Full copyright ownership of this story was the prize in our recent competition to "Own a piece of Simon Clark".
Ian Bruce, who won the competition, has kindly allowed us to keep the story on the "Nailed by the Heart" website.
"It can't be," the other retorted. "It's something to do with the foundations of your house."
"In olden times builders recycled stones from ruins. Do you remember old man Nostrils telling us that those red lumps in the church walls were bricks from a Roman villa?"
The second boy nodded, his curiosity aroused. "Okay then, Stephen. How come a gravestone got under your house?"
"Because it's been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. Then people were sometimes buried in their gardens and our house just got built on top."
With it being the first week of the summer holidays they'd not acclimatised themselves to long sunny days with nothing to occupy them but their own inventiveness. After aimlessly riding their bikes along Manchester's endless maze of streets, this at last smacked of some excitement. Stephen and Mark scrutinised the oblong slab of limestone. As white as Wenslydale cheese, it protruded from beneath the house into the rose bed. Erosion had scrubbed the slab clean of any lettering: if there ever had been any in the first place, that is.
"I bet there's a knight buried under there," Stephen announced.
"Bet there isn't. Bet it's just some crummy paving slab."
"Bet there's a knight buried with his sword and armour."
"Prove it."
"All right then. We'll dig down under it. Then you'll see the skull."
"A skull?" Mark's eyes widened. "If there is one, bet you daren't touch it."
"Bet I dare. Right in its eye socket."
With Stephen's parents working and elder brother indoors, bolted to his electric guitar like little more than some peri pheral hardware the two ten year olds worked undisturbed. Dry soil, as light as biscuit crumbs, made digging easy. For an hour they dug down at an angle under the stone slab to the sounds of the guitar riff from David Bowie's Rebel, Rebel played over and over and over...
Three feet down Mark's spade hit something hard. Experimentally he drove the spade in again. This time they heard a metallic clang and exchanged startled looks.
"It's a water pipe," Mark said hopefully.
"Nope. It's the helmet." Stephen crouched and brushed away crumbs of soil. Soon he exposed a curving piece of metal that looked like an inverted bowl lodged in the earth.
Mark snorted. "It's a stupid old saucepan."
"No it isn't, it's the helmet."
"That's no helmet; never in a month of Sundays."
"It is a helmet. Look, I can put my fingers inside the visor, like- Heck! Mark! It moved!" Withdrawing his hand from the slot as if he'd touched a live rat, he looked at his fingers in wonder. "Mark, I put my hand inside the helmet. There's something soft in there. It moved; it moved all by itself when I touched it."
"Bloody thing." Mark's freckled face turned strawberry. "Bloody, damn thing!" Tears glistened. "Fill the hole in. Bury it up again!"
"There's no need to be frightened."
"Bloody, damn! I said bury it!"
Stephen looked reluctantly down at the black metal bowl lodged in the earth wondering what mystery it contained. Then he looked back at Mark. Tears like huge pearls rolled down his friend's face; his body shook with a ferocity that was frightening. Stephen sighed, then shovelled soil back into the hole.
"THAT'S THE LAST TIME I played with Stephen," Mark told his fiance as they gazed down at the slab now almost overgrown by rose bushes. "It must be a good fifteen years ago now."
"What happened?"
"I later heard from his brother that Stephen finished digging the hole."
"Did he find anything?"
"Nothing at all." He tried to sound convincing, but it came out hollow. "After that he stopped playing with his friends. Sometimes he'd stand for hours on end as still as a statue by the church altar. Once someone saw him running along Castle Gate crying over and over, 'Byzantium burns. Byzantium burns.'"
"Where is he now?"
"Last I heard, he was on remand for taking an axe to a police car over in Stockport." Mark gazed down at the tangled rose bushes spilling over the stone slab. The rose bed could have been no larger than a picnic blanket but, he knew, somewhere in there was a little boy who couldn't find his way home: a little boy who was lost. Forever.