I mustn't be frightened, Johnny told himself

I mustn't be frightened!

Why should I be frightened? These are just ... post-life citizens. A few years ago they were just mowing lawns and putting up Christmas decora- tions and being grandparents and things. They're nothing to be frightened of

The sun was well behind the poplar trees. There was a bit of mist on the ground.

And, walking slowly towards him, through its coils, were the dead.

There was the Alderman, and William Stickers, and an old woman in a long dress and a hat covered in fruit, and some small children running on ahead, and dozens, hundreds of others. They didn't lurch. They didn't ooze any green. They just looked grey, and very slightly out of focus.

You notice things when you're terrified. Little details grow bigger.

He realized there were differences among the dead. Mr Vicenti had looked almost ... well, alive. William Stickers was slightly more colourless. The Alderman was definitely transparent around the edges. But many of the others, in Victorian clothes and odd assortments of coats and breeches from earlier ages, were almost completely with- out colour and almost without substance, so that they were little more than shaped air, but air that walked.

It wasn't that they had faded. It was just that they were further away, in some strange di- rection that had nothing much to do with the normal three.

Wobbler and the other two were still staring at him.

'Johnny? You all right?' said Wobbler.

Johnny remembered a piece about over popu- lation in a school Geography book. For everyone who was alive today, it said, there were twenty historical people, all the way back to when people had only just become people.

Or, to put it another way, behind every living person were twenty dead ones.

Quite a lot of them were behind Wobbler. Johnny didn't feel it would be a good idea to point this out, though.

'It's gone all cold,' said Bigmac.

'We ought to be getting back,' said Wobbler, his voice shaking. 'I ought to be doing my homework.'

Which showed he was frightened. It'd take zom- bies to make Wobbler prefer to do homework.

'You can't see them, can you,' said Johnny. 'They're all around us, but you can't see them.'

'The living can't generally see the dead,' said Mr Vicenti. 'It's for their own good, I expect.'

The three boys had drawn closer together.

'Come on, stop mucking about,' said Bigmac.

'Huh,' said Wobbler. 'He's just trying to spook us. Huh. Like Dead Man's Hand at parties. Huh. Well, it's not working. I'm off home. Come on, you lot.'

He turned and walked a few steps.

'Hang on,' said Yo-less. 'There's something odd—'

He looked around at the empty cemetery. The rook had flown away, unless it was a crow.

'Something odd,' he mumbled.

'Look,' said Johnny. 'They're here! They're all around us!'

Til tell my mum of you!' said Wobbler. 'This is practising bein' satanic again!'

'John Maxwell!' boomed the Alderman. 'We must talk to you!'

'That's right!' shouted William Stickers. 'This is important!'

'What about?' said Johnny. He was balancing on his fear, and he felt oddly calm. The funny thing was, when you were on top of your fear you were a little bit taller.

'This!' said William Stickers, waving the newspaper.

Wobbler gasped. There was a rolled-up news- paper floating in the air.

'Poltergeist activity!' he said. He waved a shaking finger at Johnny. 'You get that around adolescents! I read something in a magazine! Saucepans flying through the air and stuff! His head'11 spin round in a minute!'

'What is the fat boy talking about?' said the Alderman.

'And what is Dead Man's Hand?' said Mr Vicenti.

'There's probably a scientific explanation,' said Yo-less, as the newspaper fluttered through the air.

'What?' said Bigmac.

'I'm trying to think of one!'

'It's holding itself open!'

William Stickers opened the paper.

'It's probably just a freak wind!' said Yo-less, backing away.

'I can't feel any wind!'

'That's why it's freaky!'

'What are you going to do about this?' the Alderman demanded.

'Excuse me, but this Dead Man's Hand. What is it?'

'Will everyone SHUT UP?' said Johnny.

Even the dead obeyed.

'Right,' he said, settling down a bit. 'Um. Look, um, you lot, these ... people ... want to talk to us. Me, anyway—'

Yo-less, Wobbler and Bigmac were staring in- tently at the newspaper. It hung, motionless, more than a metre above the ground.

'Are they... the breath-impaired?' said Wobbler.

'Don't be daft! That sounds like asthma,' said Yo-less. 'Come on. If you mean it, say it. Come right out with it. Are they ...' He looked around at the darkening landscape, and hesitated. 'Er ... post-senior citizens?'

'Are they lurching?' said Wobbler. Now he and the other two were so close that they looked like one very wide person with six legs.

'You didn't tell us about this,' said the Alderman.

'This what?' said Johnny.

'In the newspaper. Well, it is called a newspaper. But it has pictures of women in the altogether! Which may well be seen by respectable married women and young children!'

William Stickers was, with great effort, holding

the paper open at the Entertainment Section. Johnny craned to read it. There was a rather poor photo of a couple of girls at Blackbury Swimming Pool and Leisure Centre.

'They've got swimsuits on,' he said.

'Swimming suits? But I can see almost all of their legs!' the Alderman roared.

'Nothing wrong with that at all,' snapped the elderly woman in the huge fruity hat. 'Healthy bodies enjoying calisthenics in the God-given sun- light. And very practical clothing, I may say.'

'Practical, madam? I dread to think for what!'

Mr Vicenti leaned towards Johnny.

'The lady in the hat is Mrs Sylvia Liberty,' he whispered. 'Died nineteen fourteen. Tireless suffragette.'

'Suffragette?' said Johnny.

'Don't they teach you that sort of thing now? They campaigned for votes for women. They used to chain themselves to railings and chuck eggs at policemen and throw themselves under the Prince of Wales's horse on Derby days.'

'Wow.'

'But Mrs Liberty got the instructions wrong and threw herself under the Prince of Wales.'

'What?'

'Killed outright,' said Mr Vicenti. He clicked his disapproval. 'He was a very heavy man, I believe.'

'When you two have ceased this bourgeois ar- guing,' shouted William Stickers, 'perhaps we can get back to important matters?' He rustled the paper. Wobbler blinked.

'It says in this newspaper,' said William Stickers, 'that the cemetery is going to be closed. Going to be built on. Do you know about it?'

'Um. Yes. Yes. Um. Didn't you know?'

'Was anyone supposed to tell us?'

'What're they saying?' said Bigmac.

'They're annoyed about the cemetery being sold. There's a story in the paper.'

'Hurry up!' said William Stickers. 'I can't hold it much longer ...'

The newspaper sagged. Then it fell through his hands and landed on the path.

'Not as alive as I was,' he said.

'Definitely a freak whirlwind,' said Yo-less. 'I've heard about them. Nothing supernal—'

'This is our home,' boomed the Alderman. 'What will happen to us, young man?'

'Just a minute,' said Johnny. 'Hold on. Yo-less?'

'Yes?'

'They want to know what happens to people in graveyards if they get built on.'

'The ... dead want to know that?'

'Yes,' said the Alderman and Johnny at the same time.

'I bet Michael Jackson didn't do this,' said Bigmac. 'He—'

'I saw this film,' gabbled Wobbler, 'where these houses were built on an old graveyard and someone dug a swimming pool and all these skeletons came out and tried to strangle people—'