A Case of Grave Danger. Sophie Cleverly

an answer to my burning questions.

      It was time to move on – I needed to keep going. I could see Bones running on ahead, investigating the graves as he passed. I decided I would loop back on myself once I got to the far hedgerow (I longed for my bed already), but I soon realised I was getting nearer to the spot where the blond boy was to be buried.

      Bones stopped at the graveside, where the freshly dug hole gaped like the mouth of Hell. Then I really could hear something. A moaning sound that seemed as though it were coming from the grave.

      I was near paralysed with fear. Bones hung close to my leg, and I felt his skin rumbling as he growled.

      Slowly, I dangled the lantern and peered in.

      The grave was empty. Nothing but a muddy hole, rapidly filling with rainwater.

      The sound reached my ears this time. It was definitely someone moaning. I bit my lip so hard that I could taste blood.

      ‘H-hello?’ I called into the night. ‘Is someone there?’ I blinked in the rain, in the flickering glow of the candlelight.

      Something moved behind one of the gravestones. A shadow, shuffling, ungainly.

      Watch out, one of the ghostly voices whispered on the breeze.

      I gasped, and Bones barked into the wind. The shadow moved nearer, pushing through the grass. I stayed frozen, held out the lantern like a shield. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see what was approaching, but I had no choice.

      A figure lurched into the light, and I caught a strangled breath in my throat.

      There, standing before me, was the blond boy. The boy who was supposed to be dead.

      I screamed.

      

      ou’re ALIVE!’ I gasped.

      Alive, the deathly voices around me echoed in whispers. Not one of us. This would be the talk of the graveyard now.

      The blond boy was dressed in funeral finery, the best that could be put together for a pauper from the tailor’s cast-offs, but even so – his face was as pale as the moon above us, a sliver of it peeking through the dark clouds. He was soaked with rain, dishevelled and muddy, his hair sticking up at strange angles. His skin was ashen, his eyes sunken and hollow, blinking in the light.

      I finally caught my breath again. ‘Are you all right?’

      The boy stumbled towards me, and I jerked backwards. Bones barked again, a warning.

      The boy opened his mouth, as if not quite sure how it worked. He rubbed a hand against the back of his head. ‘Where … am I?’ he asked, the words coming slowly like they were rising up through treacle.

      I shushed Bones and held on to his collar. ‘You’re in the graveyard,’ I said. ‘Um, well, Seven Gates Cemetery, to be precise.’ I realised that I was going to have to step a little nearer, but my legs were fighting against me. I ignored them and moved closer to the boy so he could hear me.

      ‘Are you a ghost? Am I … dead?’ the blond boy asked, his dark eyes wide with terror.

      I paused, a little taken aback by his humanity. Perhaps he wasn’t some terrifying creature of the night after all.

      ‘I’m certainly not a ghost!’ I said. ‘Ghosts are more …’ I looked down at myself. ‘See-through. And you certainly don’t look dead,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, you seem rather upright.’

      The boy suddenly stumbled sideways, falling into the mud beside the grave. Bones pulled away from me and began to lick his face.

      ‘Violet! Violet! Are you there?’

      It was Father! I had never been so thankful in my entire life. ‘Father! Come quick, please!’

      He dashed through the darkness towards me, his hand shielding his eyes. ‘What on earth …’ he shouted as the water drummed on the stones around us. Bones pressed a wet nose against his trousers. My father was wearing nightclothes under an overcoat, like myself.

      I watched as Father slowly took in the sight before him – the pouring rain, his daughter looking like a drowned rat, and the blond boy slumped against a stone cross, chest heaving with the breath of life.

      ‘Oh my …’ Father said, as though hardly able to believe his own eyes. He looked at me desperately. ‘What’s going on here?’

      ‘I don’t know!’ I said breathlessly. ‘I heard a noise, so I went downstairs, and I found his coffin empty! The door was open, and there were footprints …’

      Father pulled me into his arms. There was a brief moment of warmth and shelter, before he released me. ‘You should have fetched me immediately! There could have been grave robbers about!’ His words were cut short as he looked at the boy again. I didn’t know how Father could see a thing – his spectacles were steamed up and splattered with rain. ‘How could this have happened?’ His face had gone as pale as the boy’s.

      The boy shook his head as if trying to regain his senses, and shivered in the cold. He looked up at us, and finally spoke again. ‘W-what’s … happened to me?’

      * * *

      The blond boy was dead. He had been dead. Hadn’t he? He’d been sent to us to be buried – I’d seen it with my own two eyes. And yet, whatever he had been, he was very much alive now and firmly back in the land of the living.

      Father held a shaking hand out to the boy. The boy took it, but it took several attempts to lift him up – his weakened legs kept buckling beneath him. When he was finally standing, he seemed to be capable of staying up. I wanted to take his hand so badly, to give him comfort in any way that I could, but Mother’s voice in the back of my head whispered that it would be improper.

      He moaned again, and tried to bat the light away.

      ‘He’s delirious,’ Father said.

      I gulped. ‘It’s all right,’ I said to the boy, trying my best to soothe his quick breaths. ‘Please, stay calm. We need to get you inside. Can you walk?’

      ‘I think so,’ he said, but his voice was barely a whisper, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d truly heard or only seen his lips move.

      Father tentatively put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘I’ll run for Doctor Lane. Violet will help you back to the house, if you can make it.’

      The boy nodded again, silently, and I couldn’t help but shudder. I knew he was alive, but at the same time still felt as though he were a dead man walking. Like Frankenstein’s monster.

      In the lamplight, I could see that he was covered with mud and damp grass. Bones gently licked him.

      Then Father was running, and Bones shot away after him with a sudden burst of greyhound speed. They darted through the headstones like minnow through a stream – they knew them as well as I did.

      The blond boy staggered again, and I ducked underneath his arm to try to bear him up. To heck with improper, I thought. He needs me. And I couldn’t keep calling him ‘the blond boy’. ‘What’s your name, master?’ I asked.

      ‘Oliver,’ he replied, and then he began coughing violently.

      When the coughing subsided, I spoke again. ‘Can you walk? We’ll need to get you back to the house. You’ll catch your de—’ I stopped myself. ‘Sorry.’

      He didn’t seem to notice my faux pas. He began to stumble forward, and together we walked back