Page 22 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
That night, for some reason, Orla and Jason were both twitchy aboutletting me go off on my own, even though I did this sort of thing all the time and was not at all afraid. I had to be quite firm about needing to be alone.
After all, nothinglivingwould harm me in Westery, and the dead couldn’t.
I left the Batmobile outside my cottage in Graveyard Lane, resisting the urge to go in and check for phone messages, which wasn’t really ahugetemptation when youlived in the central one in a row of three, like the filling in a dubious sandwich.
On one side of me Mrs Bridges had her TV switched on full-volume between the hours of 7 a.m. and midnight, sending me subliminal messages through the party wall that I didn’t want to hear; and on the other side, of course, lived the Fowkeses with their possessed baby, Birdsong.
They call her Birdie, which mightbe all right for a tiny tot, but could be a bit sick-making when she’s adult, I fear.
Shots from number one and squalling from number three slowly faded behind me as I strode down the lane, warmly wrapped against the chilly breeze in my cape with its quilted mauve satin lining.
I was not at all nervous of the living, for the road to the graveyard was a dead end and so not much frequented atnight, and since Westery was a very small place, what youths there were preferred the dubious nightspots of the nearest large town. I’d always felt perfectly safe walking the lanes in the middle of the night, waiting for the chill awareness of the undead to strike, as it always did.
Orla thought I was going to fall prey to some mad rapist cruising the lanes looking for a victim, but I didn’tthink they cruised the lanes looking for extremely pissed-off vampires.
Down the high-hedged lane the small and isolatedgraveyard sat in its very own Foggy Hollow, giving it on the right night that classically spooky effect. But unfortunately that night was clear and crisp and even, and I didn’t even need my little torch once I was out of the lane because the moon was werewolf full. The metalgate groaned under my hand, and the gravestones all cast dark, hunched shadows.
I paced about the gravelled paths for a while …the gravel beneath her feet grated like broken teeth… under the inscrutable gaze of angels, and accompanied by the sobbing, guilty shade of Keturah, distraught at having failed her lover, Sylvanus.
She hadn’t truly believed black magic could bring him back, nor deepdown had she wanted it to, for she’d been mortally afraid of what form her dead lover would take. No wonder, then, that she cast herself on to the freshly dug earth of his grave in a frenzy of guilt and remorse!
And her lover, Sylvanus? How would he be feeling? (Apart from dead.)
If he did manage to come back in some form without her help, wouldn’t he be seriously cheesed-off with Keturah forfailing him? Especially, perhaps, if he had been called back by another, whose yearning for him was greater than hers?
Come to that, he’d probably be feeling pretty much as I did about Max just then.
Finding I was starting to empathize with Sylvanus more than Keturah, which wouldn’t do in the least at this point, I plunged suddenly off the path and cast myself full length over the newly soddedgrave of Isaiah Kettlewell.
How surprised (but not displeased) he would have been had he been able to appreciate it, the old rogue!
Turf had been jigsawed back over the mound so I couldn’t dig my fingers into the soil like Keturah, but actually the image of those other fingers coming up between the sods to close on her as she lay there was much, much better …
Then something cold squirmed undermycheek and dragging fingers closed on my shoulder.
‘Eeee-yaargh!’ I screeched, wrenching free with one mighty bound and leaping away in an acrobatic manner I hadn’t realized was in me, except in my nightmares.
As I was about to hurdle the nearest gravestone a familiar voice stopped me in my tracks: ‘It’s only me, Cass,’ Jason said apologetically.
He uncurled his long body from a gravesidecrouch. ‘I followed you to make sure you were all right, but I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
‘Frighten me? I nearly died when you touched me, you imbecile! My heart stopped beating. Three million brain cells ceased to exist. The shock could have—’
I stopped, illumination suddenly dawning. ‘Of course! That’s what would have happened!’
‘What would have?’ said Jason, puzzled. ‘When?’
‘Keturahwould probably have passed out from the shock, if not died of fear on the spot. She’s such a weak-spined creature.’
‘Look, Cass, just who is this Keturah?’ demanded Jason. ‘And why were you lying on Isaiah’s grave? I hadn’t realized you were so fond of the old villain!’
‘Keturah is thelivingmain character of my new novel,Lover, Come Back to Me.’
‘Appropriate title, with Max going off likethat, isn’t it?’ he quipped unfeelingly, and I glowered at him.
‘No, it isn’t. And although I quite liked Isaiah, I was just using his grave to get the feel of what it would be like to—’
I didn’t finish the sentence, since Jason was looking at me with puzzled affection, like a large, friendly, but not terribly bright dog.
