My friend Fin and I had a gardening business. We were students, so we didn’t have a lot of money – but Fin’s step-dad used to have a gardening business of his own, and he had a lot of spare tools lying about. Neither of us had a lot of gardening experience, but we were fairly confident that we’d pick up what we needed to know pretty swiftly. How hard is it to use a lawnmower, anyway?
We advertised on Facebook and got a good number of responses; it was April, and a lot of pensioners wanted their gardens sorted out before the summer. In those early jobs, we got good at gardening – we got confident. We learned how to weed, and how to identify what we actually needed to weed. We learned how to paint fences and how to seed grass and how to pull out moss from the ground and how to use a screwdriver to pull out dandelions. We bought better tools, bought thicker gloves. Whilst I continued to wear my tracksuit bottoms, Fin bought actual ‘gardening’ trousers. We began to look the part.
Towards the end of our studies, we began to look for one last job – something that would give us a lump sum before we went into our last Summer holidays before embracing the dreaded work life. We started advertising on other websites besides Facebook, even started handing out leaflets. We gave ourselves a name: “Green Toes”. Silly, I know; it started as a joke, but it quickly stuck. We put up adverts in shop windows, stapled them onto posts next to missing cat posters. And one day, we got a call.
It was from a local church, an old Baptist, looking for someone to come and sort out their front and back gardens. They had grass that needed cutting, ivy that needed removing, bushes that needed trimming – all jobs we were comfortable with. “Only thing is,” the guy on the phone told me, “the back garden’s also a graveyard”. Only thing is.
Fin wasn’t too keen on taking the job, until he heard how much they were offering us. The church had closed down a few years ago, but it had just gone into the care of a bigger church in the town nearby, and they had a lot of money to spare. Two full days of work, and we’d be getting £300 each. “Enough to buy another pair of gardening trousers,” I told Fin.
We took the job.
*
We found the church on Google Maps. Its entrance and front-garden were accessible via a main road. Most of the garden was pebbled, although weeds grew between each stone. The church itself was quite small, an early-20th century build, red-bricked, industrial – your typical Baptist, uninterested in glamour, hard and durable. No stained-glass windows, no signs of the cross. A few spare gravestones lined the outside of the church, pressed against the walls.
The photo of the backyard came from a side-road, a housing estate. Through a metal gate, we could see everything. It looked worst than we’d expected. Long grass, knee length, uphill for about forty meters, and then the church. About two hundred grave stones, all of which would need to be cleared with the strimmer. A long fence dividing the church from another property, covered in ivy, thick streams of the stuff.
Two days, we realised, was not a lot of time. But £300 was a lot of money.
*
The first morning of work arrived, a Saturday. We got up at 8:00am, packed the car with our tools. Fin had a big breakfast; all I had was an apple. We filled our water bottles, filled our rucksacks, made our sandwiches. We put on our boots, tightened our laces. Slathered ourselves in sun-cream. Tried not to think about the size of the job, about that uphill back-garden, about all of that ivy.
We got to the church at 9:00am, and the man who’d talked to us on the phone was already there. He introduced himself as David, shook both of our hands. David was a tall man, at least six-foot three, slightly overweight and balding – at a guess, I’d say he was in his 60s. “On time,” he said, looking at his watch. “Good start.”
He showed us around the front of the property, and it was as bad as the pictures suggested. You could spend a full day on your knees pulling weeds out of the pebbles, and the garden would look exactly as it had before. Then he took us down a small alley-way that lead to the back of the church, and I felt my heart drop. Although most of the grass was still as the pictures had shown, some of it had now reached waist-height. Along the edge of the property-diving fence, there were now large mounds of dirt, from which the ivy seemed to be growing from. We asked David what he wanted us to do with all of grass and garden waste we’d create over the course of the two days, and he showed us a spot of pavement that had been placed next to a picnic bench near the back of the church. “Put it all here,” he said.
David unlocked the church, even gave us a key, although we didn’t have time to look around. He plugged in our extension for us, and whilst we got our lawnmower out of the car, he got his own petrol-powered one out of the back of his van. “Use this,” he said. “You’re both going to be quite busy.” And with that, he shook our hands again, wished us well, and left. We had the church to ourselves.
*
First job was the back garden. Mow all of the grass, and then strim the edges of the gravestones. Try not to think about all of the bodies buried underneath us.
Mowing the lawn was monotonous, more tiring than anything. Walk down the hill, struggle to turn around at the end of it, walk back up towards the church – pretend you’re not sweating, pretend you’re not bored, pretend your back’s not hurting. I told myself stories, wished I’d brought my headphones with me. Occasionally, I’d stop to read a gravestone. Most stones belonged to people who’d been buried in the early 1900s, before the First World War. The stones looked older than that, looked Victorian, crumbling, cracks in the marble and rock.
By lunchtime, we’d finished most of the mowing. We took a quick break, ate our sandwiches. “This isn’t worth it,” Fin said, although we both knew that it was. We’d emptied our water bottles, and we both needed a piss, so we decided to head into the church for the first time.
It looked exactly as we’d expected. One large room, two storeys, with church pews on the second floor looking down towards the pulpit. A stack of Bibles were leant against the wall, looked as if they’d been left there since the 1970s. Some of them were water damaged. A door at the end of the room lead into a corridor – which lead towards the kitchen and the bathrooms. The wooden floor sank as we walked; I thought that the planks might split beneath our weight.
When we entered the bathroom, there was a long moment of confusion. There were three stalls – and one of the stalls was shut. The lock had been drawn. Occupied. Fin and I looked at each other, raised our eyebrows. “Must be a ghost,” I said, and Fin laughed. We were both nervous.
Fin got onto his knees, lowered his head towards the floor. Looked under the stall. “Nothing there,” he said. And got back up to his feet. At least there were two other toilets we could use.
I went for a piss, and I took my time. I think I was scared that I’d leave the stall and find the other one open, the toilet now unoccupied. When I left my stall, I found Fin washing his hands and the other door still locked. “Ghost’s taking a while,” Fin said.
*
That afternoon, we focused on pulling the ivy off of the fence. It was a better job than mowing the grass; at least we got to do it together, got to talk to each other. We talked about the toilet stall, admitted that it was a little creepy, but we didn’t think too much of it. We talked about university, about it coming to an end, shared stories we’d told each other hundreds of times. Talked about home, about work, even talked about God for a bit – which felt suitable, being at a graveyard and all. Talked about football, about rugby, about television, about Marvel. Talked about the toilet stall again.
And then we reached the end of the ivy, that last mound. We’d already filled up a wheelbarrow with the stuff, and the pile that had formed next to the picnic bench was massive. But this mound looked to be double the size – a big growth of dirt and soil and rock and moss and grass, wrapped in thick vines, tangled and knotted and seeped.
“Gonna be here a while,” Fin said, and then we got to work with our shovels. It must have been after the second or third scoop that my shovel hit the stone. At first we thought it was a rock, tried to find the end of it. A few more turns with the shovel showed us otherwise. Beneath all of the dirt, beneath the soil, beneath the leaves and the grass and the ivy, there was another gravestone.
It was laid flat, laid into the earth – and it was shaped to look like a cross. And it wasn’t a small stone, probably about four feet long. We swept it with a brush, searched for a name. It was unmarked.
“Crap,” Fin said.
“Maybe the name’s on the other side,” I said.
We cleared the soil, the ivy, the dirt away. Filled the wheelbarrow multiple times, until only the gravestone was left, sunk into the earth. “Which one of us is lifting it, then?” Fin said, but I was already stood behind it, already prying my fingers into the ground, feeling the edge of the cross through my gloves.
I heaved with my back, let all of its weight go into my arms, and lifted the cross out of the soil. I felt the stone digging into my stomach, felt the mud drenching my t-shirt, imagined spiders and bugs and worms crawling on the surface, exposed to the light, scattering towards my hands. And now I was pushing the cross, pushing it so that it would stand up on its own, still feeling the weight of it against my torso.
For a second, I held it at arm’s length. I got a good look at the hidden side of the stone. Covered in dirt, but insect-less, lifeless, not even damp. Completely flat, untouched – nameless. “Hasn’t got a name,” I told Fin, and then I took a step back, let go off the cross, let it fall back into the trench it had made in the soil. It landed with a thud, nearly landed on one of my feet.
Neither of us wanted to say what we were thinking – what we thought an unmarked gravestone might mean. Probably someone who had done something really bad, someone who needed to stay unknown. Maybe a John Doe, or a Jane Doe – maybe someone who had been in an accident. Not the sort of person who had died happily.
“We should tell David,” Fin said. “They’ll want to stand it up again.” I agreed. We’d tell him at the end of the day, when he came to give us the money.
*
We moved to the front garden, to pulling out all of those weeds. We didn’t need to talk about the decision; it was instinctual. I think we both wanted to be as far away from that cross as we could possibly be.
A few minutes into working, I realised that I’d left my water bottle in the back garden. It was about 14:00pm, and the sun was fully glaring down on us. I worked for another half-an-hour, pulling weed after weed out of the ground, filling up our wheelbarrow, before I decided that I really needed my bottle.
Fin kept on plucking at the pebbles, didn’t even notice, when I took the wheelbarrow and entered the alley-way. Thick shadows fell across the walkthrough; I could hardly see the back garden. Part of me dreaded what I would find, dreaded seeing that cross again, dreaded the feeling it would give me. I looked down at my top and saw the soaked stains that it had left behind – they were orange, looked like clay, almost looked like blood.
When I entered the garden, I tried not to look at the gravestone. Instead, I made my way to the picnic bench, quickly poured out our pile of weeds. I found my water bottle leaning against the fence, put it in the wheelbarrow, turned to face the alleyway. And then I saw the cross, hidden towards the back of the garden, hidden near the fence, almost completely hidden in shadow – but there was something on the stone. Only there for an instant, but there nevertheless.
I felt myself stop, felt myself drop the wheelbarrow, as the thing took to the air, shot off away from the cross. And I got a good look at it, at its red underbelly – like a flying black widow. Just a robin.
I took a deep, relieved breath, felt the sudden urge to piss myself. Knew that it was probably time for another toilet trip.
*
I entered the bathroom and the stall was still occupied. It bothered me less this time, as if the cross had stolen its place as scariest thing about this church. It had probably been left locked by the last occupants of the church – or maybe the toilet seat was broken, and the church didn’t want anybody to use it.
I entered the stall next to the occupied one, closed the door, lowered the hatch. Deep breaths – it was just a robin. Stay calm. I pulled my trousers down, took a seat, did my business. More deep breaths, long, slow breaths, and –
Creaaakkk. Came from the stall next to me. I looked up, looked at the stall divider, held my breath. There was a long silence, and then –
Footsteps, leading out from the toilet stall. And then silence again. And that feeling – that feeling of being watched, as if something had turned to face me. As if something knew that I was in there. As if something was reaching out towards my door, towards the lock, towards me – reaching with cold fingers.
More silence. But then, something breaching it – something deep and heavy, something like a heartbeat, or like breathing. Something thick; something wet. And the footsteps again, louder this time.
I looked down, looked through the tiny gap between the door and the floor that exposed the rest of the bathroom, but I could see nothing. Nothing – until I could see boots. Black, rubber boots. Working boots. Covered in mud, covered in clay, stained orange – stained red. Big boots, size thirteens – thick, stained, heavy boots.
They stopped in front of the door. There was only that heavy breathing, wet breathing, gargling red breathing. I stayed still, held my own breath, thought about closing my eyes. It’s probably just David, I tried to tell myself. The boots didn’t move, didn’t flinch, although the breathing had changed into something else now – something like a laugh, the cackling of a witch, somehow high-pitched and low-pitched at the same time.
And then the boots turned away from me, turned towards the bathroom exit. Footsteps again, weighty footsteps, because the boots were moving away – moved out of sight. I heard the door open and close – and then there was silence again. Just David, I told myself.
I stayed on that toilet for another ten minutes, just in case that thing – or David, if it was him – was still out there. I stayed long enough to start wondering why Fin hadn’t come to check if I was okay. I went on my phone, scrolled Reddit, liked a few photos on Instagram, tried to calm myself down.
*
Walking past the cross was a nerve-wracking experience. I kept my eyes on the wheelbarrow, on the water-bottle rolling around inside. Tried to stop my hands from shaking too much. Wouldn’t look at the cross – wouldn’t even dare thinking about it. Wouldn’t look at the ground, in case I saw boot-prints, in case I saw a trail of red and orange, size-thirteen engravings in the earth.
It was only when I reached the end of the alley-way that I realised that something was wrong. Fin was huddled over the ground, dead silent, unmoving, his elbows planted into the pebbles as if he was trying to keep himself balanced. I approached him slowly, left the wheelbarrow behind.
“Proper weird,” he said, and now I could see his pale face, his grey pupils. He was holding something in his hands, something tiny, something fragile. It looked like it was made of paper, looked like a rolled cigarette, looked like it could have been made of terracotta.
Fin handed it to me. It was solid, warm, covered in dirt but smooth – uncracked, unblemished. A bird bone.
Fin pointed to where the bone had come from, where it was one of many. Hundreds of little bones, and ribcages and skulls, all belonging to birds, all buried beneath the pebbles. One tug of a weed and they’d all come tumbling out, spilling from the ground.
I tried not to drop the bone as I put it back onto the pebbles, put my arm on Fin’s shoulder. “Just birds,” I said, because this shouldn’t be freaking us out as much as it was – because there was obviously a reasonable explanation. “Just bones,” I said, and he nodded.
And then we saw the robin. It was perched on the roof of the church, looking down at us, a worm in its mouth. A white worm, small – perhaps it had been bitten in half. A solid worm – no, not a worm. A bone. A bird bone.
The robin cawed, opened its beak wide, and then it tried to swallow. The bone caught at the back of the robin’s throat, forced its beak open, but the robin crunched down. With a snap, the bone disappeared. And then the robin flew off, in the direction of the cross.
*
We shovelled the bones into the wheelbarrow, and then we got back to pulling up weeds. We were side-by-side, but we were silent. I could tell that Fin wanted to talk, that he wanted to say something about the bones, about the robins.
“I saw something,” I told him, “in the bathroom.” He turned to face me; his face was pale again.
“What?” he said, as he dug out a weed root with his fingers. “Like the bird?”
“Yeah, but something else,” I said. And I told him about the boots, about those heavy, old boots that I still think about now when I close my eyes – those boots that stepped right into my fingertips when I began to write this story, and that breathing that I sometimes hear when the world is quiet, when everyone’s asleep and the lights are out and my bedroom is all shadow.
Fin listened patiently, didn’t say much, just nodded when I reached the end. Didn’t say if he believed me, but he didn’t need to. It was hard not to believe, somehow. We’d both seen that robin, seen the way it had eaten that bone. Something wasn’t right about this church; this ground was about as far from holy as you could get.
*
We still had to strim around the gravestones, which is the only reason why we decided to go around the back of the church. And the only reason why we hadn’t gone home yet was because we both needed the money, because rent was due next week, because we didn’t want to say that we’d been scared off of a job by something that could just be in our imagination.
So we got the strimmers out of the boot of my car, made our way through the alley-way, towards the back-yard, listened for the call of robins. As we reached the end of the alley, I half expected to see those boots sticking out from around the corner, pocking towards us, or the boots’ footprints.
Instead, we saw the cross. Right in the middle of the pavement, elevated to full-height, unsheltered from the sunlight – clean.
“You seeing that?” Fin asked, and I nodded.
It was leant on those old Bibles from inside the church, those old damp tomes, at least fifty of them, piled up into a tower – but still not enough to hold its weight, still not enough to support it. And those Bibles looked damper than they had before, soaked all the way through, looked as if they were caving in on themselves – shedding paper.
“Can’t be real,” Fin said, just as the robin landed on the head of the cross, wings already tucked into its stomach, its black feet hanging over the side of the rock – and those black eyes starring at us, fixed on us – and with a bone in-between its beak, but a bigger bone this time, a bone as long as my arm, a big old fossil of a bone.
The robin bit down and its beak went through the bone, split it in two, and suddenly the Bibles collapsed, and the cross fell towards the ground, fell backwards, and the robin took the air, and there were those boots – those heavy boots – and there was the silhouette that wore them – a tall man, a long man, neither dressed nor undressed, skinny with ribs protruding and massive hands, thick hands, scarred hands, hands covered in clay, and – those eyes, those horrible eyes of his, the eyes of a robin and – there was a bright smudge of red covering his belly, as if a knife had split his skin in two, as if his guts were trying to get out and – he was smiling, although he didn’t have any teeth and – suddenly he was shadow, suddenly he was nothing, suddenly there was only the cross and those Bibles, spewing out across the graveyard as if they had been caught in a wave, and –
Fin and I were running for the car now, running desperately. And we could hear footprints behind us, heavy boots marching through the yard. I dared to look down and saw that we were no longer running on pebbles – we were running on bird bones. And those footprints were getting closer, were getting heavier, and I could hear that breathing again, and – I couldn’t find my car keys, couldn’t bloody find them, couldn’t remember if I’d put them in my pockets and –
Silence. The air felt light, as if something had changed, something had shifted. The pounding of footprints vanished, and I felt the force of the sun against my neck. I turned to face Fin, saw him leaning against the side of my car. He was trying to stop himself from vomiting.
“No way,” he kept on saying. No way, no way, no way.
*
David pulled up as we were putting the tools back into the boot of the car. We’d decided to only pack the tools that we’d left in the front garden; we were leaving the lawnmower around the back, as a ‘sacrifice’ to the church.
He stopped his van in front of the entrance, stumbled out, all smiles. Looked down at his watch. “It’s four forty-five,” he said. “You’ve got another fifteen minutes.”
“Think we’ll just go home,” I said.
“This place is seriously weird,” Fin said.
“Yeah, we probably won’t be coming back.”
We put in the last of the tools, shut the boot. David watched on, smiling all the while. “I’ve still got to pay you. £150 each, if you’re only doing the one day.” He reached into his pocked, pulled out his wallet – and dropped a coin onto the pebbles. And that was when we looked down and saw his boots.
They were old boots, thick boots, boots that looked too big for him. Size thirteen. Covered in clay and dirt, oranges and reds. Heavy boots.
David scooped up the coin, still smiling, then took out fifteen £10 notes from his wallets. He held them out towards us. I paused for a long while, unsure as to whether to take them. David was still smiling, still grinning. His hands were massive – way too big, unnatural – and he wasn’t as overweight as I’d thought he was – and something seemed to be leaking through his shirt, leaking from his belly – and it looked as if his shirt was turning red, and –
“Thank you,” David said, as Fin took the notes from him. He watched us for one last moment, nodded, and went back to his van. As he closed the door and put on his seatbelt, I noticed that he had a stuffed robin on his dashboard.
David ignited his engine, waved, and then drove off. We watched him as he went, both thinking the same think, but not daring to say it.
*
Before we left, we took one last look down that alley-way. Call it stupidity, or call it instinct. We knew that something had changed, that something was different.
The cross was still at the end of the pathway, heavy on its bed of Bibles – but it was no longer unblemished. There was a new engraving, too far away for us to read it, although we could guess what it said. We saw the letter D and the letter V. That was enough.
*
We agreed to never tell this story, to keep it between just the both of us – and we burned that money when we got home. Didn’t work another job, and I don’t plan on ever doing any more gardening work. It’s been a year now, and I’ve moved away since then, although Fin still leaves in the same town.
I don’t know why I’ve written this, why I’ve told you my story. Perhaps because I have this desire, deep within me, to go back to that church, to read the writing on that gravestone. Perhaps because, when I think I’m alone, I see the dark blotches of boots behind the thinly lit gaps between the door and the floor. Perhaps because when I take a walk, I see robins watching me from the trees, their bellies red, and I can’t help but think of unmarked graves and bird bones.
And I can’t help but think that some graves are unmarked for a reason, that sometimes the secrets that they are hiding are not supposed to be made known.
Those gravestones still need strimming; I still have the key that David gave to us when we first got there. I think that I am going to go back.