The midnight moon shone brightly over Throckbade Cemetery where, in the branches of a giant, blossoming cherry tree, sat a girl in her pyjamas. Ella Rove let her legs swing freely, concentrating on the mild breeze tickling her toes to try to calm her racing heart. With deep breaths, she inhaled the scent of the blossom from the tree and the wild garlic that grew all around. But images from her nightmare kept flashing through her mind.
Memphis pinned against the rocks. A pack of wild dogs, foaming at the mouth, surrounding her.
“Don’t think about it!” Ella scolded herself.
The dogs begin to advance. Memphis calls out to the dark sky for Granny.
“Stop it!” Ella thumped her forehead with the palm of her hand.
The dogs jumped back in confusion when Granny appears from nowhere and throws out her arms towards them, pushing them back with an invisible force field. But her strength quickly weakens. Holes appear in her protective bubble and one of the dogs lunges.
“Argh! That’s enough!” Ella screamed into the night. Only a startled bird, roosting high above her, replied.
She had had the same dream every night this week but tonight it was so intense, so real, that Ella had to get out of the house to somewhere she felt safe, comforted. She and her big sister Memphis had played in this tree since they were big enough to climb it. The Cherry Blossom was famous in the surrounding area because no matter the time of year, it held onto its green leaves and blossom. It had been planted as a centrepiece when the graveyard was first laid out, over eight hundred years ago. As they sat together whispering, cradled in the branches of their tree, Memphis would tell her how its roots extended down into the rich soil and spread out into every grave in the Yard. The Dead would communicate their messages back to the leaves for those who believed and listened hard enough to hear. After years of practice, Memphis had become privy to all sorts of information about the town’s ex-residents. Or so she said. And even now, when so much had happened to rock her belief in her big sister, Ella still couldn’t stop herself from pulling a branch gently to her ear and praying desperately to hear, for once, the voices of the inhabitants of her back garden. But all she could hear was the wind dancing through the leaves. What a loads of rubbish, she thought.
Ella let go of the young branch in disgust. Growing up in a graveyard was making her crazy, just like the kids at school said. Throckbade Cemetery Park, or the Yard as her family called it, was the biggest cemetery in the country, which was a baffling mystery to anyone interested in that kind of thing, as Throckbade was a relatively small town. No one knew why the Yard had had to expand its boundaries a number of times over the years until it covered the bottom half of one of the town’s three large hills. Another curious fact was that the Yard didn’t have, nor ever appeared to have had, a church attached or anywhere near it. The Minister from the church on the other side of town had to make the trip to carry out funeral services.
Ella looked out over the entire sleeping town laid out like a rug over Throckbade’s hills on the shore of the North Sea. The water was calm tonight except for a frothing white strip over the deadly sharp rocks that hid just under the surface. The locals called them the Hound’s Teeth. While only a mile or so in width, the rocks extended out for miles. A blinking beacon signalled its end point and warned passing boats to stay away. A couple of times a year, a boat would get impaled on the rocks and would have to be rescued by the town’s lifeboat. All the kids would get pokes of chips or ice creams and take them down to the beach to watch. Ella preferred to watch from up here or, with a sudden surge of happiness, she thought that maybe next time she could watch it with Reggie and Danick. Since moving to High School a couple of months ago, Ella had at last made some real friends who loved all the weirdness about her rather than taunting her about it. Or at least Reggie did. Ella had a feeling Danick was yet to be convinced. He was worried Ella was trouble and Danick hated trouble. That reminded her, she had better get back to bed or risk another trip to the Head Teacher’s office, this time for falling asleep in class.
Swinging onto her stomach, Ella reached out with her toes for the branch below but froze when she heard something. Voices somewhere in the Yard. Instinctively, she drew her feet back up and clung onto the branch until she could figure out what was going on. There it was again but this time she saw a number of light beams cut through the darkness. One was waving erratically at every tree and headstone it passed. Feet crunched softly on the gravel path below, and stopped suddenly only a few metres away from Ella.
