Death Trance

'Charlie, this is a miracle,' I panted, 'but it's not God's miracle.'

'What are you talking about?' Charlie slowed down to a hobbling, jerky walk. 'Who else does miracles, apart from God?'

I pointed to the north-west, to the sparkling stretch of water about a half-mile south of Winter Island. 'Charlie, under the ocean — right there — where I'm pointing — lies the wreck of a 300-year-old ship. Inside that ship are the remains of a kind of demon, a devil, do you understand me? An evil spirit, like in The Amityville Horror, only worse.'

'You're trying to tell me it was that which raised up my Neil?'

'Not just your Neil, Charlie, but my wife, too, and the wives and husbands and brothers and children of scores of other people in Granitehead. Charlie, Granitehead is cursed because of that demon. The dead of Granitehead are never allowed to rest, and your Neil is the same.'

Charlie stopped, and stared at me for a very long time, while he caught his breath. 'Why are you telling me this?' he said, at last. 'Is it true?'

'As far as I know it. I'm working with several other people, including three custodians from the Peabody Museum. We're doing what we can to raise that ship off the bottom, and get rid of the demon forever.'

Charlie wiped his mouth with his hand, and narrowed his eyes towards Waterside Cemetery. 'I don't know what to say, Mr Trenton. I saw him, and he was real. Real and alive as I am.'

'Charlie, I know. I've seen Jane the same way. But, believe me, it isn't the Neil you used to know when he was alive. He's different, and he's dangerous.'

'Dangerous? I used to take my belt to that boy, when he misbehaved himself.'

'That was the Neil you knew when he was alive. This

Neil is something else altogether. Charlie, he's controlled by that demon, and he's out to kill you.'

Charlie sniffed, and then cleared his throat. He looked at me and then looked down towards the cemetery.

'I don't know,' he said. 'I don't know what to believe. You, or my own eyes.'

It was then that we both heard calling. A boy's voice, carried on the wind. We both strained our eye's to see where it was coming from, and at last Charlie said, There… look, over there!' and when I followed his stubby pointing finger I saw Neil, young Neil Manzi, standing on a small grassy promontory, waving to us as freely and cheerfully as if he were alive.

'Dad…'he was calling. 'Come on, Dad…'

Charlie immediately started jogging again, down the hill.

'Charlie, for God's sake!' I shouted at him, and ran after him, and tried to catch his arm. 'Charlie, that isn't Neil!'

'Don't give me that, look at the boy,' Charlie puffed at me. 'Look at him, the same as always. It's a miracle, that's all. A plain miracle, just like they used to happen in the Bible.'

'Charlie! He'll kill you!'

'Well, maybe I deserve it!' Charlie shouted. 'Maybe I deserve it, for buying him that motorcycle. Get away, Mr Trenton, I warn you. Leave me alone.'

'Charlie — '

'Mr Trenton, I can't be any unhappier than I am now, alive or dead.'

That last shouted remark stopped me in my tracks. I watched Charlie Manzi galloping fatly down that hill, waving as he ran to the slender boy in denims who stood just a little way away from him, waving back; and I knew that there was nothing I could do. I could have football-tackled Charlie, I suppose, or tried to knock him out. But what was the point of that? I'd never be able to watch over him night and day, to make sure that Neil didn't come back to get him; and besides which, if I did knock him out, he wouldn't even want to talk to me again.

I stood where I was, my hands down by my sides, as Charlie ran further and further away. Soon he was a tiny fat figure in the distance, his white apron blinking at me from almost a quarter of a mile away.

I decided to go back to the market, and pick up my car, and maybe drive around to the cemetery to see if there was anything I could do; but then I saw Neil run down from his promontory, and disappear, only to reappear much nearer the cemetery gates, almost the same distance away as Quaker Lane Cottage. Charlie kept after him, and I knew then that however hopeless it was, I was going to have to chase up behind and see if there was anything I could do to make him change his mind.

I ran down that hillside as fast as I used to run at High School, when I was swimming and running every day and generally considered myself to be a junior edition of Johnny Weissmuller. I was exhausted by the time I was within hailing distance of Charlie, and I could scarcely croak, let alone shout, but I kept on running at a slow, even pace, until there were only 20 yards between us.

'Dad!' came the cry on the south-west wind. 'Come on, Dad!' And the sound of it was all the more chilling because it was so young. I saw Charlie reach the cemetery gates, and open them, and disappear inside, somewhere behind the headstones.

I summoned up a last burst of effort, and reached the cemetery gates just in time to see Charlie making his way down the centre aisle of tombstones. He was walking now, holding his chest with both hands because he was so deeply out of breath, but not stopping to rest, not even for a moment, not while Neil was waiting for him at the end of the aisle, his arms outstretched, smiling, welcoming his father so warmly, and with such encouragement, that I knew I would never be able to persuade Charlie to turn around.

'Charlie!' I shouted, in a strained voice. 'Charlie, for one minute, wait!'

I wrestled with the wrought-iron cemetery gates, but somehow they refused to open. They weren't bolted; and they couldn't be locked, because Charlie had walked through them so easily. But no matter how violently I shook them and kicked at them, I couldn't get them to budge.

'Charlie!' I screeched at him. 'For one second, Charlie, just listen! Don't go near him, Charlie! Don't go near! Charlie, it isn't Neil! Don't go near!'

I rammed against the gates with my shoulder, but they weren't going to move. There was nothing I could do but stand there and shout, while Charlie plodded slowly between the gravestones towards the son he thought he had lost.

It was then that I heard a deep, gravelly, grating noise. It sounded like a ton of rock being dragged slowly across a cement floor; and I wasn't sure if I was hearing it through my ears or through the soles of my feet. Then there was another noise, grittier than the first, and louder.

Maybe it was an earthquake. Maybe something was shifting, under the ground. I had heard there were caverns underneath parts of Granitehead, where the ocean had eroded the softer subsoil. I peered in to the cemetery through the bars of the gates, and tried to see if anything was happening there.

To my horror and astonishment, I saw that one of the tombs, a large white-marble catafalque with an engraved marble coffin on top of it, had somehow slid across the aisle in front of Charlie, and was now separating him from his son. Charlie turned around, bewildered, and I heard him shout, 'Neil! Neil, what's going on here? Neil, answer me!'

Before he could walk back towards the gates, another huge tomb began to slide across the aisle behind him, boxing him in. It moved with a slow, grinding sound, like shingle being crushed beneath the wheels of a road-roller; but it blocked the aisle completely, a wall of solid Barre granite.

'Charlie!' I yelled. 'Charlie, get yourself out of there! For God's sake, Charlie, get out!'

I heard Charlie calling for Neil again; but then I also heard another sound. The steady grating of more tombstones, as they shifted themselves in on both sides, narrowing the aisle in which Charlie was standing by slow but inexorable inches.

'Charlie!' I shouted. 'Charlie!'

The tombstones pressed further and further into the space that was left, until I heard above the grinding noise they were making a sudden high-keyed shout for help.

'Mr Trenton, my sleeve's caught! Mr Trenton!'