Graveyard Shift (12 page)

“Some people do the oddest things, Ben. In all my time, I've only seen two other cases like this, both equally grim. Why they don't think these things through I'll never know. It beggars belief, it's so idiotic.”

“You sound angry.”

“Well, some cases break my heart, and then some, like this . . . they're just wasteful. However, it's foretold — it's meant to be — so what can I do?”

At the bottom of the steps, the apartment's front door was slightly ajar. Blue-and-white-check curtains were drawn behind the window beside it, so there wasn't much to see without going inside.

“Anyone home?” Mr. October called, pushing the door all the way open. “Hello there. Coming through.”

Ahead of us was a dim hallway and a wash of brighter light farther on. A chilly draft blew through from the far side of
the apartment. At the end of the hall, we came to an open-plan living area, all comfy seating and plump cushions, and a small study space with a desk to one side. Sliding patio doors at one end of the room faced out on a long country garden bordered by willowy trees and wispy shrubs.

The doors were wide open; the draft came from there. A woman was leaning against them, looking out. Her back was turned to us, but I could tell by the way her body was shaking that something bad had happened here. Something you could feel in the still of the room.

Hearing us there, she spun around but didn't seem surprised to see us; if anything she looked relieved. Her mousy hair was matted about her forehead and her face had been pulled out of shape by shock. There were red fingerprints like rose petals trailing down the front of her floral print dress, which wafted around her in the breeze.

On the varnished floor at her feet, an open medicine bottle lay among a scattering of tiny white pills. Outside on the pink and white slabs was a pair of scissors and a shredded cardboard box the size of a packing crate. Her fiancé was slumped against it, motionless, his face and clothing spattered with blood.

“What was he thinking?” the woman sobbed. “He must've been out of his mind. He was always a practical joker, a silly little boy, but this is just too much. Why couldn't he have sent flowers instead?”

“It's all right,” Mr. October said, though I didn't see how it could be.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand.

“He didn't think about me, though, did he? It was a gag, a stupid joke. He didn't think how I'd be affected, what it would do to me.” She showed us her hands, the tacky red palms. “See what he's done? I know how it looks, but this wasn't my fault.”

“He didn't know about your condition,” Mr. October said.

“What condition?” I asked, but he lifted a hand, telling me to be quiet.

The woman padded to an armchair and collapsed into it, staring at the floor near the sofa.

“Yes, he did, as a matter of fact. I told him not long after we met. That's the thing I can't forgive. He just didn't think. Anything for a laugh — the big kid.”

“What happened?” I said.

The woman didn't look up. “The doorbell rang and there were these two deliverymen waiting outside with the parcel. It took both of them to heft the thing, and I had them take it to the patio where I could get at it — I don't have the floor space in here. It was so well sealed; I suppose he'd had his buddies help him out — one brain between the lot of them. So I brought the scissors and started to open it, and I suppose I must've cut too deeply because I heard this muffled cry from inside, and then I saw the blood, and then Colin came flying out of there like a big red jack-in-the-box.”

“Colin?” I said.

Mr. October shushed me. “Let her explain.”

“But I thought his name was Andy.”

Andy was what the card said, and the telegraph never lied.

I looked out at the man propped against the box. His arms were at his sides and the fingers of his right hand were flexing. Then I looked at the pills and the medicine bottle at my feet.

“I'm Andy,” the woman said. “The pills are for my heart condition. I just couldn't get to them in time. I know he didn't mean to scare me, and he had to jump out before I could cut him again, but when he did, the shock was too great. I could see in his eyes he knew what he'd done, what a mistake he'd made, but it was too late to stop it. Now the bloody fool has to live with it, and I suppose I'm going with you.”

She was still staring at something on the floor I couldn't see from where we stood. But I already knew what it was before I moved farther inside the room.

Andy Cale's body lay on its side behind the sofa, one hand at her chest, her legs crossed at the ankles. She'd fallen with her back toward us, and I was almost glad about that: I didn't want to see her face. The floor around her sat in deep shadow, but I didn't feel the presence of anything or anyone else. The enemy weren't here.

“Well, there's one birthday I won't forget in a hurry,” Andy's ghost said. “So what happens next? Where do we go from here?”

“I'll show you,” Mr. October said, offering his hand.

She took it, and fine bolts of light encircled their fingers as he helped her out of the chair. While he walked her from the room, I lingered behind, watching the patio.

Her fiancé had found a cell phone and was speaking into it in a dull monotone that made him sound half asleep. He was on the line to emergency services, trying to explain what had happened. Too late for her, though. They'd patch him up, but it was too late for her.

“Ben?”

I hurried down the hall. Mr. October and Andy were at the door, waiting. He gave me a nod and I fell in behind them, following them up the stone steps toward the light. It was a glorious day up there.

 

As soon as we finished at Belsize Grove, Mr. October was seized by a coughing fit. The color drained from his cheeks and he sank to his knees, so I caught him under both arms and helped him to a bench on Haverstock Hill.

He held a handkerchief to his mouth until the coughing died down, and we sat quietly watching the traffic and the crowds at the Tube station across the street.

When he felt able to move again, he excused himself to a public phone box, returning a minute later as the ragamuffin, the persona I'd come to think of as the pirate.

“There's a downside to helping people,” Mr. October said. “When you truly care, it's like giving parts of yourself away,
a little at a time, parts you never get back. I'm tired of that cranky old body, but it's all I have for such occasions.”

“Couldn't you go as you are?”

“Not likely.” His eyes glinted darkly; his silver tooth sparkled. “Imagine a soul in torment seeing me like this. They'd take one look and run a mile!”

“But the old guy's getting worse,” I said. “Carry on like this and you'll need more than a walking stick to get around.”

“Well, that's my burden. I'd be better off with a desk job, but that would be wasting my gift, and you know how I feel about that.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now you're going home. You've seen enough for one day — more than most mortals could stand. As for me, it's back to HQ for the next list.”

“There are always more lists.”

“Always.”

“OK. Just be careful.”

“Of course.”

He smiled. He knew what I meant, though. I meant he should watch out for Randall Cadaverus's masses, the demons from the dark. In spite of the sunlight, I felt a chill. If I hadn't already made an enemy of them before today, I surely had now.

S
unday went the same way. The telegraph worked overtime and we took calls to all quarters of town.

We had our second drowning of the weekend, a fall down stairs, three more natural causes, and a drive-by gangland shooting before lunch. The afternoon brought us cases of liver sclerosis, asphyxiation caused by a faulty gas appliance, a heart attack, another natural causes, then a false alarm when a suicidal man jumped onto railway tracks at Brondesbury Park only to find the line was closed for maintenance.

At least, I thought it was a false alarm. But the telegraph couldn't be wrong.

The man had mangled his legs on the track. As he limped up from the station, he lost his footing at the top of Salusbury Road and stumbled into the path of a driver who'd chosen that exact moment to overtake a slow-moving road sweeper
in the brand-new Ford Focus RS he'd stolen five minutes earlier from Paddington Recreation Ground.

When the man wandered into the road in front of him, the driver floored the brakes, tore at the wheel, and went into a swerve, veering across the street and straight through the facade of a small grocery shop. He hadn't been wearing a seat belt. That, explained Mr. October, was why his was the name on the card, not that of the suicide case who'd shuffled away up the street long before the first ambulance came.

“The one who got away, won't he try something else?” I asked.

“Not if he's not on the list.”

“And if that man hadn't stolen the car?”

“Lightning strikes wherever it will. It would've found him one way or another.” He looked at me, amused. “Always the questions. Don't you ever get tired?”

“Don't you?”

I was sure by now that Mr. October never slept. He never stopped. One case followed the next, day after day, and again he returned to work from Brondesbury Park while I went home shattered.

Before I left, we agreed that I'd join him at the Ministry or in the field every day after school. He wouldn't pressure me, he said. It was up to me. But I knew what I wanted. Life at home and school looked gray and mundane compared to this. Out here with Mr. October, I'd started to see a world of many other colors, a world not many others could see.

I belonged to this world, and it filled my mind whenever I
wasn't taking part in it. What I didn't know, though, standing there on Salusbury Road with Mr. October, was how much I'd been missing while fooling myself I could see everything.

What I'd missed was important, and it had been staring me in the face all along.

 

As soon as I got home, unlocked the door, and stepped in, Mum appeared at the kitchen door. She looked like a ghost of herself, with sunken eyes and messed-up hair, still in her dressing gown and slippers. Her lower lip puckered.

“Where were you all day?”

“Oh, out and about. With friends.”

“New friends from school?”

“New friends not from school.”

“That's good. I hardly know what's going on with you lately. I'm almost never here for you.”

“That's all right. You've been tired.”

She stared at something past my shoulder, not quite able to make eye contact.

“But you're happier now,” she said. “You're settling in.”

“Yeah. Things are better now.”

“See, I should know these things. I shouldn't need to ask. I've been a terrible mother.”

“Don't be daft,” I said. “You're great.”

She threw her arms around me, holding me so tightly, I thought I might suffocate.

“Love you, son,” she said, and that was when I knew something was badly wrong.

It wasn't because she didn't say it often, but because of the way it came out, spoken under her breath like a secret.

“Fancy a cuppa?” she said, letting go and straightening herself up.

“Yeah, I could murder one.”

I sat in the living room like a visitor, perched forward on an armchair, too anxious to relax. She'd been out when I'd come home the previous night. Exhausted from my first full day with the Ministry, I must've fallen asleep before she came in. I hadn't seen her since Friday night, come to think of it.

She brought the tea and sat facing me across the room. Her cup shook in her hand when she tried to drink and rattled in its saucer when she set it down on her side table.

The note she'd left me, I thought. The way she'd written it. Something about it had bothered me, so I'd pushed it away, tried not to think about it too much.

She was putting off the moment, taking her time. She tried to smile, but seemed to have forgotten how.

“Is this about Dad?” I asked.

“No, nothing like that.”

“OK.”

“How's your tea?”

“It's fine, Mum.”

“You haven't touched it.”

“It's hot.”

She looked at her cup on the side table, but decided against lifting it again. She held her right hand in her lap and winced.

“It's about your hand, then,” I said.

“Yes. I think you should sit down to hear this.”

“I'm sitting already.”

She nodded. “So you are. I'm sorry. Ben, you should prepare yourself. This isn't good news.”

I had a sudden falling sensation, the kind that snaps you out of a dream. Something in my stomach turned slowly around. No, this wasn't good news, and Mum losing the use of her arm was only a part of it, only the beginning.

She talked on but I didn't want to hear any more. I didn't want to know what it meant. Her lips moved but her words sailed over my head, except for a few, and I didn't like the sound of them at all:
specialist
,
biopsy
,
lymph nodes
.

Seated with her back to the window, she fell mostly into shade, a frail figure far away and out of reach. And I couldn't reach out, I couldn't go to her, because for the next few minutes I couldn't move. All I could do was sit there and cover my ears.

“Don't worry,” she finished. “These things often work out. We'll do what we can. We'll manage. Where there's life, there's hope.”

 

I slept in fits and starts that night. The hands on the bedside clock never changed their position. Darkness filled the room
and the hours were long and empty. I lay with my face buried in the hot, damp pillow until gray first light found its way between the curtains.

Yes, there's hope,
I thought.
There are doctors who know about this and there are treatments that work. Mum will get better. Other people get better. Sick people get better every day.

I sat up against the headboard, blinking into the light. I felt unrested and scruffy and was still fully dressed except for my sneakers. An object in my jeans pocket was digging into my hip, and I slid it out: the Apocalypti phrase book I'd had on me since Saturday.

The words were still wriggling when I looked inside.
If only they'd settle,
I thought,
there may be something to help Mum.
If words had the power to build up or destroy, it was the building up part that interested me. Could the right combination of words have the power to heal?

But the book was no use yet. I wasn't ready. I slotted it on the shelf next to a DC Comics encyclopedia, then opened the knickknack tin where I kept the four-leaf clover chain. It should've withered and died by now, but the leaves were still fresh and green.

Love and hope and . . . I couldn't remember what the leaves signified. Love and hope and . . . something, something. I closed the tin and placed it back on the shelf next to my Sweeney Todd shaving kit.

Mum was in the kitchen, not dressed for work. She sat at the breakfast bar with a mess of papers and official-looking
forms and looked up when she heard me. She seemed brighter than she had yesterday, and her smile came easily, not so strained.

“Does this make sense?” she asked, showing me one of the forms. “I've done it left-handed and I swear I can't read my own writing.”

“I can read it. What's it for?”

“To help us get by while I'm unable to work.”

She frowned at the form where she'd signed it.

“It's strange not to recognize your own signature. Well, if they can't decipher it and send it back, you can fill it in for me, can't you? Do us a favor, darlin', and seal it up. It's awkward doing it one-handed.”

“No probs.”

“And pop it in the mail on your way to school.”

“I'm not going to school.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Someone has to be here to look after you.”

“Don't be daft. Like it or not, you're going.” She squeezed my fingers with her good hand. “Yes, there'll be changes around here, and no, it won't be easy. But believe it or not, I still have friends. They'll visit me and a nurse will come once a week. And every other week I'll have an appointment at the hospital, so you might like to help me with that.”

“OK.”

“But everything else will be exactly the same, understand? Don't think you can skip school that easily. I'm not your excuse.”

Fitting the claim form into its envelope, I sealed it and put it aside.

“How long have you known?” I said.

“Since Saturday. Actually, I've known something was wrong for some time, but it was Saturday when I got the . . . when the doctor explained it.”

I looked away, chewing my lip. Sunlight crept slowly across the street below. The graffiti-covered building looked somehow different this morning, but I couldn't place how.

“You're going to get better,” I said. “People do.”

“Yes they do, so we won't get down about it. This won't stop your schooling and it won't stop you from seeing your friends.”

“But —”

“No buts. That's the way it will be.”

“OK.”

After breakfast, I slipped the envelope into my backpack and stood watching her from the kitchen door. Still at the breakfast bar with a memo pad in front of her, she was practicing left-handed writing. She looked peaceful, lost in thought.

“Love you too,” I whispered, then turned quickly down the hall and went out. By the time I'd clomped down the stairwell, my eyes were burning. I stood on the path outside wiping them with my sleeve.

Across the street, workmen in hard hats and luminous yellow jackets were setting up around the unfinished building. A regular chip and tumble of bricks sounded somewhere inside its shell. A cement mixer churned away.

The graffiti did look different. Something about it had changed. My eyes cleared, and a numb sinking feeling went through me when I saw what it was.

The stenciled cat and rat were still there, up on the wall's right side. But now the cat's head seemed tilted, and its hungry eyes weren't fixed on the rat just above it. Instead they were staring at me.

Not only staring, but burning right through me. Its face looked weirdly alive. In a speech bubble next to its head were the words:

We're watching. We can get to you and yours anywhere, any time.

“Leave me alone!” I yelled. “Leave us alone! She never did anything to you!”

I took off along Middleton Road while, behind me, the workmen stopped what they were doing to stare after me all the way.