Graveyard Shift Page 14

  I looked at him none the wiser.

  “You’re still growing into the role, Ben,” he explained. “So much is happening around you, so many things you can’t explain. Things you haven’t learned to control yet. Don’t question it, don’t try to understand it, just try to accept what you’re becoming.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “One of us. Someone who tries to make a difference.”

  They didn’t wait around once we reached the ward. They had other calls to make, a short list of newly-departeds to visit inside the hospital. Watching them go, I puzzled over what Mr. October had said about my developing skills. Did he mean something else besides the gift of seeing?

  Mum came out of her treatment room fifteen minutes late. She looked sickly pale, worse than before she’d gone in.

  “A slight reaction to her medicine,” the nurse told me. “The first time’s always the worst. Also, she told me about your uncomfortable ride here, so I’ve arranged for a car to take you home. Shouldn’t be long.”

  I hope not, I thought. I was anxious to breathe fresh air outdoors, away from this place.

  “Sorry to keep you,” Mum said, as if it were her fault. “Were you bored waiting?”

  “Oh, you know, it wasn’t too bad.”

  We had to wait an hour for the driver, but then the ride took only ten minutes. Mum’s head bobbed like a toy dog’s in the backseat; she could barely keep her eyes open. She was tired enough to sleep for a week, she said when we got home. She ran a bath and later settled in the living room to watch Meet Joe Black on a movie channel.

  “After that ordeal, I’m in just the right mood for a good tearjerker,” she said.

  I brought tea and cookies and sat with her while the film began.

  “Is it OK if I go out?” I said. “I mean, I’ll stay if you want me to.”

  “I’m hunky-dory. Run along and get on with your life, darlin’.” She kicked off her slippers and spread herself out on the sofa. “Hospitals are no place to spend your Saturdays. I’m glad you came, but now you need to go and do your own thing.”

  Ten minutes into the film she was already half asleep. I watched her from the doorway, worried by how wiped out she looked. Whatever they’d given her at the hospital hadn’t seemed to do her much good.

  I slipped quietly away, heading down the stairwell and onto Middleton Road, ignoring the wall across the street. I didn’t need to look that way to know the cat was still watching.

  Over the next few days, most of my time with the Ministry was spent in receipts. My duties there were light relief after the hospital. There were occasional trips in the field with Mr. October, but I was getting used to the small dark space, just me and the candlelight and the telegraph machine.

  On slack nights, when the machine was quiet, I’d sit with my sketch pad, drawing the Mawbreed from memory, or I’d roll paper into the typewriter and tap out my thoughts.

  Sometimes I could go as long as an hour without the telegraph springing to life. When it did, I’d drop whatever I was doing, type up the names it spat out, then face the wrath of Miss Webster. Miss Webster was more cobwebbed every time I saw her, the records office continued to grow all around her, and the walks to her booth became longer and longer.

  At school, Raymond Blight kept his distance. Whenever I looked at him, he buried his hands deep in his pockets and turned away.

  It wasn’t just Raymond, either. Rumors about his injury had spread. There were mutters and whispers about me behind my back, and I saw something like fear in the eyes of most classmates I spoke to.

  But I still hadn’t fathomed what I’d done to Raymond that day; I wasn’t sure I’d done anything at all. It concerned me enough to ask Mr. October, who believed it was a sign of those “developing skills.” If it was a part of the gift, it scared me more than a little. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted a gift like that.

  Becky was different from the others, but even she seemed agitated when we went to the crypt on Wednesday.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. We were sitting on the outside wall with coffees in paper cups. “It’s like my first day all over again. It’s like being an outsider.”

  “You are an outsider, in case you haven’t noticed,” she said. “You’ll always be an outsider. It’s one thing putting Raymond in his place — who cares what you did, nobody likes him anyway — but it’s something else keeping secrets from your mates.”

  “What secrets?”

  “There you go again.” She frowned at the curb, scrunching up her dainty freckled nose. “It’s been a week and a half now. Ever since we spoke about you-know-what, you’ve been avoiding me.”

  “But I haven’t. You mean because I haven’t walked home with you since?”

  “It’s not about that.” She kicked her heel back against the wall in a steady rhythm. “OK, yes, it is. Not that I care, but you’ve always got some excuse, something you have to run off and do.”

  “I’m not lying about that.”

  “No, but you’re being very secretive about it.”

  It was true. I was, but only for Becky’s own good.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No need to be sorry. It’s just, I told you something important and secret that happened to me, but you . . . you’re all zippered up; you keep everything hidden away.”

  She set her coffee down on the wall and looked at me searchingly.

  “What are you involved in? Where do you go, Ben, every night after school?”

  I shuffled on the cold bricks, trapped in the glare of her spotlight.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Bull. You know that’s impossible. You have to be somewhere.”

  “I meant nowhere special.”

  “If you say so.”

  One thing I’d learned about Becky: She was like a terrier with a rag in its teeth when she got going — she didn’t know how to let go. But now she sat back, deflated.

  “Look,” I said, “it’s not because I don’t want to tell you. It’s because I don’t think I’m supposed to. It could be bad for both of us if I did.”

  She glared at the pavement, refusing to look at me. “What, so you’re working for the secret service now?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But something like it.”

  “Don’t be daft.”

  “Something secret,” she said. “Something life-or-death important.”

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “OK. Yes.”

  A light came on in her eyes. “See, I knew it! Just like I knew about the fire children. You’re not as good at hiding things as you think.”

  “I can’t say any more, though,” I said.

  “I’ll keep on at you till you cave in.”

  “Then I’ll have to get used to it. It’s like the third degree, talking to you.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you alone if you answer me just one thing. Does it have anything to do with the kids?”

  “Yes.”

  “And with what happened to Raymond Blight.”

  “That’s two things,” I said. “Let’s change the subject. What are you writing for English this week?”

  She rolled her eyes. “A ghost story. What does it matter? I’m trying to talk to you.”

  “It’s not easy, I know.”

  “You’re not easy. You’re bloody hard work, Ben Harvester. If I’m like the third degree, you’re like the Mona Lisa.”

  “I’m what?”

  “You know. That enigmatic smile, giving nothing away, keeping it all to yourself.”

  A silence fell between us. The bell across Mercy Road announced the end of break.

  “So what’s your ghost story about?” I said.

  Becky hopped off the wall, turned, and gave me a look. “Not telling. See how you like it,” she said.

  She snubbed me after school too, making a big show of chatting and laughing with her friends and not looking at me when I passed them at the bus stop. My punishment for not telling all.


  As I did every day now, I called home from a pay phone a few blocks up Mercy Road from the school. I had a cell buried away somewhere in my room, but lately I couldn’t afford to buy minutes. The phone booth shuddered around me as the school bus went past. I shoved in a coin and punched out the number.

  Mum answered on the third ring, sounding as if she’d just woken.

  “Nothing to worry about,” she said. “The nurse came to dress my arm an hour ago and it knocked the stuffing out of me. I’m over it now, but my arm looks like an Egyptian mummy’s.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need me there?”

  “No. Ellie’s here now. We’re looking through vacation brochures.”

  “Oh?”

  We both knew we couldn’t afford minutes for my phone, let alone vacations.

  “It’s like this,” Mum went on. “Ellie’s thinking of investing in a condo on Lanzarote. She’s brought holiday photos from the last time she went. I’ll show you when you get back. She says if she and Ross go ahead with this, we can visit any time for free. We only need to wait for a break in my treatment. Isn’t that great?”

  “Sounds good to me.” A change of climate would surely do her more good than the treatment had so far.

  “There’s something else,” Mum said, and then faltered. “Actually, it’s kind of a surprise. I’ll leave that until I see you.”

  “Good or bad surprise?”

  “A bit of both, I suppose. How long will you be?”

  “A few hours, probably. I’ll try not to be late.”

  “OK.” After a pause, she said, “I’m so glad you’re making friends now. Things are going to turn out fine, darlin’. You’ll see.”

  I felt a chill as I stood there with the warm telephone receiver pressed to my ear. A shadow flashed past the booth to my right, but there was no one nearby on the street when I turned to look.

  After hanging up, I leaned against the glass-paneled door, fighting the huge ball of pressure building in my chest. It took a minute to keep the sobbing at bay. It shouldn’t, but it upset me to hear her making future plans when neither of us knew how much of a future she had.

  How could she be so positive? How could she be so brave?

  The feeling passed. I shouldered the phone booth door open and stepped out. As I did, something flickered at the edge of my vision, a sudden movement farther down the street.

  No one there. No one who wanted to be spotted, at least.

  I set off for Islington at a jog, not looking back but certain I wasn’t alone. If the enemy had sent another agent after me, it would be wiser to keep to the streets, avoiding the canal’s quiet corners and dark bridges. Anything might happen down there.

  Rush hour was a while off, but the streets past Southgate Road were busy enough to help me relax. At Essex Road I checked behind me for the first time, but by then the follower could’ve been anywhere in the throng of people and traffic.

  Had I imagined someone there? Perhaps all I’d really seen from the corner of my eye was a bird flying by, or its shadow.

  I wished I could believe it, but nothing in my world seemed imaginary now. When I woke in the night with cold sweats, I wasn’t waking from dreams of imaginary monsters. These were dreams of the Deathhead stepping into the morgue, of the Mawbreed rising from McCready’s bed, and the last look on McCready’s face before it dragged him inside the room.

  Just because I couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I sprinted the rest of the way to Camden Passage, running to stay ahead of my fears, not slowing until I’d found the damp crevice between the walls and snaked through it again, passing from daylight into dark.

  No matter how often I came to the Ministry, that shift from day to dusk never failed to amaze me. A few short paces from daylight, Eventide Street stood secretly under the stars, its streetlamps bathing the cobblestones in amber.

  I moved indoors, flustered after the run. Upstairs, along the musty hallway, a dull light shone under the receipts office door. Before I could open the door wide enough to see inside, a small voice chirped, “Oh, hi, Ben. Won’t be a min. Just finishing my shift.”

  A petite girl dressed all in black hunched over the desk — my desk, as I’d started to think of it. She looked to be in her midteens and had pale alabaster skin and a wild maze of back-brushed black hair. She didn’t look up as I came inside, focusing all her attention on the card in the typewriter. Her typing, like mine, was basically two-fingered hunting and pecking. Next to the desk, the telegraph machine gave a worn-out sigh after pumping out another list of unfortunates.

  “Uh, hi,” I replied. “How do you know my name?”

  “Everyone knows your name around here,” she said. “You’re usually in about this time of day, aren’t you?”

  Finishing typing, she took out the card and compared it with the printed sheet. Satisfied that they matched, she sat back and smiled up at me. A kink in one of her eyes made her seem to be looking in two directions at once, left and right of me.

  “I’m Sukie,” she said. “Pleased to meetcha. I’ve heard lots about you, but we keep missing each other coming and going. I usually clock off before three.”

  I stared at my shoes, not quite able to meet her look.

  “Good to meet you too.”

  “Is it true what they say, that you saw a Mawbreed up close and lived?” she asked.

  “Not that close,” I said. “But close enough.”

  “Still, it’s astounding. Not many see them and survive to tell the tale. No surprise they’re calling you Wonder Boy around here.”

  I felt myself flush. “I didn’t actually do anything, though.”

  “Modest too. Well, whatever you say.”

  “I didn’t know we had to deal with things like that,” I said.

  “Well, the minute you take sides against them, the enemy are at you all the time. They’ll throw everything they’ve got at you. You’ll always have that feeling — better get used to it.”

  “What feeling?”

  “Of being followed, like just now.”

  I looked at her, surprised.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I must stop doing that, looking inside people’s minds. It’s intrusive and rude of me. But they tell me it’s a gift, so I can’t deny it.”

  “It must be hard, though, knowing what everyone’s thinking all the time.”

  “Tell you the truth, it gives me a headache,” Sukie said. “All those voices jabbering away at once. And if I’m ever anywhere near a demon, that’s the worst. They think thoughts I wouldn’t want to repeat. But then, I hear good thoughts too, like the ones you’re having about your mum. I’m sorry to hear she’s been ill. I hope she’ll be well.”

  There was something creepy but fascinating about this. “Can you tell me what else is on my mind?” I asked.

  Sukie answered without hesitation. “‘Creepy but fascinating . . . ’ and you’re also thinking of an address in Dartmouth Park — Spencer Rise, I think — but I can’t see the house number. Seems urgent. Am I right?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t know that address. Never been there.”

  “Oh.” She looked momentarily puzzled. “Then someone else is thinking it. I’ve got a fairly wide radius and pick up things from all over the place. It’s probably one of the girls in dispatch.”

  She rose from the desk, taking one of the two sets of typed cards. “Mr. October’s due in soon. Can you see he gets those?”

  “OK.”

  “Uh-oh, here comes another one. I’ll leave that to you, if you don’t mind.”

  The telegraph moaned and coughed out a solitary name.

  “Time to face the old dragon in records,” Sukie said from the door. “Nice talkin’, Ben, and apologies for reading your thoughts.”

  “That’s OK. They weren’t all mine.”

  She laughed and slipped away.

  After she’d gone, I took the printed sheet to the desk and sat down to type. Wonder Boy, I thought. Was that what they really call
ed me here?

  Rolling a card into the platen, I set to work.

  The next half hour went slowly. I stared at the telegraph, willing it to be still. Not that I minded the work, but as long as the machine kept quiet, the living kept living. I took paper from my backpack and fed it into the typewriter, then stared at the blank page a moment before typing:

  The first time I set eyes on Mr. October, he didn’t look like anything special.

  But first impressions weren’t everything, and I’d learned so much since this all began. In the receipts office I’d had plenty of time to think over what had taken place since we met, and now I wanted to record it — for myself, if no one else.

  I was on my third page when the telegraph drew breath, exhaled a jet of steam, and clattered into action. I snatched the sheet from the typewriter and put it away. As I did, the door flew open. The candle flame shuddered and nearly went out.

  “Ah, there you are,” Mr. October said, poking his head around the door. “How’s it going?”

  “Not bad. It’s been fairly quiet till now.”

  He glared at the working telegraph, blew air through his lips. “It’s bedlam out there today, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down soon.” He came over and perched on the edge of the desk. “My poor old aching dogs.”

  “Huh?”

  “Isn’t that slang for sore feet in your neck of the woods?”

  “Dunno about my neck of the woods. We haven’t been there long,” I said. “Though I did once hear Dad say ‘dog’s barking,’ and I had to ask what it meant. He said it meant the phone was ringing. Dog and bone, telephone; rhyming slang, you know? I’ve always remembered that.”

  Mr. October looked at me, nonplussed. “Never mind. I’ve been on my feet all day, that’s all. Three 6457S and a frankly bizarre 1312633. Hard to explain. Very complicated. So how’s my star apprentice today? Do you know what they’re calling you around the department now?”

  “Yeah, Sukie told me. Oh, and she asked to make sure you got those.”

  “Did she read your mind?” he asked, collecting the cards.

  “Mine and someone else’s, she didn’t know whose.”