The Gospel of Us by Owen Sheers Read Free Book Online

it.
    I stood there watching them, sweating and strained, panicked. It was like their lives depended on getting those films out from under there, as if this was their one chance and unless they set them free it was all over. As I watched they started talking again, the same old Legion Twins mumble and mutter.
    Only this time, for once, I listened.
    ‘Not forgotten, not forgotten,’ said one of them.
    ‘The last death is your name said for the last time. Name. Find the name,’ said the other.
    ‘So many under, so many under,’ said both of them. ‘Must get them out. Get them out.’
    And that was when, as if in reply, those voices started up again.
    It was like someone had turned up the volume on a hundred radios all at once; hundreds of voices, high, low, young, old, all speaking together and against each other. From where I was in the underpass I couldn’t work out, at first, where they were coming from. But as they got louder that soon became clearer. The graveyards. The voices were coming from the graveyards around the church.
    As soon as they started one of the Twins clamped his hands to his ears, pressing them hard against his head.
    ‘Arrgghhh,’ he screamed. ‘I can hear one, I can hear one!’
    ‘Go, go!’ his brother shouted back at him.
    And he was off, sprinting into the graveyard, while his brother ran to the wall of the underpass, picked up a piece of chalk and stood there, poised, ready to write. I didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to miss it, so I ran after the first one, into the graveyard.
    It was the Dead again, only this time not in film, but in person.
    There was one of them standing beside every gravestone, standing in crooked lines like chess pieces in a half-played game. They weren’t moving, just standing there, speaking. At first I couldn’t make out what they were saying, all their voices mixing together in that drone. But when I stepped nearer to them, I realised they were telling stories. Each one telling a story about whoever’s name was carved onthe stone beside them. Not stories of their deaths either, of how they’d died, but of their lives and how they’d lived.
    I looked over to where the first Legion Twin was hurrying between them all, hands still at his head, pausing by each person, leaning in to listen – to a little girl, to an old man, to a young woman.
    ‘Find them! Find them!’ his brother called from the underpass.
    He ran faster, searching between the stories, listen ing to the voices outside and inside his head. ‘Loved… loved… loved John the most! John the most! Where are they? Where are they?’
    Then he stopped. All of a sudden, he stopped beside a grave where a little boy was reciting the poem of his life, over and over.
    ‘Dewi Phillips!’ he cried. ‘Dewi Phillips! Write it! Write it!’
    I looked over to the underpass where the other Twin was searching now, searching for space on the underpass wall which was already scrawled with thousands of names.
    ‘Can’t find space! Can’t find space!’ he yelled back, panicking.
    ‘Arrghhh,’ his brother replied. ‘Quick, find space! Find space!’
    Then from the underpass, ‘Writing! Writing!’
    And as he did, the voices faded down, his brother took his hands from his head, and, standing up straight again, strolled over to his twin under the road.
    ‘Ta,’ he said. ‘Ta very much.’
    ‘No problem,’ his brother replied, slipping the chalk in his pocket. ‘Tidy.’
    And that’s when it dawned on me. It was like what Johnny had said about Alfie on Llewellyn Street. What I was seeing and hearing was what the Legion Twins had always seen and heard. All of it, the memories under the ground, the stories of the lives of the dead, all of this was what the poor sods had been carrying around with them for years until now, finally, it was out, out for all to see.
    I had to go get Johnny. I wanted him to see this too, wanted to know if he could see it too. But I