Darren Shan - Procession of the dead

Not even remotely.

"But the grave," I said, desperately clinging to the only reality I could clearly remember. If I let the last year be stripped from me, I'd have no real sense of a past at all. "How do you explain the grave? How did I get out?"

"That's a problem. I think…" She began to smile. "No, it's not. You were on display in the coffin the night before the funeral. They closed the lid after the service but didn't tighten the screws. You must have gotten out during the night, stumbled out of the chapel unseen, staggered away, confused, lost. I don't know how you got out of town without being seen, how you walked with a broken neck, how you scraped by over the following months. But it explains things, Martin. It does." Her eyes were shining. She was excited. She thought she'd cracked it, that she could truly welcome me back now and pick up where we left off. But I wasn't convinced.

"Wouldn't the bearers have noticed the difference in the weight?"

"It was a heavy coffin," Dee said. "The bearers were young, your friends. Only one of them had ever carried a coffin before. They wouldn't have known about weights." Dee grew more confident with every word and I was beginning to think she was right. A dreamworld, a fantasy…

"The cemetery," I said. "Is it far from here?"

"A couple of miles."

"I want to go."

"To dig up the coffin?" She frowned. "I don't think we should dothat."

"Why not?"

"That's desecration. We could end up in prison. Besides, it's your grave. I don't think I could dig up-"

"But it's not." I clutched her hands. "If you're right, Dee-and I think you must be-that coffin's empty. We won't be doing anything wrong, digging up an empty grave."

"I'm not sure…" She was repulsed by the idea.

"It's the only way to be certain," I said. "When we prove that it's empty, we can deal with this. It'll have to be brought to the surface eventually-if we don't do it now, the police will when they find out I'm still alive. Let's beat them to the punch and use this time to prepare ourselves. Maybe I'll be able to trace my steps from there. It might jog my memory some more."

She hesitated before finally, reluctantly, nodding her head. "You're right. We have to." She looked out the window. "But we'd better wait till night. These things are easier when it's dark." As if she'd been grave-robbing all her life.

The more we discussed it, the more I warmed to Dee's theory. I'd lost control of my senses and dreamed my year in the city. Like that silly season of Dallas years ago, when they wrote off an entire season as a dream. But it had seemed so real. If I'd been prey to sporadic fits, slipping in and out of my constructed reality, like a schizophrenic coming apart at the seams…

But I could account for every day, every character, every meeting. It was a weird world, granted, and I'd acted strangely, but it had been as real as this one. No reality breakdowns. Not until today when the marks of my fight with The Cardinal faded.

I studied Dee, turning the theory on its head. Was she real? Maybe this place was the dream, a trick of the mind. Maybe The Cardinal had hit me harder than I'd thought. I could be lying on his carpet, playing out this scene in my mind as the Troops carted me away to finish the job. That's the trouble with picking at the threads of reality-the fabric tends to unravel and leave you floundering in a den of infinite threads, not one of which you can trust or cling to.

We spent the day exploring our past. Dee pulled out old photos of a young boy with my face, my parents, us as teenagers, my friends, shots of me in school as both student and teacher. I found touching helped me more than hearing and seeing. When I felt objects-sets of keys, trophies, diplomas, books-I remembered events and feelings associated with them. They reinforced the physical reality of this town, this house, this person-Martin Robinson.

"What if the coffin's not empty?" I asked.

"Don't think about it," Dee replied.

"I have to. What if it's occupied?"

She stopped sorting through albums. "It has to be empty," she said. "You can't be in two places at the same time. I don't buy any of that ghost or clone crap I was spouting earlier. You didn't die and weren't buried."

Her logic was faultless. "But if there-"

"Martin!" She slammed an album shut and glared. "Don't talk about it. It won't happen. Things are tense enough as they are. You'll drive us both mad if you keep this up. There'll be no body."

"I hope you're right," I muttered.

"Martin," she said firmly, "I can't be wrong."

We left for the graveyard at ten. The walk to the cemetery was nerve-wracking. The night was black as my memory. We walked apart at first, awkward around each other, not wanting to touch. But after half a mile we closed the gap, drawing warmth from the union. The shovels were heavy, growing heavier with each step. Our breath rose above us and mingled in the air, trailing in our wake. Owls hooted and small creatures scurried to the sides of the road.

We encountered no other people. We didn't expect to, not at this time of night, so close to the discotheque of the dead. Kids were in bed, parents were dozing in front of televisions, lovers were making the darkness their romantic own. Only vampires, werewolves and grave robbers were at large on a night like this.

"This reminds me of the walks we used to take," Dee said.

"We strolled out here? "

"No, silly. But we'd often walk around this time, when the weather was good. We liked the solitude, the feeling of being the only humans alive."

"Where we're going," I said, "we will be."

"Yes." It was a joke but she didn't laugh.

The gates were closed, cold metal barriers between the worlds of the living and the dead. Ornamental gargoyles adorned either post and I felt them glaring at us as we scaled the low wall to the side. We jumped into soggy earth which squelched under our shoes, and long wet grass which dampened the hems of our trousers and tickled our ankles unpleasantly, like the caressing fingers of the dead. Slugs were sliding slickly through the grass and every time I accidentally squelched one I shivered. My foot snagged on a stone and I half fell. My hands hit the ground and I snatched them back quickly from the chill earth. I wiped my palms on my trousers, over and over, but they didn't seem to warm or dry.

Dee's hand fell softly onto my shoulder and I jumped nervously. I turned and chastised her with a frown. She smiled weakly. "Sorry," she whispered. "Are you OK?"

I wiped my hands one last time. "I'm fine. Come on. Show me where it is."

We found one of the many crisscrossing gravel paths and slipped past monuments, headstones, statues. I had the sense that stone heads were swiveling slowly, following us. I heard rustling, though there were no bushes nearby. The clouds parted briefly and all manner of shadows leaped to life. I glanced at Dee. She was trembling but her face was grim and she barely paused before moving on.

"This is it." Dee stopped at an ordinary headstone. I could have made out the name and dates if I'd bent, but I didn't. Instead I rolled up my sleeves, spat on my hands and took hold of the shovel. I looked to Dee for approval. She was staring at the headstone. One of her hands reached toward it, but then she yanked it back. She saw I was waiting, let out a shallow breath and nodded.

I drove the shovel into the earth, wincing at the sound it made, the way the earth seemed to suck on the blade. There was resistance all the way. The top layer of soil had been hardened by the long, cold nights. Further down it was stony, the soil full of pebbles and shale. Dee dug with me. It was a joint venture. We said nothing, digging like silent drones. We uprooted worms, slugs and insects of darkness on our way down. They squirmed blindly in the sods we tossed into the air, their world uprooted. Some dropped back into the pit, falling on our hands, in our hair, slithering down our necks. As I shook them off I vowed I'd get cremated when my time arrived.