Your work

Sudden Death
by
Pippa, age 13.

It wasn't my idea to take the short cut through the graveyard. It had seemed a good idea at the time. But that was when there was a whole group of us. Now it was just the two of us. My next-door neighbour Colin and me. We had entered the graveyard when it was light, but now the sun had disappeared, leaving the path ahead of us bathed in an eerie ray of moonlight before disappearing into a swirling grey fog. There was a deathly silence around us, even the swaying trees had stopped moaning with every movement. Hold on a minute, how were the trees moving when there wasn’t even a slight breeze?

I was about to tell Colin when I saw him. The boy. The boy looking at us. At me. His eyes were fixed on me as I stopped dead in my tracks. They were black, black as night and seemed as though he was possessed by the devil. Suddenly, the wind picked up and was howling around us, deafening us. I lost sight of the boy in the whirling fog and it was then that I felt something, like cobwebs, drag across my face. It sent shivers down my spine and then I heard the scream. I will never forget that blood-curdling scream. The very thought of it makes my hands tremble with terror. I turned to look at my friend and gasped. His face was twisted into a look of pure terror as his knees buckled and he fell to the ground. Colin grabbed my arm for the last time before he crumpled to a heap. It was then I heard my name being called. The voice was hoarse and crackling, travelling on the wind. ‘Kerri… Kerri Clarke…You’re next,’ before the wind died down and all was still. The boy had vanished.

Two hours earlier

 “What do you want to drink?”

A voice brought me out of my daze.

“Kerri? Kerri, are you all right?” asked Colin, pretending to look concerned.

“Yeah, sorry I was a million miles away,”

“As usual!” he grinned, “so, what do you want to drink?”

I asked for a coke and sat back on the bar stool I was on, so I was leaning against the bar. Tonight it was Lana, my friend’s 16 th birthday. At the moment she was playing pool with Vicki and I was chatting to Colin and Jessie. Mark was over by the jukebox changing the song every few seconds.

Suddenly a large man with a huge grin on his face appeared behind the bar. If I didn’t know him I would describe him as a fearsome bear, but I knew he was as dangerous as a stuffed teddy bear. He was Colin’s uncle, Uncle Freddy as everyone called him, the only living relative he had. Colin’s parents had died in a car crash when he was just two, so his uncle had adopted him. Also, Colin’s parents had left him a small fortune that he would inherit next week, when he was 16.

Uncle Freddy took our order and poured us our drinks. We chatted a bit longer before we decided to go back to our houses to get ready for the party later. We stepped outside and I shivered. In the middle of summer, this evening was incredibly chilly and gloomy and I couldn’t wait to get home. We turned the corner and were faced with the dark alleyway that led to the graveyard.  We stopped and stared down the forbidding path. The hedges either side loomed above us, threatening to grab us with their long branches.

“C’mon, it’s the quickest way back,” said Mark as he began to walk down the misty path, daring us to follow him. I found myself going along with the rest of the group down the lane. We walked as a unit, keeping close to each other. Two minutes later, we were picking our way through the long overgrown grass that hadn’t been cut for at least three years. One by one, we took different exits out of the graveyard till it was just me and Colin. We were next door neighbors so we usually walked together. And that’s when it began…

Three days later

It has been three days now since Colin died. I am now at the graveyard, at the exact spot where he died, I am standing with my brother. The police had filed a report that his heart had stopped, so he had died of natural causes. Case closed. But I knew that wasn’t it. Colin was an athletic person and he didn't suffer from heart problems.

Also, I had seen him again. The boy. He was standing outside my house, staring into my window before he disappeared. How did he know where I lived? I had told my brother everything and that’s why we were in the graveyard now, scouting around for clues as to what had happened. It was strange, but it was as if time had stopped in the graveyard. The trees weren’t moving, there was a deathly silence around us and our footprints, from the night it happened, were still fresh, as if they were only made this morning.

I was about to give up when John, my brother gave a cry. I rushed over to him and my gaze turned to what he was looking at. There, in the ground were different footprints. Wellington boots, all my friends and I had been wearing trainers.

“Do you think they’re his?” questioned John.

“Yeah, almost definitely,” I answered. “He would have been standing around here when I saw him. So that proves it, there was someone else here the night he died.”

“It also proves you’re not going mad,” he laughed.

“Thanks for having so much faith in me!” I replied. “Let’s see where they lead.”

We walked in silence for a while as we followed the maze of prints on the ground. I was sure they were leading in circles and I found my suspicions were correct when we reached the graveyard again. And to top it all off the prints had disappeared.

“Well that got us nowhere,” said John sighing.

“Wait a second; the footprints haven’t disappeared, the persons just taken off their shoes!” I exclaimed.

Sure enough there were footprints leading off. We hadn’t seen them before because they weren’t as noticeable, but now we could clearly see them. They led us directly to the church and as we were coming up to the main door, I saw a light in the window on the second floor. There was a silhouette of what looked like a boy standing there watching us, before it turned away and the light went out.

“Did you see…” I began.

“Yes I saw it. Him.” John cut across me.

We cautiously approached the front door and lingered on the top step. “Well we aren’t going to find anything out just standing here,” I said taking a deep breath and pushing the heavy oak door open. We crept inside warily and started looking around. There were at least three doors on each side of the church that could lead us upstairs. I motioned to my brother to try the doors on the opposite side to me when the front door slammed shut.

“What was that?” my brother asked shakily.

“It was probably just the wind,” I replied, but we both knew that the wind could not blow a door that heavy shut. My footsteps rang out across the wooden floor as I went from one door to the next trying to open them. I had just found that all of the doors were locked on my side when I stopped in my tracks. Have you ever had that feeling that someone’s watching you? You don’t know who or why but you just know? I had that feeling now. My eyes were searching round the church when I saw a shadow disappearing up the stairs in the back corner. I was sure the stairs hadn’t been there before but then I noticed the curtain that was pulled open at the side.

I told my brother and we walked towards the stairs, stopping at the bottom.

“What are we waiting for?” he questioned.

“Have you ever thought that this could be a trap?” I enquired. “After all, he let himself be seen in the window, and then he came down and opened the curtain for us, doesn’t it seem like he wants us to find him, or whatever’s up there?”

“You’re right, lets go back now, it’s half eight and I’m hungry, also we won’t be able to see anything in the dark without torches so lets come back in the morning when its light.”

We both turned back to the door and pulled. The door didn’t open. We pushed and still the door didn’t budge.

“Were any of the doors on your side open?” I asked hopeful for another way out.

“No they were all locked,”

“Well then, I guess the only way is up,” I said taking a brave step towards the staircase.

We climbed in silence. The steep winding stairs seemed to go on forever and we were both out of breath by the time we reached the top. It was pitch black on this floor and it took a while for my eyes to adjust. In the gloom I could see dark shapes of boxes stacked up high.

“I remember this place,” my brother breathed in my ear, “this is the attic of the church, I used to come up here to do bell ringing, years ago.”

Suddenly, the silence was broken by steady footsteps approaching us. I gripped my brother’s hand and we edged towards the staircase as quietly as possible. The footsteps stopped about four metres away from us.

I found my voice and called out “Who’s there?”

I didn’t recognise the shaky noise that came out of me, but it reassured me in some way.

“Yeah, who’s there?” my brother echoed. I could hear the person moving away from us, his footsteps had quickened.

My head bumped into something hanging from the ceiling as we followed him. It wasn’t enough to knock me over, but I lost my balance. I grabbed the cord that was holding whatever had hit me but that came down to. Just then, the lights flashed on, I had found the light switch. I was blinded for a second before the room came into view. The room was empty, except for me and my brother.

“What..?” I cried out in astonishment.

John seemed as shocked as me that the room was empty.

“We lost him,” I sighed, “But how did he get away? We were blocking the stairs so there must be another exit”

A cool breeze played across my face and I had an idea.

“When you used to come up here, were there any holes in the ceiling, for the bell or anything?” I asked John.

“Well yes, the bell was outside so I suppose there is a gap between the bell and the roof.” He replied.

“I know how he got out. If we’re quick we can catch him.”

I ran to where the bell was and looked for a way to climb up. Sure enough, the boxes around that area formed a staircase. I checked they were all stable before jumping onto the first box. I clambered the whole way up with John hot on my heels. I was so concentrated on looking down and making sure that I didn’t fall, that it came as a shock to me when my hands hit the bell. I looked up and could see that there was a gap between the bell and roof. It was big enough to let a small man through, so the boy would have had no problem. I found a ledge jutting out and used it as a handhold to pull myself up. I found myself on the roof of the church. My first thought was how high up we were and then how were we going to get down?

I grasped John’s hand and helped him to clamber through the gap. The roof was flat so you could survey the whole top.

“So where is he then?” I asked.

“Well there must be some way down because he’s not here,” John said. “Wait, I remember coming up here before, it was me and my mates, I’m sure we came onto the roof and found a way down. Yes that’s it, we found a tree that had long enough branches and installed a rope ladder to help us get down quicker. But I’d be really surprised if it was still here.”

“Well let’s just hope it is. And if you remember anything else, like a secret elevator in the next few minutes, that would be really helpful,” I joked.

He smirked at me and started to move towards a large oak tree. I watched carefully to see what he’d do next. He walked up and down the edge for a bit before concluding, “This is the branch we used, c’mon lets get down.”

We carefully used a branch as a tightrope and a branch above for support and made our way along the tree. We reached the large trunk when John grinned.

“It’s still here, the ladder!” he exclaimed.

We descended the ladder, rung by rung. When we reached the bottom the boy was no where to be seen. We’d lost him.

“Well, we’d better go home then,” John suggested.

“We won’t find any footprints when it’s this dark so I suppose you’re right.”

The walk home seemed to take forever and it was about eleven o’ clock when we got back. Our mother was waiting at the door for us, but to our surprise, she didn’t tell us off. Instead she beckoned us in and told us to go and sit down in the lounge. When we were seated, she began to talk.

“Now this may come as a shock to you, and please try not to be upset, but an autopsy was done on Colin’s body and the police have discovered that he was poisoned.”

I wasn’t as shocked as I thought I’d be, somehow I knew that I had already known he hadn’t died of natural causes.

“The police seem to think it was in something he had to drink so…”

The rest I didn’t hear. All I could think of was Uncle Freddy pouring us out our drinks. How he had made them behind the counter, when he usually does it where we can see. He also had a motive, Colin was going to inherit all the money, if he didn’t die, and so Freddy had poisoned him, murdered him. Just to get his hands on the money. This thought was too much, it burst out of me before I could think what I was saying.  My mother quickly called the police and let them know my suspicions. They seemed to believe me because they said they would look in to it. We all sat anxiously for the police to ring back.

An hour later they did with good news, well for us anyway.

“Well, the police searched the bar and Uncle Freddy’s house and found the same poison that was in Colin’s system. So he has been arrested.”

Later that night, I was sitting on my bed with John talking about the day’s events while drinking hot chocolate.

“I guess we’ll never know who that boy really is,” I said.

“Yeah, but at least Freddy is where he deserves to be, he always seemed so nice though,” he replied. “Well anyway, good work sussing out who really did it. Night.”

He closed my bedroom door and I got up to close my curtains, when I heard my bedroom door open then close again.

“What do you want now John?” I said turning around before gasping.

It was the boy.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

He didn’t answer, he just stood there staring. I felt my knees go weak from his stare and I dropped to the floor.

“Had a nice drink?” I heard.

Pain seared through my head.

“Guess what Kerri, you got the wrong person, and now it’s your turn.” His voice was barely a whisper, yet it mocked me with every syllable.

“No…no please..!” I managed to gasp before my throat grew tight.

“Goodbye Kerri Clarke…” I heard him laugh softly before everything went black.