Johnny and the Dead

Chapter 2

Johnny raised the subject of the cemetery after tea.

'It's disgusting, what the Council are doing,' said his grandfather.

'But the cemetery costs a lot to keep up,' said his mother. 'No-one visits most of the graves now, except old Mrs Tachyon, and she's barmy.'

'Not visiting graves has nothing to do with it, girl. Anyway, there's history in there.'

'Alderman Thomas Bowler,' said Johnny.

'Never heard of him. I was referring,' said his grandfather, 'to William Stickers. There was very nearly a monument to him. There would have been a monument to him. Everyone round here donated money, only someone ran off with it. And I'd given sixpence.'

'Was he famous?'

'Nearly famous. Nearly famous. You've heard of Karl Marx?'

'He invented communism, didn't he?' said Johnny.

'Right. Well, William Stickers didn't. But he'd have been Karl Marx if Karl Marx hadn't beaten him to it. Tell you what ... tomorrow, I'll show you.'

It was tomorrow.

It was raining softly out of a dark grey sky.

Grandad and Johnny stood in front of a large gravestone which read:

William Stickers

1897-1949

Workers of the

World Unit

'A great man,' said Grandad. He had taken his cap off.

'What was the World Unit?' said Johnny.

'It should have been unite,' said Grandad. 'They ran out of money before they did the "E". It was a scandal. He was a hero of the working class. He would have fought in the Spanish Civil War except he got on the wrong boat and ended up in Hull.'

Johnny looked around.

'Um,' he said. 'What sort of a man was he?'

'A hero of the proletariat, like I said.'

'I mean, what did he look like?' said Johnny. 'Was he quite big with a huge black beard and gold-rimmed spectacles?'

'That's right. Seen pictures, have you?'

'No,' said Johnny. 'Not exactly.'

Grandad put his cap back on.

'I'm going down to the shops,' he said. 'Want to come?'

'No, thanks. Er ... I'm going round to Wob- bler's house.'

'Righto.'

Grandad wandered off towards the main gate.

Johnny took a deep breath.

'Hello,' he said.

'It was a scandal, them not giving me the "E",' said William Stickers.

He stopped leaning against his memorial.

'What's your name, comrade?'

'John Maxwell,' said Johnny.

'I knew you could see me,' said William Stickers. 'I could see you looking right at me while the old man was talking.'

'I could tell you were you,' said Johnny. 'You look ... um ... thinner.'

He wanted to say: not thin like in thick. Just... not all there. Transparent.

He said, 'Um.' And then he said, 'I don't under- stand this. You are dead, right? Some kind of... ghost?'

'Ghost?' said dead William Stickers angrily.

'Well ... spirit, then.'

'There's no such thing. A relic of an outmoded belief system.'

'Um, only... you're talking to me ...'

'It's a perfectly understandable scientific phenomenon,' said William Stickers. 'Never let superstition get in the way of rational thought, boy. It's time for Mankind to put old cul- tural shibboleths aside and step into the bright socialist dawn. What year is it?'

'Nineteen ninety-three,' said Johnny.

'Ah! And have the downtrodden masses risen

up to overthrow the capitalist oppressors in the glorious name of communism?'

'Um. Sorry?' Johnny hesitated, and then a few vague memories slid into place. 'You mean like ... Russia and stuff? When they shot the Tsar? There was something on television about that.'

'Oh, I know that. That was just the start. What's been happening since nineteen forty-nine? I ex- pect the global revolution is well established, yes? No-one tells us anything in here.'

'Well ... there's been a lot of revolutions, I think,' said Johnny. 'All over the place ..."

'Capital!'

'Um.' It occurred to Johnny that people doing quite a lot of the revolutions- recently had said they were overthrowing communist oppressors, but William Stickers looked so eager he didn't quite know how to say this. 'Tell you what ... can you read a newspaper if I bring you one?'

'Of course. But it's hard to turn the pages.'

'Um. Are there a lot of you in here?'

'Hah! Most of them don't bother. They just aren't prepared to make the effort.'

'Can you ... you know ... walk around? You could get into things for free.'

William Stickers looked slightly panicky.

'It's hard to go far,' he mumbled. 'It's not really allowed.'

'I read in a book once that ghosts can't move much,' said Johnny.

'Ghost? I'm just ... dead.' He waved a trans- parent finger in the air. 'Hah! But they're not

getting me that way,' he snapped. 'Just because it turns out that I'm still ... here after I'm dead, doesn't mean I'm prepared to believe in the whole stupid nonsense, you know. Oh, no. Logical, rational thought, boy. And don't forget the newspaper.'

William Stickers faded away a bit at a time. The last thing to go was the finger, still demonstrating its total disbelief in life after death.

Johnny waited around a bit, but no other dead people seemed to be ready to make an appearance.

He felt he was being watched in some way that had nothing to do with eyes. It wasn't exactly creepy, but it was uncomfortable. You didn't dare scratch your bottom or pick your nose.

For the first time he really began to notice the cemetery. It had a leftover look, really.

Behind it there was the canal, which wasn't used any more, except as a rubbish dump; old prams and busted televisions and erupting settees lined its banks like monsters from the Garbage Age. Then on one side there was the crematorium and its Garden of Remembrance, which was all right in a

gravel-pathed, keep-off-the-grass sort of way. In front was Cemetery Road, which had once had houses on the other side of it; now there was the back wall of the Bonanza Carpet (Save .....11) Warehouse. There was still an old phone box and a letter box, which suggested that once upon a time this had been a place that people thought of as home. But now it was just a road you cut through to get to the bypass from the industrial estate.

On the fourth side was nothing much except a wasteground of fallen brick and one tall chimney - all that remained of the Blackbury Rubber Boot Company ('If It's a Boot, It's a Blackbury' had been one of the most famously stupid slogans in the world.)

Johnny vaguely remembered there'd been some- thing in the papers. People had been protesting about something - but then, they always were. There was always so much news going on you never had time to find out anything important.

He walked round to the old factory site. Bull- dozers were parked around it now, although they were all empty. There was a wire fence which had been broken down here and there despite the notices about Guard Dogs on Patrol. Perhaps the guard dogs had broken out.

And there was a big sign, showing the office building that was going to be built on the site. It was beautiful. There were fountains in front of it, and quite old trees carefully placed here and there, and neat people standing chatting outside it. And the sky above it was a glorious blue, which was pretty unusual for Blackbury, where most of the time the sky was that odd, soapy colour you'd get if you lived in a Tupperware box.

Johnny stared at it for some time, while the rain fell in the real world and the blue sky glittered on the sign.

It was pretty obvious that the building was going to take up more room than the site of the old boot factory.

The words above the picture said, 'An Exciting Development for United Amalagamated Consoli- dated Holdings: Forward to the Future!'

Johnny didn't feel very excited, but he did feel that 'Forward to the Future' was even dafter than 'If It's a Boot, It's a Blackbury'.

Before school next day he pinched the newspaper and tucked it out of sight behind William Sticker's grave.

He felt more daft than afraid. He wished he could talk to someone about it.

He didn't have anyone to talk to. But he did have three people to talk with.

There were various gangs and alliances in the school, such as the sporty group, and the bright kids, and the Computer Club Nerds.

And then there was Johnny, and Wobbler, and Bigmac, who said he was the last of the well hard skinheads but was actually a skinny kid with short hair and flat feet and asthma who had difficulty even walking in Doc Martens, and there was Yo- less, who was technically black.

But at least they listened, during break, on the bit of Avail between the school kitchens and the library. It was where they normally hung out — or at least, hung around.

'Ghosts,' said Yo-less, when he'd finished.

'No-oo,' said Johnny uncertainly. 'They don't like being called ghosts. It upsets them, for some reason. They're just ... dead. I suppose it's like not calling people handicapped or backward.'

'Politically incorrect,' said Yo-less. 'I read about that.'

'You mean they want to be called,' Wobbler paused for thought, 'post-senior citizens.'

'Breathily challenged,' said Yo-less.

'Vertically disadvantaged,' said Wobbler.

'What? You mean they're short?' said Yo-less.

'Buried,' said Wobbler.

'How about zombies?' said Bigmac.

'No, you've got to have a body to be a zom- bie,' said Yo-less. 'You're not really dead, you just get fed this secret voodoo mixture of fish and roots and you turn into a zombie.'

'Wow. What mixture?'

'I don't know. How should I know? Just some kind offish and some kind of root.'

'I bet it's a real adventure going down the chippie in voodoo country,' said Wobbler.

'Well, you ought to know about voodoo,' said Bigmac.

'Why?' said Yo-less.

' 'Cos you're West Indian, right?'

'Do you know all about druids?'

'No.'

'There you are, then.'

'I 'spect your mum knows about it, though,' said Bigmac.

'Shouldn't think so. My mum spends more time in church than the Pope,' said Yo-less. 'My mum spends more time in church than God.'

'You're not taking this seriously,' said Johnny severely. 'I really saw them.'

'It might be something wrong with your eyes,' said Yo-less. 'Perhaps there's a—'

' I saw this old film once, about a man with X-ray eyes,' said Bigmac. 'He could use 'em to see right through things.'

'Women's clothes and stuff?' enquired Wobbler.

'There wasn't much of that,' said Bigmac.

They discussed this waste of a useful talent.

'I don't see through anything,' said Johnny, eventually. 'I just see people who aren't ther— I mean, people other people don't see.'

'My uncle used to see things other people couldn't see,' said Wobbler. 'Especially on a Saturday night.'

'Don't be daft. I'm trying to be serious.'

'Yeah, but once you said you'd seen a Loch Ness Monster in your goldfish pond,' said Bigmac.

'All right, but—'

'Probably just a plesiosaur,' said Yo-less. 'Just some old dinosaur that ought to've been extinct seventy million years ago. Nothing special at all.'"

'Yes, but—'

'And then there was the Lost City of the Incas,' said Wobbler.

'Well, I found it, didn't I?'

'Yes, but it wasn't that lost,' said Yo-less. 'Behind Tesco's isn't exactly lost.'

Bigmac sighed.

'You're all weird,' he said.

'All right,' said Johnny. 'You all come down there after school, right?'

'Well—' Wobbler began, and shifted uneasily.

'Not scared, are you?' said Johnny. He knew that was unfair, but he was annoyed. 'You ran away before,' he said, 'when the Alderman came out.'

'I never saw no Alderman,' said Wobbler. 'Any- way, I wasn't scared. I ran away to wind you up.'

'You certainly had me fooled,' said Johnny.

'Me? Scared? I watched Night of the Killer Zom- bies three times — with freeze frame,' said Wobbler.

'All right, then. You come. All three of you come. After school.'

'After Cobbers,' said Bigmac.

'Look, this is a lot more important than—'

'Yes, but tonight Janine is going to tell Mick that Doraleen took Ron's surfboard—'

Johnny hesitated.

'All right, then,' he said. 'After Cobbers.'

'And then I promised to help my brother load up his van,' said Bigmac. 'Well, not exactly promised ... he said he'd rip my arms off if I didn't.'

'And I've got to do some Geography home- work,' said Yo-less.

'We haven't got any,' said Johnny.

'No, but I thought if I did an extra essay on rainforests I could pull up my marks average,' said Yo-less.

There was nothing odd about this, if you were used to Yo-less. Yo-less wore school uniform. Ex- cept that it wasn't really school uniform. Well, all right, technically it was school uniform, because everyone got these bits of paper at the start of every year saying what the school uniform was, but no-one ever wore it much, except for Yo-less, and

so if hardly anyone else was wearing it, Wobbler said, how could it be a uniform? Whereas, said Wobbler, since at any one time nearly everyone was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, then really jeans and T-shirt were the real school uniform and Yo-less should be sent home for not wearing it.

'Tell you what,' said Johnny. 'Let's meet up later, then. Six o'clock. We can meet at Bigmac's place. That's right near the cemetery, anyway.'

'But it'll be getting dark,' said Wobbler.

'Well?' said Johnny. 'You're not scared, are you?'

'Me? Scared? Huh! Me? Scared? Me? Scared?'

If you had to be somewhere frightening when it got dark, Johnny thought, the Joshua N'Clement block rated a lot higher on the Aaargh scale than any cemetery. At least the dead didn't mug you.

It was originally going to be the Sir Alec Douglas- Home block, and then it became the Harold Wilson block, and then finally the new Council named it the Joshua Che N'Clement block after a famous freedom fighter, who then became president of his country, and who was now being an ex-freedom fighter and president somewhere in Switzerland while some of his countrymen tried to find him and ask him questions like: What happened to the two hundred million dollars we thought we had, and how come your wife owned seven hundred hats?

The block had been described in 1965 as' an over- whelming and dynamic relationship of voids and solids, majestic in its uncompromising simplicity'.

Often the Blackbury Guardian had pictures of

people complaining about the damp, or the cold, or the way the windows fell out in high winds (it was always windy around the block, even on a calm day everywhere else), or the way gangs roamed its dank passageways and pushed shopping trolleys off the roof into the Great Lost Shop- ping Trolley Graveyard. The lifts hadn't worked properly since 1966. They lurked in the basement, too scared to go anywhere else.

The passages and walkways ('an excitingly brutal brushed concrete finish') had two smells, depend- ing on whether or not the Council's ninja caretaker had been round in his van. The other one was disinfectant.

No-one liked the Joshua N'Clement block. There were two schools of thought about what should be done with it. The people who lived there thought everyone should be taken out and then the block should be blown up, and the people who lived near the block just wanted it blown up.

The odd thing was that although the block was cramped and fourteen storeys high, it had been built in the middle of a huge area of what was theoretically grass ('environmental open space'), but which was now the home of the Common Crisp Packet and Hardy-Perennial Burned-Out Car.

'Horrible place,' said Wobbler.

'People've got to live somewhere,' said Yo-less.

'Reckon the man who designed it lives here?' said Johnny.

'Shouldn't think so.'

'I'm not going too near Bigmac's brother,' said

Wobbler. 'He's a nutter. He's got tattoos and every- thing. And everyone knows he pinches stuff" Videos and things. Out of factories. And he killed Bigmac's hamster when he was little. And he chucks his stuff out of the window when he's angry. And if Glint's been let out—'

Glint was Bigmac's brother's dog, which had reputedly been banned from the Rottweiler/Pit Bull Terrier Crossbreed Club for being too nasty.

'Poor old Bigmac,' said Johnny. 'No wonder he's always sending off for martial arts stuff.'

'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. Glint 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 whis- pered 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. In- stead, 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, ab- sent-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 decora- tions 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.