A Graveyard Visible

by Steve Conoboy

  Sam’s not crying.

  Mickey looks round, and the Torcheyed monster has his friend, got him by the shoulders, lifting him off the ground, fat lasers boring in deep. ‘No! Leave him alone!’ screams Mickey, but Torcheyes won’t be distracted this time. It’s got Sam and it’s keeping him. Sam’s mouth slackens. His whole face droops.

  It’s taking everything that makes Sam who he is. Everything that makes him alive.

  It can’t end for Sam like this, lost and swallowed up by a monster. This can’t happen to any of them, it’s not fair, they’re twelve.

  He runs at Torcheyes. Jay’s shouting at him, ‘What are you doing, come back,’ but he can’t leave stupid Sam who brought them here, and he screams his last scream.

  81

  The day is grey like late evening. He feels like he’s breathing the misery in, like he’s becoming colourless. Rain feathers his hands and face as he keeps count. Caleb’s measuring the graveyard again as he can’t think of what else to do. His other projects involve going through the gates, and his feet wouldn’t let him.

  Hand over hand. Measure by measure. Sixty-three, sixty-six, sixty-nine.

  Also, he can’t go in there because there’s other things he should do, he knows there is. He should check in on Father. Whatever happened to him might be over. It’s possible he’s got better. He might be out cold on the floor. Worse, Father could have wandered off. Caleb wants to take responsibility. And at the same time he really, really doesn’t.

  Eighty-four, eighty-seven, ninety.

  If he went to check in, and if Father was still bad, he could watch Father carefully, observe him, work out a way to put him right. There’s always a way to put things right.

  One hundred and two, one hundred and five.

  His chest hitches a little as more tears are smudged out by the rain. At least Misha isn’t here to see him like this. He wants her here, though.

  All these opposites, pulling at his insides, leaving him here, measuring fences and blinking away tears.

  He concentrates on the tape measure. One hundred and twenty-three, one hundred and twenty-six.

  It’s a shame he’s concentrating so hard.

  82

  Because Vic Sweet is watching. He’s watching the little rat who tried to break his leg. A snarl twists his broad lips as the freak edges along, one tape measure length at a time. Hideous little freak, what the hell does he think he’s doing? It’s like a really crap geography assignment in the middle of the summer holidays. Freak. It makes Vic want to vomit. Some freaks shouldn’t be allowed to live, especially leg-breaking sneaking rats who get between him and the little bitch.

  Vic wants to storm over there, smash his head in, stomp on that melon until there’s nothing left but mush. If the little rat sees him, though, the chance will be gone. The best Vic’s capable of right now is a jog. So he has to wait for Blaine to turn up. Big dumb Blaine, who should be here by now. Vic’s patience is straining at the leash. Where is he? Blaine’s so dumb he’ll probably stumble along and alert the rat too soon…

  83

  She’s been in the room for around about two minutes. He hasn’t moved. Granddad’s got his elbows on the bench, head in his hands, staring at the toaster. The toast’s already popped up, was already up when Misha walked in. He’s looking at it, but he’s not. It’s white plastic, so there’s no reflection to see. Straight through – that’s where his gaze is set.

  When he notices her, it is slow, like he’s emerging from an anaemic sleep. It can’t have been last night when she last saw him. Surely months have passed, hard months. It’s painful to see his sallow skin, his deep wrinkles. He looks like he should be in a grave of his own. ‘It’s all coming apart,’ he says, and his mouth sounds rusty.

  ‘Think that toast’s ready.’ She’s aiming for amusing sarcasm. He’s not interested in comedy.

  ‘You all know what’s at stake. Every one of you.’ He’s older than she’s ever seen him, way past his limits. ‘You, Misha, with all of your talents, and everything I’ve ever told you, and yet again today you leave me hanging around. Do you think all this is funny? Do you think I’m joking around? You’ve seen them for yourself, again and again! All you had to do today, this one single day, was grow up, and you ran away like a spoilt little brat. If that’s not enough, Crosswell’s trying to split the group, and those other idiots are stupid enough to listen. And if that’s not enough, we’ve lost Neuman when we can’t afford to lose anyone. And if that’s not enough, the revenant that took her has stirred up the others. Did you know that? They took notice, they saw one of their kind break through, and now they’re all pushing harder. Yes, they’re coming through faster, and that means all the timings are now wrong, and because you keep running away and the other fools are too busy pouting and stomping their feet, I’m basically on my own. I can’t do it all. I couldn’t do it all even without the added nightmare of all the recalculations. And ‘woof woof woof grump grump grump bark bark bark’ is what Granddad’s rant degenerates into. His lips whuff away, and Misha doesn’t see why she should have to listen to it. She’s grotty from heavy sleep, she’s already had enough from Eight, she’s had a bellyful of yesterday, and Granddad never ever seems to stop. This stuff’s all he ever talks about, never anything else.

  ‘You care more about those dead bastards than me.’

  His hands slam down on the worktop. ‘Because everything rests on them! And you know that! Nothing else matters!’

  Misha walks away. He shouts after her, pleading, but she’s heard him loud and clear and will hear no more. She passes her bedroom. Eight’s still there on the bed. Restful, but always listening. She steps back to the doorway, considers Eight.

  84

  Neuman, revitalised. Lights burning hard. Skin cracking. She’s fed deeply on her catch.

  85

  350.2m x 361.3m

  Over and over he repeats these numbers to commit them to memory. They can’t be right. They can’t. That’s a huge leap. It’s an extra thirty-odd metres in either direction. He’s seen a lot of madness lately, the incredible made real. But this is messing with the rules of physics. This kind of thing cannot happen without affecting the surroundings. You can’t contain three hundred and fifty metres in the same space as three hundred and ten. It’s not possible. People would notice. Either everything in the graveyard should look squashed up and crammed in, or everything out here should look stretched. Or there’d be gaps between the houses. Or there’d be something else between them to fill up the space.

  Or something.

  But the world around him looks as it always does. Same number of houses in the same neat lines. Pavements uncracked. Roads unstretched. Lampposts all in the same places.

  The world outside the fence carries on as normal, whilst the incredible occurs on the other side. Why is it that he, Caleb, has passed the boundary between the two, when the world just keeps on spinning?

  Ah, but it’s bled out, hasn’t it? The darkly incredible has spilled out of its burial place. It was there in his garage.

  He walks. He can’t really go home, doesn’t want to go to Gramps’s house yet, and his feet take control. With nowhere else to go, they veer into the graveyard, and he won’t stay long. A little look around for clues and, you know, maybe he’ll see her. He wouldn’t mind talking about what happened yesterday, about what upset her. What if she doesn’t want to talk to him? Misha made it clear that she didn’t want him to follow. Was that a permanent order? Should he apologise? Caleb’s not even sure what he’s done wrong. Should he…

  Vic Sweet lunges out from behind the East Chapel. Caleb takes a heartbeat too long to run away. Vic gets a handful of a sleeve. Stitches pop as Caleb yanks his arm away. He’s free but off-balance, stumbling. Now Blaine’s coming at him from the West Chapel, coming fast, dropping a shoulder, and he slams into Caleb, hard, knocking him over. Caleb hits the tarmac, teeth clacking, biting through his lower lip. Skin peels from his left elbow. He thinks of that for no more t
han a second: a pain-blast thumps into his backside. Vic just toe-punted him.

  ‘Woah-ho!’ hoots Blaine. ‘You nearly took his arse off!’

  A second kick lands in the exact same spot, and Caleb cries out, cries loud. Vic stands over him, prods him with a foot until he looks up. ‘Bet you’re glad to see me.’ He hawks up a glob of phlegm, spits it into Caleb’s hair. ‘I’m going to make a real mess of you. You know that, right? I’m going to use you like a football. Nobody will be able to recognise you when I’m gone. Blaine?’

  The two older boys grab Caleb, lift him up and drag him towards the West Chapel.

  Caleb screams for help, screams for it over and over. There’s no one coming, no one in sight. Vic is squeezing his arm so hard he can feel bone creak. The more Caleb screams the louder Blaine laughs, and Caleb can’t stop screaming because Vic meant every single word he said, and they’re behind the chapel now, obscured from the road, and he tries to fight but they are bigger boys, stronger boys, and the back door’s been prised open and they drag him

  in

  and throw him to the floor.

  He tries to get right back up, but a kick across the knees sends him crashing into the front pew. Vic and Blaine come at him. ‘Pin him,’ orders Vic. ‘Pin his arms down and don’t let go. I don’t care how much he screams.’ Blaine doesn’t look like he cares either. He holds Caleb’s arms in a death grip, and Vic stands over him emotionless, and that’s the real source of Caleb’s terror, that broad, blank face. He doesn’t care how much he hurts Caleb. He doesn’t care how big a mess he makes, what trouble it could lead to, because this mess needs to be made, here beneath the stained glass windows, here where Mum once lay in a coffin as people cried and Father stared off into nothing.

  Vic lifts his foot high, drives it down. A desperate squirm shifts the target. The stomp catches Caleb’s knee a glancing blow, hard enough for him to howl, and to know that if it had caught him full on the kneecap it would have shattered. ‘Damn it, Blaine! I told you to hold him still!’

  ‘I can only hold his arms or his legs, what do you want?’ Blaine slaps Caleb across the face. Stars scorch through his vision, his tongue and cheek burn with fire. ‘You heard him. Stay still or I’ll slap you some more.’

  Before Caleb’s head can clear, Vic’s massive foot tramps down on his stomach, and all the air is gone and won’t come back. This is light years worse than the pain in his face. He wants to throw up; nothing will move.

  ‘I bet you think that hurts, don’t you?’ growls Vic. ‘I bet you think that’s the worst pain there’s ever been. I’m going to give you a moment to think about something. What you’re feeling right now? That’s the easy bit. In five minutes you’ll be wishing to be here again, feeling like this. In ten minutes you won’t even remember who you are.’

  Blaine gets right in Caleb’s screwed-up face, laughs hard. ‘You’re gonna be a walking bruise! We are going to break you!’

  Caleb needs to clutch his stomach, can’t so much as wiggle his pinned arms. A punch in the gut. This time Caleb is sick. It blurts out of him in a brown foam, a splattery mess that clogs his nostrils, trickles into his eyes. ‘Oh no, oh God, that was horrible! Hit him again,’ demands Blaine, ‘see what else comes out of him!’

  ‘Please,’ is all Caleb can spit up.

  ‘Please!’ hoots Blaine. ‘Pleeeeeease! You heard this kid? He wants more!’

  ‘He’s getting it whether he wants it or not.’

  Caleb can only see blurs through the vomit and spit in his eyes. The Vic-blur is pulling back its leg-blur to deliver another toe-punt.

  A figure swishing in behind Vic, swinging a white bundle. It slams into Vic’s upper arm, and the bundle is heavy, very heavy, sweeping the bully sideways, and he crashes into and over the top of the first row of seats.

  Suddenly Caleb’s arms are free.

  ‘You little bitch,’ grunts Blaine, swinging a punch. It connects with the off-balance swishing figure. She cries out.

  She.

  Caleb swipes at his eyes to clear them, starts sitting up. Blaine thrusts him back down, clambering over the boy to get at Misha. She’s stumbling backwards, struggling with the bundle and its inertia. Caleb kicks out, catches Blaine’s right ankle, tucking it behind the left. He trips, stopped only by the pillar he catches hold of. Misha’s stepping forward, swinging the bundle at Blaine. He’s already fallen under her arm. She misses his head by inches, hits the pillar hard enough to knock out chips, almost drops the bundle, and she’s there beside him, her hand grasping his, and in that blink of a second Caleb feels no pain, just detached amazement and her warm hand.

  Then the roar, ‘You’re dead!’ The threat fills the chapel, resonates, as Vic rises up from between the seats, and Misha and Caleb run.

  The pain returns. It doubles, and doubles again, and he can’t run upright. Misha’s dragging him too fast. He falls through the back door, and he’s a bad shape for falling, and pitches face-first towards ground. His hands come up to take the impact. Stones cut into the meat of his palms, stones that could have had his lips, his nose, his eyes.

  ‘Dead!’ The word blasts out of the chapel like a bear-bark from cave depths. It drives Caleb up and moving and chasing Misha.

  She’s going the wrong way.

  They should head for the graveyard gates, the road, people. Misha’s turned the opposite way. ‘Move!’ she shouts at him from the base of the incline of Daisy Hill. Every last ounce of his breath is accounted for, none spare for his voice. Already he’s going after her, already his choice is made, already they’re leaving the exit behind.

  Caleb has no hope of escape.

  Blaine is fast, scary fast. He slows to let Vic catch up. ‘Go! Just get them!’ screams Vic, still struggling with his leg. Blaine accelerates, and Caleb can’t look back any more, must focus everything on getting up this hill. Ignore the burning in his belly. Ignore the way his knee wants to twist and give out. Urge his lungs to inflate. Urge his heart to pump hard and strong. Blood and pain rush through his veins in overlapping waves. Gravestones whip past, fuzzy blurs, as Misha pulls away, like the blades of grass under her feet are flicking her forwards. That grass is against him. It feels treacherous, ready to slide under his trainers and pull him down.

  And Blaine must be right behind him. Reaching. Grabbing.

  Faster. The world gets blurrier, hazy. Up, up, up as Daisy Hill steepens.

  He can’t make the top. It’s miles away.

  Legs burn, stomach burns, lungs burn.

  Misha shouting at him to move.

  Rough breathing behind and closing.

  He can’t carry on.

  Blaine spears him, shoulder driving into the base of Caleb’s spine. The spike bends him into a mid-air dive, arms and legs thrown backwards, then he’s driven into the ground, sliding to a halt, nose inches from a gravestone.

  H. A. SOWERSBY

  1910–1965

  BEYOND THIS ENDING

  WE WAIT FOR YOU

  Caleb may never take another breath. It sounds like Blaine is struggling to catch his. The grey is spilling out of the headstone, pouring into the ground, blending with the heavy sky, and he’s passing out, and let Vic have him, let Vic do what he wants. This great big monolith is tilting to the right and taking the whole world with it, and he feels damp grass against his cheek, and a daisy brushes his eyelashes.

  A scream, incoming. Something swooshing. A bag swings through his line of sight. A sickly clunk. The weight is gone from his back. He’s rolled over. Misha’s face is everything. Her hair tickles his forehead. ‘This is the last time I save you.’ She’s dragging him up; the world whirls round and rights itself. Vic is a few gravestone rows away.

  Caleb finds more energy to run. He’s sick in his mouth. Misha lashes her fingers into his; he’s not getting left behind again. ‘Blaine…’

  ‘Might be dead, I hit him hard. Shut up!’ She’s right. A single word costs him too much in air. Vic’s snorts of exertion: a wounded boar who
will have blood for blood.

  Upwards goes their mad chase. Is Misha leading the bully to another trap? Another ditch for him to snap his ankle in? At the peak, past Neuman’s open grave, no traps, no ditches, just the down of the hill, down, down, down. His legs get carried away. He feels them windmilling like he’s a cartoon character. Full speed is exhilarating. Every second it takes for Vic to reach the top of the hill puts them further ahead.

  Giddy laughter. Misha’s. Lilting in loops.

  Swearing from Vic. He’s fallen! Caleb prays to Whoever that the bully’s busted his knee, that his running days are done. He and Misha go

  Go

  Go

  Go

  She drags him so fast he almost crashes through the fence at the back of the graveyard. He risks a backward glance. Vic is a considerable distance away. They can lose him pretty easily. All Caleb has to do is keep his feet.

  Over the fence, and it’s the hardest climb he’s ever done. It seems as if each part of his body has turned against him. Limbs that ache and resist movement. Back muscles that don’t want to flex and bend. Head that wants to lie down somewhere.

  Boy and girl drop down on the other side in unison. ‘Pretend to fall,’ says Misha.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just do it?’

  ‘What are you…’ She pushes him, and he doesn’t need to pretend. She’s knocked him on his backside.

  ‘That’ll do. Come on, let’s go, he’s getting close again.’ Up once more, and bounding along a rough trail through long grass as Vic reaches the fence, hurling himself over.