Johnny and the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

him, like someone walking very slowly through dead leaves.
    “And you’re John Maxwell,” said Mr. Vicenti. “The Alderman told us about you.”
    “Us?”
    The rustling grew louder.
    Johnny turned.
    “He’s not joking,” said Yo-less. “Look at his face!”
    I mustn’t be frightened, Johnny told himself.
    I mustn’t be frightened!
    Why should I be frightened? These are just…post-life citizens. A few years ago they were mowing lawns and putting up Christmas decorations and being grandparents and things. They’re nothing to be frightened of.
    The sun was well behind the poplar trees. There was a bit of mist on the ground.
    And walking slowly toward him, through its coils, were the dead.

THREE
     
    T here was the Alderman, and William Stickers, and an old woman in a long dress and a hat covered in fruit, and some small children running on ahead, and dozens, hundreds of others. They didn’t lurch. They didn’t ooze any green. They just looked gray, and very slightly out of focus.
    You notice things when you’re terrified. Little details grow bigger.
    He realized there were differences among the dead. Mr. Vicenti had looked almost…well, alive. William Stickers was slightly more colorless. The Alderman was definitely transparent around the edges. But many of the others, in Victorian clothes and odd assortments of coats and breeches from earlier ages, were almost completely without color and almost without substance, so they were little more than shaped air, but air that walked.
    It wasn’t that they had faded. It was just that they were farther away, in some strange direction that had nothing much to do with the normal three.
    Wobbler and the other two were still staring at him.
    “Johnny? You all right?” said Wobbler.
    Johnny remembered a piece about overpopulation in a school geography book. For everyone who was alive today, it said, there were twenty historical people, all the way back to when people had only just become people.
    Or, to put it another way, behind every living person were twenty dead ones.
    Quite a lot of them were behind Wobbler. Johnny didn’t feel it would be a good idea to point this out, though.
    “It’s gone all cold,” said Bigmac.
    “We ought to be getting back,” said Wobbler, his voice shaking. “I ought to be doing my homework.”
    Which showed he was frightened. It’d take zombies to make Wobbler prefer to do homework.
    “You can’t see them, can you?” said Johnny. “They’re all around us, but you can’t see them.”
    “The living can’t generally see the dead,” said Mr. Vicenti. “It’s for their own good, I expect.”
    The three boys had drawn closer together.
    “Come on, stop mucking about,” said Bigmac.
    “Huh,” said Wobbler. “He’s just trying to spook us. Huh. Like Dead Man’s Hand at parties. Huh. Well, it’snot working. I’m off home. Come on, you lot.”
    He turned and walked a few steps.
    “Hang on,” said Yo-less. “There’s something odd—”
    He looked around at the empty cemetery. The rook had flown away, unless it was a crow.
    “Something odd,” he mumbled.
    “Look,” said Johnny. “They’re here! They’re all around us!”
    “I’ll tell my mum on you!” said Wobbler. “This is practicing bein’ satanic again!”
    “John Maxwell!” boomed the Alderman. “We must talk to you!”
    “That’s right!” shouted William Stickers. “This is important!”
    “What about?” said Johnny. He was balancing on his fear, and he felt oddly calm. The funny thing was, when you were on top of your fear, you were a little bit taller.
    “This!” said William Stickers, waving the newspaper.
    Wobbler gasped. There was a rolled-up newspaper floating in the air.
    “Poltergeist activity!” he said. He waved a shaking finger at Johnny. “You get that around adolescents! I read something in a magazine! Saucepans flying through the air and stuff! His head’ll spin around in a minute!”
    “What is the fat boy talking about?”