A Stranger's Grave

by Craig Saunders

  The woman in white came to him and took him in her hands. Elton's trousers were round his ankles and he felt guilty not because he was married but because he hadn’t thought of Georgia since the woman in white started stroking him, but there was a little girl and he was married he was married he was...

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted, and pushed the woman away. He pulled up his trousers as she snarled at him, like some insane beast.

  ‘Come away!’ said Henry Harrison. Squeak, squeak, said the buggy, and a mouse peered at Elton over the side. It wore a bonnet, like a baby might have back in the fifties, or the sixties.

  ‘Leave him,’ said the little girl.

  ‘Elton,’ said Georgia, suddenly under him, bucking, holding him. It was the last thing he remembered, and when he woke with his first erection for what must be years, he felt sadness, but he didn’t feel guilt.

  He didn’t remember the girl, or the woman, but he did remember Henry Harrison, because he saw him that day, solid and real as ever.

  *

  44.

  ‘Never did like that man,’ said Henry Harrison from Elton’s side. Elton jumped, because he hadn’t heard the old man’s approach.

  ‘I saw him piss on that boy’s grave, you know. John Upbright.’

  ‘You were there,’ said Elton.

  ‘Snuck into the bushes.’

  ‘No,’ said Elton. ‘No, you didn’t.’

  Henry smelled of his ever present pipe. It was a comforting smell. He didn’t smell like a killer. He didn’t smell nuts. But Elton was sure he was.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Henry Harrison,’ the old man replied with a smile. He rocked the buggy while he talked and now Elton was aware of the squeaking of a wheel. The buggy looked dated, now. Something old. It wasn’t like the new type, the ones with big fat wheels that you had to inflate, or one of those lightweight ones you could go running with in some park somewhere. It was old, with a hood and suspension. Like it had been expensive once. Maybe fifty years ago.

  Maybe longer.

  ‘No, Henry. I mean, who are you?’

  ‘Just an old man,’ he replied. ‘Trying to get a little baby to sleep?’

  ‘A little girl, you mean.’

  ‘Baby, girl...she never did grow up.’

  ‘She’s a ghost...are you?’

  Henry laid his hand on Elton’s shoulder.

  ‘Real as you, young man,’ he said.

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘Just an old man. A sad old man,’ he said.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Henry rocked the buggy with one hand. Back and forth, back and forth, in an easy rhythm, like he could go on rocking, back and forth, all day. The mourners came out of the chapel, following the pall bearers to the grave. There weren’t many mourners. There often weren’t, as a man got older.

  ‘We’ll see, Elton. Let’s see where this goes. See how you do. She’s awake now. She’s awake, Elton. Let’s see if we can’t get her back to sleep.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Mr. Harrison?’ Elton rubbed his face hard. The old man, the old ghost, whatever the hell he was...shit, the whole thing was making his head ache, right behind his eyes.

  ‘We’ll see. And Henry’s fine.’

  He patted Elton on the shoulder, an old man’s hand, but strong, and just as real as the sun shining down on his back as he walked away.

  Don’t wake her, Elton.

  But she was awake, and Elton was beginning to worry. He could beat a man to death, but he couldn’t beat something he didn’t understand. He understood fists. He didn’t understand little girls, beautiful little girls, but as underdeveloped as a baby.

  Beautiful dead babies.

  Elton’s head kept right on hurting, because he knew there were no answers. No answers when it came to...

  He didn’t know what it came to. All he knew was that tonight he was going to meet someone else, in the dark, filling in an old man’s grave.

  Best case? It wouldn’t be his.

  *

  45.

  Seven o’clock that evening, after nightfall and after dinner, Elton stepped out into a light rain and zipped his jacket because of the goosebumps on his arms, but it wasn’t that cold. Water dripped down his neck, because the old puffed jacket he wore didn’t have a hood. He stopped and listened to the traffic running on the road outside his domain. Just a few cars. The rain like mist in the orange glow of the street lights down the street.

  He shrugged his coat higher on his broad shoulders.

  ‘Come on, Elton,’ he told himself. ‘Come on.’

  He went to the sheds round the back of the cottage and took out a shovel and a couple of lights. He wanted plenty of light tonight. He wanted to be surrounded by it.

  What he really wanted was to be filling in this grave in the light of the sun. But Elton understood, just as Sampson had before him, that gravedigging was dark work, and work for the night. It wasn’t supposed to be easy.

  It was kind of a vigil, he guessed. Fill it in at night. Could dig it out during the day, maybe, but fill it in at night. He didn’t know if it was tradition. Elton thought it could be. But it didn’t matter. He’d fill in the grave, wet soil, wet turf. Mark it, leave it.

  Sounded simple, but sometime in there, in between filling and sleep, he knew he’d meet someone. A little girl. He didn’t even know her name and he certainly didn’t know what Henry Harrison had to do with the whole thing.

  Did he even care?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  Two kids had been killed and an old man had been scared to death. He didn’t want anyone else to die on his watch, because he was getting used to his life. A life that was simple but satisfying, just the same.

  Elton understood he could never be the sociable guy. Never be the one laughing and telling jokes. Never go and make friends playing golf, or doing the quiz night in the local pub. He was alone now. His joy had gone, but he liked living just fine, and he liked the cemetery. It was his home.

  He knew he was still in prison, because he set his own routines. The only difference was that he didn’t have anyone telling him to do it. It was all down to him now, and the only prison remaining was the prison in his head.

  Two degrees, twenty-six years of little but thinking. Didn’t matter. He didn’t want any more bodies from now on.

  Cold, as always. Thinking of himself. But thinking of an old man, and a little girl, and wondering what the hell they had to do with the murders.

  A big man, still strong. The scarred knuckles of a fighter. A limp, his shoulder on the right scarred, too, both inside and out.

  In the light rain, his shoulder and knee ached worse.

  A big man. Brave and angry still.

  But he was frightened, now. Frightened to meet the girl and the old man, because two degrees and all the time to think in the world, there wasn’t a way to make this thing sit right. Something, someone, had killed those two kids, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the police anymore. He thought maybe it was his business, and that Henry Harrison had made it that way.

  Then, before he could even get to the grave, he swore and dropped both lights and the shovel, because the girl was there in front of him.

  ‘Shh,’ she said, though he hadn’t said anything.

  ‘She’s coming,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk to her. Don’t tell her. Please don’t tell her,’ she said.

  She dashed off, fleet. Nothing was wrong with her legs, and she was steady on her feet.

  Where her left eye should have been was nothing but a gaping hole.

  But that other eye. Such beauty. Such...

  Serenity, thought Elton. That’s the word. But words like serenity had no place on a cold wet night when you were frightened and in the dark because you’d just broken two lanterns and because there was something out there, something blacker than night. Something evil.

  ‘Bring her,’ said the woman in black, and his blood turned to ice.

  *


  46.

  ‘Make her come,’ she said. Something in the dark of night. No light. Nothing to see by.

  'Don’t talk to her,' the little girl had said.

  Shivers started in Elton’s shoulders. Those tremors deepened and travelled down to his legs.

  He knew what the woman wanted, for as sure as the night was pitch, he could tell it was a woman’s voice. A sultry voice. Soft. Pliant.

  'You can do anything to me,' that voice said.

  A hand touched him in the dark, and big man or not he jumped. The hand was delicate, though, and came back for him.

  There were two of them. The woman in black he’d seen the night of the murder, the woman in black that the girl had seen and that had driven the poor girl mad.

  But the woman in white was here, too. That beautiful woman who didn’t speak. The woman in black had that beautiful voice, enticing him into darkness. The white had the touch.

  He remembered her perfectly from the dream. He’d met this one before.

  Two women, he knew. The black one on the path. The white one from the dream.

  One a dream, one a nightmare.

  But he wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t talk to them. Because there was some dark aspect to them both. The one in white – he didn’t need to see – touched his trousers, ran her hand up the inside of his leg.

  He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. His legs felt like steel, long steel rocking in a high wind.

  ‘Where is she?’ said the one in black, the one with the voice.

  Don’t talk, he remembered, but he groaned as his fly was pulled down. He groaned and bit his lip because God, he wanted her.

  Georgia. Georgia.

  He thought her name over and over, a litany against the pressure in his pants as he grew hard. Harder than he had any right to be. He was married. That hadn’t changed. It never would.

  He wanted to push her away, because he was married. To Georgia. Georgia...

  ‘Where is...’

  ‘Leave him,’ said another voice, and Elton smelled smoke, sweet thick pipe smoke, drifting on the wet air.

  ‘Leave him,’ the old man said.

  The pressure was gone and the light from the dropped lanterns flicked back on. He looked around and saw nothing. Heard the buggy’s wheel, squeaking.

  Nothing there at all, but he knew this hadn’t been a dream, because he was out of his trousers and hard as rock. He fumbled and tucked himself away. After he was decent he picked up the shovel and walked back to the cottage.

  Burial might be dark work, but not anymore. Daylight would do.

  For the first time since moving in to his cottage he bolted the door and sat up until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.

  *

  47.

  Elton woke in the morning on the couch, dead on six am, sitting upright, like he’d fallen asleep. His neck would barely move from the position he’d been in all night, but he used his hands to take the pressure of his head off it, moved his head around and around, stretching it out, rubbing his stiff neck.

  He knew he couldn’t do this alone, whatever it was. He needed help. Some things couldn’t be figured out like a puzzle. Some things just fell into place. But he knew he needed to help this one along.

  The woman in black and the woman in white were dangerous. More dangerous than anyone he’d ever met. More dangerous than a man he’d met with a knife going through Christmas presents. More dangerous than the reason he’d served twenty-six years in prison instead of five.

  More deadly than anyone, anything, because they weren’t natural.

  And the little girl?

  Elton thought maybe she was the most dangerous of all.

  Whatever happened, however this was going to go, he knew he couldn’t do it alone. The only people he knew in town were cops and one crazy old guy who made no sense at all. And one copper who’d maybe seen something. PC...

  James?

  He called the police. It went against everything he knew to be right. Never volunteer information. Never give up anything you don’t need to. But the thing of it was, he needed to. He needed help and when you didn’t know anyone else, who was there left?

  He didn’t think he was going crazy. Elton wasn’t stupid, and he believed something inexplicable was going on. So if PC James would help him or not, he needed an ally. He couldn’t not call them, because this wasn’t something he could throw his anger at, his intellect. This was...

  Fuck it, he thought. This was ghosts.

  *

  A Hard Death

  There’s a groundskeeper who lives in a cottage in the cemetery in a small Norfolk market town. There’s always been a groundskeeper. Sometimes he goes away, sometimes he comes back. But the job is always there.

  The cottage in which he lives was built in 1905 and since then it has sometimes been empty, though the cottage is mostly filled. The custodian is responsible for maintaining the graves, sometimes for digging, sometimes for cleaning the chapel. He keeps the grass short and the hedges trimmed. He picks up the deadfall from the many trees and tends the flowers.

  But the cottage is at the west gates where the sun sets and the groundskeepers are gatekeepers, too. They are there not just to tend the dead, but to keep them from coming back. To keep them asleep.

  In 2011 a man named Elton Burlock took the position of gatekeeper, but the dead were already waking, and sometimes even the gatekeeper couldn’t rock them back to sleep, no matter how hard he tried.

  *

  48.

  Elton sat on the couch. PC James sat on the pew. James was higher than Elton, physically, but he didn’t get the best cup. Elton gave him one of four plain mugs he’d bought. He took the motorcycle mug on the couch with him and held it in both hands. The motorcycle mug was the right weight, the right thickness, just like the ones they’d had in prison.

  Elton didn’t shake. He wasn’t too worried about having a policeman in his home. Nor did it really matter if the copper thought he was mad. Other policemen might have some questions he couldn’t answer. He wouldn’t tell someone like DS Fredrickson what was going on, or DI Terry. PC James might have him committed. Elton didn’t think he would, though.

  Because PC James had seen them, too. He was sure of it.

  He was sure enough to risk calling him down to his cottage. Sure enough to give the man coffee while he was in his home.

  James watched Elton. Waited.

  ‘You called me, Mr. Burlock,’ he said finally, after waiting what seemed like forever.

  He was right. For all his bluster, Elton was worried about putting it into words. All the while he drank his coffee he half watched the policeman and thought things through. He was a thorough man, a thorough thinker. He didn’t mind taking a day or a night to think things through and work it out slow. But sometimes you just have to take the plunge.

  Elton sighed. He put his mug on a small coffee table with a stain on it he couldn’t get out no matter how hard he scrubbed.

  ‘You saw them, right?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘PC James...’ Elton took a breath and started again. He couldn’t think his way around this. He’d thought and thought while the PC was on his way over.

  Probably he’d be a little pissed off, a fat guy called back to the cottage where the ex-convict lived. A big hill and a trip to see someone he probably hated. A guy he probably wouldn’t mind never talking to again.

  Pissed off, sweating a little from the walk.

  ‘OK. Cards on the table?’

  ‘Cards on the table,’ said James, nodding.

  ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Elton said. ‘At the end of it, you want to put me in jail, have me committed, whatever...I won’t fight it. I won’t lie. We’ll start out on the right foot.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said James, and Elton could tell the policeman thought he was about to get a confession. He was, of sorts, but not the kind he thought was coming.

  ‘You know an old man, Henry Harrison?’

  �
��Can’t say I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘He walks around all day, with a buggy. The buggy’s empty. You must have seen him.’

  Something in the man’s eyes gave him away, and Elton knew he had the copper. But it wasn’t the right time. Not yet. He had to get him on his side.

  There was only one way to do that and that was to tell him the truth. All of it.

  Was he ready to do it? Really? All of it? There was only one way to find out, and that was to start and see where it went.

  ‘PC James. I can see you don’t trust me. I can see you’re sitting there, thinking, starting to worry. Thinking you’re in a room with a murderer, and maybe wondering what the hell you were thinking, coming out here on your own.’

  James’ hand strayed toward his belt.

  ‘Easy. I’m just talking here, and I’m not talking about murder. I’m talking about getting up some trust between us, because I’m in shit and I need help and I think you’re maybe the only person in the world right now who might be able to see his way to helping me. I’m not looking for salvation, PC James. I’m not looking for absolution. You read my jacket?’

  The PC nodded. ‘I read it.’ Wary.

  ‘Then you know what I’m capable of.’

  ‘Murder,’ said the PC. He didn’t seem to find it as distasteful as some. Maybe he was built of sterner stuff. Certainly a tougher man than his partner, Davis. Probably seen a few things, thought he knew a bit about darkness.

  He didn’t know a fucking thing.

  ‘Well, the jacket’s wrong. I need your trust. So I’m going to tell you a story, because I know you saw the old man and the buggy and the woman in black. I’m going to tell you a story, and we’ll see if I can make you a believer, because if I can’t I think something very, very bad is going to happen.’