Johnny and 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 odd assortments of coats and breeches from earlier ages, were almost completely with- out 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 di- rection 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 popu- lation 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 zom- bies 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!'

Til 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 news- paper 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'11 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 in- tently 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 sun- light. 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 ar- guing,' 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 supernal—'

'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! Theyjust 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.'

'I'm not proposing to let anyone use my vote,'

said the Alderman. 'I want to use it myself. No law against that.'

'Good point.'

'I served this city faithfully for more than fifty years,' said the Alderman. 'I do not see why I should lose my vote just because I'm dead. Democracy. That's the point.'

'People's democracy,' said William Stickers.

The dead fell silent.

'Well ...' said Johnny miserably. Til see what I can do.'

'Good man,' said the Alderman. 'And we'd also like a paper delivered every day.'

'No, no,' Mr Vicenti shook his head. 'It's so hard to turn the pages.'

'Well, we must know what is happening,' said Mrs Liberty. 'There's no telling what the living are getting up to out there while our backs are turned.'

Til... think of something,' said Johnny. 'Some- thing better than newspapers.'

'Right,' said William Stickers. 'And then you get along to these Council people and tell them—'

'Tell them we're not going to take this lying down!' shouted the Alderman.

'Yes, right,' said Johnny.

And the dead faded. Again there was the sen- sation of travelling, as if the dead people were going back into a different world ...

'Have they gone?' said Wobbler.

'Not that they were here,' said Yo-less, the scien- tific thinker.

'They were here, and they've gone,' said Johnny.

'It definitely felt a bit weird,' said Bigmac. 'Very cold.'

'Let's get out of here,' said Johnny. 'I need to think. They want me to stop this place being built on.'

'How?'

Johnny led the way quickly towards the gates.

'Huh! They've left it up to me.'

'We'll help,' said Yo-less, promptly.

'Will we?' said Wobbler. 'I mean, Johnny's OK, but ... I mean ... it's meddlin' with the oc- cult. And your mum'11 go spare.'

'Yes, but if it's true then it's helping Chris- tian souls,' said Yo-less. 'That's all right. They are Christian souls, aren't they?'

'I think there's a Jewish part of the cemetery,' said Johnny.

'That's all right/Jewish is the same as Christian,' said Bigmac.

'Not exactly,' said Yo-less, very carefully. 'But similar.'

'Yeah, but ...' said Wobbler, awkwardly. 'I mean ... dead people and that ... I mean ... he can see 'em, so it's up to him ... I mean ...'

'We all supported Bigmac when he was in juv- enile court, didn't we?' said Yo-less.

'You said he was going to get hung,' said Wobbler. 'And I spent all morning doing that "Free the Blackbury One" poster.'

'It was a political crime,' said Bigmac.

'You stole the Minister of Education's car when he was opening the school,' said Yo-less.

'It wasn't stealing. I meant to give it back,' said Bigmac.

'You drove it into a wall. You couldn't even give it back on a shovel.'

'Oh, so it was my fault the brakes were faulty? I could have got badly hurt, right? I notice no- one worried about that. It was basically his fault, leaving cars around with Noddy locks and bad brakes—'

'I bet he doesn't have to repair his own brakes.'

'It's society's fault, then—'

'Anyway,' said Yo-less, 'we were behind you that time, right?'

'Wouldn't like to be in front of him,' said Wobbler.

'And we were right behind Wobbler when he got into trouble for complaining to the record shop about the messages from God he heard when he played Cliff Richard records backwards—'

'You said you heard it too,' said Wobbler. 'Hey, you said you heard it!'

' Only after you told me what it was,' said Yo-less. 'Before you told me what I was listening for, it just sounded like someone going ayip-ayeep-mwerpayeep.' 1

'They shouldn't do that sort of thing on records,'

1 But according to Wobbler it was really: 'Hey, kids! Go to school and get a good education! Listen to your parents! It's cool to go to church!'

said Wobbler defensively. 'Gettin' at impressionable minds.'

'The point I'm making,' said Yo-less, 'is that you've got to help your friends, right?' He turned to Johnny. 'Now, personally, I think you're very nearly totally disturbed and suffer- ing from psychosomatica and hearing voices and seeing delusions,' he said, 'and probably ought to be locked up in one of those white jackets with the stylish long sleeves. But that doesn't matter, 'cos we're friends.'

'I'm touched,'said Johnny.

'Probably,' said Wobbler, 'but we don't care, do we, guys?'

His mother was out, at her second job. Grandad was watching Video Whoopsy.

'Grandad?'

'Yes?'

'How famous was William Stickers?'

'Very famous. Very famous man,' said the old man, without looking around.

'I can't find him in the encyclopedia.'

'Very famous man, was William Stickers. Haha! Look, the man's just fallen off his bicycle! Right into the bush!'

Johnny took down the volume L-MIN, and was silent for a few minutes.

Grandad had a complete set of huge encyclopedias. No-one really knew why. Somewhere in 1950 or something, Grandad had said to himself, 'get educated', and had bought the massive books on hire purchase. He'd never

opened them. He'd just built a bookcase for them. Grandad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around, educa- tion leaked out, like radioactivity.

'How about Mrs Sylvia Liberty?'

'Who's she?'

'She was a suffragette, I think. Votes for women and things.'

'Never heard of her.'

'She's not in here under "Liberty" or "Suf- fragette".'

'Never heard of her. Whoa, look here, the cat's fallen in the pond—!'

'All right ... how about Mr Antonio Vicenti?'

'What? Old Tony Vicenti? What's he up to now?'

'Was he famous for anything?'

For a moment, Grandad's eyes left the TV screen and focused on the past instead.

'He ran a joke shop in Alma Street where the multi-storey car park is now. You could buy stink bombs and itchy-powder. And he used to do conjuring tricks at kids' parties when your mum was a girl.'

'Was he a famous man?'

'All the kids knew him. Only children's enter- tainer in these parts, see. They all knew his tricks. They used to shout out: "It's in your pocket!" And things like that. Alma Street. And Paradise Street, that was there, too. And Balaclava Ter- race. That's where I was born. Number Twelve,

Balaclava Terrace. All under the car park now. Oh, dear ... he's going to fall off that building ...'

'So he wasn't really famous. Not like really famous.'

'All the kids knew him. Prisoner of war in Germany, he was. But he escaped. And he mar- ried ... Ethel Plover, that's right. Never had any kids. Used to do conjuring tricks and escap- ing from things. Always escaping from things, he was.'

'He wore a carnation pinned to his coat,' said Johnny.

'That's right! Every day. Never saw him without one. Always very smart, he was. He used to be a conjuror. Haven't seen him around for years.'

'Grandad?'

'It's all changed around here now. I hardly see anywhere I recognize when I go into town these days. Someone told me they've pulled down the old boot factory.'

'You know that little transistor radio?' said Johnny.

'What little transistor radio?'

'The one you've got.'

'What about it?'

'You said it's too fiddly and not loud enough?'

'That's right.'

'Can I have it?'

'I thought you'd got one of those ghetto- blowers.'

'This is ... for some friends.'Johnny hesitated.

He was by nature an honest person, because apart from anything else, lying was always too complicated.

'They're quite old,' he added. 'And a bit shut in.'

'Oh, all right. You'll have to put some new batteries in — the old ones have gone all manky.'

'I've got some batteries.'

'You don't get proper wireless any more. We used to get oscillation when I was a boy. You never get it now. Hehe! There he goes - look, right through the ice—!'

Johnny went down to the cemetery before break- fast. The gates had been locked, but since there were holes all along the walls this didn't make a lot

of difference.

He'd bought a plastic bag for the radio and had sorted out some new batteries, after scraping out the chemical porridge that was all that was left of the old ones.

The cemetery was deserted. There wasn't a soul there, living or dead. But there was the silence, the big empty silence. If ears could make a noise, they'd sound like that silence.

Johnny tried to fill it.

'Um,' he said. 'Anyone there?'

A fox leapt up from behind one of the stones and scurried away into the undergrowth.

'Hello? It's me?'

The absence of the dead was scarier than see- ing them in the flesh - or at least, not in the flesh.

'I brought this radio. It's probably easier for you than newspapers. Um. I looked up radio in the encyclopedia and most of you ought to know what it is. Um. You twiddle the knobs and radio comes out. Um. So I'll just tuck it down behind Mr Vicenti's slab, all right? Then you can find out what's going on.'

He coughed.

'I ... I did some thinking last night, and ... and I thought maybe if people knew about all the ... famous ... people here, they'd be bound to leave it alone. I know it's not a very good idea,' he said, hopelessly, 'but it's the best I could come up with. I'm going to make a list of names. If you don't mind?'

He'd hoped Mr Vicenti would be about. He quite liked him. Perhaps it was because he hadn't been dead as long as the others. He seemed friendlier. Less stiff.

Johnny walked from gravestone to gravestone, noting down names. Some of the older stones were quite ornate, with fat cherubs on them. But one had a pair of football boots carved on it. He made a special note of the name:

STANLEY 'WRONG WAY' ROUNDWAY

1892-1936 The Last Whistle

He nearly missed the one under the trees. It had a flat stone in the grass, without even one of the ugly flower vases, and all it declared was that this

was the last resting place of Eric Grimm (1885- 1927)- No 'Just Resting', no 'Deeply Missed', not even 'Died', although probably he had. Johnny wrote the name down, anyway.

Mr Grimm waited until after Johnny had gone before he emerged, and glared after him.