The Boy In The Cemetery
Sebastian Gregory
This is the story of a girl who lived but was not alive…Carrie Anne is desperately unhappy. Tangled in a web of abuse, she seeks solace in the cemetery that backs onto her garden. But something creeps between the gravestones. Carrie Anne is not alone……and a boy who was dead, but could not die.'The cemetery is home to a boy. He has guarded these forgotten bones since meeting a gruesome end two hundred years ago. Neither dead nor alive, he has been watching for a long time. And now, he finally has the visitor he’s been waiting for…The perfect twisted tale for fans of Angela Carter, Grimm's Fairy Tales and Tim BurtonPraise for Sebastian Gregory'It reminded me of Tim Burton’s ‘The Corpse Bride’ and ‘The Nightmare before Christmas’ which I really loved - Candy's Bookcase on The Boy in the Cemetery'Within the pages of The Boy in the Cemetery, I found that incredible part of my imagination that I realise I'd lost somewhere in the process of growing up. I was enthralled, entranced, and completely enchanted. I would happily, happily, happily read anything by Sebastian all day long.' - 5 cupcakes from Becca's Books to The Boy in the Cemetery'Every now and then you come across a book that blows you away, this is one of those books.' - 5 stars from Nicky Peacock to The Asylum for Fairy Tale Creatures'This novella is magnificent. It is hauntingly magical.' - The Modest Verge on The Gruesome Adventures of Alice in Undeadland
This is the story of a girl who lived but was not alive…
Carrie Anne is desperately unhappy. Tangled in a web of abuse, she seeks solace in the cemetery that backs onto her garden. But something creeps between the gravestones. Carrie Anne is not alone…
…and a boy who was dead, but could not die.
The cemetery is home to a boy. He has guarded these forgotten bones since meeting a gruesome end two hundred years ago. Neither dead nor alive, he has been watching for a long time. And now, he finally has the visitor he’s been waiting for…
Also available by Sebastian Gregory (#u818b39c9-cc50-565b-aa0c-4ee5aedbd645)
The Gruesome Adventures of Alice in Undeadland
The Asylum for Fairy-tale Creatures
The Boy in the Cemetery
Sebastian Gregory
www.CarinaUK.com (http://www.CarinaUK.com)
SEBASTIAN GREGORY
(pronounced Gre-gory) writes from a cabin in the middle of a haunted wood. His inspiration comes from the strange and sorrowful whispers amongst the ghastly looking trees. Sebastian is only permitted to leave the shadowy candlelight of the cabin once a story is complete, when it is unleashed upon the world of the living. Sebastian writes for the younger readers as they are easier to terrify than adults whose imaginations died long ago.
When not writing in a cabin in the middle of a haunted wood, Sebastian lives in Manchester with his family and various animals.
You can email Sebastian on writtenbyseb@hotmail.co.uk (mailto:writtenbyseb@hotmail.co.uk)—he would love your feedback.
You can follow him on Twitter @wordsbyseb (http://www.twitter.com/wordsbyseb)
You can stalk him on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/writtenbyseb (https://www.facebook.com/writtenbyseb)
For the Perseverance Book Club, thank you for a great evening. Next time we will rock!
Contents
Cover (#uafda2264-a873-533c-bf3d-fbe68ca7737e)
Blurb
Book List (#u5bdb05e7-d14c-51df-8b49-b94f2411c2c7)
Title Page (#u92a194b4-711f-5729-999b-8aa100434c3b)
Author Bio (#uab1f7245-f646-5dfa-b535-40f37dd68e45)
Dedication (#uc9d65fd2-a3be-5a59-946c-8c9642a417fa)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u818b39c9-cc50-565b-aa0c-4ee5aedbd645)
This is the story of a boy who was dead but could not die.
And a girl who lived but was not alive.
There was a name that caused fear and missed heartbeats to those unfortunate enough to hear it spoken. A name so suited to the disease that the words themselves described the symptoms and the purpose in a terrible dark perfection. So afraid were the people of the city that they dare not speak of it, for fear of in some way drawing the attention and wrath of the thing itself. It was called The Consumption and like an ominous descending fog it choked the life of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught within its wisps. The cruellest of diseases, The Consumption would take every last drop of life as it turned a once recognisable, living person into something far less. A mere blood stained whisper of humanity’s l memory. To its victims, The Consumption was devastating; to those who watched their loved ones waste away to a dry husk, more so.
First there is the cough, subtle at first, small as a tickle. But the tickle soon becomes an itch, an itch that comes from the lungs and so cannot be scratched. There is no relief as the choking and choking and choking grips the windpipes and begins to slowly, oh so very slowly, drown them in their own blood. Drip, drip the lungs begin to fill; drip, drip the lips splutter and spill. The Consumption can take its own time and savour the misery wrought; after all there is no cure and it is, at the point of bloody coughs, firmly rooted within the body. Now is the time for the sweating to begin as the body temperature rises and sweat pours forming puddles around the lost desiccated soul. As the body shakes and rattles, the sweats run. Now he Consumption really earns its name, leaching all that it is to be human, slurping the mind of sanity, and petrifying the body to bone. All that is left for death to usher into the next world is a withered, mindless thing. And this is exactly what happened to the boy’s mother.
They lived in a one-roomed hovel, the boy his mother and an unknown number of skittering cockroaches, by the city docks. It was always dark inside no matter the time of day. What little light fought for survival against the dank dark was provided by small brown wax candles that produced a smaller brown flickering light. Slivers of sunlight penetrated the cracks in the rotting wood door, but soon became lost in the gloom. They brought a damp stench and clung to the air and wet the lungs and offended the nostrils. There were no beds—only two dirty grey uncomfortable mattresses made from stitched sacks and straw, placed on the cobbled stone floor. One for his mother and sometimes his father—if truth is told, the father was rarely seen and spent most of his time pissing at the gin shops. The other mattress belonged to the boy. They slept in ragged sheets that wouldn’t keep a small rat in bedding. The boy barely noticed his father and was not even truly aware of him until his mother was in the cold grip of The Consumption. In his memories, the mother’s smile lit up the dark; she was soft and warm despite the harsh cold world. Her hair was red curls, wild, that tickled his nose whenever she cleaned his face with kisses. She would sing to him at night, sweet angel songs as she sat in front of a cracked mirror putting on her coal soot make-up.
“Mummy has to go out, my lovely boy.” She looked so beautiful, smiling before him and her voice a comforting whisper. “But when the morning comes, I will have enough money to take you to breakfast.” The boy’s mouth practically drooled at the thought. She kissed him and that night he dreamt of sausages and oranges and treats to come.
The next day the boy woke with his mother sitting over him.
“Get up, sleepy head; I owe you breakfast.” She beamed.
The boy was out his makeshift bed and holding her faster than a dying eye can flicker. They laughed and the boy dressed into his one and only set of clothes. An itchy and thick woollen suit and heavy leather shoes Mum had bought from a boy who no longer needed them. His mother wore the same outfit from the night before and although she looked a little dishevelled and smelt of smoke and gin, she was still beautiful. Soon out in the sun they walked to the market. Mother held her son’s hand tightly as people barged by, hurrying and not watching where they were going. The noise was incredible to the boy, as stall vendors called their wares to the world. The boy felt dizzy with happiness as his senses where overwhelmed. The air smelt warm and exotic, the noise intoxicating, the sights inviting as they passed brightly coloured stands selling all manner of fancy goods. She bought two hot sausages and the boy nearly swallowed his whole, burning his lips. But the pain was nothing to the satisfaction of having something warm in his belly. His mother laughed at him and gave him another sausage, which disappeared as fast as the first. They walked to the hill that overlooked the city. The buildings steamed and shimmered with chimney smoke in the hot sun. As they strolled past green trees and upon the carpet of grass, something they had done many times, Mother stopped suddenly, gasping for breath. The boy panicked by her side as she fell to the ground, landing on her back in the green grass. She looked pale even beneath her make-up. The boy shook her as best he could with his small arms; there was no one around to help.
“Mum, Mum, wake up please,” he pleaded.
She must have heard his cries, for moments after falling she opened her eyes to her son.
“I was resting, boy.” She smiled. “Can’t I rest?”
The boy held on to her, burying his head in her chest, not seeing the trickle of crimson from her mouth’s corner. The mother, however, knew it was there as certain as she knew what was happening deep inside her vulnerable flesh.
The death of his beloved mother began slowly, and with all the efficiency of a leech attached to an exposed vein. The boy’s world was not taken from him in a swift act of violence but rather a fading from the inside and outwards. The illness took her strength until, when she was at her most vulnerable, it took her soul. Without fresh water or any type of medicine she soon became bedridden. Weak, she could barely speak without the trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth or wet, red chokes denying her breath Her pale skin the colour of curdled milk and just as soaking wet as she perspired her life away. The change was subtle at first: the odd cough there, the unsure strength of weak knees.
“What is wrong, mummy?” the boy would ask.
“Nothing.” The mother would smile, hiding the red spots on the handkerchief from his view. But when the boy crept closer, the mother held him more and more at arm’s length. Until one day she was too weak to even muster the effort for that. For hours he lay upon her, huddled, thirsty and starving in the dark but unwilling to leave her side. Her breathing was gasping and her body felt as brittle as twigs, but still the boy would not leave her. Finally after untold hours, the mother stirred and opened her eyes for the first time in a long, long time.
“Where is Father? Where is he? We need to get you help,” the boy said; his voice was a dry whisper so as not to hurt his mother with heavy words.
“We do not need him, son, and never have,” she replied so distantly, lost in a memory of what was, and when she spoke of him sadness overshadowed her otherwise defiant words. “Come,” she added between deep gasps. “Let us be out of here; you have to be strong and help me.”
The sun was warm on the boy’s face as he held his mother in the outside world.For one fleeting moment as the smells and sounds of the city washed over him, everything was good and familiar. The shouting of the boat workers on the bank of the river as huge steam ships came down from faraway places. The smells of the river, a cocktail of heat and rain with a measure of rotten fish from the market. There was the laughter and fighting from the gin houses that lined this part of the city as sailors came and went and ladies with thick make-up greeted them with drunken smiles… The mother held on to her son tightly, and each step was an achievement for both the mother whose life was slipping and for the young boy holding her upright. They half walked half stumbled across the cobbled street. A horse and carriage trotted by dropping steaming manure behind it. A few of the homeless children followed collecting the stinking piles into sacks. The boy knew a life of poverty; he shared a bed with lice and at many times had taken dark water from a burst pipe. However, his mother had always kept him sheltered and safe. Even from his own father, who once came stumbling into the hovel angry that his mother had no coin for him to liberate.
Like a shadow of a beast, he pointed, looming over the boy, slurring words through a foul breath.
“What about him? Get him to the sweep. What about it, boy? You’ll climb a chimney for us, won’t you boy?” He swayed over his child, but before his giant hands could grab him, his mother stood between them.
“He’s five and if you go anywhere near him, I’ll see you floating in that black river out there, feeding the rats.”
He grabbed his son by the arm with such force that socket and bone were very nearly separated. The pain and shock was such that the boy could only yelp at being dragged along. The mother went after the monster in an attempt to save her child but her breath betrayed her as she violently spiralled into a coughing fit, collapsing on the floor, gasping as if she had woken to find herself buried alive. The boy cried for his mother but too late; he was dragged into the street, finding himself slapped across his head by his father’s huge palm. As the pain shook him senseless and his vision fired purple sparks, his father threw him over his shoulders where the boy flopped like a fresh corpse. He bounced along the cobbled streets. The sun seemed violently radiant and the boy’s ears rang a hum. The boy was brought to a street of houses in the darker side of town, but still with a higher standard of living than the boy and his mother had to endure.
“I want to go home,” the boy spluttered against nausea as his father set him down on the street. He wobbled and sat in the dirt.
“Shut up, boy; time you earned your keep, be a man,” his father snarled back.
The street was full of houses crushing together, with red brick and grey slate roofs overhead. There was a ruckus coming from one of the houses as a man dressed in a dark top hat and thick fur coat strode from a doorway. A woman’s voice cursed from the door he left. The boy’s father removed his cloth cap and held it his hands. The bald head underneath was a map of scar tissue from many a year of altercations. He approached the fur-coated man. The boy considered that this is what Satan would possibly look like had he decided to walk the earth in a man’s skin. All dressed in black with mean sharp features from the shadow of the top hat.
“Mr Cutlass,” his father said all of a sudden in a soft tone.
“Go away; I’m busy,” Cutlass replied. His voice sounded like a razor blade wetting a throat. The woman came to the door, shouting. She was not well to do but had money. Her red dress and blouse looked like lace and her dark hair was well kept in a tight bun. But her make-up was running and covered in soot. Her voice was a faux accent of what she considered proper English. “You, sir, owe me a new chimney.”
Cutlass waved at her in a dismissive stroke of air. The boy’s father blocked his path.
“Mr Cutlass.”
“What?? What??” he shouted.
“I’ve brought my boy here; he wants to be a sweep.”
“He does? I doubt it. None of those bastards crawl up that fireplace and into the dust willingly,” Cutlass noted as he eyed the boy. “It just so happens I have an opening now; we’ve had to dig a dead one out.”
From the doorway the woman was screaming about her destroyed chimney, while a large thug carried a young boy in his arms. They were both black as coal, but the boy flopped lifelessly in the big man’s arms.
Despite his size, his father appeared deflated as the dead urchin was brought from the house. “Let’s go home, son,” he said. From that day on he never asked anything from the boy or his mother again. The boy did not lose the memory for a time. He slept and would open his eyes and find himself in the black-dust stone of a chimney stack. He couldn’t move no matter how he shook; his arms were pinned by his side and numb. The only feeling in him was fear, squeezing his nerves in its skeletal grip. When he tried to scream his mouth filled with the dust, drying his saliva so he couldn’t spit before it filled his throat.
“Don’t worry,” a sweet voice said. “You are not alone. You will never be alone here.”
And the boy looked up the stack to see the dead boy hanging there, neck broken and eyes white as milk. Naturally he would wake at this point, never wanting to sleep again.
At the edge of the river, on the stone cobble bank, the mother managed, slowly and with great effort, to crouch in front and level with her son.
As she smiled her thin smile, the river lapped behind her.
“My angel,” she said. “You are the most wonderful thing I have ever done in my life. My angel, there are no words for how much I love you. You are so strong and brave. You need to be strong and brave.” Tears ran from her bloodshot eyes and turned to dust on her cheeks. Such was the strength of The Consumption.
“Now close your eyes,” she said as she stroked his hair and without hesitation he did. Her hand trembled over his cheek and the boy breathed the happiest sigh in the world, as he inhaled her never-ending scent and beauty.
When he opened them again his mother was gone and somewhere there was screaming and crowding and shouting and he was knocked to the stone as people ran to the edge of the water…
Chapter Two (#u818b39c9-cc50-565b-aa0c-4ee5aedbd645)
A smack to the back of the boy’s head from his father’s hand brought the boy back to the here and now.
“Pay attention, boy,” his father rumbled as the force of the blow staggered the boy forwards and rattled his skull. Despite the pain and the viciousness of his father, the boy refused to cry. He would not give his father the satisfaction and instead held the pain inside, stored and ready to be unleashed with the other inflictions upon him. One day he would see his father cry. Until that day he would have to accept his father’s ways. After all he was now eight twelve years old and a scrawny thing whereas his father was a huge bull of a man, bald and thickly round. The pair stood on Dark Wood Hill just on the outskirts of the treeline. Despite the sun being high in a clear grey sky, father and son were almost invisible against the shadow of the trees. Below the hill the town, although huge and stretched as far as the eye could see, seemed like a tiny vision of Hell as it steamed in the sun. The boy could see that cursed river slicing through the streets. The same river that took his mother.
But the father hadn’t brought him here for the view. He brought him for the cemetery.
“Look, boy, what do you see?” he asked his son.
Fearing another thump, the boy concentrated upon the sight before him. The cemetery cut itself into the hillside; it surrounded itself with a high black iron fence. Inside the boundary, a church in the centre of the field of headstones, rang a melancholy chime into the air from the steeple. Each ring of the bell reached up to God and possibly saddened the almighty. When the ringing paused, the boy could hear the creak of the iron gates as they opened for the procession that had crawled its way up the hill like a centipede.
They were led by a huge black horse with red and white feathers protruding from its mane. It pulled behind it an ornate glass cart, in turn holding a wooden casket. Behind this were the mourners. Dressed in black garb they shuffled together, dark beetles in the insect march. They were sombre and writhed deep in their sadness. A top-hatted gentleman walked with his arm around a little blonde girl. They walked directly behind the casket. The blonde girl caught the boy y in his eyes. Whether she could see the boy in the distance, he knew naught. He did however recognise the look on her face. It was one of profound loss and sadness mixed with disbelief that would never go away.
“It’s a funeral, Dad, just a funeral.”
“Not just a funeral,” snorted his father, “that’s an opportunity. See how well dressed they are. That’s velvet and silk not these stained wool suits we wear, boy. Whoever is in that coffin is going be wearing all kinds of fine jewels.”
“But the dead, Dad, won’t they mind?”
“The dead will welcome us, son. When they have been in the ground long enough and the flesh leaves them, they all smile, boy; the dead all smile.”
When the night arrived and the light bled from the world, the two made their way to the cemetery under a sky of purple and silver. Father brought tools, which he had hidden in a sack,buried under leaves in the outskirts of the woods. A rusted pickaxe and a dull yet effective spade. They arrived at the iron fence, gasping mist into the air. The boy wondered if his white breath was from fear rather than the evening cold. His heart was thumping so hard he feared his ribs would surely crack. Immediately his father knelt down and shovelled great clumps of dirt from under the railings.
“Keep a look out, boy,” his dad ordered.
The boy couldn’t take his eyes from the cemetery. He could see the gravestones peering from the dark like ships lost on a fog sea. Gas lamps shone tiny yellow lights in the otherwise cold, unforgiving black of the cemetery.
“Done,” said the father.
There was a space dug from under the fence, big enough for the two to crawl through.
“After you, boy.”
The boy hesitated, which made his father scowl. “Move it or would you prefer I throw you over?” Again the boy could not move. His imagination led him to believe there were dead things waiting for him in there. Rubbing their bony hands together and waiting to pull him into the soil with them. It had been many years since his mother left the world. Yet his loss had left the boy with vivid, nightmarish senses that made him fretful of unknown, invisible things. His father did not have the burden of imagination and did not fear the dead.
He grabbed the boy by his neck and pushed him into the trench as if he weighed nothing. The boy had no choice to scramble through or be swallowed by the soil as sudden panic drove him through. He came to the other side spitting filth, trying not to swallow. His father crawled behind and pulled himself up, shaking himself cleaner, and smirked through gritted teeth standing by his choking boy.
“Suck it up, son; we have work to do,” he said, giving him a none-too-gentle kick with his boot, making the boy limp to his feet. And the boy felt hatred and frustration knot in his stomach.
They walked to the sound of gravel crunching underfoot. Despite the dark, the moon lit the way and the cemetery was clear for anyone with eyes still in their sockets to see. Not that the shadows of the many oak trees were unkind to the trespassers as they went about their dark purpose,
From gravestone to gravestone and shadow to shadow, the father led the way like a hunting dog searching for a dead fowl bleeding in pond grass. Looking at each stone tableau, each stone cherub and words of loss until he found his prize. The soil was fresh and soft and the father tested it with the spade. It sliced the freshly turned grave easily.
“Ah yes,” he whispered in admiration of his find. “Here we are, all nice and snug. Be easy to dig this one out, boy. You look out for any wardens and I’ll find our prize. You should be proud, son; you’re about to learn a trade.”
The boy barely heard his father; he had been hypnotised by the statue that silently held vigil over the grave next to the one his father was violating. It was made of the purest marble and in the moonlight it sparkled. An angel in the garden of the dead. It held its hands together praying and its beautifully crafted wings wrapped around itself. It reminded the boy of his mother, floating away as if taken to Heaven. Except it was not Heaven calling her back, but the dark waters of the river pulling her deep below with her white nightgown billowing in the water like broken angel wings.
“Where is she looking?” the boy thought to himself.
And as he stared and wondered, a figure bore down upon him as if escaping from Hell itself. The man was upon him, his bearded face grimacing and snarling, his black clothes flowing from the shadow.
“Bloody thief,” it screamed.
The boy cowered unable to move but was spared when, from beyond the grave, his father collided with the grave warden and they fell to the ground violently. The boy managed to move and hid behind the angel. He closed his eyes tight and held his hands over his ears, trying to stop the groans and snapping sounds. Until finally the boy could only hear his own breath in and out, in and out, in and out and a hand took his shoulder. His surprise quickly turned to relief as his father stood over him.
“We need to go, son; leave the tools,” he said.
The boy went to reply but the wound in his father’s stomach took his words. His father held his hand there but the wet red poured through his father’s fingers.
“ Bastard got me,” His father explained…
The journey back to the hovel by the docks was not an easy one. The boy’s father could only drag himself as his precious fluid poured. In the night of the city, the richer couples walking in the evening glanced at the father and boy and quickly avoided them. Whereas the two made their way home and closer to the slums, one or two less-desirables circled them like ravens ready to pick dead meat from bones. They saw the bloodstains left by the father, who was becoming more and more uncertain on his feet. However, he was a formidable size even wounded and anyone with sinister thoughts would attack him at their own peril. Then finally they made it home and as they entered through the broken and crumbling doorway, the father collapsed on the rag-sheet mattress.
“I’m done,” he mumbled, falling to fatigue. “I’m done, son.”
The boy kept vigil by his father’s side, unsure of himself if he did so from a misguided loyalty or to make sure the bastard died. The warm sun baked the darkness of the room, but this was nothing compared to the fever heat that came from the father as his blood soaked the rags and the untreated wound invited an infection. And infection came, grasping the father with deep sweats and cold shivers of an almost rigor-mortis-like chill. The boy wet a rag from the leaking pipes and doused his father’s brow. He pulled back the makeshift bandages and inspected the deep slice in his father’s stomach. Maggots had found their way in and they writhed at the feast before them. The boy did not recoil at all; instead he stared almost with indifference to the sight, to the smell It was a mercy when his father died after days of seething in agony. The boy sat watching the still lump in the room. He shed no tears at his father’s death, for his mother had taken them all. Now the boy only felt a numbness. He stayed that way until the sounds of the world outside fell silent and the sun was replaced by the moon. Again and again the moon and sun came and went. The boy watched as his father’s skin turned green. A rat came from an unknown corner. That curious creature sniffed and nibbled at the dead man’s fingers. The boy made no attempt to stop it. Eventually hunger and thirst reminded the boy he was alive. The boy came to realise it was now the time to begin to look after his own well-being, before thirst or starvation claimed him. He was alone and therefore for survival’s sake, he would need to be able to provide for himself. The boy had seen children dragged kicking and screaming into the workhouse. Behind those high stone walls topped with razor wire and the serious black gates. Just as he had seen children pulled limp and silent from chimney stacks. He had heard stories of children working with the new weaving machines and losing limbs to their hungry spindles and threshing metals. His mother had always promised he would not go the same way. He would therefor take what his father had given. The only thing he had given him. He had taught him to steal the secrets of the dead.
He wandered a gas lit cobbled street and no one paid him any heed; it was as if he was no longer alive at all. And that moment the world seemed to melt away and he found himself in the cemetery watched by only the dead and the stars. Of course he stood in front of the stone mother angel and he wondered if his mother looked down on him from Heaven or his father looked up from Hell. As the boy longed for the beautiful stone angel he began to be lost in her eyes. Not that they were any different from the first time he saw them, but now he saw something else in them. What were they seeing? he wondered. Those blank white marble orbs were staring at something behind him. Turning, the boy could only see the trees and the gravestones hiding in the dark. He wandered. A cool breeze shook the plant life, and uncovered what the angel knew to be there already. The mausoleum was an age older than any of the other tombs in the cemetery. The stone was once white but time had turned it moss grey. The entrance was an oak door that sagged under the weight of ivy that choked and grew over the stone pillars either side of the door.
The boy had to push branches to one side as he approached. It was as if the trees themselves were trying to deter him from his path. The boy could not be deterred and the scratching of the trees was nothing to the pain that fate had already inflicted upon him. He reached out, pulling the ivy from the door. The plant resisted but was torn aside nonetheless. The wind blew harder and the trees shook harder as the boy pushed at the creaking doors. They opened with no resistance. As the boy took his steps into the tomb the wind howled.. It sounded like a mother crying.
The tomb itself had an instant chill to it. There was moonlight seeping in from holes in the ceiling, giving the stone a grey misery. In the centre of the tomb, a stone coffin lay broken and open. It seemed that the boy was not the first to come looking for treasure. He was surprised at how fate had led him to the tomb only for his curiosity to be rewarded with disappointment. At the moment the boy turned to leave, the shadow flowed from the corner and gripped the boy, holding him in the air. The darkest of things holding the boy was at one time a man. That same-said time had ravaged the creature of its flesh. Clearly it was dead, yet it stood straight holding the boy; its eyes had long gone, but it stared at the boy through empty sockets. The sight before the boy was so far beyond the world he knew, that all fear was replaced with awe.
The dead man moved with the grace of dried twigs and leaves. It was barefooted and dressed in shredded rags. It was bald save for a few strands. When it spoke it sounded like urn ashes blowing on a storm.
“Boy? Why you here, boy?” it asked. The boy answered clear and true; he had no fear of this ragged beast. He had seen the death of a loved one and the death a hated parent. There were no horrors in the entire world or the next that could compare.
“I came for your secrets; the dead have no need of such things,” he said with defiance.
“Don’t we? Do I look dead to you, boy?”
“Yes, although this is not a true death. I have seen a true death.”
The dead creature laughed a rotten laugh, its breath a rancid stench. It slowly lowered the boy to his feet, before kneeling with a creak before him.
“Are you not scared, boy?” it asked.
The boy wondered if he should be and searched his inner soul for even a hint, curious he felt no fear at all.
“No, I feel nothing.”
“Why?” the dead man wanted to know.
“I have lost everything. There is nothing more that would cause me more upset.”
“How?” the creature wished to know.
“The Consumption took my mother’s mind and I watched as the river took her body. My father taught me how to search for the dead’s treasures. But I found only an undead thing. Like my father’s life, his teachings amounted to naught.”
The dead man pondered the reply. Its fleshless face wrinkled as if trying to understand. The dead man seemed to reach a decision. And it spoke. “Are you alone, boy?”
“Yes.”
“And you want my secrets, boy? Do you truly want my secrets and will you accept them as they are?”
“Yes,” the boy replied without hesitation.
“Then take them, boy; I have been this way for more years than there are worms in the ground. It is time to finally rest.”
And the dead man opened its mouth so wide its jaws snapped and from the maw came a green gas. It found the boy and entered his mouth and nostrils and eyes. The boy tried to cough but the gas found its way deeper into his lungs. And when the boy’s eyes stopped watering, the dead man had gone, replaced by rags decomposing on the tomb floor. The boy, to his dismay, realised no breath left his lips or heart pumped in his chest. He looked at his thin pale arms and the veins had turned black. For now they held the secrets of the dead. All that was left to do for the boy was to scream and scream and scream.
Chapter Three (#u818b39c9-cc50-565b-aa0c-4ee5aedbd645)
The sky was a miserable overcast grey of obese clouds and depressed rain. Carrie Anne knew exactly how it felt. She sat in the back seat of the car, staring through a window that all the rain in the world seemed to be pelting. Her reflection, broken by the rain giving her face a melted look, stared back with bored and uninterested eyes. Her hair was long and blonde or so she always hoped it would be. Instead staring back at her was a sad face with lank hair that fell over her dark eyes and gaunt face. Her head rocked slightly as it lay on the headrest and in time with movement of the car, no, no, no, no, no, no, over and over again. She hardly recognised the reflection that looked back. She didn’t want to be that person; she didn’t want that life. She was twelve years old but felt a lot older in an unreal way as if time had aged her beyond any human means and now she was trapped in an emotional limbo, too young to understand herself as yet and too old to change. The rain tapped the car with the sound and force of a thousand pebbles; she felt the weather echoed her mood and Carrie Anne wondered if the sun even existed any more. Her father swearing at another driver broke her thoughts.
“David! There is no need for that.” Carrie Anne’s mother squealed in surprise at the string of expletives that had left her father’s mouth.
“Oh really, Lucy? Did you see that idiot? He nearly drove me off the road.” The rain was so thick that the constant swishes of the wiper blades were making it difficult to see the motorway roaring around them, never mind a driver intent on killing them. If they had been run from the road, Carrie Anne doubted she would even care.
She looked at her parents and inwardly felt a wave of sinking from her stomach. Her father sat driving, gripping on to the steering wheel and leaning hunched, as if he was trying to squeeze his face against the windscreen. His hair was dark and greasy and slicked back on his balding head. His hair looked like it was holding on for dear life before time took more of it. However, he did have a dark beard as fairly recently he had taken to not shaving, as this made up for his retreating hair line. Her father always had a permanent scowl. He was always angry with the world and any chance to vent was taken at every opportunity. For as long as Carrie Anne could remember her father had been disappointed. Sometime before she was born her father had an accident at his job as factory supervisor (what the factory made or what he supervised she didn’t know) but since then Carrie Anne knew two things about her father. The money settlement meant he would never have to work again and couldn’t thanks to his twisted spine that made him limp. And his life disappointed him and now he was never satisfied. He had been that way even before his accident that permanently took his ability to work. Carrie Anne suspected he was waiting for the favour the world owed him. Of course there was the other side to her father that she dared not dwell on, a secret side that although hidden was always in her thoughts and followed her as an overbearing shadow. No one knew of its existence except the three in the car.
All daddies do this, it means I love you, it’s OK mummy said it was OK, but it’s a game and we can never talk about it to anyone, you understand? Good girl, good girl.
Too late now, she had thought on it and her skin crawled and panic began to deepen her breath. The familiar feeling of being trapped and needing to suddenly run made her nerves prickle. She concentrated on her mother to distract herself. Her mother was extremely thin and her skin was mapped with deep blue veins. Carrie Anne’s mother had a presence of denial about her. It was in her shuffle walk, her drooping shoulders and her dark ringed eye sockets. It soaked from her skull to her hair, which was a weave of long split ends. Despite her mother’s total inability to face reality, Carrie Anne loved her; she just wished she was different, stronger and able to think for herself rather than be told what reality was. She was too influenced by her husband, but Carrie Anne didn’t hate her for it. She knew that for her mother the truth must be too horrible to comprehend. Even when she caught him sneaking from her room. Had she always known?
Carrie Anne sat on her bed and pulled the covers around her ears to block out the sound of the shouting. There was screaming and accusations and crying. No one came to see if Carrie Anne was OK.
This is your fault; this is entirely your fault. You hurt your parents. This is your fault.
“Mum, say something.”
“How long has he done this?” The words came as easy as speaking with a mouth full of nettles. Carrie Anne could see the pain in her mother as she spoke.
“Just that one time you found him in my room,” she lied to spare her.
“Has he done anything else to you?”
“No, just…the touching.”
“Did you lead him on?” The words choked her.
“No, how could I? Why would I?” Her voice croaked through pain and upset and the knowledge that her mother couldn’t help her. She watched as her mother stood up and, like a blind woman, wandered out of the room to nowhere in particular.
That was the family: David and Lucy Jones, parents to twelve-year-old Carrie Anne Jones. It was just the three of them and they were all running away. Carrie Anne dared not think of it and tried to keep it locked in the back of her mind, whereas her parents denied the existence of any kind of problem and saw their leaving as just a fresh start somewhere new, together as a normal solid family. Yet it was there like a presence in another room, silent and unseen but there nonetheless.
Carrie Anne remembered sitting in the bathroom, hating herself and the memories trapped within her. Her mother knew they were there. But now instead of relief and sanctuary there was only confusion. Carrie Anne knew what her father had been doing all these years was wrong, very wrong. She hated her weakness in not being able to call for help. She prayed every day someone would notice she was different and help her. It never happened. When she was younger, when she lay in her dark bedroom she would pile her teddy bears and dolls in a soft wall on her bed. She had a fragile hope of the wall stopping her father, but it never did. Although, try as she may, she could not hate either her mother or father. She was their daughter and it was her duty to love them, despite the cruel loss of her childhood and alienation of her innocence. So instead, she did the only thing she could do, and hated herself. She had found what she was looking for in the bathroom. A razor blade of her father’s from a cabinet on the wall. The orange plastic around the sliver of steel was broken easily against the tiled floor. She paused with the blade shining under the gaze of darkness. She pushed the blade against her skin, slowly and softer. Then, after holding it there a moment, she pushed it deeper still. There was no pain as the skin split, the blade being so sharp it only caused a slight stinging sensation. Immediately she felt all her frustration pour from her arm with the blood that pooled around the razor. She pushed the blade against her skin again and again, creating a tally-marked pattern. Each cut taking away heaviness that crushed her ribs. Her goal here was not to die, but to create a physical pain, a distraction from the worse pain from the scars that penetrated her soul. But as the blood flowed, that relief turned to fear, as she dripped from the patterns criss crossing her skin.
Carrie Anne who had learned to keep silent for most of her life screamed and screamed and screamed.
Her mother and father ran to her, bleary-eyed from being woken, their shocked faces and fear as they stemmed the bleeding with towels from the room.
“What did you do?” they accused. “What did you do?”
Carrie Anne remembered being sat at the dining room table. The room with the red velvet wallpaper that she had always hated but had been there since she had been born. Tears were stinging her eyes and she looked at her mother for love and comfort from the seat opposite. But her mother had withdrawn into herself and couldn’t meet her daughter’s gaze. Carrie Anne’s father paced the dining room talking with the determination of a man trying to convince himself as well as those listening. He paced up and down. He wore his usual outfit of a cheap shirt and jeans a size too big. It had been a few days since she had been found in the bathroom but the memory was fresh…
“Get the first aid kit,” shouted father.
Mother was crying as she ran from the room, reluctant but hurrying. In one hand father gripped her face; the other held the soaking towel against Carrie Anne’s arm.
“Why? Do you want to destroy your mother? Is that what you want?” He spoke in an angered whisper; his teeth were gritted and spittle ran from his chin.
“If you do this, if this continues, you will kill your mother and destroy this family. Now I promise I won’t touch you again. I’m clear now; I just got confused how I loved you. This attention seeking needs to stop. Do you understand me?”
She nodded. With that, Carrie Anne resigned herself to the fact that this was her life now. As the last of her self-esteem bled from her, Mother entered the room…
Carrie Anne’s arms were bandaged. They didn’t hurt but they itched like dry scratches infected by ants.
“I’ve been talking on the phone to a few people and I’ve decided to do what is best for this family.”
“She needs medical help, David,” Carrie Anne’s mother said. “We need to get her some help.”
They both looked at Carrie Anne who had hung her head down.
“And what would you tell them, Carrie Anne?” Her father was frantic.
“Nothing,” she whispered.
“No, we can’t let things destroy this family. I’ve been busy; I told you.”
“What are you saying, David?” Her mother finally spoke but it was without conviction; there was only defeat.
“I’ve given notice on the house, and I’ve put a deposit on another, far from here, where no one knows us, where we can live in peace without fear of persecution because of a mistake. We can be a family.” Throughout his entire speech, there was no pleading for forgiveness in his voice, no real sense he had done wrong.
Carrie Anne wanted to stand and scream from the top of her lungs. To cry for help and tell the world what had happened to her. She wanted to shake her mother, to say help me, be a mum and help me. And in her mind for the briefest of moments she did just that and reality changed to match her version of it and she was away from the nightmare that was her life. But that was for only the briefest of moments. All she could do was to cry bitter child’s tears. However, things were just the way they were. Carrie Anne could see that. She saw it in the way he looked at her and in his eyes; she knew he was alluding to their previous conversation. Agree, keep quiet or destroy her mother.
Carrie Anne’s attention snapped back to her surroundings. She was still in the car.. It had stopped raining yet the clouds still loomed threatening more misery to come. They parked at a service station. There were a couple of small shops and a café. A petrol station stood not too far from the car park. People were coming and going from their cars, buying tea and coffee and sweets for their children. Living normal lives. Carrie Anne’s mother undid her seat belt; she turned to speak to her daughter.
“You’ve been daydreaming, love; what were you thinking about?”
“Nothing much, just trying to fall asleep,” she replied.
Her mother’s eyes flickered over Carrie Anne as if trying to read her mind. Satisfied at the answer her mother smiled.
“Let’s stretch our legs; still got a bit to go,” said Dad. As he left the car the wind and violent sounds of the nearby road forced themselves into the car until the door was closed again.
“Come on,” her mother added.
The breeze outside was strong and sharp. Carrie Anne wrapped her black leather bomber jacket around her. It offered little protection from the wretched day. There was a large car park with a garish yellow petrol station servicing huge trucks from the motorway. Carrie Anne’s father walked over to the café on the other side of the concrete car park. A line of bushes not much higher than Carrie Anne’s waist separated the place from the motorway itself. The cars thundered past spraying drizzle into the air in wet clouds. She could easily just walk over and turn that wet cloud red. That way all of this nightmare would be over. This fake, sickening pretence would be at an end and questions would be finally asked and the world would know what had happened. The car horn shook Carrie Anne’s ears and she was startled to find herself on the edge of that giant road. She had absolutely no idea how she had arrived there,as huge truck bellowed past like a juggernaut, honking a noisy warning. The wet air and the gust spat at her in a blinding mist.
Step in the road and it will all be over. One tiny step and all your confusion will be gone.
Carrie Anne took an inch forwards. Only an inch, such a small thing, such a tiny step but so much closer to that expanse of road. An inch closer and car brakes were screeching. Her heart was pounding. Was this it? Was it all over? She moved and…her father was grabbing her in a matter of seconds.
“Jesus Christ, Carrie Anne, what are you thinking? You could have been killed,” he shouted over the noise of the motorway. Her father and gripped her by the shoulders, again shouting in competition with the road noise.
“I…I…I…” she had no explanation; she wasn’t sure how she had arrived here. Her daydream had obviously had more of an effect on her, but she couldn’t think as he continued to shake her…
“You’re hurting me,” she pleaded as tears ran down her cheeks.
“Hurt you? You are lucky to be alive.” He pulled her in towards him and forced her face awkwardly towards the chaos of the road.
“Look,” he bawled. “You would be dead.”
“Good,” she thought or did she say it out loud?
A look of confusion crossed his face and somewhere her mother called, “David, David.”
“What?” he called back but as they turned the two saw a crowd forming and watching the show. Concerned faces and upset children. Carrie Anne’s mum stood a few feet away pleading with a look of wide-eyed terror on her face.
“Please stop,” she said. “Just stop.”
He looked again at the crowd and let Carrie Anne go. All three walked back to their familiar red car. The mother and father put their arms around their daughter. But to Carrie Anne it felt meaningless.
For rest of the journey they travelled in silence. There did not seem to be any conversation that could make sense for any of the turmoil that had taken place. She could not see any way out of her life. No hope and no light or tunnel. She felt sick to her stomach and overwhelmed with sheer hopelessness. Would there ever be a time when she would feel normal? Or would she have to carry on with confusion and senselessness? She looked out of the window and caught her sad reflection; it began to rain again. The world was grey and all the colour washed away with the rain.
Carrie Anne finally dozed off and was woken in the afternoon by her father declaring that they were there. She yawned and wiped the drool from her mouth and chin. Her eyes adjusted to the mid-afternoon gloom as she blinked awake. As they drove into the driveway they were shaded by green trees hiding the house from the street. From her window Carrie Anne could see a large removal truck. Its back doors were open and a ramp led men in blue overalls in and out of the van, as they brought their belongings into the house. Her father brought the car to a halt.
“Look how they are handling those boxes; Jesus, I will have to have a word with them. If one thing even has the slightest scratch, they won’t be getting a penny.” He violently pulled the hand brake, yanked his seat belt away and left the car, slamming the door behind him. Carrie Anne and her mother both watched him set the nearest removal man to rights. A moment or two later after exerting his authority in an arm-waving and heated exchange, father returned to the car.
“All set darling?” Mother asked.
“Yes,” he replied, irritated. “Just can’t get the staff. Come on, let’s see the house.”
The house father had moved them to was as large as it was isolated. It was situated in an estate of identical houses: red roofs, white painted stone walls and each window and door resembling a bored face. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms on the second floor, living room and diner and kitchen on the first. Oh and a garage. Let’s not forget the garage. However, the house Father had chosen was surrounded by large fir trees. The house Father had chosen was hidden from view.
He wants to keep you prisoner here.
As they went from one room to another, manoeuvring around boxes left there by the movers. Carrie Anne’s parents become more and more excited at what the house had to offer. Wooden floors that apparently were all the rage, grey and white painted walls throughout, which Father explained was the new magnolia. The kitchen had a dishwasher, a dishwasher! The thought of placing dirty dishes into the machine animated Mother and she clapped like a child seeing a balloon for the first time. But there were more treats to come: en-suite bathrooms, blinds instead of curtains, all the things a modern household needed. Carrie Anne had never been so bored in her life and she wandered off on her own. Off the side from the kitchen Carrie Anne found a door and through the door she found stairs that led to a dark cellar. It was a clue to the real age of the house and area despite all the modern things her parents had raved about. There was pull string hanging lazily from a dirty white fixture that she pulled. Immediately a single bare bulb lit the cellar with a buzzing sound. Carefully she walked down the creaking stairs. Each step of her Converse trainers flicked dust. At the bottom she found a musty-smelling room. The ceiling that held the bulb by a wire was made of thick oak beams with copper piping running parallel. Its walls were old with crumbling plaster. In places there was white paint, other places blue or red. But whatever the decorations had been they had long ago grown old and died. A single window no bigger than a crawl space was broken where green ivy had pushed its way in and climbed down the far wall. It was the most interesting room she had ever seen. Her concentration was broken by a scratching sound behind her. She turned and followed the noise with the curiosity of Alice. Except from the corner there was no white rabbit but instead a fat, greasy black rat.
Carrie Anne took a few steps back as the thing scuttled out, sniffing the air. She wasn’t afraid, more fascinated than anything. But she did gasp when she realised it was not alone. It chittered and from the shadow more came. Carrie Anne took to the stairs and stood on the first rung as at least thirty rats flowed into the cellar. They carpeted the floor in dirty fur and continued to the corner where the plaster had crumbled to reveal holes in the brickwork. Fascinated, Carrie Anne looked on as one by one the rats fled into the hole. Where they went from there, she had no idea. But she dare not tell her parents what she had witnessed; this was hers and hers alone. A happy distraction from herself. It was then she heard her mum calling her name.
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