A Graveyard Visible

by Steve Conoboy

  Eight lights the way.

  It starts as a basement, a scattering of old boxes and a couple of broken chairs. Fat pillars support the ceiling. Caleb does his best impression of jogging on; his leg is a flare, and Eight’s getting heavier. He quickly realises that the huge basement is tapering into a funnel, pouring him towards a passageway. Eight’s torchlight has a limited reach. Ten feet in front of him things rapidly fall away into night, a thick abyss in which untold horrors lurk. But real horrors are chasing him.

  ‘CAY-LEB, CAY-LEB.’

  ‘YOU’RE A BAD FRIEND, CAY-LEB.’

  ‘BAD FRIEND! BAD!’

  They’re down in the basement and they’re fast and they’ll never be slowed down by fatigue or pain.

  ‘YOU’RE NO FRIEND OF MINE.’

  ‘CAY-LEB! CAY-LEB!’

  He bangs his elbow on the plastered tunnel wall, joggling Eight, and the light jitters wildly and it makes the path ahead look like it’s jumping and heaving. He risks a single glance back. Ghost boys pushing into the tunnel entrance, one crawling up and around the arch, dim sparks where eyes should be.

  Cayleb runs as best he can.

  A three-way junction. No time to pause, think, ask questions. He goes straight on. He can’t see Eight’s message: NOT THAT WAY.

  111

  I came back home.

  Not to my house. That, of course, was inhabited by a new family. I pitied them if they knew what had happened within those walls, and small towns don’t tend to keep such secrets very well. I didn’t want to be in that house, not with my memories of what happened inside it. I didn’t want to be anywhere near. I found a B&B on the other side of town. A couple of nights at most was all I intended to stay for, and what little money I had after my helter-skelter chase back home wouldn’t stretch much further anyway. My beard was growing in and my frame was scrawny. Mirrors told me I’d be difficult to recognise.

  As it turns out I only paused long enough for a meal. Evelyn, I knew, would not pause at all. Not for food, not for rest, not for sleep, not for anyone or anything. I wished good luck to any poor soul that might step in her way. The pulse in my neck injury was low but ever-present: I imagined each beat matched one of her footfalls as she straight-lined her way directly to me. I imagined her driving right through family homes, ripping and tearing, and that’s where I stopped imagining, and that’s when I set out on the final part of my single-minded mission.

  I went to the graveyard. I had a knife tucked into the waistband of my dusty trousers. I had the sense not to approach via the front gates. I had a burning hate in my chest. I had very little else. Two years of wandering alone, no local family connections, no ability to make friends or form any kind of relationship knowing what would happen to anyone I came near, always moving on, always sensing her presence whether near or far. So many nights I woke up in darkness, doused in the fear that Evelyn had caught up and caught me off guard, lurking just behind a doorway. On too many occasions that had turned out to be true. I knew little of genuinely peaceful sleep, and everything of terror’s constant beat.

  I wanted it all to end. I could not take one more day.

  It was a cold thrill to trudge up the back of Daisy Hill, knowing what was under my feet. All those tunnels that Evelyn and I had run through, there amongst the dead. I wondered how much more digging her lunatic father had done since then. I wondered how it would feel to stab him in the heart when he refused to help. Even as a young, desperate man I was not so foolish as to believe the confrontation would smoothly go my way.

  Did I, therefore, go up that hill and to that house with murder in mind? I have to say yes. I wanted him to stop Evelyn and I wanted him to put her to rest, but I also wanted vengeance, hot bloody vengeance for what I had suffered. If he would not cooperate, then I would bury the maniac in the graveyard, and I would be glad of it.

  He was tending to weeds in the back garden as I approached. He stood slowly as would a man with a back complaint. ‘Actually found a little courage to come back, did you?’ he growled. ‘Took you long enough.’

  I pulled out the knife. ‘We’re going to have a little talk,’ I said, ‘whether you like it or not.’

  There was a trowel in his hands. A brutal weapon. It made us rather even. And he dropped it. ‘I won’t be talking to you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not any day after that. So kill me if you think you can, boy. Stick me right in the chest if you haven’t used up the last of your guts coming here. Get it done with.’

  I’d run through the scenario a thousand times on my way back to this town. I’d thought of as many possible endings as I could, all of them bad for one of us. This had not been one of those scenarios. I lowered the knife. There was no murderous instinct in me after all. ‘All I want is for you to undo what is done. Call her off. Send Evelyn back to the grave.’

  He was steel through and through on that slate-sky day. ‘Why should I? It’s because of you that my Evelyn’s gone.’

  My grip redoubled on the knife’s hilt. ‘You killed her. You brought her back. You sent her after me.’

  ‘No! You killed her!’ His bark was cigarette-and-whiskey rough. ‘You stuck your nose in where there was no room for it! You chased after something that wasn’t yours to chase! What else was I supposed to do?’ He started towards me; I threatened with the blade, holding the madman back, but his rage was building. ‘My girl! She was my little girl! She was not for the likes of you!’ He pounded his fist into his palm with every other word. ‘Stupid little boy, trying to take her away from me!’ He swung a hand to slap the knife out of my hand, only succeeded in cutting his fingers deeply. He didn’t cry out, and I cringed from the splash of blood, my skin bristling.

  ‘I wasn’t taking her away!’ I didn’t like the wobble in my voice, the weakness. I took a step forward, stabbing towards him with the knife, a warning to back off. ‘I didn’t even know what you were doing here!’

  ‘It was only a matter of time before she blabbed. You forced me into it! I should have killed her sooner! That little bitch took you into the tunnels!’

  ‘It wasn’t a choice! You were chasing us!’

  I realised he was crying, thin tears tracing his cheeks. He didn’t seem to know they were there. ‘She was meant to stay with me. She wasn’t meant to go after you. But she picked up on my hate and how much I wanted you dead, wanted everything about you erased from the earth. So she went after you, didn’t she?’ A bitter grin. ‘And she’s kept you running all this time. All that running, and for what? To end up back here, back where it started. You’ve run to nowhere. You haven’t moved an inch in, what, two years?’ Laughing. ‘Almost makes it worth losing her to see what she’s done to you. Almost worth everything I’ve been through.’

  Bile rose in my stomach. ‘What you’ve been through? What about me? You don’t know…’

  ‘I don’t want to know about you! And you don’t have a clue, boy! You don’t know about all the years! And all the work! And it was me that had to kill her, not you! I had to strangle her because you wouldn’t stay away! I had to squeeze her throat, squeeze until the life choked out of her! She was supposed to help me. I was supposed to train her for all of this! Instead I’ve been alone.’

  The way his head lowered, the way his eyes dulled, I knew he was coming at me whether I had a knife or not.

  I didn’t shout. I didn’t move. I didn’t step out of the way. He ran right at me, and onto the knife. His whiskey-stale breath burst over my face, and his eyes drew sharp one last time, staring right into mine. His whole body tensed up, then shuddered, as if the life was being shaken loose from his frame by unseen hands. It took a painful age for him to slump to the ground and finally die. My hands were bloody and I felt sick. With a struggle I managed to hold onto my dinner. The last thing I wanted to do was give his corpse the pleasure of upsetting me.

  It was only then that it occurred to me to look around for witnesses. There was nobody. I almost wrote down that there wasn’t a single soul, but that would be far fro
m true, wouldn’t it?

  I dragged his body into the house. Whatever leaves the body in death is replaced by weight. My back howled as I lugged that meat-sack over the doorstep, limbs flopping about and getting stuck on everything. It was a better fight than he’d put me through outside. I dumped him in the hall, near the kitchen, locked the back door. An intense hunger seized me like none I’d ever felt before. My body cried out for energy, now, now, now. After a little rooting about for everything I needed, I threw together a thick ham sandwich, got through it in four large bites. It wasn’t enough. An apple was next, and I chewed it round and round while my stomach was already baying for the next piece of food.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, I looked back at the body and wondered what I had become. The man, as vile as he was, had died on a blade I was holding. Coming after me was his dead, vengeful daughter. With the father gone I had no likely chance of stopping her. Yet there I was, waiting and refuelling, instead of running away from a crime scene and certain death. I hadn’t felt so good in a long, long time. Not, in fact, since my first kiss from Evelyn.

  We would meet one last time. She would find me in the house where I lost her.

  112

  She hasn’t had an answer out of Bartley in five minutes, and the light-weave is pulling, like hers are the only hands holding it up, like it wants to collapse. It needs more links, it needs tightening, a second layer if she’s to feel any kind of security.

  A burp of light by her feet. The light-map, belching its last. The image has flash-burned onto the corner of her eye. A map with motionless blips in each house, and one other blip, one that’s moving right down the middle of the road. Moving towards her.

  A pain blasting into her hands and up her forearms, a javelin bursting through her wrists. The barrier disintegrates, fragments melting into the air. Morgan clutches her arms to her chest, gasping at the heat.

  No map. No barrier. Defenceless. It’s time to run.

  Then she sees the girl.

  113

  Misha swipes her arm through the light-weave like she’s brushing aside gossamer sheets. It crackles static electricity across the back of her hand as it spun-sugar shatters. A weak construct, hardly worth the effort of summoning the atoms to weave it with. Had to be the work of one of Crosswell’s bunch, if not the scowling man himself.

  It was put here for a reason.

  Here. Caleb’s street.

  What else has that backstabbing boy been doing? What has he done to rile up Crosswell? Why would Crosswell want to fence him in when light-weaves don’t even work on the living?

  Possibilities flash through her brain, and Misha is surprised at how some of them make her ache. Crosswell has caught Caleb and killed him. Perhaps to silence the boy forever, perhaps to get Eight for himself, perhaps any other reason, doesn’t really matter (unless Crosswell has Eight, then it matters, it really really matters). The boy is dead in this street, and Crosswell set up the light-weave to trap him here. Would ugly old Crosswell be scared of a ghost boy?

  Would he be scared of a vengeful girl?

  She hates Caleb.

  She hates Crosswell far more.

  She liked Caleb. Still does.

  ‘No I don’t. He stole Eight. He’s a selfish bastard.’ The boy with the dead mother. The boy just like her. ‘He’s nothing like me.’ But he is, and if she doesn’t care, then why is she so worried? Why is she frozen to this spot, afraid to approach his house, afraid to look inside and see his shell shambling towards her, eyes blazing.

  She will kill Crosswell. She will rip his face open. She is burning; her chest is anger-swollen.

  She doesn’t even know if Caleb is dead.

  ‘I just want to kick his head in myself.’ That lying, thieving, backstabbing boy. As bad as the others. No, worse. Worse, because she thought he was okay. She let herself believe that he was an okay kid, and she liked him.

  Misha will never forgive herself for that. Or him.

  Without Eight she feels lost. So many questions, no one to give any answers. No help, no guidance. This is Misha, well and truly alone. She hasn’t noticed she’s alone until now. All the way here she’d been full of fury and certainty. It’s all gone with the falling of the light-weave. swept away.

  She has to know if that stupid lying boy is okay. She wants to punch something. His head will be a good start.

  Misha starts walking towards his house.

  Hands grab her, pull. She swipes fingernails, screams.

  ‘Shut up!’ hisses Morgan. Crosswell’s mate. Which means Crosswell must be here. Which means she’s right about Caleb. Her punch catches Morgan on the edge of her left eye socket, almost knocking the woman over. Misha tries to run past. Morgan spins her by the shoulder, bouncing her off a wooden fence. ‘God, you little bitch!’ She’s holding the side of her head. She’s all kinds of bad shapes, contorted fury; hunch shouldered, scowl-mouthed, blaze-eyed, crook-fingered. There’s a will to slap, to hit. ‘I’m trying to do you a favour!’

  ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ Misha hopes she looks equally angry.

  ‘Killed who? I’m saving your dumb life, although right now I’m regretting it.’

  ‘Stay away from me. You and that arsehole Crosswell…’

  Single finger to lips. ‘Keep your voice down when I tell you. It’s in this street somewhere, I don’t know exactly where.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Neuman.’

  Cold burrows into Misha’s bones as a hard dusty voice barks, ‘Cay.’ Woman and girl huddle up against the fence. ‘Cay.’ That sounded close. Two houses away, three at most. ‘Cay.’ Somewhere round the top of the cul-de-sac, Misha thinks. ‘Leb.’ Can’t hear footsteps. ‘Leb.’ Is it a little closer each time? ‘Leb.’ A little angrier?

  ‘Cay. Leb.’

  And what is anger if it’s not a hunger?

  ‘CAY. LEB.’

  It’s after that stupid lying boy.

  114

  The strobing of the light is making him sick behind his eyes, making it hard to run, to judge distance, to anything. ‘Stop doing that!’ Caleb gives Eight another whack. It’s response is to pulsate faster. He wants to throw it off one of these rough-plastered sloping walls. He knows if he does that then Eight will turn its light out and he will be plunged into complete choking black and he’d never find Eight again and he’d never ever find his way out.

  ‘WE’LL FIND YOU CAY-LEB.’

  ‘BAD FRIEND. BAD FRIEND!’

  ‘WE’RE COMING CAY-LEB.’

  He’s certain those boys don’t need light to find him down here, those dead hungry boys. But they can use Eight’s light to track him down. He needs to keep moving. But the floor is jittering around in that flashing glare.

  Caleb turns Eight, squints into its window, feels like his eyes are getting pushed right back into the sockets. ‘Why are…’ Finally he sees the message.

  GOING

  WRONG

  WAY

  Each word bashes out after the other in rapid succession, an alternating alarm. The words slow, like Eight’s realised Caleb has read them at last, like Eight’s calming down. It settles on a soft wordless glow.

  ‘I can’t go back,’ says Caleb, and the hooting of dead boys confirms this.

  ‘CAY-LEB.’

  ‘PULL YOU APART, BAD FRIEND.’

  ‘I can’t go back!’

  NO SHIT, SHERLOCK

  Caleb shakes the ball, frustrated. ‘If they get me, they get you as well!’

  When the screen settles again, it reads, YOU MUST HIDE.

  ‘Where?’ He’s in another long tunnel, another after run-stumbling down long tunnel after long tunnel, and he can’t burrow into the walls, even though he’s so scared he wants to dig-dig-dig until his hands are bloody stumps. ‘There’s nowhere to go! There’s nowhere!’

  MUST GO ON

  He wanted Eight to come up some magic solution, some secret way back to where he’s come from, to the normal world above, a way past the dead boy
s. Instead it tells him to GO ON. GO ON means further into the tunnels, further into the dark.

  ‘CAY-LEB.’

  He runs on. It’s easier with a steady light. What if Eight is lying? What if they reach another junction and Eight sends him the wrong way? It can’t lie. It’s okay, the ball can’t lie. But who said it can’t lie? The ball? ‘I hate you,’ he tells it, and listen to the layers of hot panic! So breathless, shaky. He’s not far from losing control. And he’s too far into these tunnels. How many turns has he taken? Is Pernicious House behind him? To the left? The right?

  Eight might not know the way. Eight just wants to run and guess and they’ll be lost down here until they’re caught—

  That’s flat wall up ahead. It’s a dead end. Dead. End. Caleb hears himself, tears in his words: ‘No, no, no, no, no, no…’ Still he runs, like he could smash straight on through, like it might be an illusion, a trick of the hard light. ‘Please, please, please, please, please, please…’

  A junction! Sharp turns in either direction. There’s still a chance, whispers his hope, a tiny, tiny chance. ‘Which way?’ he asks of the eight-ball. ‘Hurry up, which way?’

  LEFT LEFT LEFT

  Caleb goes goes goes.

  ‘BAD CAY-LEB BAAAAAAD.’

  The echoes swirl around his head, bounce from ear to ear, and there’s laughter in it now, cruel laughter. Dead boys enjoying the game, loving it because they know that in the end they will win, they will seize their prize.

  The tunnel is short. Caleb stumbles out of it into a small chamber, half a dozen rectangular columns on either side (he’s been here before, he’s been here as Gramps, he’s been in this bad place, it’s a bad bad place) and he doesn’t want to stay anywhere near them and sticks as close to the middle as he possibly can; actually draws himself in thin because arms stick out and are grabbable. Archways ahead and either side. ‘Eight?’