I have never forgotten the last touch of our fingertips.
I ran, keeping low, looking over my shoulder over and over again. When I reached the school I stopped looking and kept moving. I was reduced to a jog, but I refused to slow any more than that. I had something to do, and I didn’t think I’d have much time to do it in.
As I expected, the Landy house wasn’t locked. The monster man had been in too much of a hurry to dish out some punishments. I found a satchel, went to Evelyn’s room, filled it with most of the books she’d hidden under her bed, carried the remaining two under my arm, and the whole time I thought of that open trapdoor leading down to the cellar, to those tunnels and the dusty, greasy creatures that shuffled around in the dark.
I couldn’t get out of that house quick enough.
But I didn’t leave the graveyard, not straight away. I’m only so much of a coward. I lay low, keeping out of sight while watching that house. I wanted to see her come back. I wanted to see Landy, if he would return dragging Evelyn along by the neck or if he’d be alone. I watched to see the dead rise from the tunnels and spill out into our world.
I saw none of these things.
That house was silent for hours. I was left alone, cold and tired, with only assumptions for company. I told myself she was leading him the merriest of dances, and he was still chasing her somewhere in the night, maybe in big circles. I imagined that the creatures weren’t coming out because they were awaiting their Master’s return. I told myself to believe in Evelyn, that she could deal with him, because she would never lie to me, would she? My Evelyn.
I would hunt her out the next day, and she’d have a frightening tale to tell, and together we’d work out what to do next.
At some ungodly hour, then, I headed home, and in the absence of sleep I read a book.
Caleb lowers the journal. He wants to look at Misha, wants to see her reaction. Her gaze is diverted towards the drop-off and beyond. He wonders what she sees. Is it the girl, running, running but eventually caught? Or is it the boy, sneaking home with books and fear? Or are her thoughts elsewhere, back home, beneath the floorboards?
Her chin is set firm, like she’s ready to fight. ‘Your Gramps is an old man now, right?’
‘Yeah. Properly old.’
‘All of this happened years and years ago.’
‘Yeah.’ Decades ago. What an odd thought. Caleb’s only a little more than a decade old himself. Decades just don’t makes sense to him.
‘So either the tunnels collapsed or got sealed up. I’ve never heard of them or seen anything that might have come out of them.’
‘We haven’t finished the journal yet.’
‘So what? You said yourself Landy’s house got knocked down and replaced. There’s no cellar, Caleb. No trapdoors. Or if there is, somehow I’ve never seen it, and unless it’s been hidden under the rug in my bedroom all this time, then I really don’t know where it could be.’
‘What about that guy?’
‘Which one? The one you left in the garage with your dad?’ It isn’t said with venom, but its still got fangs. ‘That didn’t dig itself out of the ground. Not dirty enough. That was something else. You’re getting distracted by old stories when they don’t really matter. There’s a lot to deal with right now.’
‘Gramps gave me this for a reason; he wants me to read it…’
‘And we’ve read it, and it was great, but I don’t know what you want us to do with it. We can’t go down there even if we wanted to. We’ve got stuff going on right now that we don’t know what to do about. There’s Neuman who could be anywhere, and Crosswell’s going to be a real pain in the arse, and Vic Sweet’s going to get his gang to kill us, and Granddad’s not far from raising the dead. There, I’ve said it. You wanted to ask, I know you did. It’s been killing you. Well, there it is, that’s what you saw. He’s trying to control it so they all come up at once. The old coot’s totally crazy, and Crosswell and the others are just as bad or maybe worse because at least Granddad’s excuse is that he’s mad, and you know what, Caleb? Do you know what? Once we’re done here, you get to go home. Your Father’s there, I know, and that’s terrible for you, but you get away from it all. You close the door behind you, and leave the world outside, and it’ll be like all the monsters are miles and miles away. When I go home, I’m right in the middle. I sleep with monsters all around me. And then Granddad wants to go out playing with them.’ She stands, and he has a feeling she might take a run-up and kick him in the head. ‘This is all a big scary adventure for you, Caleb, but for me this is life, every single day.’ She walks off, heading towards the broken gate. Caleb scrambles to his feet. ‘Don’t bother,’ she snaps. ‘I need to get home before Granddad comes hunting.’
And so Caleb is, once again, alone. Just a boy and a journal.
71
Not-Father stands in the corner of a kitchen that’s not his, watching the heaped human on the floor, the small blood splashes marring the linoleum. First the right foot twitches, then the left. Fingers grasp at nothing. Creaks and cracks as neck and shoulders jerk. Shudders run up and down the legs, the arms flap like rubber wings.
Then it all stops.
And Glasses stands. He’s a little wobbly, but he’s upright, and staring at the microwave. His reflection is dim in the jetblack door of the appliance. With a shuddering hand he rights his skew-whiff spectacles.
A bump in the garden outside.
Glasses shuffles to the back door, struggles with the handle. Not-Father steps forward to assist. As soon as the door opens, Glasses shoves Not-Father away and bundles out, staggering on the step down to the patio. There’s a ball in the middle of the lawn, and a small face peering over the fence.
‘Excuse me? Can I have my ball back this time please?’
Glasses heads for the small face, arms out-stretched and desperate.
72
An eight-ball, heavy on a bed. It’s the only thing in the room shaking. When it stops a short message appears in its window: HUNGRY I ACHE
73
He long ago gave up calling out a ‘hello’ whenever he gets home. Once upon a time it resulted in Mum calling something cute right back at him before coming through from the living room, or upstairs, or wherever to hear about his day. Now, noise tends to alert Father to Caleb’s presence, and the boy prefers to get in and get to his bedroom with the minimum of fuss. He doesn’t want to know what happened in the garage, doesn’t care if there was a scuffle when Father threw the intruder out on the street. So he enters via the back door, kicks off his trainers on the mat in the kitchen, and heads upstairs without seeing that the front door is open.
Caleb doesn’t intend to stay home for long.
He needs to get back out there. He has to be in the graveyard. So what if she told him not to follow? So what if her granddad and his goons might be lurking around and looking for him? A million ‘so whats’. There are measurements and drawings and investigations that will not wait. There are things that must be found out, and Caleb has to record it all.
He must.
Must, must, must.
In a minute.
As soon as he’s got up off the bed. Only a minute or two. He’s thinking about what to do next. Closing his eyes to think. A couple of minutes while he makes a decision about something. Whatever it is. Important. That’s what it is, important. But it can wait. Five minutes.
That’s all.
74
She approaches home cautiously, spends the minimum time possible in any sight lines from the windows. There are no cars parked out front, which is good and bad. Good, because it means there’s no Crosswell or any of those other idiots hanging around. Bad, because it means Crosswell and the other idiots aren’t around to distract Granddad. For an old man he can be surprisingly alert. She can’t face any more of his disappointment. It’s been too long a day already.
Round the back of the house she goes, slips through the window into her room.
Eight sits on the middle
of the bed.
Misha takes a good long look at the silent ball, feels it is eyeing her right back. She drops a towel over Eight, something she’s never done before, then changes into pyjamas.
She thinks that maybe she’ll leave the towel over Eight for the rest of the day.
There’s a soft hiss of shifting material as the towel trembles. Misha knows she shouldn’t have let that thought out. She doesn’t want to deal with Eight when it’s angry. Maybe she should scoop it up, pop it in a cupboard out of the way, get a few hours peace. Or a few days. She could live without its predictions for a few days. Didn’t exactly help her with Vic Sweet, did it?
The shaking under the towel becomes more violent.
She feels pale. She’s let her thoughts run too far this time.
‘Alright,’ she says, ‘I was only messing around.’ Deep breath, and she draws the towel away. ‘Take it easy, okay? Don’t freak out. Nothing wrong with having a sense of humour.’
Eight regards her in cold, blank stillness. No words, no shaking. She turns her back on it, folding the towel and placing it on top of the drawers. She wonders if perhaps now would be a good time to go and face Granddad, get that unpleasant scene out of the way. If she offers to do a few weeks worth of chores then she might be able to take some of the heat out of the situation.
Even with her back to Eight, Misha knows a response has appeared. It’s like an ice cube millimetres from her neck, her skin cringing away.
She thinks of Caleb, with only a miserable, hateful father to avoid. Poor boy with so little to lose. Alone in his bedroom. She wishes she could have stayed a while longer. It was nice there, away from the world, away from all this, even if it was only for a little while, even if it couldn’t hope to last.
Now she must deal with this.
She turns to see what Eight has to say.
DON’T YOU DARE
A hard, dry swallow. ‘Come on, I’d never stick you in a cupboard, it’s a joke,’ but it’s a joke that feels lumpen in her throat.
Eight’s words are an icy blue. ALL I’VE DONE.
‘I know. You’ve done so much. I’m not saying you haven’t…’
YOU MUST REMEMBER
‘I can’t forget, can I?’
No immediate answer, except the darkness is answer enough to her snappy words. If it launches itself at her, Misha won’t be surprised. Then, I AM YOURS.
‘Yes.’ The lump in her throat grows.
YOU ARE MINE
Those are the worst three words of all. ‘Yeah, but look, I could do with a little bit of quiet before Granddad finds out I’m back…’
FOCUS ON ME. This last word grows to fill the screen, simmers as if hot.
Misha reminds herself not to think of anything. Now is not a good time for thinking. There’s all too much trouble in thoughts.
I’M IN CHARGE. This is a crimson shout.
OLD MAN NOT
‘Try telling him that. He’s got a world to change and he’ll do it no matter what.’ And if Granddad ever finds out about Eight there is no telling how badly he will react. The only guarantee is that the reaction would be very, very bad.
CHANGE IS GOOD
‘So I’ve heard.’
CHANGE IS RIGHT
CHANGE IS NEEDED
OLD MAN FOOLISH
BUT ALSO WISE
She’d almost prefer Eight’s violent outrage to this gobbledegook. ‘I get this rubbish from him all the time,’ she snaps, and reminds herself to keep her voice down or give herself away. ‘I’ve heard all of this. I just want a break…’
CHANGE IS IMPORTANT
BUT NEEDS CONTROL
I’M IN CONTROL
CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL
‘Okay, I get it, I get it. I bow down to you, the all-seeing, all-knowing Eight. But you didn’t tell me about Vic. You didn’t say that he’d get me up at the tree.’
The last CONTROL fades from the small round window, and she watches it hard, and the answer is several long seconds in coming. LEFT ME HERE, says Eight.
She frowns, reading the message again, and again. ‘Did you know he was coming for me? You had to know. You always know.’
DOES IT MATTER?
‘You got in a huff with me over something I hadn’t done yet? I can’t believe this. You left me to him.’
ALL NEED LESSONS
A horde of violent thoughts push and shove to the front of her brain. Throwings. Smashings. Burials. All possible endings for Eight the Betrayer.
‘That’s not fair. You’re not fair, I brought you here. It’s because of me that you’re here and not still stuck over there!’ Heat in her throat, tongue boiling. ‘You made all these promises, and you’re just like everyone else, you all say the same things, and you said you were different and you’re not, you’re as different as everyone else and that’s no different at all. The only thing that’s in that ball is the same old bull.’
DON’T YOU DARE
Eight shakes so hard that the words disintegrate and she thinks the ball might explode. She cowers away as small words expand: ALL I’VE DONE, ALL FOR YOU, ALL I’VE DONE, THROWN AT ME, HATE HATE HATE.
Misha drops to her knees before Eight, leans over the bed, finds the courage to bring her face up close. Her reflection bends and distorts. ‘But it’s true. You did leave me to him, and you did make promises, a pact you called it, a pact, and you were meant to stick to it.’
YES A PACT
Then, WE BOTH DID.
She sinks down upon the quilt, resting her head in the crook of an elbow. ‘For a little while I thought you were on my side. I really did.’
ONLY ONE SIDE
‘Yeah. Yours, right?’ Cool now, Misha, cool. ‘I was never off your side.’
STUPID EIGHT ANSWERS
She’s been expecting this, but it’s still cold shivery awful. Her own words. Her own thoughts.
GET GRANDDAD’S SLEDGEHAMMER
SEE WHAT’S INSIDE
STUPID STUPID EIGHT
‘I was angry, alright?’ Her honesty is all she has left against Eight’s venom. ‘What else do you want me to say? I said those things, yeah, I know. And you knew I was going to say them, right? And you know why. So it doesn’t change anything.’
WORDS ARE WORDS
She looks away from Eight, to the wrinkles of her knuckles. Having her own spite thrown back up by this ball is wearisome, rapidly so. Soft quilt. Sleep is coming. She pulls the rest of herself up onto the bed, curls around Eight. ‘I couldn’t get rid of you. We both know it. Because I wonder how you know what you know. It’s like writers who can see how the story will turn out, because it’s their story.’
YOU ARE MINE
‘You keep saying that.’
BOY IS YOURS
Did her stomach really flutter then?
KEEP HIM CLOSE
‘I know what I’m doing. It’s like you said. He’s into it now, he won’t let go.’ She waits for more answers, but there are none, and she drifts.
75
It’s a bang so loud it vibrates the walls and Caleb jumps up, gasping. That was the front door. He knows from the times he’s slammed it and been verbally blasted as a result. It has to be Father who has almost taken the door off the hinges. No one else ever comes in (except for Misha, she was here, a girl in here).
Father never slams doors. He can shout and bang fists on tables and throw things at bins, but never door-slamming.
Caleb eases himself off the bed, nerves frazzled and spitting fireworks after the abrupt wake-up. He pads across the carpet, slips out of his bedroom, and listens with ears well attuned to the house he’s lived in forever.
Some kind of…snuffling. Caleb’s skin prickles. Dogs snuffle when hunting through grass. Hunting.
Caleb feels fragile and edible.
It stops, and is the house always this silent, this breathless?
Someone (thing) is in.
It must be Father. To shut the door, he had to let himself in first. It needs a key. Only Ca
leb and Father have keys. The door was definitely shut. He saw it was shut. Didn’t he?
No. No he didn’t. But why would it be left open? It’s never left open. And people never jump out of their graves, and no one would ever dig a labyrinth of tunnels under a graveyard, and revenants don’t exist.
Solid footsteps tramp down the hall, real solid footsteps, like Father’s but not. More deliberate. Measured. Someone relearning the basics of walking might stomp like this.
How long are revenants away before they come back to this life?
Stop it! Caleb is stern with himself. It’s Father. It can’t be anyone else. It wouldn’t be the Not-Man, back after wandering around in and out of the house, looking for Caleb, never thinking for a moment that the boy has already sneaked upstairs and been in bed for who knows how long (and how about that for an idea, a Not-Man looming over a sleeping Caleb and taking hold of his face with cold throbbing hands and squeeeeeeeeeze). It’s Father. Has to be. He got rid of the Not-Man and it was a great struggle and in that struggle Father got hurt. That’s it. That’s why he’s walking strangely. It might be a blow to the head. Concussion. Caleb’s heard of that. It makes sense.
If that’s the case, why can’t Caleb bring himself to call out? Just a few quick words. Or go and look. If Caleb thinks Father might be hurt, then he must go and look.
The footsteps are going in circles around the front room. Tight circles, increasing in speed.
Caleb retreats to his bedroom. He could drag his wardrobe across to barricade the door, but it would make a lot of noise. It would give him away. He could stack up boxes and books, but they wouldn’t be enough to stop that man (a man, are you sure it’s a man? It’s a not a man, it’s not, it’s not Father) if he wanted to barge in, if he wanted to bash right in, grab Caleb’s face in two strong hands and squeeeeeeeeeze. (Why do I keep thinking that? Stop stop stop.)
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