Chapter Eleven

“Jeff?” Asked Yorick. “What do you have in mind here?”
Jeff leaped back to the top of the tallest gravestone and struck a dynamic pose, gesturing upwards with one hand and side-eyeing us with a wide grin, waggling his eyebrows.
“Were going to dramatically pose and build a human pyramid?” Guessed Anj, then corrected herself at a pointed cough from Archie. “A pyramid of people?”
“No!” Jeff slumped slightly, then pointed rapidly between himself and the night sky. “Werewolf. Moon. Moon high in the sky?”
He slumped slightly further when he saw our group of blank faces, and shook his head.
“You people have no imagination, and only two of you have an excuse.” He muttered. “I’m going to ask the Moon to help.”
“OK, wasn’t expecting that.” Archie commented.
Anj raised a hand.
“Is the moon not very far away?” She asked. “Not that I don’t like the werewolf and moon thing, but it seems like range might be an issue.”
“Distance isn’t as big a deal as you might think around here.” Jeff grinned. “Yorick and Headcrow can tell you about that.”
He took a deep breath, threw his head back in a classic ‘howling at the moon’ pose, and … Made absolutely no sound.
Archie and Yorick and I looked at each other, then back to Jeff.
“Uhh, Jeff?” I asked. “Was something … “
The rest of my question got cut off when Anj repeatedly slapped my arm, saying “Moon” over and over again while looking up. The crescent moon, previously a silver sliver in the night, was somehow right above us, a pockmarked object hanging over the boneyard.
Archie, Yorick, and I said the only thing we could under the circumstances.
“Fuuuuuuck.”
Jeff adopted a more relaxed stance, facing upwards.
“Thank you.” He said. “I’m hoping that you can help us with the new arrivals.’
Impossibly, a crater opened into an enormous eye, and I could suddenly see the face which had been there the entire time.
“This is the primary for the arrivals.” Jeff continued, gesturing at me. “And he’s got a way to find all the others, and there are a lot of others, but it won’t work on the ground; Can he come up and try it from where you are?”
The eye somehow focused on me; It was like being caught in a spotlight, pinned in place. I could almost feel a question in that gaze.
“Ummm, … Hello.” I waved. “I can’t really introduce myself, because I don’t know what my name is. They tell me that’s probably significant somehow.”
I fished out the package of red dirt.
“Between us all we made this stuff, and it seems like it’ll make a trail to all the people we can’t find out there in the boneyard.” I gestured around. “Some of them are people I work with, and some are also my friends, and I’d like to help them, but … I think I need some help to do it?”
“We don’t really know what we’re doing here,” Anj added. “Or where here is, or whether this is all just a dream or something. But we could really use some help, and Jeff thinks the help we need is yours.”
“Though I’m not clear on how that would work?” I asked, partly to Jeff and partly to the Moon.
The eye closed. Somehow, without actually changing, the Moon looked different. Instead of being a crescent of light on a dark sphere, it now looked like an actual silver crescent, like something from a stage show.
“I think that’s permission to proceed?” Said Yorick. “Jeff, how does the next part of your plan work?”

I stood at one end of a long row of graves. Down at the other, with his back against an obelisk of some kind, Jeff crouched, his hands laced together.
“This is idiotic.” Yorick declared. “I don’t care what you say about cartoons, this cannot possibly be the right approach.”
“I’ll bet a spa weekend at the Mansion that it works.” Said Jeff, then looked at me. “Whenever you’re ready; Just run like hell and jump when I throw you, dude.”
“You’re on.” Replied Archie and Yorick simultaneously.
I started running.
“They have spa weekends?” Anj asked. “They’re good?”
Up to a decent speed, I tried to set my pace to hit Jeff at the end of a stride.
“The bathrobes are amazing.” Archie replied. “And they have them in my size; Not everywhere can accommodate a giant spider, but these have extra armholes.”
With one final push, my foot hit Jeff’s hands, and I jumped as he hurled me upwards.
And further upwards, trailed by Jeff’s distant shout of “Halloween Special Cartoon Logic! In your face!!”.
And still further upwards, the Moon seemingly expanding in front of me until I collided with it gut-first, wrapping myself around the lower ‘horn’ of the crescent and clinging on. I paused to catch my breath, realised I didn’t need to, and started to gracelessly clamber up onto the lower crescent.
A slowly growing “Waaaayyy!” turned out to be Jeff heading towards me, arms and legs flailing. He overshot with a muttered “OhShit!”, snagged the very tip of the upper crescent with one foot on the way past, and came to a crashing halt at the very top of the Moon, clinging to the underside of the upper tip with all four limbs and his teeth.
“‘Extbook ‘anding, ‘at was.” He claimed, trying to adjust his grip.
As I cautiously stood, I could swear I saw the Moon’s eye roll.
“No time like the present, dude.” Jeff called down. He was dangling by his legs, doing something with a silvery cord tied around his waist. “Let’s see if this works!”
Trying not to look down, I dug the paper parcel of red dirt out of my pocket and carefully poured the contents into one hand. I took a deep breath, then paused, slowly letting it out again.
“What’s up?” Jeff enquired, now sitting on top of the Moon, tying his silver cord to the very tip of the crescent. “Try not to be nervous; If it doesn’t work, nobody will blame you.”
“No.” I replied. “Not nervous, just … Thinking about how to give this the best shot of working?”
I turned a bit and looked out towards the horizon, raised the handful of dirt to eye level, and took another deep breath. Then I grabbed the stitches across my mouth with the other hand, yanked until the cords broke, and blew as hard and as long as I could across the dirt, sending a giant plume of red dust out into the sky.
As I watched, it separated into dozens of individual strands and sank towards the boneyard below.
From above me, Jeff muttered.
“Damn; That was bad-ass awesome.”