The New Elizabeth Regina Comprehensive School was half a mile east of the village of Mistleton, on the Vicarage Road. Michael followed that half mile to the churchyard of St. Lucy's, at the eastern edge of which there was a traffic roundabout, where Mistleton High Street began. The High Street ran due westward from the roundabout, through the village, while the Vicarage Road veered on a long curve that turned it past the church and southward behind the Scotts' back garden. Because of the number of large lorries that travelled on the Vicarage Road, Michael was supposed to take the High Street past St. Lucy's to the top of Carriage House Row, the street where Michael lived. On days when Michael wanted to delay getting home, he would do as he should and take this route. On days when he was in a hurry, he would do what he did today, which was to cut through the churchyard of St. Lucy's.
Churchyards make many people uneasy, and St. Lucy's was a good example why.
In summer it was gloomy as winter, in winter it was gloomier still. Anywhere you stood, it seemed, you stood in shadow. At the western, front end of the church, two great chestnuts thrust above the Norman battlements of the bell tower, with branches reaching as wide as the building and then some, dominating the great double door more solidly than the heavy stone arch that framed it. Behind the church, where Mistleton High Street met the Vicarage Road, was an ancient oak as old as the village, some said, and at least older than anyone who lived there, Michael knew. It was almost as wide as a road, Michael estimated, and its lower branches were as thick as the trunks of most normal trees. The branches radiated like the spokes of a giant umbrella, protecting the graves below from rain and sun alike, providing shade for sparrows and squirrels, nooks for nutcrackers and nightingales, havens for ravens, robins and rooks, and perhaps for a specter or two.
Midway along the southern wall of the church, a giant yew bulged as it clawed itself out of the earth, upwards and outwards, like a giant, miserable miser grasping for more daylight than it could hope to hold, jealous of the slightest shoot that sprouted, of the smallest petal that bloomed, of the narrowest leaf that dared seek the dimmest hint of sun. Even the gravestones appeared to bow from fear beneath the masterful yew, and the lawn seemed daunted, growing sparsely, as if apologizing for daring to sprawl across the churchyard floor. If it was brightness someone was looking for, the churchyard of St. Lucy's was the last place Michael would have sent them.
Beneath the shady canopy, shrubs and bushes huddled between the graves, creating shadows within shadows. In winter, when the oak and chestnuts had shed their leaves and were sleeping, the yew remained full and green, spreading its ghostly gloom. In summer, the other plants seemed to share the dark mood of the yew, and the churchyard was always damp. Moss was as common as turf, and the wildflowers that peaked out from beneath the shrubs and along the stone wall that ringed the property's edge were purple and blue, with a few miniature white blooms, like tiny spirits, floating in the shadows. The gravestones were carpeted with lichen, and the slate pathways were crisscrossed with the silvery trails of snails and grubs. Spider webs spiraled in every hanging space, and bracken ferns fanned upwards and outwards among the tombs, collecting dampness and shedding spores on anyone who passed, or simply on the graves, anointing them with an otherworldly spray of decay and ancient rot, as musty as the mushrooms that huddled like grim, grey guardians of the dead.
Then there were the graves themselves. St. Lucy's was a small church, and very old, so that nobody had been buried in its churchyard for a very long time. There wasn't room. Michael couldn't take more than two paces in any direction, save on the paths, without stepping on a grave. He determined that bodies had to lie below bodies for them all to fit, and he was sure this had to displease everyone who was buried there. He often imagined the dead as angry neighbors bickering over who was infringing on whose personal space. It always seemed a funny scene to Michael, and this took away a little of his fear of the graveyard's ghosts.
The gravestones tended to surprise most visitors to St. Lucy's. It was Michael's experience that people expected gravestones to be tall, marble and ornate, like the elaborate carvings in many modern cemeteries. There were none of those here. The markers in this churchyard were smaller, simpler and more important. They did not appear to have been carved from stone, but rather to have been grown from it, not placed, but planted in the earth so many ancient years ago. They were as much a part of the living landscape as the grass from which they must have sprouted, as if the stone had chosen this place to rise out of the sod. The names that were etched on the stone, almost wiped smooth by weather, were no longer the names of people who had lived and died and been buried. The names, and their stones, had lives of their own now, in the present, always in the present. People could come and go through the churchyard, or more commonly past it on the Vicarage Road, but the stone markers and their long-forgotten names would always be there.
For now, for Michael, the churchyard was a convenient shortcut. He dodged between the grave markers, under branches, through brambles, using his experience to take the shortest route home. He was midway from the High Street to the brook that ran behind his garden wall when a voice called out to him.
" 'Ere! Where d'yer think you're goin'?"
Michael cringed and stopped in his tracks. It was Old Geoffrey, the sexton of the church.
"Since when 'as this 'ere churchyard been a motorway, eh?" It was one of Old Geoffrey's favorite things to say to Michael. It didn't really make sense, since Michael was never driving across the churchyard, but that didn't matter to Old Geoffrey.
"And mind where you're steppin'!" This was another of Old Geoffrey's favorites. "You don't know who you're steppin' on!"
Old Geoffrey was a strong believer in ghosts. He believed that stepping on a grave was akin to stepping on the spirit of the person buried there. While he never told Michael that angry ghosts would come to haunt him for stepping on their graves, he marked it an act of shameful disrespect to disturb the dead in so careless a manner. Sometimes Michael watched him, seeing him sidling, side-stepping, shuffling and sliding to avoid treading on graves, to the point that sometimes he resembled a child playing hopscotch or jumping from stone to stone across a stream, while at other times he simply seemed mad and incapable of walking in a straight line.
"Take care o' yer dead," he would say, "You'll be one of 'em soon enough."
As sexton of St. Lucy's, Old Geoffrey considered it his job to look after the dead. While burying was not one of his chores--obviously, because no one was buried there anymore--the upkeep of the grounds was. As far as Michael could see, that consisted of chasing people off of the graves. It didn't appear to be trimming the undergrowth or cutting the grass too often. Michael was undecided whether this was because Old Geoffrey was careful about disturbing the souls beneath the ground or because he was too old to do the job properly.
He certainly was old. He was wrinkled and bent, with long, wild grey hair and grey eyes that must have been a different color once, when Old Geoffrey was younger. If his eyes had faded, it was only in hue, because the man had lost none of his sharpness, of vision or of wit. Neither had he lost much strength. His body was crooked, but it didn't droop so much as coil, like he was a snake, curling in on himself, gathering his energy for when it was needed. If he was weaker now than when he was young, as he must be, then he must have been very powerful. Michael had witnessed him moving stones on the churchyard wall, large ones, and hauling them in his wheelbarrow. Just the other day, Michael had watched as the old sexton pulled up the roots of young trees that had fallen after the storm. Michael had taken a go at helping and couldn't budge a single root. Old Geoffrey had made it seem effortless.
The old man wore the same set of clothes whenever Michael saw him, whether it was the coldest winter night or the hottest summer day, whether it was rainy or sunny, windy or still, foggy or clear. He wore baggy brown work pants tucked into floppy green wellington boots that had yellow reflective tape along the top. He wore a plaid woolen shirt over a knitted cotton undershirt and a knee-length brown oilskin overcoat over a tan vest. The only changes to his attire that Michael had ever seen were that he wore a tweed blazer instead of his overcoat when he attended services at St. Lucy's or a holiday party, and he occasionally wore a long, dark scarf, the color of which Michael never could make out, on particularly bone-chilling winter days. One item of clothing that never changed was his hat, a tweed cap given to him by the vicar of St. Lucy's, when he was an apprentice sexton.
"That was before the Beatles," he once told Michael, in a tone that made the fact profound. Michael accepted the fact as such, not wanting to admit that he didn't know when the Beatles were, reasoning that when a person shares a fact like that with another person, it is bad manners not to think it important. It might even be worse manners than stepping on someone's grave, although Michael was sure that Old Geoffrey wouldn't think so.
"Hello Geoffrey," Michael offered. He looked down to make sure he wasn't treading on anyone.
"Don't worry," Old Geoffrey replied, "You missed 'im."
"Who?"
Old Geoffrey knew everyone who was buried there.
"Richard Collier."
"Was he important?"
"They're all important, lad."
Michael and Old Geoffrey had this conversation often. It was more ritual than conversation, really.
"What did he do?"
"Never mind what he did, what're you doin' scarperin' through this churchyard?" This was a departure from the routine. Normally they would make up some life story for the occupant of the grave.
"I'm not scarpering," Michael said, "I'm just in a hurry."
"I can see that." Old Geoffrey approached him. He didn't seem angry. He seemed like he had something on his mind.
"Is something wrong?" Michael asked.
"Wrong? You mean besides young scamps dancin' on dead folks' graves?" The word "scamps" was a good sign. Old Geoffrey wasn't angry. "No, I wouldn't say nothin' was wrong, at least not with me."
"With me?" Michael asked before he could stop himself.
Old Geoffrey was at Michael's side now, with a spade in his hand. He leaned his chin on its handle and looked towards Michael's back garden. He might even have been looking at where the top of the garden shed poked over the garden wall. He smiled ever so slightly.
"With you, lad? Well, I might be askin' you that, mightn't I, with you in such a rush."
Michael couldn't decide whether or not he wanted to tell Old Geoffrey about the shed. He might later on, he thought, but not yet.
"It's Friday," he offered as explanation. It wasn't a very good one, he knew.
"That it is," Old Geoffrey concurred, still studying the garden wall, "I suspect you'll be wantin' to get on home and see what's the goin's on."
That was exactly what Michael wanted, except that part of him wanted to stay now. Old Geoffrey's curiosity had made Michael curious about its source. Old Geoffrey, for his part, seemed to be finished with the conversation.
"Off you go, then," he said, jovially, "Only mind where you tread."
Michael knew he'd get no more information out of Old Geoffrey today, so his attention turned immediately back to the shed.
"See ya," he said, and he skipped off homeward, following Old Geoffrey's direction and being careful not to step on any graves. As he did so, though, he couldn't help wondering if that was all that Old Geoffrey meant.