‘Oh,’ she says, hesitating. She reaches for another plate from the cupboard. ‘Want to stay for dinner?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I can’t. My dad’s got something ready.’
She shrugs. ‘Sure?’ she says. The plate is already back in its place.
I nod.
Bright smile, her. Bright smile, me.
Her eyes meet Peter’s. They both look away.
I leave Peter’s house and take the main road. There are still some crisps and biscuits in my bundle of stuff at the graveyard. I nip in through the main gate and along the edge of the wall.
Evening is closing in. That kind of grey-blue slow gloaming that you get in Scotland at this time of year. Late spring melting into summer. In the kirkyard everything is settling down for the night. The midges in a dancing swarm beneath the old monkey-puzzle. The birds singing, warbling and fussing about. The leaves of the older evergreens are dark and leathery. Thistle and briar choke the little thickets clustered at the foot of the trees.
The workmen have been back. Some of the horizontal slabs have been moved and stacked at one end. They are marked and labelled. I walk over to look at them.
My footsteps scrape the gravel.
I stop.
I hear something.
A soft movement behind me.
A skitter of stones in the half dark. Shadows move towards me.
God! What?
Stupid. Stupid. Nothing.
I hear the stumbling conversations of a group of teenagers. I glide quietly off the path.
‘Open a can, for f ’s sake.’
I slide, cunning and sure of my own territory, behind an upright slab. Whatever they’re drinking or sniffing makes them cocksure. Confident but uneasy at the same time.
‘Can’t come here again. They’ve padlocked the gate.’
They stop to light up. Right beside me. Gathered at my altar.
‘Nothing a pair of pliers can’t solve.’ The lit end of a cigarette arcs in the darkness.
‘Dunno. Probably be a night-watch.’
‘I don’t like this place any more.’ A girl’s voice. ‘Something creepy about it.’
The hand leaning on the top of my tombstone moves down as its owner changes position.
I remain rock-like. A stone image frozen for ever. But, very slowly, I reach out my tongue . . . A cold lizard. A snake. Coiling round the outstretched fingers.
The shriek is absolutely satisfying. The best thing I’ve felt for ages.
‘What? What is it?’ someone yells. But nobody is answering as they all scatter and are away.
Now the place is mine again. But nothing is as it was. There is mess and desecration everywhere. Turf has been marked out and cut, sods lifted. There are ropes looped round some of the upright statues. Other gravestones have been loosened at the edges. The branches of the cherry tree have been lopped.
Unease and disquiet vibrate in my head.
The earth near my part of the wall is churned up.
I see why.
The air I breathe into my lungs seems thick and cold. There is a length of chain around the rowan tree, cutting into its flesh. They have tried to pull it out with the van, or perhaps a tractor, but it has held fast.
Not all of it though.
It is half out of the earth. But the roots reach back. Roots that haven’t seen the light of day for many, many years. Thick as a man’s arm, they twist back down into the bowels of the earth, pale as a slug under a stone. The soil is a strange colour. Whitish, like drifting sand, or ash. It’s dry and dusty and blowing about a bit now in the wind. I turn my head. I hadn’t felt any breeze. There is none. I look again. It’s as though the ground is moving, shifting and restless like the sea.
But then that happens to me when I stare at something and try to concentrate. Pages of writing shudder before my eyes. The print struggles in front of me, swimming awkwardly on the lines.
There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight though. I’ve had my eyes tested.
Dozens of times.
I don’t have bad eyesight.
Had my hearing tested too.
I don’t have poor hearing.
Or MS.
Or ME.
I’ve been tested for things which most people have never even heard of. They all come up clear.
They told my mother, ‘You’ll be pleased to know, Mrs Morris. Nothing wrong with him.’
One time as we came away from the clinic she gave me a right shake. ‘Nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with you. They don’t know the half of it. Bed-wetting at ten years old. Can’t hold a knife or fork the right way. Can’t tell the time. Can’t read. Can’t write. There’s something wrong with you all right. They just haven’t got a name for it. Pain in the bloody arse, that’s what I’d call it. And, whatever it is, we know whose side it came from.’
I move down the main path towards the entrance. I want to see if the gate is now locked up as they said. Perhaps the smallpox story is true and the council want to keep people out when they start digging up the bodies. I should have paid more attention to the conversation earlier. Their talk of a night-watchman. Before I know it I’m almost on top of his little stripy hut.
And there’s a dog. Black, and barking like crazy.
And now I am running. As hard as I can. Never outpace this brute. My runty little legs won’t move fast enough. All that junk food and sitting in front of the telly.
Yet . . . I know which direction to take. Where to go. Know where the animal would not, could not, follow me. I scramble the last few paces and jump up onto my part of the dyke. Looking down I see the dog; its eyes gleam red in the dark night. Its forepaws scrabble at the wall. I pull my feet up. It steps back to prepare itself to spring, its feet among the white ash. Then it stops and is strangely silent. It lifts its paws, one by one, shaking them hopelessly. Then it starts to whine, a high-pitched noise with little frantic yipping barks. It retreats rapidly, stops, then, lifting its head to the sky, it howls.
I’ll never forget that. All the hair on its back rose and stood upright on its neck and shoulders, as the dog moved slowly backwards baying to the heavens. The moon showed briefly in the troubled sky. The animal paused, then turned and fled.
It’s terribly cold. I’m shaking so hard my legs can hardly hold me. I nearly topple from the wall into the hole where the tree’s roots are lying naked to the sky.
I’m not staying here. Down the other side and off through the wood. I’ll go the long way home.
Sometimes we get a night frost in late spring, we’re so far north. But this cold is different. It’s like a house that hasn’t been lived in for years.