Stonebird (7 page)

After school I walk up High Street, past the post office, where boys and girls are jabbering and giggling. They've grown up in Swanbury all their lives. They've got friends they've known forever, and they walk in big groups, kicking soccer balls and racing each other and tiptoeing along the curb and trying not to fall off.

I don't have anyone.

How do you even go up to kids when you're the new boy and everyone already has their friends and they're all laughing and joking? I only have one good joke:

Why do French people never have two eggs?

Because one is an oeuf.

I told that to a girl at my old school and she laughed and her eyes sparkled, and, speaking of world records, at that moment my stomach could have broken the world
record for World's Biggest Backflip. But I had nothing else to say after that, and the quiet stretched on and on, and then she said, “Bye,” and ran off.

And that's what will probably happen if I try to talk to anyone—

“Hey!”

I jump a thousand feet in the air.

On the other side of the road, something moves.

No, not something. Someone. Because they're there. All three of them.

“Nice story, Liam,” says Matt, kicking a stone at me. “Just one problem. You don't expect me to believe that garbage, do you?”

“I thought they didn't have to be real?” says the small ratty one.

Matt smacks him on the arm. “Shut up, Cheesy.”

They close in around me, and suddenly they're taller than giants.

I'm halfway home. If I could just distract them, maybe I can make a break for it . . .

“Maybe it
is
true,” I say.

They hiss with laughter.

Then I run.

My feet thunder on the road as I peg it up toward Church Lane, and the sound of their footsteps behind me is louder than the rumble of the orcs in
Lord of the Rings.

“Get him!” Matt yells.

I bound over the small flint wall into the graveyard and hop across a patch of lumpy ground, dodging
between the tombstones and the mounds of earth. The grass muffles their footsteps. I can almost pretend they're not there at all, except—

“Get back here, you little wuss!”

Across the grass and over the wall and into the grounds around the edge of the church. I race up to the crumbling wooden door and only then do I stop and turn around. Matt and his friends are panting by the time they get to me. Matt's eyes are huge and round, hungry. His nose wrinkles, and I can see his teeth.

“Matt,” says Cheesy.

But he doesn't turn around.

“Hey, Matt,” says the other boy, Joe.

But Matt still doesn't turn around.

The others aren't coming any closer.

They've stopped at the edge of the grass bank that leads up to the church.

“Hey, friend,” they say. “Matt . . .”

Matt scoffs but finally turns to look at them. He's like a kettle that's so close to boiling it's rattling and spewing steam. “What?”

“Something's not right,” says Cheesy. “I don't like this.”

“You heard his story,” says Joe. “It's haunted, this place.”

“I DON'T CARE ABOUT HIS STUPID STORY!” roars Matt, rounding on me again.

Back, back, back. Shuffling in the direction of the door. If I can just—

There.

I feel it behind me and step inside, spinning and running across the aisle. My ears strain for any noise as I duck down behind one of the pews, but there's no door swinging, no footsteps, no shouts. No nothing.

A huge sigh of relief floods out of me.

Slowly I peer over the top of the pew. My palms are slick on the old wood.

They've gone.

Maybe they did believe the ghost stories.

Maybe they believed
my
story.

The gargoyle faces above me are glaring, and the bare branches of the trees are waving through the broken windows, and sitting there on my own with only the emptiness around me, it's easy to see how they might get scared.

But there's nothing to be afraid of here.

Unless you count a gargoyle that disappears from one moment to the next.

When I'm sure Matt's not going to barge in, I stand up. Slowly I make my way over to the crypt. Every breath is cold and quick, and I keep glancing over my shoulder to make sure they aren't trying to trick me.

I stand outside the crypt door, listening to the never-ending quiet. The air's heavy and thick with dust. I push open the door and walk slowly down the stone steps . . .

Stonebird's there again, in the dark.

He's there waiting.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

Come on, Liam . . . talking to a statue?

But somehow I know he can hear me. Somehow I know he can understand.

“Is it true?” I say, moving closer, my footsteps quiet on the flagstone floor. “What Grandma wrote in her diary? Did you really come here from France?”

He doesn't say anything, of course. He never says anything.

He's a gargoyle. A statue. He's made of stone.

He can't move.

But he did . . .

And then something else hits me. I told a story about him protecting me, and Matt and his friends left me alone. They didn't come into the church. Or maybe they
couldn't
come into the church.

“Was it you keeping them out?” I say. “Was it you protecting me?”

Up close, his eyes are bigger than tennis balls. His beak looks sharp enough to cut through bone. The wings are long, reaching out as if he's stretching, and his legs are hunched, ready to pounce.

For a second I see him leaping at me, but I shake the image away.

I look for any sign of where he might have been, but there's nothing. Just smooth, clean stone. He's even in the same position. In fact, it's as though he never moved at all.

“Look,” I say, standing right in front of him now, “I don't mind that you vanished. I'm quite glad you did, actually—I don't think Jess would understand. And she'd probably tell Mom, and then I might not be able to come see you anymore. It's just . . .”

What am I trying to say?

What am I doing?

Even though there's no one else here, it still feels weird talking out loud. If Matt and his friends did come in now, I'd probably die on the spot, and even if I didn't, they'd never let me forget this.

But if it wasn't for Stonebird, if it wasn't for the creepy church, if it wasn't for my story, then they'd probably be beating me up right now.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” I say quietly.

The words die on the stale air, and somehow it doesn't feel enough.

I reach up and touch his cold stone face. But it's not cold. Not like it should be. I leap back, scramble as far as I can, because suddenly the image of him attacking me isn't stupid.

He's warm. He was warm before and he's warm again. I didn't imagine it.

And if he's warm, he must be alive.

“Where have you
been
? We're going to be late!”

Mom's waiting for me when I get home. Jess is there too. She's fiddling with her nails and paying a lot of attention to the floor. Even though she didn't go to school, she's dressed in her school uniform.

“Why are you wearing . . . ?”

She cuts me off with an evil glare.

“Um . . . Where are we going?” I ask, trying to sound natural.

“To see Grandma! She was asking after you yesterday, so I said I'd bring you along.”

I close my eyes and silently ask Nancy Wake the White Mouse for good luck. Hopefully Grandma will be in one of her happy moods again.

“Are you okay?” says Mom. “You look a bit ill.”

I think of the gargoyle. Stonebird. I can still feel his warmth on my fingers. I'm not going crazy.

“I'm fine,” I say.

Anyway, she's the one that looks ill. Her veins are dark through her skin, and I wouldn't be surprised to see rain fall from the bags under her eyes. I try and make my eyes do smiles like Daisy does when she's happy, and it must work, because Mom's lips twitch, and for a minute her face looks real again.

It makes me remember Mrs. Culpepper saying
Happy memories are powerful things
.

You know how sometimes when you go and visit your Grandma in a retirement home you wonder if it's really worth it because the next day she won't even remember? But then you realize it's not just about spending time with Grandma, it's about spending time with Mom too, because these are Mom's memories as well and every memory counts.

That's how I'm feeling now. Maybe that's what Mrs. Culpepper meant.

“Come on,” Mom says. “Let's go.”

We get there just after Grandma's finished eating her dinner. A nurse with a wheeled cart full of dirty plates and leftover bits of food backs out of the door. She winks and says, “She's in a good mood!”

Something flickers in Mom's face. She's got the World's Biggest Smile. She grabs our hands and pulls us in, and there she is, there's Grandma, lying in bed licking bits of meat and carrot and gravy off her fingers.

She doesn't see us at first. When we get closer, she jumps slightly.

“Oh, Sue!” she says, holding out her slimy hands for Mom to hold.

“Hang on,” says Mom. “Let's just clean you up.” She takes a tissue from her bag. “It looks like you had a nice meal.”

“Oh, I did,” says Grandma, beaming. “What did I have, Arthur?”

My heart stutters. That was Granddad's name. My fists clench, and I brace myself, because any minute now she's going to burst into tears and she won't be in a good mood anymore. She'll be in one of her
I'LL KILL YOU
moods, and I don't want to see that again.

Grandma's eyes are wandering around the room now. She looks lost. Seeing her like this makes me feel bad for suspecting her of killing anyone. But when she shouted at me that time . . . her eyes didn't look lost then.

“It looks like roast dinner,” I say, moving into view.

She stares at her hands, at the lumpy bits of sauce as Mom dabs at them. It's on her nightgown too, in splotches over her top. Then Grandma looks up and I can see her eyes grappling with my face. She's trying to remember who I am.

“I've brought the children with me,” says Mom, settling back in her chair. “I know how much you were looking forward to seeing them.”

“Ohhhh!” says Grandma, and it clicks. I can see it click. The edges of her eyes go all crinkly as she smiles. “Liam!
Little Liam! You're growing up so much! You'll be taller than your mother soon! And where's Jessica?”

Jess steps forward, and Grandma reaches up, trying to stroke her cheek. Jess scrunches her eyes tight shut, but Grandma can't reach, and her hand flops down uselessly on the bed.

Jess looks back and sees me smiling.

“What?”

But I don't know
what,
I just know that I'm happy. It's inside me, lifting me up, spreading warmth through my body all the way to the tips of my fingers.

Once I got three gold stars for a story I wrote in my old school, and it was put up on the wall for the whole term. But even then I didn't feel as happy as I do now, because this is family, this is fun, this is
right
! It's Mom and Grandma and Jess and Me, and we're all grinning for no reason. Grandma's in a good mood, and that means Mom's in a good mood, and that's something I haven't seen since we moved house.

“Do you know,” says Grandma, “if there's one thing we do well, it's family.” She looks around at us, and her eyes are shining. “Seeing you here—it's lovely. It reminds me of being back up north. I always did throw a good party, didn't I, Sue? In Harrogate . . .”

She trails off, and the silence is long and heavy.

“Oh, Arthur,” says Grandma, and a single tear trickles from her eye down her cheek and her neck onto her nightgown. And
WHOOSH!
there goes all the air in the room. “Oh, Arthur!” She wails it this time, and now they come faster, the tears, running down her cheeks.

I normally don't cry, because I'm eleven years old, which is double digits. But now there's a watery heat behind my eyes, and I have to turn away. Mom's already there, ready to squeeze Grandma's hand, ready to bring her back to the moment. But she's gone, I can hear she's gone. I know it even though I'm looking out the window at the garden and the flowers and the wooden benches that nobody sits on.

“What have I done?” says Grandma. “What have I done to deserve this, Arthur?”

“Shh,” says Mom, trying to comfort her. “Shh.”

Grandma wails again, and it breaks everything inside me. She's so small, smaller than Daisy, probably, and the demon's eaten everything inside her. Everything but the tears that stream and stream down her face.

Jess is looking anywhere except at Grandma. She catches my eye and turns away, grimacing. Even Mom's quiet now. She's just holding Grandma and whispering in this soothing voice, like she did to Daisy when she was a puppy, howling every time we went to bed.

And Grandma . . .

I saw a frightened horse in a film once. It had eyes so wide you could see white all around the pupils. All they did was look straight ahead. Just stared straight, as if something was coming at them and
fast.
Their eyes were fried eggs. So big and white.

That's how Grandma looks now.

She's scared. She's so scared.

And realizing that, I know what I have to do.

“It's really nice to see you,” I say, turning to move closer to her and smiling the biggest smile I can. And all the
time I'm thinking,
Please work,
because it's worked before.
Please work . . .

She blinks. She shakes her head, as if there's something in there she can't understand.
Is it the demon? Can you see it, Grandma? Can you hear it?
But she's looking at my face and her eyes are moving all over it and soon they find my smile, and she smiles too.

“You're so lovely, dear,” she says.

And I can see the smile traveling up her face, all the way to her eyes. She turns to the windows, and the flowers, and the garden outside.

“Such lovely colors,” she says. “I've always loved yellow. A
happy
color.”

Just like that, I've saved the day.

When it's time to leave, Mom wraps me in a massive hug in the corridor outside.

“Thank you,” she says, and her words are quiet because she's talking into my shoulder. I can feel wet tears on my cheek, but they're not mine.

“It's okay,” I say.

Our footsteps echo down the corridor as we leave. The pictures flash past, and I try to figure out each one on the wall before it's gone, but it's practically impossible, especially the one with the zigzags and the fading animals.

I nearly crash into Mom when she stops at the reception desk.

“Mom?” says Jess. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, just . . . you know . . .”

Jess frowns. “What?”

“I just want to take a look at this,” she says, moving over to a picture on the wall. It shows all the staff and nurses and aides who work here. It looks a bit like the soccer team photos in my Premier League sticker album, but nowhere near as shiny.

Suddenly there are footsteps behind us.

We all look back together, but it's only me who gasps.

Two people are heading our way. One of them is the man who came to the house, the one who broke the wine bottle. The other is a boy who has his head bowed. But even though he's looking at the floor, I can still see who it is. I'd recognize him anywhere.

It's Matt.

He hasn't seen me yet . . .

Quickly, quietly, I shuffle behind Mom, but she's already going off to greet them.
No!
I pretend to be interested in the staff photo.
Please don't see me please don't see me please don't see me . . .

“Sue!” says the man whose name I've forgotten.

I sneak a sideways glance. Matt's looking up, looking at Mom, smiling at Jess.

Why are you here?!

Of course.
I'm so stupid!

There's only one reason he would be here, and that's the same reason I'm here. Matt's smile fades as his eyes settle on me and narrow to slits. If he could fire arrows through them, I'd be dead. I look around desperately for backup, but Jess is just standing there twirling her hair, and Mom doesn't seem to have noticed.

“Oh!” she says, and she's smiling. Why is she smiling? “You two know each other?”

Gulp. “Yeah,” I say, “but—”

“Well, that's delightful!” She turns back to Matt's dad and says, “Gary, you should bring Matt around after school one day!”

“Yes!” says Gary, patting Matt on the shoulder.
Why can no one see? Look at him, he's fuming!
“He's not coping very well . . . I think he'll appreciate the distraction.”

“I am
here,
you know,” says Matt.

“Sorry,” Gary says, with a secret smile at Mom. The kind of smile Jess and I have when Mom says something like
I saw it on the Facebook
instead of just Facebook.

Mom laughs. A real laugh, and for a second I forget what's going on, because it's so rare. But then I catch Matt's face again, growing darker and darker by the second.

“Great! That's great. You'll like that, won't you, Liam?”

“Er, yeah, cool,” I manage to say.

No idea how that sounded so natural. What I wanted to say was
No no no no no no!
But how can you say that when—look at her! She's laughing again. Mom's laugh is the best laugh in the world. It makes her look young and happy and free. When she's not laughing, it's like there's something invisible lurking on her shoulders, weighing her down.

Matt's face tells me he'll like it even less than I do.

In the background I hear words like
tea
and
after school
and
the boys will love it
, but the only thing going through my head is
How is this happening?

And that's what you call one of Life's Great Mysteries.