Graveyard Shift (3 page)

“So what's my true calling?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me or what?”

He grinned and stretched out his arms, locking his fingers together until the joints crackled and clicked.

“My, but you're hard work,” he said. “Always the questions. But I'm hungry! Let's take a walk.”

W
e set off along Lamb Lane and crossed London Fields through a fog of barbecue smoke. Everywhere in the park, sun lovers were roasting themselves alive in shorts and swimsuits. On Broadway Market, cyclists swarmed in all directions between the chic coffee shops and stalls of brightly colored fruits and vegetables, not slowing or giving way, so we had to duck aside to avoid being clobbered.

We turned off at the bridge, heading down to the canal. It felt cooler alongside the water, and the pale moon's reflection on its surface kept pace with us as we went.

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “You're no ordinary office clerk, are you?”

“That's right,” Mr. October said. “But, then, my office is no ordinary office. Here, have an apple.”

Wiggling his fingers, he reached up to his right and picked one from the air and handed it to me, rosy and red.

“Good trick,” I said, “but I bet you stole it from one of the stalls.”

“If that's what you'd like to think,” he said, plucking another for himself as if from an invisible tree.

I was cautious at first about biting into the fruit. If it hadn't come from a stall, then where? But it tasted delicious, bitter and sweet and crisp. We walked on, munching, not speaking for a while.

“So what else can you do?” I said. “Read minds? See the future?”

“Not exactly, not the way you mean, but something tells me if you don't step this way right now, you'll regret it.”

Before I could fathom what he meant, he'd taken my arm, yanking me to his side of the footpath just as a girl cyclist went flying past at top speed exactly where I'd been walking. I caught a glimpse of her scraggy fair hair and wraparound sunglasses as she whisked by.

“God, how about that?” I stared after the girl as she shrank into the middle distance. “She would've flattened me if you hadn't done that.”

“Some people have no morals,” he said, a note of anger in his sandpaper voice. “She stole that bike, you know. And the sunglasses too.”

“How could you know a thing like that?”

“I saw her leaving a shop back there on the street. Saw the
look on her face and knew at once. I pick these things up from people.”

He was glaring after the bike in the distance when the girl seemed to lose control, as if she'd hit a stone or a crack in the path, and went skewing to her left toward the bank. The cycle struck the edge and upended, carrying the girl into the water with an almighty splash.

“Nothing to do with me,” Mr. October said innocently. “If she hadn't been thieving, she wouldn't have been in such a rush, and that would never have happened.”

We headed to where she and the bike had hit the water. The bike had already sunk without a trace and the girl was splashing frantically a good distance from the bank.

“Can't swim,” Mr. October confided. “That's how it looks to me.”

“She's gonna drown,” I said.

“Not only that, but she's lost her sunglasses.” He didn't seem at all concerned. “All that fuss and trouble for nothing.”

“But aren't you going to help? Maybe I should go in after her. . . .” I was starting to panic.

“There you go again: born helper.” He patted my shoulder. “Don't worry. Someone else will be along in a minute. And besides, she's not what she seems. She's not on the list.”

No sooner had he spoken than a small group of people — two more cyclists, a trio of joggers — appeared in the distance, heading our way. Mr. October set off along
the bank, ignoring the girl's screams and splashes. It took me much longer to drag myself away.

She vanished below the surface, then shot up again spitting water and thrashing her arms. It wasn't right to leave her like this, but the others were closer now and had seen what was happening. They would help.

“It's OK. You'll be out of there in no time,” I called to the girl, but I couldn't be sure she heard. Then what Mr. October had said began to dawn on me, and I set off after him, running.

“What list?” I said. “I don't understand.”

“Everything in its own time and place, Ben. Just like the preacher said.” He stretched through a yawn, wiggling his fingers. “All this excitement is making me hungry again. Fancy a hot dog?”

 

The hot dog he plucked from the air for me came with both ketchup and mustard and an extra helping of caramelized onions. We ate in silence for a time, and then Mr. October let out an appreciative burp, which I matched with one of my own. We both laughed.

“My, I feel as stuffed as a taxidermist's cat,” he said.

Farther along, the canal path was busier, with a constant stream of cyclists and joggers. None of them got too close, as if they sensed what had happened to the last cyclist who'd done so. Instead they slowed down, easing around us at a
respectful distance. Even so, they were a source of irritation to Mr. October.

“We came here for a quiet chat, but look at them — they're thick as flies. I can't hear myself think.” He clicked his fingers a couple of times, and the pathway ahead suddenly appeared silent and clear. “That's better,” he said.

“Did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Clear the path. There's no one else here now, just us.”

“It's only a lull. There'll be more along soon.”

All the same, as we strolled on I noticed how still the water had become, with the moon's reflection frozen on its surface like a snapshot. Overhead, a few small white clouds stood fixed against the sky, not moving. In the last few seconds, the roar of traffic on a road bridge nearby had faded to nothing. This was becoming stranger, more unsettling, by the minute.

“It's like being inside a bubble,” I said.

He gave me a quizzical look. “How so?”

“Like before, on Mare Street, when no one noticed us. And the street went quiet for a time and it was just you and me. Like being inside a bubble where we could see everything but we were unseen.”

Mr. October considered this, then a broad grin broke across his face, his silver tooth sparkling. “I knew I was right about you. I knew you had the gift the first time I saw you. Congratulations, young man.”

Now he'd confused me again. “Congratulations for what?”

“You've passed all the tests so far. You've shown just the right qualities for the job. And as soon as I've run my report past my superiors, I think we can move you along to the next level.”

So far he'd answered none of my questions; all he'd done was invite many more. What list? What job? What true calling? I was still pondering all this when he clicked his fingers down by his hip and the traffic noise returned to the bridge and the roads around Victoria Park. Light and movement quivered across the water again, and seconds later I noticed the first cyclist pedaling toward us around the bend.

That was when I knew for sure: He had powers I couldn't even begin to imagine, the kind I'd only ever seen from heroes and villains in comics. If only for a minute, Mr. October had stopped the world.

 

Leaving the canal towpath, we cut across Victoria Park to the lake. It was quieter and less crowded there than London Fields nearer home. Families of swans and geese idled on the sparkling water.

Mr. October sat with me on the grass in the shade of a gnarly old oak, his nimble fingers knotting together a chain of four-leaf clovers.

“Count yourself lucky,” he said, passing me the chain. “Some people wait their whole lives and never find what they're looking for. Some go looking in all the wrong places. Others are too lazy to look in the first place. They think,
This
is my lot, these are the cards I've been dealt, this is as good as life's ever gonna be
.”

“That's sad. I'd hate that.”

“Good for you, then, because destiny tapped you on the shoulder today. Tapped you right on the shoulder and took you on a ride to see the sights.”

“Is that what this is?”

“It's only a start. There's so much more.”

“Why me, though?”

“Because I've been in this line of work longer than I care to say, I've lost count of the people I've seen come and go, and I've never seen anyone so right for the task as you. That's the crux of the report I'm filing with my superiors, anyway.”

“Who are your superiors?” I had to ask.

“The Overseers,” he said quite seriously. “All you need to know for now is that our work is vitally important. Top secret. Highly classified. Not to toot my own trumpet, but without us the world would be in an even worse state than it is now. The whole thing would come crashing down. The natural order of things would change.”

“Wow. Sounds like a big responsibility.”

“Yes, it's huge.”

“I'd be scared to take on something like that.”

“Nothing wrong with being scared,” he said. “Nothing worthwhile's ever achieved without fear. If I'm wrong about you, I'll throw up my hands and say, ‘Sorry, my mistake.' But come with me and you'll have the answers to all your questions, even the ones you haven't thought of yet. Questions
about your father and what I was doing last week at Seaborough churchyard.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. Dappled patterns of brightness and shade played through the oak's branches above us, falling on the intricate chain of four-leaf clovers and making them appear to squirm between my fingers.

“Well, duty calls,” Mr. October said. “We've come a long way together today, young man. We've got a lot further to go. I'll check back with you next week about the trainee position. But now I've got work to do.”

I stood to watch him walk away toward the lake, a tall raggedy man dressed head to toe in darkness. As he neared the water, a frantic scratching behind me drew my attention away. A red squirrel scrambled up the tree trunk, freezing in its tracks when it felt me watching, its bright button eyes staring straight into mine for perhaps a full minute. Then it skirted around the far side of the tree, out of sight.

There were countless gray squirrels in the park, but I'd never seen a red before. I'd never seen a four-leaf clover for that matter, and here I was holding a string of them in my hand, standing on a green carpet of thousands.

Magic,
I thought.
Something like magic. Everything's alive!

Folding the chain into my shirt pocket, I scanned the lake-side for Mr. October. There was no sign of him now, and the only movement near the water was that of an urban raven taking flight.

The bird soared into the air and soon became a dark dot above the trees. The moon had sunk from the sky, and I
stared into the hazy blue until I grew dizzy. Then I set off toward home.

 

The first true breeze of the day wafted down the roadway as I came up from the towpath. I hadn't seen anything of the sunglasses thief on the way back. Whatever she'd done wrong, I hoped she was safely back on dry land by now. But what had Mr. October meant, she wasn't what she seemed?

On London Fields the barbecues were still going strong. The smoke made everything soft and distant. Near the fence along Lansdowne Drive, a black mass of ravens were fighting among themselves over a pile of bread someone had dumped in the park. As I got to the path that crossed the park from Lamb Lane, I saw Mum coming back from work, carrying a shopping bag and jumping aside to avoid a cyclist.

“Summer in the city! Don't you just hate it?” she said when she saw me. “Ever noticed how
cycle path
sounds like
psychopath
if you say it three times quickly?”

“Cycle path. Cycle path. Cycle path.”

“So how was your day, love?”

“Oh, you know, not bad.”

“You're a mine of information. But I can't help noticing you don't have your sketch pad with you. Remember what I said about not wasting your God-given gift.”

I felt a flush of guilt about that, but I couldn't tell her what I'd really been up to. She'd think it was a lot stranger than frequenting cemeteries.

“Anyway, you can tell me what you
did
do,” she said, and twitched her bag, showing me the parcel of takeout food inside it. “You can tell me over a supper of wonton soup and shredded chili beef — your favorite.”

“But we can't afford . . . ,” I started to say. “Can we?”

Mum shook her head, then ran a hand back through her dark blond hair. “No, we can't. And you know what? I don't care. You have to live a little now and then, otherwise you'd go mad. Do us a favor, hon, and carry this for me. My arm aches.”

“You're in a good mood,” I said, taking the bag. I hadn't seen her so buoyant for ages.

“Well, I should be, considering I got the biggest tip I've ever seen in my life today.”

“Really? Who from?”

“Some man in a suit, very posh and smart and well spoken. A fish out of water where I work. Hands me a twenty-quid note for a six-quid roast dinner and tells me to keep the change.”

“Blimey.”

“I know! So I ask if he's made a mistake, does he know he's tipping me fourteen quid, and he waves me away like it's nothing. ‘See you again,' he says as he goes out the door. Oh, I hope so.”

“Me too. Maybe he'll come back again and sweep you off your feet and . . .”

Mum clammed up then, lowering her gaze as we left the park. I knew right away I shouldn't have said it. Perhaps
because of the way Dad had left us — it had never been that clear to me — she never spoke to me about men.

We crossed Lansdowne onto Middleton Road. Mum didn't speak again until we'd climbed the cool stairwell, the coolest place in town today, and negotiated the planters and pigeon droppings on our balcony to unlock the door.

“Anyway,” she said, unpacking the food in the kitchen, “that's dinner from Hai Ha's with change left over. Only thing that bothers me is, he said I looked like I could use the money. Now I feel insulted.”