The Gravesavers (8 page)

“It’s the poison in the air from all the industry. It’ll be worse where you’re going to.”

Thomas shot her a withering look. “Thanks for your kindly words of encouragement,” he muttered to me.

When we reached the dockyard we were sucked into the whirlwind of energy. The ground beneath us vibrated.

“John, over here! Take a look at that, would you?” Thomas pulled my arm. He was pointing to a ship.

“That’s ours?”

He nodded.

“Are you sure?” I choked out. I was looking up and up and up. I was getting dizzier by the second.

“What’s the matter, little brother, getting scared?”

“Not likely!” I said, but kept hold of his coattails.

The men working on that giant, whale-shaped boat beetled to and fro, carrying crates on their backs and pushing them into holes darker than the mouths of underground caves. The stench in the air was overpowering—sweat and rotting fish and salt and more coal mingled together.

I retched—and vomited my breakfast. On Tom’s shoe.

“John! Disgusting! Here,” he said. He wiped my face with a brisk rub of his handkerchief. “Quick now, before Mum sees and makes a big fuss. You’ll be fine. Just too much excitement. Breathe.”

“I’d rather not. That’s the problem.”

“Then plug your nose. Like this. Just scrunch it up and then breathe through your mouth.” His voice changed as he showed me. I did as I was told. It worked.

Single file, holding on to each other, we wove our way through the crowd. Finally, we reached a man in uniform at the head of a long queue of people. He frowned as he shuffled through the handful of papers and tickets Dad handed over. He looked at the crate and cradle, shook his head. I watched Dad slip some money into the man’s palm. He waved us forward.

Thomas jabbed me in the ribs. “Told you about them. Was I right or what?” I followed his finger.

At the stern of the ship, on a thick cable of rope leading up to another one of those dark holes, was a rat as big as a beagle. It crawled up a twist of rope and into the belly of the ship. We both shivered. Rats spread the plague that claimed our grandparents’ lives. Now that was a story that haunted us even more than legends of the Black Knight.

“It’s time,” said Dad. He was pale beneath his usual browned face. Mum sobbed into Libby’s shoulder and Libby was bawling too.

“For God’s sake, Mare,” Dad said as we walked up the gangplank to the main deck, “I didn’t think you even liked the woman.”

“It’s not Libby I’m crying for, it’s England,” she sniffled. Dad came to a dead halt. Thomas and I bumped into them.

“We can turn around right now, Mary Hindley. It’s not too late. They’ll give me my job back in a second at the mill—you know that. Are you sure this is what you want?”

I held my breath.

Mum reached up and passed her hand across Dad’s forehead like she was feeling for a fever. “You are the kindest man alive, Paddy. I thank you for asking that question.”

Thomas rolled his eyes.

“Move along, mates.” The voice behind us was friendly but impatient.

Goodbyes are many things all mixed up together, I thought as we took our place on deck.

The ship’s horn sounded. Throngs of people waved and a cheer went up from those left behind. Libby was now just a little dot of red and black, like a ladybug, I thought as she got smaller and smaller and smaller.

The grinding and moaning of the ship was deafening. We headed with purpose for open waters. Thomas’s hand covered mine. At first I thought it was some sort of accident. But no.

“Wave, John Hindley, wave goodbye to the shores of our homeland, and I’ll wave goodbye to my heart.”

“Oh brother!” Oh lovesick brother.

I was all ready to pretend to blow kisses back to Rebecca, but Thomas moved his hand just then. He placed a protective arm around my shoulder.

I held my teasing back and we stood on deck a very long time, as did most folks, stood there until the last speck of land turned a pale grey and seemed to melt finally, blurring into the line between the sky and the sea. England disappeared as easily as a cloud rubbed out by wind.

“’Bout time,” Nana snapped from behind the door, as if she’d been lying in wait for me the whole time. She had a purple plastic flyswatter in her hand. I half expected her to start swatting me in the back of the legs with it when I brushed past her to go upstairs. I wanted to wash the skull and get a better look at it.

“Suppose you’re hungry now. Well, we better get something straight right off about meals—”

“What?” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as I could.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something,” she said.

“I did,” I said, then pulled the skull out from under my shirt and thrust it in her face. I was hoping to freak her out. She barely blinked. Then she turned so fast she squeaked. I’m certain I could smell rubber burning from her boots.

“Bring it into the kitchen first,” she said. “Then I’ll put it with the others.”

The others?

I followed her into the kitchen.

“Just put it on the table,” she ordered.

She cleared a spot by shoving aside what looked to me like my breakfast. I suppose it would have been my punishment for running off. She would have made me eat a bowl full of cold porridge.

She filled the sink up with warm sudsy water and then motioned to me to bring it over.

“It’s yours. You have to clean it.” She handed me an old toothbrush. “Be gentle.”

I scrubbed at least ten minutes. As the dirt dislodged from the cavities and pockmarks, the skull became more recognizably human.

“Okay, that’ll do,” she said and held out a terrycloth towel. I watched as she dried every nook and cranny, and even used a Q-tip on the smaller spaces she couldn’t get at with the twisted corner of the towel. She handed the skull back to me. But it was the strangest thing. It no longer felt like a skull. It felt like a head. It was warmer for one thing. It gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Nana clasped the key that hung from a rope around her neck and pulled it over her head. Or tried to. She was wearing an oversized man’s plaid shirt and the key got tangled up in her collar. After tugging for a bit, she finally croaked from beneath the folds of the shirt, “Help me with this, would ya?”

Rather trusting, I thought, letting me help her with a rope around her neck.

When she had the key in her hand and her shirt back in place, she pointed to the skull and then upstairs. With the skull in my hands—like a dead weight, which it was—I followed.

She cackled. “I call this the bone closet.”

Just as I feared and always suspected. There
was
something secret and deadly behind that locked door. Great, I was thinking, she’s a vampire witch and I’m in the middle of a horror movie.

But at first, it was nothing spectacular. A small storage room. I smelled mothballs and cedar and stifled a sneeze. There were books and boxes everywhere. Herbs hung upside down in bunches. She reached behind a neat stack of shoeboxes and chocolate boxes and scooped up bundles of dirty old tea towels. Cradling them in her arms as if she was carrying a baby, she placed the five bundles on a steamer trunk.

“Unwrap them,” she instructed. The creepy feeling slithered into my belly again.

“No,” I whispered.

She laughed. “They won’t bite.”

“I’m telling Dad,” I said.

“What?”

“That you’re scaring me.”

“You’ve got yourself worked up, is all,” she said and laughed again. “Your imagination’s far worse than the truth. Unwrap them.”

So I did.

I let a yelp out of me that travelled to Katmandu and back. Sure enough, there were more bones and partial skulls.

“Calm down,” the witch was snorting. Laughing! “Don’t look so terrified. It’s not like I ever killed anyone!”

I had to plug my nose for fear of upchucking right there on the floor. I started to back out of the closet.

“No you don’t, get back here. It’s not pleasant but it’s a fact. I figure this here was a man, this one a woman, this child, maybe four, five years old. You found a baby this morning. See?”

She put her glasses on and rummaged through a wicker basket. From a rat’s nest of trinkets she produced a measuring tape and proceeded to measure the baby’s skull.

“Not more than two months old, I’d say. God bless her little soul.”

“Nana, what’s going on?” The room was starting to wobble in front of my eyes, like heat rising from hot pavement in summer.

“Out!” she hissed. She didn’t have to tell me
twice. She locked the door behind her. “Put on some boots. I’ve got someplace to take you.”

“I didn’t bring any.”

“There’s an extra pair of rubbers by the door.”

She grabbed the keys to her truck. I didn’t even have time to untie my sneakers, just threw them off and stepped into boots miles too big for me. I clomped after her as fast as I could. She was already in the truck with the motor gunning by the time I caught up with her.

“It’s only five minutes from here.”

“What’s five minutes from here? Where are you taking me?” She had a wild-eyed look about her. Crazy, I kept thinking, my whole family is bonkers now.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

She sped like a demon down the main highway, then turned onto a dirt road I’d never been on before. It was narrow and cut through dense forest of fir and pine. We were in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t seen a house for at least a mile. Nana honked suddenly.

It was a squirrel. The truck hit the soft dirt on the shoulder of the road and fishtailed until she finally got control. And she just kept on going!

“Nana!” I screamed.

“Relax,” she said, “I’m a very good driver.” Compared to who? I wondered.

After a few more hair-raising twists and turns, she parked. We got out of the truck and she looked around, almost as if she was sniffing for danger.

“Hold still,” she said. I turned in time to get showered with bug spray. She just missed my eyes.

“The no-see-ums are buggers this time of year. They get me every time.” She doused herself with the musky stuff, dabbing it behind her ears as if it were perfume from Paris. From the cab of the truck, she pulled out a stick and some bells.

“Never seen a bear in these here woods, and never want to neither. Just in case, though, this’ll scare them off.” I think she thought it was a good joke. I didn’t laugh.

She crossed the road and clambered down into the ditch, motioning to me to follow with an impatient wave of her arm. I squished after her, darn near sinking in mud the colour and thickness of tar. I had to fight my way through a grove of cattails, most of them taller than I was. Nana was breathing heavily by this time, but then so was I.

“Shh!” she hissed, looking behind me. I slowly turned. It wasn’t a skeleton or a bear, but a doe, just a few steps away. She noticed us, and with a flick of tail showing the white patch around its bottom like a thong bikini, she was gone.

“This way,” said Nana. An overgrown trail led deeper into the forest. “Careful of the branches,” she said. “One snap in the eye and you’ll be blind for the rest of your life.”

I followed at a safe distance as they whipped back. She was ploughing through like some dog on the scent of a rabbit. The wild blackberry bushes and thistles on either side of the trail attacked my ankle bones. Finally, we made it to some sort of a clearing.

Panting, she trudged up a small knoll in the centre of the clearing. I joined her, almost blown over by the force of the wind, gasping at what I saw. It was a view of the ocean even more spectacular than from the hill behind her house. Stretching out as far as I could see was nothing but ocean. It was a wild and thrashing sea, the roar of the waves like thunder beneath our feet.

“Over here,” she shouted. Barely visible for the alders and scrub brush around it was a cemetery. The tombstones were lopsided, crooked teeth in a dinosaur’s jaw. She pointed to a tall monument, a giant cement pencil pointing to the sky. “Looks like a miniature of the Washington Monument, doesn’t it?” she wheezed.

“I couldn’t say,” I said, “seeing as I’ve never seen the Washington Monument.” I was hot and bruised and frustrated and now wet by the spray from waves hitting the rocks below. I couldn’t look down without getting dizzy.

“Well, it does. Read what it says,” she ordered.

There was a rectangular plaque, tarnished from age, about halfway up the base of the stone. I read it out loud.

“‘This spot marks the burial of some 544 souls lost at sea in the marine disaster of the SS
Atlantic
on April 1, 1873. May they rest in the waters of eternal life.’”

“Five hundred and fo—” I was astonished.

“Everyone knows about the
Titanic
,” Nana said quietly. “They write books about it, make movies and spend millions looking for it. That’s fine, it should be remembered. But this shipwreck was the largest wreck before the
Titanic
. This one is all but forgotten. Nearly everyone in Boulder Basin and Terns Bay helped in the rescue that night.” She pointed just down the coast aways. “See that hump of rock out there, like a whale’s back?”

I nodded. It was only visible every few moments, as waves crashed around it.

“That’s where she hit. Not even eight hundred feet from Elbow Island beyond. Some made it to the island. Some washed up on its shore. Some say if you step on that island to this day you’ll hear the screams and dying words of those who didn’t make it. Those bones you found, they’re from here, this gravesite where those folks got buried. Time and the sea are eroding the earth. These poor buggers are drowning all over again.”

“You mean the bones from here make it all the way to your house?”

“All up and down this coast these past few years. Before that, people around here collected enough treasures and pieces of ship in their houses to set up a small museum. Which is exactly what I’d like to see someday. Anyhow, the erosion of the grave itself is a tragedy. I’ve been stashing the bones for a few years now, hoping I could get some action.”

“Action for what?”

“To restore this gravesite, first off. Thought we could fix up the shoreline here, bulldoze some earth back in and build up the embankment to keep who’s left buried safe. I started off writing a few letters. I went to some town council meetings.”