Consideration for Scoundrels

ONE

Footsteps echoed through the graveyard. A heavy, steady metronome of sound, occasionally accompanied by the disturbance of the scrape of steel against the cobbled stone pathway that wove its way through the labyrinth. Heavy bellows of fog crept from the river, bringing with them a bone-deep damp. Celeste's breath was a cloud as she exhaled slow, steadying her heart. Her mottled raincoat clung unpleasantly, as if the moisture had suctioned the material to her skin. Her gaze trailed upwards. The sky above was shifting, the deep indigo giving way to the gray that proceeded dawn. They didn't have much of night left to spare.

Frost had crusted on the tops of the graves, as sharp and iridescent as glass as she trudged past.

"How much longer?"

Like all unpleasant things, Celeste just wanted it to be over with. She labored beneath a cloud of shapeless irritation, though she knew impatience would get her no where. And the dead couldn't be hurried.

She'd been following this particular ghost for nearly an hour now. Female, as far as she could tell from the mostly shapeless form hovering a few yards ahead, through it was hard to place, given the plain burial shroud, torn and worn as it was. Harder still to pinpoint the exact era the spirit had occupied in life.

Celeste could feel the last of her patience running dry as the first splinters of light leaked across the horizon, when the ghost came to a sudden pause. It, or she, hovered their a moment, and then nodded towards the briars. So Celeste began to dig. Careful, she shoveled away the increments of dirt, cautious not to damage the ground too much, too obviously, until she heard the metal struck something that was neither dirt nor stone. Kneeling in the brambles she pulled apart the fragile roots, her fingers searching, grubbing through the mud like weevils, muck scrapping away beneath her nails until a sharp edge came loose from the packed earth.

Celeste used both hands to pry the olive-wood box free and turned it over in his hands. It wasn't large, nor ornamented; just large enough to fit in a grown man's hand. Moving quick, her thumbs searching for the hinge. The wood stuck, but only for a moment. The lid gave way, faster than she'd expected, and the loosely scattered contents spilled free.

Taken aback, she cursed, low and filthy. Luckily, she had positioned herself a step upwind, avoiding a face full of white ash. And there, resting on the bottom of the box, was an emerald the size of a large pumpkin seed.

Carefully, she plucked her prize free and slipped it beneath his coat.

The spirit who'd guided her way still hovered nearby, a satisfied grin stretched across the iridescent features. So close, Celeste could see she was almost certainly a woman one who'd been nearing her late thirties before she'd died, with a heart shaped face and high cheekbones.

She acknowledged it with a small grin of her own. "Thanks."

The spirit nodded once, before fading against the backdrop of the river.

As fast as she could manage Celeste returned the olive wood box back into the ground, sketching the sign of the cross in the air over it, as if that somehow made this whole thing more forgivable, and dragged back the dirt from where she'd shifted it aside, pulling the brambles back across to disguise the sight of freshly turned soil.

The sky began to glisten with the dusted pink of dawn and Celeste knew she needed to be gone from this place, to cross the iron gates, before the sun could burn away the mists. Sweat trickled down her neck as she trudged her way through the final leg of the graveyard, she'd retrieved her shovel and stowed back inside the groundskeepers' shed, re-latching the lock and driving the bolt home.

Her sharp eyes were etched with dark shadows, bearing a permanent badge of perpetual exhaustion as the wind whipped her hair against her face, the long red strands stinging her nose and cheeks. The thought of a scalding hot shower, clean clothes and cool sheets was enough to make Celeste's chest ache as she made her way towards the cemetery gates. She was almost home, she was almost...Something tickled at the back of Celeste's spine. No, tickled was too gentle a term; something ran its sharp nails from the base of her skull to her tail-bone. Possessive, insistent. She paused mid-step and slowly, turned back around.

She had expected to see the creature, still stalking her from the trees. But what she found were three hollow cheeked waifs, half-formed and flickering in and out of view, had manifested near the yawning mouth of the great iron gate. They stared at her, eyes brimming with curiosity.

"They'd be dead by now anyway." Celeste whispered to herself, fighting back the roil of nausea that rose in her throat. "The last person buried here was two hundred years ago...long dead."

Because as she walked along the western bank of the Thames,

Fresh corpses bobbed in the tide like fishing lures. Copper hung heavy in the air, the telltale reek of blood and death. Smoke and ash were belched by the river, embers crackling through the dense, acrid air. All around her, Celeste could hear the pounding of hooves against stone, and the piercing shrieks that made up the death rattle of two thousand souls. These were the worst of the dead, trapped in a loop cinched by the horror of last moments so traumatic the souls could not escape.

A memory now utterly forgotten by the living, and yet so deeply imprinted on the city's bones that Celeste bore its unknown shame even beyond the graveyard's gates. But like she had with the clutching waifs at the gate, Celeste turned her gaze away. There was no saving the dead.

God above, I hate the Shallows. She thought as she pressed onward.

Still...

Celeste plucked a coin from her jacket. It was still pocket warm as she rolled it across her knuckles a moment, before pressing it against her palm with the end of her thumb.

For the ferryman.

She thought, before letting it slip over the railing. It struck the inky black with a soft plunk, before slipping beneath the surface as the first streaks of golden light touched the water.

It was better to be safe, then sorry.