Whispers in the Graveyard

by Theresa Breslin

  I always sat in the same seat. Number four.

  I sit down now. My legs stick out into the passage. The door opens and Ms Talmur comes in, the children in twos behind her. She doesn’t miss a step.

  ‘Ah, Solomon,’ she says. ‘I was told I might expect someone to . . . help me this afternoon. I didn’t realise it would be you.’

  Oh, yeah?

  ‘Children, go into your groups. Amy, you haven’t got a group yet. Sit with Solomon just now until I sort things out.’ She starts to organise the class as the one called Amy climbs onto the chair beside me.

  I look at her. Her pretty face and red-brown curls. She smiles. She has two teeth missing at the front. I look away.

  ‘Good.’ Ms Talmur is at the desk. ‘I’m glad to see you have made friends. Solomon, would you take out your jotter and get on with a bit of free writing while I prepare some material for Amy? She has just moved here. Her dad is supervising the moving of the stones in the old kirkyard.’

  What?

  ‘Come on, Amy.’ She takes the child’s hand.

  I take my jotter out and lean over to one side and across the desk. I curve my arm round and tuck the jotter into the crook of my arm. I start to write. Slowly.

  ‘Solomon, if you’re left-handed then you might find it easier to place your jotter like this.’ Ms Talmur leans over me. She adjusts my position so that I’m not covering my work as I write.

  There is a musky scented smell from her as her face bends close to mine, a warm closeness that makes me want to touch her. Then I see her mouth turn down as she looks at my writing. She flicks back through the pages. She sees the red-pen corrections, pages and pages of them. My hands start to sweat.

  She is reading some of my work. Her lips move, the scarlet outlines changing shape as she mouths the sounds.

  She says something.

  I don’t hear it.

  I’ve blocked her out. I know what’s coming next. Been through this routine a dozen times or more. Could write the script for her – if I could write, that is.

  She stretches over and takes a book from the corner bookcase. She places it down flat in front of me.

  ‘Can you read that title?’

  It has a picture of the ugly duckling on the front.

  ‘The Ugly Duckling,’ I say calmly. ‘By Hans Christian Andersen,’ I add.

  Nice touch, that.

  I look directly at her.

  ‘Would you read something from that book for me, please?’ she asks.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. I turn the pages casually, find a place and read her a sentence or two.

  A wrinkle appears on her forehead. She’s not convinced. I lean over and take a few more books. I open them at different pages and read the sentences out loud. She smiles at me.

  ‘Clever boy,’ she says softly. She examines the books carefully, lifts her eyes and looks round the room. ‘Clever Solomon. But how are you doing it?’

  ‘Dunno what you mean, miss.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ She chews her lip, thinking hard. ‘You had Mrs Webber didn’t you? All the way up the school. Did you sit at the same table every year, say this one, the fourth seat? She would take the reading round the class in the exact same order each morning, so all you had to do was get someone to read you the fourth sentence and then memorise it.’

  There is a trickle of sweat running down between my shoulder blades. No one, not even Peter, has ever worked out how I coped with reading aloud.

  ‘Dunno what you mean, miss.’

  She partly covers her mouth with her hand and, turning her head away, she says something.

  ‘What?’

  She looks back to me. Eyes grey-green. ‘So there’s nothing amiss with your hearing.’

  I can’t go through all this again.

  ‘Hang on a moment, please,’ she says. She goes into a store cupboard and comes out a moment later with a pack of cards and a plastic tray.

  ‘Would you look at them for me, please, Solomon?’

  It’s going to be the same old routine. And I’d thought she might have been different.

  Now they are in front of me. Spread out like a torturer’s implements. Cards laid out on the tray, various shapes picked out in different-coloured dots. Her nails are tap, tap, tapping on the pale wood of the desk. My head is aching now and the coloured dots tremble and merge, swimming across the page.

  ‘Don’t think of them as alphabet letters, or try to tell me what they are. Just trace the outline of what you can see.’

  I put my head down.

  ‘Draw that shape for me. There.’ She points with her long red finger nails among the blue and green and orange dots.

  Green sludgy green.

  Blood orange red.

  Red alert.

  Her tray is slippy in my hands as I lift it and chuck it against the wall. I bang my fists on the table and stand up; the table comes with me. I turn and kick myself free of it and the chair. I run round and pull down the boxes from the window ledges. The Lego pieces and the coloured straws scatter before me.

  I bite the sleeve of my jumper. I can hear the ripping cloth. I whirl round.

  There is something there in her eyes. Cloudy, shades of a sea storm. Pity? I take her handbag and empty it out onto her desk, then I hurl it at the blackboard. I grab some of the contents of her bag. Her personal things. Mirror, lipstick, comb. I smash them on the floor.

  Her eyes are sharper now, bright with fear. And I am glad. It makes me stronger, exultant.

  I wrench the classroom door open. I’m free. I’m running down the corridor, screaming.

  CHAPTER X

  I am not alone.

  On my wall, in the dark, wrapped in my blanket, I wait for dawn. Nowhere else to go. Think in the morning I’ll steal some money somewhere and take off for London or up north.

  And now, in this place beside my poor raped rowan tree, I know that I am not alone. Its body is lying crushed on the ground. Its leaves have withered quickly. The little creamy white flowers will now never produce their fruit. They’re brownish yellow and dying on the surface of the earth. As if a pestilence has struck them.

  Upset and turbulence all around this place where I used to feel safe. More soil has been taken from the base of the tree. The hole is deeper and wider but the roots seem to spread out and run deep. Like a wart I once cut around and tried to take from my finger. Its sinewy white tentacles had groped down into my flesh.

  They have been removing quantities of earth to dig it out. The air itself is full of unrest. I cannot sleep.

  And now. Whispers in the wind.

  I sit up quickly. There are two voices. That became important later. After the ‘accident’ I was unclear about things. Fear does that. Freezes your brain. Real terror, scattering your reason. But I know that in the beginning there were two of them. I heard them talking.

  ‘This way, Gerry. I left the shovels here.’

  I roll over in my hiding place and look down into the old churchyard. Two figures are among the diggings. Two figures creeping about.

  Why?

  I manoeuvre myself onto my stomach and watch.

  ‘Hold the torch and I’ll clear the earth.’

  ‘Hope this is worth the effort, Joe.’ The smaller one, who is wearing some kind of brown workman’s overalls, is holding the torch. His hand shakes and the light wavers. ‘Gives me the creeps being here at night.’

  They were at the wall directly below me.

  ‘I’m telling you now. There’s something worth money down there. What else would be in a chest fastened up like that? If we leave it one more day Frame will notice that this tree is taking too long to uproot. He’ll be over to find out why. You listen to me. The officials find it first and it’ll end up in a museum. We dig it out tonight, no one knows but us, and we get to keep what’s there.’

  I can hear their grunts as they shovel out the earth. A faint breeze ruffles my hair.

  The sound of metal striking metal.

  ‘Got it
! Give’s a hand here, Ger.’

  The moon speeds out from behind the clouds and I see them grappling a heavy lidded chest out of the hole.

  ‘God! It’s well done up. Locked and bolted and chained. Whoever put this away wanted to make sure no one got into it.’

  Or out.

  Joe laughs. ‘Good job I brought a crowbar.’

  He fits it through a hasp and levers. Both of them so intent on what they are doing that at first they are not aware of the ground around them shifting slowly. I feel the wall beneath me tremble.

  ‘CURSE!’ There’s an almighty crack and the one called Joe swears loudly.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he says. ‘The bloody crowbar’s snapped.’

  ‘Eh, you’re bleeding, Joe,’ says his mate. ‘Look.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s nothing. I’ll see to it in a minute. Mind yourself now, this earth’s so soggy with the rain we’ll be up to our ankles in a minute.’

  There’s blood coming from the wound on his wrist. Blood dripping onto the iron chest. I watch the warm dark liquid trickling down through the hinges.

  ‘Well, at least we’ve got it undone.’

  He’s right. One of the hasps has broken and the lid is very slightly askew.

  ‘Let’s see what’s in there.’ He reaches into the opening.

  Suddenly I feel the earth itself vibrate. Loose stones fall from the wall. There’s a great groaning sound and the torch light goes out.

  ‘Holy Mary! What was that?’

  Nothing.

  No sound. No movement. No breath of wind. A nothingness that reaches out into your mind. I shake my head.

  ‘No,’ I cry. But to whom, to what?

  ‘Joe?’ Gerry swings the torch about.

  It’s as if the sides of the hole have collapsed back in on themselves, taking the box with them. But where is Joe? The light from the torch is shaking violently.

  ‘Joe? Joe, where are you?’ Gerry moves forward to look down into the earth. There isn’t any room for him to be under the metal chest. Can’t be. Where has he gone?

  ‘Stop fooling about.’ Gerry casts around him with the torch. He laughs, or tries to. ‘Come on out of it.’

  In the beam of the light I can still see the top of the box, the hasp broken, the lid to one side. Is there something moving inside?

  The nothing feeling is stronger. The coldness complete. As the void left by a fallen star or the emptiness of despair.

  ‘Whatyesay?’ Gerry mutters something and steps towards the box.

  Then I act. The faint shadow in my dream of last night is sharper, clearer. I have to stop the other man touching that chest. I don’t mean to give away my hiding place. It’s a stupid thing to do. I just remember having an absolute conviction that if Joe was in the grave he was not coming out again. Not ever.

  ‘Don’t,’ I cry.

  ‘Almighty God.’ Gerry screams as he turns and sees my white face hovering above him in the moonlight. He runs.

  I jump down. There is a sense of power coming from the earth. From this part of the cemetery in which nothing grows. I look about me. Empty silence chokes the night. There is no one there.

  Yet . . .

  It’s as if there are others with me. I am among folk I know. Pals. I can hear them laughing and chatting just out of reach, calling to me, friendly-like. They want me to join them.

  All I need to do is to reach out to them.

  Reach down.

  Inside the chest.

  I lift my arm. I turn my head. I am alone. Myself. Something moves in my mind. I am alone.

  I repeat the phrase aloud. ‘I am alone,’ I say.

  But I’m not. There’s my father’s laughter in the air. His great ringing shout; he has started a story and I must hear the end. With the smell of warm toast and the taste of melted butter in my mouth.

  And it’s there for the taking. Just for me, if I want it.

  And I do. All I have to do is . . . stretch out my hand.

  I reach out my hand.

  CHAPTER XI

  ‘Lies.’

  The sound hissed in my ear.

  Lies. Lies. Lies.

  Was there a word written on the chest? Dead leaves from the rowan tree had fallen on the lid. They rustled, disturbed by a small whisper of air. Was that what I heard?

  No, there was lettering. Their moving had revealed it on the lid. ‘HERE LYE . . .’

  A brief moment, a break in the cloud, allows the moonlight to shine down on me crouched in the earth, and into the disturbed grave.

  ‘HERE LYE THE ASHES OF . . . . . . . . . . . . MALEFICE’

  I mouth out the words . . . M-A-L-E-F-I-C-E . . . and suddenly it is cold in the kirkyard, very cold. Black shadows gyrate across the space between my hand and the dark metal. My fingers stop. I hesitate. There is a wind among the yew trees, a wind that snuffles and moans between the branches. I know I am not alone. I look around me. I see only tall tombstones huddled like conspirators in the darkness.

  A cold grey light is pouring into the churchyard. Dawn, edging out blackness, as the planet spins away from the night. And suddenly my urge to reach down into the grave is gone.

  I move my head and it is as if space shifts. I lean back on my heels. The town clock strikes the hour and time flows back again like a river around me. I shiver and stand up. As I do so the earth I am standing on slides suddenly, tumbles and falls in from the sides of the hole. I step back quickly to stop being pulled in. The sods thud back and cover the chest. I move away and as I do so my foot catches a small object shining in the grass. A ring. I pick it up and put it in my back pocket. I collect my blanket from the ledge and stuff it in my rucksack. I’m never going to sleep there again.

  It is only when I am out on the main road that I hear the call of a bird’s morning song.

  There is something weird going on, something unexplained. Whatever is in that chest is wrong in some way, yet I had been about to open it up. Why? Every instinct had told me not to . . . yet I had felt compelled to reach out and touch . . . What?

  Two nights of disturbed sleep aren’t helping me to think very clearly. Where was the first workman? The one his friend called Joe? He must have run off when the box fell back into the hole.

  The whine of the milk float gently teases my brain back to normality. The gun-metal grey of the sky has charred patches of rain cloud on it. The milkman nods to me and it. ‘Rain before breakfast at this rate,’ he says.

  I open our back door very slowly. One of the panes of glass has been broken and a piece of cardboard wedged in the frame. Various pieces of crockery lie on the floor and the contents of the cupboards remain strewn all over the worktops. He is sitting at the kitchen table, red-eyed and unshaven, a mug of coffee in front of him. His hands shake as he drinks it.

  ‘Sorry, son. A million times.’

  I walk past him. No wonder she left.

  I sit down on my bed and drop the rucksack on the floor. My head hurts so much. I can’t go to school. There will be a major investigation into yesterday’s trouble. But if I stay off again, someone might come round. That could be worse. The state he’s in, and the way the house is wrecked, every social worker in the area would be drafted in to deal with us. There was no telling either whether he would start drinking again. It sometimes happened that way. He would ricochet from bender to bender until like a spent bullet he ran out of force. Then he would lie in bed for days, crushed and useless.

  A hesitant knock on the door. I get up and open it. He’s standing there with a tray. I look at it. Cup of coffee, plate of toast. I strike it out of his hand onto the floor. He doesn’t say anything, just gets down on his hands and knees to clear up the mess.

  I slam my bedroom door and wedge a chair against it, noisily, so that he will hear me doing it.

  I lie down on my bed and stare at my ceiling. There are posters and magazine cut-outs pinned up. Gandalf the Grey. Elves and goblins. He had drawn some of them for me. Great swathes of colour sweeping across my room.
Palaces floating on shining lakes, crystal waterfalls gushing from magic mountains. Fantasy.

  Something in my jeans pocket jabs into my side. I pull out the ring I had picked up earlier. I turn it in my hand. It is gold, broad and heavy. Maybe I’ll get something for it from one of the traders at the market on Saturday.

  ‘Blast.’ There’s writing engraved inside. That’ll take the value down. I squint at it and try to read it slowly. What does it say?

  A name, I think. Then a word. I spell out F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Then another name. There are numbers too, as part of the inscription. I can’t work it out. It’s too complex. Why don’t they make capital letters the same shape as small ones, and just have it that you have to write them bigger? It would make things much easier.

  Suddenly I have a thought. Maybe the ring came from the chest. Maybe the first workman had picked it out before the box slipped away from him. He had known there were things worth having buried there. If I could get back before they did, then I could make some money out of this. What had been written on the lid? ‘Malefice’.

  I would have to find out what that meant.

  A tapping on my bedroom door. I stuff the ring back in my pocket.

  My father’s speaking. ‘There’s someone from the school downstairs. I said you were sick but they won’t go away. Said they had to see you.’

  CHAPTER XII

  It was her. Ms Talmur, standing like a trapped butterfly in our dingy hallway. My father beside her, unshaven, in grubby clothes.

  What was she thinking? Seeing the stained wall paper, the worn carpet, the broken handle on the living-room door?

  It doesn’t seem to bother her. She looks around her casually and then straight at me coming down the stairs.

  ‘Ah, Solomon, there you are. If you get your school bag I’ll give you a lift to school this morning.’

  It’s an order.

  ‘I’m going to ask the Head if you can help me out today,’ she says as we get into her car. ‘The parents of the new pupil intake for next term are visiting and I could use some assistance.’

  ‘I need to go to my class.’ I stare out of the window at the rain.