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.
An utter absence of heat.
Deep intense chill.
A tomb.
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