The other three found that, quite by accident, they'd all moved closer together.

A rare Scandinavian thrush, unless it was a rook, cawed in the elms.

'Gone where?' said Wobbler.

'I don't know!'

'I knew it! I knew it!' said Wobbler. 'His eyes'11 start to glow any minute, you watch. You've let 'em out! There'll be lurchin' goin' on before this day's over, you wait and see!'

'Mr Grimm said that if they're away too long, they... they forget who they were ...' said Johnny, uncertainly.

'See? See?' said Wobbler. 'You laughed at me! Maybe they're OK when they're remembering who they were, but once they forget ...'

'Night of the Killer Zombies?' said Bigmac.

'We've been through all that,' said Johnny. 'They're not zombies!'

'Yeah, but maybe they've been eating voodoo fish and chips,' said Bigmac.

'They're just not here.'

'Then where are they?'

'I don't know\'

'And it's Halloween, too,' moaned Wobbler.

Johhny walked over to the fence around the old boot works. There were quite a few cars parked there. He could see the tall thin figure of Mr Atterbury, talking to a group of men in grey suits.

' I wanted to tell them,' he said.' I mean, we might win. Now. People are here. There's TV and every- thing. Last week it looked hopeless and now there's just a chance and last night I wanted to tell them and now they've gone! And this was their home!'

'Perhaps all these people have frightened them away,' said Yo-less.

'Day of the Living,' said Bigmac.

'I should have had my lunch!' said Wobbler. 'My stomach's definitely playing up!'

'They're probably waiting under your bed,' said Bigmac.

'I'm not scared,' said Wobbler. 'I've just got a stomach upset.'

'We ought to be getting back,' said Yo-less. 'I've got to do a project on projects.'

'What?' said Johnny.

'It's for Maths,' said Yo-less. 'How many people in the school are doing projects. That kind of stuff Statistics.'

'I'm going to look for them,' said Johnny.

'You'll get into trouble when they do the register.'

'I'll say I've been doing something ... social. That'll probably work. Anyone coming with me?'

Wobbler looked at his feet, or where his feet would be if Wobbler wasn't in the way.

'What about you, Bigmac? You've got your Everlasting Note, haven't you?'

'Yeah, but it's going a bit yellow now ...'

No-one knew when it had been written. Ru- mour had it that it had been handed down through the generations in Bigmac's family. It was in three pieces. But it generally worked. Although Bigmac kept tropical fish and generally out of trouble, there was something about the way he looked and the way he lived in the Joshua N'Clement block that

saw to it no teacher ever questioned the Note, which excused him from doing everything.

'Anyway, they could be anywhere,' he said. 'Anyway, I can't look for 'em, can I? Anyway, they're probably just inside your head.'

'You heard them on the radio!'

'I heard voices. That's what radio's for, innit?'

It occurred to Johnny, not for the first time, that the human mind, of which each of his friends was in possession of one almost standard sample, was like a compass. No matter how much you shook it up, no matter what happened to it, sooner or later it'd carry on pointing the same way. If three- metre-tall green Martians landed on the shopping mall, bought some greetings cards and a bag of sugar cookies and then took off again, within a day or two people would believe it never happened.

'Not even Mr Grimm's here, and he's always here,' said Johnny.

He looked at Mr Vicenti's ornate grave. Some people were taking photographs of it.

'Always here,' he said.

'He's gone weird again,' said Wobbler.

'You all go back,' said Johnny, quietly. 'I just thought of something.'

They all looked round. Their brains don't believe in the dead, Johnny thought, but they keep getting outvoted by all the rest of them.

'I'm OK,' said Johnny. 'You go on back. I'll see you at Wobbler's party tonight, all right?'

'Remember not to bring any... you know... friends,' said Wobbler, as the three of them left.

Johnny wandered down North Drive.

He'd never tried to talk to the dead. He'd said things when he knew they were listening, and sometimes they'd been clearly visible, but; apart from that first time, when he'd knocked on the door of the Alderman's mausoleum for a joke ...

'Will you look at this?'

One of the people who'd been examining the grave had picked up the radio, which had been lodged behind a tuft of grass.

'Honestly, people have no respect.'

'Does it work?'

It didn't. A couple of days of damp grass had done for the batteries.

'No.'

' Give it to the men dumping the rubbish on the lorry, then.'

'I'll do it,' said Johnny.

He hurried off with it, keeping a lookout, trying to find one dead person among the living.

'Ah, Johnny.'

It was Mr Atterbury, leaning over the wall of the old boot works. 'Exciting day, isn't it? You started something, eh?'

'Didn't mean to,' said Johnny, automatically. Things were generally his fault.

'It could go either way,' said Mr Atterbury. 'The old railway site isn't so good, but ... things look promising, I do know that. People have woken up.'

'That's true. A lot of people.'

'United Consolidated don't like fuss. The District Auditor is here, and a man from the Development Commission. It could go very well.'

'Good. Urn.'

'Yes?'

'I saw you on television,' said Johnny. 'You called United Consolidated public-spirited and co- operative.'

'Well, they might be. If they've got no choice. They're a bit shifty but we might win through. It's amazing what you can do with a kind word.'

'Oh. Right. Well, then ... I've got to go and find someone, if you don't mind ...'

There was no sign of Mr Grimm anywhere. Or any of the others. Johnny hung around for hours, with the birdwatchers and the people from the Blackbury Wildlife Trust, who'd. found a fox's den behind William Stickers' memorial, and some Japanese tourists. No-one quite knew why the Japanese tourists were there, but Mrs Liberty's grave was getting very well photographed.

Eventually, though, even Japanese tourists run out of film. They took one last shot of them- selves in front of William Stickers' monument, and headed back towards their coach.

The cemetery emptied. The sun began to set over the carpet warehouse.

Mrs Tachyon went past with her loaded shopping trolley to wherever it was she spent her nights.

The cars left the old boot works, and only the bulldozers were left, like prehistoric monsters sur- prised by a sudden cold snap.

Johnny sidled up to the forlorn little stone under the trees.

'I know you're here,' he whispered. 'You can't leave like the others. You have to stay. Because you're a ghost. A real ghost. You're still here, Mr Grimm. You're not just hanging around like the rest of them. You're haunting.'

There was no sound.

'What did you do? Were you a murderer or something?'

There was still no sound. In fact, there was even more silence than before.

'Sorry about the television,' said Johnny nervously.

More silence, so heavy and deep it could have stuffed mattresses.

He walked away, as fast as he dared.