Beyond Dead

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  ∞

  “At least it’s not a derelict mental hospital tonight.” Sabrina was already sitting on the low wall on the outside of the cemetery and waved her letter at me when I appeared after finishing my last assignment for the day. “And who the hell is Sally?”

  “Is Sally the one who kept sneezing when we were setting up for the festival?” I stopped in front of her and looked out over the cemetery.

  Only the first fifty graves or so were out in the open on the flat planes; the rest were hidden in the small wooded area that surrounded the church further back from the road.

  “No, that was Deirdre. Was Sally the short one in the tartan skirt?”

  “That was Sheila.” I paused, doubting myself and trying to remember what she looked like. That’d teach me for not getting involved. “Or was it Shirley?”

  “Who knows? Who cares?” Sabrina shook her head. “I think we should skip this. Go out and get drunk. We could say we thought it was a joke. Who holds a ghost meeting in a cemetery?”

  “It’s in the hall, not the cemetery, and I can’t. Do you have any idea how much trouble I’m in already? If Oz thinks I’ve skipped a meeting he’ll get those cute little frown lines between his eyebrows and sentence me to a thousand years in that damn house.”

  Sabrina folded the letter and shoved it back into her pocket. “Chances are everyone’s going to be at the memorial service anyway so they won’t notice we’re not there.”

  “Oh, yeah, Eleanor completely won’t check where we are.” I turned to get a look at the view of the town below. “Besides, I thought you’d be eager to go to the service.”

  “Meh.” Sabrina shrugged. “Now we know who the killer is, it seems less exciting.”

  “We don’t know she’s the killer.” I turned back around to look over the graveyard. “We just know she’s part of Jeremy’s scheme.”

  Sabrina thought about that for a moment. “Good point. It could still be someone else. Let’s get to this service and work it out. Don’t suppose you know where this church is?”

  I pointed over Sabrina’s shoulder and into the dense trees that hid the majority of the graves. “In the middle of there.”

  “We’re having a ghostly acclimatisation meeting in the hall of a church situated in the centre of a spooky graveyard? Because the meeting in the derelict mental hospital went so well.” Sabrina sighed and stood up, gazing over the gravestones. “This is getting ridiculous. I can’t wait until the fort’s no longer a crime scene.”

  “Me either.” I gestured over my shoulder to the tombstones. “At least these guys get a good view.”

  The cemetery was situated on a hilltop commanding one of the best views of the town, the beach and finally the ocean.

  “It is beautiful,” Sabrina agreed. “And I’m sure if they weren’t just rotting corpses they’d all enjoy it.”

  “I wonder if I’m buried here.”

  “Want to have a look on our way through?”

  “I don’t know. Not sure I want to see where my rotting corpse is buried,” I said to Sabrina’s laughter. “Actually, I’m not even sure I’m buried.”

  “What?” Sabrina looked at me. “Okay, we should find out. No one should miss their funeral.”

  I wasn’t really sure that would be a welcome experience. “Oh.” Speaking of unwelcome experiences. “I had an unnerving visit from Pete before.”

  Sabrina’s brow wrinkled as we passed through the low metal gate. “What did he want?”

  I twisted the toes of my flip-flop clad feet in the gravel of the path as I walked, the cold pebbles rippling over my toes. I loved the sound of it crunching. It reminded me of playing hide and seek with my cousins after Sunday church service. “Basically to know what I knew.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Aside from the fact I thought he was a nice murderer?” I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  Sabrina pulled me to a stop by my elbow. “You told him you thought he was a nice murderer?”

  “I was trying to butter him up so he wouldn’t kill me.”

  Sabrina stepped back, eyebrows up in her hairline. “And that was the best you had?”

  “At that moment in time. Yes.”

  We walked along the gravel path lined with the older graves towards the woods. More trees than I remembered were dotted around the outer circle of the graveyard. Apart from the graves it would’ve made a beautiful park.

  We walked up the small hill and underneath the first tunnel covered in wisteria. Delicate purple blooms reached down from the man-made wicker archway, the only contrived feature within the whole place.

  Manor Road had been woodlands. The church was placed in the centre, but the cemetery lay much further towards the road, as if the planners hadn’t wanted the graves too close to the church. Like death was contagious or something. There was no plan to it as such, only that when someone died a little spot of the woodland was beaten back to find a place for the grave.

  As we walked further in, the trees became more densely packed and reached high above our heads, blocking much of the evening light.

  “If you were lost you would say, wouldn’t you?” Sabrina checked back over her shoulder trying to keep count of how many lefts and rights we’d taken as the path had forked or divided.

  “My gran’s buried here.” I waved my hand in dismissal of her concern and breathed deeply the scents of the conifers. “Know this place like the back of my—”

  We turned the corner and the path twisted in the opposite direction to the way I knew the church was.

  Sabrina saw my momentary puzzlement. “Hand?”

  “Church is this way.” I pointed through the undergrowth.

  “Path goes that way.” Sabrina pointed in the opposite direction and pulled the letter back out of her pocket. “There are directions on the back of the letter to the church hall. Maybe we can retrace our steps and follow them?”

  “I know where I’m going. The pond is over there, the church is over here.” I stepped off the path, headed through the scrub and weaved through the trees. “You coming?”

  “You’re lucky I’m already dead,” Sabrina mumbled, following me, “because there’s no way I’d be traipsing through a wooded cemetery in the fading light otherwise.”

  We tramped through the tufted grass and dodged the weeds until the path was out of sight. My borrowed flip-flops made the journey harder but I was momentarily glad I wasn't wearing my Jimmy Choos because there was no way I'd have traipsed through the undergrowth in them.

  Birds rustled in the tree branches, calling to each other, while rabbits hopped around the ground just out of sight, shaking the small bushes as they passed. It wasn’t total blackness in the undergrowth but it was dark enough to not be able to clearly make out what I was stepping on.

  “And you’re sure—”

  “Shhh.” I paused to listen, turning back towards the path. “Did you hear that?”

  “Seriously?” Sabrina thrust her hands on her hips, unimpressed. “Are you seriously trying to spook me?”

  “No, I thought I heard someone back on the path.” I pursed my lips at her. Her face was shadowed in the darkness but I could make out the tightness around her eyes. “I was going to suggest grabbing them if they were part of our group so they don’t get lost.”

  Sabrina gestured around her. “As opposed to us?”

  “I know where we’re going.” I shook my head at her lack of faith and took a few more steps forwards into the swelling blackness.

  Sabrina grabbed my arm. “I heard that.”

  “It’ll just be a rabbit or a badger.”

  Her hand tightened around my arm. “Badgers bite.”

  I noticed something in her right hand for the first time. “What the hell is that?”

  She held it up for me to get a better look at it. I could just about distinguish the outline in the fading light. It was a small cudgel, like the ones the old-fashioned policemen used. Maybe eight inches in length with a small, n
arrow handle, widening as it reached the head. She had it so tightly gripped in her right hand, the blood had fled from her knuckles. They almost glowed in the darkness.

  “Badgers. Bite.”

  “Fine.” I sighed, realising we were not going to make it through the woods with her crazy badger fixation and feeling less than certain of the way in the darkness. “Let’s go back to the path, retrace our steps and follow the directions on the letter.”

  “See, doesn’t it feel good to make the smart choice?” Sabrina asked as she hightailed back towards the path, still gripping her cudgel.

  “If I were making smart choices, I wouldn’t be friends with you.”

  “I didn’t say you had to make them all the time. Just this once.” The relief in Sabrina’s voice was obvious as the path appeared between the trees ahead. “We’ll retrace our steps, follow the directions and we’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll be late,” I mumbled.

  “Maybe,” Sabrina conceded. “But we won’t have badger rabies.”

  “Ah, yes, the infamous badger rabies. Can badgers even get rabies?”

  “Of course they can,” Sabrina snapped. Obviously she wasn’t going to be happy until we were out of the trees. “There was a case—”

  Sabrina stopped so abruptly at the edge of the trees I walked directly into her back, nudging her onto the path. Thinking it might be a badger, I quickly ducked under the last branch and out of the dense woodland, ready to give it a good sharp kick to the ribs with my practically bare foot. But it wasn’t a badger. It was a person. And they had a gun aimed at us.

  I glanced at Sabrina. “Bet badger rabies doesn’t look quite so bad now.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess there’s no Sally.” Sabrina shoved both hands in her pockets, subtly hiding the cudgel from sight.

  “Actually, there is a Sally in your GA group.” Alex shook his head in disgust. “Late twenties, brunette, shy, lovely girl.”

  “How would you know?” Sabrina asked.

  “She came to reception today because she needed help with how to notify her GA members about where their meeting would be tonight.” Alex smiled, but it was more of a grimace. “I helped. I knew neither of you would check the location with the other members of your group. You’re both too self involved to even be able to identify them, let alone actually talk to them.”

  “Well, we’ll consider ourselves chastised and be on our way.” Sabrina linked her arm with mine, narrowing her eyes at Alex. “And really, the gun was unnecessary.”

  I could feel her trying to tunnel us but it was like being dragged through toffee. A slow smile spread over Alex’s face.

  “How stupid do you think I am?”

  “You’re pointing a gun at two ghosts,” Sabrina gritted out, still trying to fight through the toffee blocking our escape. “So I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question?”

  “I’m not stupid enough to be trying to tunnel from a graveyard,” he snarled and waggled the gun at Sabrina. “And this gun will kill you sure as if you were alive.”

  “Graveyards are one of those blocked places. Guns kill ghosts. Good to know.” Sabrina sighed and released my arm. “I’m going to have a long talk to Eleanor about the lack of information she gives us.”

  “And why exactly do you want to kill us?” I asked, hoping it wouldn’t antagonise him, but I was struggling to see a motive for it other than he’d lost his mind over Bertha’s death and decided to take it out on us. “Did I not complete my assignment forms properly? I have to say, personally, I feel a gentle reprimand would’ve been more appropriate than shooting me. I am still fairly new to the job.”

  Alex’s placid expression suddenly twisted with rage. “For Bertha,” he spat at me. “Justice for Bertha.”

  “I’m sorry?” I glanced at Sabrina, who shook her head. She wasn’t following either. “How will killing us get you justice for Bertha?”

  He jabbed the gun at me. “Because you killed her.”

  “What?” I started at him. “I did what?”

  “And she helped,” Alex gritted out, swinging the gun between us.

  Sabrina jerked back as if Alex had slapped her, more from the accusation than the gun I thought.

  “Why would we kill Bertha?” I asked.

  “Because she was on to you,” Alex snarled, swinging the gun back and forth between us. “On to you both.”

  “On to us about what?” Sabrina sounded as bewildered as I did.

  “Whatever it is you’re doing.” Alex’s face coloured a deeper shade of red the longer we talked. We needed to get out of here before he lost it and shot us. “Whatever you’re up to.”

  I gestured between Sabrina and me. “We’re not up to anything.” Admittedly, this wasn’t entirely true but I doubted Alex was likely to be receptive to our explanation.

  “Then why did you kill her?” he cried in frustration, his gun hand shaking as he thrust it in our direction. A tear trickled down his cheek.

  “It’s so beautiful and peaceful,” a lady in her early sixties announced, appearing around the bend in the path coming from the right. She gazed around at the beams of sunlight pushing through the trees to light the path, her arm linked with an older lady in her eighties. “Dad must love it here.”

  “Probably complains about the bugs.” The older lady patted her daughter’s hand and she laughed.

  The interruption seemed to bring Alex back to himself. He dropped the hand holding the gun to his side as he shook his head and roughly swiped at the tears drying on his clean-shaven cheeks. He stepped backwards onto the grass to let them pass. They walked on admiring the beauty of their surroundings, oblivious to our situation.

  “Don’t,” he warned as Sabrina’s eyes darted all around for an escape route. His voice was rough with choked emotion, but the brief respite had given him time to collect himself and he appeared more rational. “Shooting you in the back will kill you as surely as shooting you in the front.”

  “The sea air too,” her daughter chimed in.

  “And the lack of padding in his coffin.” The older lady shook her head with a sad smile. “That man could moan.”

  “Where were we?” Alex stepped back onto the path, pointing his gun in our direction once more as the ladies rounded the next corner and disappeared out of sight, their quiet conversation following them.

  “You were accusing us of killing Bertha and threatening to kill us for it,” I offered helpfully. “We were explaining we hadn’t killed her.” Sabrina stared at me as if I’d gone mad. “What? He might not like us, but he’s smart enough to see the holes in his accusation.”

  “He’s got a gun,” Sabrina ground out and stabbed a finger in his direction. “And it’s pointed at us.”

  I turned back to Alex, temporarily ignoring Sabrina’s concern. I’d already died once this week and survived it, so to speak. How hard could dying twice be? “Look, when Bertha … passed on, it was during the festival when everyone was masked and cloaked. It could’ve been anyone that … y’know, so what makes you think it was us?”

  “Someone saw you,” Alex persisted.

  “First, we didn’t do it, so if I were you, I’d consider the motive of whoever’s telling you we did. And second,” I said, gesturing between Sabrina and me, “masked and cloaked. How could they have identified us?”

  “You could have taken your masks off,” Alex supplied, the hand holding the gun lowering almost infinitesimally.

  “C’mon. You’re about to kill someone in a public place. Would you take your mask off?”

  Alex lowered the gun to half way so it was pointing at the ground by my feet while he thought about it. I was winning him over, I could tell. No one was getting shot here tonight! I felt Sabrina tense. She exploded into action. Whipping the cudgel out of her pocket, she whacked Alex so hard on the wrist I was sure I’d heard a bone crack. His hand briefly tightened as he yelped in surprise and agony, causing him to fire off a round
before he dropped the gun from his possibly broken hand.

  Gravel sprayed onto my feet as a poof of dirt wafted up from the dent the stray bullet had gouged into the path mere inches from my toes. I stared at the hole. At the settling dust. At the gravel on my borrowed flowery flip-flops. Maybe I wouldn’t have survived dying twice.

  “Grab the gun,” Sabrina grunted.

  I looked up to find her standing behind a kneeling Alex, in between his legs, with his good arm twisted up behind his back, her other hand on his shoulder keeping him in place.

  “The gun,” she repeated.

  “What are you doing?” I stared at her as I retrieved the gun from the ground, boxing away the nearly-getting-shot drama in my mental safe to deal with at a later date. Much later. Maybe in therapy. “He’s not going to believe us now.”

  “He wasn’t going to believe us anyway,” Sabrina retorted. “Can you get the ribbon from my right pocket?”

  “I think you’ve broken my hand.” Alex held his injured hand up in front of his face, trying to bend the fingers, partially oblivious to our conversation.

  “Well, you pointed a gun at us,” Sabrina snapped back. “So I think we’re even.”

  I pulled a long, thin length of black ribbon from Sabrina’s right pocket. “Why do you have a ribbon in your pocket?”

  She took it from me and wound it around Alex’s wrist. “It’s less conspicuous than rope.”

  I nodded to myself. “Of course it is.”

  “Other hand behind your back, please.” Sabrina tapped his shoulder impatiently.

  He stared at me with angry eyes since he couldn’t see Sabrina. “You don’t actually expect me to do that?”

  “Do it or she’ll shoot you.” Sabrina turned to me. “Not in the knees, though, we need him to walk. The arm or shoulder will do.”

  Alex twisted his body so he could see us both then faced forwards again. He straightened up and pushed his shoulders back, keeping his injured hand in front of him and mustering what little dignity he had in his current position. “No.”

  I frowned then smoothed my expression out to minimise wrinkles, a habit from life. “If you’re so certain that we killed Bertha, what makes you think we won’t just shoot you and leave you here?”