Lets Drink To The Dead (7 page)

St. John Dace stepped towards Gideon. Dani could see a huge, gaping wound in the back of his head. “No, Gideon.”

“I’ve paid the price!” Gideon shouted. “I’ve
paid!
”

“No.”

The candles went out. The room was dark. Shuffling figures in uniforms and smocks moved past.

“I’ve paid, I tell you.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

“Get back. Get
back
.” Then that high, manic titter. “You can’t hurt me. You
can’t
. You’re just ghosts. I can still kill her and–”

“We can’t,” said St. John. “But there are other things here. Old things that have slept and waited. Things that
can
hurt you. Things like this.”

The room, already cold, suddenly grew even colder. The dead moved back, some of them pressed almost up against the bedframe. There was a scratching, scraping sound, and between the closely-packed forms, Dani saw something move past; something very, very tall and thin, impossibly thin for a human being, surely. Something whose shape was thankfully hidden under a black, tattered cloak and cowl; something with long, long skeletal fingers that groped out ahead of it.

“No.
No
.” There was something beyond rage and misery in Gideon’s voice now; there was naked terror.

“You know what it is,” said St. John Dace. “And you know what will happen if it touches you.”

The black, tattered thing advanced; Dani glimpsed Gideon’s face – white, mouth agape, eyes staring – as he retreated, out of the doorway, onto the landing. The tattered thing pursued him; the dead crowded after it. Only St. John Dace remained in the room, watching them go.

There was a scream from Gideon, then a splintering sound, a crash, and another scream; one that faded, receding, and ending in a wet crunch of impact. Then silence.

St. John turned and looked down at her. Blood ran from his eyes. “Sleep,” he said, and a cold hand rested on her brow. And then there was nothing.

8

M
ORNING WOKE HER
; thin pale light stinging her eyes through the room’s window, and the faint twitter of birdsong outside.

Dani opened her eyes. Her head pounded. She sat up; the pain washed outwards to fill her whole body. Her stomach seemed to slop about inside her like a bucket almost full to overflowing. She put a hand over her mouth; the nausea subsided. She was still holding the talisman; its edges had dug into her palm and drawn blood.

She was free, she realised. The other restraints had all been neatly unfastened. Her rucksack sat beside the bed. She opened it quickly; everything was packed.

She made her way outside. To her right was a staircase. The banister had broken. She peered over; the stairwell circled downwards over three floors, presumably to ground level. Below her lay a small broken figure, like a discarded doll.

She went down the staircase, emerged at the bottom. Gideon’s body was twisted awkwardly in the middle, bent at an angle she wouldn’t have believed possible. Steam rose from his bloodied mouth; breath. Still alive, at least for now. His eyes flickered towards her, mutely pleading.

She pulled her rucksack back on, stepped over him and went out.

S
HE DESCENDED THE
path back towards the abandoned station, breathing in the cold clear morning air. Her headache faded; the nausea passed.

This time there was no ambiguity about what might or might not be there. The trees on either side of the path were lined with smocked and uniformed figures; each, as she passed them, raised a finger to their lips, or to where their lips had been.

She nodded, again and again, as she passed. She’d keep her silence on this. Who’d believe a tale like hers in any case? Besides, the little she’d glimpsed of that tattered, spindly thing had been more than enough. It’d haunt her dreams as it was; if she angered the dead by disobeying them, it might do more than that.

For now, she only wanted to get away from here and find her way back to Dunwich Road; everything else, even deciding whether she went on to Manchester or back to her family, could wait.

As she neared the entrance to the platform, a figure stepped out. Military uniform, neatly pressed, and his eyes no longer bled.

St. John Dace touched his finger to his lips.

“I will,” she said.

He smiled, and touched his finger to the brim of his cap, in salute. And then she blinked and he was gone.

Dani looked back up the path, and it was empty. The wind rustled in the trees, and a bird twittered somewhere. Otherwise, there was nothing.

She stood like that for a long time, before she finally turned and walked away.

HOW BRIEFLY DEAD CHILDREN DREAM

Human life is not so much sleep

As that part of sleep in which we dream

What a tiny fragment of being

In the black sleepless night before, after

And how briefly dead children dream...

Bolesław Taborski, 1927-2010

1

F
IVE DAYS FROM
Christmas and Myfanwy’s awake, in the cold iron dark of the night. She blinks and sees her breath in the air. It shouldn’t be that cold; she put the heating on, and there’s no-one else here to switch it off. She’s been alone a long time.

But she is not alone tonight.

Myfanwy.

She doesn’t hear her name so much as see it, printed on the black night air. She realises she can’t hear the bedside clock ticking. She looks and sees the second hand inching steadily around the clockface. But there’s no sound.

Myfanwy.

Slowly, she raises her head and looks down to the foot of the bed.

The figure is silhouetted. A young man. A cold, flickery light, like a bitter white flame, barely illuminates his face.

There’s a place you need to go
, he says.
The old farmhouse on Dunwich Lane. Go there. Now.

The cold light blinks out and the young man is gone. Myfanwy sees her white breath in the air, hears the clock’s tick again, feels warmth return, but the chill stays deep in her bones. When you’re seventy-five, cold lingers and is hard to shift.

She closes her eyes, lets out a long breath and turns the cover back.

It has just turned midnight. December 20
^th
, 1986, has passed into history. It’s now the first hour of December 21
^st
: Midwinter’s Eve.

2

M
YFANWY DRESSED AND
went downstairs. It took her a few minutes; the cold still wasn’t leaving her bones. At her age, everything took longer to recover from.

She put the kettle on the hob, spooned coffee into a mug, added a dash of milk. Took a Benson’s from the packet and lit it. Her son was always on at her to give up. She was trying as well. Her grandchildren were the light of her life, especially little Anna. But it was a hard habit to break, after so many years. Especially on a night like this.

The kettle shrilled. She stubbed her cigarette out half-smoked and made her coffee, sipped. She didn’t want to look up; the air of the kitchen seemed to tremble in the pale cold overhead light like the desert in a heat haze, as if it might shift into a shadowy figure, one she might see better this time.

“Alright,” she said. Her voice, always throaty, sounded like a croak to her own ears. “I’m going. Just let me get this down me first. I’m not as young as I was. Need warming up.”

Go there. Now.
That’s what the young man had said. It’d been a long time since the Sight had done anything for Myfanwy. Once or twice over the years there’d been a twinge, a feeling, but little else. She’d thought it dead, gone. But clearly not. And she knew – from bitter experience – not to ignore it. But first she needed warming; half-frozen, she’d be no good to anyone at her age.

She finished her cup, rinsed it in the sink, and put it on the side to drain. Then pulled on her coat, relit her cigarette and went out.

M
YFANWY’S
A
USTIN
M
AXI
pulled out from outside her terraced house on Alma Street and headed towards the rank of hills that rose above Kempforth like a cresting wave. The north of Lancashire was harsh, craggy, unforgiving country; it often reminded Myfanwy of Merioneth in North Wales, where she’d grown up.

Dunwich Road, the main road that ran through the town, passed through a defile between two of the hills on its way across the moors; a long grey ribbon, fading into the low ground mist that swirled along the damp, bitter moor. Dunwich Lane was a different prospect. Not long after Myfanwy passed through the defile, it was there to her left: a narrow, potholed, ill-lit thoroughfare running along the flank of the hills.

She turned the headlights up and fought to keep the wheel steady. God, if David knew about this, he’d think she was senile. Out in the middle of the night, on the strength of a message from a ghost.

The hills loomed black above her. Dunwich Lane ran the length of them, all the way to Ash Fell, the furthermost one. God, Ash Fell. That terrible place. There weren’t many houses along it; three terraced cottages here, two cottages there. And finally, almost right under Ash Fell, the farmhouse.

Myfanwy pulled in outside it, eyed its lightless bulk, then let herself out. The muddy ground was frozen, hard and treacherous underfoot. She’d have to be careful; easy to fall and hurt herself here.

She’d forgotten to bring a torch. But the night sky was clear and the moon full; she found her way to the front door easily enough. In the distance she heard far-off traffic, the skitter of small things in the undergrowth, the call of an owl.

The house smelt of dirt and damp and char. There was soot around the empty windows and the blackened hole of the door. Cold dank air wafted out to meet her, as if something was breathing out in satisfaction now she was here.

Silly to think that. But she didn’t want to go in, all the same. She didn’t fear the dead – by definition they could do no harm – but the fire that had gutted this place had been a bad one and the structure wasn’t safe. And then the night sounds died away, and there was only a blanketing silence.

Myfanwy.
The word burned a dull red in the blackness within and then faded.
Come.

No choice, then. She took a deep breath and stepped inside. The darkness closed around her like a shroud.

Inside, the floor was stone, but littered with debris. She stumbled, almost fell.
I’m no good to you if I break an ankle
, she tried to say, but though her lips and throat worked she couldn’t hear it. But as if in answer to the thought, a cold sourceless light began to flicker. The same as in her room before. Ah, she knew it well.

The young man stepped into view. She could see his face more clearly now. thin and pimply, with greasy yellow hair. Vast eyes and a slack mouth. She recognised him. The tip of her tongue.

Tom Yolland
, he said. His mouth moved without sound; the words glowed in the air. He smiled – rather shyly, she thought.
Everyone called me Yolly.

That was it. His picture had been in the paper last year. A murder. Two.
You killed two people, one of them a priest
, she said, or tried to.

Mr Fitton, the butcher, and Father Sykes,
Yolly said.
They deserved to die
.
They raped children. And worse. I was one of those children once. But Mr Fitton and Father Joe, they made me one of them.

She remembered the rest of the story now. He came here after killing them. He’d brought cans of petrol, poured them over himself and–

The badness was in me,
Yolly said.
They put it there. Once it’s in you, it stays. You’ve got to burn it out. Fire purifies, Myfanwy. Remember that.

Myfanwy put a hand to her mouth. All she could feel for him now was pity. There was no menace from Yolly; only sadness.

They did worse
.

Worse? Dear God, what could be worse than this?

They sold children to the Shrike.

The Shrike? Who was the Shrike?

Yolly didn’t answer; he only looked around. The flickering glow spread to light the burned-out interior of the farmhouse.

Most of the internal walls were gone; they’d only been plaster and lathwork. It made the inside of the house cavernous, but it surely couldn’t be this big. It seemed endless. The light spread to illuminate children. There were dozens, scores. Too many to fit into a building like this, surely? The eldest Myfanwy could see was no more than ten or eleven years old; the youngest no more than two or three, a little boy, holding hands with a girl of about nine. All were pale; all had black holes in lieu of eyes. The eyelids held their shape perfectly, but there were only empty sockets beyond them.

The girl holding the little boy’s hand spoke now.
This earth is full of bones.

Myfanwy looked down at the cracked stone flags, and for a dizzying instant she seemed to see through them into a rich sea of black earth where hollow bones writhed like pale worms. Then she blinked and saw only stone.

He’s been coming here for years,
the girl said.
Sometimes he pays with money, sometimes with other things. But there are always people waiting here to give him what he wants. To feed him.

The little boy spoke next.
They take children from the town sometimes. Other times they take them from further away, so no-one will guess. And they sell them to him.

A small boy in a parka, Indian or Pakistani, spoke now:
He eats children. He does other things first. Terrible things.

And then he buries us deep,
says the girl.
Deep in the earth. He buries our souls with our bones. Buries our voices in the earth so we can’t be heard. Till now. At last there are too many of us. We started to get out.

I promised to help,
said Yolly.
Last year. I killed the others and burned myself so I wouldn’t suffer after I died.