THE BOY FROM THE PAST (1)

A sort story in more than one part that begins in a graveyard...

There was a dark silence in the graveyard when Timmy and Lorna crept in, both aware that sometimes nasty things happen in the land of the dead because they’d been warned umpteen times by anxious parents keen on protecting their offspring from harm.

But they weren’t that young any longer, no longer thought of themselves as children, and so the warnings didn’t apply to them at their age.

“I’m ready if you are,” whispered Timmy who, deep inside, was far from sure that he was ready.

“All right,” hissed Lorna back to him, “but go quietly. I want to be alive for my next birthday!”

“Fourteen,” grinned Timmy, suddenly relaxing, “I’m almost fourteen too.”

The graveyard gate squealed as he pushed it.

“Shush!” whispered Lorna.

“It’s not me. It’s the gate. We should have thought of that and brought some oil with us,” breathed Timmy, “now stick by me and we’ll be safe.”

Once inside the gate he crouched low because making himself look as small as possible seemed the most sensible thing to do seeing as they were passing gravestones out of which all manner of spirits of the dead might spring out and jump onto them. Best to take precautions, he thought, best to do our best to be as invisible as possible.

The night was getting cooler, it seemed by the moment, and the breeze that had been teasing them soon became a cold wind, the sort that ruffled Lorna’s hair and made Timmy began to wish that he’d put his jeans on instead of the shorts he had been wearing all day.

“You know the kid we all call Knocker?” asked Lorna quietly when they paused by large and ancient gravestone, “you know the boy everyone used to call Fatty until we were told off about it?”

“I wish I didn’t know of him,” replied Timmy, “besides being overweight he’s a bully and with that belly of his his weight can come keen!”

“Well, he reckons I’m his girlfriend,” Lorna told him, testing him for a reply.

“Does he invite you into midnight graveyards?” asked Timmy.

“As if!” replied the girl.

“Well, I do,” grinned Timmy

“Then Knocker’s no boyfriend of mine and I’m no girlfriend of his!”

“You know, you’re the only girl I really know,” sighed Timmy, “none of the others like me, at least I don’t think they do.”

“Poor you, then. But I’m with you now, aren’t I? And look here on this gravestone. Albert Marlowe died in 1827, and look, “aged thirteen, born 1814. So thirteen. That’s our age.”

“He must have come from a wealthy family,” sighed Lorna, “this memorial must have cost the Earth.”

“We were told in history a few weeks ago that back then not so many people grew to be old,” Timmy told her, “there were diseases that mean nothing today, and yet kids died of them. And poorer people, they often didn’t always get the right food to keep them healthy.”

Before Lorna could open her mouth and speak there was a vibration of the large gravestone they had been looking at, accompanied by an almost inaudible humming sound, making them both suddenly wish they were anywhere but in the graveyard.

“Let’s go,” whispered Timmy, “there’s something on the telly that I want to watch.”

“What’s a telly…” That wasn’t Lorna though both children wished it was, but the hollow sound, whispered maybe, or breathed barely audibly, seemed to come from the Earth itself.

“What?” gasped Timmy, “was that you?” he asked her, knowing it wasn’t because the voice was all wrong.

“Are you messing about?” she asked him.

“Help me…” This time it was clear that neither of them was making a sound.

Timmy had had enough. He hated being spooked at night in such an eerie place as a graveyard reputed to be haunted. “Who’s pratting about?” he demanded of the trembling air, and Lorna jumped.

“Not so loud, Timmy!” she begged.

“I bet you it’s that lump of a Knocker Pritchard!” decided Timmy for no better reason that because he had no idea what or who might be trying to scare them.

“It’s not his voice,” whispered Lorna, “come on, Timmy, let’s get out of here! I’m scared.”

“Okay,” replied the boy, who was equally frightened.

“Stay where you are. I want to see you,” crackled from nowhere through the air.

Then, as if it was subject to a huge force from below, the gravestone telling that the child Albert Marlowe rested beneath it began moving, at first sliding from side to side and then toppling back until it would have been resting on Lorna’s back had she not scrambled aside in time.

“Come on!” urged Timmy.

“I’m with you…” But that wasn’t Lorna assuring him but the croaking hollow voice that had suddenly become louder.

With a crash the gravestone finally fell back and neither teenager dared look to see if its movement had revealed anything, because if it had they knew it would be heart-stoppingly scary.

Instead, Timmy grabbed Lorna by one hand and pulled her after him and started to run for the graveyard gate. But he had only taken half a dozen paces when he pulled up sharply because a form, at first just a shaped darkening of the night air and then something more substantial and shaped like a person loomed up in front of him.

“What is it?” whispered a frightened Lorna, seeing what he had seen.

“A boy,” replied Timmy, and then, fearfully, “A dead boy, a skeleton…”

“You said telly,” moaned the figure, “what is telly?”

“Never mind,” replied Timmy.

“Try to tell him, Timmy,” whispered Lorna. “It might be, you know, all he wants to know.”

“A picture machine, then, that tells stories…” Timmy struggled to find an adequate explanation to define the complex machine they had at home.

“Then I want telly…” moaned the figure, “I want stories.”

“Then come with us,” Lorna told it, “and don’t get in the way or maybe you’ll never find out what you want to know.”

“Are you sure, Lorn?” asked Timmy.

She might have smiled at him, but it was too dark for him to see. “I think I am,” she replied. “Come on, what’s your name, Knocker is it?”

“Me? Call me Albert. Yes, you can call me Albert…”

“Are you dead then?” asked Lorna inquisitively.

“Say not that!” snapped the shape of a boy, “now guide me! To telly!”

Holding Lorna firmly by one hand till she almost pulled away from him, Timmy retraced their way all the way to the graveyard gate and pushed it, making it squeak again, open.

“This way,” he said,”this is the way to my home and our television set.”

“I cannot…” Suddenly the boy who called himself Arthur, pulled up.

“You cannot what?” asked Timmy, “it’s just down this road. In my home, and with a bit of luck my parents will be out, at the pub.”

“No,” insisted Arthur, “you must bring telly to me! And show me stories.”

“It needs to be plugged in,” replied Timmy, “into the mains, and it needs the Internet. Or you wouldn’t be able to see anything.”

“What is all this nonsense? Mains? Internet? I don’t understand.”

“Arthur,” said Lorna with what she hoped was a friendly smile, “on your tombstone it said you died in 1827, was it? And things have changed since then, because this year is 2024. Clever men ad women have made discoveries and invented all sorts of things, and if it’s almost two hundred years since you passed, so you must understand that a lot will have been done that you will never understand.”

“Show me,” demanded Arthur, “I will come.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

© Peter Rogerson 20.11.24