Free The Lewis Man by Peter May

crouch now in the gloom, behind the shelter of a large tomb taller than myself, crowned by a stone cross.
    I tried to hold my breath so as not to make any noise. But the pounding of my heart filled my ears, and bursting lungs forced me to suck in oxygen, before expelling it quickly to make room for more. My whole body was trembling.
    I listened for the footsteps but heard nothing, and was just starting to relax and curse my overactive imagination, when I heard the soft, careful crunch of feet on gravel. It was all I could do to keep myself from crying out.
    I peered out cautiously from behind the cross and saw, less than twenty feet away, the shadow of a man limping by on the path. He seemed to be dragging his left leg. A few more steps, and he emerged from the shadow of a huge copper beech into moonlight, and I saw his face for the first time. It was ghostly white, pale like my mother’s the day she told us our father was dead. His eyes were lost in the darkness beneath prominent brows, almost as if the sockets were empty. His trousers were torn and he wore a ragged jacket and grey shirt open at the neck. A small sack of belongings hung from his left hand. A vagrant seeking a place to sleep among the dead? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
    I waited until he had shuffled off again to be swallowed up by the night, and I moved out from behind the tomb to see for the first time the name cut in the stone of it. And every hair on my body stood on end.
    Mary Elizabeth McBride.
    My mother’s name. I knew, of course, that it wasn’t her lying there beneath the ground. This Mary Elizabeth had been in residence for nearly two hundred years. But I couldn’t shake off the sense that somehow it was my mother who had guided me to that place of concealment. She had charged me with looking after my brother, but had taken it upon herself to watch over me.
    I turned and fled, back the way I had come, heart trying to crack open my ribs, until I saw the black-painted metal gate standing ajar. I was through it like a ghost, and sprinting across the asphalt to the door at the back of The Dean. The only time in my life, I think, that I was glad to be inside it.
    Back in my bed I lay shivering for a long time before sleep took me. I’m not sure when it was that I was wakened by Peter. He was leaning over me, caught in the moonlight that angled in across the dorm in elongated rectangles. I could see the concern in his eyes, and he was touching my face.
    ‘John,’ he was whispering. ‘Johnny. Why are you crying?’
    It was Alex Curry’s fault that the adventure on the roof ended in disaster. He was a brute of a boy, older than the rest of us, and had been there the longest. He was about as tall as Mr Anderson, and probably stronger. He’d always been a rebel, the others said, and had his arse belted more often than anyone else at The Dean. But in three years he had developed to the point where his physical strength matched his rebellious nature. And that must have been pretty intimidating to Mr Anderson. Lately he had refused to cut his thick, black hair and grown it into an Elvis quiff and duck’s arse. I think that’s probably the first time that Peter and I became aware of Elvis Presley. We had barely been conscious of the world outside of our own. The belting of Alex had tailed off, and it was rumoured that he was to be sent to a hostel. He was too old for The Dean now, and far too much for Mr Anderson to handle.
    Catherine had come to us the day before, with a wink and a smile and a conspiratorial tone. She and several of the other girls had received food parcels that week, and there was to be a midnight feast on the roof the following night.
    ‘How do we get on to the roof?’ I said.
    She looked at me, eyes full of pity at my innocence, and shook her head. ‘There are stairs leading up to the roof from both wings,’ she said. ‘Go and take a look at your side. There’s a door at the end of the landing, and behind it a