x

Down with the Dead

x

"Gothamites appear a little shook after seismic tremors rippled across the mainland. Many were out of power for hours. Out on the beat, Detective Bullock describes how his breakfast burrito salsa-ed off into a manhole."

The midday news flickered across John's laughing face. "Adios, burritos!"

Arkham felt the vibrations, but none of the backup generators had been tripped. Lights flickered, a couple of the alarms went off, and a few of the more simple patients ran about giggling as children do when there's a storm. But Bruce had barely registered his own hands in front of him. Last night had been hellish. Caught somewhere at the edge of consciousness he'd slipped into dream. His thrashing must have alerted the orderlies behind the camera in his room, and although he'd no idea which chiropteran nightmare had caused him to cry out, he did remember hands wrestling with him. They must have shot him up with a substantial dose because he'd blacked out until late morning. Give it another hour and he'd be able to feel his feet again.

A wiry smile at the side of him kept glancing over to the chess-table. John's lips sucked and smirked and turned for the tenth time grinning.

"Wha tis it, John?"

"Oh, nothing. Nothing. Oh! Shhh! There's Zasz." John's breath broke with nasal cracks. Flattening himself in the armchair he held his mouth tight, vibrating silently.

Bruce craned his neck. Zasz approached his table and went to pick up Uriel. He wouldn't move. The cut-fingers tried another chess piece and then another. When none would move, he tried to pick up the board and the whole table lifted with it. Zasz stood, his mouth agape. An ugly beetroot began to discolour the scarred elegance of his skin. Like a toddler at the edge of a mighty rage, his face ticked with unrealised emotion.

"You were saying something about pride, Bruce," chimed John loudly. "A vice, you say?"

"I'LL KILL HIM! THE CLOWN, I'LL KILL —!"

Within seconds the table and chairs that marked Zasz's corner flew across the room. Orderlies raced over as an alarm began to wail.

"MORTIFER! MORTUI ERITIIS!"

With a large white hand, John cupped his ear. "What's that, Zasz? Gonna kiss my other cheek?"

John slapped his own arse as Zasz was dragged across the room, a needle sticking out his neck. Eyes bulging, he howled, "ADOLEBTIQUE PEDERAST!"

Squashing his nose with his thumb, John wiggled his fingers. "Bluuuurssh!"

The Wreck Room door slammed shut, the alarm ceased, and nurses came to coddle a patient rocking with their hands cupped to their head.

"Ha-ha! He brought out the Latin!"

With a strand of drool clinging stickily to his chin, Bruce rounded with all the outrage he could muster, "dya hav'a death wish?"

"No." John smirked, "but I have superglue!"

Bruce did nothing but stare as John's snickers kicked at the end, crawling up to caw with laughter.

x

With competence returned, feet his own, and face free of drool, Bruce knocked on John's door with firm expectancy.

"Hey, buddy, now's not the best time."

His friend winced apologetically, but Bruce unfurled a hand and held the door from closing. "Let me in, John."

John blew out his cheeks, rolled his eyes, but let him pass. Bruce went straight to the toilet and sat on the cracked lid as John tilted his head in question. The Wayne Asylum was open and pressed between the wall and flaking basin. Bruce picked up the book. If you wanted to look at something away from the camera, then the toilet doubled up as a reading chair. He turned to the page wide open where the grainy picture of a woman gazed hauntingly up. She had a small heart shaped face and curls were beginning to twist from her shaven head. Her dull, dumb eyes looked like they might've sparkled with character once. The corners of them lined like she had — at one time — reason to laugh.

"Hard to believe they were people once, ain't it?" chuckled John dryly, searching for some shared horror in Bruce's eyes that were flat with a kind of apathy. "Harder to believe nobody remembers them — what their favourite ice cream was, or if they liked kittens, or birdsong, or if they talked too much after a spritz! Their eyes, they're just so…so…"

"Empty," Bruce finished, faintly mirroring John's frown creased with nauseas pity.

"Exactly." Liquid green orbs gazed hollowly at a broken tile at the side of his head. "Like your dad reached deep into their heads and pulled the plug on the person inside. And who they were just — swurish — disappeared down the drain."

He nodded gently in agreement, listening to the compassion in John's voice that would've caused his heart to swell with pride…if he were still free to smile, that was.

"Yet, the saddest part is no one was close enough to that inside-person to miss them — or Gotham would've cared a lot sooner!"

He remembered the portraits only too well, had fingered his own copy until the spine began to break. Now his father's victims were old news. He'd grown accustomed to their shaven heads, stapled scalps and cold, dead eyes. He simply couldn't find the energy to care, and he knew that made him a bad person. Guilt had turned to indifference. His incarceration provided the kinda closure rag editors loved to mollify their readership with, meaning Gotham would soon grow tired of their tortured faces as well. It was a tragedy, but it was true. Eventually, they would be bored of him too and his name would fade from news bulletins and cocktail parties, and from the conversation hushed between the long, dull meetings held at Wayne Enterprises where his name had been whispered with contempt for so long. His father's boy.

"You're dad was smart. That's how he got away with it." John shuddered, a melancholic horror tightening his throat, "he pulled the plug on the guys no one would miss."

He didn't know what to say, instead gazing at his friend wearily, who had become still and cold. Nothing he said could change his blood. His father was a bad man, but he found it difficult to be a bad son. The theatre tickets still intact. He'd lied to Alfred when he said he could no longer love his father. Felt both culpable and treacherous when he'd pulled his father's portrait from the hall. A man he loved regardless of his evil, and anything he said about his father could never portray the revulsion Thomas Wayne so dearly deserved. At least his silence couldn't trivialise the suffering of Arkham's victims, or reveal his detachment to the sin he'd surely inherited. Batman was no longer his mantle to claim, he saw no reason to steel himself in righteous penitence.

"Do you think they knew?" John stammered, appalled. "Who they were inside — I mean? Do you think they were buried deep down somewhere…or just…just scratched records? Unplayable…even in their own heads?"

"I don't know, John. I wouldn't like to say which is worse. Oblivion or awareness from within a mind that appears absent." Registering the fright in John's eyes, he added firmly, "wherever they are now, though, I hope they're at peace."

"Ye-EAH!" Pale fingers ran their distress through tangled hair, combing it back. "Green pastures in the great beyond…sounds cosy, no?"

Bruce couldn't disagree. There was something oddly comforting about seeing thoughts of mortality linger on John's face, as there was something optimistic in the slight curve of his mouth, a child-like hunger that death would reveal secrets that John had pined for since his first days in Arkham. A carnival master or gypsy king?…Bruce didn't think so.

His breath murmured vaguely, "'two Joker's together is the only unbeatable play'."

"Mmm?"

"Nothing. My father played cards sometimes…I never understood the big guys round the table in the Games Room, their fat cigars and serious talk over whiskey — gold rings clinking their ice together. They'd be laughing alright, but it would be cold and sickly. Tense. Whenever I plucked up the courage to stroll in after my father, my mother always scooped me up and took me away. I'd get a bedtime story. Sometimes ice-cream."

Felt his lips lean into a small smile, his mother's hands were as soft as doe skin. She had been an older lady when she'd had him, (that generation had babes in their twenties though Martha was thirty-seven), and though privilege never let her become haggard, Bruce remembered her with crows-feet at the corner of each eye that she'd soften with powder. Bopping him on the nose whenever he got too close to the vanity, himself giggling in a nest of silks, feeling quite the fashionista as he helped select the coordinating clutch-bag to compliment his mother's outfit.

John's nose had shrivelled high as sentimental warmth spread across his face. "What she read ya? Golden Chad and the Three Bats?"

"No. Not quite." The lightness in his chest cooled hard. "I never realised then, but they were gangsters, weren't they?"

John nodded like this should have been obvious to anyone.

"Alfred pulled the wool," he growled, "and like a fool I never clocked, not until the truth was printed in the papers." He looked down at the document of sin in his lap. "None of it. I never saw any of it coming. Not this." He touched the monochrome cheek of the broken woman. "Not Lady Arkham or Falcone. Not Alfred leaving. Alfred dying…my own insanity. Mine and my father's mess…any good I did seems so far away."

John almost rolled his eyes, instead they withered in their sockets as he bit back a sigh. Bruce's voice raised:

"I don't want to fight! Don't want the guilt, I just want to be left alone — is that so bad?"

A bitter sensation rushed through his chest and, noticing something tucked inside the book open in his lap, he went to turn the page, but John stopped the paper covering the haunted girl's face in shadow, rustling the book out his hand while a pale finger shielded her, coughing apologetically as he slid her safely under his pillow. John sat and the springs creaked. He drew a long, steady breath:

"Look, no one knows where Alfred is. Missing and dead aren't the same thing!" He splayed his pale fingers in a gesture that was meant to push reassuringly against Bruce's melancholy, but that instead made John seem a marionette, loose of limb and jerky. "The doctors are pessimists. Oh, they'll sugar coat, but they don't really mean it. You forget, bud, I've had a lifetime in here! Sometimes it feels like my entire past are these walls…but that can't be, can it?"

Bruce only stared at the anger ticking in John's face as appeasement broke with frustration.

"So, you've had your idyllic childhood re-written a couple of cords — I get it, childhood's the only time and space Bruce felt happy — and that's a big deal!"

Felt his cheek twitch.

"But at least you have a picture — took a scandal to see the bigger pic — but you have details, and colours, and sights and smells… ME — what do I have? The hum of the lights, mmm?"

Without meaning to he curled his lip and John's eyes bulged:

"I am not stupid, Bruce! I know why you gave me the trouble-book, and I wish I had answers to give, but I don't…not that it matters anyway…not when you've given up." John's voice trailed off as his ticking fingers rubbed his neck, his voice suddenly cracking with passion, "but they're the same walls, Bruce! You, your dad, me — Arkham is what binds us! It's always been Arkham!"

Bruce scoffed in dismay. "You can't seriously think...?"

"What?"

"That — that you're one of these people!"

The skin pulling John's mouth into a grimace tightened, an expression Bruce couldn't read, making him seem far away, like a polaroid-snap of a moment distanced by time.

"I think," said John slowly, "I think…I empathise with these people." Jade eyes widened as if surprised their owner capable of emotion so positively human. "They are like me…because they have no names the living can call them by."

Shielded by his hand, Bruce's eyelids flickered in an inward sigh. He dropped it, puffing. "You have a name, it's John. Okay. John."

"Is it, Bruce?" asked his friend quietly. "The one my ma gave me? Did I even have a ma — did she leave me on the step of some laundromat? Or did I burst out the ground like some weed? Am I even human, Bruce — are the aliens ever gonna come back!"

"Don't be ridiculous. What makes you think the past is worth remembering anyway?"

Stilled lips croaked, sneering hoarse with laughter. "Jeez! Thanks for the sympathy…"

"I mean, if it's only gonna hurt, what's the point?"

"What's the point?" John shook his head, anger bringing colour to his blanched expression. "The point is I have no self I can rely on! No identity that makes sense!"

Bruce scowled hard, the fissure of his chin growing coarse as Batman's had done beneath the cowl. "None of us do."

"Oh, god." John smacked a hand to his head. "Can you not with the gloom? The self-pitying is becoming claustrophobic! I am sorry you and The Bat have fallen out — really, I am — but it really is your choice as to whether he remains dead or not!"

"Batman can't be a murderer," he gravelled stoically.

"But Batman can solve mysteries!" sputtered John. "Batman could waltz outta here if he wanted to! Go fix —."

"There is NOTHING TO FIX! OKAY! There is NO mystery!" Sharp on his feet, his yell took them both by surprise, and Bruce hushed his tone to an embittered whisper when John pointed at the sleeping camera above, making the shush sign, "my father practically ran this place, and go figure, but maybe this is the home I deserve!"

John threw up his hands with a snarl, creaking the bed as he brought a frustrated thumb and forefinger to pinch his lip. "The familiar," he mumbled through knuckles, pale and bloodless like a laboratory rat.

"What?"

"Perhaps we've been looking at this wrong," suggested John, letting his hand fall away as he eyed the camera above, seemingly vacant, but perhaps watching them all the same. "Vicky Vale went after you because your family erased hers. Harvey, because he thought you touched his girl. Tiffany hit you big time in the tenders because you blew up her dad."

A rasp of protest gargled in his throat, but John cut across:

"Harley used to say, 'revenge is always personal' — and the closer someone has been to a person, the more they make it hurt."

John's eyes flickered:

"So, your dad snuffed out the guys no one would miss, but what if someone was missed — just once?" Agitation leant his crooked body forward, but the camera above was static, fixed on the bars darkening the window. "Doesn't take a genius to deduce this Themis guy is angry. Righteously so. You want my opinion, right?" scoffed John. "Well, what if Thembo knows your Batman and that's why he cares?"

Confused, Bruce tilted his head. He no longer cared who Themis was, in fact who and why were quite irrelevant when he himself had earned his cell in Arkham. Nevertheless, he invited John to continue with his silence:

"I dunno — maybe Themis was sick of the Wayne's thinking they owned Gotham or something. Thomas Wayne was bad — Batman good — but that's not the point! The point is: arrogance," stressed John, listing Bruce's character flaws off on his hand, "entitlement, privilege, elitism. Making choices for others not because you should, but because you can — and Themis couldn't stand seeing a Wayne having power over the city again — literally ruling with an iron fist — not when he's lost his sister, or brother, or whoever to Thomas's experiments! Or maybe he was a fellow experimenter! Maybe it's personal in a completely different way?"

"John," said Bruce, holding up his hand stiffly, "I don't follow. The Wayne Asylum was about exposing corporate corruption. Serious corruption. It was about the Waynes…not Batman."

"Yes." John chewed his lower lip, wincing as he tried to articulate the upturned logic in his head, "but it just kinda feels…like a cloak? What IF the real reason for the book was to shut Batman down by shutting Bruce Wayne down? We need to examine this stuff from different angles — different glasses!"

Bruce shook his head, inwardly groaning that John was finding a way to make his most heated grudge the prime suspect. "No, it isn't Waller. Waller saw an opportunity, she didn't collaborate. Besides, Waller's plan for getting rid of Batman proved quite affective, don't you think!"

But John batted Waller's name aside with a pfft. "Not a collaboration, Bruce, two enemies independent of one another who wanted Batman iced for different reasons! Just because two people want the same thing doesn't mean their motivated by the same reasons. Hey! Wouldn't it be funny if the only reason Waller sicked ya in the first place was because of Themis? Because the old trouble-book brought an Agency secret too close to Batman's ear — and buy buy Batsy! Ha-haa! Now that would be ironic!"

"Hilarious, John."

A white finger waggled warningly. "I don't think you can reason with a hatred like his, Bruce! Don't you think it's funny that Themis waited until Batman was most vulnerable before publishing? He must have had those secrets clutched to his chest for years, so why wait until Bruce Wayne and Batsy both were all alone in the world and without a single able ally?" John shook his head, grassy hair falling over his eyes as a pallid hand swept it back, determined. "You know, Crane is old enough to have known your father — AND — proximity to the target is essential!"

"Oh no, John. Let it go," moaned Bruce. "I regret ever giving you the damn book…No one plotted to imprison me here! I did that myself and Crane's my doctor. No more excuses. Or paranoia. Or mystery!"

"But —."

"NO! Just — why can't the world just — just —."

Let me fly away. Like in my dreams. Let me be a small shard of night, chasing the insects in my mother's garden. I don't even want the city, or the suit, just somewhere quiet my small black body can crawl under, just wide enough to let me fold my leather around myself as I wait for dusk to envelop the sky, wet ink cooling to a sightless air of wing beats.

Bruce blinked until grimy tiles became a claustrophobic reality of the cell surrounding him. John Doe sat opposite. Expectantly staring. Resisting whatever words had been wrestling with the tip of his tongue, his thin lips now a tight line. He shrugged, rubbing his neck:

"So, bud…what do I owe the tapping at my chamber door?"

Bruce sighed through a deep shame as he reached slowly into his pants. John's eyes widened, but when Bruce pulled out an envelope his pallid cheeks flushed pink. "Please, I need to know what it says, John."

His friend smirked scathingly. "What, privately-educated-billionaire forgotten how to read?"

"Privately-educated-billionaire can't trust his own brain. Read. Please."

"Okay, bud. Don't let the bees sting…" John pushed some imaginary glasses up his nose and spoke with English pomposity: "'The fallen grave — Isis'. Are the letters still in the right order, sir?"

Bruce bowed into his hands.

"Look, the loons do things like this all the time," assured John with a soothing pat on his back. "People get bored, they want a bit of fun. So don't get your cape in a twist! It's drivel, okay?"

"It's Selina."

"Probably sent by someone who has a view of the cemet— Oh! Wait?"

"Yes, John." Bruce looked up, sighing heavily. "My only ally on the outside got a letter past security."

Long fingers stroked a twisted chin with Bond-villain suave. "Cat Lady, eh? And you say, 'no more mystery!'"

"Which means — ."

"To the cemetery we go!"

x

It had rained hard and smells of damp earth rose in steam baked off by the sun now shining through patches of blue sky. They'd walked confidently past orderlies until one pointed in challenge. Luckily for them, however, Dr Leland chastised the orderly in passing and walked with them to the oaken doors that led to the garden. Not nearly as charming as John where Dr Leland was concerned, Bruce kept his own mouth shut as John effortlessly slipped into boyish gratitude.

"Eh, she likes me!"

"Sure does."

"Could've said: 'what's not to like'!"

"Too many teeth and a bad attitude."

"Cos I am under-appreciated!"

Cloud drifted apart as new shafts of light illuminated the graves in the distance. They sneaked away from the circle of patients slumped in meditative reflection — a couple racing around those seated — and to the railings that marked the edge of the cemetery, broken and sunk by centuries of salt-whipped gales.

A white hand brandished something from a pocket, and John sprung theatrically to the fallen gate with his key:

"Da-da-d-d-daa-daaa!"

The key fit and the gate creaked out on itself. John's face lost all expression. "Well, I'll be damned…"

Bruce stepped around the fallen gate as John retrieved his key and slid through. Gaining hight next to an ash tree, Bruce looked toward the stone angel, then surveyed the ground around. The graves were numerous. Arkham stopped burying patients here in the 60's, so most graves were old if not ancient, leaning this way and that, covered in lichen. Several had toppled — probably with the freak tremors — and so Selina's grave would have to be found by lifting each. He turned to John, who stood with his hands on his hips in a heroic stance, grinning wildly:

"I'll look left-side, you look right."

John's eyes snapped out of whatever fantasy he'd been in and narrowed with determination. "Aye-aye, Captain!"

They split and Bruce heaved the first grave up. Nothing but worms coiling in fresh damp. He let go. Breathless grunting reached his ear and then he heard a yelp:

"Alright, John?"

"Never better. Just dropped 'Unnameable 108' on my foot."

"Keep looking."

He let a one 'Martin Hawkins' drop while apologising internally and scampered up the damp grass to the next. A rustling in the branches above turned his head and he followed the gust down to the stone angel. Behind, in shadow, the green lady walked softly to the figure of a man. Another stood beside them dressed in a red cross, while on the body of the man hung a gold cuirass. Face impossibly old, his gaunt cheeks sucked into the hollows of his face, and his eyes gazed out with the opal death of a slain reptile. She placed her sapling fingers on the old man's shoulder and her forest-filled eyes expanded within his mind.

He turned sharp, showing them his back and shut his eyes tight. Run to the house? Demand his medication early?

Control your fear and turn, you coward.

Wincing he turned, but all three had vanished. He cast a stone hard where they once stood and drew his lips back to scream —.

"Bruce! Brucie boy!"

A rage tremored through his body, a terrible feral panic. He heard John's call again, and, quashing his feeling, moved his limbs toward the calling of his name.

"Look, Bruce — a box!"

He squatted beside the raked earth and brushed the woodlice away. The wooden box had sustained damage to one corner and last night's rain had soaked in. There were papers wrapped in plastic, intact, and Bruce realised they were plans of Arkham House, including the warren of tunnels that had supported mining, as well as the catacombs that had sealed the dead off when fever broke out in those ancient days before the house was built. Secret hollows and twisting paths. Escape.

There was a recorder too, but it was wet. He bit back panic and pressed:

"Bruce. If you're listening to this then you have the means to get out of Arkham. Enclosed are plans…follow…"

Selina's voice jumped and slurred and he smacked the side of the recorder. "C'mon!"

"I can't imagine…don't punish…you don't understand what's going on…we need you…"

No. Please no.

"Alfred is alive."

The breath froze in their lungs as they looked at each other.

"Bruce, listen, Alfred is…beware…Themis…"

The recorder failed.

"No. NO! NOOO!" His quaking fingers crushed the recorder to pieces. Saw John visibly pull back as he bit down on a scream. His whole body electrified:

"Tell me, John, you heard it too. 'Alfred is —'."

"'Alive!' Yes, clear as day!"

"And —."

"You need to beware —."

"They need me." Bruce gaped. "They 'NEED ME' — you heard?"

Fear contracted John's pupil as his iris swelled. A glassy jade. His soft mouth tightened to a thin sad line as he turned his gaze to where the sky met sea beyond the garden wall. Bruce was sure he could hear the ocean currents lapping at the edge of the island's rock. John's lips cracked with sound, "I might've found something…"

"— what? Where?"

"In the book. I told you Crane was not to be trusted and I've found something."

"What are you talking about?"

"Scribblings…and things."

"What things?"

John seemed to be trying to pull something substantial out of thin air, his breath hesitating before lacing his voice with mystery, "equations…and symbols…and things."

"Show me."

"Well…I can't show you here!"

"Improvise," Bruce pointed to a muddy puddle in the hollow where the box had been. "Draw these symbols."

John glanced over Selina's plans that had been momentarily abandoned by Bruce and dipped his fingers in mud. He crouched to a neighbouring grave and began to draw a line. Bruce watched as the brown marks of an inverted triangle, the filthy streaks of a cross, and lines like a crown appeared.

Not possible.

John turned to him.

"You kept…" His wide hands smeared the muddy symbol off the grave. Then they grabbed John by the throat and lifted him off his feet:

"WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU KEPT FROM ME?"

John choked. "Nothing…no…I am not…I am."

"WHAT ELSE?"

"Nothing. Just that…and…but Crane!"

"LIAR! WHAT ELSE ARE YOU HIDING?"

"Nothing…please…hear me out!" John kicked as his pulse raced under thumb.

He could hear the lily-livered heart pounding as he squeezed the pale throat, his own lip drawn back in a snarl. Swelling pink, John's eyes rolled back inside his head. The bats flapped franticly about, one landed on his arm, biting hard. He let go and John fell to the earth. The bat that had drawn blood flicked its body down and curled protectively on John's chest, hissing.

"I didn't…I am a friend," John gasped. "Crane's twisting the screw and you don't even realise!" John rolled on his back, coughing, laughing in terror, trying to find breath. "I don't know what it is…it's just one little scribble…tucked inside a page, okay! It looks nothing, ha-ha…but it matches up…and I know where it is…and I have seen Crane sniffing about it."

Bruce drew back his fist.

"On a wall!" John spluttered, giggling. "In the transition corridor to the East Wing. A tiny tile with the same image. What if it's the lab?"

Tightened his knuckles.

"Why would Crane want to find your father's lab? Even the police couldn't be bothered to find it — I wanted to be sure before I told you — to actually be useful! I WANTED TO IMPRESS YOU!"

Bruce let his fist fall. Turned his body from John and stared at the angel gazing back with haunted stone. John's giggles became wet, his voice choked with sniffles:

"But it doesn't matter because you're going to go and I am…going to stay here. Aren't I? But don't blame me for wanting to go with you — you can't be angry at me for wanting that! Please, Bruce."

"If you're not fit to be on the outside, then neither am I."

"Please — what?"

"But they need us. When we are done here, we'll go." He turned back to John. "If there's a lab, don't you want to see it?"

John drew his hands near his head like he anticipated pain. He hesitated, "…yes."

"Well then, together we'll find it. C'mon." Bruce offered his hand and when John took it with quivering fingers he pulled him to his feet and into his arms:

"John, I am sorry."

"It's Crane!" spluttered John vehemently, blaming anyone but Bruce.

He shook his head. "I don't know if I am…?" He ghosted the red marks on John's throat. "You once asked me to put my trust in you and I did." He frowned seriously, "did I ever disappoint?"

"No," John laughed hoarsely. "At least…not in the sane-brain."

"Well, then, trust is important. Isn't it? I want to trust you — want you to be able to trust me. Can we do that, John?"

"Yes."

"Can we?"

"We really can!"

His baleful shouts must have carried and the orderlies had been alerted. There were no cameras in the cemetery or the back end of the house, not where the cliff face fell straight down into the sea. Dr Leland was with them, casting a concerned eye over him and John. She ordered the guards to stand back.

"Are you okay, John? A patient saw —."

"I am fine."

"Both of you —?"

"Yes."

John stood smiling in his arms and Bruce pressed himself against John's body so he could slide the plans into his friend's pants without being noticed. Pale hands helped pull the waistband up.

"Well, please come back here," directed Dr Leland sternly, her eye still suspicious. "You shouldn't be in the cemetery. You know this part of the garden isn't open to patients!"

"I know — it's just," John began innocently, "it's just Bruce's routine. To pay his respects. I mean they're still dead, aren't they? Maybe some of them were mothers and fathers too, and at least all of them were someone's child at some point…ain't that right, Bruce?"

"Yes. Through prayer the dead may live in memory."

"Exactly. I am sure Dr Leland understands. This one here's called Alfred," said John, patting the grave in front of them.

"Right," murmured Leland uncertainly. "Now please come back."

They parted their embrace to the disdained pulling of the orderlies' noses and climbed back through the sunken railings. Dr Leland watched them intently. Bruce was sure her eyes lingered on the red marks bruising John's throat and John hiccoughed.

"Dr Crane is waiting for you, Bruce."

He nodded.

"Please see the nurse beforehand."

He cast one last glance at the far wall, but the stone angel stole his eye. He turned his forearm out to her and smiled submissively.