by Tom Becker
A phone flashed into life before Sarge could reply.
“What is it now, Raj?” Roxanne said wearily. “Well of course Greg isn’t there yet – he’s quick, but he’s not Lewis Hamilton! Look, if he’s not there by half-past give me a call, but until then give it a rest, will you?”
Sarge rolled his eyes and left the office through the back door.
Out in the car park, the light was already fading. Liam gave Greg’s car an admiring glance as they walked past it, tracing a finger along the bonnet. They returned to the van and headed back to the town centre, steering around a herd of teenagers in school uniform spilling into the road as they walked home. Following Roxanne’s directions, Sarge took a right at the junction at the bottom of the hill, passing through the deepening shadow of the crumbling stone wall around the graveyard. Above their heads, streetlights blinked orange as they awoke.
As Roxanne had told them, the Lodge was the last house on the row, a large detached house set against miles of rutted fields.
Liam gave Jamie a nudge. “Not too shabby, eh?”
Jamie nodded doubtfully. Usually they stayed with acquaintances of Sarge’s, sleeping on floors and sofas in cramped, sullen houses. The Lodge was certainly grander than that, but as he stared at it Jamie felt a prickle of unease on the back of his neck. Maybe it was the late-afternoon gloom, or the barren backdrop of the fields, but there was a forbidding atmosphere about the building, the vague, distant shadow of a murder of crows on an otherwise empty horizon.
They locked the van and walked up the driveway to the house, losing themselves in the shadow of the porch as Sarge selected a key from the bunch with professional expertise and slid it into the lock. The door opened grudgingly, revealing a pitch-black hallway.
“Here we are then, lads,” said Sarge, as he stepped into the gloom. “Home sweet home.”
They explored the house together, flicking on light switches to chase away the gloom and banishing the silence with their clumping footfalls. Judging by the stale damp in the air and the cairn of letters on the hallway floor, the Lodge had been vacant for a while. Wherever the previous occupants had gone, they had left in a hurry. The house was still filled with their possessions: the beds were made; clothes still hung in the wardrobes; coffee cups were stacked neatly on the draining board. Sarge picked up a vase in the living room, examining it with the professional eye of an auctioneer. Jamie felt like a burglar, creeping through strange rooms filled with other people’s possessions and the mysteries of their unknown lives.
“It’s bloody Baltic in here,” Liam complained, rubbing his hands together. “Get the heating on, eh?”
It took them a few minutes to locate the boiler inside a cupboard beneath the stairs. When Sarge turned it on there was a series of loud clunks and rattles but the needle on the pressure gauge stayed rooted at zero and the radiators remained icy to the touch.
“Great,” said Liam sarcastically.
“I’ll have a look at it later,” Sarge told him. “It’s not like we’re going to be here long anyway.”
Jamie found a Chinese takeaway menu amongst the junk mail in the hallway and Liam ordered them some food on his mobile. But by the time the food had arrived, even the delicious aroma wafting up from the cartons on the kitchen table couldn’t make Jamie feel hungry. Perhaps it was the cold house, but he couldn’t stop shivering, and his hacking cough had returned. Eventually he gave up, pushing away his portion of chicken chow mein.
“You not having that?” Liam enquired, pointing at the chicken with his fork.
Jamie shook his head. “Don’t feel well,” he said.
“Early night. Eight hours’ sleep,” Sarge said crisply. “You’ll feel like a new man in the morning.”
Jamie nodded obediently, left the kitchen and climbed the staircase. During their initial recce of the house Sarge had volunteered to sleep on the sofa downstairs, leaving his sons to choose between the master bedroom and the adjoining box room. Liam had let Jamie take the bigger room, pushing him inside with a “Go ’ead” and a playful shove. The window offered a sweeping view of Alderston’s rows of terraced houses as they melted into the twilight. Directly in front of him the graveyard behind the church sloped down the hill towards the Lodge. Jamie closed the door behind him, revelling in the fact that he had a room all to himself. For one night, at least, he would sleep in a bed, not crumpled up in the van’s front seat like a discarded crisp wrapper. He didn’t care about the cold seeping up through the floorboards, wrapping his feet in its icy clutches. Closing his eyes, he listened to the trees murmur in the wind.
Gradually he became aware of another noise, voices rising up from a grating in the skirting board. Jamie crouched down beside it, felt the ironwork’s cool kiss upon his cheek. Through the grating he could hear Sarge and Liam talking to each other in the kitchen. A glimmer of a smile appeared on Jamie’s face. He had learned from a young age that if he wanted to find out what was really going on in his family, he had to listen in on his dad’s and his brother’s conversations. Over time Jamie had developed into a skilled eavesdropper – a thief in his own right, a shadow with soft feet and sharp ears who stole snatches of other people’s conversations.
“…don’t know what all this fuss is about,” Sarge was saying tetchily. “I moved around all the time when I was a young ’un. That was what you did when your old man was in the army. We went from one barrack town to another, barely had enough time to unpack. I didn’t stamp my feet and whine. I just got on with it.”
“Yeah, so you’ve told us before,” Liam replied. “But we’re not talking about you, we’re talking about Jamie.”
“So the lad’s got a cough! He’ll be right as rain in a day or so.”
“Maybe he should see a doctor.”
Sarge snorted. “Might as well send him to a psychic, all the good that’ll do him,” he said. “Your doctors weren’t any use when your mum got sick, were they? All soft voices and sympathy. They’re conmen, plain and simple.”
“This is your fault,” said Liam. “You shouldn’t have made Jamie go on that railway job. You knew he wasn’t well, and it was freezing out.”
“I made him wrap up warm, didn’t I? Someone had to keep lookout. Jamie’s not a little kid, he’s twelve years old! I tell you one thing – I was doing a damn sight more than just keeping watch at his age, and so were you.”
“Yeah? But what if Jamie’s not like me and you, Sarge? What then?”
“Then he’d better learn,” Sarge said ominously. “And fast.”
Chair legs scraped across the linoleum as someone got up, followed by an angry clatter of plates and water gushing into the sink. Jamie pulled away from the grate and climbed into bed fully dressed. There were times, he thought glumly, when being a conversation thief was like trying to steal barbed wire. Unless you were careful, all you ended up doing was hurting yourself. He shivered beneath the duvet, curling up into a ball as he tried to warm the cold bed. Maybe it was because of the long day, or the fact he wasn’t feeling well, but Jamie’s mind began to drift with surprising speed down through the levels of his consciousness, towards the deep basement where sleep waited to claim him. In his mind’s eye the basement door yawned open, and he stepped inside.
For a while he drifted through his unconscious, his dreams one blank after another. Then, without warning, Jamie found himself confronted by a brilliant tapestry of stars, twinkling against the velvet folds of the night sky. He was lying flat on his back, with high walls rising up around him in a deep rectangle. Reaching out, he touched the nearest wall and felt soft, crumbling earth beneath his fingertips. He was lying in a hole in the ground. Before Jamie could get to his feet there was a scraping sound on the surface, and he was showered with earth. He tried to shout out, but when he opened his mouth more soil rained down upon him, filling his mouth and choking his cries. There was a movement at the top of the hole and a face appear
ed, blocking out the stars. It was Sarge, a shovel in his hands and a thin smile on his face…
Jamie sat bolt upright in bed, his heart pounding. Panic gripped him as he looked round at his unfamiliar surroundings. Then he slumped back on his pillow in remembrance. His forehead was burning up and his skin was damp with sweat. It felt as though there were still foggy clouds left over from his dreams inside his head, that he wasn’t fully awake. As he pulled back the covers and climbed out of bed he saw that he had forgotten to close the curtains. Looking out through the window, Jamie saw a light flitting around the shadowy jumble of the graveyard.
Slowly, as though he were still dreaming, Jamie walked over to the door and left the bedroom. On the landing he pressed his ear against Liam’s door, and heard the sound of deep, regular breaths. Jamie crept down the stairs and past the living room door, where he caught a glimpse of Sarge stretched out beneath a blanket on the sofa, his shoes arranged neatly on the floor by his feet. Sarge’s mouth was wide open, and his throat made a harsh gargling sound as he slept. In the hall Jamie slipped on his trainers, eased open the front door and stepped out into the night.
On the other side of the road, part of the drystone wall at the back of the graveyard had toppled down, offering a narrow opening inside. Jamie pulled himself up through the gap, brushing the earth from his hands as he clambered to his feet. Headstones reared up before him, their edges gnawed by years of wind and rain, flagstones jutting out of the earth at awkward angles. Jamie carried on up the hillside towards the outline of the church. There was no sign of any light bobbing amongst the gravestones now – no light at all, save for the dim orange glow of streetlamps in the road below him. The cold air was starting to shift the fog in Jamie’s head, and the first nagging doubts had sidled into his head. What was he doing out here?
He was about to turn back for home when he noticed a small stone building sheltering in the shadow of an oak tree by the east wall. It was a squat octagonal tower with a narrow spire. Two stone slabs led up to the doorway, which was secured with a heavy padlock. A rusted metal grille was set into the window recess on the ground floor, and above that there was a narrow slit. Jamie walked over to the tower and peered in through the grille. It was pitch-black inside, a cauldron of pure midnight.
Then, far above Jamie’s head, the moon came out from behind a cloud, and there was an answering metallic gleam from inside the tower. Straining his eyes through the darkness, Jamie saw that a phalanx of large iron cages, bigger than a man, had been stacked against the wall.
“Looking for something?”
Jamie whirled around. A girl with tied-back dark hair stared back at him. She was dressed from head to toe in black: long-sleeved T-shirt, skirt, tights and boots, with matching black lipstick. A backpack was over her shoulders and there was a torch in her hand. Her mouth was set in an expression of defiant scorn.
“I saw a light from my window,” Jamie said uncertainly, pointing back towards the Lodge. “I don’t know why, I thought I’d…”
“…take a trip to the graveyard and see what was going on?” The girl snorted. “And I’m supposed to be the weird one.”
“I’m Jamie. I’m not from around here. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he added feebly, aware that if anyone looked scared at that moment it was him. He rubbed his hot forehead. He really didn’t feel well.
A mocking laugh escaped from the girl’s mouth. “That’s very good of you, Jamie-Not-From-Around-Here, but if you ask about you’ll find Keeley Marshall doesn’t scare that easily.”
At the mention of her name Jamie found himself back in the sour fog of the taxi firm, Roxanne’s voice echoing around the back office: “She’s a regular Black Maggie, that one…”
“In fact,” Keeley continued triumphantly, “I was the one checking on you. I heard you trampling around like an elephant and I thought I’d check you weren’t trying to break into the watch house.”
“Watch house?” echoed Jamie. He looked back over the octagonal tower, frowning. “What’s it watching for?”
“Bad people,” said Keeley with a hint of smile. “Thieves and criminals. The kind of people who break into graveyards in the dead of night.”
“I wasn’t breaking in,” Jamie said quickly. “I just wanted to know what you were doing, that’s all.”
“Whatever I want to do,” Keeley retorted. “There isn’t anyone here to tell me different. If they want to call me a witch, then that’s what I’ll be.”
“Like Black Maggie, you mean?”
A shadow passed over Keeley’s face. “Guess you’re not so new in town after all.”
Jamie looked up towards the church at the top of the hill. “You sure it’s OK to hang out here?” he said dubiously. “No one ever tells you to get out or calls the police?”
“The police?” Keeley laughed. “The nearest police station’s over in Caxton, and they know better than to bother coming round here anyway. Alderston folk don’t like strangers coming round asking questions. They take care of things on their own. Why else d’you think Roxanne and her lot stay here?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Jamie said weakly.
“No, maybe you don’t.” Keeley eyed him critically. “You don’t look like the kind who would. In fact, you look like death warmed up. What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“You a doctor?”
“No. But my mum’s a nurse, and I bet she’d say you weren’t well either.”
Jamie looked down at his feet. “I’m fine,” he said. “But I’d better go. It’s late, and if my dad finds out I’ve been out…”
“See you later, Jamie-Not-From-Around-Here. Take care in that place,” said Keeley, nodding in the direction of the Lodge. “It’s got a bad history – the only people who move in there are outsiders, and they don’t ever last long. If I were you, I’d sleep with one eye open.”
Jamie nodded uncertainly. All he could think about now was getting back to the warm refuge of his bed. He hurried away through the gravestones, his eyes focused on his bedroom window. His head was dizzy and it felt as though his limbs were on fire. As he climbed down through the gap in the wall at the bottom of the hillside, Jamie slipped, nearly falling on to the pavement below. He had to concentrate so hard on crossing the road that he didn’t register the fact that the lights were on in the front room of the house. As he fumbled with the gate the front door flew open, and Sarge’s angry silhouette filled the doorway.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.
“I saw a light…” Jamie stammered. “I thought … I don’t know…”
“A light? In the graveyard? What are you rabbiting on about? Get inside!”
As Sarge reached out to drag Jamie inside the house, the world took a sickening revolution around him, and suddenly everything went black.
Jamie spent the rest of the week in bed, his body wracked with fever. Every muscle, every joint, ached. His lungs became bubbling volcanoes, every eruption of hacking coughs searing his chest. Shaking with cold, Jamie burrowed deeper and deeper beneath the covers in search of warmth, only to find his skin burning and damp with sweat minutes later. He slept in fitful snatches, haunted by dreams of empty graves and the soft whisper of shovelled earth.
With Jamie ill, his family had to stay in Alderston – whether they wanted to or not. Liam seemed pleased, his mood buoyed by the discovery of a boxing gym in the nearby town of Caxton. He brought down an old TV set from the attic and propped it up on a chair so Jamie could watch it in bed. As Jamie stared dully at daytime cookery shows he could hear the rapid shuffle of his brother’s feet from the next bedroom as he shadow-boxed in front of the mirror.
Sarge was a different matter. Once a day, at eleven o’clock sharp, he stuck his head through the bedroom door to check on Jamie’s progress. The rest of the time he s
pent propping up the back bar of the Royal Oak, getting to know the locals. He never came home drunk – Sarge didn’t drink – but he was short-tempered and sullen, and to Jamie it was obvious that his dad blamed him for the fact that they weren’t back on the road. The first thing Sarge had done in Alderston was take the van to the garage to have the broken windscreen replaced, but now it just sat in the driveway. It was as though Sarge had looked down to find his feet had been wheel-clamped.
Just when it seemed as though he would never get well, Jamie’s fever finally broke, and he woke one morning to find that his forehead had cooled and the aches in his limbs had melted blissfully away. He climbed out of bed and went across the landing to the bathroom, his bare feet hopping on the icy tiles as he turned on the shower. Thankfully the Lodge’s shower worked on a separate system to the boiler, and didn’t rely on it for hot water. Jamie washed and dressed, and went downstairs to find the house empty. He poured the last of the milk into a bowl of cereal and ate it at the kitchen table, aware of the sound of food crunching in his mouth. When he had finished he put his bowl in the sink and went into the hallway to put on his coat. Jamie had no idea where Sarge and Liam had gone or when they would be back, and the last thing he wanted to do was spend another day in the house on his own. Stepping outside, he closed the front door behind him.
He followed the road along by the cemetery wall, heading towards the town centre. The sky was filled with grey clouds, and there was a bite to the chill air. Jamie turned up the collar on his coat and thrust his hands into his pockets. Maybe if he asked Sarge, he could get the money to buy a pair of gloves. The streets were eerily quiet as he headed down the winding cobbled road towards the village square. No cars drove past, and there were no customers outside the terrace of shops on the other side of the road. Jamie realized he had no idea what time or even what day it was. From the moment they had entered Alderston it felt as though time had taken on a less certain meaning – though whether that was due to his illness or the atmosphere of the town itself, Jamie couldn’t say.