The raven wandered about as lonely as a single cloud in a perfect blue-sky day. He stumbled over cracked headstones and pitted paths, and every step he took the thorns went in a little deeper. Each time he blinked he saw the church doors slamming shut.
Exhausted, he came to a stop and tried to detach the rosy barbs from his body. First the bees, now the thorns. What had he ever done to Father Cadman to deserve this?
‘And again!’ A voice came croaking up from beneath his feet. ‘Who is it this time? Who comes all shakin’ me bones with pain? Who comes all disturbing my well-earned sleep? Ain’t a man entitled to his rest, but isn’t he so! Not even when he’s dead!’
A ghostly hand appeared and started to grapple about right next to the raven’s beak. It was old Jeremiah Hickelsby, cranky and disgruntled all the way down into the marrow of his bones. Something rancid and rotten drifted out with him. It was highly unusual for ghosts to smell, but Jeremiah had been lying about, mouldering in his coffin for well on half a century.
‘Aye,’ he said, and only the tops of his eyes, hooded and suspicious, peeked out over the thin layer of grass. ‘Off ye go walkin’ all over me bones, and there’s me, not buried even near deep enough, and there’s you, with a tread on ye like ye boots are filled with sackfuls of cement! Can a man not get one wink of shut-eye, not even after fifty years of being dead?!’
‘Excuse me,’ said the raven. He was not in the best of tempers and a crabby ghost certainly wasn’t helping the situation. ‘That’s enough of associating me with words like “heavy” and “cement”. Due to a condition I am suffering at the moment, an incurable malady, I have been unable to eat like a regular bird. I have actually lost weight. I’m the trimmest I’ve been in my life.’
‘Why are ye still talkin’?’ Jeremiah Hickelsby’s hands thrashed about and he clutched at what used to be his head. ‘Go away and leave me alone. I just want to sleep, is all. It’s enough to drive one mad.’
‘Kraaa.’ The raven pecked a thorn from his wing and spat it at the ghost. It was not the type of action he would usually endorse, but he felt as though he’d been strung out by his wingtips. Of course, the thorn went right through, harmless, but Jeremiah Hickelsby was having none of it.
‘Me head, me poor old head,’ he wailed. ‘Look what ye’ve done! Like a boulder rollin’ on through, it is. How could ye be so unkind? How could ye be so unkind to not dig me up and bury me deeper? No peace, no peace, even in the grave.’
‘Yes,’ said the raven, ‘I got your point. Three hours ago.’
‘I just want to shut me eyes for good,’ the man wept.
‘Well, you died a hundred years ago. Kind of missed the opportunity, didn’t you?’
‘A hundred years, is it?’ said Jeremiah. ‘A hundred years of this agony, is it then? A hundred years and not one wink of sleep. People walkin’ over me and singin’ and spittin’ thorns. And me only half-dead, stuck in these wretched old bones.’
‘Then get up and go,’ said the raven. ‘Everyone’s got problems. Leave. It will be better for all of us.’
‘But where would I go?’ said the ghost. ‘What would I do? Where is the place where I can finally rest?’
‘Far away from here,’ said the raven, and made his escape. He half-flew, half-flopped over the gravestones, muttering angrily and wondering just how he’d found himself in such a dire predicament.
‘Hey, Ravo.’
The raven looked up from his self-important protestations and found himself staring at the wispy outline of Todd. He hovered over the gate of the children’s plot before drifting down to the ground.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said the raven. ‘What did you just call me?’
‘Ravo,’ said the boy. ‘Wanna croissant?’ He pointed at the pastry lying in the dirt next to the bottlecaps. The scent of it hit the raven full in the beak, and his stomach roared as if to remind him that recent gut-wrenching and humiliating events had seriously depleted his energy levels.
‘Kenzie left it for me,’ said Todd, ‘before she started shouting and all that in church.’
‘Yes,’ said the raven, ‘quite inappropriate.’ He hopped forward. ‘Thank you, I will have that croissant.’
Todd went to pick it up, realised he couldn’t, and slunk back down.
‘Probably for the best,’ said the raven. ‘I don’t need someone to feed it to me. I’m rather above being treated like a dog. Especially today.’
Todd shrugged. The raven darted forward and snapped up the croissant. He made to fly away with it back to his belltower, where he could sulk and eat at his own leisure. But he checked himself and turned back to face the boy.
‘All right, then?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ said Todd, ‘not really. But thanks.’
‘Yes, well,’ said the raven, ‘you’re not the only one. I’ve suffered above and beyond myself today.’
‘Think she hurt her hands,’ said Todd, his eyes unable to fix themselves on anything for more than a second, ‘tearing up those thorns. They’ll be real cut-up. Won’t worry her much, I guess. Takes more than a scratch for her to notice.’
‘She certainly has a powerful set of lungs,’ said the raven. ‘They could probably use her in the church choir.’ His guts twisted at the thought of his exile from the church and all the songs he would miss out on.
‘You know, I miss her,’ said Todd, still looking into space. ‘I do. Watching and talking to her all one-sided – it’s not like the real thing. Feel kinda stupid doing that. Doesn’t mean much to her, does it?’ He sighed, and his thin shadow almost sunk into itself.
The raven nudged about the dirt with his claw. ‘There’s new grass coming up,’ he said, looking over the boy’s grave. ‘That didn’t take long.’
Todd looked too, but he didn’t say anything. The silence drew on until it got positively uncomfortable. Dead people were just so depressing.
‘None of my friends have come to see me yet,’ said the boy. ‘Thought they would, maybe.’
It was the raven’s turn to be silent. A single stream of sunlight shone down, picking out the bottlecaps one by one as though they were passing on a secret message.
‘Bottlecaps,’ the raven finally blurted. ‘I have more bottlecaps. I’ll bring you some more down if you like. That will make her happy. Something has to.’
Todd looked at the T that marked his grave, and his face was filled with the glint of the golden dots. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that might be all right.’
‘Okay,’ said the raven. ‘Good. I’ll see to it. Thanks for the croissant.’
‘She thinks it was me, you know,’ said the boy.
‘What’s that?’
‘She thinks it was me who put them there. The bottlecaps.’
‘Well,’ said the raven, ‘I guess that’s for the best, isn’t it?’
Back in his den the raven devoured the croissant in a couple of gulps. He staggered out into the fresh air, stuffed and lethargic, to shake the crumbs from his breast. And it was then he saw Barnabas Brittle – the very man who had made him an outcast in his own church.
He was quite a distance away, but the raven could smell a traitor a mile off. Brittle was just coming back from the path that wound through the Mausoleum Garden, walking much too casually for a man just going about his business.
The raven saw his arch-nemesis’s eyes dart around furiously, questioning every shadow and covered nook. He saw his penny-pinching hands curled up into horrid little fists, swinging at his sides. And then he saw Father Cadman slamming shut the church doors, and the silence that his gospel songs used to fill.
He could swoop down, claws out, and launch himself at Barnabas Brittle’s face. But it probably was not the best of ideas, seeing as his belly was so full of buttery croissant. So instead he let loose with a few particularly spiteful Kraaaas! and made his own way towards the mausoleums.
Barnabas Brittle had been up to something. The raven intended to find out what.
It didn’t take him long. The churchyard was the raven’s territory, and he spent his days surveilling it, checking that nothing was amiss. Even in his sluggish state, he could spot Brittle’s footprints, the pile of rubble near one of the mausoleum doors where someone had recently let themselves in.
It was in the oldest part of the Mausoleum Garden, a decaying, cruddy crypt, covered with weeping violets and crawling honeysuckle. The raven hopped in through a hole near the door, his bright eyes alert. He noted the tracks in the furry dust, the foot patterns in the rubble, and followed them until he came to a low arch. He traced the traitorous stench of Barnabas Brittle down a narrow, curving passageway, which was broken up by steps and festooned with bugs and crawlies and twitchy spider legs.
And then he came into a little alcove, which struggled to hold even the wisp of light falling through a fissure in the roof.
But the lack of sun didn’t matter, because the alcove was lit from within by jewelled chalices, silver ornaments, and the glass jar that contained the stolen money.
Now the raven had experienced a truly atrocious day. But when he saw this stolen stash, he felt it well up in his throat – the luxuriant, velveteen taste of success.
Pruuuuuuk.
This wasn’t over. Not yet.