Johnny and the Dead Read online

  Bigmac was kneeling on the ground, making small ‘oof, oof’ noises.

  ‘I’ll have to keep huffing on it to keep them there, mind!’

  ‘You all right, Bigmac?’

  They knelt down beside him. He was wheezing with his asthma.

  ‘I . . . I really frightened him . . . yeah?’ he managed.

  ‘Right, right,’ said Johnny. ‘Come on, we’ll give you a hand up . . .’

  ‘I jus’ saw them there—’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Jus’ winded.’

  ‘Hang on, I’ve got to go and huff on it again—’

  ‘Help him into the car.’

  ‘’S’all right—’

  ‘I’ll drive him to the hospital, just in case.’

  ‘No!’

  Bigmac pushed them away, and rose unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘’m all right,’ he said. ‘Tough as old boots, me.’

  Red and blue lights bloomed in the fog and a police siren dee-dahed once or twice and then stopped out of embarrassment.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Atterbury. ‘I rather think my wife got a bit excited about things and phoned the police. Er . . . Bigmac, isn’t it? Would you recognize those men if you saw them again?’

  ‘Sure. One of ’em’s got teethmarks in his ear.’ Bigmac suddenly had the hunted look of one who has never quite seen eye to eye with the constabulary. ‘But I ain’t going in any police station. No way.’

  Mr Atterbury straightened up as the police car crunched to a halt.

  ‘I think it might be a good idea if I do most of the talking,’ he said, when Sergeant Comely stepped out into the night. ‘Ah, Ray,’ he said. ‘Glad you could drop by. Can I have a word?’

  The boys stood in a huddle, watching as the men walked over to the bulldozer, and then inspected the remains of the wall.

  ‘We’re going to be in trouble,’ said Bigmac. ‘Old Comely’s probably going to do me for ear-biting. Or pinching the bulldozer. You wait.’

  Wobbler tapped Johnny on the shoulder.

  ‘You knew something was going to happen,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Don’t know how.’

  They watched the policemen peer into Mr Atterbury’s car for a moment.

  ‘He’s reading my huff,’ said Wobbler. ‘That was lateral thinking, that was.’

  Then Comely went back to the police car. They heard him speaking into the radio.

  ‘No! I say again. That’s H for Hirsute, W for Wagner – Wagner! Wagner! No! W as in Westphalia, A for Aardvark—’

  Mr Atterbury appeared from the direction of the bulldozer, waving a pair of pliers.

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to move again tonight,’ he said.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Not sure. We can probably trace the van. I think I’ve persuaded Sergeant Comely that we ought to deal with this quietly, for now. He’ll take statements from you, though. That might be enough.’

  ‘Were they from United Consolidated?’

  The old man shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps someone thought everything might be a lot simpler if the cemetery wasn’t worth saving,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a couple of likely lads were slipped a handful of notes to do . . . er . . . a Halloween prank—’

  There was a burst of noise from the police radio.

  ‘We’ve stopped a van on the East Slate Road,’ the sergeant called out. ‘Sounds like our lads.’

  ‘Well Done, Said PC Plonk,’ said Yo-less, in a hollow voice. ‘You Have Captured The Whole Gang! Good Work, Fumbling Four! And They All Went Home For Tea And Cakes.’

  ‘It would help if you’d come along to the police station, Bigmac,’ said Mr Atterbury.

  ‘No way!’

  ‘I’ll come along with you. And one of your friends could come, too.’

  ‘It’d really help,’ said Johnny.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘And then,’ said Mr Atterbury, ‘I’m going to take considerable pleasure in ringing up the chairman of United Consolidated. Considerable pleasure.’

  It was ten minutes later. Bigmac had gone to the police station, accompanied by Yo-less and Mr Atterbury and an assurance that he wasn’t going to be asked any questions about certain other minor matters relating to things like cars not being where the owners had expected them to be, and other things of that nature.

  The sodium lights of Blackbury glowed in the fog, which was thinning out a bit now. They made the darkness beyond the carpet warehouse a lot deeper and much darker.

  ‘Well, that’s it, then,’ said Wobbler. ‘Game over. Let’s go home.’

  The fog was being torn apart by the wind. It was even possible to see the moon through the flying streamers.

  ‘Come on,’ he repeated.

  ‘It’s still not right,’ said Johnny. ‘It can’t end like this.’

  ‘Best ending,’ said Wobbler. ‘Just like Yo-less said. Nasty men foiled. Kids save the day. Everyone gets a bun.’

  The abandoned bulldozer seemed a lot bigger in this pale light.

  The air had a fizz to it.

  ‘Something’s going to happen,’ said Johnny, running towards the cemetery.

  ‘Now, look—’

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘No! Not in there!’

  Johnny turned around.

  ‘And you’re pretending to be a vampire?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Come on, the railings have been knocked down.’

  ‘But it’s nearly midnight! And there’s dead people in there!’

  ‘Well? We’re all dead, sooner or later.’

  ‘Yeah, but me, I’d like it to be later, thank you!’

  Johnny could feel it all around him – a squashed feel to things, like the air gets before a thunderstorm.

  It cracked off the buckled gravestones and tingled on the dusty shrubberies.

  The fog was pouring away now, as if it was trying to escape from something. The moon shone out of a damp blue-black sky casting darker shadows on the ground.

  North Drive and East Way . . . they were still there, but they didn’t look the same now. They belonged somewhere else – somewhere where people didn’t take the roads of the dead and give them the names of the streets of the living . . .

  ‘Wobbler?’ said Johnny, without looking around.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He could feel something lifting off him, like a heavy blanket. He was amazed his feet still touched the ground.

  He ran along North Drive, to the little area where all the dead roads met.

  There was someone already there.

  She spun around with her arms out and her eyes blissfully shut, the gravel crunching under her feet, the moonlight glinting off her ancient hat. All alone, twirling and twirling, Mrs Tachyon danced in the night.

  Not all alone . . .

  The air sparkled. Glowing lines, blue as electricity, thin as smoke, poured out of the clear sky. Where they touched the fingers of the dancing woman they stretched out and broke, then reformed.

  They crawled over the grass. They whirred through the air. The whole cemetery was alive with pale blue comets.

  Alive . . .

  Mrs Tachyon’s feet were off the ground.

  Johnny looked at his own fingers. There was a blue glow crackling over his right hand, like St Elmo’s Fire. It sparkled as he waved it towards the stars and felt his feet leave the gravel path.

  ‘Ooowwwwwah!’

  The lights spun him around and let him drift gently back down.

  ‘Who are you?’

  A line of fire screamed across the night and then exploded. Sparks flew out and traced lines in the air; which took on, as though it was outlined in neon, a familiar shape.

  ‘Well, until tonight,’ it said, blue fire sizzling in his beard, ‘I thought I was William Stickers. Watch this!’

  Blue glows arched ov
er the gravestones again and clustered around the dark bulk of the bulldozer, flowing across it so that it glowed.

  The engine started.

  There was a clash of gears.

  It moved forward. The railings clanged and cart-wheeled away. The brick wall crumbled.

  Lights orbited around the bulldozer as it ploughed onward.

  ‘Hey! Stop!’

  Metal groaned. The engine note dropped to a dull, insistent throbbing.

  The lights turned to look at Johnny. He could feel their attention.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  A light burst into a glittering diagram of the Alderman.

  ‘Isn’t this what people wanted?’ he said. ‘We don’t need it any more. So if anyone’s going to do it, it should be us. That’s only right.’

  ‘But you said this was your place!’ said Johnny.

  Mrs Sylvia Liberty outlined herself in the air.

  ‘We have left Nothing there,’ she said, ‘of any Importance.’

  ‘Force of habit,’ said William Stickers, ‘is what has subjugated the working man for too long. I was right about that, anyway.’

  ‘The disgusting bolshevik, although he needs a shave, is Quite correct,’ said Mrs Liberty. And then she laughed. ‘It seems to me we’ve spent Far too long moping around because of what we’re not, without any Consideration of what we might be.’

  ‘Chronologically gifted,’ said Mr Einstein, crackling into existence.

  ‘Dimensionally advantaged,’ said Mr Fletcher, sparkling like a flashbulb.

  ‘Bodily unencumbered,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘Into Extra Time,’ said Stanley Roundway.

  ‘Enhanced,’ said Mr Vicenti.

  ‘We had to find it out,’ said Mr Fletcher. ‘You have to find it out. You have to forget who you were. That’s the first step. And stop being frightened of old ghosts. Then you’ve got room to find out what you are. What you can be.’

  ‘So we’re off,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘We don’t know. It iss going to be very interesting to find out,’ said Solomon Einstein.

  ‘But . . . but . . . we’ve saved the cemetery!’ said Johnny. ‘We had a meeting! And Bigmac . . . and I spoke up and . . . there’s been things on the television and people have really been talking about this place! No one’s going to build anything on it! There’s been birdwatchers here and everything! Turn the machine off! We’ve saved the cemetery.’

  ‘But we don’t need it any more,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘We do!’

  The dead looked at him.

  ‘We do,’ Johnny repeated. ‘We . . . need it to be there.’

  The diesel engine chugged. The machine vibrated. The dead, if that’s what they still were, seemed to be thinking.

  Then Solomon Einstein nodded.

  ‘This iss of course very true,’ he said, in his excited squeaky voice. ‘It all balances, you see. The living have to remember, the dead have to forget. Conservation of energy.’

  The bulldozer’s engine stuttered into silence.

  Mr Vicenti held up a hand. It glowed like a firework.

  ‘We came back to say goodbye. And thank you,’ he said.

  ‘I hardly did anything.’

  ‘You listened. You tried. You were there. You can get medals just for being there. People forget the people who were just there.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘But, now . . . we must be somewhere else.’

  ‘No . . . don’t go yet,’ said Johnny. ‘I have to ask you—’

  Mr Vicenti turned.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are there . . . angels involved? You know? Or . . . devils and things? A lot of people would like to know.’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t think so. That sort of thing . . . no. That’s for the living. No.’

  The Alderman rubbed his spectral hands. ‘I rather think it’s going to be a lot more interesting than that.’

  The dead were walking away, some of them fading back into shining smoke as they moved.

  Some were heading for the canal. There was a boat there. It looked vaguely like a gondola. A dark figure stood at one end, leaning on a pole that vanished into the water.

  ‘This is my lift,’ said William Stickers.

  ‘It looks a bit . . . spooky. No offence meant,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Well, I thought I’d give it a try. If I don’t like it, I’ll go somewhere else,’ said William Stickers, stepping aboard. ‘Off we go, comrade.’

  RIGHT said the ferryman.

  The boat moved away from the bank. The canal was only a few metres wide, but the boat seemed to be drifting off a long, long way . . .

  Voices came back over the waters.

  ‘You know, an outboard motor on this and it’d go like a bird.’

  I LIKE IT THE WAY IT IS, MR STICKERS.

  ‘What’s the pay like?’

  SHOCKING.

  ‘I wouldn’t stand for it, if I was you—’

  ‘I’m not sure where he’s going,’ said the Alderman, ‘but he’s certainly going to reorganize things when he gets there. Bit of a traditional thinker, our William.’

  There was a click and hum from further along the bank. Einstein and Fletcher were sitting proudly in some sort of – well, it looked partly like an electronic circuit diagram, and partly like a machine, and partly like mathematics would look if it was solid. It glowed and fizzled.

  ‘Good, isn’t it,’ said Mr Fletcher. ‘You’ve heard of a train of thought?’

  ‘This is a flight of the imagination,’ said Solomon Einstein.

  ‘We’re going to have a good look at some things.’

  ‘That’s right. Starting with everything.’

  Mr Fletcher thumped the machine happily.

  ‘Right! The sky’s the limit, Mr Einstein!’

  ‘Not even that, Mr Fletcher!’

  The lines grew bright, drew together, became more like a diagram. And vanished. Just before they vanished, though, they seemed to be accelerating.

  And then there were three.

  ‘Did I see them waving?’ said Mrs Liberty.

  ‘And particling, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said the Alderman. ‘Come, Sylvia. I feel a more down-to-earth mode of transport would be suitable for us.’

  He took her hand. They ignored Johnny and stepped on to the black waters of the canal.

  And sank, slowly, leaving a pearly sheen on the water which gradually faded away.

  Then there was the sound of a motor starting up.

  Out of the water, transparent as a bubble, the spirit of the dead Ford Capri rose gently towards the sky.

  The Alderman wound down an invisible window.

  ‘Mrs Liberty thinks we ought to tell you something,’ he said. ‘But . . . it’s hard to explain, you know.’

  ‘What is?’ said Johnny.

  ‘By the way, why are you wearing a pink sheet?’

  ‘Um—’

  ‘I expect it’s not important.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well—’ The car turned slowly; Johnny could see the moon through it. ‘You know those games where this ball runs up and bounces around and ends up in a slot at the bottom?’

  ‘Pinball machines?’

  ‘Is that what they’re called now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ The Alderman nodded. ‘Well . . . when you’re bouncing around from pin to pin, it is probably very difficult to know that outside the game there’s a room and outside the room there’s a town and outside the town there’s a country and outside the country there’s a world and outside the world there’s a billion trillion stars and that’s only the start of it . . . but it’s there, d’you see? Once you know about it, you can stop worrying about the slot at the bottom. And you might bounce around a good deal longer.’

  ‘I’ll . . . try to remember it.’

  ‘Good man. Well, we’d
better be going . . .’

  Ghostly gears went crunch. The car juddered.

  ‘Drat the thing. Ah . . . Be seeing you . . .’

  It rose gently, turned towards the east, and sped away and up . . .

  And then there was one.

  ‘Well, I think I might as well be off,’ said Mr Vicenti. He produced a top hat and an old-fashioned walking cane out of thin air.

  ‘Why are you all leaving?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s Judgement Day,’ said Mr Vicenti. ‘We decided.’

  ‘I thought that was chariots and things.’

  ‘I think you’ll have to use your own judgement on that one. No point in waiting for what you’ve already got. It’s different for everybody, you see. Enjoy looking after the cemetery. They’re places for the living, after all.’

  Mr Vicenti pulled on a pair of white gloves and pressed an invisible lift button. He began to rise. White feathers cascaded out of his sleeves.

  ‘Dear me,’ he said, and opened his jacket. ‘Go on, away with you! All of you! Shoo!’

  Half a dozen ghostly pigeons untangled themselves and rocketed off into the dawn.

  ‘There. That proves it. You can escape from anything, eventually,’ he called down. Johnny just managed to hear him add, ‘. . . although I will admit that three sets of manacles, twenty feet of chain and a canvas sack can present a considerable amount of difficulty in certain circumstances . . .’

  The light glinted off his hat.

  And then there was . . . one.

  Johnny turned around.

  Mr Grimm was standing neatly in the middle of the path, with his neat hands neatly folded. Darkness surrounded him like a fog. He was watching the sky. Johnny had never seen such an expression . . .

  He remembered the time, many years ago, when Bigmac had a party and hadn’t invited him. He’d said afterwards, ‘Well, of course not. I knew you’d come, you didn’t have to be asked, you didn’t need to be asked, you could just have turned up.’ But everyone else was going to go, and was talking about going, and he’d felt like a pit had opened up in his life. That sort of thing was pretty awful when you were seven.

  It looked much, much worse when you were dead.

  Mr Grimm saw Johnny staring at him.

  ‘Huh,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘They’ll be sorry.’

  ‘I’m going to find out about you, Mr Grimm,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Nothing to find out,’ snapped the ghost.

  Johnny walked through him. There was a chilly moment, and then Mr Grimm was gone.