Marcus Sedgwick - The Book of Dead Days

Seventy-fifth. No.

But then, when Valerian had persisted, he had changed his mind. “Very well,” he had said. “Very well, I will waste your money. It will be expensive. I only make the best pieces of optical equipment.”

Seventy-sixth. No.

And so they had agreed, and Valerian had slogged away at that stupid act for another year until the camera was built. Kepler had called him delusional. Delusional? He’d be delusional himself, thought Valerian, if his time was running out. If something was coming for him he’d damn well be delusional too!

Seventy-seventh . No.

Valerian straightened and moved on to the next stone, beginning to doubt he was going about this the right way. He knew there had to be a better answer. But just as an idea came into his head, his attention was caught by something up ahead.

A light.

There was a weak light flickering in the darkness ahead of him.

“That boy can’t get anything right!” he cursed under his breath. “I told him to stick to the wall.”

Valerian plucked another candle from his pocket and lit it from the one he was holding. No tricks this time. Pushing the candle into the earth of number seventy-eight to mark his place, he strode off to see what his boy was up to.

As he approached the source of the light, his eyes widened with surprise.

“Well! Hello, Valerian,” said a high, cracked voice.

Valerian turned to run, but a blow to the back of his head had him out cold before he even hit the ground.

“What?” whispered Boy.

“What?” replied Willow.

“What did you say?” Boy asked.

“I didn’t say anything,” she said.

They were hunched over a grave. Yet another grave. They had been searching stone after stone, until the carved names had become a blur. Nowhere had there been a trace of anyone with a name even vaguely resembling that of Gad Beebe.

“What was that noise?”

“You’re imagining things,” said Willow, as much to convince herself as anything.

“Isn’t that an hour yet?” asked Boy.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it must be. Come on, let’s go back.”

“You are sure it’s an hour?” Boy asked. “I mean, we don’t want to-”

At that moment there was another noise, the click of metal on metal.

They froze.

“The candles!” Willow warned.

Boy blew the candles out. Utter blackness surrounded them. After a few moments they began to see a little as their eyes widened to catch as much light as possible. In the vague, gray shadow world, they suddenly both saw the same thing-a flicker of yellow light away to their left, in the heart of the cemetery.

“It must be Valerian,” said Willow.

“Why?”

“Well, who else would be out here?”

Boy didn’t want to even think about the answer to that question.

“Yes,” he said, “Come on. We may as well meet him there.”

They set off in the darkness and immediately Boy walked into a gravestone. The moonlight had vanished behind a bank of cloud, and with no light to guide them the gray stones were as good as invisible. He picked himself up, silently cursing Valerian.

“Boy!” whispered Willow. “Here’s the path. Come on. When you get your feet on it you can follow the stones.”

She was right. By the feel and the sound of the grit underfoot they made their way more quickly toward the light. Boy found that by looking straight ahead rather than at his feet, he could see the faint gray ghost of the path better.

As they got near, something started to worry Boy. “Willow?” he said quietly.

She ignored him.

“Willow?” He stopped in his tracks.

She turned.

“What is it now? I just want to go home.”

“I don’t think that’s Valerian.”

“Don’t be difficult,” she said. “Who else could it be?”

Her voice tailed off as she realized the implication of her words.

“And,” said Boy, “Valerian went that way.”

Willow couldn’t see the arm he waved in the darkness, but she understood.

For a long time they paused, uncertain what to do. The light was no more than a hundred feet away now and they could hear vague sounds coming to them across the stones.

“What if it is him?” Boy said.

“We’ll have to go and see,” Willow said.

Boy pulled a face in the darkness.

“All right,” he said, “but let’s be careful. Please.”

Getting down on their hands and knees, they crawled the rest of the way between them and the light, leaving the path and cutting across the rows.

Boy could feel the damp of the scraggy grass begin to soak through to his knees. His hands pushed into patches of mud, cold but not yet frozen, as it soon would be once the winter hardened.

After a few minutes he could no longer feel his fingers; a little further and his hands had gone numb.

Still they pressed on, and as they neared the light and sound they saw they were right to have been cautious. It was obvious even from a distance that they were not the only ones working in the cemetery that night.

They came to a large tomb, and decided to hide behind it. Peeping around the side of the grave, they had a clear view of an unholy scene.

Three men were hard at work in a grave. A small glass lantern propped against a gravestone illuminated the scene. The shadows it cast were long and grim. Around them lay various tools, and beside them a mound of earth spoil was piled onto a large sheet of canvas. There was a spare shovel and an iron bar with a hooked end. And there was a large canvas bag with a lump inside it-a large, disturbing lump.

“Grave-robbers!” whispered Willow in alarm.

Boy nodded.

There was no sign of Valerian.

“Come on,” said Boy.

Willow ignored him, trying to work out what was wrong with the scene.

The figures in front of them were shoveling earth back into the grave. It was obvious what was in the large sack next to them on the grass.

“Wait,” said Willow. “They’re going. Let’s wait.”

“Let’s just find Valerian and get out of here.”

“In a minute. Look, they’re going.”

It was true. The men worked fast and as soon as they had finished it took them no more than a second or two to gather their things, including the hideous bag, and leave. They swung away into the night, straight down the center path of the cemetery, as bold as could be.

“He never could keep his nose out,” said one. Boy and Willow started at the sound of his voice. It was high and wavered like that of a dying man.

Boy thought he heard another of them laugh.

Willow meanwhile was scampering over to the grave.

Horrified, Boy hesitated by the tomb, unsure if it was more dangerous to follow or to stay where he was. A glance behind at the yawning rows of death in the darkness convinced him to move.

He caught up with Willow where she crouched on the grass by the grave.

“Willow,” pleaded Boy, “come on. Please. Let’s just-”

“Look,” she said. “You would hardly notice they’d been here. A bit of loose soil, but then if it was a new one it would look like that anyway.”

She nodded at the fresh grave.

“Boy,” she said, “what was wrong with what you just saw?”

Boy frowned at her, but it was wasted in the darkness.

“Apart from the fact they just stole somebody?” he asked, sarcastically.

“Exactly!” she said. “They stole somebody. Well?”

Boy shook his head and looked around, expecting the grave-robbers to return at any moment. He noticed a sickly light in the sky. It was still a fair time until dawn, but they could at least see more easily now.

“Look,” Willow said, “I’m not an expert on the ways of resurrection men, but why would they fill the grave back up once they’d taken the… you know?”