Naked

10 Grave Discoveries

I made my way down the street keeping my head down, but still on alert.

I couldn't risk being detected entering the Bow Cemetery at this hour. Not to mention someone could be following me and I had to circle the entire cemetery going through Ropery Street, Southern Grove and enter conspicuously through Hamlet Way. 

I had to retrieve the files Steve left me and knowing him, plus his exorbitant paranoia I had to act fast. If there was one thing Steve feared the most, was being discovered helping me; the last time that happened it got his friend killed.

Peter was a good fellow but incapable of keeping his mouth shut. He had a moral code you see. When Steve smuggled me out of my prison, he started panicking about the redcoats hanging us all together for treason. Steve had tried to reason with him, using his devious brain to sway him on our side.

Long story short the man didn't believe a word he said and ended up dead. The worst of it was that we were the ones that found him...

 The was no denying who had killed him.

Steve was inconsolable that night. I knew something cracked inside him then. Before shoving me in a ship hidden inside a crate, I helped him bury his friend. The last thing I said to him before the ship departed was to forget everything and go home. Apparently, the bastard didn't listen.

Due to his appearance, no one questioned his motives when he dug for information. Anyone who met him fell in the trap of his fat physique and gullible face; they thought he was a dimwit but he played them right into his game.

That is how he managed to save me. I could not blame the man for seeking justice for his friend, I knew the feeling all too well. The difference between us was that I had given up; you can't bring down a man protected by the law when you had toffers as witnesses and you didn't exist as a woman. And most importantly not when you lived petrified at the mere mention of his name. He haunted my life by hunting me like an animal and lived in my worst nightmares.

Lady Luck kept me alive as did Lynette. Without these two ladies, I would have died along with the rest of my family. But there were times I wish I had. Twenty years had passed and I still hadn't figured out why they were murdered. A gas explosion in the mansion's kitchen that set the house ablaze, was the feeble sham that the people believed without even batting an eye.

The story of my family now forgotten and the world moved on.

My heart clenched at the memories of my sisters' smiling faces. If only I had known that the day I ruined Anna's dress would be the last day I 'd see her...

I kept an eye out, making my way through the creepy tombstones trying hard to not pay to much attention to the dead that were about to rise and eat me. Dark cemeteries in the dark with lots of dead people. Ahhhh... Steve really knew how to make a girls day... 

Just as I was about to reach the right one and avoided a few skeletaly hands that tried to grab me, a conspicuous sound caught my attention. My first instinct was to stop but my heart was beating so hard in my chest and my mind was conjuring up dead people behind me that I found in more prudent to keep on moving. If it was a live person after me then he would think I didn't hear him, which was also a favourable outcome.  

I decided to investigate the live-or-dead person following so when I spotted the tombstone with the name Fogg I simply passed it and made my way towards the large pine tree a few meters away. I sensed the man following me increase his speed as I was about to cross behind the tree and vanish.

Opening up my stride I reached the large trunk and quickly climbed the first branch, setting my trap. Moments later, a skinny looking man appeared looking confused. Well, why you look at that! It's an alive skeleton! Who would have thought?