Chapter 1: Goodbye, Darkness, My Old Friend

First chapter of A Ghoul Named Perry.

(2013)

Perry knew something was wrong when he woke up in a grave. His eyes flashed open. Darkness, everywhere. His breathing grew heavier as he turned his head from side to side, trying to see something in the darkness. There was nothing. Only shadows. Gasping, he raised his hands, forcing them up against the wood above him in a desperate attempt to free himself. This space was too enclosed, too claustrophobic. He felt panic rising in him like vomit, threatening to spill all over this old, worn coffin. He didn't have a weapon. There was no way he could escape with his bare hands; he'd be trapped forever, breathing but not living, dead but alive. He wasn't human; he could just feel it. Something had shifted in his soul, changed in his bones. He wasn't Perry anymore. He was a shell. And he wasn't supposed to be alive.

Out. I have to get out. Nothing else mattered: the crisis of what he was could wait for another time. The decades he'd spent down here in the darkness fell apart to nothing. Faces melted; places changed. He just had to survive.

He couldn't hold off the panicking for much longer. A scream rose in his throat, but he couldn't make noise, couldn't speak. His hands curled into fists, beating against the wooden ceiling over and over again, until he could feel blood trickling down his knuckles. Blood. Not blood. Water? Sweat? He gasped and heaved, pressing his hands against his face for a moment. He had to be calm. Had to be sensible. How would he free himself if all he could do was freak out? Perry breathed into his hands, trying to remember what he'd been told in the dead land. Breathe in for four seconds. Hold for eight. Release for seven. He continued doing this until his breathing regulated again, and then came the second attempt.

Another punch. Another push. Another hit. The lid wouldn't budge. It wasn't too surprising. If he was six feet underground, there was no way in hell he'd have the strength to push all of that weight off him. He needed something else. Another tactic. Something clever.

You won't survive, he heard the ghosts hiss. You have to use your strength. All of it; every ounce. The human body is capable of crushing bone. Stop holding yourself back.

Yes. He had to stop panicking, but he also had to stop rationalising this. This was not rational. He'd been buried underground. He'd died. He could still feel the knife buried in his mouth, could still feel it butchering his tongue. The blood came back. Filled his mouth. No escape.

He wasn't going to give up now; anxiety would not allow him rest. Perry forced his body to the side, wriggling as much as the coffin would allow. It was too shallow for kicking, but perhaps if he just managed to turn, he'd be able to push up against the lid of the coffin. It was a stretch, but he had nothing else. No other solution. It was this or nothing.

He continued to wriggle, ignoring the burning sensation in his muscles. He wasn't used to moving; not after years, perhaps decades, of passiveness. It would take a miracle for this to work.

And yet, he managed it. He turned, twisted on his side. The lid bit into his shoulder, pressing down hard on his skin and bones. He could feel it scraping, and realised with a start that this would probably give him yet another scar. Hissing with effort and pain, Perry forced himself to make the full turn, until he was lying on his stomach in the shallow, claustrophobic coffin. There. He'd made it.

He took a moment to catch his breath, turning his head to one side so that he could breathe. There was barely any air in this coffin, and so it was more difficult than he'd imagined. He was inhaling must and decay, allowing the rotting air to burrow itself into his lungs. It hardly mattered. He'd already died once; did further problems matter?

Perry forced his hands to ball into fists against the base of the coffin, ignoring the pain in his arms as they were trapped under his full weight, and the weight of six feet of dirt. He forced his weight up, using his whole body to fight against the lid of the coffin, against the dirt. He was immediately flattened again, panting like a dehydrated dog. He couldn't get up. He couldn't do it. There was six feet of mud, compacted in the years it had aged, locking him in this coffin. What else could he do? Was he going to be trapped here for eternity, trapped in death whilst living?

Suddenly, a change. Perry heard a strange noise, almost like a giant boulder being thrown into a building. Another gasp escaped him, and he covered his ears with his shaking hands. The noise lasted for what seemed like an eternity, but was, in reality, ten seconds.

Something in the atmosphere changed. Perry couldn't breathe air, but his surroundings seemed less claustrophobic, as though a huge weight had been lifted.

A huge weight.

He lifted himself up on his hands, trying again. To his amazement, the lid above him gave way. It was opening. The lid of his coffin was opening and he'd escaped.

Mud and dirt flooded his face, invading his nostrils and mouth and eyes. He shrieked in surprise, quickly closed his lips and eyes against the onslaught. Once the mud had finished invading the coffin, Perry forced himself to stand in spite of his aching body, gazing at his way to freedom with dark, doubtful eyes. Six feet. He was only a little bit taller; it would be quite difficult to climb out of his grave. He was a statue. His body was so stiff, he could barely twitch his fingers, let alone climb up six feet. The sky was filled with darkness, but the sight of the moon and stars staring down at him was enough to render him speechless. How different it was to the dead land. How eerie.

Perry gritted his teeth and closed the coffin so that he could stand on top. He wasn't used to using his body anymore; it felt odd and alien, like he was in someone else's skin. He hadn't moved for so long. Hadn't breathed. Once he'd climbed on top of the coffin, he took a few breaths of the cool night air, his chest heaving as he tried to ignore the poisonous exhaustion seeping into his bones. So tired. So, so tired. Perry looked down at his hands, amazed to see them shaking so violently. Amazed to see that they were still hands. He'd been underground for years - he didn't even know how many. Surely his skin would have rotted off by now? But here it was, pale and sickly and covered in purple-black blotches, but otherwise normal. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. His head ached.

Once he'd caught his breath, Perry began to climb. His hands did not obey his mind's commands, and it took him a while to come to grips with the handholds in the dirt around him. He pushed himself up. Grabbed the stones. Felt around the dirt wall for a place to hold his hands and feet. Up, up, up. His hand slipped, his foot slipped, and he fell back onto the coffin. Gasping. Winded. Perry closed his eyes against the spray of dirt in his face, opened them again, standing back up. He would get up. He would get out of this grave.

It took seven attempts for Perry to get out of the ground. In the comic books, they made grave-digging, and crawling out of graves, look easy. In reality, he felt like he would never be able to breathe properly again.

By the time he'd finally managed to push himself up into the outside world, Perry couldn't move a single muscle. He allowed his body to fall, allowed the grassy ground to catch him. It was frosted and cool against his back; idly, he realised that it was probably winter. He lay there in the grass, in the ground of a graveyard, and stared up at the stars. There was a particularly bright one just below the moon. Perhaps it was a planet. Venus. Mars. Or maybe it was just a bright star.

There was a woman standing close by. Tall, in a purple blouse, black jeans and tall boots. She was beautiful, with her cheekbones high and prominent and her eyes slanted, glinting like a fox's. She had a shovel pushed into the dirt, and leaned on it without a care in the world, spare hand low in her pocket.

“You all right?” she said.

Perry stared harder. He wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to react, or what he was supposed to do. He opened his mouth, closed it again. He frowned. “What?”

His voice was hoarse and husky. Speaking was an odd sensation after so long in silence. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. He didn't like it. Everything felt so different already, and he'd only been awake for a few hours, fighting against the weight of the dirt.

"I said, 'you all right?',” she repeated. “I'm assuming this isn't a normal Tuesday for you."

He stared at her, as blank a colourless piece of paper. Any and all thoughts had abandoned his mind. He had to crane his neck to look at her, but his gaze was sceptical.

Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own. “How?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You'll have to be a little bit more specific than that, darling. How do we exist? How do we live? How will the world end?”

He blinked. Slow, bleary. He could barely understand a word she said.

“Uh...” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” she answered. Which made no sense.

He continued to stare at her like she was an alien from outer space, and at this point, it wouldn't surprise him if she was. She stared back at him with a permanent smirk on her face. She looked like some sort of ancient queen, standing above him like that. A pharaoh, perhaps. He was staring up at a Cleopatra lookalike.

Then she said, in the same, grandstanding voice:

“I don't know how, darling. I just heard scrabbling underground, and tried to help. So here I am.” She peered at him, frowning slightly. “So. As insane as it sounds, I assume you, my dear boy, are a ghoul."

“A ghoul?” he repeated blankly.

“A ghoul,” she agreed. “Y'know. You were either buried alive and somehow managed to stay alive for long enough to claw your way out of the dirt, or you're a ghoul. It's one or the other. So which is it? Did you die?”

He struggled to remember. He wondered what a ghoul was.

“Yes,” answered Perry. “I...I was...stabbed. Someone tried to stab me in the chest, but something...something happened. And they stabbed me in the mouth instead. They didn't mean to, but...”

Perry lifted his head, pointing to the scars on his mouth and chin. He could still remember the sensations; the pain. The weight of his killer, bearing down on him as the murderer straddled his sleeping body. It wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to remember. In the dead land, he'd been told to forget.

Dwelling on death is never good for the living, Scilti had said. Live. Love. Forget.

So he'd forgotten. The memory had faded into nothing, and his dead life had become the dead land, with all its blue hues and sad wanderers. Now, however, he had nothing but death to focus on.

“Ouch. Looks like it hurt,” the woman observed. “I've never died myself, but it doesn't seem like much of a pleasant experience."

Perry didn't reply. How could he?

The woman cleared her throat. "My dear, I hate to bring it up, but...your grave says 1940-1958.”

“Yes,” he nodded.

“1958,” she said again. The emphasis she put on the year made him frown. “Darling, you've been dead for fifty-five years.”

He felt dizzy. Sick. Tired. He wanted to go back to sleep and pretend none of this had happened. Instead, he sat up from the floor, gazing at his grave with eyes larger than the moon hanging so high in the blackness. The stranger was right, as he knew she was; he'd died in 1958. His grave defined him:

Percival Gideon Azur

Beloved Son and Friend

1940-1958

That was all he'd been allowed to be. Percival Gideon Azur, the son of a mother. If he'd lived longer, would he have been different? A lover? A father? Perhaps even a brother; his mother had been very young when she'd had him. But no. Perry was a son, nothing more. A dead, beloved son. And he could have been so much more.

“Hey.” The woman's voice grew gentler as she watched him stare, his lips parted in a soft, silent scream. Despite all the grandstanding, she apparently recognised pain. “It's OK. You'll be OK. Do you have anyone you can go to? Anyone who might still be alive?”

Slowly, he shook his head. “Ma was all I had."

Would she be alive? Would she even remember him if she was?

The woman bit her lip, looking around her as though waiting for someone to appear and give her some advice. No one did. The woman removed her hands from her pockets, extending one towards him. “Stand up, poppet. Let's get that dirt off you, shall we?”

He was silent as she helped him stand. Silent as she brushed the mud from his dire, black suit. Perry didn't speak or move as the woman smiled brightly. A valiant attempt, he supposed, at making him feel better. But it didn't work like that. He was in another century. It hurt so much he couldn't breathe, and yet, breathing was the very reason he was experiencing this. If he'd taken that last breath in 1958 and stuck with it, he wouldn't have to go through another century. But he hadn't. He'd woken up again, and here he was. Living. Breathing. He wondered whether anyone he knew was still alive.

A surge of bitterness appeared in his heart. He should be decaying. And he wasn't. Why wasn't he a rotten corpse? Why wasn't he one of the zombies in one of Christopher's stupid, wonderful comic books?

The woman reached out to squeeze his shoulder. She wore so many rings on her fingers; he was slightly surprised that she wasn't being dragged off by every magnet in the world.

“If it's been...if it's been fifty-five years...” He spoke slowly. His brain felt like broken clockwork; the hours and minutes were broken, and he was left with nothing but a confusion of springs. It had been fifty-five years. He was a broken doll, thrown this way and that, abused in the mouths of dogs. He couldn't think properly. He didn't understand.

“If it's been fifty-five years,” he repeated, “that would make it 2013.”

“That's right,” the woman confirmed, nodding her head. “At least you remember basic maths.”

“2013,” he breathed. He wanted to scream, but screaming wasn't practical. He needed to be practical. Still: the idea of screaming was attractively hysteric. “Fifty-five years.” He stared at the woman, wide-eyed. “My family.”

He thought of his mother. He thought of Tobias. He thought of Christopher.

They couldn't all be dead, but surely they were all old? They'd all lived their lives. Without him. Was he alone now? He wanted to go back to sleep. Wanted to hide in the dead land. Wanted to hear the reassuring tones of Scilti's voice.

“I'm sorry,” said the woman. And she sounded sorry. She sounded like someone who understood.

“What do I do now?” Perry whispered. His breath formed in the air. His fingers were frozen. “I have nowhere to go.”

She nodded as though she knew this would be a problem, and raised a perfect eyebrow at him. “Well, hey. I've got room in my apartment. You can stay there until you find somewhere else.”

He stared at her. “Really? Just like that?” he asked.

She shrugged. The hands were back in the pockets again. “Why not? I've been looking for a new room-mate. My last one stole my tortoise. I turned her into a rat. It was a good time.”

“I don't even know you,” he protested, frowning as he realised what she'd said. “Wait. You turned her into a rat?”

She bowed, with all the flamboyance of a terrible magician. Her arms spread as though she was preparing to take flight, and she leaned so far down her nose was almost touching the floor. Perry just stared at her, astonished. He'd seen nothing like this before; nothing like her. She was quite frightening, in her own, manic way.

“The Great Witch, Jarvia Knot, at your service,” she said, in the most dramatic voice she'd used all evening. Which was saying something. He'd never heard someone so booming before.

He was also fairly certain she'd just called herself a witch, but he had dirt in his ears, so it was probably just his imagination.

Jarvia Knot straightened up, flashing him an eyeliner wink. “You may call me Jarvia the Magnificent, or Jarvia the Bold, or Jarvia the Supremely Awesome Witch.”

“How about just Jarvia?” he offered.

“Just Jarvia works, too,” she grinned. “So what do you say, ghoulie? You've got nowhere to go; I've got a room. It's a pretty damned perfect arrangement, if you ask me. I'm the last surviving witch in the world, and you're the first ghoul I've seen for a couple of centuries. Maybe it's better that we stick together.”

He stared at her, feeling slightly dubious. On one hand, Jarvia Knot was a stranger who was definitely on the mad side. On the other, Perry really did have nowhere else to go. She'd called herself a witch again, he realised.

"If I come to live with you," he said cautiously, "I'll need to know why you keep calling yourself a witch."

Jarvia smiled as though this amused her, leaning back on the spade. "Because I'm a witch. Why else?"

For a moment, Perry simply stared. Then, as the meaning of the words dawned on him, he murmured, “But witches...don't exist.”

"We don't?" Jarvia challenged. Her eyes were all too knowing, all too ancient. "Then how do you think you got out of that grave?"

He couldn't help blinking, staring at her in bewilderment. Of course. The noise. The feeling of a change, as though a huge weight had been lifted from atop the grave. How else had he managed to open the lid of his coffin? How else had he managed to escape?

"That was you?" he asked.

"Naturally," she replied. "You've just crawled out of your own grave like a zombie in a TV programme, kid. I wouldn't spend too much time doubting the existence of witches if I were you."

She had a point. He'd turned into a ghoul, and he was questioning witchcraft. Now that she'd put it that way, it did sound like rather a stupid reaction.

He sighed. There was no point in being indecisive. He knew what he wanted. She knew, too. It was better to get it over with now, before she changed her mind.

“Fine,” he said. “I'll stay with you. I don't really have any other choice, do I?”

Jarvia smiled at him. It was a genuine smile, though her eyes had a strange, unreadable emotion in them. “You can pay rent through labour. I need some help with my job. You look like you could be a helping hand.”

He frowned. Perhaps her words should have unsettled him, but they didn’t. There was something about her that made him think she only ever said what she meant. “What would this 'helping' entail?” he asked.

“Oh, you know,” she waved a hand. “Nothing too serious. Nothing involving blood sacrifice, so I wouldn't worry about that, if that's what you were thinking.”

“It wasn't,” said Perry.

“Wonderful. Then we should get on marvellously, don't you think?” She paused, raising an eyebrow. “It's nice to meet you, Percival.”

“Perry,” he corrected. “My name is Perry. I hate ‘Percival’. It sounds stupid.”

She shook his hand, grinning. “Then it's nice to meet you, Perry. Welcome to the twenty-first century."

Author's Note

You wouldn't believe the amount of times I had to rewrite that coffin scene to get it to work. Who knew getting a ghoul to climb out of his grave was so difficult?