The Bone Yard and Other Stories Read online

  And the living thing was hunched over the fire eating with wet slopping noises. Yes, it had been human. The greyness was skin unused to sunlight. I smelled pork. It went to one of the skeletons and pushed bloody meat into its mouth and then worked the jaw bone mechanically, like it had done this a thousand times.

  “Ma,” it said, touching the corpse. “Eee.”

  But the corpse would not “eee” or “eat” or anything and it became distressed.

  “Ma!” It howled. “Ma?”

  Strangely, I felt a pang of pity. The skeleton was its mother and it didn’t understand she was dead. At the same time I felt revulsion, for the thing was no longer human. Years of enforced cannibalism had turned he or she insane: it was eating one of my friends.

  There was a moan from some distant corner. Weakly: “Don’t eat me!”

  Alexander!

  He was alive!

  He sounded weak … but he was not dead yet.

  The thing silenced Alexander with a slap. It preferred fresh food and had spared Alexander’s life for that reason. I had to do something. Looking in my immediate area I saw nothing to use as a weapon - nothing but bones.

  While it was busy devouring Brian, I brought the largest bone I could to my side. I put both hands around the narrowest end, planning to swing it like a club when it got close.

  “Urrrk,” I said.

  It approached to investigate. Foetid breath stung. Its head was so close to mine ... I swung.

  The bone hit its forehead - whack - and it roared, more surprised than hurt. I pushed. It lost its balance and fell in the fire. The flames licked it greedily, sparks flying. The dry clothing ignited and it panicked, running from the church smoking and in pain. It didn’t have the sense to roll on the ground and was probably going to douse itself in water, which would take time.

  Adrenaline pumped inside me suppressing pain and fatigue. I rushed to Alexander. He was in bad shape, blood on his lips. Eyes unfocused. “Mike?”

  “Get up,” I said, tugging his arms. He obeyed. “Can you walk?”

  He nodded. I guided him and we headed towards the gap. Alexander was a dead weight, but I wasn’t going to abandon him. He could be annoying and snobby, but he was my friend. I had to save him. We had to get out of the graveyard.

  Somewhere the cannibal screeched. Then it was silent. I feared it had found water, putting the fire out, which meant it would now be angry and looking for us.

  I pulled Alexander onwards.

  The gap loomed - so close and yet so far.

  I willed us forward.

  It was too late.

  I could hear the cannibal coming.

  *

  With one last effort, I half-dragged, half-carried Alexander towards the gap. The cannibal was crossing the bone yard with leaps and bounds, leaping from headstone to headstone, snarling and screeching. Reaching the gap, I pushed and lifted Alexander over the low wall. Looking back, I saw the cannibal only twenty feet away. I grabbed the wall with both hands and jump-kicked to propel myself upwards and over. I tumbled through the gap, strength going, consciousness going. I was too tired to run when it inevitably attacked. Alexander and I were a tangle of arms and legs, lying on the trail.

  The thing slammed into the wall. Its hands gripped the stones. I kicked them. It growled, retracted the hands. Its dirt grey face bared yellow teeth. It only had to climb over the wall to kill us.

  But it stopped.

  There was an expression in its eyes:

  Fear.

  And I understood.

  It was afraid of our side of the gap.

  Our world was as frightening to it as Old Carney was to us.

  It lingered at the wall - shaking with indecision. It wanted us dead - but it was terrified of the consequences of leaving its home.

  “Leave us alone!” I yelled.

  It hissed ... and was gone.

  I laughed hysterically and forced myself to stand. Alexander swayed drunkenly, so exhausted. I aided him up the hill. I kept looking back in case it changed its mind. But it did not. It stayed in the bone yard.

  I heard a car’s engine and wept with joy. Bright headlights blinded me. Joe had reached the village and obtained help. Knowing this - knowing we were going to be all right now - my legs collapsed and I lost consciousness.

  *

  Today Old Carney is still there, though the walls have been repaired with concrete and the gap blocked and signs placed to warn the public. It’s a little part of England that will always be there. Sure, the weeds and the thorns might get longer and the wall might lose a few stones, but it will never change. Old Carney is a place that has a bad aura you can never shrug off.

  I’m old now, but I will never forget that hot summer of 1939. I’ll always remember Joe, Alexander and Brian.

  Brian was like a brother to me. He was not smart or special, but he was part of the Fearless Four and his death was something that irrevocably changed my life. I became a doctor because I wanted to save lives after seeing Brian die.

  Joe’s guilt over Brian’s death changed him, too. He became a vicar; the irony of that makes me smile.

  Alexander used the experience in his novels and lives in the hallowed halls of Oxford, lecturing students on a subject with a multi-barrelled title.

  These days I live a long, long way away from Old Carney, but it’s always there in my memory, late at night, just before I go to sleep.

  After we escaped the bone yard, the authorities tried to hunt down the cannibal, but they never found it. They did discover hundreds of half-eaten bodies in the ruins. They were reburied in a different cemetery miles from Old Carney. Then everyone tried to forget about the old bone yard.

  Most local people think the thing starved underground many years ago. But some local people still say they hear weird noises coming from Old Carney. Like the sounds of a wild creature.

  I believe them.

  Nematode

  The wound, like the hungry mouth of a lamprey, opened.

  Kelly looked down where his navel had been only moments before. He pulled up his slick T-shirt and let out a cry of alarm as the thing wriggled its purple tail inside his abdomen, bloating him as if six months pregnant. Oh, God, this can’t be happening. But it was happening, and the thing made wet sucking sounds as it forced its way between his organs, eager to be inside the warmth of his body. Once it had vanished, his blood started flowing like water out of a garden hose.

  Kelly clutched his stomach and vainly tried blocking the blood. But it just spurted between his fingers, splattering his legs and feet, so much that he knew whatever had entered him - what was it, a worm? - was killing him, even as he staggered out of the barn and towards his farmhouse - which seemed so far away. He had to reach the phone. Call a doctor. Call a vet. He fought the pain, somehow remaining conscious, holding his stomach together as he waddled up the lane. He entered the dark farmhouse. Reaching the phone, he hammered nine-nine-nine. Come on, come on, answer, someone help me. Police? Fire? Ambulance? George Clooney! Anyone!

  A thick, guttural slurping sound emanated from his chest, like a massive belch. It was feeding, he could feel its teeth. Then the pain passed a threshold and Kelly collapsed, unfortunately pulling out the phone line. I’m going to die.

  Kelly was wrong. It was far worse than that.

  *

  Killing was the worst job in the world. Seeing it on a regular basis had converted Kelly into a devout vegetarian, but killing was the family business. He’d learnt the slaughter trade as his final promise to his dying father, Douglas Kelly. Kelly had become CEO of Bovine Products Enterprises, a semi-large company employing 230 people that killed cattle by the thousand in a complex of corrugated iron slaughterhouses. Since the BSE scare, business had been booming. The slaughterhouse killed cattle, putting a bolt into their brains on a deadly production line of a thousand a day, then sent the reluctant corpses to an incinerator plant outside of Birmingham.

  He’d hated it. Kelly had found it hard to remai
n detached from the act of slaughter whenever a pair of big, dopey eyes stared at him. Cattle were so stupid, he felt sorry for them. He could barely watch his people drive a bolt through their brains and watch their legs give out under them. It had been hard enough for him to justify the work when the cattle was being put to a purpose - for food - but the crisis over BSE convinced him to renege on his promise. It was just killing for killing’s sake. A waste. Most of the poor animals assigned for incineration were BSE free. And the ones with BSE probably circumvented the slaughter and ended up on Mr and Mrs Jones’ plate anyway. So he’d quit and sold the slaughterhouse for half its real value, buying a farm in Surrey.

  He’d decided to breed cows for milk.

  That had been his plan, six months ago.

  Funny how things had changed.

  *

  Kelly’s cheek was stuck to the stained carpet. A strange feeling scratched at his consciousness. It was an absence of something. Pain. Yes. There was no pain. Was that a good thing? Yes. He hoped. What an awful dream he’d had. It had seemed so ... real. Nauseous, he tentatively felt his stomach. There was a hole. He could feel it. Too big for his navel. The dream ...

  When he remembered how he’d got in the situation, Kelly groaned. He rolled over and sat up, peering down. The wound had stopped gushing, brown coagulated blood now circled it. The floor was another story. About nine pints of vintage Kelly ‘96 had pooled around him while he’d been unconscious.

  But he was still alive.

  Impossible.

  Unless ... unless the thing was keeping him alive.

  He stood and hurried to the bathroom.

  He desperately needed to go.

  *

  One night, the cows were restless. He could hear them all the way from the farmhouse. They sounded like screaming children. Kelly opened the gate and swept his torch over the herd. They shied away from the light.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He’d never seen them act this way. It was as if they were scared - no, terrified. He moved among them, shining the beam on their flanks. Maybe they had a skin infection causing them distress. No. Nothing. They looked fine. But his presence just caused them more agitation. They were frightened.

  The torch caught something red in its beam - a dead cow. The cow was lying separate from the rest of the herd and the other cows wouldn’t go near it. Kelly felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  As he got closer he saw its abdomen had been horribly mutilated. Yet the same cow had been alive just hours earlier. During the night, someone or something must have sliced her open and removed the internal organs. Why? He had no idea. The idea repelled him. Cattle slaughtering had been happening in the US for years ... where it was blamed on anything from UFOs to the CIA. But he’d not heard about it happening in Britain. Unless the government was covering it up.

  It was obvious by the extent of the damage and the precision of the injuries that no wild animal had caused the mutilation. The vet would need to examine it. And the police. Maybe there was a psychotic in the local village he didn’t know about, one who got a kick out of hurting animals. Maybe the perpetrator was watching him, right now.

  *

  Kelly showered the blood off, sluicing it down the drain. Then he looked at himself in the mirror. Apart from the weird hole instead of his navel, he looked normal. The swelling had gone down. He was very anaemic, yes, but otherwise normal. It was little comfort, considering what the thing had done to his cows. How could something that big fit inside him? Would it just burst out, like that creature in the Alien films?

  He returned to the living room and went to replug the phone.

  Pain rippled up his chest, raw and excruciating pain. The pain managed to get worse the closer he got to the phone. He stopped, and the pain stopped. He stepped forward - and buckled in agony.

  Kelly realised it didn’t want him to call for help. The pain was a warning.

  “I’m not listening to you,” he muttered, dragging himself across the room.

  *

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” George McMurry said. The vet stood next to the steel table, rubber-gloved hands deep in the cow’s abdominal cavity. “There’s been a 95 percent loss of blood. If I believed in the supernatural, I’d say it’s as if someone drained the blood like a vampire. As a rational man, I’d say this was ... something else.”

  Kelly said: “What about the organs?”

  “Gone,” McMurry said. “There’s surgical precision to it, Ian. You have any enemies?”

  “None I know about.”

  “Then you’ve got a problem.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I’ll call the police.”

  *

  I should have called the police when I had the chance, Kelly thought, as he lay on the ground, barely a metre away from the phone. But no, I’d decided to handle the problem myself. Then that thing had come out of the latest dead cow, headed straight for me. Like it was upgrading species. He rolled away from the phone and the pain vanished. In the brief glimpse of it before it entered him, he’d seen it was unsegmented, like a nematode. Nematodes were pointed at both ends, with a mouth and anus, unlike flatworms which just had mouths. Its skin had been smooth and thick, dappled white and pink, almost transparent. He knew of two species of nematode that were parasites of humans, roundworms and pinworms, but it had been too big and too fast to be their big brother. George McMurry had been right - it was Something Else.

  The way it had stopped him reaching the phone meant it was intelligent.

  Tomorrow morning Kelly’s wife would be back from London. He could not let the nematode live long enough to make her its host. He would rather die. He walked into the kitchen, switching on the phosphorus strip lights. The lights flickered on unsteadily then filled the kitchen with painful brightness. The pain did not belong to him, he sensed. The nematode didn’t like light. It didn’t like his intentions, either, sending white hot agony up and down his body in waves. The nematode must have tapped into his spinal column, playing his nerves like a harp’s strings. He could feel it renting and tearing, plucking pain in every way it could. Black spots danced before his eyes. Oxygen starvation. He grunted and grit his teeth. “You’ll ... have to ... try harder, buddy.”

  He walked past the oven to the counter top by the windows. There were knives in the drawers, and hanging up in racks. A spot of self-surgery sounded the best option. It could not add to his pain. Half-blind, he grabbed a ten inch carving knife and aimed it at his stomach. His skin rippled in concentric patterns, centred on his navel. The creature was nervous. With all the force he could muster, he stabbed himself.

  The blade sunk in up to the handle. There wasn’t even any resistance. Not a splash of blood came out. He moved the knife upwards, to where his breastbone stopped it. Nothing. His chest looked as if he’d been given a zip. He put the knife between his teeth and used his hands to grip the sides of the opening. His fingers sunk into his chest. Then he pulled back the flaps, an living autopsy, delicious agony causing him to weep. Behind the flaps of skin there was a hole. The kitchen lights shone into the red and purple cave.

  The nematode was curled into a spiral adhered to the wall of the hole. His knife attack had gone through the middle, striking nothing. The nematode’s black, shiny eyes looked up at him, as if to say: “You missed me.”

  A giddy insanity rocked Kelly. The nematode started to unwind, pushing upwards and downwards with unimaginable force. Kelly felt as it he was going to split in two. He took the knife out of his mouth and jabbed at the undulating flesh. A black and red ichor jetted out.

  Now it was pushing up into his throat, determined to make its host’s brain dead before he could strike the killing blow. Kelly stabbed himself in the neck, again and again. As long as the nematode was keeping him alive, he had the strength, the will-power to fight. He was relentless, cutting and hacking until the kitchen tiles were awash with white chunks, like the off-cuts in a fish restaurant. The pressure on his neck st
opped. Falling to his knees, Kelly worked the knife inside his ribcage, just to be sure. Something slithered over his hand. He pulled his hand out and stared at in in horror. The headless nematode was wrapped around it. Released from his body, it was no longer supporting his life functions. He fell backwards, slamming against the oven door, head lolling against his punctured throat. Through the crimson haze, he could see a new head growing out of the nematode’s bloody mass, feeding on the flesh of his arm. Razor teeth buried into his wrist. The thing was one of those worms that could survive even when cut in two.

  Sheer anger kept Kelly going. He slammed his hand against the floor, stunning it and dropping his knife. Twisting around, he put his hand in the oven. Then he picked up the dropped knife and hacked off the hand, his wrist bone snapping easily thanks to the nematode’s previous attack on it. Then he shut the door, leaving his hand and the worm inside. He fell against the oven door, exhausted.

  The nematode slammed against the wire-glass, but Kelly’s body weight prevented its escape. Still, he could not leave it alive. It was one species that deserved extinction. Reaching up with his one good hand, Kelly turned the oven on full, 220C. It’s really cooking tonight. Delia Smith, eat your heart out. In fact, eat your stomach out. When Kelly slumped, a numbness taking over, he could hear the nematode screaming.