The Dead Ones - The Whispering Wall

Will couldn’t get Benjamin’s face out of his head. The bulging eyes. The tongue. The way the body just swung there like a broken clock pendulum. Three days had passed. Or what felt like three days. Time was different now. It moved in clumps. Sometimes fast, sometimes treacle-slow.

He sat on the bench. His bench. Smoking. Watching the living drift through the park like they owned the place. They didn’t. Not really. They just hadn’t figured that out yet.

Silas appeared beside him. He never arrived. He just was suddenly there.

—You’re brooding, said Silas.

—I’m thinking.

—Same thing, with you.

—What happens to him now? Benjamin?

—He crossed over. Jemima saw to that.

—Crossed over to where?

—That’s not your concern.

—It bloody well is my concern. I’m the warden. I watch souls come in. I need to know where they go.

Silas sat down. Took one of Will’s cigarettes without asking. Lit it with a match that appeared from nowhere.

—There are places beyond the bridge, Will. Places I cannot describe because language doesn’t stretch that far. Benjamin went somewhere appropriate.

—Appropriate.

—Yes.

—That’s a word that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Silas almost smiled. Almost. The veins in his face shifted like worms beneath wet soil.

—Come with me. There’s something else you need to see.

—Oh, wonderful. Last time you said that, I watched a woman turn into a demon and hang a man from a tree.

—This is different.

—You’ll forgive me if I don’t find that reassuring.

They walked. Past the oak tree, which looked ordinary again. Innocent. Just a tree. No rope. No body. As though it had digested what had happened and gone back to sleep. Will shuddered.

Silas led him to the far edge of the park, where the railings met the old brick wall that bordered the cemetery. Will had walked past it a thousand times when he was alive. It was just a wall. Victorian brick, crumbling mortar, moss creeping along the top like a slow green tide.

But now, standing close, he could hear it.

Whispering.

Dozens of voices. Hundreds maybe. Layered on top of each other. Some urgent, some calm, some just repeating the same words over and over. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was like pressing your ear to a door at a party where everyone was talking at once.

—What is that?

—The wall holds them.

—Holds who?

—The ones who won’t cross. The ones who refuse the bridge. The ones who cling.

—Cling to what?

—To what they were. To who they loved. To the things they did or didn’t do. They press themselves into the wall and they stay there. Whispering. Trying to be heard by the living.

Will stepped closer. Put his hand against the brick. It was warm. Not like sun-warmed stone. Warm like skin. He pulled his hand back.

—Fuck.

—Expletives won’t help with this.

—How many are in there?

—Thousands. Going back centuries. The wall was built over a much older wall. And that wall was built over older stones. It goes deep, Will. Very deep.

Will lit a cigarette. His hands were steadier this time. He was getting used to the horror. That in itself was horrifying.

—So what’s my job here?

—Sometimes one of them pushes through. Finds a crack. Starts to emerge. When that happens, you need to send them back.

—How?

—You’ll know. The warden always knows.

—That’s incredibly unhelpful, Silas.

—It’s the truth.

A sound came from the wall. Different from the whispering. A scraping. Like fingernails on the inside of a coffin lid. Will watched as a section of mortar between two bricks began to crumble. Dust fell. A crack appeared, thin as a hair, then wider.

—Silas?

—Yes. This is why I brought you here.

—Now would be a good time for some actual bloody guidance.

—You are the warden.

The crack widened. And through it came a hand. Grey-white. The fingers long and thin, the nails black and split. It gripped the edge of the brick and pulled. More mortar fell. A second hand appeared. Then a face began to push through the gap, which shouldn’t have been wide enough for a face, but the rules of geometry didn’t seem to apply.

It was a woman. Middle-aged. Her eyes were wild and rolling. Her mouth was open and she was saying something, the same thing, over and over.

Will stepped closer. He could hear her now.

—My children. Where are my children. My children. Where are my children.

—Who is she? Will asked.

—Margaret Leeson. Died in 1953. Her children were taken from her by the authorities. She never saw them again. She’s been in the wall since the day she died.

—That’s over seventy years.

—Yes.

—And she’s been saying that the whole time?

—Yes.

The woman was pulling herself through now. Her shoulders were emerging. She was looking around with those desperate, rolling eyes. She saw Will. Fixed on him.

—Please. My children. Do you know where they are? Please. I just want to see them. Just once. Please.

Will felt something break inside him. Something he didn’t think could still break, given that he was dead.

—Her children. Are they—

—Dead. Both of them. They crossed the bridge decades ago.

—So they’re on the other side?

—Yes.

—Can she go to them?

Silas paused. The pause was long enough to mean something.

—That is not how it works.

—Why not?

—She refused the bridge. She chose the wall. The wall keeps what it takes.

—That’s not fair.

—Fair is a word for the living, Will.

Margaret was almost through now. Her torso was emerging. She was reaching out towards Will, her fingers grasping at the air.

—Please. Please help me. I can hear them sometimes. Through the wall. I can hear them laughing. They were always laughing, my two. Always laughing.

Will looked at Silas.

—What happens if she gets all the way out?

—She wanders. Lost. Forever. Neither in the wall nor across the bridge. A shade. The living feel her as a cold spot. A sadness they can’t explain. She’ll drift through houses and streets and shopping centres and she’ll ask everyone she meets where her children are and nobody will ever hear her. Not even us, eventually. She’ll fade to almost nothing. But she’ll never stop asking.

—That’s worse than the wall.

—Yes.

—So I have to put her back.

—Yes.

Will stepped forward. Margaret looked at him. Her eyes were brown. Ordinary brown eyes. Someone’s mother’s eyes.

—Margaret, he said.

—Do you know where they are? Michael and Susan. Do you know?

—I don’t, love. I’m sorry.

—Please. I just want to hold them.

Will put his hands on her shoulders. She felt real. Solid. Warm, like the wall. He could feel her trembling.

—You need to go back, Margaret.

—No. No, please. I’ve been in there so long. So long in the dark. I can’t—

—I know. I know. But out here is worse. Trust me.

—How can it be worse? How can anything be worse than the dark?

Will didn’t have an answer. He gently, carefully, pushed her back towards the gap. She resisted. Her fingers gripped his arms.

—Please don’t. Please.

—I’m sorry, Margaret. I’m so sorry.

He pushed. She slid back into the wall. Her face was the last thing to go. Those brown eyes, looking at him. Not with anger. With something worse. Acceptance.

The crack sealed itself. The mortar reformed. The whispering resumed, and somewhere in the middle of it, Will could hear her.

—My children. Where are my children.

He stepped back. Lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking again.

—That was cruel, he said.

—That was mercy, said Silas.

—Doesn’t feel like mercy.

—It rarely does.

They stood in silence for a while. The park carried on around them. A jogger passed. A woman with a pushchair. A teenager on a bike. None of them heard the whispering. None of them felt the warmth of the wall. None of them knew what was pressed into the bricks beside them, layered in like fossils, whispering their unfinished business into the deaf air.

—Silas?

—Yes?

—When I died. Was there a moment when I could have gone into the wall?

—There is always that moment.

—Why didn’t I?

—Because you had nothing to cling to.

Will thought about that. It should have hurt. It didn’t. Or maybe it did, and he just couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

—Will there be more? Trying to come through?

—There are always more. The wall is restless. Especially at night.

—Right.

—You are the warden, Will.

—Yeah. So you keep telling me.

He sat down on the grass with his back against the wall. He could feel them in there. All of them. Pressing against the brick. Whispering their names and their losses and their desperate, unanswerable questions.

He smoked his cigarette down to the filter and flicked it away.

—I’ll watch the wall, he said.

Silas nodded. And then he wasn’t there anymore. Just gone. Like he’d never been.

Will sat alone against the whispering wall and waited for the next one to try to push through. Somewhere deep inside the brick, Margaret Leeson called out for Michael and Susan.

And the wall whispered on.