Chapter 2 (Life)
She used to follow the line of the old railway until it headed out of town and past the woods. There a pathway would lead across a field to a road which led into the crematorium and the cemetery.
When she was 13 her and Roxanne had snuck out of the house late one night and, armed with a couple of torches, made their way down the tracks to the cemetery. They found an entrance around the back, accessed by a field and a hole in the fence. They had to cross a ditch and Holly had fallen in, landing in water that came up to her ankles.
The two girls had laughed as Roxanne had dragged her out. They’d wandered amongst the gravestones illuminated by the silver moonlight until they had headed deeper and deeper into the cemetery to the old, Victorian area.
Here stone angels loomed over them. Angels were meant to be comforting, but these ones looked quite sinister, their cracked and disfigured faces eroded by decades of acid rain.
They had found a bench near the small chapel that served as the entrance archway from the main road to the cemetery. They had taken flasks with hot tea and had told ghost stories. Holly had always been scared, but scared in a good way. Scared in a way that made you want to carry on.
But now Holly was unsure if she ever wanted to visit a cemetery again. After her experiences earlier in the day at the small churchyard, she could think of nothing else.
Eventually the working day came to an end again and Holly found herself walking home the longer way just to avoid the small church. Something odd was going on there and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be involved in it.
When she got home there was nobody in. It’d be another hour or so before Agatha finished school and her parents were both still at work. Her father was a dentist and her mother a recruitment consultant. They were both paid fairly well, but it was most definitely not the type of job she wanted to go into. Up until a few months ago she had been enjoying her job at the library. She was sad it had come to an end.
She sat down in the living room, her hands in her lap. She stared straight ahead at the net curtains and sighed.
She was bored.
It was then that her phone beeped. She looked at the text message.
YOU BUSY? COME TO THE DEN? GOT SOMETHING TO TELL YOU. ROXY.
She frowned. What was Roxanne doing in the Den at this time? She didn’t usually go there until later in the evening.
Oh well, she thought, something to kill the boredom at last!
She jumped up, pulled on her coat, hat and scarf, and made her way outside.
The Den was located deep into the woods on the edge of town. Before you got to the actual line of trees that led to the woods, there was a children’s play area, although at this time of the year it was quiet. A large, sloping hill led up towards the tree line.
Holly glanced up at the sky, the sun was beginning to set and it’d be dark in about thirty minutes. Luckily she’d brought her torch with her. She was used to being up in the woods at night anyway, it’s where the gang always met.
She’d met Roxanne when they were at school together and they had both gone on to study photography at college. Roxy had always been a bit of a wild card. Whilst Holly tended to get herself in all sorts of scrapes when she was out and about mainly by accident, Roxy was the sort of girl who would deliberately go looking for trouble.
Holly and Roxy had made quite a nice group of friends at college, and when they all left they stayed in touch. They used to go drinking in the woods late at night in the Den and they were all interested in the paranormal and supernatural.
Roxy had claimed that when she was 11 years old she had seen a woman in white walk across her hallway. Since then she had been interested in all sorts of spooky goings on. Holly herself had always had a recurring nightmare of a headless woman in a long, flowing ball gown that used to walk down the passageway behind her house. They didn’t do anything serious with the gang, but it was fun. It was a laugh.
These days, though, they didn’t tend to meet up at the Den as much. Most of them had moved on in life, only once in a blue moon heading up there.
Holly reached the tree line and muddy pathway that wound around the woods and into the denser area of trees. Although there was still some light, the trees obscured most of the sky so she turned her torch on.
The Den was located in a dense circle of trees which was itself set in a circular clearing. She could already see the gentle glow from the fire amongst the trees.
As she made her way across the clearing and towards the trees Roxy appeared at the edge. She had long, curly brown hair, glasses and a small collection of freckles around her nose. She was wearing a blue bobble hat and smiled when she saw Holly.
“Hey, Roxy,” said Holly.
They embraced warmly. They hadn’t seen each other for a while now.
“Hey, yourself, Dangerfield.”
“How you been?”
“Oh, you know,” said Roxy, “between jobs at the moment. I lost the job at the ice rink.”
“What?” said Holly, as Roxy guided her into the trees. “I thought you were alright there.”
“I was until I went in there late one night after arguing with Brian and spray painted “ROXY WAS HERE” on the ice.”
Roxy had been going out with the manager of the ice rink, Brian, for the past year or so. They had been getting on well, but Roxy wasn’t the sort of person to want to settle down.
“So he sacked you?”
“Not exactly,” said Roxy. “The owners gave Brian a choice - either I left or they sacked him.”
“So you thought with your heart then?”
“Yes,” said Roxy, rolling her eyes. “We split up, but I couldn’t let him lose his job cos of me. I might do daft things sometimes, but I’m not about to let someone lose their job over it.”
“So what’s this all about?” said Holly. She wasn’t ready to tell yet another person that her granddad had recently passed away.
“You’ll see. I’ve got Foxy here.”
“Simon Fox?” said Holly. He was one of the first to leave the group back in the day. They hadn’t seen him for years since he’d gotten a job at a law firm in town. They used to joke that Foxy and Roxy would end up together one day.
They didn’t.
“Yep,” said Roxy. “It was a bit of a bolt out of the blue. He called my house phone. He was gibbering on about something he’d seen in his garden.”
“Jesus, it must have been weird for him to have called on you. Foxy was the biggest unbeliever of them all.” She smiled. “No offence, of course.”
“None taken, sweetheart,” said Roxy with a chuckle.
“So what was it?”
“I’ll let him tell you himself.”
The Den was a large, wooden shelter-like hut. It was about 5 foot high and could fit about six people in it. It was missing the front wall, but a ragged sheet had been fixed to the frame to give them some shelter. Simon Fox was sat beside the fire, picking at his nails. He looked up as the two women entered.
“Hey, Foxy,” smiled Holly.
“Wow, Holly. You’re looking good.”
They hugged each other. Simon had left them when they were only 17. She’d been a goofy, gangly teenager back then. She’d definitely grown into herself as she had gotten older.
“Looking sharp, yourself,” smiled Holly, nodding at his blazer, shirt and tie.
“Too smart for this place,” said Roxy, sitting beside Simon and poking a stick at the dying fire.
“So what’s it all about?” said Holly, sitting down next to Simon and looking at him with interest.
“Don’t laugh,” said Simon, “but this morning I saw my dead mother.”
The Scottish girl stepped up to the gates. They were padlocked and she shook them. Nothing was going to get them open. At least not in a hurry. She sighed and looked around. It was dark now, just the car park lights from the crematorium casting a dull orange glow across the nearby buildings.
A man exited the crematorium and looked over to her. “Can I help you, miss?” he called from across the car park.
“Thought I could cut through,” lied the girl.
“Gates get locked at dusk,” he said. He continued to stare at her and then went back inside.
She took her phone out of her jeans pocket and put it to her ears. “It’s me,” she said. She rolled her eyes. “Who do you think, daft head? It’s Lilly.”
There was a noise just beyond the gates. The cracking of twigs.
“Yes, it’s all secure. No I haven’t checked the other side yet. Do you know how long it’d take me to walk around there?” She shook her head. “Too dark to go through now, even if I did unlock it. Did you deal with the woman?” She smiled. “Good. This is getting a bit dodgy now.”
There was another sound. Another twig, but this time further away.
“Look, I’ve changed my mind. I’m off to check the other gates. If I see anything I’ll call. See you later.”
She put her phone back into her jeans and quickly made her way down the road.
The girl - Lilly - wasn’t aware that eyes were watching her from the other side of the gate, shrouded in darkness.
Simon had finished telling Holly about his encounter in the back garden with his dead mother.
“And you just left her?” said Holly.
“No,” said Simon. “I didn’t know what to say to her, and then this bloke and a blonde girl barged through the back gate and threw a bag over her head.”
Holly’s eyes narrowed. Those two again!
“They told me not to say anything and that it was a trick of the light and dragged mum out of the garden and disappeared down the alleyway.”
“What did you do?” said Holly.
“I called the police. They fobbed me off and said someone would come round. They still haven’t been.”
“Fox Mulder’s planes not landed yet,” said Roxy with a smile.
“I didn’t go into work. I waited for the mist to lift and had a look round but there was nothing. So I called Roxanne instead. It’s the stuff we used to talk about, yeah?”
“That’s right partner,” said Roxy slapping Simon on the back. “Roxy and Foxy back in business.”
“What do you think?” said Simon to Holly. “You don’t seem too surprised.”
“Well, it’s weird, yeah,” said Holly, nodding slowly, “and I’d find it hard to believe, if I hadn’t seen the two people you described this morning myself, tackling some old guy to the ground.”
“Was he a dead person?” said Simon.
“How should I know?” said Holly. “He just looked…old.”
“What a minute, Hols. You saw a dead person too?” said Roxy, getting in closer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“To be honest I’m still trying to process it all,” said Holly, scratching her head. “Where they both Scottish? The man and girl?”
“Yep,” said Simon, nodding. “I mean, my mum’s long gone.”
Holly nodded. She had remembered reading it in the paper. His mum had died in a house fire five years ago. Simon’s Dad had walked out on the family when he was only seven and he had been an only child. He had been brought up by his mum and it had affected him badly when she had died.
“Hang on,” said Holly. “I don’t want to sound insensitive or anything, but how did your mum look?”
“Like the same old mum,” said Simon sadly.
“Not…burnt or anything?”
“Holly!” said Roxy, astonished.
“I’m sorry, Simon,” said Holly, “but I’ve gotta ask.”
Simon shook his head. “No. Just the same as she’d always looked. Pale, but…beautiful.”
Holly looked at Roxy, got to her feet and then guided her towards the trees out of earshot of Foxy. “Janelle Fox was burnt to death, remember? As absurd as it sounds, if her body really had climbed out of the grave and gone to see Simon, why didn’t it look like she’d done two rounds with the Human Torch?”
Roxy nodded. “True. But then how do you explain it?”
“You can’t explain it,” said Simon, getting up and brushing his trousers down. “You just can’t.”
“I vote we take a trip to the cemetery,” said Roxy, grabbing her rucksack.
“Why? It’s too dark anyway,” said Simon.
“That never stopped us,” said Roxy.
“It’s not like it’s late or anything,” said Holly. “It’s just dark. There’s still that hole in the side of the fence over the ditch. We can get in that way.”
“Will you two listen to yourselves?” said Simon. “We’re adults now, not college kids. I work for a law firm.”
Holly nodded. “Yeah, normally I would have accepted that and backed down, however, this is not a normal, adult situation. The dead are wandering the town.”
“You don’t know that,” said Simon.
“Then maybe you imagined your mother,” said Roxy. “Simon, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s the only way. I don’t know how it’s happened, but, darling, this town has a case of zombies.”
The two young women weren’t sure how they had done it, but somehow they had managed to convince Simon to go with them. Holly and Roxy were dressed for the trip, but Simon looked out of place in his blazer, jumper and shiny black shoes. He looked worried and frustrated, but he knew he needed answers.
They had trekked through the woods to the dark-track that led across a field. The track then crossed over a farmers flyover that stretched across the main road that had been built on top of the old railway. They then followed a path until they reached the field that ran along the side of the cemetery. A ditch ran along the fence but it had been long since drained of water.
Holly shone her torch along the metal fence. It was around here somewhere. The same place Holly had fallen in all those years ago.
There it was!
Holly pointed. There were a couple of slats which looked like they could be easily swung aside.
“Nice one, Dangerfield,” said Roxy. “Nice of the council to not bother fixing it.”
They were about to make their way into the dry ditch when there came a voice.
“Good evening.”
The three of them turned around in unison. Standing there with a torch light shining under his chin was a man with brown hair and stubble. The same man Holly and Simon had seen earlier in the day.
“Can I help you?” he said with a smile. He had a warm and gentle voice.
“Who are you?” said Holly, the only one managing to find her voice.
“My name’s the Doctor. I’m hunting the dead, and I suspect you are too”
To be continued...
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