Johnny and the Dead Read online

  ‘I reckon he wants to join the Army so’s he can bring his gun home one weekend,’ said Yo-less.

  Wobbler looked up apprehensively at the huge towering bulk of the block.

  ‘Huh! Bringing his tank home’d be favourite,’ he said.

  Bigmac’s brother’s van was parked in what had been designed as the washing-drying area. Both the doors and the front wing were different colours. Clint was in the front seat, chained to the steering wheel. The van was the one vehicle that could be left unlocked anywhere near Joshua N’Clement.

  ‘Weird, really,’ said Johnny. ‘When you think about it, I mean.’

  ‘What is?’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Well, there’s a huge cemetery for dead people, and all the living people are crammed up in that thing,’ said Johnny. ‘I mean, it sounds like someone got something wrong . . .’

  Bigmac emerged from the block, carrying a stack of cardboard boxes. He nodded hopelessly at Johnny, and put the boxes in the back of the van.

  ‘Yo, duds,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s your brother?’

  ‘He’s upstairs. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Before he comes down, you mean,’ said Wobbler.

  ‘Shut up.’

  The breeze moved in the poplar trees, and whispered around the antique urns and broken stones.

  ‘I don’t know as this is right,’ said Wobbler, when the four of them had gathered by the gate.

  ‘There’s crosses all over the place,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Yes, but I’m an atheist,’ said Wobbler.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t believe in ghosts—’

  ‘Post-living citizens,’ Bigmac corrected him.

  ‘Bigmac?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What’re you holding behind your back?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Wobbler craned to see.

  ‘It’s a bit of sharpened wood,’ he reported. ‘And a hammer.’

  ‘Bigmac!’

  ‘Well, you never know—’

  ‘Leave them here!’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s not stakes for ghosts. That’s for vampires,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Wobbler.

  ‘Look, this is just the cemetery,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s got by-laws and things! It’s not Transylvania! There’s just dead people here! That doesn’t make it scary, does it? Dead people are people who were living once! You wouldn’t be so daft if there were living people buried here, would you?’

  They set off along North Drive.

  It was amazing how sounds died away in the cemetery. There was only a set of overgrown iron railings and some unpruned trees between them and the road, but noises were suddenly cut right down, as if they were being heard through a blanket. Instead, silence seemed to pour in – pour up, Johnny thought – like breathable water. It hissed. In the cemetery, silence made a noise.

  The gravel crunched underfoot. Some of the more recent graves had a raised area in front of them which someone had thought would be a good idea to cover with little green stones. Now, tiny rockery plants were flourishing.

  A crow cawed in one of the trees, unless it was a rook. It didn’t really break the silence. It just underlined it.

  ‘Peaceful, isn’t it,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Quiet as the grave,’ said Bigmac. ‘Hah, hah.’

  ‘A lot of people come for walks here,’ said Johnny. ‘I mean, the park’s miles away, and all there is there is grass. But this place has got tons of bushes and plants and trees and, and—’

  ‘Environment,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘And probably some ecology as well,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Hey, look at this grave,’ said Wobbler.

  They looked. It had a huge raised archway made of carved black marble, and a lot of angels wound around it, and a Madonna, and a faded photograph in a little glass window under the name: Antonio Vicenti (1897–1958). It looked like a kind of Rolls Royce of a grave.

  ‘Yeah. Dead impressive,’ said Bigmac.

  ‘Why bother with such a big stone arch?’ said Yo-less.

  ‘It’s just showing off,’ said Yo-less. ‘There’s probably a sticker on the back saying “My Other Grave Is A Porch”.’

  ‘Yo-less!’ said Johnny.

  ‘Actually, I think that was very funny,’ said Mr Vicenti. ‘He is a very funny boy.’

  Johnny turned, very slowly.

  There was a man in black clothes leaning on the grave. He had neat black hair, plastered down, and a carnation in his buttonhole and a slightly grey look, as if the light wasn’t quite right.

  ‘Oh,’ said Johnny. ‘Hello.’

  ‘And what is the joke, exactly?’ said Mr Vicenti, in a very solemn voice. He stood very politely with his hands clasped in front of him, like an old-fashioned shop assistant.

  ‘Well, you can get these stickers for cars, you see, and they say “My Other Car is A Porsche”,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s not a very good joke,’ he added quickly.

  ‘A Porsche is a kind of car?’ said dead Mr Vicenti.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I didn’t think he should joke about things like that.’

  ‘Back in the old country I used to do magical entertainment for kiddies,’ said Mr Vicenti. ‘With doves and similar items. On Saturdays. At parties. The Great Vicenti and Ethel. I like to laugh.’

  ‘The old country?’ said Johnny.

  ‘The alive country.’

  The three boys were watching Johnny carefully.

  ‘You don’t fool us,’ said Wobbler. ‘There’s – there’s no one there.’

  ‘And I did escapology, too,’ said Mr Vicenti, absent-mindedly pulling an egg from Yo-less’s ear.

  ‘You’re just talking to the air,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Escapology?’ said Johnny. Here we go again, he thought. The dead always want to talk about themselves . . . ‘What?’ said Bigmac. ‘Escaping from things.’ Mr Vicenti cracked the egg. The ghost of a dove flew away, and vanished as it reached the trees. ‘Sacks and chains and handcuffs and so on. Like the Great Houdini? Only in a semi-professional way, of course. My greatest trick involved getting out of a locked sack underwater while wearing twenty feet of chain and three pairs of handcuffs.’

  ‘Gosh, how often did you do that?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Nearly once,’ said Mr Vicenti.

  ‘Come on,’ said Wobbler. ‘Joke over. No one’s taken in. Come on. Time’s getting on.’

  ‘Shut up, this is interesting,’ said Johnny.

  He was aware of a rustling noise around him, like someone walking very slowly through dead leaves.

  ‘And you’re John Maxwell,’ said Mr Vicenti. ‘The Alderman told us about you.’

  ‘Us?’

  The rustling grew louder.

  Johnny turned.

  ‘He’s not joking,’ said Yo-less. ‘Look at his face!’

  I mustn’t be frightened, Johnny told himself.

  I mustn’t be frightened!

  Why should I be frightened? These are just . . . post-life citizens. A few years ago they were just mowing lawns and putting up Christmas decorations and being grandparents and things. They’re nothing to be frightened of.

  The sun was well behind the poplar trees. There was a bit of mist on the ground.

  And, walking slowly towards him, through its coils, were the dead.

  Chapter 3

  There was the Alderman, and William Stickers, and an old woman in a long dress and a hat covered in fruit, and some small children running on ahead, and dozens, hundreds of others. They didn’t lurch. They didn’t ooze any green. They just looked grey, and very slightly out of focus.

  You notice things when you’re terrified. Little details grow bigger.

  He realized there were differences among the dead. Mr Vicenti had looked almost . . . well, alive. William Stickers was slightly more colourless. The Alderman was definitely transparent around the edges. But many of the others, in Victorian clothes and o
dd assortments of coats and breeches from earlier ages, were almost completely without colour and almost without substance, so that they were little more than shaped air, but air that walked.

  It wasn’t that they had faded. It was just that they were further away, in some strange direction that had nothing much to do with the normal three.

  Wobbler and the other two were still staring at him.

  ‘Johnny? You all right?’ said Wobbler.

  Johnny remembered a piece about over population in a school geography book. For everyone who was alive today, it said, there were twenty historical people, all the way back to when people had only just become people.

  Or, to put it another way, behind every living person were twenty dead ones.

  Quite a lot of them were behind Wobbler. Johnny didn’t feel it would be a good idea to point this out, though.

  ‘It’s gone all cold,’ said Bigmac.

  ‘We ought to be getting back,’ said Wobbler, his voice shaking. ‘I ought to be doing my homework.’

  Which showed he was frightened. It’d take zombies to make Wobbler prefer to do homework.

  ‘You can’t see them, can you?’ said Johnny. ‘They’re all around us, but you can’t see them.’

  ‘The living can’t generally see the dead,’ said Mr Vicenti. ‘It’s for their own good, I expect.’

  The three boys had drawn closer together.

  ‘Come on, stop mucking about,’ said Bigmac.

  ‘Huh,’ said Wobbler. ‘He’s just trying to spook us. Huh. Like Dead Man’s Hand at parties. Huh. Well, it’s not working. I’m off home. Come on, you lot.’

  He turned and walked a few steps.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Yo-less. ‘There’s something odd—’

  He looked around at the empty cemetery. The rook had flown away, unless it was a crow.

  ‘Something odd,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Look,’ said Johnny. ‘They’re here! They’re all around us!’

  ‘I’ll tell my mum of you!’ said Wobbler. ‘This is practising bein’ satanic again!’

  ‘John Maxwell!’ boomed the Alderman. ‘We must talk to you!’

  ‘That’s right!’ shouted William Stickers. ‘This is important!’

  ‘What about?’ said Johnny. He was balancing on his fear, and he felt oddly calm. The funny thing was, when you were on top of your fear you were a little bit taller.

  ‘This!’ said William Stickers, waving the newspaper.

  Wobbler gasped. There was a rolled-up newspaper floating in the air.

  ‘Poltergeist activity!’ he said. He waved a shaking finger at Johnny. ‘You get that around adolescents! I read something in a magazine! Saucepans flying through the air and stuff! His head’ll spin round in a minute!’

  ‘What is the fat boy talking about?’ said the Alderman.

  ‘And what is Dead Man’s Hand?’ said Mr Vicenti.

  ‘There’s probably a scientific explanation,’ said Yo-less, as the newspaper fluttered through the air.

  ‘What?’ said Bigmac.

  ‘I’m trying to think of one!’

  ‘It’s holding itself open!’

  William Stickers opened the paper.

  ‘It’s probably just a freak wind!’ said Yo-less, backing away.

  ‘I can’t feel any wind!’

  ‘That’s why it’s freaky!’

  ‘What are you going to do about this?’ the Alderman demanded.

  ‘Excuse me, but this Dead Man’s Hand. What is it?’

  ‘Will everyone SHUT UP?’ said Johnny.

  Even the dead obeyed.

  ‘Right,’ he said, settling down a bit. ‘Um. Look, um, you lot, these . . . people . . . want to talk to us. Me, anyway—’

  Yo-less, Wobbler and Bigmac were staring intently at the newspaper. It hung, motionless, more than a metre above the ground.

  ‘Are they . . . the breath-impaired?’ said Wobbler.

  ‘Don’t be daft! That sounds like asthma,’ said Yo-less. ‘Come on. If you mean it, say it. Come right out with it. Are they . . .’ He looked around at the darkening landscape, and hesitated. ‘Er . . . post-senior citizens?’

  ‘Are they lurching?’ said Wobbler. Now he and the other two were so close that they looked like one very wide person with six legs.

  ‘You didn’t tell us about this,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘This what?’ said Johnny.

  ‘In the newspaper. Well, it is called a newspaper. But it has pictures of women in the altogether! Which may well be seen by respectable married women and young children!’

  William Stickers was, with great effort, holding the paper open at the Entertainment Section. Johnny craned to read it. There was a rather poor photo of a couple of girls at Blackbury Swimming Pool and Leisure Centre.

  ‘They’ve got swimsuits on,’ he said.

  ‘Swimming suits? But I can see almost all of their legs!’ the Alderman roared.

  ‘Nothing wrong with that at all,’ snapped the elderly woman in the huge fruity hat. ‘Healthy bodies enjoying calisthenics in the God-given sunlight. And very practical clothing, I may say.’

  ‘Practical, madam? I dread to think for what!’

  Mr Vicenti leaned towards Johnny.

  ‘The lady in the hat is Mrs Sylvia Liberty,’ he whispered. ‘Died nineteen fourteen. Tireless suffragette.’

  ‘Suffragette?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Don’t they teach you that sort of thing now? They campaigned for votes for women. They used to chain themselves to railings and chuck eggs at policemen and throw themselves under the Prince of Wales’s horse on Derby days.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘But Mrs Liberty got the instructions wrong and threw herself under the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Killed outright,’ said Mr Vicenti. He clicked his disapproval. ‘He was a very heavy man, I believe.’

  ‘When you two have ceased this bourgeois arguing,’ shouted William Stickers, ‘perhaps we can get back to important matters?’ He rustled the paper. Wobbler blinked.

  ‘It says in this newspaper,’ said William Stickers, ‘that the cemetery is going to be closed. Going to be built on. Do you know about it?’

  ‘Um. Yes. Yes. Um. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Was anyone supposed to tell us?’

  ‘What’re they saying?’ said Bigmac.

  ‘They’re annoyed about the cemetery being sold. There’s a story in the paper.’

  ‘Hurry up!’ said William Stickers. ‘I can’t hold it much longer . . .’

  The newspaper sagged. Then it fell through his hands and landed on the path.

  ‘Not as alive as I was,’ he said.

  ‘Definitely a freak whirlwind,’ said Yo-less. ‘I’ve heard about them. Nothing supernat—’

  ‘This is our home,’ boomed the Alderman. ‘What will happen to us, young man?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Johnny. ‘Hold on. Yo-less?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They want to know what happens to people in graveyards if they get built on.’

  ‘The . . . dead want to know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Alderman and Johnny at the same time.

  ‘I bet Michael Jackson didn’t do this,’ said Bigmac. ‘He—’

  ‘I saw this film,’ gabbled Wobbler, ‘where these houses were built on an old graveyard and someone dug a swimming pool and all these skeletons came out and tried to strangle people—’

  ‘Why?’ said the Alderman.

  ‘He wants to know why,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Search me,’ said Wobbler.

  ‘I think,’ said Yo-less uncertainly, ‘that the . . . coffins and that get dug up and put somewhere else. I think there’s special places.’

  ‘I’m not standing for that!’ said dead Mrs Sylvia Liberty. ‘I paid five pounds, seven shillings and sixpence for my plot! I remember the document Distinctly. Last Resting Place, it said. It didn’t say After Eighty Years You’ll Be Dug Up and Moved just so
the living can build . . . what did it say?’

  ‘Modern Purpose-Designed Offices,’ said William Stickers. ‘Whatever they are.’

  ‘I think it means they were designed on purpose,’ said Johnny.

  ‘And how shameful to be sold for fivepence!’ said dead Mrs Liberty.

  ‘That’s the living for you,’ said William Stickers. ‘No thought for the downtrodden masses.’

  ‘Well, you see,’ said Johnny wretchedly, ‘the Council says it costs too much to keep up and the land was worth—’

  ‘And what’s this here about Blackbury Municipal Authority?’ said the Alderman. ‘What happened to Blackbury City Council?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Johnny. ‘I’ve never heard of it. Look, it’s not my fault. I like this place, too. I was only saying to Wobbler, I didn’t like what’s happening.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ said the Alderman.

  Johnny backed away, but came up against Mr Vicenti’s Rolls-Royce of a grave.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Not me. It’s not up to me!’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said dead Mrs Sylvia Liberty. ‘After all, you can see and hear us.’

  ‘No one else takes any notice,’ said Mr Vicenti.

  ‘We’ve been trying all day,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘People walking their dogs. Hah! They just hurry away,’ said William Stickers.

  ‘Not even old Mrs Tachyon,’ said Mr Vicenti.

  ‘And she’s mad,’ said the Alderman. ‘Poor soul.’

  ‘So there’s only you,’ said William Stickers. ‘So you must go and tell this Municipal whateveritis that we aren’t . . . going . . . to . . . move!’

  ‘They won’t listen to me! I’m twelve! I can’t even vote!’

  ‘Yes, but we can,’ said the Alderman.

  ‘Can we?’ said Mr Vicenti.

  The dead clustered around him, like an American football team.

  ‘We’re still over twenty-one, aren’t we? I mean, technically.’

  ‘Yes, but we’re dead,’ said Mr Vicenti, in a reasonable tone of voice.

  ‘You can vote at eighteen now,’ said Johnny.

  ‘No wonder people have no respect,’ said the Alderman. ‘I said the rot’d set in if they gave the vote to women—’

  Mrs Liberty glared at him.

  ‘Anyway, you can’t use a dead person’s vote,’ said William Stickers. ‘It’s called Personation. I stood as Revolutionary Solidarity Fraternal Workers’ Party Candidate. I know about this sort of thing.’