The Boneyard - Short Story
This is a short story that I've been working on for a while. It has actually been in a state of 'nearly-finished' for at least 4 months now, but I've only just had the time/inclination to finish editing it to my satisfaction. As always, con-crit is not only appreciated but encouraged. Bear in mind I'm eventually going to be trying to get my writing published (Whether as a novel, series of short stories, play etc) so anything that can help me to improve now will directly help my future career. Much appreciated, and I hope you enjoy it.
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The three of us ran across the field as fast as our young legs could carry us, clods of dirt being kicked up behind. When we reached the old fence, Ben and I climbed over it. Gabe did a running leap. Not out of eagerness, but just to show off. We ripped through the bushes and jogged to the top of the hill where we stopped to catch our breath. Looking down, Ben pointed proudly.
“There. Told you.”
We followed his gaze, and sure enough there at the bottom of the hill was a crowd of children, and at their centre; the dark skinned Basahli brothers. Their family had arrived in our village two winters ago as part of a larger travelling community, but when their group moved on, the Basahli family had stayed behind to try and make a life for themselves here. We had been cautious at first, almost afraid of their odd clothes and their strange accents, but it wasn’t long before we saw their adults working as hard as our own families, and their children playing games that were completely new to us. They taught us how to play, and in return we taught them our games, and soon it seemed that their skin, clothes and voices weren’t so strange any more. At least, not to most of us. Gabe had never trusted them, not even after all this time. Seeing them now, he spat on the floor, but said nothing.
We ran down the hill and pushed our way to the middle of the group. Luca, the younger of the two brothers, was clutching something tightly to his chest.
“Is it true?” I asked when I reached them “That you found a bone?”
Luca said nothing, but Theo, the older brother, grinned and nodded.
“Go on, Luca.” he said “Show them.”
Slowly, and with more than a little reluctance, the young boy held out his hands and opened them to reveal his find. Every one of us leaned in to get a better look, even Gabe, and no one could deny that it was an impressive specimen, dull grey and about two fingers in length. The shape seemed well preserved, flat at one end and pointed at the other, and if you looked close you could almost make out twisted grooves carved down the sides. To our young imaginations it immediately became ancient work of art, a weapon from a tiny civilisation and a key to a secret land all in one.
“Where did you find it?” Ben whispered, as though in the presence of a holy relic. Luca just stared at the ground, shy from the unusual attention. Theo clasped his shoulder gently.
“It’s alright. Tell them.”
Another period of silence, and then, in a small voice:
“Ground.”
Theo flashed his toothy smile and nodded.
“Dug it up! We’re great diggers.”
Gabe scoffed.
“You don’t expect us to believe that? You probably stole it.”
Theo’s smile dropped in an instant, and Luca clutched the bone close to him again, as if afraid it would be snatched away.
“Where could we have stolen it from?” Theo demanded “Who has bones that leaves them lying around?”
Clearly Gabe had not thought that far ahead. Bones were not rare by necessity, but those that existed tended to be prized family heirlooms, hidden away out of the reach of children or intruders. It was very doubtful that the Basahli’s had taken one of these, yet under Theo’s angry glare and in view of the rest of us, Gabe was forced to hold his ground.
“It could be from… from… the Boneyard!”
We all gasped.
“Are you stupid?” Theo spluttered, eyes bulging “That’s… that’s…”
“It’s off-limits.” I said “Everyone knows that.”
“So you’ve never been there then?” Gabe retorted, cockily. He knew I had. After all, he was the one who had dared me to go, even following close behind just to make sure my nerves didn’t get the better of me. They hadn’t, of course, but from stubbornness alone. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared the whole way there and back. We hadn’t even gone far into it, but just enough for him to prove it could be done. If we could do it, why not Theo?
“I go there all the time.” Gabe said, sticking out his chest.
“Never!” cried Val, clearly impressed.
“Oh yeah, all the time. And they got loads like that.” He pointed to Luca’s bone.
“They do not!” Theo growled “And I bet you don’t even go there. I bet you’re scared like everyone else.”
“Is that so? We can go there right now, and then we’ll see who’s scared. And you’ll find loads of bones like that, too.”
This was followed by a hushed silence as Theo locked eyes with Gabe and the two boys squared one another up. It was a common practice between them, each seeming to ache for a reason to fight while never wanting to throw the first punch, but this time, unusually, no one in the crowd dared to interrupt them. The boys were left to their hateful standoff until one of them broke, and the first to do so was Theo. He bared his teeth.
“Fine.”
It was hours before we reached the Boneyard, and most of the children had gone home, either scared, tired or both. All that remained were the two Basahli brothers, Ben, Gabe and I, Peter, who was the eldest boy after Gabe, the girl Val and, after much encouragement, her friend Roz. I was sure that Gabe had been lying earlier about how often he came to the Boneyard, but if he was scared he didn’t show it. He led us with a determined trot, never once faltering, except to occasionally glance back at Val. This continued until we reached the Wall, where we stopped dead.
The Wall was a series of long, thin bones about twice our height, each spaced a few meters apart. They stuck out from the ground at all angles, but most, for reasons known only to the ancients, pointed directly upwards to the sky. This wall stretched far away on both sides, and marked the outer edge of the Boneyard. Beyond it anything could be waiting, from killers and ghosts to wild dogs. Whatever the truth, there were too many stories of children going through and never being seen again, and although they would never admit it, this was the farthest that most of our party had ever dared come.
I didn’t really believe the stories, and I had been past the Wall before, but when Gabe marched on between two of the bones reaching up like accusing skeletal fingers I held my breath with the rest. We sighed in relief when Gabe, who paused on the other side, neither dropped dead nor vanished, and one by one we crossed over after him. The last to cross was Ben, who was clearly the most frightened of us all. His eyes darted from side to side and his fingers danced nervously.
“Come on.” snapped Gabe, eager to prove his bravery to Val. I turned back and from across the Wall looked Ben in the eyes.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want.” I said. He shared my gaze for a time that seemed to stretch on and on, his lips quivering and eyes shimmering. I found myself desperately hoping that he didn’t cry, if only for his sake. Gabe would never let that go. Fortunately, Ben rallied enough courage to nod back to me.
“I’ll… wait here,” he said “and stand guard. In case someone comes.”
I nodded silently, and we continued on our journey without him. When the Wall was almost in the distance I looked behind us to see his post abandoned. Ben was already a speck on the horizon, running home. Shortly after that we entered the overgrown forest that blocked the Boneyard itself from view. We began to notice small bones that lay half buried in the undergrowth as if trodden into the ground, though none of us could hear any signs of animal life, not even birds. They seemed to avoid this place, which served to fuel rumours of the Boneyard’s supernatural influence. Yet these bones proved to be only disappointing fragments, and were extremely difficult to find. Gabe didn’t even waste his time looking for them, and simply marched on ahead. Given his confidence and sense of purpose, he was obediently followed. It wasn’t long until there were bones all around us, increasing in size until we came across several that were larger than human beings. These, we summarised with awed whispers, must have belonged to great animals of the past, and we tried to imagine them alive and roaming the land until Roz begged us to stop because she found the idea too frightening. After that we settled for searching through the smaller bones, of which there were many. None, however, like Luca’s.
“Just give it up.” said Theo angrily “You won’t find anything here because we didn’t get it from here.”
“Yeah, you’d like me to give up,” Gabe called back tauntingly “because you know if I do, I won’t find this.”
He pushed aside some branches that had been obscuring our view ahead and revealed the biggest pile of bones any of us had ever seen. It was as though they were a hill, a genuine feature of the land. We had to crane our heads just to see the top, and Peter breathed an obscenity that the rest of us didn’t know. I had never been this deep into the Boneyard before, and the sight of this hill of bones combined with the almost unnatural silence of the forest was enough to send a shiver down my spine. Gabe was the only one of us who didn’t seem affected, already stood waiting at the foot of the hill and calling back over his shoulder.
“Over this pile there are even more. Thousands, probably. We’ll look there.”
If Theo had any objections he didn’t voice them. By that point I think he was drawn on by curiosity and excitement as much as we were. So we scrambled up the pile in silence, the bones of an ancient people grinding beneath our feet. The occasional cry went out to avoid a particularly sharp specimen, or a cylindrical one which would roll away as you stepped on it, but otherwise we didn’t speak. Cresting the hill at last, we looked down in collective awe at the millions of bones below. Gabe hadn’t lied. Not a speck of ground could be seen under the layers upon layers of grey, red, brown and silver, and at the far end of this field of bones lay the most impressive one of all; a giant whale-like carcass, washed in from the sea which still lapped gently at one end. The great curved ribs reached far into the sky, with petrified skin stretched between.
“We’ll split up,” Gabe was saying “but we’ve all got to look. That’s the deal. Yeah?”
Theo was staring at the scene in amazement, but silently nodded. We each made our way down the other side of the pile, which was trickier than going up. We had to be very careful, and even then Peter slid and rolled painfully to the bottom, sending a clatter of bones after him. He laughed it off, but we all chose our steps wisely after that. Luca, being the youngest and clumsiest, rode his brother’s shoulders.
Reaching the bottom we made a point to look around for madmen and ghosts, but saw none, which comforted us until Gabe began to explain loudly that ghosts were invisible. He knew because he had heard one once, which he described in a story that Theo said was nonsense but made Val squeal in a delighted way. It didn’t help my confidence that Peter, my search-partner, had the nasty habit of pointing out potential ambush spots, which were frequent and unavoidable, though thankfully empty of ill-meaning occupants. Yet I still began to wish that Ben had actually stayed behind as a look-out. My back was prickling uncomfortably, and I couldn’t help but glance around every few seconds. Searching like this, we laboriously worked our way through the Boneyard until it was almost dark overhead.
As we neared the great ribbed carcass I began to see just how large it was, larger even than it had appeared from the pile. Its presence dominated the Boneyard and drew me towards it, while the others searched, squabbled or whispered fearfully of spirits and black magic. My own fear faded away as I walked unflinchingly forwards, bones grinding underfoot, eyes locked on this beast that had once travelled the seas.
Behind me, raised voices shouted out. Gabe was claiming that he had found another bone just like Luca’s. He called Luca over to compare, but when the young boy arrived at his side Gabe took the two bones, cupped them both together and flung them far into the distance. A tiny clattering rang out where they landed.
Before Luca could even comprehend what had happened, his brother leapt at Gabe swearing and snarling. He punched him hard in the jaw and the two fell down, Gabe already swinging back, grabbing and kicking wherever he could. They began to thrash along the ground in a violent grapple, crashing into mounds of bones and striking at each other with that unique kind of relentlessness found only in a child’s hatred. Val screamed. Peter whooped and laughed. Luca started to cry while Roz pulled him out of harm’s way.
All of this was happening close behind me, but I was only aware of it in the vaguest sense. While the rest of the group were concerned with the fight, I was being drawn closer, as if possessed, to the ribs of that ancient sea beast. I reached out, faltered, and then placed a hand firmly on its cold, hard skin. It was weathered and rusting. I stroked it, enjoying the unusual sensation along my palm, until I reached a point where it thinned into nothing. I gripped hard and a piece snapped away in my hand. As Gabe and Theo crashed and flailed along the floor, fighting over a single bone, I found myself admiring my own specimen with its sharp edges and dark mottled surface. I was captivated by the way the light played across this otherwise dull object, causing specks of white to dance along as I rocked it back and forth. As I turned it to one side, the light even bounced off onto the floor and landed on the bones there, twisting itself to mask the various shapes and sizes. It was because of this that I found it; a bone caught under the ribs of the beast, jutting out invitingly. It was angular and flat, and without the dark mottled feel of the first. Crouching slowly, I pried it loose, realising after a moment that it was much larger than I had anticipated. Eventually it came free, and after raising the thing into the air I was stunned into silence. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.
I felt Peter’s presence at my side, followed by Val and Roz. The four of us gathered close, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the thin, pale and perfectly rectangular bone before us, as tall as our arms and twice our width. The thing was held at a safe distance, though I couldn’t say which side was being protecting from the other.
“What is it?” Roz whispered, almost fearfully. None of us replied or even acknowledged her question until she raised a shaking hand and pointed at a mark barely noticeable under generations of dust. After a moment’s pause, Peter reached out and gently brushed the dust away, revealing a series of symbols, faded but visible, etched onto the bone’s surface. We stared at them in wonder, and the boys fighting behind us realised that they were no longer the centre of attention. They paused in their combat and looked over to find what spectacle had replaced them. Theo lay on top, fist clenched, raised and frozen in mid-strike, while Gabe’s hand gripped his throat. Their eyes found not the bone and its strange symbols, but little Luca who was approaching us with his mouth half open and silently moving, tears drying on his cheeks.
I turned to the young, easily forgotten boy as for the second time in one day he held the attention of us all. The difference this time was that our interest was not in what he had. It was what he was doing. His eyes traced the lines and curves of the bone’s symbols almost greedily, taking something from it that had not been apparent to us. They never for a moment stopped moving, in the same way that his brow never creased in confusion and his eyebrows never rose in shock. He seemed simply to understand.
For what seemed like an eternity we stood watching Luca and waiting, though none of us knew what for, until finally he spoke; translating for us all the ancient and forgotten language of his people.
“Now entering Rumney Scrap Yard, property of Cardiff county council. Working hours 10 till 6. Closed on Sundays.”
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