A Graveyard Visible

by Steve Conoboy

  And I spent hour after hour that night going through every one of my memories of her, trying to remember the girl who was so full of life, not the one so full of hate for me. I couldn’t. She’d been taken from me again.

  When I went to close the curtains Evelyn was there on the other side of the glass. She placed the tips of her skin-tearing nails on the windowpane, dragged them up and down with a keening squeal. ‘Daddy wants you,’ she whispered, and the window did not silence her voice; I heard it in the very centre of my head. ‘Daddy doesn’t want to let you go.’ She drew back a dead hand to smash her way in.

  ‘Wait!’ I cried. I didn’t want that thing in my home. I didn’t want it to wake my parents. I didn’t want them to come in and see it killing me. ‘I’ll come. Just wait.’

  ‘Come out the window.’ That way she could get her hands on me immediately. Cold, dank skin.

  ‘Just wait.’ I backed away from the window and out of the room, and tried not to be terrified and failed. I left the house as quietly as I could, and Evelyn was striding rapidly around the corner on legs that knew exactly how to work. I walked fast. I kept a strong lead, heading for the graveyard.

  ‘Let me hold your hand,’ she cracked. ‘Let me touch you.’ I sped up as we reached the graveyard gates. ‘Give me your hand. Or I take more of your blood.’

  I didn’t answer. Instead of going back through those gates I turned right, away from the graveyard, away from my home, away from my parents. I sped up. So did she, the hard slap of her feet catching up on me. Not a sound from her broken throat. No threats, no commands, no screams, no roars. I ran, and she ran too. Dead Evelyn, closing in on me and the blood in my veins.

  I ran until I was nothing but hurt, until I was dizzy with exhaustion, until I had to stop and let her have me. She was no longer there. I was on the outskirts of town, and Evelyn was nowhere to be seen. I looked round, and round, in case it was a trick. Not that it mattered. I was utterly drained. I wouldn’t be able to fight her off. I sat on a nearby bench, and I wept. The only girl I’d ever loved, and she’d been turned into a monster because of me. All I could think about was the way she hated me, the way she wanted nothing other than to kill me. It was impossible to bear.

  I decided that next time I’d let her.

  Eventually the remains of me dragged itself home. Evelyn had been there before me. She’d torn my parents apart. They were spread out across their bedroom, skin and blood.

  It’s blank for a while after that. How long for, I don’t know. What I did in that time I’ll never recall. When my mind fully woke up, I was on the run with a bag over my shoulder and wearing a change of clothes and with no idea where I might go, knowing only that I could never go home.

  Turned out I was wrong about that too.

  The wounds carved along the side of my neck blazed, but they were the very least of my cares. Let them rot. My parents were gone, murdered. My home was a slaughterhouse. My Evelyn was a demon back from the dead. The whole of my life was in torn bloody ribbons.

  I kept walking. Through the night, through the day. I left town. Walked right through the next. Eventually I came to my great aunt’s door. She lived in a village miles and miles from home. I didn’t think I’d be able to stay long before I was hunted down for the murder of my own parents, but I was tired and hungry and near the end of my wits. I held myself together just long enough for Edith to welcome me with joy, ushering me to a comfortable chair and filling me with tea and cakes.

  She threw a hundred questions at me, all about family matters. I answered as if my parents had not been ripped to pieces.

  Inevitably she saw the wounds along my neck. I blamed it on some horrible beast attacking me on my journey. No lie there. Great Aunt Edith insisted I visit a doctor. I was even more insistent that there was no need. I won, but she still managed to sit me down and tend to the injury herself, cleaning and dressing it.

  Edith was a good woman.

  During the week I stayed with her, the throb in those deep scratches refused to leave. At times it grew stronger, so much so that no cream or cold compress could cool the heat. It brought on tremendous headaches, which gave me a good excuse to hide away in bed when my emotional traumas devoured me and became too much to bear. Every minute was misery. Poor old Edith tried her very best to make me comfortable, and she knew there was more wrong than I was telling.

  The nights out there weren’t merely dark, they were utterly black. Once the lamps were snuffed out nothing at all could be seen. Lying in bed with my eyes open, my sight would strain to find something, some tiny glimmer to latch on to, anything to confirm that the world still existed around me. I would stumble across the room, open the curtains and stare out into an endless void. Fields and hills and trees: I knew these things were out there, they were simply indivisible from one another. Evelyn was out there too. She could have been on the opposite side of the glass, right there in front of me, and I’d have known nothing about it. Inches from my face, Evelyn raising her fingernails, those jagged coffin-tearing splinters, reaching for me as my neck burned.

  I told myself lies. I told myself Evelyn knew nothing of my family, of where they lived. I told myself she couldn’t find me here. After all the damage done to me, after the destruction of my life, I would be left to my suffering. This last assertion made the most sense to me. I wasn’t standing in a bedroom: I was suspended in death’s void. I was inside the charcoal remnants of my own heart.

  Morning eventually came. Exhausted after yet another restless night, I dragged myself to the kitchen. It was the first part of the day’s pattern, pretending for Edith’s benefit that I didn’t want to lie in bed all day and torture myself with thoughts of those who’d died. She smiled at me, and for a moment I hated her for that smile. I’ll never forget feeling that way. It was the smile of someone who’s never seen a family member reduced to a bloody canvas. I wanted to tell her then, and wipe away that smile for good.

  I heard the back door open. I turned, and there in morning daylight was Evelyn, and she hit me hard, lifting me off my feet. I banged my head on the pantry door and my vision span so I couldn’t tell which way was up.

  Evelyn dragged Edith away screaming.

  I fought the oncoming rush of nausea. Edith’s terrible gurgling screams tore through the house. I tried desperately to get up, to shake off the pains in my head, the scorching heat in my neck. I had to save Edith, save myself.

  But I was too late for my great aunt.

  Her awful, nightmare-haunting shrieks came to a sudden crunching end before I could leave the kitchen. There was silence. Then wet tearing. Then Evelyn: ‘You made me do this! You think you love me, but you ran away! You left me.’ Her footsteps approached down the hall. ‘You might not love me, but I still want you. I’ll take you back. When you’re dead like me I’ll show you what true love is. I’ll show you.’

  I fled. I ran from the house, left everything behind, left another member of my family slaughtered. Evelyn came after me. Took the door off the hinges as I sprinted across the road. The nearest house was two hundred yards to the left or right of me. I went in the only direction I could – straight on, into the trees, into the dark. Enough people were dead because of me. If I went knocking on doors for help innocent people would die. There was nothing anyone could do against the maelstrom tearing after me, a malevolent corpse ripping up fence-posts and hurling them at my head.

  ‘You’re mine!’ she shrieked. ‘You promised!’ Her voice was thunder-bright in the midnight forest, setting off fear-flashes in my ribcage. There was no light to see by, but I knew that the deathly glimmer in her eyes allowed her to see me clearly. My wounds seared hotter than ever, churning the bile in my stomach as I bounced from tree to tree, and her voice seemed to be at the very base of my skull, and my skin tried to pull away from the teeth that I imagined were about to bite. ‘You will always be mine!’

  Arms out in front of me, I ran faster. Faster into thick darkness.

  A low hanging branch caug
ht my left hand, bending it right back. Two fingers snapped. The pain was like a pair of popping fireworks in my flesh. It slowed me down, and my limbs jellified under the duress of shock and pain and panic, and I could hear Evelyn crashing towards me ever faster, and then it was all I could hear, my own wailing and heavy breathing utterly smothered as she smashed the forest to pieces in her frenzy. The explosive splintering of tree trunks, the chunks of earth heaved from the ground, huge shadows rushing past me or glancing off my shoulders. She was pulling the planet apart to get at me.

  Then the ground turned mushy underfoot, and I stumbled, and I fell into shallow water, gulped down a large choking mouthful of fetid liquid. I was out of the forest, and sprawled in marshland.

  On hand and knees I vomited up a gutful of foul water, and pedalled my feet as hard as I could to get myself moving. Soaked, freezing. I stumbled onwards, knowing that Evelyn was still on my trail. That night stretched itself long. Splashing on through the marshes, water dragging heavy at my trousers, I was hounded by the noises that followed me. Sudden loud splashes nearby. Screams of rage that ripped my nerves to shreds. Bubbling laughter that gave way to flat silence. I begged her to stop, to turn around and go back to her grave. I shouted at her that none of it was my fault and she could go back to Hell. I pleaded for forgiveness. I told her all of my deepest hurts. I whispered to myself that it would all be over soon. Hysteria, terror, exhaustion, I had run to the very limits of my sanity. The dark was full of arms, all attached to the corpses of dead girls. All I could smell was the dank dirt at the bottom of graves. My blood felt thick and lumpy and cold.

  At some point I collapsed. On the outer edge of consciousness I waited for Evelyn to catch up with me, and pull me apart there on the marsh, alone and a million miles from anyone.

  My body was in a constant shivering state as a tangerine dawn bled over the horizon. I watched it through twitching eyes, sure I would never see another. I was unconscious long before the sun rose fully. I could have been out for hours or days.

  When I awoke I was on a hard bed and knew immediately that I was terribly ill. Sweating, cold to my bones, shaking. I still had my marsh-damp clothes on under the covers. A thin old man, cross-armed, stared at me from the doorway. ‘What were you doin’ out there?’ he asked, his voice flat. I couldn’t answer. ‘You have a think. Next time I come in here, you give me an answer before I get the police.’

  I heard the door lock.

  Part of me was screaming at the injustice of being saved from one bad situation only to wake up in another. That was a very small part, though. The rest of me was very far from caring. No piece of my body and soul was spared from agony and anguish. All of my desperate running was merely delaying the inevitable end. Evelyn would kill me: I would be in her service forever, the walking, talking dead. Every day until the end of time I would see my murdered parents and hear Edith’s final screams. Every day there would ever be. Why keep fighting? One way or another it was all over. Let this strange man do whatever he wanted. Let the police come, if that was actually his intention. I was finished.

  I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing blood.

  I could hear Evelyn in every creak of the house.

  I couldn’t take my thoughts from the helter-skelter chase through the forest.

  I drifted through endless nightmares.

  A loud bang, the kind you feel in your ribs. The strange old man shouting broad obscenities. Her voice, stronger than his by far: ‘Where is he?’ Then smashing, and screaming. His screaming. Whatever he had in mind for me was obliterated in an instant.

  Despite my desperate desire for my misery to end, despite the certainty that I was only delaying the inevitable, I did not want that creature to get me.

  Even at our last, we fight for more.

  I slid out of the bed, hot and stinking. My legs buckled, I sank to my knees.

  Outside the bedroom, those screams shifted pitch, higher, agonised. The grim stranger was dying. I’d already seen that doors were flimsy protection from Evelyn. Within moments I’d be next.

  That thought gave my legs strength. My arms too. I picked up a stool from the corner, smashed the window with it, climbed out into the night, cutting my hands and forearms.

  Wood shattered behind me.

  I ran.

  Such was my life for more than two years. I couldn’t stay in one place for long. Evelyn was forever behind me.

  I had two modes of survival. Whilst on the move I became quite an adept thief (although until then I grew incredibly weak and skinny). I developed a keen eye for spotting opportunities for a steal and a getaway. There were plenty of close calls, angry chases and the occasional shotgun to avoid. Every once in a while, however, I had to pause, had to take a breath. When the pulse in my neck lessened to a barely-there background noise, I would stop in some town or other, doing odd-jobs – any jobs – in return for money or a night’s lodgings or food. It wouldn’t be long before the throb would tell me she was catching up again. Or the police would get word about some thieving in the area, and I would have little choice but to move on. I didn’t stay any longer than I thought necessary. I had enough deaths to my name.

  I spent all those months believing that I’d stuck to this vow, that I’d fulfilled it. Now I know very different. I know of the trail of destruction I left in my wake. She thought nothing of tearing down doors and flesh. She showed no moment of hesitation in chasing me down. She pushed the price of my life higher and higher. Would I have come back sooner if I’d known? Would I have returned to face my demon sooner?

  Many nights I have told myself that, for the sake of so many lives, I should have handed myself over to Evelyn. But even at our last, we fight for more, don’t we? Whatever the cost.

  I came home. I got as big a lead on her as I could, and I came home. I returned to the graveyard. This time I was armed.

  99

  The ache in her arms is dull and thick. They won’t stop trembling. Her hands aren’t nimble enough for the job. It’s like she’s wearing two pairs of gardening gloves for knitting. She doesn’t know what’s going on over the opposite side, whether Bartley’s holding it together or not – the communication thread between them has snapped, and Crosswell is gone, leaving Morgan isolated and exhausted. The fact that this patchwork-wobbling fence is holding any kind of form at all is the only evidence she has that Bartley’s still working on the other end.

  Damn Crosswell and his ambition. Damn herself for listening to that stupid man.

  She’s so tired and so scared that she might throw up.

  The Possessed have all come out into the road. A gathering. Waiting. One turns to face Morgan. There are thick scorch-marks around its eyes, charcoal remains of blazing fires. Its lips bleed from chewing, and there are bruises on either side of its head. If it comes for her, Morgan’s pretty certain she’s in major trouble.

  Whatever Crosswell’s up to, he’d better make it fast. Really really fast.

  100

  SHE HATES YOU

  Caleb knows it’s best to ignore the spiteful thing. It’s been spewing up hate messages since the second he laid eyes on it. For a noiseless object, it is terrifying. Inside it must churn with hot poison.

  DREAMS YOU DEAD

  Some of its threats and evils are in small cold letters, like it wants him to strain to read it. Others blaze large. If they were any hotter the window would melt and allow its anger to pour out into the world.

  SHE KILLS AGAIN

  He hates these messages the most, the ones that sound like it knows the future. He really hates that the future always sounds very bad for him.

  KILLS YOU TODAY

  Then acts as if it can read his mind, like it knows precisely what he’s thinking.

  HA HA HA

  He hates this thing. It’s been fifteen minutes and he wants to hurl it at the nearest wall and smash it to bits. Perhaps he will once he’s got what he needs.

  WILL NEVER HAPPEN

  ‘Okay, so you can read m
y mind. So you must know everything about me, then.’ It doesn’t answer with words. A smile peels open, fat, rancid lips that part slightly to show jagged rock-teeth perfect for flesh-tearing. They bleed, those lips. Like the mouth has chewed itself. Or recently fed. Caleb slams the eight-ball on the floor, with enough force to bounce that foul mouth out of the screen. ‘I won’t put up with your crap! If you know everything about me then you must know that!’ He’s shouting; he’s got to cool it. He doesn’t want it to know that it’s got under his skin (but if it knows everything then it already knows that it has, but he won’t let it see, no, he can’t ever show it on his face), and he doesn’t want anyone hearing where he is. Anyone, or anything.

  Huddled in a corner of the main hall, Caleb knows it’s madness to be here, and that’s exactly why he came. Nobody would think to look for him here. Nobody would believe he could be so reckless.

  He can hardly believe it himself.

  The murky window nearby isn’t easy to see out of, despite a hard rubbing with his sleeve, but at least it allows him to keep an eye out in case someone (thing) approaches. Plenty of space in this hall for escape too. Four sets of doors, lots of windows.

  THEY ARE NEAR

  ‘They can be as near as they like, it doesn’t really matter if they don’t come in here, does it?’

  THEY CAN HEAR

  ‘Then I’ll keep my voice down.’

  NOT YOU. ME.

  A blunt and horrible threat.

  Caleb doesn’t know enough about this unpleasant ball, this haunted abomination that should not exist. Like everything else, he is too far into something he doesn’t understand.

  STUPID LITTLE BOY

  He would love to crack it open like a skull, spill its brains. ‘Say whatever you like, it doesn’t bother me.’