Johnny and the Dead

Chapter n

As Tommy Atkins had once said, things aren't necessarily over just because they've stopped.

There was Bigmac, for a start. Yo-less had gone home with him, and Bigmac's brother had been waiting up and had started on at him and Bigmac had looked at him strangely for a few seconds and then hit him so hard that he knocked him out. Yo-less said, with awe in his voice, that it'd been so hard that the word 'TAH' was printed in Biro on the brother's chin. And then he'd growled at Glint and the dog had hid under the sofa. So Yo-less had to get his mother out of bed to bring her car round to carry Bigmac's suitcase, three tropical fish tanks and two hundred copies of Guns and Ammo back to her spare room.

And there was the generous donation to the Blackbury Volunteers by United Amalgamated Consolidated Holdings. As Mr Atterbury said, it's amazing what you can do with a kind word, pro- vided you've also got a big stick.

The cemetery was already looking more lived- in. There were endless arguments between the Volunteers who wanted it to be habitat and the ones who wanted it to be ecology and a middle group who just wanted it to be clean and tidy, but at least it was wanted, which seemed to Johnny to be the most important thing.

It took Johnny a week to find what he wanted, and when he found it he took it along to the cemetery after school, when no-one was about. There was frost on the ground.

'Mr Grimm?'

He found him by the canal, sitting staring at the water.

'Mr Grimm?'

'Go away. You're dangerous.'

'I thought you'd be a bit... lonely. So I bought you this.'

He opened the bag.

'Mr Atterbury helped,' he said. 'He phoned around some of his friends who've got electrical shops. It's been repaired. It'll work until the batteries die, and then I thought maybe it'd work on ghost batteries.'

'What is it?'

'A very small television,' said Johnny. 'I thought I could put it right in a bush or somewhere and no-one'11 know it's there except you.'

'What are you doing this for?' said Mr Grimm, suspiciously.

'Because I looked you up in the newspaper. May the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-seven. There wasn't very much. Just the bit about them finding ... you in the canal, and the coroner's inquest.'

'Oh? Poking around, eh? And what do you think you know about anything?'

'Nothing.'

'I don't have to explain.'

'Is that why you couldn't leave with the others?'

'What? I can leave whenever I like,' said the ghost of Mr Grimm, very quickly. 'If I'm stay- ing here, it's because I want to be here. I know my place. I know how to do the right thing. I could leave whenever I want. But

I've got more pride than that. People like you don't understand that. You don't take life seriously.'

It hadn't been a long report in the paper. Mr Vicenti was right. In those days, some things didn't get a lot of reporting. Mr Grimm had been a respectable citizen, keeping his head down, a man at the back of the crowd, and then his business had failed and there'd been some other trouble involving money, and then there'd been the canal. Mr Grimm had taken life very seriously, starting with his own.

People didn't talk much about that sort of thing in those days. Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.

Mr Grimm sat with his hands clasped around his knees.

Johnny realized that he could think of nothing to say, so he said nothing.

Instead, he wedged the little pocket television deep in a bush, where no-one, not even the keenest birdwatcher, would find it.

'Can you turn it on with your mind?' he said.

'Who says I shall want to?'

The picture came on, and there was the faint tinkly sound of the familiar signature tune.

'Let's see,' said Johnny. 'You've missed a week ... Mrs Swede has just found out Janine didn't go to the party ... Mr Hatt has sacked Jason from the shop because he thinks he took the money... and ...'

'I see.'

'So ... I'll be off, then, shall I?'

'Right.'

Johnny backed away.

'I'm sure the hours'11 just fly by.'

'Right.'

'So ... cheerio, then.'

'Right.'

'Mr Grimm?' Johnny wanted to say: you can leave any time you want. But there seemed to be no point.

'Right.'

Johnny watched for a while, and then turned and walked away. The other three were waiting for him by the phone box.

'Was he there?' said Yo-less.

'Yes.'

'What's he doing now?'

'Watching television,' said Johnny.

'I expect ghosts do that a lot,' said Wobbler.

' 'Spect so.'

'You all right?'

'Just thinking about the difference between heaven and hell.'

'That doesn't sound like "all right" to me.'

Johnny blinked. And looked around at the world.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, won- derful. Which wasn't the same as nice. It wasn't even the same as good. But it was full of... stuff. You'd never get to the end of it. It was always springing new things on you...

'Yeah,' he said. 'All right. What shall we do now?'