We had moved into the house by the cemetery about a year ago. Within a month some of the local teenagers told me about the problems in the graveyard. Tombstones shifting. Holes in the fences. Movements in the shadows and grave dirt on the streets.
They blamed everything from curses to plague pits. 'Go to bed early, and get those lights off,’ they all said.
No way. These rumours were not going to stop me playing computer games. Especially now the evenings were drawing into the serene gloom of autumn.
Mum agreed these tales were nonsense, but still insisted I kept my curtains closed at night. They had been in the house when we arrived. A perished inner lining and dodgy rings meant the two pieces of fabric never quite met in the middle.
Games were brighter in those days too. Bolder on their palette, all slime green and bubblegum pink. Even with my light off there must have been a constant enchanting glow between the curtains if you watched from outside.
At that point my main obsession was a platformer headlined by a talking salamander in a spacesuit. Lots of alien goop. What a novelty after being in the ground for so long. Perhaps colors that vivid were not even a part of existence when they had last been above.
I presume that is what attracted them to the house.
The eyes were the worst. Yellow snotty blobs which looked through rather than at you. I jumped at first, like when a plate drops in a cafe, and assumed a rotting hand would soon be round my throat.
But all they did was watch. Some left greasy marks on the window. One moved their head up and down when I pressed the jump button. Another had a pocket watch, and it clinked against the glass in a regular beat.
And when it was bedtime, and the last glow of the power button faded to black, a monotonous trudge back to underground homes was the sole consequence of my gaming.
I understand Mum was trying to be kind. We had been to the supermarket earlier that day, and it was a chilly Friday evening. A hot chocolate and marshmallows was such a wonderful idea for an unexpected treat. But I am a teenager. You have to knock. Her screaming was louder than a bird getting stabbed with a blunt machete.
‘Mum, they are just curious,’ I said.
I was about to point out the pocket watch, when she wrenched the console’s plug from the socket, and plunged us into darkness.
For the first time, I heard a groan outside the window.
Mum simply would not listen to me. She tugged me under the bed by my collar, and covered her ears to drown out the noise of splintering doors and breaking glass. A maggot studded boot stepped on my discarded controller. Broken fingernails dragged against the smooth face of the television.
If she would only let them watch.
Line: I jumped at first, like when a plate drops in a cafe, and assumed a rotting hand would soon be round my throat.
