Crawl is the last option left, and it brings him here, to this graveside, because where else could he ever go?
He is on hands and knees above her, he is blood and dirt all over, he looks like the corpses stumbling down Daisy Hill. ‘Why won’t you come back?’ he asks, heart aching like it did the day she left. ‘Why didn’t you ever come back? I need you! I’ve always needed you!’ He thumps the ground, both fists. ‘Even Dad came back! Where are you? People who hate me are coming back, so where are you, Mum?’ Through all of this he has needed her, and she hasn’t returned. The only ones that have, in his street, underground, in the gardens, are murderous, deadly. Mum could not be one of them. His own mum couldn’t. His own mum won’t come back to him.
Caleb, the hated boy.
He screams, a note all his own. It is everything he cannot say, everything he wanted to tell Misha, everything he’s never been able to tell anyone. Mum said she’d stay forever but now she’s nowhere at all, and he screams on her grave as the dead descend Daisy Hill.