Graveyard Shift (18 page)

“Oh.” He sounded surprised, even impressed. “Good work. You do that. We'll follow.”

“Hurry, don't look back,” Becky told them, ushering them out to the moonlit path. Then she turned and glanced up at me with anxious eyes. “Will you get a move on? Ben . . . Oh my God, what's that?”

I was halfway downstairs when something snared my ankle, tightening around it like a noose. A gray-gloved hand cut above the mist's pale surface, holding me fast, yanking me down. As I tried to kick it loose, a foul earthy scent rushed up at me, and I saw that the hand holding on to me wasn't gloved at all — it was covered with gray, decaying flesh.

The dead, old smell of it made everything inside me go loose. A blind panic seized me as the demon shot up to full height, transferring its grip from my ankle to my throat and slamming me back against the wall.

Its face was familiar. I'd seen it — or one like it — only a few days before. Beetles scuttled around its pale dead flesh. The scent of the grave clogged my nostrils as its breath wafted over me. If a face without eyes could express anything, the Deathhead was expressing triumph. Delicious victory. Its mouth, with shorn-off lips, was as close as it could get to a smile.

“Feeding time,” the demon whispered, squeezing my throat. “You stole two souls from us; now I have to steal something back.”

Please,
I tried to say, but I couldn't make a sound.

I heard Becky screaming below me and Mr. October barking instructions, but I couldn't tell what he was saying. Everything around me was blurring and turning soft. The world was slowing to a standstill.

Raymond,
I thought — a thought out of nowhere. Raymond had had ahold of me, and so had Synsiter, that morning by the canal. Things had a way of happening when bullies came after me, but how? What had I done?

But I was drowsier now, couldn't recall, couldn't think.

Let me sleep,
I thought.
Let it stop.

The demon's grip tightened, lifting me up off my feet and clear of the stairs. My body fell slack and a thick gray fog came rolling in. There were footfalls on the stairs not far
below me, and somewhere in the gray I heard Lu yelling: “See what you want, Ben.
Try
to see it. If you can think it, you can do it!”

And I did. It was only a simple thought — for all I knew it might be the last thought I'd ever have — and if I'd been able to make a sound I would've screamed it out loud:
Enough.

That was all.
Enough.

The Deathhead suddenly relaxed its choke hold on my throat, then dropped me altogether, whipping its hands clear and staring down at them in empty-eyed terror. The strong fingers were withering to stumps, dissolving away as if they'd been soaked in acid, drooping boneless from what was left of its hands.

The demon howled and tottered across the stairs, thumped against the banister, then turned to face me, hissing between its teeth. As it did, my vision cleared just enough to see Lu running up toward it, making that quick-fire motion with her wrist. Seeing her coming, probably knowing what she meant to do, the Deathhead didn't waste another second. It plunged back inside the mist, becoming just another dark shape swimming beneath the surface.

Lu had ahold of my hand now. “Come on, you come with me, Wonder Boy.”

Before I could catch a breath, she'd half dragged, half carried me the rest of the way downstairs and out the front door to where the others were waiting on the path. The fire children stood on either side of Becky. Mr. October was nodding
appreciatively. Lu slammed the door behind us, sealing the mist inside.

It took some time for my head to clear. I stood inside the gate, nursing my throat, croaking when I spoke.

“Thanks, Lu. Thanks, Becky. You were great in there. Fearless.”

“So you all were,” Mr. October said, “but we have to keep moving. They'll be furious about what we just did, and we have to attend to these two before they come after us again. Lu? Our transport!”

Soon we were rolling again, the three of us together on the seat with the children at our knees and the house falling back into shadow up the slope behind us. A mournful cry followed us on the air, a hollow call that seemed to rise up from the depths.

Mr. October puffed air from his cheeks and changed his appearance to the old man in readiness for what would come next. “Deary me, I could do with a holiday,” he said.

“Is it like this all the time?” Becky asked.

“Sometimes it's worse,” he said. “It could get worse yet tonight, now that we've rattled their cage. And I still have more rounds after we've seen the children off safely. Lu, would you call dispatch and see what they've got?”

“Just did,” Lu answered, accelerating down Chetwynd Road. “One natural causes, one hit-and-run, one DIY accident with a drill.”

“Are you taking us home now?” mewled Molly.

“We only want to sleep,” said Mitch.

“It'll be over very soon,” Mr. October said in his softest, most compassionate voice. “And then you'll be safe again. And then you can rest.”

And it was. And they were. And they did.

F
rom our position on the rickshaw, there wasn't much to see. The door in space on the edge of the heath was as hard to distinguish as the fine-line crack between the walls across from HQ.

Mr. October stood to one side of it, stooping and slowly turning its handle like a mime with an invisible prop. Then the door opened, at first revealing a narrow slit, then a dizzying rectangle of golden yellow light standing against the darkness — an entry point into the beyond.

Without hesitation, Mitch and Molly marched hand in hand toward it.

“Now I see them,” Becky said tearfully. “They're not looking back. How do they know what to do and where to go from here?”

“That's a mystery,” I said. “I'm not even sure Mr. October knows. All he can do is show them the way.”

We watched in silence. Whatever lay beyond the doorway blazed like fire, but a welcoming, smokeless fire the children were glad to enter. As they moved inside, their shapes became less distinct. Then they were part of the light itself. We lost sight of them just before Mr. October closed the door, leaving us staring into shadows again.

 

“Blimey, I can't explain a thing I've seen tonight,” Becky said as we walked home through De Beauvoir Square. “But I don't doubt any of it. I feel like laughing or crying, I don't know which. I'm all shaken up.”

We walked along, lost in our own separate thoughts, until Becky stopped me on a street corner. “We can't afford to tell anyone, Ben, can we?”

I shook my head. “It's best if we don't.”

“We'd be a laughing stock. They'd think we're weird, like I used to think you were weird.”

“Yeah, they would.”

“What have you gotten me into?” she said. “I feel all funny inside. And now I want to shout about it, but I know I can't. I won't sleep a wink tonight after this.”

“You'll get used to it, though. It's the same thing every night of the week.”

“What, with the monsters too?”

“Not every night. Just sometimes.”

“Did you really melt off that thing's hands?”

“Dunno,” I said. “I'm not sure what I did.”

“But we saved them, didn't we? We really did.”

“Yes, we did.”

As she set off toward home along Kingsland Road, I felt a swell of pride over what we'd achieved, but also a nagging fear of what was to come. The war of souls may have raged for centuries, but for us it was only beginning.

 

It was after ten when I got home. Seven hours on the job, I suddenly realized — so much for part-time work.

Mum was still up and about. “Ah, there he is,” she called from the living room. “The wanderer returns.”

“Sorry I'm late.” I lingered in the hall, afraid she'd see the evening's drama written across my face like the runes. “Everything OK, Mum? Did Ellie stay long?”

“She left half an hour ago. And I'll tell you what, we're really going for that vacation. I have a good feeling about Lanzarote, and as soon as we can get away, we will.”

“That's great,” I said. “You sound good.”

“Do I? Well, it helps to have something to look forward to.” She patted the cushion next to her on the sofa. “Are you planning to stand there all night? Come here and tell me about your day and I'll tell you about mine.”

It wasn't until then that I remembered she had news, a surprise. Whatever it was, it couldn't be anywhere near as explosive as the news I could've shared with her if I'd dared.

She'd positioned herself so I had to sit on her good side. Her bandaged hand lay slack on her lap. Her left hand ruffled my hair when I settled down beside her.

“So, how was it?” she said.

“Oh, today was OK, just fine, you know.”

“That's not very informative.”

“Well, it's school,” I said. “And mucking around with friends after school. Not much to tell.”

“If that's the best you can do . . .”

“You had a surprise for me,” I reminded her.

“Yes.”

“You said both good and bad, a bit of each.”

She nodded. “It's sad news, actually, but good for us in some ways. Would you mind grabbing that envelope, darlin'?”

The envelope on the side table looked official, with the name of a law firm printed across the top —
ROSSITER
&
ALLEN
, ltd. It felt thick enough to contain more than just a letter.

“Open it,” Mum said. “Read it, and then I'll answer any questions you have.”

I emptied the envelope, shaking out a cover letter with a slip of paper stapled to the back of it and another, smaller envelope with Mum's name handwritten on the front. The letter began:

I broke off there, looking at Mum in astonishment. She pinched her lips and didn't say anything. The check attached to the letter was signed in a hand as illegible as a doctor's, but the figures printed across it were clear to see.

Ten. Thousand. Pounds.

My jaw hung open. “Aunt Carrie . . . ,” I said. “Aunt Carrie left you all this?”

She sniffed. “That's right.”

“But you hadn't spoken for ages. You had nothing to do with each other. I don't get it. Why would she —”

“Read the other letter,” she said. “That's the hardest part, but it's the part that explains it all. I should've spoken to you sooner about this. I never expected it to come out this way.”

“Ten thousand quid,” I murmured.

I was wary about knowing anything more. Over the years I'd gotten used to family secrets. Mum had locked all those stories away like precious stones in a box, but this letter had changed all that, and now she was handing me the key.

“Turn to the last two pages,” Mum said. “Everything you need to know is there. Start there, third paragraph down.”

Aunt Carrie's writing wasn't much easier to decode than Mum's new wrong-handed scrawl. It slanted both ways, up
and down, all knotty and tangled, and some parts I had to read twice to decipher. Other parts I had to read several times before I could believe what I was seeing.

For long seconds I was dumbstruck, floating, staring at the page in confusion.

Mum wiped her eyes and said, “She always was a drama queen. There's nothing to bloody forgive. Silly woman.”

“She should've called,” I said.

“So should I have. We were equally at fault there.”

“But what was she so sorry for? And what did she mean about slapping Dad?”

I had a feeling about that, perhaps I always had, and in some ways I didn't want to know. I carefully folded the papers back inside the lawyer's envelope, waiting for Mum to reply.

“It's like this,” she said. “You know how we all got together one afternoon at the old house, you and me and Dad, and we had this very important announcement to make. . . .”

“Yes.”

Not only did I remember it, I could still see it clearly, every detail, from the color of Mum's mauve top to the way she and Dad sat together on the sofa but never looked at each other, from the arrangement of furniture in the room to the thrush hopping on the lawn outside the window. I could feel the awkwardness in the air, and the sadness.

“We said we needed a break from each other,” Mum said. “We hadn't been getting along too well for a while, and we'd come up with this new arrangement — maybe for a short time, maybe longer.”

“Yes,” I said. “You can tell it to me straight, Mum. I know Dad left and didn't come back. I never knew why, though.”

“I'm sorry, I was getting to it.”

“Dad cried, didn't he?”

“Did he? I don't remember that.”

“The night he left. I heard him from my room. Then later I saw him from my window going up the path. He looked back once but my light was out and I don't think he saw me. Later, I thought if he had, he might've changed his mind and come back.”

Mum hung her head, settling her left hand over her bandaged right. “He never wanted to leave. He certainly never wanted to leave
you
. We didn't think it would be forever at the time.”

“A few years isn't forever. He might still come home,” I said. “If he knew you were in poor shape, he'd come back.”

“You think so?”

“I know he would.”

“Still, he hasn't picked up the phone in all this time. He hasn't written. He might've vanished off the face of the earth for all anyone knows.”

“But why?” I said. “Why'd he have to go in the first place?”

Somehow I knew what was coming and what she'd say, but that didn't make it any easier to hear it.

“Because of what happened between him and Aunt Carrie.”

It felt like a slap. I turned away, then looked sharply back at her. “How long?”

“Not long at all. It was over before it started, but then it
was weeks before I found out, before he broke down and told me. The irony is, I was the one who put them together. I made it possible.”

She could see I wasn't following, so she went on.

“It was while he was working all-out on his business, trying to keep it afloat, before they refused the loan that broke his heart. He was traveling up and down the country to meetings and conferences all over the place. You'll remember how it used to keep him away from home four or five nights a week.”

“Yes.”

“Well, one of those conferences took him close to Carrie's. She had a big old drafty house in the north, near Ilkley, the year before she moved back to the coast. I called and arranged for your dad to stay a couple of nights. The rest you can probably work out for yourself.”

I could, but I didn't want to. What with the day's shift for the Ministry and now this, I wasn't sure how much more my head could take.

“As Carrie said,” Mum went on, “they made a stupid mistake.” Maybe I made a bigger mistake putting them together in the first place.

No wonder Mum had been so low for so long. I'd only had the vaguest idea until now. One mistake, and she'd lost her sister forever. Maybe Dad too.

I turned the envelope around in my hands. The check would help, but Carrie had been right: It couldn't make up for what had gone wrong.

“So that's how it was,” Mum said. “The truth came out and I asked for time to think things through. He went to Newcastle, stayed there with friends for a while, but then he moved somewhere else and no one knew where.”

“And you haven't heard from him since?”

“No, not once. Seems he's vanished into thin air.”

“I miss him,” I said.

“Me too, darlin'.”

She forced a smile, brightening slightly. “It would be nice to know where he is, at least. Even if he's living a new life in the sun, it would help to know. You never know: We could take our holiday with Ellie and find him living it up in the first bar we pass.”

“But we won't,” I said.

“No, we won't, because whatever else he did wrong, that's not Jim, that's not your dad. Oh, that's terrible,” she said suddenly, leaning around me for a view of the TV.

A light aircraft had lost control and smashed into an apartment building on the south side of the Thames. The breaking news showed a tower of fire captured on camera from a helicopter.

As the story unfolded, I wondered how many seconds or minutes ago the telegraph machine had woken with a start and how many names were on this list. And I wondered if Becky might be seeing this now, knowing Mr. October and Lu and others from the Ministry were on their way even as we watched.

“They're going to have their hands full tonight,” I said quietly, more to myself than to Mum.

Mum looked at me askance. “Pardon? Who?”

“The emergency services,” I said as the camera zoomed in and the building began to collapse.