"'Fyou walk on the cracks, Louise Smellyhead loves you!"

But now they were walking beneath that brown, shrivelled pine. The one where the roots were breaking up through the pathway, so it was all cracked up, so you couldn't help but walk on the cracks. And even if you did manage to skip across on your tip-toes, there would always be someone there to shove you, and make you walk on the cracks.

"Yah! Garry loves Louise Smellyhead! Garry loves Louise Smellyhead!"

It was a ritual. They did it every Wednesday morning, on the walk through the grey graveyard from the church back to the school next door. After that kind of service which made you think about how hard the pews were, and how old the prayer-books were, and how much better you could do that reading which Louise Smellyhead always did, it was a relief to get outside and make some noise and push each other around.

"'Fyou don't walk on the cracks, the Gravemen will get you!"

You could always rely on someone to say something like that. And there would be a few squeals as people leapt for the cracks, and shoved each other off them. The Gravemen, of course, were always worse than Louise Smellyhead. You could bare being loved by Louise Smellyhead, or loving Louise Smellyhead back, but the Gravemen were something else. They didn't love you, and you didn't love them.

They lived beneath the stone slabs, and only came out at night, to take someone back down with them when morning came. There weren't many of them (they'd counted fourteen), but then, the graveyard wasn't big (even smaller with that new road), and one Graveman was one Graveman too many. Nobody had ever seen a Graveman, of course, but they all knew they existed; they were the bad version of Santa. Ben's mother had said so, and Ben always believed his mother, so the others did too.

"The Gravemen are coming for Timmy! The Gravemen are coming for Timmy!"

"No! No! They're not coming for me! They're not! They're coming for Louise Smellyhead!"

"Yeah! They're coming for Louise Smellyhead! No-one likes her!"

Louise 'Smellyhead' Smelton, who walked behind them, did not reply. She did not even look up. She never said anything to anybody but the teachers. It was unfortunately true that no-one did like Louise, because she was always getting the best marks, the most praise and the most enjoyable things to do. There was always one.

Worst of all, she wouldn't play along with this cracks thing. Everyone else did, but it only took one to spoil it for everybody, because if one person didn't believe it, then it cast doubt on whether anybody could believe it. And if the risk wasn't there, it wasn't much fun anymore.

"The Gravemen are coming for you Louise!"

And now they were at the gate, the one that stood where the church's property stopped, and the school's began, though in places they overlapped. They waited here noisily until Miss Brent came, opened the gate and led them into the warmth of the red brick building. However, Ben and Timmy always stopped just inside the gate to inspect the School Snails. A patch of wall here was always covered in snails, and they were especially good at frightening the girls with. It was then that Timmy had the idea.

It would have to wait until next Wednesday, and they'd have to be quick. They were always hurried into church in the morning, the teachers not wanting to let the children's attention wander into the graveyard even before the service. Things did not go according to plan, because Louise Smellyhead did not do the reading today, and she did not collect the prayer-books either. This meant Ben and Timmy had only a few minutes to fill her coat pockets as they hung their coats and scarves up at the back of the church.

That service was particularly long. The vicar's version of the Christmas story was none too engaging, but most of all was the suspense of how long it would take Louise Smellyhead to find her little surprise. It was well worth the wait.

Ben and Timmy got a safe distance as they were donning their coats, but not too far as to not be able to see her face. How she screamed! And she only saw one of the snails! The whole church seemed to roar with laughter, though it was probably only Ben, Timmy and a few of their friends who had been let in on the great plan. They'd never seen Louise cry, despite their years of taunting, but now she was sobbing, and tore off her coat frantically. Then she ran through the arched doorway, her shoes clicking briskly on the cold stone floor. They never saw her again.

Miss Brent hurried after Louise, and did not return. A little later the vicar went out to see why, and returned in a fluster, and hurried them all back to those hard pews, and got out his guitar.

Ben's mother said Louise had been in a car accident, just out on that new road, and that this was the reason she got that petition together, and that nobody at the school was safe. Ben believed her of course, and so did Garry and Hannah. Timmy, however, knew differently. The Gravemen had come for her.

He had seen her new home. There was a fifteenth door in the earth, not far from the gate between the school and the church. And he had actually seen the Gravemen making it the next Wednesday, and had instantly cried.

They did not go to the church that way again. And indeed, as soon as he was given the choice, Timmy never went back there again.

It's all overgrown now. The grass is unkempt, and the brambles creep over the walls and under the fences. In autumn the graveyard turns an earthy brown. The sun never shines in that graveyard, though perhaps that's because it's in the shadow of the church. And that pine is finally dead, untended to for so many years.

NOTES:
The only story I wrote at high school that I can still look at and find something I like, this was submitted as A-Level English coursework, for which it received 20/20... a fortnight after somebody else won the school's creative writing award that I'd coveted since the first year. I wrote this for a substitute teacher in late 1999, starting at 11pm one night and finishing it off at 7am the next morning (no, it didn't take eight hours!). She asked for a signed copy to keep, but I can't even remember her name...