The old man jerked his gnarled wooden walking stick at the tall, plush hedge that ran through his unkempt jungle of a garden.
“Over there is the boneyard,” he said half mischievously, half reverently. Out of privacy I won’t reveal to you his name but I will tell you this story. Tell you it reluctantly. ‘Boneyard’ was one of the many words and phrases he used, all created by his own modest ingenuity. A watch was a ‘timer’, a kettle a ‘whistler’, the radio (he had no television set) was called the talk box. Then there was his rusting Volvo, more an assortment of compressed tin cans painted tepid brown. It was christened ‘Air Force One’. A friendly if wizened cat shared his home who he called “TC,” an abbreviation for “the cat.” I need not tell you what he called the toilet but then again that was a word even he didn’t make up! And boneyard? Well, that is what he called the cemetery next door.
It was an old, old cemetery long disused. Even on the brightest, hottest day of high summer I couldn’t pass those tall, gothic gates without a cold shudder. Beyond them was a crooked expanse of wild overgrown greenery mingled with decayed shards of stone and concrete; the broken gravestones and crosses that marked where the dead lay. Out there, in the country, the nights were pitch. No street lights existed for miles and no house except the old man’s bungalow to shed any light thereabouts. I remember passing those gates and the huge iron fence that streaked the cemetery’s periphery one Halloween at midnight after visiting the old man and I can tell you that no amount of money could have tempted me to cross its threshold even for a second.
How did I know the old man? He was a family friend long ago but I got to know him after meeting him out on a country walk and we fell into an interesting conversation. From then on I made a habit of calling round to visit him at least once a fortnight for it seemed as if he didn’t get any other visitors.
I genuinely enjoyed his company. He was kind, charming and very witty with countless funny stories about his life and the people he once knew.
“They're all next door now,” he said.
I made a habit of going round to his house after midnight mass every Christmas Eve and we had a nice little party of savoury finger foods and mulled wine although he himself never went to church. A fanatical reader, he had two whole rooms teeming with books, fiction and non-fiction, old and new alike. He was also delightfully eccentric with many unique and odd hobbies. Nearly every time I visited he would unfurl something that demonstrated his creative genius. He carved little figures and objects out of wood and painted them with tender detail and they could be anything! Anything at all! He carved little men and women from countries around the world; a little German in Lederhosen or perhaps a Japanese Samurai, little animals; a parrot, a dog, an elephant, houses, churches, world famous monuments were scattered or craftily hidden throughout his garden. Over time I had free rein of the house and grounds and could come and go as I pleased. One summer’s evening I was walking through it when I came across a (relatively) miniature Tyrannosaurus Rex, six foot high with wooden jaws grimacing, as it stood half concealed between the bushes. I was mildly shocked before I realised it was a just a life-like carving and I looked back at the bungalow to see the old man laughing at my reaction. I couldn’t help but laugh too. Then there were his scrap books; dozens upon dozens of them spread randomly around every room in the house! Over the years the old man had filled them with newspaper or magazine articles and photographs with the earliest extracts dating from the early 60’s. Strangely they were of nearly every topic under the sun; politics, sport, geography, wildlife, engineering, Swiss army knives, the moons of Jupiter, taxidermy, the Chaco War, Don Quixote, executions; you name it and I bet you I could have found something relating to it in one of those battered scrapbooks in less than an hour! I never found out why the old man collected them all and I suppose he had so many interests it was a way of recording information in his own special way but what I recall most pertinently was the amount of obituaries and death notices he had pasted in them. What else did he do? Oh yes, he could cook very well for a man of his generation and I never refused his frequent dinner invitations for as well as having a great meal we always had a bit of a laugh! At first I had harboured a sneaking suspicion that perhaps the old man was gay and that he had some perverted designs on me but nothing could be further from the truth. He was lonely. Pure and simple. He didn’t mention any family but I inferred, from the gold ring he wore, that he was married at one point long ago. His ring was inscribed with a plain lower case ‘r’ but I am unaware what this alluded to and he never once spoke of a wife or children or relatives of any description. Instead he was absorbed with his pastimes and interests and could alternate between telling me a torrid tale from Norse mythology, the best way to attract wild birds or the internal politics of Russia. As you can see he was good company and an altogether intelligent yet humble man. Now here comes the ‘but’. He had another hobby.
When I found out about it I had known the old man for ten years. One afternoon in the month of March I called to visit and we were having tea by the fire when I noticed something above the mantle piece that hadn’t been there before. I stood up to get a better look. It was a bone, in fact part of a jaw bone with a few teeth studded along it.
“What’s this from?” I asked the old man.
“Guess,” he answered.
“Sheep?”
“No.”
“Horse?”
“Not a horse.”
“Cow?”
“Not a cow.”
“Donkey, fox, badger, bear?”
“No, no, no, no.”
I shrugged.
“Well, what then?”
“A woman.”
“Woman? You’re joking!”
He wasn’t. I asked him where he got it.
“Next door,” he said grinning. He explained that he had gone into the graveyard and found it; the cemetery was so old it was coughing up bones. I didn’t say so but I was unhappy with the old man’s revelation and suggested that maybe he should return it.
“No one’s any use for it now,” he said dismissing my idea. I disagreed, believing his attitude to be disrespectful, but I decided to say no more about it as I didn’t want to spoil our friendship. ‘Just humour the old man’, I thought as I sat down. ‘It’s only one little bone!’
“Just be careful,” I said settling back into the chair, “she might want it back!”
The old man smiled.
“We shouldn’t forget the dead,” he said. “After all they are the world’s largest minority.”
It was an unwise concession to make to the old man. On my next visit, one grey Saturday, we were having a lunch of fried chicken and salad. My eyes strayed out the patio doors and rested on a potted plant on the rear porch. Protruding up from the damp soil, and fastened to the plant in order to lend it support, instead of a bamboo pole was the unmistakable shape of a human thighbone. My appetite diminished immediately. The old man ate steadily and smiled knowingly. I did not mention having seen the bone as any discussion of it would likely cause me to be physically sick so I pushed the remainder of my lunch around the plate and went home earlier than usual.
At this point I had not lost faith in the old man but I was naturally concerned. On each of my subsequent visits I would notice new additions to his collection. At first they were very subtle inclusions. What looked like toe bones were decoratively spread upon the coffee table, about a dozen in number, then a bone, that could not have been anything other than a rib appeared on the bathroom window ledge. Eventually there were other ribs, all on display in the living room. Again I said nothing for despite knowing of his morbid hobby the old man was as much the same jolly and hospitable person as before. During those months his work rate also increased and his craftsmanship improved to such a degree that I came to accept his bone collecting as a low-key secondary pastime. He also flattered me by giving away a lot of his art work and handicrafts as his house and garden were becoming far too cluttered even for his liking! Amongst these gifts was a finely detailed model airliner, World War II tanks and a wooden dragon! Therefore it was for these reasons that despite witnessing the growth in his collection, I said or did nothing to stop it. Now, I wish I had.
I was departing for home one evening when he called me to wait a moment.
“Here,” he said handing me a curved shallow piece of what looked like crockery.
“What it is?” I asked.
“Let’s call it an ashtray,” said the old man.
“But I don’t smoke.”
The old man thought for a moment.
“But your girlfriend smokes, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said.
He laughed.
“Well if you ever get a girlfriend, and she smokes, she can use it,” he said pressing it into my palm.
Then came the lowest point of our friendship. Some time ago he had built a greenhouse, ingeniously cementing together any glass he came across into an elaborate framework. It was mostly comprised of old car wind screens but also some window panes he’d purchased for the task. The only things he grew in it were tomatoes and they were the nicest tomatoes I have ever tasted! Together with the lettuce and scallions from his vegetable patch he prepared many delicious salads. Now one day in August he brought me out to help him pick the new crop as the blushers (his word for tomatoes) had ripened inside the hot house. We went out into the sunshine and entered the stifling homemade greenhouse. About a dozen or so tomatoe plants had bunches of their juicy fruit ready for plucking. I put on a pair of gardening gloves and crouched down to pick the tomatoes and put them in a plastic container. After removing three of them I stopped and cringed. Tied to the green stem of the plant by a piece of blue cord was another long bone! Another! Not only that, I was sickened, sickened; to see yet another on top of it and another and another… Attached thus they served the purpose of straightening the growth of the tomatoe plant just like his plant on the patio. Long human bones! Not bamboo rods but bones, taken by the old man from the graveyard! I was nearly sick. The sudden movement I made as I recoiled from the sight alerted the old man’s attention.
“Caterpillar bite you?” he chuckled.
With an almost dizzy sensation ringing in my head I turned to him. His warm smile could not assuage my disappointment in him nor could it cure the acute unease combobulating in my stomach. I didn’t answer him and looked back at the plant to ensure that what I’d seen was really there. It was. I looked at the plant next to it. It was supported in the same way; a half dozen long bones atop each other. As was the next plant and the next one and the next one; all of them were tied to a pole of bones! He had taken it too far. Unsettled, I looked at him plaintively but his determined countenance did not drop one bit. He said that perhaps it was too hot to work outdoors that day and that we go in for a drink. So we did and soon after I went straight home. I did not raise the issue of the bones nor did my old friend mention them but again I felt let down and I have not eaten a tomato since.
Perhaps I should be grateful because the full realisation of the extremes the old man had gone to with his collection and how he put such objects to use caused me to consider moving away from my native part of the country. There were other reasons of course; boredom, loneliness, plus I’d become chagrined with country life and felt like making a fresh new start elsewhere. Maybe I’d even go abroad. Before I made any decision however I decided to confront the old man and ask him to return all the bones he had taken, indeed stolen, back to the cemetery. It had been a few weeks since seeing the sight in his greenhouse and while I did not want to end my friendship with him I was nonetheless determined to speak to him about those awful things.
“Well stranger, where have you been?” he asked answering the door.
I said I had been busy with work and planned to leave the country. When I told him this he looked concerned and said that while he would miss my company he could only wish me all the best for the future.
“But I wish you’d been here last week!” he said.
I asked why.
“I was burgled!”
He heard them come in at night. They broke through the patio doors. He had heard the glass break and heard them wreck the living room. The old man had stayed in bed, listening, waiting for them to come down the hall and find him! But they didn’t. They left soon after without speaking a word.
“Did they take anything?” I asked.
“Nothing substantive,” he said. “Just a few trinkets; all the little relics I borrowed from yonder.” He pointed up the road to the cemetery gates.
“Well thank God for that!” I said, becoming panged with guilt. I apologised to him and said that perhaps if I had been about the week before the presence of a younger man would have deterred them but he would hear none of it!
“How were you to know son? It wouldn’t have mattered to those drunks; opportunists don’t think like that, now come on in and let’s get a bite to eat!” “Did you call the police?” I asked him.
“No need,” he replied.
I didn’t argue and in my relief that the old man was alright I completely forgot about the main reason for my visit. In any case the “trinkets” the old man kept in the living room were the only things taken which was unusual in itself.
“Probably a bunch of Goth kids,” I commented.
“Yeah, well they smashed up the talk box too,” said the old man ruefully. “And my patio; left a real mess out there!”
We spent a pleasant afternoon and when I left for home I had failed to mention the bones in the greenhouse.
Two days later I returned and gave him a gift as a way of atoning for my long absence. He had long been coveting a mobile phone so I bought him a fairly up-to-date model and he was delighted!
“Wonderful!” he said. I did not need to show him how to use it as he was already proficient having seen me use my own over the years. After playing with it for a while he set it down and sighed deeply.
“More bad news son. They’ve come back.”
They had come the night before last. As he lay in bed the old man heard them lurking outside in the dark. They had moved quietly at first, walking around the garden, not speaking as before, but betraying their presence only through the cracking of twigs and the rustle of grass and grating stone. Then they came to the greenhouse, just outside the old man’s window. He waited in cold fear, all alone in the dark and beyond any help.
“Then they tore up the hot house,” sighed the old man.
It had been completely destroyed he said. Each time he heard a piece of glass smashed it was like a lightning bolt through his soul such was his fear. When every makeshift pane and windscreen in the greenhouse had been wrecked the vandals went inside and ransacked it. Then they left as silently as they had come.
“You’ll have to call the police this time!” I insisted. He shook his head.
“The police have murderers and rapists and drug dealers to catch,” he said. “I’m not going to waste their time asking them to come up here when I can go outside tomorrow and rebuild it myself!”
The old man was adamant and I could not dissuade him otherwise.
“Then let’s go out and get started,” I said eager to help him.
“No, no,” he answered waving his hand. “It’s something I want to do myself,” he said kindly.
I came back again the next day to check on him. Fortunately neither the burglars nor vandals had returned but I resolved to try and visit him every other day to keep and eye on him and act as a deterrent in case the house was being watched.
Somehow we got talking about life and death and came to discuss the afterlife. As far as the old man was concerned there was none.
“There is no ‘Great Beyond’,” he scoffed. “You just end up in a hole in the ground,” he concluded firmly.
Privately, my Christian faith disagreed, so I asked the old man, if he did not believe in an after life, why he had a crucifix in his hall way.
“For decoration,” he replied, giving me a long, thoughtful look.
“I’ve something to show you,” he said at last. Then he rose from his chair and beckoned me to follow him down the hall. We came to a padlocked door at the dark end of the passage. He nodded at the door.
“There should be no secrets between friends,” he said. I watched the old man take a key from his pocket and unlock the padlock. Pulling it away he pushed open the door which produced a long drawn out squeak. He hobbled into the darkness beyond, his walking stick in one hand, and then stood to one side waiting for me. I stepped into the room carefully and waited. The old man reached for the light switch.
“This is my prize collection,” he whispered as he pressed the switch.
The solitary bulb hummed then flickered. I caught sight of shelves. This room was small and square. Three walls were streamed with wooden shelves and there were things on each one. The bulb stopped flickering and I saw what they were. Lining every shelf, in neat order, were skulls! Yes, skulls! Human skulls! No, not only skulls! But also the decomposed heads of men, women and children! I admit I nearly laughed. Perhaps it was out of disbelief or the sheer madness of the sight but my laugh became as gasp of horror as the odour of decay hit me. Beside me the old man stood expressionless with his hands in his pockets. I tried to admonish him, question him, say something, anything by way of rebuke but no words could come out and I held my hands to my face as I backed off. As I did the old bare bulb began to give out. It flickered rapidly. The faces on the shelves seemed to move; they glared, snarled, contorted into grimaces of hate and loathing as they beheld me with disdain in the blinking light. Then the bulb went out. In the dark, did I hear the briefest of hisses? Was it me? Was it the old man? Or, was it one of them? I covered my face and ran from the room, not stopping until I reached the front door where I fell to my knees like an exhausted athlete. I heard the rattle of keys as the door was secured and padlocked then the shuffle of the old man’s feet and the dull thuds of his cane as he walked slowly back down the hall. He stopped and though I had my back to him I knew he was looking at me, uncertain what to do now that he had revealed his last secret.
“I’ll get you a glass of water,” he whispered, breaking the awkward silence.
“No,” I said standing up and turning to him. “I’m going home.” He nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I suppose you’d better go,” he said.
“You know you’ve got to take them back,” I said, able to speak again.
“I know,” he said calmly. Then in acknowledgement of this being my likely final visit he extended his hand. I shook it then unlatched his front door.
“Good luck in Spain,” he said as I walked away. I paused and faced him again.
“Why did you take them?” I asked.
The old man shrugged then beamed one of his warm, trademark smiles.
“Because I could. Goodnight son.” He closed the door and I went home in a silent daze.
Three nights later I got the call.
“Well son,” he said briskly. “This is it!”
“This is what?” I mumbled, still half asleep.
“I just want to thank you son, for the friendship you’ve given me and your company for so long a time.”
Beyond him I heard repeated, violent thuds.
“What’s wrong?”
“Thanks for everything son.”
“What’s wrong?” I repeated as a resounding crash arose in the background.
“Their here.”
The line went dead.
I tried calling him back but got no reply. After several more attempts I was so overcome with weariness that I fell back into a grateful slumber.
When I woke I instantly remembered this conversation so I flung myself out of bed and dressed hurriedly. Still there was no answer from his phone so I got in my car and sped recklessly to the old man’s house along the narrow roads. In the dawn light all was still and silent as I braked to a halt at his bungalow. His car was there and the windows were intact but the front door was gone! It was lying face down in the hallway. I stepped inside and called the old man’s name. There was no sign of life inside as I went into the living room. Shards of glass lay on the floor. They had smashed in the patio door again as well! I ran through it into the back garden again shouting the old man’s name. There was no answer. I came to the greenhouse. All its windows had been smashed weeks earlier but he had not yet rebuilt it. I looked inside, dreading to come across something awful. The remnants of the tomatoe plants hung lifelessly on the damp concrete floor. Only then did I remember the bones. They were gone! The old man had not told me this! Like a rushing wind the ghastly memory of the room full of skulls and heads came back to me. With it came another thought, a reluctant realisation that made me feel very cold. This was the third time they had come. On the first night they had taken the bones in the house without taking anything else. On the second night they ruined the greenhouse and took the bones. Their bones. These were…. ‘No, no!’ I thought. ‘This can’t be real!’ And on the third night, last night, they took back their…. If I checked that room then, surely to God this, terrifying notion with all its implications for my sanity would be proven true!
The hallway’s carpet had been churned, pictures knocked to the ground; the signs of a violent struggle as if someone was carried away in terror against their will. I walked firmly down the hallway to the room with every sense racing in anticipation. My very soul sank at the sight! The door was strewn in splinters but I knew I had to look inside one last time. I closed my eyes before reaching the threshold and braced myself.
Empty. Threadbare. Devoid of heads.
“Oh, holy God!” I breathed.
I charged back down the hall and out the front door into the coming daylight. It all came together in my mind so quickly and I cursed my acute sense of logic for I had little doubt left now about its certainty! These were no Goth kids. These were no burglars or thieves. These were no vandals. Those who had come to the old man’s house had not come to steal, or destroy or to ruin. They had come to reclaim what was theirs. And they had not come very far. I breathed deeply and wiped the perspiration from my sweaty brow. It began to rain as I walked away from the house.
In front of me loomed the rusted iron gates of the cemetery. With firm yet wary steps I went up to them. The faded metal was cool and coarse to the touch as I pushed them open. They swung back with as vile a noise as had the door at the end of the hall and for the first and last time in my life I stepped into the cemetery. As I moved forward everything around me fell silent. No birdsong, or stray far-off sound or even a breath of wind seemed to penetrate that place and I did not blame them even if it were possible to accuse a sound of cowardice. Every step I took was an ordeal. Beneath my feet there were so many sleeping dead amidst this jungle of gravestones and vile greenery. A bout of vertigo tingled me. As it faded I sensed that there was something here. Something that was neither alive nor fully dead. I went on slowly through the headstones, crosses and long wet grass; unsure of what it was I was looking for. After what seemed like an age I arrived in a kind of clearing with a series of old tombs dotted around me. In the drizzle they appeared older, fouler and in my heightened mindset they brimmed with an icy malevolence. I looked for a way forward but I was to go no further. In the middle of this clearing rose a pile of fresh earth, strewn with rocks and, as I peered closer, something else. From the churned soil, in the very centre of the small mound, came a hand. It bore a ring, a ring with a solitary ‘r’. A sleeve of a pale blue sweater ended at the wrist where the earth had consumed the old man leaving only the hand I had embraced four nights past. He was down there. With them.
I tensed. There was vigilance around me. I was certain of it! From every direction came a series of thuds like something being closed. The sounds resounded through the empty silence of the grave yard. I turned and ran. I avoided the tombs and their stone doors, stumbling through the rain in desperation to escape. On that soaking morning I must have set a record for I’d no sooner blinked when I came to those dreaded, spiked gates that led back to the real world! I was out! I sprinted down the muddy road back to the house, leapt into my car and drove home as fast as I had I come!
Dried, showered and safe, I lay shattered on my bed. It was all sinking in. Hours passed and I did not move from the security of my bedroom. The greenhouse, the bones, the skulls, the heads, the old man, the grave yard, them; it would never go away. Outside the rain pelted my window as the autumn dusk ate up the daylight. Still the events of that morning clung to my thoughts like a fever with no cure. Then my mind relaxed and I remembered something. It was as if it had conspired to be forgotten about until that very moment when, weary and anxious again, I sat up on my bed and glanced at the long chest of drawers by the window. Perched on top was the final gift that the old man had given to me; my future girlfriend’s ash tray. I had barely given it a thought since the day I got it but now I looked at it carefully. It was not large or particularly aesthetic, unique with its hollow concave curvature, pointy sides and bone-like colour. Bone-like. Bone-like! I had seen enough of them to now realise that this object that my non-existence girlfriend would one day use was no ceramic ash tray! It was the top of a skull, a human skull taken by the old man from that haunted cemetery! And it was in my house. My house! For months it had lay here utterly forgotten, the only object not returned to that boneyard! I leapt up and grabbed it! They had come for the bones in the old man’s house, they had come for the bones in greenhouse and they had come for the skulls in the padlocked room. As I held it I could sense an approach like an oncoming storm as inevitably this trend would continue until everything taken was returned to where it came from. For the first time I cursed the old man’s name as the legacy of his folly now moved to destroy me in body, mind and soul. The thing I had been burdened with felt like some unexploded bomb that I could not disarm or hurl away but was also acting as a magnet to an unholy force that would stop at nothing to regain it! Should I flee? Should I throw it out into the rainy night? My indecision was dispelled by a sudden noise, the grating vibration of my mobile phone. It stopped abruptly; I had received what is called a text message. I breathed a little easier. All day I had been caught up in this torment and a greeting from a friend would serve as a window, however small, back to the warmth and safety of reality. ‘I’ll call a priest. No, I’ll go to my brother’s’, I thought as I flipped open my phone to read the message. In an instant my hope was crushed.
It displayed the old man’s number. The message had been sent from the dead old man’s phone; the phone which I, in my own folly, had bought for him. I had not seen it nor given it one thought since running from his house that morning. A pulsating trepidation surged through me, heightening my every sense as I braced myself. With a long deep breath I pressed ‘read’ with my sweaty fore thumb. A deadly, rankling phrase: a simple statement of primitive intent sent to confirm what I already knew but dared not think:-
we are coming for you
© Ciaran McVeigh 2010
