They had been digging a hole for quite some time. That was fine, though—what was childhood for if not endless digging?—and there was nothing more exciting than digging in the middle of the night with no adults around. Clatty Blackburn was not one of those ringleaders who was brutish and wanted to break you, nor was he one of those too clever to be a child and overly good at manipulation. He was somewhere in the middle. Brutish, yes, he could be, he broke Saville Moan’s arm last year in the first ice of winter-spring, although that was a play fighting accident, and he was clever. He had told them very little. All they knew was they were going to dig up a body, and who would pass up such an opportunity other than Clatty Blackburn’s sister Rust who said, “Nah, I’ve got Maths in the morning.”
Clatty put his ear close to the ground as if he was listening, which of course he was not. “We’re in the right place. Keep digging,” he said.
They kept digging and they were none of them surprised to dig up the body of a woman who was old and not long dead, but that was not to say they were well prepared for it. Saville Moan vomited copiously, and Clatty Blackburn took the opportunity to mock him for still eating alphabet spaghetti. Peter Parsley cried a little. It was night-time and he thought that nobody saw him, but Thomas Dresden stood a little closer to him to shield him from Clatty’s eyes, which were sharp enough to discern tears on a boy’s face a mile away. Besides, it did not get properly dark. Not anymore. Their digging was illuminated by the pollutant orange effulgence of the city that powered the heliacal streetlamps.
But Clatty was busy looking at the body. “Who’s that?” he said.
Everyone shrugged. You had to look nonchalant as much as possible, even if you were staring at a dead body, even if you had yesterday’s dinner flowing thinly down the side of your mouth. Strangely, the body did not smell at all. But they could smell the stray dog Charles, who had alerted Clatty to the body in the first place.
“One of you idiots must know who it is,” said Clatty.
And they knew they had to lean in and guess.
“Looks a bit like Ethel Partridge’s mother,” said Saville Moan. His skin was bilious, and he had a wet voice like aspiration pneumonia, but he bent down bravely to take a good look at the woman.
“Wrong eyes for that,” said Thomas Dresden, who had learned early on that it was much better to let another boy go first and then critique him. “And her chin’s too thin.”
“How did you get such a bird’s eye view of Ethel Partridge’s mother’s chin?” said Clatty Blackburn, and they all laughed. They were too young to understand the inference, and even Clatty did not know, really, what he was saying, but they had some sense of what they were taking part in, and they gave their laughter the coarse quality they knew the situation called for.
“I think it’s Fanita Derbyshire,” said Peter Parsley.
“Now you’re cooking with gas,” said Clatty, who was far too young to have ever cooked with gas. Even his nan had never cooked with gas. “Go on.”
“Well. It’s her—she’s got them teeth. I mean, no teeth. And—not many teeth, any road—and she’s got that birthmark and them liver spots.”
“Anyone else see liver spots?” said Clatty. “I’m not sure I can see them.”
They all knew Clatty could see them. They got closer. “There’s one,” said Saville. He choked down a thick web of emesis that had climbed up his throat. He pointed at her cheek.
“That one’s a skin tag,” said Thomas.
“Same difference.”
“No, it’s not.”
And there, just like that, they were in an argument that made the dead body seem normal.
“You’re both wrong,” said Clatty, when he decided it had gone on long enough. “It’s a filiform wart. But you’re right, I think it is Fanita Derbyshire.”
“What should we do with her?” said Thomas.
“I’ve got a sudden appetite,” said Clatty. “I reckon we go to Joseph’s.”
Joseph’s was the all-night diner. The food was shit, but Clatty wasn’t interested in the food. He was interested in Jonathan Bakewell, an older lad Clatty sometimes daydreamed about. Jonathan Bakewell would know what to do.
Since the city of London redirected police funding in 2011 and pumped the money into schools, hospitals, social workers, doulas, therapists, youth workers, faith leaders, libraries, playgrounds, safeguarding teams, mentorship schemes, family protection, sexual health services, prevention liaisons, drug and alcohol programmes, parks and gymnasiums, street parties, the Post Office, soup kitchens, food banks, shrine vendors, and take-your-cousin-to-work days, the things previously known as crimes and now termed ‘calls for help’ or ‘interpersonal harms vulnerability’ had dropped considerably. But there was still trouble if you knew where to look for it, and it was part of Jonathan Bakewell’s job to know where to look for it. It wasn’t just the diner, it was the barbershop, the wet market, the youth choir, the library café—anywhere that people gathered to talk hired people who knew what to do when things arose.
“What have you boys been up to?” said Jonathan Bakewell.
“This and that,” said Clatty Blackburn. “My nan made dinner.” Everyone knew and loved Clatty’s nan, and not just because she was dying. “Watched some televisual. Dug up a body. You know. The usual.”
The boys all looked as if they dug up dead bodies every night of the week and Jonathan Bakewell did them the courtesy of dropping the platter of bread rolls he was coming out to serve them. “What did you say?” Reclaimed Kintsugi porcelain was shattered over the floor and the acorn flour rolls bounced on the recycled linoleum.
Clatty Blackburn shrugged. “About dinner? My nan made rice and peas.”
“No, about the dead body.” Jonathan grabbed the food safe pottery mending lacquer kit.
“Oh,” said Clatty, “That. Yeah, we think it’s Fanita Whatshername.” He knew her full name. They all full well knew her full name.
“Derbyshire,” said Saville.
“That’s the ticket,” said Clatty. “Fanita Derbyshire. Looks like her, anyhow.”
“Where’s the body now?” said Jonathan.
“Side of the road,” said Clatty.
They all trooped back. Jonathan Bakewell made a few calls on the way, so when they got there, it was a small crowd who welcomed them with weak cups of orange squash and a couple of portions of large steaming chips.
“Thanks,” said Clatty, grabbing a fat handful from several suppliers.
There was nothing to see. The body had disappeared. The hole was still there. The person who went to do a welfare check on Fanita Derbyshire found her awake watching the televisual even though all the programmes had ended, and she was just staring at the Test Card F out-of-transmission screen. The boys were sent home.
“What the ever-living hell happened to her body?” Clatty Blackburn said to his nan the next evening.
“What’s it got to do with you?” said his nan. She poured synthesised green eel liquor around his pie. “You dug her up, she’s back home now. No harm done.” Nobody had suggested at any point that Clatty and the boys were lying. Which was a cause for concern.
“I think,” said Rust, “What Clatty means is, he knows you know how did she get to be buried like that, and how she was dead then and alive now.” Rust and Clatty both knew that every adult in town had been to a meeting that afternoon about the business of Fanita Derbyshire’s body being dug up and her being found safe at home that same night and every child was dying to know what had happened.
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you,” said their nan. She poured herself some water from the table jug and took her medicine. She always took it in front of them and invited them to ask questions about it, although they rarely did. Her long illness was no secret. “So just forget about it.”
The gang did not forget about it.
“Maybe she’s a witch.”
“Maybe she’s a zombie.”
“Maybe she’s a vampire.”
“How would being a vampire make her dead and buried and then alive?”
“Vampires sleep in coffins.”
“Yeah coffins. Not clean off the side of the road.”
“Maybe it wasn’t her body.”
“Yeah, maybe she has a sister.”
“Maybe she has a twin.”
“Maybe it’s her body but she wasn’t really dead; she was, like, sleeping.”
“Yeah, maybe she’s got narcolepsy.”
“Maybe she’s—maybe she was in a coma and someone buried her accidentally and then she woke up when we dug her up and she walked home while we were at Joseph’s.”
“Maybe she’s immortal.”
“Maybe we should go and spy at her house.”
Of course, every boy in the gang wanted to go and spy at Fanita Derbyshire’s house. They packed a picnic. They called it victuals. Two enormous bags of crisps, biscuits with jam in the middle of them, a bottle of pop, and then the sweets. The cinema had been closed since a legionnaire’s scare, but the cinema tuck shop was still open and from it they got liquorice rat tails, chocolate mice, peach cola balls, chocolate money, and nougat pebbles, coffee, and sugar snakes. In previous years, sugar snakes used to be just one long ribbon made of psyllium husks and a kind of gum mixed with sugar and food colouring and something fizzy. But sugar snakes had come on in recent years and now they had a distinguishable head and a tail.
Nobody really had cars anymore, but there was an old burnt out electrical one across the road from Fanita Derbyshire’s, and the boys climbed in there because this was how they had seen stakeouts happen on the televisual. They took it in turns to swig black coffee out of the thermos. None of them enjoyed the taste—it was far too bitter—but everyone knew if you wanted to spy on someone, you had to drink black coffee.
There was nothing to see the first two nights. Then, on the third night, at 12 o’clock, Peter Parsley attached the ends of his sugar snake to each other, so the snake’s tail rested inside the snake’s mouth, and Fanita Derbyshire came out of her house. Nothing so strange about that, apart from that Fanita Derbyshire was old, and old people stayed in their houses after dark, except for old Mr Tomkins, who was so ill-tempered he could not stand to see anyone and took his evening walk when the streets were darker and emptier.
They crept out of the car and they followed Fanita Derbyshire for a good fifteen-minute walk along the tree covered part of the road up towards the park until she turned around. “I know you’re following me,” she said.
“Mrs Derbyshire,” said Clatty. “I didn’t see you there. We’re just off for an evening stroll.”
“An evening’s spying, more like it,” said Fanita Derbyshire.
“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs Derbyshire,” said Clatty. “Enjoy your evening.”
Fanita Derbyshire laughed and kept walking, and they kept following her. Every now and again she would stop and turn around and look at them and they would affect surprise at seeing her again.
“Mrs Derbyshire,” Clatty would say. “How lovely to see you again.”
This went on for the best part of an hour until they came to the stretch of road that they dug her body up from. “Right,” said Fanita Derbyshire, “That’s enough now. Unless you want me ringing your nan, Clatty, and telling her you’s all here.”
Clatty held his hands up smoothly. “No need for anything like that, Mrs Derbyshire,” he said. “We’ll be out of your hair. You enjoy your night.”
He motioned for the gang to turn around, and they walked back for a few seconds before Clatty put his fingers to his lips and turned around on the spot. But Fanita Derbyshire had gone. They stayed a little longer at that spot in the road hoping to see something, and then Clatty’s nan was there, all at once, grabbing Clatty roughly by the arm and marching them all home and into bed.
The gang were all in big trouble. “You’re grounded,” said Clatty’s nan. The rest of the boys were too. They had their phones confiscated. They were escorted to and from school and spent their weekends doing chores. After two weeks of this, Clatty’s nan told him he was allowed out. She told him this when she was escorting him back from school and she said nothing about the raven that followed them part of the way. Clatty did not either. He went straight to Fanita Derbyshire’s house. She saw him through the net curtains of her windows and the two of them stared at each other until Clatty’s nan arrived.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, and took him home.
The gang were grounded every time they were caught spying on Fanita Derbyshire or hanging around the spot of earth where they had found her buried body, which, for a reason unknown to the crew, was marked now by a peacock feather.
“I know something’s going on,” Clatty said.
His nan shrugged. “No-one’s denying that,” she said.
And no one was. When they went to Joseph’s, Jonathan Bakewell was quite open that there had been adult-only meetings about Fanita Derbyshire’s body being dug up. “I’m not allowed to say nothing,” said Jonathan Bakewell. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
“But you wouldn’t be doing anything wrong,” Clatty said. “And I wouldn’t tell the other lads. You’d just be telling me why she’s alive when we dug up her dead body clean out of the ground.”
“Have you heard of when something’s greater than the sum of its parts?”
“No,” said Clatty.
“Well. It’s like this. A cake is just synthesised eggs and plant milk and flour and sugar isn’t it? But when you have the cake, and it’s just come out of the oven, and it’s all hot and it smells like cake, it’s kind of bigger than that. Than all the stuff that went in it. And that’s how it is with this thing. It’s kind of bigger than just telling you why she’s okay.”
“I don’t get it,” said Clatty.
“Yeah,” said Jonathan Bakewell. “You’re not meant to.”
The mystery continued. The gang stopped spying on Fanita Derbyshire, but they did not stop speculating. Every now and again, they would get together and really try to work out what the hell was going on. Their theories would get wilder and wilder. She was an alien. She was a ghost. Or, their favourite, she was immortal. They began to enjoy these nights more than the other nights they shared together. They called themselves the Immortality Investigation Crew. They would have notebooks where they would write down their theories. They would stay up deep into the night fortified with lilac moonshine and that nasty neat coffee and present their best theories to each other. Saville Moan even did a PowerPoint presentation.
And then Clatty’s nan died when he turned sixteen. Rust went to live with her dad and Clatty moved to another town to live with an aunt. He and the crew kept in touch, writing each other IIC letters about the Fanita Derbyshire mystery. When Clatty was in his early twenties, he returned to his hometown. He wanted to introduce his boyfriend Paul to the Immortality Investigation Crew, most of whom still lived there, and the people that took care of him when his nan was sick. He took Paul to Joseph’s and was delighted to find Jonathan Bakewell still behind the till. “What,” said Clatty, after a bit of chatting, “was all that business with Fanita Derbyshire?”
Jonathan Bakewell smiled, but there were tears in his eyes. “Your nan,” he said, “Knew she was dying.”
“We all did,” said Clatty.
“Yes,” said Jonathan Bakewell. “May she rest in peace. Anyway, she knew she was, you know, didn’t have long left, and she wanted to give you something to enjoy, you know, and she used to worry about you—you know, you’re a smart lad, and it’s a small town. Not that much to do. So, she got us all together and we came up with this mystery.” Jonathan paused to wipe crumbs off a particularly grubby table. “Got a guy she knows from way back when to make a dummy of Fanita Derbyshire’s body, got in a sangoma to work up an enchantment. Fanita was well up for it. Thought the whole thing was hilarious. And we trained Charles the dog to lead you there. And then we had all these meetings where we’d pretend we was discussing Fanita Derbyshire. But really, we’d be talking about how to support you and Rust through her death. You know. The funeral, how Cathy-Anne Porter moved in with you all, how the Grandmothers Book Club made all your meals. Getting your sister’s dad involved. All that kind of stuff.”
Clatty ran his fingers over the diner table. His head was filled with his nan. Her smell, her cooking, the way she checked the back of his collars for dirt, the notes she would write in his lunch every single day for years, saying that she loved him and she hoped he was having a good day. Clatty put his hands in his face and wept. He and Jonathan Bakewell embraced. It was the kind of contact with Jonathan Bakewell that Clatty had fantasised about since he was ten, but it didn’t feel like that now. It felt like family, and like comfort. When Paul hugged him from behind some moments later, kissing the parting in his locs, it felt different. Grown up.
“You ordering anything?” said Jonathan Bakewell.
Clatty laughed. “The food in here’s shit,” he said. “But I’ll have some chips.”
Laura Barker runs a queer black writing group in London. Her work appears in The Guardian, Apparition Lit, midnight & indigo, The Other Stories, Planet Scumm, Middleground, Gothic Fantasy Anthology, Love Letters to Poe, FIYAH, ongoing, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Riptide Journal, Last Girls Club, and Showcase: Object & Idea. @LauraHannahBar.
Translunar Travelers Lounge 