The Living and the Dead

A Willerby Story

Dan, Sally and Lisa went running in the woods at the bottom of the hill that went up to the old Roman fort.

They were hungover.

The night before in the Green Man, beginning with an early doors drink and dinner that became tipsy singing along to the jukebox, it had turned into an unexpected Big One.

While not planned, it felt appropriate.

They’d all been celebrating good news; Lisa had been promoted to supervisor at work, and Dan and Sally had received an inheritance that meant they’d be able to pay off their mortgage years earlier than they’d expected to.

Going for a run the next day had seemed a great idea at closing time and just Caitlin, laughing, said there wasn’t a chance she’d join them.

“You three go for it,” she said, as the four of them, plus Joe and Sammy who were both nodding on the shoulders of their parents, clustered outside the pub before saying their goodnights, “I’ll watch the kids and make breakfast for when you’re back.”

The three runners huffed and moaned to begin with, but as the cold, crisp air cleared their heads and birdsong swelled in the strengthening pink dawn all were glad they’d made the effort to drag themselves into the new morning.

They were young. Youngish at least.

They had their health.

They were all on the up.

Life was good.

“Let’s rest here,” Sally said, as they reached a clearing, her breath a fog in the cold, “And just enjoy the woods for a minute.”

It was a sight worth stopping for. The grass was sharply frosted and the ice around the bare twigs of the trees sparkled and shone white in the low sun.

The spot was one they all knew well – a place of picnics and barbecues in the summer and campfires and marshmallows in autumn and winter.

The world, on the cusp of winter and spring, felt crowded with good memories of the past and future.

“Winning at life,” said Dan, softly, thinking of bacon sandwiches, hot coffee and the Sunday roast that came after them.

Then, as sudden as the falling of a curtain, thick fog tumbled from the sky, darkening and thickening as it came until all was hidden in a shroud of grey and white.

“Dan?” Sally said, waving her hands in the fog to try and find her husband.

“Just here,” said Dan from about where she remembered him being.

She felt his warm hand slide into hers.

“Don’t move,” said Lisa, “I’ll come to you.

They stood close, their shoulders and arms touching, the warmth of muscle and skin comforting in the freezing mist.

“Do you think we can find our way back from here?” Dan asked. “I think I might be able to.”

“I don’t think we should move,” said Sally. “What if we got lost?”

“Surely we couldn’t get lost,” Lisa said, “we can’t be a mile from the village here.”

Then they all went quiet as they realised the uncanniness of the fog meant they couldn’t be sure where they were at all.

They were still thinking about what to do when they heard a dry clicking, like the snapping of branches, from the centre of the clearing.

It was steady and rhythmic, growing startling loud in the unnatural silence.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

The sound was drawing closer.

Dan, Sally and Lisa clustered even closer together.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

Shapes moved in the cloud, the mist flowing and coiling like slow water as it peeled away to reveal three yellow-white skeletons, two smaller and one larger, staring at them through eyeless black and hollow sockets, all clad in the rags of tattered sportswear that might have been comical were it not so unsettling.

For an instant Dan froze, then he grabbed at Sally and Lisa and tried to drag them away.

Lisa went a few steps with him and then shook him off.

“Stop,” she said, “running won’t do us any good if we can’t see where we’re going to.”

“We don’t need to know where we’re going!” Dan shouted. “Anywhere is good enough for now!”

“Lisa’s right,” said Sally, gently shaking off her husband too, “Dan, stop. This is Willerby. We can’t run. We should see what they want.”

The three living stopped and again, the three dead drew near.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

The sound of their knees, hips and elbows, dry bone working on dry bone

Again, the movement of shapes in cloud, the coil and flow of mist and again the three white-yellow bone skeletons staring at them without eyes.

They stopped ten feet away and stood there as still as carved marble.

Then one of the skeletons – the larger one – spoke.

“I were well fair,” it chanted in a high hollow, dry tone that boomed like echoes in forgotten, forsaken crypts, “Such shall you be, for God’s love, beware of me.”

Then the second spoke in a lower voice.

“While I was a man upon earth, pleasures were mine.”

And then the last, higher again.

“Make your memories of me.”

They turned and walked back into the mist.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

The same way it had fallen, the fog rolled up and away, leaving Dan, Sally and Lisa in the clear, frosty morning listening to birds calling in the spring.

They were quiet and subdued on the walk home where the hot coffee and sandwiches weren’t quite enough to rub out a strange, eerie feeling that stayed for days.

…

“Ah,” said David, when Dan told him about it when he ran into him by the church a few days later, “so you met the three dead. I saw them once or twice too, so have lots of people from here over the years. I don’t think they’ve any real power – someone must have spelled or prayed them into being and they’ve been around ever since.”

“But why?”

“As a warning,” said David, “to not be too pleased with yourself – death’s coming, they say – same as it has for everyone who’s ever lived, doesn’t matter how proud or grand. Too easy to forget that these days when so many people grow old thinking it somehow won’t happen to them, and our ends so often hidden away in hospitals.”

Dan thought for a moment.

“I was feeling pretty pleased with myself when it happened – we all were.”

“Of course you were,” Dan said, “that’s what brought them out, the same reason they’ve been popping up every now and again for more than five hundred years, and not everyone appreciates it. If you’ve got ten minutes, I can show you how we know that.”

Dan shrugged and nodded, and David led him up the grassy path that led to the crumbling Norman church, which he unlocked with a large iron key.

There – on the wall halfway down the peeling whitewashed nave – David pointed up at a faded painting of three curly haired nobles in fine robes.

One wore a crown, one held a falcon on its arm and the last carried a sword.

“The three living,” David said, “the three dead are there too but harder to spot – can you see them?”

Dan followed David’s pointing finger but saw nothing– then he saw there was a disembodied jawbone floating in the white.

“Someone foolish tried to paint out the dead,” said David, “as if that could work, as if they thought they could cheat death by painting over it – as if it’s not there waiting if you can’t see it. As if the warning was the problem.”

…

Later that day Dan told Sally about the three living and the three dead and the church.

They talked about how run down it was and how the pensioners who used it most had to wear coats inside because there was never enough money to fix the heating.

They talked about the snowdrops and the daffodils the pensioners put in vases to brighten it up in the spring and the coffee mornings and messy church.

Then they looked at the inheritance in their bank account and at their mortgage statement.

They decided an extra year or so wouldn’t matter – that they could afford a donation that would do some good before their years were over with and they too joined the dead.