1
Never again will I use the phrase Nightmare Fuel to describe something unpleasant, like a roach infestation or a fried centipede on a stick. No, those don’t count anymore, because they’ve been replaced by the much more substantial “waking up in what is clearly an actual coffin to the distant sounds of digging” nightmare fuel.
Pretty sure I screamed. A lot.
The digging paused, then started again, with more enthusiasm, and a dim orange glow filled the space.
“Hey Buddy?” A muffled echoing voice said. “You doing OK in there? We’re going as fast as we can out here, but it seems like you’re in pretty deep.”
“I’m in a fucking coffin! How do you think I’m doing!? Get me out of here!!” I paused. “Please? Please get me out of here?”
“That’s the plan, but it’s pretty mad out here, so we’re short on people. Going as fast as we can.”
A different voice cut in, slow and deep, and the light changed, inexplicably, to grey.
“Please rest assured that you are in no danger in your current situation. Can you please describe your surroundings?”
“A coffin! I’m in a coffin! I’m running out of air in a coffin!”
“What do the sides look like?” The slow deep voice enquired. “Straight sides, or does it taper?”
“Straight sides.” A thought struck me. “Where’s the light coming from? And how could I see before?”
“Oh, that’s really more of a casket; Straight sides, and probably hinges? Classic casket design.”
“Oh, is that the distinction?” Replied the first voice as a hint of orange light leaked back in. “I always thought they were interchangeable.”
“What can you smell?” Asked the grey voice. “Is it damp or dry?”
I sniffed the air.
“Dry. Maybe a bit like a campfire?”
“That tells us where to look; Thanks pal.” Said the orange light voice. “And you’re not running out of air, for reasons I’d rather not explain just now because … Well, just take my word for it, OK?”
Very faintly, I heard yelling from outside. Something about a bonfire.
“Is there anything you can explain?” I asked. “It sounds like you’re digging me out, and I’m grateful for that, but I’m not sure how I got here.”
“Can you tell me please,” Asked deep & slow & grey. “What the last thing you remember is? Not that it’s immediately relevant, but it’ll help fill the time while we find you.”
“I was at an office party, and there was a really loud noise and a bright light.”
“Good party?” Enquired orange light voice. “I’ve never been to an office party, but parties are usually fun.”
I had to think about that one.
“I think other people were probably having more fun than I was.” I concluded. “I made a tactical error and got sat next to an IT Morlock who doesn’t really understand how conversations work and is really interested in cars.”
Both voices spoke simultaneously.
“I thought this was an all-human deal?”
“How many different species were present? And what’s a Morlock? Or an Eye Tee?”
Species? What?
“Uhhh,” I tried to find the right words. “Not an actual Morlock. Morlocks aren’t real. Just … someone who doesn’t see daylight very often and has poor social skills.”
“That makes more sense.” Deep slow & grey replied. “I wondered if we’d been given the wrong information for a moment there.”
The digging was definitely getting closer.
“You mentioned a light; Do you remember the direction it came from?”
“Must have been from outside.” I said. “IT guy and I were right beside the window, and I remember we were both turning away from everyone else to look towards it.”
A scrape on the lid.
“You in there; Just hang on, OK?” Asked orange light voice. “We’ll get you out of the hole, then out of the box. Trust me, you don’t want to try climbing out of a grave as your first task of the night; It’s really tricky.”
“And to be honest,” Intoned slow & deep & grey. “It’s not an ideal introduction to a new place. Few places are at their best when viewed from eight feet down.”
2
The coffin, or possibly casket, rocked a bit as something rasped against it.
“We’re just getting some ropes around you, OK?” Said the orange glow voice. “Then we can lift you up and out, and get you out of that thing.’
“Take your time; I’m not going anywhere right now?” I offered, weakly. “OK, that was bad. Not funny at all.”
“No.” Said deep & slow & grey. “But it’s nice that you tried. And you’d be surprised how far even a bad joke will go in a tense situation.”
“Speaking of … ” Orange voice started, but was cut off by a yelling rasping voice.
“Head! Crow! Headcrow!! We found another primary!!”
There was a long pause as heavy footsteps approached.
“Uhhhh, hello?” I called. “Everything OK out there?”
“There should only be one primary.” Said orange glow. “That’s what the word means. How can there be two?”
“Not a clue, Headcrow, but they’re somewhere in the vaults. We’re going door to door now, because we can’t get a decent location; Something’s throwing it off.”
“Probably the whole rest of the boneyard.” Orange voice grumbled. “There are arrivals everywhere tonight. And why Headcrow?”
“That the other primary?” Asked rasping voice. “Hey, you in there! How many people were you with before you were in the box?”
“They were at an office party.” Said deep & slow & grey. “So probably a lot, but that shouldn’t cause …”
It trailed off.
“How close were you to the Eye Tee Morlock you mentioned?”
“What’s a Morlock?” Whispered raspy voice. “I thought this was a humans only thing?”
“Across the table from him.” I replied. “It was a pretty cramped restaurant, so I could have picked up his plate without stretching.”
All three voices spoke as one.
“Bollocks.”
The box started to lurch upwards, and orange glow voice tried to be reassuring.
“Look, normally we’d have a whole welcoming thing for you, and show you around, but it’s a madhouse up here, and not the fun kind, so when we get you out we’re going to need you to go straight to work. There are a bunch of other people in the same situation as you, and we need all the hands we can get.”
There was a meaningful cough, and a pause.
“I was getting to that.”
“Get there faster, Headcrow.” Said raspy. “Clock’s ticking.’
“Here’s the big thing.” Orange glow voice sighed. “When we open this box, things are going to look really weird and probably frightening to you. Normally we’d have set the scene, but we don’t have time, so all I can tell you is that you’re safe. Nothing will hurt you, nobody means you harm, and if we’re reading the situation right, there are a bunch of people who need the help only you can offer, OK?”
The box lurched & dropped onto something solid. The foot end tilted up, and raspy voice asked. “Head or feet?”
“Feet! That’s the foot end you’re lifting!”
The box dropped, and the other end lifted, slowly bringing me upright.
“That’s why I wish they’d use coffins.” Muttered raspy. “No confusion with a coffin.”
“Did everyone but me know this!?” Demanded orange glow voice.
There was some scraping at the lid, then silence.
“The next part is up to you.” Said deep & slow & grey. “We’ve unscrewed the lid, so, …, in your own time, open it and step out.”
I’d intended a calm measured opening of the box, but the urge to not be in there anymore turned that into a brute-force shove which hurled the lid open & broke one of the hinges, so that it sagged and hit me in the shin.
I didn’t really notice the impact; I was too busy staring in disbelief at the cloaked skeleton, glowing-eyed pumpkin-headed scarecrow, and actual werewolf standing in front of me.
3
The werewolf tried what was probably a grin, but there were a lot of teeth involved, so it wasn’t particularly reassuring. Scarecrow waved. Skeleton gave a slight bow.
The edges of my vision started turning black, and I tried not to scream again, clenching my teeth together, and kept it to a low squeeking noise that I thought maybe they wouldn’t notice.
Werewolf noticed, and nudged the scarecrow.
“Say. Something.” He growled through gritted teeth. “Or I’m going to have to chase this one when he runs, and that’ll put us even further behind; So. Say. Something.”
The scarecrow stepped forward on impossibly thin legs, raising hands with too many fingers in a gesture that was most likely intended to be reassuring.
“You’re in no danger here.” He started. “I know you’re scared and confused, but despite how things probably look, you’re safe here in the boneyard.”
He gestured out.
“It’s total chaos at the moment, I grant you, but I’m hoping that you can help us with that. Take a look around.”
I took a hesitant step out of the casket or coffin, then turned to follow where he was pointing, but the blackness expanded. Suddenly the scarecrow was right behind me, grabbing my arms as I fell.
“Woah! OK, I’ve got you. Just shut your eyes for a bit, maybe?” The scarecrow suggested as he started to gently steer me away from the casket. “We’ll try this in stages, OK?”
I let myself be steered & sat on what felt like a log, with something warm & crackling & smokey somewhere in front of me.
“Try opening your eyes again.” Said deep & slow & grey, presumably the skeleton. “Just … Describe what you’re seeing. It’ll help.”
I hesitantly opened my eyes.
“There’s a campfire, with logs around it, like a campsite from a movie.” I started. “I’m sitting on one log, there’s a skeleton in a grey robe on one of the other logs, and a werewolf on the other wearing … Are those Hawaiian print cargo shorts?”
The werewolf nodded and grinned, then gestured at me to continue.
“There’s a scarecrow sitting beside me with a Jack-o’-lantern for a head with what looks like actual flames in it, whose legs are so long that his knees are above his head, and …” I shot a look at the skeleton. “Are you toasting a fucking marshmallow?!”
“Oooo, good idea!” Exclaimed the werewolf, rummaging elbow-deep in a pocket. “I’ve got some chocolate and crackers here somewhere.”
4
“Keep it up.” Mumbled the skeleton through a mouthful of S’more. “You’re doing well. What’s around you?”
“The campfire is under a tree and surrounded by,” I looked around. “A graveyard? Kind of overgrown, and the gravestones are all at different angles. And there’s an open grave behind me.”
“What about over there?” Asked the werewolf, pointing past the tree.
“Much more manicured graveyard, with the stones in neat rows, and a bunch of little buildings scattered around. They’re all white, and there’s a bunch of … People, I guess? … Looking around in the wrong places and banging on the doors.”
“What about behind you?” Asked the scarecrow, gently turning me to look over the open grave while the werewolf made a strangled coughing noise. “What can you see there?”
“More graveyard, an iron fence that’s leaning and overgrown, then … Some kind a hedge maze that people are going through with burning torches, and a big creepy-ass house with some ghosts having a picnic on the lawn.”
“Where should the folks in the graveyard behind you be looking?” Asked the werewolf. “You’re doing great here.”
“They want one of those places where there’s lots of vaults off a hall; Like a capsule hotel for dead people.”
There was a sudden scrabbling noise, and I turned to see the werewolf running off towards the better-kept part of the graveyard, hurdling rows and waving his arms.
“Wrong vaults! Follow me!!”
My brain slowly caught up.
“How did I know that?”
“No idea.” The skeleton shrugged. “But in these multiple arrival situations there’s usually a primary, and they point us at the rest, like you just did.”
“Though in this particular case,” Continued the scarecrow, moving to the log recently vacated by the werewolf. “It’s probably complicated by there being two primaries, one with the knowledge and one with … Something else.”
I tried raising an eyebrow.
“Headcrow isn’t being intentionally vague.” Said the skeleton over the top of an outraged squeak from the scarecrow. “We don’t really know what to expect in these situations, but its sometimes a thing they can do, sometimes a thing they know, and sometimes a thing they carry. But there’s always something.”
“Can we review this ‘Headcrow’ thing?” Asked the scarecrow.
“No, it’s official; You’re Headcrow now. Jeff decided.”
“Jeff only called me that because he’s terrible with names; It doesn’t count, and I feel like giving a name suggesting leadership of crows to someone who is a Literal. Fucking. Scarecrow sends the wrong message. Or is offensive. Or something.”
The skeleton pointed at their own head, then made a surprisingly realistic crowd shadow puppet in the firelight, then grinned somehow.
“I just don’t think that Jeff should get to name things.” Grumbled Headcrow.
5
“Why am I blindfolded?” I asked. “This feels like some kind of hazing ritual, where I’m going to fall into a pond. Or an open grave. Or something.”
“I’m hoping that without being able to navigate based on what’s unfamiliar or frightening, you’ll just randomly wander in the right direction.” Headcrow replied. “Or at least a useful one.”
“And is it working?” I took a few more short steps, then stopped when my outstretched hands brushed against something hard. “Because I think I’ve just been going in circles. See, I’m back at the tree again.”
There was a whispering laugh and a cold breeze.
“You’re really not.” A new voice joined the conversation, somehow coming from all around me. “Headcrow, Yorick; How’s it going?”
“Surprisingly well.” Said the skeleton, while Headcrow muttered about brainless werewolves. “This seems like a promising development. How about things on your side?”
“Mostly catering at this stage. There’s definitely someone in the house, maybe multiple, but until this multiple primary thing is figured out we can’t find a damn thing. I heard Jeff yelling about vaults?”
“They were looking at the wrong sort.” I explained. “The buildings, when they want the ones in a wall.”
“Ahhh, that would make sense. They’d look similar from the inside.” Came the whisper. “And meanwhile, you’ve been led here.”
An ice-cold gust of wind gently slid the blindfold up. In front of me, instead of the tree I was expecting, stood the ivy-covered stone base of a badly weathered monument. I took a step back to get a better look, and passed through the misty white figure of a woman wearing what looked like a circus ringmaster suit.
By now I’d assumed I was immune to being startled, but no such luck; I made a strangled squeaking noise and jumped backwards, colliding with a hedge & getting tangled in the branches. Headcrow had climbed halfway up the monument, and was examining the statue of a figure in plate armour, shaking a fist at the sky and riding what looked to be a spider of some kind.
“Yorick, could you?” He waved vaguely at me. “There’s something bugging me about this thing beyond the fact that we were led right here.”
The skeleton pulled me out of the hedge.
“Yorick?” I asked. “Really?”
“Jeff again.” He grimaced. “He’s bad at remembering names, but good at coming up with new ones. Said it’s from a play or something.”
“That’s why I never let the furry menace use anything other than my title.” Offered the ghostly ringmaster. “Never give him an opening; I assume he’s to blame for Headcrow?”
“Yep.” Headcrow crouched on the shoulders of the statue, all knees & elbows. “I don’t get why we got led here. This statue’s been here forever from the look of it, and I’d expected something new.”
Yorick, the ghost ringmaster, and I all made simultaneous “are you sure” noises, then looked at each other in surprise.
The ghostly ringmaster gestured to Yorick, who pointed at the base and moved some foliage aside.
“This carving looks a whole lot like that word game thing where you get a certain number of guesses, and we only found out about that a while ago.”
Impossibly, Headcrow leaned all the way down from his perch to peer at the carving, then pulled himself back up and looked at me, raising a nonexistent eyebrow somehow.
“How does someone with a carved pumpkin for a head raise an eyebrow?” I asked. “I can tell it’s what you did, but I don’t see how.”
Before he answered, I continued, gesturing up.
“And I’ve seen a picture that looks like that statue; It’s the IT guy’s desktop wallpaper.”
“Oh, The Morlock?” Asked Yorick. The ghostly ringmaster started.
“A Morlock? Like an actual one? I thought this was a humans only thing?”
“No, just an unkind turn of phrase.” I waved my hands. “Not a real Morlock, just an odd guy with a picture of his D&D character on his desktop.”
She looked slightly disappointed, but gestured to the ring of hedges around the monument.
“This spot is just inside the hedge maze, on the Mansion side. Anyone coming though that way comes through here, so I’ve probably greeted thousands of folks right here, usually by vaulting dramatically onto the top of the sundial.”
She paused and grinned while we all looked around. Aside from the monument, there was nothing but grass & hedges.
“So this monument,” Yorick started, squinting suspiciously at it. “With the weathered stone and ancient ivy, …”
“Wasn’t here yesterday.” Confirmed the ghostly ringmaster. “And has probably ruined my welcome routine.”
6
Headcrow stepped down from the statue.
“Does the Morlock like those word puzzle things?”
“Not a clue.” I shrugged. “But I know one of the software types was an absolute fiend for them, and she was about three seats away.”
Everyone looked at me.
“What!? You made it seem like it was a big deal that I was opposite James when the light happened, so I figured that was relevant.”
“Oh, it’s relevant.” The ghostly ringmaster agreed. “But …”
She paused and cocked her head, then looked at Headcrow and grinned.
“What?” Headcrow asked, looking around wildly, so that he was facing entirely the wrong direction when Jeff hurdled the maze and crashed into him.
“Headcrow! We found the other primary! And this here is the Something Else!” Jeff stood on top of Headcrow’s prone form, then looked around at us. “Why’s he lying down?”
“But positively identifying this site as being relevant to more than one arrival,” The ghostly ringmaster continued, gesturing to Yorick.
“Means the confusion should go away and tell us exactly where the other one is.” Said Yorick, somehow grinning hugely at Headcrow.
“OK, how are you doing that?” I demanded. “He can raise an eyebrow, you somehow grin … How does that even work?”
Headcrow spoke up as he pushed Jeff off of his chest.
“I’m more impressed that you watched someone with no internal organs or skin or flesh eat a s’more and thought nothing of it.”
“But … you ate one too?” Jeff looked back & forth between Headcrow and me. “Uhhh … Has nobody shown this guy a mirror?”
“Jeff?” Asked Headcrow. “Why are you here and not with the other one?”
Jeff helped him to his feet.
“He’s freaking out pretty bad; Screaming about the lights hurting him and refusing to come out of the vault.”
“Jeff?” Asked Yorick, in a tired voice. “Did you, at any point, call him a Morlock?”
“Maybe?” Jeff shrugged. “What’s a Morlock?”
“Think Gollum, or maybe a CHUD, but with tech skills.” Said the ghostly ringmaster. “Jeff; How on earth do you know a Hamlet reference, but not The Time Machine?”
“Worked in a video store; Was there a Time Machine movie?”
“There was that one with Jack The Ripper?” I offered. “Maybe another one, but that might have been a streaming thing.”
“Such a waste of a good idea.” Said the ghostly ringmaster and Jeff simultaneously, shaking their heads, then stared at each other in surprise.
Yorick cleared his throat.
“Perhaps what’s more important,” He suggested. “Is that there’s a deeply confused and frightened person in a stone box who needs some help.”
—–
A minute later I was standing in a marble corridor, the walls covered with neat rows of gravestone plaques, leaning awkwardly beside an open hole in which two eyes dimly gleamed. Headcrow and Yorick were lurking down one end of the hall, and Jeff had positioned himself at the other and was making ‘get on with it’ motions at me.
“James?” I asked. “Can you hear me? Do you recognise my voice?”
A grunt.
“I was sitting across from you at the restaurant, and you were talking all about a VW van that your grandfather owned.” I saw Jeff roll his eyes, and I shrugged in agreement. “I’m not really sure what’s going on right now, and from what I’ve been told you’re not having a great time, but I don’t think we’re in any danger here.”
“This is just a nightmare.” Came a gurgling response. “Just a dream.”
Headcrow, Yorick, and Jeff simultaneously facepalmed.
“Maybe?” I replied. “Seems pretty real to me, but also makes absolutely no sense? They’ve said that there’s normally a proper welcome, but there’s something unusual, and people are still stuck. Like you were.”
Another grunt.
“And they have s’mores here, so it can’t be that bad.”
That got a snigger.
“The light hurts my eyes out there.”
I made eye contact with Jeff, and we winced at each other.
“That might be my fault.” I admitted.
“I used the wrong phrase around someone who has a bit of a thing with names, and … I guess it stuck?”
“Don’t worry about it too much.” Headcrow called out from the end of the hall. “People change depending on what they do, so the Morlock thing won’t stick.”
He walked a bit closer.
“And from what I can tell, you’re something that moves in shadows and darkness, so …” Headcrow gathered his thoughts. “Try to drag it with you? That often works.”
A long-fingered clawed hand slowly emerged from the wall, somehow dragging shadow with it like a blanket.
“What’s a Morlock?” He asked.
—–
A few minutes later we were standing at the entrance to the hallway, looking out at the boneyard. James was munching on a cracker and melted chocolate assemblage, having declined the marshmallows on the grounds of texture.
Yorick was scattering dust on a rough map he’d drawn on the floor, watching it drift into little piles, with three large clumps where James, the Monument, and I had been found. Headcrow squatted beside it, muttering as the pattern formed.
“… And the monument probably has something in it that relates to you, but it’ll need unlocking with that Wordle Puzzle thing.” Jeff was explaining. “But that can wait a while; Got people to find and rescue.”
Headcrow looked up at us.
“Looks like two big clusters, the Mansion and the more natural bit of the boneyard.” He pointed at James. “It looks like you’d be better in tunnels, so why don’t you & I head that way?”
“I’m guessing it’s easier now that we’re both out?” I said through a mouthful of s’more. “Jeff, why do you travel with what seems like an unlimited supply of snacks?”
Jeff stared blankly at me.
“Why wouldn’t I?” He asked. “Who doesn’t like snacks?”
I noticed that James the Morlock was staring at me, and tried wiping at my face.
“Do I have chocolate everywhere?” I asked. “How bad a mess is it?”
“It’s not that.” He replied. “I just wondered how you’re eating with your mouth sewn shut like that?”
There was a long silence, eventually broken by Jeff.
“Can we please show this guy a mirror?”
7
“So we’re just kind of winging it?” I asked as we walked back towards the bonfire. “You don’t get sent a map or anything?”
“No such luck.” Replied Yorick. “People get a vague sense of where to look, like Headcrow & I did with you, and Jeff did with The Morlock, but not a lot more.”
Around us, a hoard of figures of a wide variety of shapes were going grave to grave through the boneyard, inspecting gravestones & knocking on crypts. How they were then hearing any response I had no idea, but every so often they’d stop and cluster around a single location. Up on the hill, in front of the mansion, a steady stream of people were visiting the ghostly picnic on the lawn.
“What’s going on up there?” I asked.
“That’s where they’re handing out food.” Came a voice from the next row of gravestones. “Gonna be a long night to find this many arrivals if the primary can’t get their shit together.”
A furry spider the size of a cow stood halfway up and leaned its second pair of legs against some convenient masonry, waving a giant paper-wrapped sandwich in the air.
“The Mansion’s handling it because they’ve got bigger kitchens than anywhere else.” It continued, missing a frantic throat-slitting gesture from Yorick. “And they’ll be at it a while, from what I hear, because the primary’s barricaded themselves in a crypt and is screaming about it being a dream.”
Yorick was somehow rolling his eyes in despair when I glanced his way.
“Though I heard that there’s another primary, somehow,” The spider continued, settling in for a long chat and taking a bit of sandwich.
I looked down, trying to think of a way to interrupt, then lost all track of what it was saying as I stared at the gravestone in front of me.
“Anyone home?” Asked the spider, shaking me by one shoulder while Yorick put a hand on the other. “You alright there? Need something to eat maybe? You look kind of dead on your feet there.”
“Really!?” Shouted Yorick, echoed by Jeff from the top of a crypt somewhere off in the distance. I didn’t pay them much attention, but pointed to the inscription.
“That’s the brand name on a coffee mug in the office. People try to get that specific mug every day; Some even come in early.”
Yorick leaned over my shoulder to look, and the spider scuttled around to mirror his posture over my other shoulder.
“This mug thing? Is there something special about it?” The spider asked, then leaned past me to look at Yorick. “And I’m fucking hilarious. Don’t blame me if you can’t keep a sense of humour; Zombie jokes are always funny.”
“Not on their first day they’re not.” Muttered Yorick through gritted teeth. “On a first day they’re exceedingly unhelpful. Much like certain people I could name.”
“Completely normal mug.” I answered the spider. “With the branding of a Curry House on it. Nobody had ever heard of the place, and nobody knows how long it had been in the cupboard, but it became a sort of fun office joke to get the mug and claim the title on it for the day.”
The spider’s face somehow fell as it looked between the gravestone & me.
“Does that mean that you’re …?”
“Yes.” Said Yorick, flatly.
“And I’ve been …?”
“An eight-legged asshole!” Came a shout from across the boneyard.
Any further response was interrupted by some faint bangs from the grave in front of us.
Yorick gave me a gentle pat on the shoulder and pointed, so I dropped to my knees and leaned forward, trying to yell into the ground.
“Whoever you are, try not to panic. We’re getting you out, and you’re in no danger; It’s going to be OK.”
There was a pause, then some muffled yelling, impossible to make out. I looked up at Yorick.
“Can we do the thing with the glowing lights you used to talk to me?” I asked.
The spider had climbed onto a few neighbouring headstones and was waving in Jeff’s direction.
“We found one! Get a digging crew!”
“We?” Said Yorick. “You didn’t find a blessed thing. The primary here did the finding, you just ran your mouth and ate a sandwich.”
“To be fair, they’re really good sandwiches.” Jeff hurdled a few rows and landed beside us, carrying a bundle of tools over one shoulder. He rummaged in a pocket with his free hand and extracted a couple of bundles, which he tossed to Yorick and I. “Nicely spotted, dude.”
He dropped the tools and slapped me on the back.
“If we didn’t have a whole bunch of folks out there, I’d ask you to join the digging, but …” He trailed off, gesturing to the boneyard.
“I’ve got other places to be?”
“Yep!” Jeff picked up a spade and flicked a shovel in the spider’s direction with one foot, turned to look at the headstone, and raised an eyebrow. “You go find the next one; Archie and I will deal with the Spicy King here.”
8
Yorick and I trudged down the row of graves. Behind us, enthusiastic digging noises erupted as Jeff and Archie unearthed the Spicy King.
“So who’s the Spicy King?” Asked Yorick.
“Not a clue.” I shrugged. “It was too muffled to recognise the voice, and I didn’t pay much attention to that mug; Got my own one that lives in my desk drawer.”
I took a few more steps, then realised that Yorick was no longer walking beside me.
“I can think of a few candidates,” I continued as I walked back to where he was standing, staring at the gravestone in front of him. “But they were all at the restaurant, so that’s not much help.”
Unlike most of the others, the gravestone in front of us had a slab of polished black marble embedded into the rough and weathered grey stone. I’m sure it probably had something carved into it, but I didn’t notice; I was too caught up with looking at the flickering and distorted figures of James the Morlock and Headcrow reflected in it.
I looked behind me, knowing there was nobody there, but feeling like I should check anyway, just in case. Nothing there, just more gravestones.
Yorick leaned in close, and I copied him.
James the Morlock was squinting at us, his enormous eyes clenched almost closed. Behind him, Headcrow was enthusiastically gesturing at a slab being levered up out of a stone floor by a troupe of circus clowns.
“Yorick?” I asked, not looking away.
“Yes?”
“Why is there a tiny little monochrome TV in this headstone? And why is it showing us Headcrow and James and a bunch of actual clowns?”
“I don’t know what a Tee Vee is exactly.” He replied. “But I’m guessing that this vision we’re seeing is something James is doing to try to communicate that they’ve found someone one.”
As one we pointed towards the growing mound of earth that Jeff and Archie were creating, using wildly over-exaggerated motions. It worked well until we both realised the other was doing the same thing, and we collapsed into laughter when we saw the dumbfounded looks on James and Headcrow’s faces in the marble slab, just before the image flickered and faded away.
“James? Not Headcrow?” I asked.
“The vision? Not Headcrow.” Yorick confirmed. “Not a scarecrow kind of thing. I don’t know what Morlock things are, but I guess that’s one of them?”
I shrugged.
“No idea. I read The Time Machine thirty years ago or more; Don’t think it had any powers or anything, just underground creatures who understood technology and surface ones who didn’t.”
Yorick stroked his chin, or more accurately jawbone, in a thoughtful manner.
“And they were maybe cannibals?”
Yorick did his eyebrow trick again.
“And this is a good description of your colleague?”
“I did say it was unkind.” I shrugged, but also looked away. “Dwells in darkness, hard to lure out, kind of bad at people-ing … Look, I was having a bad day, OK?”
Yorick let that one hang in the air for a long moment.
“You and a lot of other people in that restaurant, it seems.”
Not able to meet his nonexistent eyes, I looked out over the boneyard.
“This is taking too long, isn’t it?” I asked.
A boney hand rested on my shoulder.
“You’re going as fast as you know how. So is James the Morlock.”
I stared at our reflections in the marble slab.
“If James figured out how to do … Whatever that was,” I started. “Is there something else I could be doing? Something I’ve not thought of?”
Yorick grinned a little and made a ‘go on’ gesture.
“Look at me.” I gestured at my reflection. “I’m clearly some kind of Zombie, with the sewn-up mouth and the paint markings, so … Can we use that?”
“Zombies were popular a bit after my time,” Yorick replied, then directed an obscene gesture in Jeff’s direction when a shout of ‘So was Stonehenge’ drifted over. “But a lot of how this place works is about how people think it works.”
I frowned.
“So James could do that vision thing because he thinks he can? Or that it’s something Morlocks can do?”
“Something like that,” Agreed Yorick. “But it’s also what the others think.”
I started to walk back towards Jeff & Archie’s earthworks, and beckoned Yorick to follow as he continued.
“The Ghostly Ringmaster is insubstantial unless she doesn’t want to be because that’s how phantasms work, Headcrow can suddenly be right behind you because that’s the creepiest place to find him, I can keep pace with someone who’s running even though I walk slowly, … It’s about their role in the legends.”
We reached the half-excavated grave, and I picked up a handful of dirt. Archie glanced at me as I stirred it around in my hand.
“You getting an idea?” He enquired. “‘Cause we could use a way to speed this up.”
“Dude!” Jeff shoved him. “Not helpful!”
“This is going to take a really long time.” Archie muttered as he went back to digging. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Jeff and Yorick and I tried to ignore him.
“I’ve got an idea.” I started. “But it’s based on something from a music video, and … It’s probably kind of offensive?”
Yorick cleared his throat, unnecessarily.
“You’ve already turned a coworker into a Morlock.” He pointed out. “I think that ship has sailed.”
“Really?!” Archie popped up from the grave. “Like an H. G. Wells Time Machine Morlock? How’d you do that? Why’d you do that?”
“I used the term ‘Morlock’ to describe someone, and didn’t know it would stick.” I replied.
“Lemme guess; They’re in IT and you said the quiet part loud?” Archie sniggered, then gave a multi-leg fistpump as his shovel scraped across something. “Yes! Got to them!”
We all lent a hand to get the casket clear of the earth and on it’s way up to the surface.
“You couldn’t have known,” Archie continued as we tried to keep the thing level. “But kind of a dick move, pal.”
“If you’re talking about who I think you’re talking about,” Came a voice from inside the box. “Then it’s entirely fair; Bought and paid for, no penance required. Do you know how many times I’ve heard about that fucking VW Microbus?”
9
Between the four of us, we got the casket stood on the correct end and the lid unscrewed.
There was a long pause as Yorick, Jeff, and I tried to get one of the other ones to coax the inhabitant out, broken by a muttered “Oh For Fuck’s Sake” from Archie, who pushed in front of us and made a throat-clearing noise.
“Hey there, you in the box? You feeling ok?”
The lid creaked very slightly open, then slammed shut again with a muffled scream.
“I’ll take that as a maybe.” Archie continued. “And I’ll level with you; Things are a shambles out here, and there’d normally be this whole introduction thing, but we can’t do that right now, so we’re kinda making it up as we go along.”
A long pause. The casket lid opened slightly, and a dark eye in a pale face peered out of the gap.
“But you’re in no danger here. Nobody means you harm; They might be a bit useless right now,” Archie glanced at me, and I raised a finger in response. “But there are no bad guys here.’
The casket giggled, the lid creeked open a bit more, revealing a strip of porcelain white face with colorful markings.
“Are you the giant spider, the skeleton, the werewolf in cargo shorts, or the cadaverous looking guy flipping the bird who … Looks a whole lot like a dehydrated version of one of the analysis people?”
There was a hint of an accent there. A familiar one.
“I’m the spider.” Archie waved, then gestured to the rest of us. I tried to look nonthreatening, and began to understand why Headcrow & Yorick & Jeff had looked so awkward; There’s not a lot to work with when you look like a dehydrated castaway corpse and amateur craft project.
“The skeleton is Yorick.” Archie continued. “The werewolf is Jeff, and the cadaver is … Actually, what the hell is your name?”
“All that criticism you were handing out, and you don’t know his name?” Jeff facepalmed. “This is … Uhhh …”
Jeff scratched his head, and Yorick looked thoughtful, while Archie somehow hung a smug look on his face.
“Maybe it never came up?” I offered. “No big deal. I’m … “
Total blank. My name’s right there, but I can’t quite find it. It’s just out of reach.
“I can’t remember it either.” Came the voice from the casket. “I know I know it, because I’m pretty sure I recognise you from a breakout session during one of those remote working calls, but … I can’t remember your name.”
I stopped trying to think of my own name for a moment as a memory hit. A company called that dragged on, with breakouts to discuss things we knew damn well wouldn’t be listened to or acted on, so we spent most of the time chatting and complaining about a wasted day.
“Anj?” I asked. “From the IT team? We spent most of the breakout sessions talking about TV shows we’d been watching because the questions were so stupid?”
“Aye, that’s right.” The casket opened wider, and a skeletal figure in a long white dress leaned out, her face painted with flowers. “Most of them came down to ‘what other option is there?’, and the whole thing was a waste of time. I’d rather have been working.”
I saw Yorick lean over & mutter something to Jeff, who looked startled, then put his head on one side and looked me over with a thoughtful expression. His lips moved as he seemed to be trying out different things to say, then rejecting them.
“Come on.” Archie prodded him with a leg. “This is your thing, surely?”
Anj leaned towards me, her eyes on the Archie/Jeff/Yorick grouping, and spoke out of the side of her mouth.
“So, what’s going on? This is a dream or hallucination or something, right?”
“No idea.” I shrugged. “I woke up in a box, same as you, and got dug up by Jeff and Yorick and a scarecrow with a jack-o’-lantern for a head. They all say it’s safe here, but … I don’t know if it’s real?”
“Last thing I remember before the box.” Mused Anj. “Was the meal at that new restaurant. There was a bright light, and the front window exploded towards me.”
“I remember the bright light and a loud noise, but not the window thing.” I tapped my finger against my lips in thought, then stopped because the cords holding my mouth closed felt really weird. “But maybe that’s because I was right next to it and got hit by it?”
“James was opposite you, and you said he’s here too, and I was four or five seats along, so …” She trailed off and looked around. “Is everyone else here too? Buried out there?”
“James and Headcrow – That’s the scarecrow who dug me up with Yorick and Jeff – They found someone over at the mansion.” I pointed across the boneyard. “But I don’t know who.”
I pointed at the gravestone.
“Only found you because of the Spicy King mug; I didn’t know you liked that one.”
“I don’t.” Anj grinned. “But I do enjoy annoying one of the sales folks who’s obsessed with it, so I grab it before him whenever we’re on a call together.”
Across from us, Jeff shook his head in frustration.
“I’ve got nothing. Zomtagonist? Zombie Prime? Dave? Nothing fits.”
“Dave.” Archie repeated. “You came up with Headcrow, which admittedly is catchy, and then went with ‘Dave’?”
“Ran out of options.” Jeff shrugged. “It’s not like I do it deliberately, and naming isn’t part of any werewolf story I’ve ever heard about, so I just tried stuff and it didn’t sound right, so I thought I’d try something simple.”
Yorick tried to ignore them and turned to me.
“Look, can we ignore the name thing for the moment?” He asked. “It’s not that it isn’t important, and I suspect it’s probably going to be significant that the primary for the biggest group arrival ever doesn’t have a name and can’t be given one, but right now we still need to find a bunch of people.”
He gestured around at the boneyard.
“Can we deal with that first? What was the idea you’d had? Something offensive and musical, was it?”
Jeff and Archie sniggered as I raised my hands in an ‘Oh Hell No’ gesture. I’d not noticed before, but when my sleeve fell back I saw that the left one was attached at the wrist with what looked like the same giant cross-stitch looking things as my mouth; Some kind of braided cord in a row of large X’s.
“A music video that might be a bit offensive in context. Or maybe just in general.” I shrugged. “But it had someone doing Voodoo stuff with scattering powders, and I remembered your trick with the dust, and I kind of look like a zombie from a Pirates of the Carribbean movie, so … I wondered if there was a way to use that to mark all the graves at once?”
“Probably.” Said Archie.
“That makes sense.” Said Yorick.
“What the fuck?” Asked Anj, then looked thoughtful for a moment.
“That sounds awesome!” Jeff contributed, then looked offended as the other three stared at him. “What? Look at him. Cool Voodoo stuff would be totally On-Brand.”
10
“So, how does this work?” I asked Yorick. “What do I do?”
He shrugged.
“I have absolutely no idea. How do YOU think it works?”
The long pause was broken by Jeff.
“You may want to add a little more detail there, buddy. Not a lot to go on.”
Yorick nodded slowly, crouched, and picked up a handful of dirt.
“In my time,” He began, sketching the same map of the boneyard he’d used earlier into the loose soil by the grave. “Magic was all about sympathy and similarities and contagion. Things that look alike are connected, things that were connected maintain a connection, that kind of thing.”
He sprinkled the dirt and we watched it slowly drift into a few clumps, just as it had outside James’ crypt.
“And I’m a skeleton, with a clear graveyard theme, so it seems to me that some kind of affinity with graves should exist, and that there should be a certain slow and measured quality to what I do. It fits the mythology of the thing.”
He looked up from his crouch.
“So what’s the mythological or legendary basis of Zombies, or Carribbean Pirates, or this Music Video you’re thinking of?”
This time it was Archie who broke the long silence.
“Yorick, that was without a doubt the most long-winded and unhelpful explanation of this place I’ve ever heard.” He gestured at the blank look on my face, then pointed at Jeff. “You want to maybe give your version?”
Jeff buried his face in his hands and groaned, then started digging into his pockets.
“For. Fucks. Sake.” He grated out through clenched teeth, digging up to the shoulder in a pocket clearly too shallow and narrow to fit his entire arm. “I know this is a disruption, and we’re all on edge, but … not cool, OK?”
In rapid succession he hauled out a series of small packages and tossed them to Archie.
“I’m going to assume that you’re just hangry or something, so go make us a batch of s’mores or something?” He raised a hand as Archie started to object. “You’re not entirely wrong, but you’re not helping right now.”
As Archie stalked away, Jeff turned back to me.
“He’s not normally this much of a dick.” He glanced down at Yorick. “And I thought that was a pretty good explanation; Bit too technical for a new arrival though?”
Yorick patted his little dirt map flat and stood up, somehow blowing the dust from his hands.
“I simplified it as much as I could, but …” Yorick shrugged and raised his hands helplessly. “Sympathetic magic doesn’t seem like it’s studied anymore? Not that it was widely studied in my time, to be fair.”
Anj, Jeff, and I all shook our heads.
“Noooo.” Anj replied. “Not beyond Harry Potter, I think.”
Yorick seemed like he wanted to ask, but shook his head and gestured to Jeff.
“Do you want to try?”
“It’s simple.” Jeff said. “This is a Saturday Morning Cartoon Halloween Special.”
Yorick stared at him, slumped, shook his head, and headed off to where Archie was setting up a fire in a small pot on a stand.
“The skeleton can eat a sandwich, even though he has no organs, because he wants to.” Jeff continued. “The zombie with his mouth sewn closed can still talk, or eat a snack, because he wants to, and maybe because he didn’t know his mouth was sewn shut because nobody showed him a mirror.”
He gestured at the smoothed-over patch of dirt where Yorick’s map had been.
“Yorick’s thing with the dust works because that’s how he, and we, think it works. Or at least we don’t think it shouldn’t work that way. This is the Halloween episode of that TV show where the guy claiming to be a vampire doesn’t have a reflection in the background of the last scene; It’s all about the story. It doesn’t have to make total sense, it just needs to make enough sense.”
Jeff stepped onto the Spicy King gravestone and gestured around at the boneyard.
“Figure out something that makes some kind of sense to you, and fits the Halloween theme, and it’ll probably work.” He dropped to a crouch and looked between Anj and I. “So, what seems like it might work?”
I looked at the pile of dirt, and the casket, and the gravestone, trying to think about TV shows and movies and music videos.
“No pressure quite like ‘all up to you’, is there?” Archie leaned in with a handful of snacks. “Here, have something sugary and sticky; Maybe it’ll help.”
Shoving the s’more in my mouth, I picked up a handful of grave dirt.
“OK, let’s try something.” I mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate. “Got some grave dirt because we’re looking for graves.”
I pulled at the stitches on my mouth, then gestured around at the group.
“Can someone untie or cut one of these? I figure that if I’m linked to the others somehow, then something from me should be in there? Maybe?”
Yorick pulled a full-sized scythe from under his robe, spun it once, and tucked it away again. He reached out and delicately pulled a strand of cord, with the knot still attached, out of my face while I tried not to squirm at how odd it felt.
Anj stared at me in horrified fascination.
“That was bizarre.” She said, then pointed at my face. ” But the fact that it’s regrowing kind of trumps it?”
I took the cord and stirred it into my handful of dirt, trying to ignore the crawling sensation on my lips as I watched the cut-off piece of stitching dissolve into the soil. The pile of dirt sat there, not doing anything particularly magical.
“I’ll be honest.” Said Jeff. “I was expecting something more impressive than a handful of dirt. And maybe more colourful?”
“Yeah, me too.” I agreed, looking around. “But I can’t think of anything related that’s colourful.”
Archie did a thoughtful chin-stroking gesture with three legs simultaneously as he looked around.
“There’s not a lot in the way of colourful plants in this part of the boneyard,” He complained. “It’s all greys and browns.”
“The crypt where we found James the Morlock was all white marble,” Offered Jeff. “But that monument had ivy all over it?”
Anj cleared her throat and held up a skeletal index finger.
“Ivy like this?” She enquired, showing off the painted plants and flowers decorating her bones, then extended her hand to just above the dirt pile and looked at Jeff. “You’ve got claws; Could you have a crack at scraping some of this paint off?”
—–
We all watched as a few tiny flakes of red paint drifted slowly down, sparkling slightly as they tumbled, and settled onto the handful of dirt. I gave it an experimental stir, then jerked my finger away as the whole pile turned a deep red colour.
“This seems … encouraging?” I asked, looking between Yorick and Jeff.
“What happens now?” Yorick asked. “Any ideas?”
I shrugged, then leaned in towards the handful of red dirt, trying to somehow make eye contact with a thing without eyes.
“I’m looking for things like you.” I told it. “Graves, with people in them, somehow connected to me; Can you find those for me?”
Maybe the mouth-stiches didn’t quite close properly, but a tiny puff of breath stirred the pile, and a handful of streams of fine dust drifted lazily away. One headed towards the Mansion, another drifted towards the hall of vaults, and another splattered straight into Anj. Looking around, we could see faint red marks in all directions.
“Perhaps it got confused?” Suggested Yorick. “Seems like it went everywhere.”
Archie had been perched on top of a tall grave marker, watching from above, and stretched as tall as he could, looking around.
“Maybe not.” He suggested. “From up here, it looks a bit different.”
—–
We all balanced precariously on the tallest gravestone, steadied by Archie, looking down at the grave of the Spicy King. I’d wrapped the red dirt in my sandwich wrapper and stuffed in the one pocket of my zombie pirate castaway trousers, to keep it safe and free up a hand.
Below us, faintly sparkling red lines radiated out from the gravesite, terminating where they hit obstacles.
“So it worked,” Anj suggested. “But it can’t go around obstacles?”
“Seems like it.” Said Archie. “I’d kind of expected it to shoot off & mark all the sites, not lay a trail, but we could work with this if it can clear the terrain somehow.”
“Seems like we just need to get higher.” Yorick suggested, pointing towards the Mansion. “Top of the Mansion, perhaps?”
Jeff gave a deep chuckle, and indicated that he was climbing down, so we spent a few minutes getting back to ground level.
“You’re thinking too small.” He grinned and pointed up. “And it’s the perfect night for it; Crescent moon and everything. This’ll be awesome!”
11
“Jeff?” Asked Yorick. “What do you have in mind here?”
Jeff leaped back to the top of the tallest gravestone and struck a dynamic pose, gesturing upwards with one hand and side-eyeing us with a wide grin, waggling his eyebrows.
“Were going to dramatically pose and build a human pyramid?” Guessed Anj, then corrected herself at a pointed cough from Archie. “A pyramid of people?”
“No!” Jeff slumped slightly, then pointed rapidly between himself and the night sky. “Werewolf. Moon. Moon high in the sky?”
He slumped slightly further when he saw our group of blank faces, and shook his head.
“You people have no imagination, and only two of you have an excuse.” He muttered. “I’m going to ask the Moon to help.”
“OK, wasn’t expecting that.” Archie commented.
Anj raised a hand.
“Is the moon not very far away?” She asked. “Not that I don’t like the werewolf and moon thing, but it seems like range might be an issue.”
“Distance isn’t as big a deal as you might think around here.” Jeff grinned. “Yorick and Headcrow can tell you about that.”
He took a deep breath, threw his head back in a classic ‘howling at the moon’ pose, and … Made absolutely no sound.
Archie and Yorick and I looked at each other, then back to Jeff.
“Uhh, Jeff?” I asked. “Was something … “
The rest of my question got cut off when Anj repeatedly slapped my arm, saying “Moon” over and over again while looking up. The crescent moon, previously a silver sliver in the night, was somehow right above us, a pockmarked object hanging over the boneyard.
Archie, Yorick, and I said the only thing we could under the circumstances.
“Fuuuuuuck.”
Jeff adopted a more relaxed stance, facing upwards.
“Thank you.” He said. “I’m hoping that you can help us with the new arrivals.’
Impossibly, a crater opened into an enormous eye, and I could suddenly see the face which had been there the entire time.
“This is the primary for the arrivals.” Jeff continued, gesturing at me. “And he’s got a way to find all the others, and there are a lot of others, but it won’t work on the ground; Can he come up and try it from where you are?”
The eye somehow focused on me; It was like being caught in a spotlight, pinned in place. I could almost feel a question in that gaze.
“Ummm, … Hello.” I waved. “I can’t really introduce myself, because I don’t know what my name is. They tell me that’s probably significant somehow.”
I fished out the package of red dirt.
“Between us all we made this stuff, and it seems like it’ll make a trail to all the people we can’t find out there in the boneyard.” I gestured around. “Some of them are people I work with, and some are also my friends, and I’d like to help them, but … I think I need some help to do it?”
“We don’t really know what we’re doing here,” Anj added. “Or where here is, or whether this is all just a dream or something. But we could really use some help, and Jeff thinks the help we need is yours.”
“Though I’m not clear on how that would work?” I asked, partly to Jeff and partly to the Moon.
The eye closed. Somehow, without actually changing, the Moon looked different. Instead of being a crescent of light on a dark sphere, it now looked like an actual silver crescent, like something from a stage show.
“I think that’s permission to proceed?” Said Yorick. “Jeff, how does the next part of your plan work?”
—–
I stood at one end of a long row of graves. Down at the other, with his back against an obelisk of some kind, Jeff crouched, his hands laced together.
“This is idiotic.” Yorick declared. “I don’t care what you say about cartoons, this cannot possibly be the right approach.”
“I’ll bet a spa weekend at the Mansion that it works.” Said Jeff, then looked at me. “Whenever you’re ready; Just run like hell and jump when I throw you, dude.”
“You’re on.” Replied Archie and Yorick simultaneously.
I started running.
“They have spa weekends?” Anj asked. “They’re good?”
Up to a decent speed, I tried to set my pace to hit Jeff at the end of a stride.
“The bathrobes are amazing.” Archie replied. “And they have them in my size; Not everywhere can accommodate a giant spider, but these have extra armholes.”
With one final push, my foot hit Jeff’s hands, and I jumped as he hurled me upwards.
And further upwards, trailed by Jeff’s distant shout of “Halloween Special Cartoon Logic! In your face!!”.
And still further upwards, the Moon seemingly expanding in front of me until I collided with it gut-first, wrapping myself around the lower ‘horn’ of the crescent and clinging on. I paused to catch my breath, realised I didn’t need to, and started to gracelessly clamber up onto the lower crescent.
A slowly growing “Waaaayyy!” turned out to be Jeff heading towards me, arms and legs flailing. He overshot with a muttered “OhShit!”, snagged the very tip of the upper crescent with one foot on the way past, and came to a crashing halt at the very top of the Moon, clinging to the underside of the upper tip with all four limbs and his teeth.
“‘Extbook ‘anding, ‘at was.” He claimed, trying to adjust his grip.
As I cautiously stood, I could swear I saw the Moon’s eye roll.
“No time like the present, dude.” Jeff called down. He was dangling by his legs, doing something with a silvery cord tied around his waist. “Let’s see if this works!”
Trying not to look down, I dug the paper parcel of red dirt out of my pocket and carefully poured the contents into one hand. I took a deep breath, then paused, slowly letting it out again.
“What’s up?” Jeff enquired, now sitting on top of the Moon, tying his silver cord to the very tip of the crescent. “Try not to be nervous; If it doesn’t work, nobody will blame you.”
“No.” I replied. “Not nervous, just … Thinking about how to give this the best shot of working?”
I turned a bit and looked out towards the horizon, raised the handful of dirt to eye level, and took another deep breath. Then I grabbed the stitches across my mouth with the other hand, yanked until the cords broke, and blew as hard and as long as I could across the dirt, sending a giant plume of red dust out into the sky.
As I watched, it separated into dozens of individual strands and sank towards the boneyard below.
From above me, Jeff muttered.
“Damn; That was bad-ass awesome.”
12
I sidled up towards the wider main body of the Moon, away from the tip of the crescent, and cautiously looked down. Twinkling streamers of red were making their way to the ground, fanning out as they headed for different spots, leaving a trail across the landscape below.
Really far below.
I hurled myself away from the edge and pressed my back against the more vertical portion of the crescent Moon, eyes shut tightly, and for some reason breathing quickly.
After a moment, I could hear some faint voices, gradually getting closer and louder.
“That worked better than I’d expected.”
“Aye, those trails should be simple to follow, I’d think.”
“Did you know Jeff could do that?”
“I don’t think Jeff knew Jeff could do that; Not for certain, anyway.”
“Are we talking about the jumping thing, the throwing thing, or the talking to the Moon thing?”
“The throwing. It’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t have worked at all.”
“You’re just annoyed because we owe him a spa weekend.”
“Each!” Came a rasping voice from above me. “You each took the bet, so you each owe me a spa weekend.”
There were some noises of outrage as Jeff continued, somehow getting closer.
“Though I might give one of them away to someone who’s done a hell of a job.” A gentle poke on my arm. “How’re you doing there, Voodoo Dude? Voodude? Zomdoodle? … Nope, still got nothing … “
I opened my eyes. Jeff, impossibly, was hanging in the air a few metres away, positioned as though he was hanging onto a an invisible rope with a hand and a foot, like a furry swashbuckler in a very strange movie.
At my obviously confused look, he reached up and flicked the empty space just above his hand. A silvery shimmer travelled briefly out, revealing a thin strand tied around the top Cresent of the Moon.
On a hunch, I leaned out a little and looked down. Below him on the strand, just under the Moon, Yorick and Anj stood on Archie’s shoulders, or whatever passes for shoulders on a giant spider, rotating gently around the silvery line as he climbed upward.
“It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up!” Anj commented, waving at me enthusiastically.
As they drew level, Anj and Yorick stepped off onto the lower crescent, then Jeff dropped, bounced off Archie, provoking an outraged squawk, and landed beside me.
“That was right beside my eye!” Archie complained, climbing to the top of the moon and then scuttling down to a point a bit above me. “Your paw hit right beside my eye!”
“Sorry, Archie.” Jeff looked embarrassed, but only for a moment. “Though in fairness you do have a lot of eyes; It’s kind of hard to avoid them.”
For a long moment, we all stared down. Red lines snaked across the boneyard, leading to glittering headstones or down into vaults. A broad avenue of red traced a path through the hedge maze, then broke off into a multitude of trails as it entered the Mansion.
A dim orange glow drifted up towards up, and Headcrow’s voice emerged.
“Are … Are you standing on the moon? The actual moon?”
“Yep!” Jeff somehow managed to sound smug. “It’s a werewolf thing.”
“Is it working?” Yorick asked.
“Oh Hell yes!” Headcrow replied, the orange glow brightening a bit and coalescing into a tiny translucent jack-o’-lantern. “It’s leading us right to everyone, though that sparkly stuff gets everywhere. It even went to James and the new guy we just found.”
“Who is it?” Anj and I asked simultaneously.
“We figured you’d found one of your own after the mime routine Yorick and … Uhhh …” Headcrow paused. “I’m sorry, but what’s your name? Guy we dug up first, with the stitches.”
Archie tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out towards the Mansion. Up on the roof, Headcrow and James the Morlock were waving at us, standing next to a gargoyle.
“We have no idea.” I replied, waving back. “I can’t remember, and when we got her out Anj couldn’t remember, though she knows she should know it.”
There was a brief huddle on the rooftop.
“James can’t remember either, and neither can Errol.” Headcrow continued as the gargoyle waved hesitantly. “The best they can do is ‘the guy in the analysis team who’s laptop crapped out on a Friday afternoon’ and ‘that one who helped move the sofas when we were saving the hidden breakout area’.”
There was another huddle.
Anj leaned past Yorick and tapped my arm.
“Didn’t know you were responsible for that area.”
“It was a group effort.” I replied. “They wanted to remove it, so we rearranged things, brought in some plants and bookshelves, made it look more deliberate.”
“And you’re also the one who kept playing Christmas videos on the big screen in the office? With a fireplace and cats and … A reindeer?” Headcrow asked. “I don’t understand any of that bit.”
Anj caught me making a rude gesture towards the rooftop and valiantly tried to change the subject.
“Erroll, yes?” She asked. “Building maintenance? Did the basement refit where none of the walls were square?”
—–
A while later, we were all sitting with our feet hanging over the edge of the Moon, like a very strange version of that New York construction worker photo, watching the crews below dig up graves and guide people towards the Mansion.
Headcrow had made his way to the grave of the Spicy King, and was continuing the conversation from there.
“So, what was the key? What made it work?” He asked.
“Teamwork and luck, I think.” I replied. “Yorick and Jeff explained how things work, Anj and Archie helped figure out the ingredients and where to go, Jeff got us here, and … I guess the Moon made it possible?”
“What was the music video you mentioned?” Archie asked. “Anything I’d know?”
I shrugged.
“Don’t know what the actual song is, or who it’s by.” I admitted. “It’d sometimes be playing as part of a loop at this gym, but you needed to plug into the machines to hear the soundtrack, and I always had my own headphones linked to my phone, so I had my own tunes.”
Yorick looked baffled, raised a hand as though asking a question, then waved it away and gestured to me to continue.
“There were people in a jungle, being hunted by some kind of voodoo zombie guy and trying to get away. And there was a suitcase that someone cut their way out of, and I’m pretty sure a scarecrow in the middle of a road that turned into the zombie when it got hit by a jeep?”
Anj looked thoughtful.
“Did it start,” She asked. “With someone dangling by their feet from a rope, and ends on a beach?”
“Yeah, that’s the one!” I grinned. “And another person cuts them down, and one of the people on the beach is the zombie guy but not wearing the top hat!? Because he had a top hat for the rest of it.”
Archie made a thoughtful noise, and Anj looked annoyed, then they simultaneously slapped me across the back of the head.
13
“Did you seriously base this whole thing on a video you didn’t even understand?” Anj shouted. “That wasn’t a zombie, it was a skinny guy in facepaint.”
“Voodoo People?!” Demanded Archie. “We just solved this using fucking Voodoo People?”
“No!” I protested. “Voodoo People is the one with the blindfolded people running in a city, with their hands tied behind their backs, and there’s other people gambling on them. And the winner gets a bag of money.”
“That was a remix.” Said Archie. “The jungle one is the original.”
“Who does a video with the original band members for a remix?” I asked. “That just seems confusing.”
Yorick cleared his throat unnecessarily.
“Not that this isn’t fascinating,” He began.
“And it really isn’t.” Added Jeff.
“But maybe we should consider getting down from here,” Yorick continued with a sharp look at Jeff. “And getting back to the confused people in the caskets?”
—–
We stood at the edge.
“Soooo, … ” Anj slowly enquired, looking down. “How does this work?”
“I can ferry people one at a time.” Archie offered. “Going down’s harder than going up when you have a load, so it’ll take a while; If you’ve got another option, that might be faster.”
Anj looked thoughtful, and started patting around the waist of her dress, looking for a pocket. When she found one, she closed her eyes, put a determined look on her face, and plunged her arm in up to the elbow, carefully drawing out an umbrella.
“Thought I’d try Jeff’s trick with the pockets.” She explained. “And I had an idea for getting down that seemed kind of fun.”
Anj popped the umbrella open, revealing a mostly white lace sunshade kind of thing, with the same flower designs as on her bones.
“Any of ye seen Mary Poppins?” She asked brightly.
—–
“This was a terrible idea!” Yorick yelled, clinging onto my ankle. “Why did I let you talk me into this?”
It had seemed like such a good idea. We link hands, step off the Moon, and float gently down to the boneyard in a long chain, supported by Anj’s umbrella.
The reality was that Anj floated serenely in the air while Yorick and I dropped like stones. He lost his grip on my hand, but managed to grab my foot on the way down, while I’d just been able to keep hold and was clinging onto Anj’s wrist with both hands.
Jeff, who had opted for ‘werewolf stuff’ and simply stepped off the edge, was watching from ground level, and Archie was trying to swing towards us but was having trouble moving against the breeze.
“I don’t want to alarm you, Yorick.” I said, as calmly as I could under the circumstances. “But I can feel this odd popping sensation from my leg.”
“Your ankle looks fine.” He responded. “A bit dessicated, but it doesn’t look like anything’s damaged?”
I looked down to see a thoughtful look cross Yorick’s face. He freed a hand, reached up, and gently pushed the ragged cuff of my castaway trousers up. We had just enough time to share an ‘OhShit’ look before the last stitch around my calf parted and he plummeted downward, still holding onto my ankle.
Headcrow and Jeff jumped towards the spot immediately under Yorick, diving to try to catch him as the skeleton crashed into the earth between two rows of graves, throwing up a small cloud of dust
“That did not look fun.” Muttered Archie as he swung by.
The dust cleared, and we could see Yorick lying on his back, triumphantly holding my leg up like a weird trophy, lying on top of Jeff, who was sprawled on top of Headcrow.
“In hindsight.” Headcrow remarked. “While I’m unhurt, I think I’d have preferred the option where you waited for the next available spider.”
“Is everyone OK?” I shouted down.
“Did you break anything?” Asked Archie. “Well, anything other than Jeff?”
Jeff extricated an arm from the pile and gave a thumbs-up.
“I’m OK.” He shouted up. “Yorick doesn’t weigh much, though his bones are quite pointy.”
Yorick slowly sat up, cautiously moving his limbs and producing loud clicking noises as joints realigned.
“Nothing broken here, I think.” The skeleton replied. “Everything’s still attached.”
“Unlike your leg.” Anj added with a grimace. “Which I suspect is going to become very important fairly soon; Look out!”
My one remaining foot clipped the big obelisk and started me wildly swinging. I managed to get it under me when we touched down, and tried to keep my balance with a few giant hops, which worked until I collided with the Headcrow/Jeff/Yorick pile, flipped over it, and came to rest lying on my back, staring up at the stars.
With a hint of a smile, the Crescent Moon closed its eye and turned back into a silvery sliver in the night sky.
14
“How was I to know it wouldnae work?” Anj complained as she walked towards the Yorick/Jeff/Headcrow pile. “It should have worked. It worked in the movie.”
Yorick rolled gracelessly off the pile and staggered to his feet, still clutching my leg.
“We all got down, at least.” He said. “If not all in one piece.”
Jeff reached out, grabbed the stump end of my my detached leg, and pulled himself upright using Yorick as an anchor. I shuddered and grabbed at the stump.
“Gah! Don’t do that!”
I levered myself to my foot and carefully hopped over towards the Grave of the Spicy King, leaned against it, and pulled up my trouser cuff to look at my leg-stump. Snapped cords hung from the broken stitching, and the broken-off end of a bone protruded a little way out of dry flesh.
“I don’t know how, but I could feel you pulling on my leg.” I complained as I poked at the stump. “Why does my leg have the consistency of an overcooked steak? How does that work?”
Anj and Jeff both sniggered, earning them a confused look from Headcrow as he sat up and hugged his long legs for balance, looking out from below his own knees.
“Pulling his leg?” Anj suggested.
“How did I not see that one?” Headcrow softly headbutted his thigh a few times, then looked at me. “If you can still feel it, then we can most likely just stitch it back on; It’s still connected to you.”
“What if it wasn’t?” Asked Jeff. “What do you do then?”
“Mostly just tape a bunch of cats together.” Came a voice from above as Archie lowered himself towards the top of the big obelisk, turning slowly in the air as he descended.
Yorick and Headcrow both looked like they were about to ask something, but Jeff got in first.
“What’s spinning a web like?” He enquired. “Is it like you’re doing a really long poop?”
Headcrow stretched out an arm, snatched my leg, and threw it at him, hitting Jeff squarely in the muzzle with my toes.
—–
I sat leaning against the Grave of the Spicy King, extracting the broken cords and trying to knot them back together. Anj sat on the gravestone, and Yorick leaned against it. In front of us a three-way slap fight between Jeff, Headcrow, and Archie tumbled around.
“Looks like Headcrow has the reach advantage, but Archie is winning on number of limbs?” Anj offered. “And Jeff … ?
Yorick nodded.
“Jeff seems to be more mobile than either of them, from what I can see.”
Jeff sprang out of the scrum and landed on top of the big obelisk, posing in an arms-raised victory stance for a moment before my leg caught him in the gut & he folded over, toppling off again.
Anj leaned down and grabbed a badly knotted strand from me with a muttered “I can do better than that.”
“What’s a bit annoying is that I can still feel my leg.” I said, handing the other cord fragments up to Anj. “So all of that is kind of distracting. And a bit ticklish maybe?”
Yorick made a thoughtful noise, then lowered his hand, palm-up, in front of me. One finger was detached, and as I watched, it arched like a caterpillar, then stood on its tip and hopped around.
“Just a thought.” Yorick muttered, somehow raising a nonexistent eyebrow.
I leaned forward and stared at the ongoing scuffle, trying to concentrate, or at least to identify who was currently holding my leg. Anj tapped me on the shoulder and handed down the cords, now braided together into a single slightly lumpy strand.
“Wait.” She suggested. “For the opportune moment.”
—–
Jeff and Archie simultaneously swept Headcrow’s legs out from under him, making the scarecrow topple, his arms flailing wildly. Jeff hurled himself upwards, just barely snagging my leg with one foot on the way past; Archie reared up, stepping on Headcrow for a little more reach, trying to grab my toes.
At the top of Jeffs arc, Anj and Yorick both tapped me on the shoulders.
“Now.” They murmured.
My severed leg twisted in Jeff’s grasp, flicked upwards to kick off his stomach, and hurtled downwards to rebound heel-first off Archie’s head. It hopped hard onto Headcrow, pushing him back down, then bounced a few jumps towards me, coming to rest upright beside the gravestone in an oddly smug way.
“Good leg.” Anj said, patting it on the stump. “Well done.”
15
The Archie/Headcrow/Jeff pile sorted itself out with only a small amount of bickering about who’d won; The general consensus was that I’d in some way cheated, and that said cheating was somehow worse because I wasn’t involved in the slap fight. I pointed out that I was quite literally the focus of the fight, or that at least a part of me had been, so I’d clearly been involved before any of they were, but this was rejected by Headcrow as being unhelpful.
“Soooo.” Anj said, slowly. “How does this next bit work?”
I rolled up my trouser cuff, exposing the stump and broken-off bones. Cleaning out the grass and dirt from my landing took a few moments, and I looked back and forth between the stump and my severed leg.
“OK, on you get!” I declared, pointing back and forth between the leg and the stump. “Here’s where you’re supposed to be.”
Absolutely nothing happened.
“Come on!” I tried making the sort of noises that sometimes attract cats.
Much like a cat, the leg just sat there, somehow ignoring me.
“What.” Yorick asked. “Are you expecting to happen here?”
“Thought it might work.” I shrugged, then reached out to snag the leg and drag it closer, shuddering at the feeling of touching the inside of my own leg when I accidentally grabbed the severed end. “I figured maybe Jeff’s cartoon logic thing would kick in.”
Pointedly ignoring the huge grin on Jeff’s face, Yorick shook his head.
“No. Sorry, but that’s not how it works; At least not for skeletons, and I guess not for whatever you are. Carribbean Pirate Voodoo Person Zombie?”
“Gonna need to find something shorter than that.” Muttered Anj.
I carefully lined up the ends of my leg bones with the corresponding holes in the stump, took an entirely unnecessary deep breath, closed my eyes, and gently threaded my leg back on, shuddering all the while as I felt the bone slide across flesh. Once the worst of the quite literal flesh crawling sensation died away, still with my eyes clenched shut, I pushed upright and tried to stand, then overbalanced and faceplanted back into the dirt.
There were muffled noises from Anj, Yorick, and Headcrow, but Archie spoke up enthusiastically.
“Balance can be a bit tricky.” Multiple fuzzy arms pulled me upright and got me standing, then gently pulled away. “Try it now. How’s it feeling?”
“It’s odd.” I opened my eyes to see everyone staring intently at me, for some reason maintaining direct eye contact. “I can feel the bones pushing against each other; Didn’t feel like that before.”
I flexed my knees a bit, tried bouncing on my toes, and would have fallen again if Archie hadn’t grabbed me.
“That felt so strange.”
I looked down at my leg.
At the back of my leg. And my own heel.
The group collapsed into laughter. I merely collapsed when Archie let go and fell onto his back, rocking back and forth, giggling.
—–
Once it was turned the right way around, my leg slid back together with much less of the unpleasant flesh crawling sensation, though the noise of bones dropping into place did feel like fingernails on a blackboard. I grimaced, wiggled my toes, then put my feet side by side and wiggled them in unison.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked, admiring my properly oriented feet.
“Waiting for you to notice.” Anj offered. “And then you just jumped into action without opening your eyes … “
“And we got caught up in the moment.” Continued Headcrow.
“And after you fell Archie stopped us from speaking.” Said Yorick, grinning at Archie’s attempt to look innocent.
“Don’t blame me; I’m a giant spider.” He protested. “We don’t have feet! How was I supposed to notice?”
We all stared at him.
“Yeah, fair enough.” He grinned. “What’s the point of having eight limbs if you can’t shush a bunch of people and hold someone up at the same time? Especially for a good joke?”
I perched on a nearby gravestone and started trying to poke the reassembled cord through the holes in my leg, gently wiggling it through while stretching & twisting the dry flesh to make the parts line up. While it didn’t feel nearly as bad as the bone had, it was still an unpleasant sensation, which must have shown on my face.
Anj started going through her pockets, muttering about craft supplies, but gave up after a few minutes.
“Sorry.” She shrugged. “I’d have thought that a sewing kit or something to fit the theme, but apparently Halloween Cartoon Land disagrees.”
Yorick shot out an arm and held up his palm right in front of Jeff, blocking the grin that was forming.
“Don’t.” He grated. “Just … Don’t. It’s bad enough that your explanation worked when one rooted in reason and philosophy failed, but with the Moon thing too?”
Yorick slumped.
“I’d just like to get through the rest of the night without any more cartoon anything. Or Werewolf smugness.”
Jeff nodded, suppressing his grin with an obvious struggle.
“Sure thing, Yorick.” He replied. “And on the bright side, we should be done, shouldn’t we?”
Headcrow clambered to the top of the obelisk and looked around, then called down to us.
“Looks like it.” He gestured around at the boneyard. “Looks like everyone is heading for the Mansion, and I can’t see any red trails.”
At the sight of four puzzled faces, he continued.
“We found that the trails fade when the person is found; Made it way easier in the Mansion Vaults, I’m told.”
Headcrow jumped back down and crouched over, peering at my leg.
“So once we get that thing reattached, you can go meet up with everyone.” He reached out and made a little grabby-pinchy motion with impossibly thin twig fingers. “I can probably grab the end if you can get it close enough to the surface.”
The sensation of something grabbing around inside your leg, trying to pinch a cord and draw it through a ragged hole, turned out to be remarkably unpleasant. Still not as bad as ‘waking up in a coffin which is actually a casket’ or ‘realising that you accidentally turned a co-worker into a Morlock’, but unpleasant enough that you’ll look for anything to distract yourself. I was idly reading inscriptions on headstones, tracing the paths between graves, adjusting the tension on the stitches already in place; Anything to distract from thin pinchy fingers inside my calf. Tiny fragments of red still glittered in a few places, not yet faded, and as Headcrow let out a triumphant “Got It!” and dragged the cord through the last hole, finally dragging my leg back together, I managed to figure out how to link the fragments into a coherent path.
I looked up from tying my leg securely back into place to see Anj staring intently at the same fragmented path, for some reason squinting at it. Archie scuttled across to look over her shoulder.
“It’s funny that those bits haven’t faded.” He commented. “All the rest …”
“Aye, all the rest have.” Anj continued. “And they almost make a trail.”
I cleared my throat, unnecessarily, and pointed, tracing the path I’d figured out.
“It makes one from down here; Goes around the stones, but I can’t follow it past the obelisk.”
“Could be a leftover from your first attempt?” Yorick suggested, following the red sparkles. “Though that path …”
“That’s where I was standing.” Said Anj. “Big clump of red hit me; Looks like some got through though?”
“I assumed it was heading for you.” I said, clambering back upright and jumping up and down a few times to test my restored leg. “But … Maybe not? Maybe we’re still missing someone?”
We discovered that following the trail while standing was nearly impossible, but things got easier when I dropped to a crouch, and then to a crawl. Behind me, the rest of the group followed.
“I’ve got a question.” Jeff started. “And I solemnly swear it’s not about Cartoons or Werewolf Stuff.” He added quickly after a groan from Yorick.
“I Solemnly Swear I Am Up To No Good.” Anj and Archie and I intoned, unhelpfully.
“Ignore them; It’s a children’s book reference.” Jeff continued. “Something about a school for magic and a kid with a scar? But it’s a good line.”
“It’s Harry Potter.” Said Archie with an incredulous tone. “It’s a modern classic.”
“Despite what the author did afterwards.” Anj muttered. “How do you know the line but not the name?”
“Anyway.” Jeff continued, ignoring them. “What if the Voodoo Zombie People thing tried to work, but the aim was off? Is that a thing?”
The sound of a skeleton stroking their chin in thought, it turns out, is a reasonably distinctive sound, even when the backdrop is a giant spider and a painted skeleton lady quoting lines from movies.
“You’re suggesting that the trail is weaker because … ” Yorick said slowly, thinking aloud. “The sympathetic elements don’t match the target?”
“Or don’t match them enough.” Confirmed Jeff. “I don’t remember exactly, but wasn’t there something in there about being connected to our new zombie bloodhound here?”
“I heard that!” I yelled back, my face just above the ground, crawling into the gap between a couple of vaults.
“And you’re proposing that this person isn’t connected?”
“Yeah! Or isn’t connected well.” Jeff replied. “Hey! Was there anyone …”
“How The Hell Are You Doing That!?” Anj yelled, interrupting him.
I froze in place and looked back over my shoulder at her, down the gap between the vaults. She was staring in horror, Jeff and Archie had looks of confusion, and only Yorick and Headcrow seemed unconcerned.
“Doing what?” I asked. “I’m climbing through here to follow the trail. Didn’t want to risk losing it.”
“Look at where your feet are.” She demanded. “Then where the rest of you is.”
Headcrow gave a low chuckle.
“Guess we can add something to the list of Voodoo People Zombie things.”
After looking around, I could see her point. My feet were flat on the top of the vaults on either side of me. My torso was sideways in the gap, both hands somehow on the ground. My chin had been just above the ground, looking forward, but was now looking back at an angle I’m pretty sure wasn’t possible for anyone with a spine.
“It it bad that this is weirdly comfortable?”