The Boy in the Cemetery (2 page)

“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

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 soilwith 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 butthe 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 invited and unapposed, 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.