A girl, A boy, and a graveyard

Running through rain

Lucy POV
1062 words

🎵My heart is yours
It's you that I hold onto
Yeah that's what i'll do
And I know I was wrong
But i won't let you down🎵

🎵Yeah I saw sparks
Yeah I saw sparks
And I saw sparks🎵
-Sparks by Coldplay

"Lucy, you're shaking." Lockwood's voice rang out like a curfew bell. We hadn't been walking for too long, but I hadn't said a word regardless. And it felt like we had been walking for hours in silence. "Luce." Lockwood stopped, the stone and dirt under our boots crunched, small dust clouds floating just above the toes of our boots.
"What?" I hadn't been paying attention to what he said, but I stared past him.
"Hey," He grabbed my chin gently, his cold long fingers held my face, "look at me, you're shaking."

"I'm just cold." I pulled myself away from him. How could I have been so foolish, how could I have said yes to this walk? I felt ashamed that I had given into Holly and was wearing this stupid outfit. I tugged at my skirt and folded my arms over my chest. He didn't love me. Lockwood was not in love with me. Tears threatened to fall and ruin the tad of makeup Holly had gave me. Though it didn't matter; Lockwood wouldn't care.

He moved, sighing, muttering something, he took off his jacket. Grabbed my shoulder and put it around me, pulling me to him. "There, better?" I had stopped breathing, I was so shocked.
"Come on, let's keep going." We began to walk again, I held the sides of his long jacket to keep it from falling off me. We passed wooden signs, and two bakeries. There were a few ghost-lamps scattered around. Other than that people had candles or lanterns outside their homes to light the paths. The houses were low and bricked.

There was a hum in the air, I could suddenly hear it. The closer we drew to the graveyard. The hum was low, almost a background noise. Somewhere I had heard it before.

"Quick question for you, Luce, it's about us."
My body turned shockingly cold, shockingly fast.

"Uh, yeah.. What about us..?"
"Well," Lockwood scratched his dark mop of hair. "are you still my client? Or should I be paying you for yesterday, when we were killing those ghosts and George saw that eyeless one. Like should i be paying you when we kill ghosts?? I'm a little confused.." He laughed, glancing back at me.
"To be honest, i've lost track of that too." My heart rate slowed, the blood stopped roaring, and with that the hum came back.

My mouth became dry. The graveyard was in view now, a lantern that hung from a pole lit up a small patch of the land in a circle of dusty gold light. The rest covered in a blanket of darkness. Gravestones shrouded in the night sky. We stopped just outside the wooden gates of the graveyard.

"Well, here it is. This is where that boy Danny Skinner was going on about. The last sighting of the Creeping what-do-you-call-it. Anyway.. Yeah, we'll figure it out," Lockwood smiled, looking over into the sky, "Technically we're helping each other. I'm getting your disgusting skull back, you're helping me with this village. Your skulls got to be in the institute... something is important about that place, i know it."

He looked at me then, his bright eyes reflecting off the lantern light. "We're going to have to figure out a very complicated client-agent relationship... Or we could always do something simpler." Thunder rumbled above us, rain started pattering on the light brown dirt below us.

Suddenly, my ears popped. My temples pounded. Searing light spread across the graveyard in front of us. Blue and grey, swirling mist across the sky. A black figure began to grow in size, till it reached the highest trees. I didn't get time to ask what he meant, i didn't even get time to blush, as his hand silently slipped into mine. His long fingers gripped my gloved hand. We stared at the trailing figure, looming and walking through the graveyard. I noticed, when raindrops came to fall onto the black mass, they instead sizzled around it. As if it were made of fire.

As it slowly moved down, further away from us, it left a trail of grey and blue mist that lingered on the tall weeds in the graveyard. The Creeping Shadow, slowly went out of view, disappearing at the end of the graveyard to the hills beyond. Me and Lockwood stood there, only then i realised i was cold and covered in water from the now pouring rain. Then I also had realised, my hand was still in his, he must have realised at the same time. Our fingers just sort of.. fell away? slow, back to our original positions at our sides, ready to pull out a rapier or salt-bomb.

Lockwood cleared his throat, i moved hair out my face. It could have been the cold and the rain, but his cheeks looked a lot redder than before. Our boots shuffled on the ground, i didn't know what to do. My face grew hot. I looked at him, his shirt was drenched, i could see the skin below the thin white fabric. His chest, so visible but so far away.
"So.. the heck was that??" I asked, slowly looking back at the direction of the Shadow.
"The Shadow.. right?" He glanced at me through his bangs. I blushed more and shrunk back away from the light, making sure he couldn't see my face as much.
"We need to tell the others."
"Quick, let's run before this storm gets any worse." Thunder crackled along the clouds. Lightning lit up the sky for a moment.

We started running, our boots splashed through new puddles along the dirt and gravel paths. We started to laugh hysterically, maybe it was the aftermath of seeing that terrifying apparition, maybe it was something more. We ran and ran, passed broken fences and sleeping sheep. Passed an old wooden church, and finally to the inn. We opened the gate outside, breathing heavy and lay against the brick wall outside to catch our breath. Looking at each other and laughed. Lockwoods hair was flat, his skin highlighted below the shirt, droplets of water fell from his fringe and onto his long slim nose.

The Inn door was open and Holly leaned against the door frame to look at us
"Nice walk?" Holly smirked.