Probably no one else but Johnny and the Consolidated man noticed Mr Atterbury take a ten-pence piece out of his pocket. He turned it over and over in his fingers. The man from the company watched it like a mouse might watch a cat.

He’s going to offer him double his money back, Johnny thought. Right there on television.

He didn’t. He just kept turning the coin over and over, so that the man could see it.

‘That seems a very diplomatic offer,’ said the interviewer. ‘Tell me, Mr – er—’

‘A spokesman,’ said the Consolidated man. He looked quite ill. There was a glint as light flashed off the coin.

‘Tell me, Mr Spokesman . . . what is it that United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings actually does?’

Mr Atterbury would probably have been a good man in the Spanish Inquisition, Johnny told himself.

Mr Grimm turned the sound down again.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ said Johnny.

‘Haven’t come back,’ said Mr Grimm, with horrible satisfaction. ‘Their graves haven’t been slept in. That’s what happens when people don’t listen. And do you know what’s going to happen to them?’

‘No.’

‘They’re going to fade away. Oh, yes. You’ve put ideas in their heads. They think they can go gadding about. But people who go gadding about and not staying where they’re put . . . they don’t come back. And that’s an end to it. It could be Judgement Day tomorrow, and they won’t be here. Hah! Serves them right.’

There was something about Mr Grimm that made Johnny want to hit him, except that it wouldn’t work anyway and, besides, hitting him would be like hitting mud. You’d get dirtier for doing it.

‘I don’t know where they’ve gone,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think anything bad’s happened to them.’

‘Think what you like,’ said Mr Grimm, turning back to the television.

‘Did you know it’s Halloween?’ said Johnny.

‘Is it?’ said Mr Grimm, watching an advert for chocolate. ‘I shall have to be careful tonight, then.’

When Johnny reached the bridge he looked back. Mr Grimm was still there, all alone.

*

The dead rode a radio signal over Wyoming . . . They were already changing. They were still recognizable, but only when they thought about it.

‘You see, I told you it was possible,’ said the person who was occasionally Mr Fletcher. ‘We don’t need wires!’

They ran into an electric storm high over the Rocky Mountains. That was fun.

And then they surfed down the radio waves to California.

‘What time is it?’

‘Midnight!’

Johnny was a sort of hero in school. The Blackbury Guardian had a front page story headed: COUNCIL SLAMMED IN CEMETERY SALE RUMPUS. The Guardian often used words like ‘slammed’ and ‘rumpus’; you wondered how the editor talked at home.

Johnny was in the story with his name spelled wrong, and there was a quote which ran: ‘War hero Arthur Atterbury, president of the newly formed “Blackbury Volunteers”, told the Guardian: “There are young people in this town with more sense of history in their little fingers than some adults have in their entire committee-bound bodies”. This is thought to be a reference to Cllr Miss Ethel Liberty, who was not available for comment last night.’