When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  ‘Well, I’ll keep a look out for Walt, from up here. And later, maybe with the drone…’

  Fergus is getting worried about all her pauses – maybe he is the one who’s worried about her – but perhaps he’s overthinking it. He can do that sometimes. After all, she’s out on police business and there could be things happening on the other end of the line that he doesn’t know about.

  ‘I love you, Georgie.’

  He hears movement behind him and turns to see a blackbird picking at something on the ground beside his bike.

  ‘I know you do,’ she says.

  ‘And you’ll find him,’ he starts saying. ‘You’re good at finding people, love. Have faith in yourself—’

  But she’s hung up the phone already, and he realises he’s offering encouragement to an empty line. Still, she’s probably busy. Well, of course she’s busy. She’s on a murder enquiry and here he is, able to follow his own interests and no need to report to anyone; he’s very lucky really, he knows that, and he couldn’t say the same for most of the men who lost their jobs with him when the site was decommissioned. He’s got Georgie to thank, that’s the truth of it. Not her fault if she’s run off her feet. So he sends her a wee text of encouragement, the least he can do really, before turning his full attention back to the motte, the history, the ruins hidden deep under the land, and clasping the soggy rope to begin his climb to the top.

  A LITTLE AFTER 1 P.M.

  With every step Georgie takes towards the church ruin she feels it more – the dread, the creeping darkness, a knowledge deep within her that she’s been trying to push down but which keeps forcing its way back up. Trish drove them here, parked some way from the gates so they could walk in slowly, keep their eyes open. The track leading to the small stone wall that surrounds the churchyard is muddy and trampled. Something’s been along here, though whether it’s sheep or cows or people is hard to tell. Pamali shivers, and Georgie slips an arm through hers. It helps.

  They’ve been friends for years, since they were both young and new to Burrowhead; there’s not many young people choose to arrive, so they felt a kinship. Pami had come to take over the Spar from her uncle who was ill and Georgie, well, Georgie just found it to be the most peaceful place she’d ever visited. She’d needed some peace. Where better to be a cop than somewhere that makes you feel the world can be beautiful, and with a man who sees it the same way? Fergus always reminded her of Errol, too – they were neither of them fighters. And he’s good at seeing the best in people, her Fergus. She hopes no one notices him out with the metal detector, scrambling up on the motte; hates the thought of folk laughing at him, like he’s the local crackpot, when he doesn’t have a bad word to say about any of them. Or her. That’s good, focus on Fergus, on the kindness of him; keep yourself rooted in that.

  ‘Hold on,’ Pamali says, and she pauses to wrap her skirt hem around her belt to keep it out of the mud. ‘Don’t want it to trail along the ground.’

  They all look down to where Pami’s standing, and they’re clear in the mud – footprints. Multiple sets. All leading through the graveyard. Trish nods and opens the low metal gate that’s hinged against the stone wall. It’s a modern addition, relatively speaking, though no one is quite sure when it was put in, or why. Probably to keep the animals from the churchyard. It doesn’t even lock. It’s kept joined to the post by a loop of old rope. They all walk through and out of habit – or perhaps more respect – Georgie turns and closes the gate, looping the rope back over the post.

  ‘Kids,’ Trish says.

  It’s what Georgie expected, in a way – Simon had told her kids came here. And the evidence is mounting: beer cans dumped beside the larger stone coffins, a crisp packet lodged between the cellophane from a bunch of long-dead flowers and the headstone they were propped against. There are stones by the stems. Probably put there to stop the flowers blowing away in the wind. Some of the villagers must have relatives buried here, even today. When she forces herself to look past the litter, past the cigarette butts and the weeds, it is possible to see what it once was: a large, sweeping graveyard circling the church, with views over the fields to the sea in one direction, and back towards the village through an arch of oak and birch in the other; stone gravestones lovingly engraved, some with gold lettering, some with carved wings, that avoid the regimented lines of more modern graveyards and instead seem to wander amongst fruit trees, once tended but now grown wild. Under the largest cherry tree lie the oldest graves, their messages faded to curves in stone and obscured by lichen. She walks hesitantly over to them and kneels down, running her fingers over them, trying to decipher the lives beneath. It sends a cold breath down the back of her neck. Damp seeps through to her knees. She stands and backs away, keeping her eyes down. The rumours about this place, the reason it was abandoned, they must have started with something true.

  Trish stops still, presses her finger to her lips. Sure enough, there is a noise, something coming from the ruin itself. Sounds like nail scratching rock. Nail, or perhaps claw.

  Georgie nods. God, it’s hard to turn her back on that cherry tree – she doesn’t want to leave it unobserved – but she forces herself to follow Trish and Pamali, keeping her steps as light as she can, towards the ruin. The sight of it, the imposing shapes and shadows of it make it difficult to speak, even to breathe. As the roof crumbled, it left vast triangles of stone to rise at either side, and between them pillars reach up to the sky, unadorned but for the two gargoyles at the corners facing the churchyard, their features blurred and stretched by weather and age. It was a building that was added to over the years, over the centuries; it is not one thing, but many things. Shapes of light and dark move between the pillars, through the arched gaps in the stones that remain. It’s the kind of place that can creep right under your skin.

  Trish steps inside, and Georgie can tell from the way her back relaxes that it is nothing to be afraid of; that whatever is making the scratching sound is no threat to them. But still she holds her breath until she has stepped inside the ruin herself, until she can see past the crumbled stone wall and into the corner of what would have been the pulpit.

  Chips. Takeaway chips, dumped half-eaten and left to the gulls in their damp yellowing container. Red smeared all over the place.

  ‘It’s ketchup,’ Trish says, though her certainty is from visual inspection only – they all seem to be keeping their distance.

  A dozen gulls are pecking at the floor, squabbling over the chip wrapper with its smears of grease and tomato sauce. They look greedy. Entitled. Like a gang of thugs. Georgie realises that the white sauce next to the red is not mayonnaise but bird shit. It doesn’t stop the gulls from eating. Neither does their presence; these birds are not afraid of people, not in the slightest. It’s Georgie who’s edging away from them and suddenly she hears the noise again, shouts, slogans, all around her the push of bodies and anger and panic; they’re just birds, she tells herself, God’s sake, just gulls.

  ‘Look over here,’ Pamali says. She’s walked over to the far side, past the stone pews that still stand where they once did, though spongy moss has found its way onto the seats, a green cushion which looks more luminous than it should in the diffuse light. It is a strange sort of sky, with a lack of colour, no sign of the sun up there. What Pamali has found, though, that is a sign. There are stones, dragged from the walls or perhaps the graveyard itself, positioned roughly around one of the broken pews.

  ‘Someone’s been sitting here,’ she says.

  ‘And using this as a table.’

  All three women stand around the pew in silence, and none of them sit down on the makeshift seats. None of them want to, though not one of them could quite explain why either, if asked. But there’s a wrong feeling here, and they all know it. Even Trish. She’s subdued now, introspective. This place, Georgie thinks. I don’t like this place. As a gust of wind howls through the open side of the building, the chemical smell of vinegar lingering on the air is replaced, for a moment, by
the salt smell of the sea.

  ‘I don’t think Uncle Walt is here,’ says Trish. ‘I don’t think he’d come here.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’ Georgie looks around and thrusts her hands into her pockets. She’s forgotten her good gloves today. ‘It’s nearly two…’ But then she sees it. Or rather she feels it. A shadow, something dark, large, swinging beyond the thin arched space that was once a window in the far wall. Hunched over. ‘There’s…’

  She can’t make it stop. She can see a body, hanging beyond the ruins, long dead and blowing in the breeze, the colour of rotting skin, and she can see it everywhere, the deep red brown of old blood seeping up from the ground, bathing the village, the playground, the swings, seeping beyond to the derelict flats and on, to the standing stone, even to Fergus, reaching his feet, clawing its way up into his body. She scrunches her eyes shut against it and instead she feels something moving in the ground beneath her feet—

  ‘Georgie.’ Trish puts a hand on her arm, steadying her. ‘We’ll go together.’

  From the sound of her voice, Georgie knows Trish has seen it too, the swaying shadow. It won’t be Walt. It can’t be. She’s scratching between her fingers, trying to wipe them clean, but in her mind she can see rope hanging from a tree branch, a body left limp; no, he wouldn’t have. But Dawn? She’s got to stop thinking like this.

  Trish clasps Georgie’s wrist as they approach the collapsed part of the wall together, pausing before stepping over the rubble to see what’s on the other side.

  The wind breathes.

  The shadows twist away.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ Georgie says.

  Trish is still grasping her wrist, tight.

  The tree behind the wall is half out of the ground, its root ball strikingly flat and circular, almost obscene, sticking up from the soil at an angle and crawling with worms and woodlice. There’s no body here. There’s no one at all, just a tree felled, storm damage. She feels her eyes being drawn up to the white upon white of a featureless expanse of sunless sky.

  ‘Must have…’ Trish clears her throat. ‘Must have come down in the storms these last few days. Or half down.’

  The trunk’s creaking every time the wind gusts, under the sound of the air itself; it reminds Georgie of Alexis’s wrist, caught in the swing chains, the way they groaned. She takes a step forward, feels something slip under her shoe, sees blood. No, it’s a slug, its insides burst.

  God but it’s cold on this side of the church. Colder. Like night’s falling at two in the afternoon. But that’s the shadow alright, the shadow she saw from inside the ruin – just the swaying of an uprooted tree. That’s all it is. Trish slowly releases her hold on Georgie’s wrist and forces a smile.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Georgie shakes her head.

  ‘Don’t know what I expected more, Dawn’s murdered body or Uncle Walt having done something … something stupid…’

  ‘I’m sure he’s safe somewhere,’ Georgie says, though she doesn’t know if that’s true.

  ‘Oh,’ says Pamali, climbing up over the stones behind them. ‘Someone’s left their bag over here. You two okay?’

  ‘What bag?’

  ‘Holdall there by the bushes.’

  She’s right – a dark green holdall, straps Velcroed together, looking empty rather than full. Looking waterlogged. Snagging a bit on the gorse.

  ‘But that’s…’ Georgie moves towards it. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I recognise this bag.’

  As she steps forward a flutter of tiny birds rises from the bushes, scattering into the air then gone.

  ‘I’ve never seen it before,’ says Trish.

  ‘It was on the beach. On Tuesday morning. I think… It was washed back out to sea, or something, it vanished…’

  Georgie kneels by the bag, puts on some gloves and carefully pulls the zip open towards her. Its grating sound is the loudest noise in the churchyard. Trish is kneeling beside her on one side, Pamali on the other.

  ‘Pebbles? What the…’

  Georgie lifts them out, round and grey and yellow, warm in her palm until—

  ‘Is that a toy rabbit?’ Pamali says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There, underneath…’

  Pami’s right. Georgie doesn’t touch, but she looks: a pink rabbit, water-stained. Off-white fluffy ears. Well loved, by the looks of it.

  ‘And that,’ says Trish, voice back to sounding like Trish again, ‘that is a mobile phone.’

  Georgie’s on her feet. ‘Alexis’s mobile hasn’t turned up. Come on, both of you. Back up and don’t touch. Trish, get Cal down here right now. We need to get a perimeter set up straight away – there’s evidence here.’ And something else too, though she doesn’t say so out loud, something deeper and older than the ruin itself, something faceless and insidious. She felt it, seeping through the soil beneath her feet, and she feels it shrink away as she raises her voice and takes control of the scene. There is evil under the ground here. She’s not going to be denying that any more. But she’s also got work to do, and whatever ghosts haunt this graveyard, they’re somewhere else for now.

  SECOND CHANCES

  The woman is sitting where I would be sitting, if I’d had the courage to admit what I’ve done: his head is cradled in her lap, her black hand wiping the sweat from his desperately pale head. His skin like cracked rice paper. Drool in the corner of his mouth. Her clothes are from another time; her dress is old and ripped and tattered, there’s faded lace at her neck. We used to whisper about this place. The cave where the minister’s slave hid, centuries ago, where she was killed, murdered in front of the village folk; where the dead of the village gather, hidden from the living – or so the stories go. I don’t know how I ended up here, but this is where I am, and maybe there is a reason.

  ‘I’m here,’ I say, kneeling at his side. His eyes swivel to mine and I struggle to read their emotion: anger, blame, regret. I didn’t think I’d ever have to face them again. I watched as they were burned, scattered his ashes over the cliffs and to the sea. I close my eyes to remember, to force it up and out. I close my eyes so I can picture his; the way they seemed to dry out when he died. They had been weeping, you see. They were watery before. I used to dab them for him, when the tears gathered in the corners and he’d not strength enough to blink them out. I had a special hanky for that, an extra-soft one so it wouldn’t chafe – I think it was designed for a baby’s skin, but it did the job. There is something similar about the skin of a baby just born and the skin of someone already half slipped into death.

  I remember making soup. The starchy water-skin from potatoes, onion tears, the bubble of a simmering pan. Leek and potato and ham; he liked the meat chunky and the veg blended smooth. I knew which was the right spoon for spooning, which was the easiest bowl to carry in on the tray. He was frail and silver-grey when he came back from the hospital, hair an animal fuzz above watery eyes. Chemo kills everything, but the surprising thing was that it hadn’t quite killed him. He was a survivor. We are a family of survivors.

  Keep him warm, they say, keep him well hydrated, his strength will return. He has the both of you, they say. He is lucky to have the both of you. I am the one who makes the soup, though, and all the while I am filling in the blanks. The flat where we grew up, the bird getting in, its shit spilled down the curtains, a wardrobe that never closed right. Me, but smaller. Groggy and afraid. Moonlight; faces hidden. My tiny neck.

  My Dawny, he says. Please, my Dawny.

  EXCAVATIONS IN THE AFTERNOON

  The old church ruin is no longer deserted. Cal’s whole team are here, Karen setting up the tent – rain’s looking like a sure thing – and everything from the rotten old gate and the overgrown graves to the stones that once framed the church hall are enclosed in the stinging yellow tape of a modern crime scene. Not so atmospheric now, not so easy to get lost in superstitions and ghost stories. Then again, it’s the crime scene that feels out of place; th
e police are the ones who don’t belong here. They’re intruding, and it feels to Georgie like the ruin is barely tolerating them.

  Suze is standing beside her, hand on hip and eyes out to the road; she’s here to keep the scene secure, keep onlookers away – and they’ve got a few of them already. Must have seen the cavalry arriving, wondered if there was another body; folk are drawn to crime scenes like to car crashes and ancient tombs. Suze looks uncomfortable. It’s not like her. She leans a little closer to Georgie and lowers her voice. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday. If I seemed too … well, familiar, with Elise. Since old Art’s been ill I’ve been helping her out, you know, bringing her shopping and that, popping round to give her some company. Didn’t occur to me she might be… I should’ve kept things formal.’

  ‘We’ve all done it,’ Georgie says, surprised at the apology – and pleased with it too. Suze’s confidence seems a little blinkered at times, and it’s good to know she’s got a sensitive side. ‘Think no more about it.’

  ‘Alright then.’

  Mind you, that’s a fast recovery.

  ‘Let’s get this scene secure, eh?’

  Whatever Georgie senses here, Suze feels none of it. Probably for the best. June and Whelan have arrived, they’re tying a strip of white cloth around a branch of the old oak by the gate as if they’ve come to honour the dead, but soon as Suze starts towards them they’re asking all their questions, what’s happened here then and is there another incident and what about poor Alexis why would anyone have done that and have they got any leads yet? Georgie closes her eyes against it all. They’re just back from their caravan, apparently, and all this going on in the village – well. June helps Pami out in the Spar at weekends, runs the post office counter on Saturday morning. Suze is good at deflecting them, she’ll give her that. Asking about their holidays and if they’ve seen anyone unexpected around; enquiring as to who took care of their dogs while they were away; talking news from the city, Tuesday’s bombing. Georgie hears the word Muslims and feels her spine tighten. She does wish people would mind their own business, keep their ignorance to themselves. And she’s starting to hate this feeling of being watched, all the time, everywhere she goes. She’s not imagining that, is she?