When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  ‘It’s too much,’ she says. ‘Please.’

  ‘Please what?’

  She’s shaking her head, hands clutching at her throat like Georgie doesn’t know what, but she recognises the fear. She does see that.

  ‘Do you have something to tell us, Mrs—’

  She stands, the chair falls again, desperation turns to determination.

  ‘Let me go, right now.’ Her voice thin but firm, her breath a stutter.

  ‘We just want to talk.’

  Georgie feels something in herself turning cold.

  ‘I think it’s time you told us the truth, Mrs—’

  It’s worse than cold. It’s hard, it’s angry.

  ‘I want to leave!’

  ‘You’re not under arrest.’

  ‘So I can go?’

  ‘You can go,’ Georgie says.

  And with that, Mrs Helmsteading turns and leaves the room and Georgie stays sitting at the interview table. She might even look calm to someone who didn’t know her, but her hands are clasped tight around the table’s edge. Before she gets up she knows she has to see them, face on, the figures getting closer, surrounding her. They are masked and cloaked, with only their eyes glinting through rips in the fabric: familiar and cold and vicious.

  HOW GEORGIE CAME OF AGE

  She wakes Errol up at 5 a.m., their mom fast asleep and the dark’s potential retreating fast – they have to go now if they’re going to catch the first bus to the city and Georgie’s not going to miss this protest, and she’s not going to let her brother miss it either.

  ‘Get up,’ she whispers as loud as she dares, shaking his shoulder – his face is invisible, blankets scrunched over his head. He must be roasting. Or faking it. ‘You’re awake, aren’t you. Very funny.’

  The blankets wobble with his laughter.

  ‘Why do we have to go…’ His voice is muffled and amused.

  She grabs the covers off him, throws him a T-shirt.

  ‘To make our voices heard.’

  ‘Stand up to the man?’

  ‘They’re fucking racists – and you should be taking this seriously.’

  He pulls the T-shirt over his head, locates his jeans.

  ‘I know, sis. I’m going, aren’t I?’

  ‘Bring your fake ID.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just in case.’

  They said you were supposed to be sixteen to join the protest, and since she went to the trouble of getting him the ID he might as well bring it along. Though he’s so easy-going, her brother, he could probably charm his way into anything he wanted.

  Full moon outside. Low and bright, watching her. Head down past the mayor’s house, won’t even look in. It’s three years since she cursed them with the redbird, three years since his mother died in her sleep, two since the mayor had his heart attack, one since the mayor’s son Troy got his gang to meet on a Saturday night and wait in the shadows till Jeff from the year below was heading home from his job at the diner. They surrounded him out back, five of them, one of him, took turns slapping him, laughing till he fought back and they piled on, kicking him to a broken nose and broken ribs and bloody eyes that would take a month to heal. Stupid nigger, they laughed about it after. Georgie overheard them. Cursing their homes with birds isn’t enough any more.

  They are the only two at the depot as the bus arrives. A scattering of passengers already on board, heads against windows, sleeping, gazing out at nothing. Georgie hands over their tickets, Errol chooses a seat at the back. Reads Georgie’s leaflets over her shoulder as they weave through the last of the night. She’s glad he’s looking, angles them over so he can see. Death to the Klan March. They’re starting in a housing project, marching through the town centre to end at City Hall. Radical, violent opposition to the Klan. There are going to be TV cameras there. They’re going to make a difference. Armed self-defense is the only defense. And Georgie knows it, too. As they pull into the city, Errol looks at her with his big eyes and for a second he looks just like the little boy he used to be.

  ‘You sure about this, sis?’

  ‘Come on.’

  They leave the bus. The light’s ablaze. Georgie leads the way and he follows through streets already loud and throbbing. The dust and dirt of midsummer, the shove of strangers; this is what she’s been waiting for. The road’s rising and they climb. She’s memorised the route, imagined walking it every day for weeks now, lying in bed with that restless anger pulsing through her, preparing her voice to shout. She’s barely even taking in her surroundings until they reach the top and she stops, stunned. Below them, the crowds have gathered, men, women, banners and shouts and the beginnings of a chant that grows with each second that passes, the crowd buzzing like a swarm and she grabs her brother’s hand and starts to run – she needs to be down there, needs to be a part of this. Death to the Klan, she can hear them shouting as her own voice builds up in her throat, she’s never chanted, she’s never been at a protest before, ‘Death to the Klan!’ she yells and they reach the edges of the crowd and suddenly they’re engulfed in it. Errol’s pulled his hand away, but there he is, beside her. He’s the youngest here, easy. The crowd is pushing and pulsing and the energy sparks through her. ‘I’m proud of you,’ she shouts, but he doesn’t even hear. Fight violence with violence, they’re chanting now and they’re right – they have to fight – and the crowds are pushing into her and she’s finding it hard to breathe but her fist is punching the air and her voice is rough. ‘Fight violence with violence!’ She is here. This is everything.

  Suddenly there are cars. She doesn’t know where they came from. The growl of engines, darkened windows, dozens of them surrounding the crowd. They’re taunting them. Threatening. But Georgie won’t be scared. She feels a fresh surge of anger. This is just the beginning. She’s deep in the rally and she’s got her brother’s hand. In her other, she holds a stone. Around her: picket sticks and slogans and rage. Now! Throw it! She does, high and hard over the crowd. It hits the hood of a car. She thinks. Can’t see, can’t hear. Again! A cascade of stones now and for a second, a second, they are powerful, they are fighting back. Then a car engine. More of them. Encircling the crowd. Something changing, something turning to panic, people surging forward and she has no choice, she moves with them, is one of them; she’s pushed, she stumbles. Falls to her knees. Grazed, raw. It hurts. Stand up! someone says. They pass her another stone. The heat of the people and the sun. Her arm up, her back arching. Stones flying over the crowd. Sticks and signs launched at the van up front. It’s them. Flashes of white, pointed, sharp, the slam of a door, so fast. It’s them. White cloaks. Faces masked. It’s them! Around her, people fall. Screaming. Shots, gunshots everywhere, her ears buzz. Can’t hear words. Her arm pulled down. Her shoulder, stinging. Screams. Heat. His eyes rolling back. Her brother. Blood seeping from his neck. A scream coming from her throat. Blood on her shirt. Blood on her face. She doesn’t understand. It was too fast. He didn’t even want to be here. The screaming. Her screaming. There’s blood between her fingers, slipping and wet and she’s screaming, she’s screaming; blood between her fingers and how could this happen and she’s falling and she’s alone and surrounded and the noise and screams and people and blood and

  TOO LATE

  The night gets darker. A deeper dark than it has been for many years, though some say it’s been threatening for a while now. Black like the soil and the kind of wind that suffocates with too much force. Nights like this, in Burrowhead, seem hopeless, and so people tend not to talk about them. It’s their way. Curtains are drawn all along the street, doors locked from the inside, though they can’t put their finger on why. Aye, they say to themselves, pulling chairs closer to fires and turning their eyes inwards. A dark night.

  Pamali is cashing up at the Spar when they come. Balaclavas over their faces, all fists and boots and hoods. ‘Sit down,’ one of them yells, ‘hands in the air!’ but she’s already sitting on her stool behind the till so she puts her hands up and
stays where she is until they change their minds.

  The lights go off, the switch pummelled with a fist. Her eyes move to the panic button. She imagines reaching forward to press it, tries to will her arm to move, but it won’t and it’s too late.

  ‘Stand up,’ he shouts then. ‘Bitch! Stand up!’

  So Pamali stands, and he drags a chair to the middle of the shop, tells her to sit again. She doesn’t think they have weapons. But they have fists, boots, anger.

  ‘Fucking sit.’

  She sits, palms out like she can calm them. Instinct is all it is. Doing what she’s told to calm the situation.

  The shorter one grabs a packet from the shelf, rips into it with his teeth. Nylon twine. She makes to stand but she’s roughly pushed back down, hands forcing her shoulders. The one holding her on the chair is the angrier one, it’s steaming off him – then there’s the lanky one over by the till. She has this awful feeling she knows them. That she’s served them and smiled.

  They tie her up on the chair, using that twine she sells in the shop, around and around her body, her arms pinned to her sides, her ankles tied to the chair legs. Her eyes strain through the darkness, seeing the white flicker of the drinks fridge down the side of the shop, the strip of it reflected in the eyes that peer out from their woollen masks. The twine is sharp, thin, bites into her skin. It’s happening too fast now, she’s not reacting right. But how bad can this get, in Burrowhead? It’s her home. A dark night, but still. She stays calm. They’re probably just here to steal. She left the cash drawer open.

  ‘If you want money—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Then the smashing starts. Everything in the shop. It makes a racket, but no one comes. Down the aisles they grab and smash – cans of lemonade and ginger, cereal packets burst, trampled, light bulbs hurled to the ground, disintegrating into glass specks and slivers. The tall one writes something with a spray can, indoor graffiti, she doesn’t know what it says, she can just hear the hiss of it as they make their marks over the front of the counter where her till stands.

  A kick, on her chair leg, and her whole body jolts. She needs to speak.

  ‘What is it you want, boys?’

  She tries to hide the shake of her voice, but it doesn’t work.

  ‘She knows us,’ the little one growls.

  ‘No she don’t.’

  A packet of yellow dusters is being ripped open now, she doesn’t get why at first.

  ‘Tell me what you need and you can have it. Cans? There’s plenty behind—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  He’s staring at her now, right into her eyes, the one who tied the twine too tight, staring and staring and she looks back, right into his eyes, the only bit of his face not hidden. The slap is such a shock she doesn’t understand what’s just happened.

  She looks him in the eye. Looks at him and recognises him.

  ‘She knows who we are!’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘She’s a witness.’

  ‘It’s not a fucking movie.’

  They’re kicking at the shelves now, her neatly ordered shelves of shampoo and cotton thread, washing-up liquid, peaches in syrup, safety pins, batteries. It makes a crash when it hits the floor, everything falling, scattering, smashing. She’s wriggled her arm loose, but he knows it. He’s watching her. Surely someone’s going to hear all this. He grabs her wrists – ‘Like that, is it?’ he spits – yanks her arm behind the chair to tie her up better, but she’s resisting now, holding her arms tight round the front of her body – ‘Fucking bitch’ – and her wrist is grabbed and pulled so far back, so fast and the pain of it, shooting from her shoulder to her wrist, she can’t even scream at first, her eyes are wide and filling and then she’s screaming, and she’s screaming and screaming and the pain of her arm is too much it’s too much.

  ‘What’ve you done?’ the one with the spray can says, and still she’s screaming until the yellow dust cloth is rammed into her mouth and she’s struggling and crying and her screams muffled and desperate and he’s laughing, the one who tied her up, all rage and spite. He’s laughing. She can’t breathe. The cloth is choking her and she’s starting to retch and the feel of it in her mouth is dry and fibrous. She has to breathe. She has to get through this.

  ‘That’s shut you up some,’ he says. ‘Not that it makes much difference round here. There’s no one listening.’

  FRIDAY

  BEFORE SUNRISE

  Outside the night is deeper than oceans but here, in my cave, at last I can see: red ribbons tied lovingly around pebbles, prayers offered to the dead of the cave because the living have stopped listening. Twigs are tied into crosses, a reluctant farewell; a heart frames the initials of people who wanted to be remembered. PD & RT 4EVER: Pauly and Rachel, on the cliffs, eating berries, the day they died. They are happy to see me. The little girl too, with her dirty face and petticoat, her bare feet, her small hand slipping into mine as I dab the sweat from Dad’s forehead.

  Please help my mammy, she whispers.

  We are near the front, the wide room inside the cliffs where we are welcome, where others have sheltered before me; we do not look to the back, where the shapes gouged into stone are older and vicious, where the stretching shadows reside, the violence that threatens our peace. My own violence is giving them strength, but I have to remember: the weeks that pass as I make my dad soup. I spoon it to him gently, my hand shaking when he says thank you, like he is grateful to me. Like he loves me. Until one day I realise who he is. I know the smell, I know his eyes, how they peered through holes cut in a mask as he held my wrists down and it is too easy to stop him breathing, to hold the cool flannel over his face instead of his forehead. He’d said thank you as though he loved me, but he never will again.

  I’m here, I say, kneeling at his side. His eyes swivel to mine and I struggle to read their emotion: regret, sadness?

  I have my worry doll clasped in my hand.

  Love?

  He reaches out for me. I drop the doll and our fingertips meet and then I feel them again: the sharp pinches at my skin, the hiss of rasping breath and I look up to see them, clinging to the rocks that edge the cave, watching us and waiting. I hold Dad’s hand and glare at them, unafraid; I am not a child any more. They are fear that stretches and shrinks, that is all, they are rotting breath, the scratch of unseen claws. Vicious words seep from their mouths, but this morning they are weakened and gasping.

  Don’t look at them, Dad, I say, just look at me. I’m here, I’m safe.

  The little boy looks up at me from inside his coffin. He is so young; the girl seems old and wise beside him. We will not leave him to suffocate alone. His hair is clumpy and uneven; I imagine scissors hacking at it, held by the same hand that forced him into this box. He is calm now, though, and when the girl sits cross-legged beside him his toothless smile is wide. Perhaps he is grateful to have the company. Perhaps Dad is too. His eyes are watery so I wipe them for him, gently, and the creatures writhe within the rock. There is a scratch at my skin, but I rub it away – the men who attacked me didn’t have beaks for hands, they had fists that forced my chest onto stone, fingers tying rope around my neck, a knife pressing into my throat.

  Is there something you need to tell me, Dad?

  The breath is his alone, from the pain of his last days.

  A sudden screech from the rock, then silence again.

  We’re too late for that now though, aren’t we?

  Mary’s eyes are the same gold as the charms in my pocket; they both give me strength. I offer them to her but she shakes her head.

  What can I do?

  Rachel holds out a blueberry, glimmering in the sunlight, and pops it into Pauly’s laughing mouth. Black curls frame his face and his eyes dance. Rachel is wearing his ring on a silver chain around her neck, a long dark skirt with gold flowers sewn through – it is what she was wearing when they died. This is the moment they die. It is happening again. Something shifts. Cold. Sickly. They�
��re not alone. Hate melts out of rock and claws through the air, nails are dragging on stone, getting stronger with every step, with every scratch until Pauly and Rachel distort, their smiles turning to grimaces, their lips peeling back away from their jaws—

  Leave them alone!

  I push out towards them and fall through shadow, a gash along my arm where they stab at me, my face burning with sharp wounds, the rasping noise getting louder all around, and I feel Dad’s fingers closing around my wrist; I’d only left him for a second. My Dawny, he croaks, but it is too late – his face is elongated, his eyes are gone, please no, I beg, he’s not one of you, don’t take him, please, but Mary is looking at us and even as the rest of her fades her eyes remain and they stare right into me and the girl has gone, the little boy has gone and I’m begging them to stay – don’t leave me, please – but I am alone, my dad is gone and Alexis is gone. I am alone here in the cave in the cold with my guilt and the sky outside has turned blood red.

  RED SKY

  Georgie’s wide awake, woken by Dawn’s pleading voice, by images of violence and a little girl, helpless and terrified in the grit of salt wind at the playground by the coast. Five men in cloaks that hide their bodies, tall and looming over her, kneeling on her tiny wrists; masks made out of sheets hanging over their faces, looping rope around a child’s neck – their eyes, she sees their eyes, the raw pink skin around their eyes leering out of slits of fabric. Alexis knew it too, and now he is gone, lost. The look on his face; blood pooling above his collarbone, washed from the ground under the swings to seep into the soil of the village. She has to get some answers.

  But how much do the answers help? That’s what Georgie’s struggling with as the wind groans and she finds herself tiptoeing down the stairs. Were the answers going to help Dawn? Would they help Alexis? Or her; would the answers help her? People in Burrowhead dressing up like members of the Klan to attack a local child – it doesn’t make sense. If it was all racism she’d know how to fight back, if it was all misogyny, if it was all from one person, even a group, but this – violence used against a local girl, a gay man, threats and vandalism, racism, murder – is it every kind of otherness they hate? And it’s not just now, is it, it hasn’t just started, it’s historic, it’s endemic. She’s staring at Fergus’s flyers, his membership forms: