Nettles bend themselves to sting, branches reach out to scratch, the path bucks like an undulating snake, writhing through fat tufts of wild grass. This is helter-skelter running. This is life with everything against them.
They’re pulling away from Vic again.
Misha throws herself to the ground, makes a big play of getting up.
‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Caleb’s voice splits and breaks.
‘If we get too far ahead he’ll give up.’ She takes flight again, and Caleb’s in the middle of two crazies; chasing one, chased by another.
No way off the path. Hemmed in by trees and tangles.
All this because he was too stupid to keep his eyes open.
They burst out of this encroached trail onto a broad path that swoops left and down, a high wall running alongside them, and Misha feigns another fall. A guttural noise escapes Caleb’s throat, a frustrated growl. It’s either that or kick her where she kneels.
He takes her elbow to get her up.
‘No! Not yet! He’ll lose us!’
Twig snaps and bush rustle signify Vic’s stumbling arrival on the path. He’s red and sweating through pain. He stops, clutching his knee, a rabid troubling dog. Staring, and staring.
‘He’s done,’ Caleb whispers, backing away, drawing a reluctant Misha with him. ‘What’s wrong with you? He’s given up, let’s go.’
To Caleb’s cold horror she points at Vic, and shouts so her voice tears at the air. ‘You’re a loser, Sweet! Look at you! We beat you!’ The bully limps forward, each step taking a heavy toll on his leg. How he glares, how he wants the blood that’s so far away. ‘I hate you!’ Misha rages, it vibrates from her in waves. He feels it in his lungs, and it scares him
‘I hate you!’
because he burned this hot
‘I wish you
a fire that melts eyeballs
were dead!’
into tears, and he screamed
‘You should
this at Father because Mum
be dead!’
was dead and never coming
‘I hate
back, and here he was,
hate
right here, still living, still
hate
there with the nerve to live,
to keep limping on, like Vic would rather his leg snap than give up. Caleb’s managed to drag spitting Misha to the bottom of the slope, under the bridge where it’s cold and damp, real cold like dawn frost, real damp with water-slick stonework. ‘You deserve to die!’ Her threats reverberate and redouble and surround him. ‘You think you’ve got the right to touch me, to do whatever you want, and you’re disgusting, you’re scum, and I want to stick a knife in your throat and watch you bleed!’
Caleb’s nerve-endings thrum.
Vic has halved the distance. He bursts into a final charge. Close, so close Caleb is sure he sees tears streaking from bloodshot eyes, before he and Misha flee. His burnt-out muscles make his legs difficult to shift, and it’s uphill again, and this couldn’t be harder if he was wearing iron boots.
Caleb knows this part of the gardens. The path branches. Left goes to the Butterfly House. Straight on is the Tea Rooms. To the right, lights. Getting brighter. Approaching.
‘Come and get us!’ screams Misha, and Caleb hisses at her to shut up but she’s too busy shouting at Vic, too intent on winding the bully up.
She’s so intent on who’s behind her that she takes the right-hand turn.
‘Not that way!’ He reaches out to her, to steer her, but she’s got past him, heading towards the beams.
She’s still shouting at Vic to ‘Come on! Come on you scum!’ and Caleb realises that it’s not chance and random choice that’s led them here. It’s Misha.
The steel-blue splash of the beams is surging through the trees up ahead.
Caleb’s no longer running; he’s stumbling, staggering, between two monsters.
Vic is gaining ground fast. Ten paces behind, nine, eight.
Low branches snapping as headlamps race forward, blazing in the gloom.
Vic seven, six, five paces behind. Pushing harder.
Howling-yelling Misha takes Caleb’s hand. He sees Neuman pounding through trees painted bone-metal with her lights.
Vic four, three, two.
Misha pulls on Caleb’s arm. Sharp left, they veer off the path, slipping on loose stones and dirt. Vic turns after them. Doesn’t see Neuman burst out of woodland, launch herself across the path. Caleb sees.
Oh God he sees
Vic Sweet, eyes fierce, mouth sneering, sure of victory, doused in the light scorching from Neuman’s sockets, an airborne demon, all crackle-skinned and stretch-limbed, and in its lights the world is a seared wasteland through which jut the long, scything talons of thirsting devils, and under the ground glow the angry and broken half-souls of writhing revenants, and the light strips away Vic’s skin and flesh
and Neuman crashes into the boy, driving him to the ground. He doesn’t get the chance to cry out.
He will die with the taste of dirt in his mouth.
Misha drags Caleb to the path. There are no final bursts of energy for running from this awful scene. He must listen to the fading struggles. He must hear Neuman pulling Vic out from the undergrowth. He must listen. He shouldn’t feel any pity for the boy who wanted to kick him until he was dead. He shouldn’t feel anything but bruises and exhausted muscles and scorched lungs.
Her hand grips hard. It doesn’t seem to fit properly in his.
Each breath is fire in his throat. ‘Oh God, what have we done?’
‘He did it,’ she snarls, all hackles and bloodlust. ‘He did it all, and don’t you forget it. It’s his fault.’ Now she begins to tremble? Now she’s scared?
They cut through flowerbeds and trample a patch of cabbage, only using the path when it goes their way. They hear no birds, see no animals. They pass a football, an empty plastic bag, a trainer, scattered rubbish. Caleb wants to be thrown away too. It would suit his aching legs if he were cast aside, left to crumple and heap.
No lightbeams follow them. The day’s dull is theirs alone as they press on towards Pernicious House. Off the path one last time. One more shortcut through the trees.
It’ll never end. He’ll always be here, chased and terrified.
A boy in the deeps of gloom. Caleb’s first thought, Blaine! is dismissed. Too skinny. Too small. ‘There’s someone…’
‘I just want out of here, okay? We’re in trouble, I know, I get it. Just move, will you?’
They leave the boy behind. Onward, around trunk after trunk, and the boy is over to the left now, still and watching, but he must have ran to get over there so quickly, he must have sprinted.
It (why it? The boy is a he, a he) is hunch-shouldered, miserable in stance. Miserable? Caleb can’t see anything but silhouette. He’s over-tired. That’s no boy. There’s no one there. A collection of branches with tight clumps of leaves.
There, to the right, and further ahead. The boy. Can’t be the same boy. There’s more than one.
Caleb stops running so suddenly that he almost jerks Misha off her feet. ‘What the hell?’ she snaps. He points at one boy shape, then the next, then the next.
‘We’re surrounded. That’s what the hell.’
She turns in circles, looking from one black silhouette to another. ‘Who are they?’
‘Was hoping you might have an idea.’ An awful idea: ‘What if it’s Vic’s back up?’
‘No.’ She’s shaking her head a lot. ‘No. They’re nothing to do with him.’ She fishes an eight-ball out of the pillowcase, holds it up to look into its window. ‘Who are they?’ A shake. Glowing letters swarm together.
DEAD ALL THREE
Caleb feels cold water in his veins. Misha grips the eight-ball so hard her fingers turn bone-white. ‘How can that be? How are they here?’
ONE QUESTION ONCE
She’s talking to it. And it’s talking back. ‘Damn it, Eight!
How are they here?’
THESE ARE REMAINS
Caleb tears his eyes from the answer (answer! It answers!) to see the boys (they’re boys, not its [why does he keep thinking it it it]) closer. Like they hovered five steps closer. None are standing up straight. Shoulders sag, heads loll, arms hang limp.
‘Oh God,’ breathes Misha. ‘It was Neuman, wasn’t it?’ Shake, shake.
SHE DRAINED THEM
The ball shakes itself.
VERY LITTLE LEFT
Two of the boys speak.
‘Home.’ ‘Home.’
‘So far from Home.’ ‘So far.’
‘Want to go Home.’ ‘Take us.’
Misha drops the eight-ball back into the pillowcase. Through the thin cotton Caleb can see a single luminescent word repeated:
RUN RUN RUN.
Echoing whispers, the darkled voices of shadows:
‘We’ve been here ‘It’s all dark here
for so long.’ they’re all dark.’
Misha spins the pillowcase to form a thin rope. That single word whips round, RUN RUN RUN
Caleb’s pretty certain he has no run left.
‘Where is Home?’ ‘I’m lost, I’m lost.’
‘Take us there.’ ‘So empty.’
‘You, Caleb, you.’ ‘Hate you, hate.’
He might have a little left in the tank after all. He and Misha make a break for it, and cold hands reach for them. The ball swings, cracks a forearm. No cry of pain from Mickey. That’s who it is, Caleb’s friend from school. A boy he knows. Just a boy.
‘Caleb, we need you, Caaaaay-leb.’ He looks back to see Sam behind Mickey and Jay, another boy he knows, but they’re not boys anymore. They won’t be playing football and they won’t be going to school and they’ll never go home.
86
The town doesn’t see the two kids tumble out of a hole in a fence, doesn’t yet know about the missing. The graveyard’s secrets are spilling out, but for the most part the town is unaware of the miseries coming its way.
They are coming, though, and they won’t be stopped.
87
He couldn’t climb it. He barely made it all this way to the fort, and clambering onto the roof is too much to expect of his legs. And his arms. And everything else. So they’re inside the fort, sitting opposite each other, the eight ball in its case to one side.
Caleb thinks he may never move again. He’ll stay here in the playground, in the thin rain, and let Neuman come, or the thing from the garage, or Father, or any horror at all, let them all come, and let them all take him because he can’t fight and deserves only the justice of the dead. (Father’s not dead, why think that, he’s not, he’s not), but he is. Dead and gone. Like Mickey and Sam and Jay.
He leans forward, elbows on knees, head low, looking at his pencil-slim fingers. Misha leans too, touches her forehead to his, and he watches as she laces her fingers with his. After monsters and ghosts, the touch of her seems hyper-real, more real than anything has ever been. The racing of his breath slows and deepens. Eyes closed, he tries to listen to whatever might be in her head. If only she could hear his thoughts too. Speaking is too difficult. His heart gets in the way.
Will she stay here with him, even when the monsters come? Will she be here at the end?
The pulse in her fingertips, it bumps against his own.
‘There’s no point in us telling anyone,’ she says, and when she speaks Caleb can feel small vibrations in his skull. ‘You know that, right? It’s too late. It’s a waste of time.’ She squeezes his fingers, as if to reassure him that this terrible choice is okay.
‘We’ve got to say something. Their parents should know.’
‘What? That they’ve been taken by a creature we call a revenant? That they’re haunting the trees of Pernicious House? That they’ll do bad things to Mummy and Daddy if they ever get home? Nobody’s going to believe a thing you say.’
He lifts his head, frowning. ‘We tell them their kids are missing. That’s what we have to do.’
‘And how do you tell them that? Because if you know where they are, they’re not missing, are they? And they’ll want to know how you know. They’ll want to know a lot of things. I don’t think you’re ready for that, Caleb. I don’t think you’re anywhere near ready.’
Hot sparks in his chest. ‘Of course I’m not ready! I’ve not been ready for any of this! What has that got to do with anything? When has being ready mattered? They’re boys I know, I played football with them, I had a fight with Sam every other week, and I know them, I went to school with them, Mickey was in my class, he’s a kid, he’s just a normal kid. And he’s got parents, and his parents probably love him, so don’t you think they deserve to know? We have to tell them something.’ Misha’s not holding his hands now. She’s leaning back, leaning away.
‘They’re not coming back,’ she says, ‘so what are you hoping to do? Where’s telling the parents going to get you? Done is done. It’s over for them. I knew them too, you know. I’d seen them around. Boys like any others.’
He barks at her. ‘They were kids, Misha. People.’
‘And what does the world care? Has it ended? Has the world come to a stop? It didn’t when your mum died, and it didn’t stop today. Three dead boys aren’t going to change that. It’s all going to keep on going, the way it always does.’
‘How can you say that? How can you think like that?’ He’s shouting now.
And so is she. ‘Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter what I say or think! It doesn’t change the way things are. I can’t change it, and neither can you! Do you think those three were ever going to make much difference? Seriously. Did they ever have a chance of doing anything that might help fix this broken world? No, all they’d ever be is another broken part of it.’
Caleb’s on his feet. He wants to be away from her; he needs Misha to hear him loud and clear, needs it, needs it, needs it. ‘Of course it makes a difference! They’ll be missed. There are families that won’t have Mickey or Sam or Jay in them, and that affects the world, it affects someone’s whole world, it’s like tearing it up into tiny pieces and then giving someone a roll of tape and saying, “There, go and stick it all back together if you can”.’
Misha’s up as well, and her limbs are rigid with anger. ‘You’ve got to open your eyes! You’ve got to be able to see past this crappy little town, past your own tiny little life. It’ll all keep working without us, you know, without this town. The world’s full of shit, Caleb. Look at Vic. Look at what he tried to do to me. You think I care that he’s dead, that anyone cares? Is he such a big loss? Are we missing out on anything now that the scumbag is gone?’
‘You knew what you were doing the whole time. You led him to Neuman. You killed him.’
‘I’d stab him in the throat if I could!’
Every ounce of her means it. He can see it in the way she vibrates. This is something wearing Misha as a girl-suit. The graveyard girl herself is little but a memory now, a memory that maybe isn’t real. ‘People say things like that all the time, but they don’t actually mean them, Misha, they don’t! Look at what you did! You led him there to die! You basically killed him!’
And isn’t she mad now! ‘So I’m a killer, I’m a murderer, and that’s fine by me. The things he wanted to do to me don’t matter to you, do they? Caleb, the good little boy who’s never done anything wrong, the good little boy who’s been hard done-to by the world. He was going to kill you today. He was going to keep kicking you until you bled out of your eyes and ears, and then would have kicked you some more. Only I was stupid enough to save you, wasn’t I? I come along and save your life and how dumb does that make me?’ She’s stalking now, walks three steps away from him before turning to stride right at him, like she’s building up to charging him down. Stalk, stalk, stalk, stride, stride, stride. ‘And I’ve got rid of him! I’ve got rid of Vic Sweet! He’s gone forever, and it’s because of me! You couldn’t stop him, nobody else could stop him, but I did. He can’t
bully anyone ever again, and it’s because of me!’ Her rage burns tears. ‘He can’t beat on you again because of me! He can’t corner me again, can’t grab me ever again, and the only person who stopped it is me. Tell me, Caleb, tell me how the world’s going to suffer without him in it? Tell me how we’re all so much worse off, why don’t you? What does it matter that he’s dead?’
‘What does it matter if any of us dies then?’
‘Exactly. Now you’re getting it.’
He throws his hands up, pleading. ‘What does that mean? You can’t say things don’t matter when they actually do.’
‘Your mum died and kids still ran around in the playground screaming and laughing and playing tag. Your dad hates the fact that you exist and the neighbours keep wasting their time on what the pretend people do on TV. It’s like that for everyone everywhere. We hate each other. All over the world, we hate each other. It doesn’t matter how any of us goes because it makes no difference to anything.’ She stalks back to the fort, picks up the eight-ball. ‘So fuck the world, Caleb. Fuck it.’
She goes, and his guts sink. She is not his Evelyn.
88
Later, when he’s curled up on Gramps’s sofa and staring at the waste-of-time television, when he’s seeing none of what’s happening on the screen because there’s too much spinning behind his eyes, Caleb wonders what he can do to stop the ache in his chest. He knows it’s his thoughts that are hurting him, but they’re like an infection he can’t shake off. He pushes one away, two more come from behind it.
His head, resting on a coarse cushion, is nestled in the crook of his arm. He’s sure he can smell her on his sleeve, that girl he first saw in the graveyard.
He wishes she’d stayed away, because he knows now that he can’t.
89
It’s back to being her tree again. A hollowed-out hidey-hole at a far end of the graveyard, away from all eyes and demands. Only Vic ever found her here, so determined to have her to himself. He’s never coming back. He’ll never follow her with his gang or corner her again. He is gone for good.
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