Manu Zolezzi
Winnet woke up that morning and her heart ached. She went through the motions of beginning the day: rising, dressing, washing, tea. She prepared oatmeal and ate fruit. No matter how close she stayed to her normal routine, she could not rid herself of that tightness in her chest; the feeling of dread.
It was the early days of spring and the last snow had melted some days ago. The streets of the town were already dirty again, but now it was a dry dirt rather than the wet, dangerous slush that followed the wintry backend of the season.
Winnet, already almost a decade and a half past fifty, walked along the street and greeted anyone who greeted her. It had been a few years since she had been able to open conversations with her own greeting; to take the initiative in social interactions. Now, as a member of the town council, it was indecorous to give the people outside of her personal social circle attention unless requested. At first, Winnet found the situation shameful, as if her new position – inherited from her late husband – somehow elevated her above others in town against her will. In time, she came to accept that there was an undercurrent of meaning in the mores: if she greeted one acquaintance, she would have to greet them all. The size of the town was such that while she was certain she knew every face, she knew she could not greet them all in a day and have hours left for sleep, or meals, or anything else. This, at least, bolstered her humility and gave her a semblance of reprieve.
She made her way through the town’s market, putting in her reservations. Bread, fruit, oats, and cheese. Things that would be waiting for her when she came back along this path late in the day, so that she did not have to cart them around all day with her.
‘Did you hear, Mrs Pierce?’ Jenny, the wisp of a girl that tended to her family’s dairy stand, asked her. She showed Winnet a broad smile and eyes full of anticipation.
Winnet squinted, a look that she knew was often interpreted as suspicion, even if she used it just to see the smiles and hear the giggles of the younger children.
‘Hear what?’ She chortled. ‘I suppose I haven’t, if I’ve got to ask.’
‘They’re finally coming,’ Jenny said, so excited she seemed to have forgotten to explain who.
Winnet, well-used to the girl’s excitability, blinked with deliberate slowness and waited.
Jenny stared at her, even as her hands bundled up Winnet’s cheese order for later.
‘Jenny, dear, you’ve got to tell me who.’
‘Oh!’ Jenny let out a shrill giggle, vibrating with energy. ‘The Caravan of Lights!’
Winnet felt the pressure in her chest drop like a stone to the pit of her stomach.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘All against?’
Winnet didn’t bother raising her hand. Of the thirteen council members, eleven had already voted ‘aye’.
‘Let the record show the Caravan of Light’s visit to the town this coming end of week is approved with eleven votes in favour, no votes against, and two abstentions,’ Ortanto said, rapping the gavel against the pad at the head of the table. ‘I suggest you all get your lanterns ready and prepare to see some old faces, then.’
He smiled, then his eyes turned to Winnet. He was her age; a weasel-faced, indecorous man with an unpleasant snicker whenever he was feeling superior, which was often enough and never appropriate. He employed it now.
‘And why, may we ask, has Mrs Pierce declined to favour the Caravan’s visit?’ He looked at Winnet, that snicker coiling over his words.
Winnet ignored the looks from the rest of the council. She folded her hands, one atop the other, and took a moment to gather her thoughts.
‘I simply believe that those who are at rest should remain at rest.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Lucien, the youngest member of the council and the only other to abstain.
‘Then why not vote against?’ Ortanto looked from Lucien to Winnet, his curiosity a mere mask that hid the pleasure of challenging people whose stance had already lost.
‘To avoid this conversation, Ortanto.’ Winnet moved to rise. Lucien slipped out of his seat and eased her chair back. She kept a stoic expression, despite being grateful to Lucien for his camaraderie and support.
A shadow fell across Ortanto’s face. He did not challenge the assertion.
‘Thank you, Lucien.’ Winnet rose without waiting for the meeting to be adjourned and left the room.
Lucien caught up with Winnet only a minute or so after she left. Ortanto must have adjourned the meeting immediately.
He pretended to be winded as he fell into step next to her. ‘You’re quite spry for a woman your age.’ He was teasing her. At a good twenty years younger than her, Lucien was the son of one of her oldest friends; she had watched over him as a boy more times than she could remember.
‘You, on the other hand, are not so old that I won’t put you across my knee,’ Winnet shot back, amused.
Lucien laughed.
‘How is Vivienne?’ Winnet walked along, heading towards the market to pick up the orders she’d made on the way to the meeting.
‘She’s good. Bigger every day,’ Lucien said. ‘She asks after you. You haven’t been to visit in a few months.’
‘Well, I’m getting old,’ Winnet countered. ‘You should all come visit me instead.’
‘We may very well take you up on that, now that we have settled into the new normal, somewhat.’
It was almost a year since the death of Lucien’s mother, Marianne; four years since the death of his father, Pierre. All of Winnet’s friends were gone. Of their generation, only contentious and craven pustules like Ortanto remained.
And Lucien looked so much like his parents.
‘Why did you abstain with me, Luc?’ She put her hand on his arm and gave it a familiar squeeze.
Lucien watched her for a moment. She could see his gaze softening, the corners of his mouth lowering gently. His hand came up and he put it over hers, squeezing it.
‘Some of us remember things others think we’ve forgotten, Aunt Winnet.’
Winnet knew her smile was sad, and she extricated her hand from his and stopped, turning away before the tears could begin to form. She walked again.
Lucien followed.
He walked her home in silence, through her picking up her reservations all across the market. It wasn’t until they stopped at her door that he smiled.
‘It’ll be okay,’ he said, hand on her shoulder, light and gentle. ‘It’ll be okay.’
Winnet spent the rest of the day in her garden, made dinner, and called it an early evening.
Before bed, a short time after the sun went down, she opened the cupboard in her bedroom and stood before it for a long minute. Inside was the funerary lantern she made after Geoffrey’s death. It was a simple glass cylinder with a clay top and bottom connected by rigid supports, making it look like some sort of cell. The top came off so that one could put a candle inside and light it. After staring at it, she looked over to its customary place: a shelf on the wall facing her bed. If Lucien and his family were coming to visit, it would not do to have it in the cupboard.
She resolved to move the thing later, and closed the cupboard, then turned in for the night.
As a child she had slept on her stomach, with a pillow against her chest and face down, her arms cradling her head so she didn’t smother herself against the mattress. During her marriage to Geoffrey, she had learned to sleep on her back, and rested less for it. Since his death Winnet had returned to her previous position, reacquainting herself with the long and fitful night’s sleep of her youth. She had also gravitated, gradually, over the past year, towards the centre of the bed.
That night she laid down on her back and watched the bare ceiling of her bedroom. Falling asleep in this position was an exercise in patience, and she had to work to remember what recourse she had to find sleep. She followed the length of the beams on the ceiling, back and forth and side to side. There was a pattern she had employed, when sleep was hardest to come by, wherein she would skip her vision between the beams in a specific order. It tired her eyes and they would begin to close on their own, the shapes of the beams blurred, and eventually she would fall to sleep.
It wasn’t working. Every time her eyes followed the beam in one direction, a movement in the corner of her eye would distract her, sharpen her focus and bring her back to that spot. She tried a different beam, and the movement happened somewhere else on the ceiling, a pulsing shadow, like an engorged bubble of darkness that vanished when she looked at it. She caught it one more time and didn’t look away now. She stared at the corner where she had seen it, as if daring it to come out again, to show itself.
Winnet felt her pulse quicken; her heart thumping fiercely within her chest.
She shook her head and put the trick of the light out of her mind. Perhaps tonight was a night without sleep. She had had those before and knew how to survive them.
Tea and a book by candlelight was all it would take.
She resolved to get up.
She did not.
She could not.
Winnet’s veins felt full of cold and rigid lead, the weight paralysing her beyond just her limbs.
Her legs were semi-crossed at an angle under the covers, her left knee pressing down on her right ankle. She had one hand on her stomach and the other off to the side. A single, maddening strand of silver hair ran down her forehead and over her eye, bifurcating that one pupil’s vision with a blurry line.
Winnet could consciously move four parts of her body: her lungs, which forced her chest to rise up and down, ever quicker, as she felt her heart pump harder; her eyes, saccading furiously to follow the thing on the ceiling; her eyelids, that she dared not close; and her tongue, which wriggled in silence behind lips that refused to part.
The shape on the ceiling slithered out of the corner, roiling; it grew darker and thicker; a shadow becoming ink. It stretched like a liquid black wisp across the ceiling, tendrils coiling over the beams. No sound came from the contact between it and the wood, but rather as it moved from darkness to darkness, shadow to shadow, it left the spots it crossed a bit darker than they had been before. Winnet could feel its eyes on her, despite it having no eyes that she could see.
It stopped right above her head. She stared up at it, as it pooled across the underside of the beam above her, and started to distend from it.
It was like watching water fighting to stay within a bottle that is plugged from the other end, gravity pulling at it, surface tension keeping it pressed against the mouth of the bottle. But this was darkness, a black stain that stretched downward without reluctance nor hurry, until a piece of it dripped free.
She felt it splash on her cheek and expected it to burn like it had so many times before. She thought it would be hot and solidify almost immediately, etching a mark on her face that was not enough to scar the surface, only within. But this fluid, solid shadow had the icy touch of disdain, so cold it began to numb her cheek.
That numbness spread as another splash of black frore hit her chin, and Winnet felt the slick, chill slide of the shadow across her skin. Her limbs still pinned from the weight of her leaded veins, she shoved her tongue against the back of her teeth, desperate to push through them, the forlorn need to cry for help stuck behind her pressed lips.
Winnet persisted. Her tongue pushed against old, weak teeth that were nevertheless clamped so tightly that it felt as though they were a colander and she were straining her tongue through them. She refused to pause, even when she felt her teeth pry just a smidge. Winnet pressed on, her tongue forcing her teeth apart; teeth that belonged to a jaw unwilling to budge. She recognised the liquid copper taste in her mouth as the top layer of her tongue was peeled off by the dull, yet tightly pressed edges of her teeth. Blood filled her mouth, seeping from her tongue. She swallowed it. Her whimpers of pain were a high-pitched thrumming in her throat as she felt her teeth cutting into the middle of her tongue. But she could feel them – her lips! – there on the tip of her implacable muscle, and she shoved again, and again. Her fury overtook her and she finally squeezed her eyes shut, the salted tears that streamed down her temples warm in comparison to that icy black sludge on her face. Winnet tore her tongue through her lips, wresting them apart, and took a breath to scream…
Her face ached.
Winnet opened her eyes to the scorching morning sun on them as it streamed through the window. At first, she wondered as to the angle from which it shone on her. She was too low and could not see that particular window from her bed by just looking to one side. Then she realised she was not on her bed.
The wooden floor of her bedroom was warm from the time she spent on it. She could feel the edges of the floorboards digging into her knee, shoulder, and hip. It hurt, but she ignored it.
She closed her eyes again and stayed quiet, turning her attention to what she could hear. All of the sounds that reached her were ones she was used to: the morning creatures, like birds and dogs and insects; the early risers and their children; the gentle auditory whorl of the wind. Nearer than that, she could hear her own breath, steady enough, all things considered, though more laboured than usual. Even nearer than that, as she focused, Winnet heard the thrumming beat of her heart against her chest, causing it to apply a faint rhythmic pressure against the floor.
It unnerved her, the sound of her own heart.
She focused on her breathing. She inhaled laboriously and managed not to recoil at the copper scent that assaulted her. It was mixed in with the dust from the unswept floor and the mould that no doubt crept beneath the boards.
Her head burst with pain when she heard the knocking on the door of the house. She used the bed frame next to her to help herself to her knees and then her feet.
The frantic knocking had become a pounding.
‘All right, all right!’ she called out. Pain exploded across her cheek and jaw when she moved them, but she soldiered through. ‘Give me a moment, I’m no spring chicken.’
The pounding stopped.
Winnet walked to her window and opened it. She stuck her head out only to come face to face with a worriedly curious Vivienne, who looked up at her from four-or-so feet in height. She had her mother’s roguish smile and her father’s kind eyes.
‘Vivienne,’ Winnet greeted her.
‘Winnet!’ Lucien’s call, from the direction of the house’s door, was full of relief. He was stomping back towards the window. ‘I saw you on the floor through the window and panicked!’ He paused, looking at her closer; there was an uneasy recognition in his eyes. ‘What were you doing there?’
Winnet bit her tongue. It was fine; it was whole. ‘I fell.’ She eyed Lucien and Vivienne and then shooed them with a hand. ‘Back to the door, like proper visitors. I’ll let you in once I’ve changed.’
She closed the window and pulled the day curtains shut.
Winnet hurried to dress in what she had prepared the night before, noting it must be much later in the day than she thought. Her brief stop in front of the mirror revealed what made Lucien look at her that way. She sported a bruise along her cheek and jaw, as if someone had given her quite the blow.
She closed her eyes and shook off the sensation.
Winnet opened her eyes again and in the reflection, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something that made her veins run cold.
The door to the cupboard was ajar and the funerary lantern sat, as if it always had, in its customary place on the wall.
Winnet didn’t mention the lantern to Lucien and Vivienne; neither did she talk about her nightmare. She made them some tea and then they all left the house for a mid-morning walk to the market.
Once outside, she immediately noticed them. Lanterns. With the Caravan and ceremony growing near, the townsfolk had begun hanging their lanterns outside their homes from hooks set up next to their doors. Most had two or three – people who had lost a parent and a child, or a child and a spouse – and some, victims of tragedy, had even more. Households with only one lantern tended to belong to people like Winnet, who had married but never had children, and who was old enough that her parents had passed too many years prior to the ceremony. The Caravan could give one final farewell to those dearly departed in recent years, but some had simply been gone too long.
Each lantern was different. Some were made of glass and clay like Geoffrey’s, while others were made of metal or ceramic, while still others of varnished wood in broad designs that would keep the flame from burning it. Some families used their funerary lanterns in the night, burned normal candles within them to remember their loved ones; others kept them as quiet reminders of loss and waited for the Caravan of Lights to bless the town with a visit.
Winnet greeted those who greeted her, trying to ignore the pitying looks when they noticed her bruised face. She should have worn a shawl, but she had been in a hurry to get Vivienne and Lucien out of the house.
Vivienne put her hand in Winnet’s and squeezed, leaving it there. Winnet smiled down at her. As they reached the market, Vivienne tugged on Winnet’s hand and started leading her astray. There was no council meeting today, so Winnet had more time to dally at the market, and so she let the little one take her. She kept her eye on Vivienne’s father, however, who seemed engrossed in some monetary interactions with some of the townsfolk. He was collecting, it seemed.
‘What is it that your father is collecting money for?’ Winnet looked down at Vivienne with the curiosity that comes with age, knowing it was not unlike the one that comes with youth.
‘Poppa Guy’s got a medical condition,’ Vivienne said, without looking up at Winnet. She was busy picking pomegranate seeds from the fruit Winnet had bought her.
Guy was Lucien’s father-in-law. But as far as Winnet could recall, the man was not in good standing with Lucien. Curious. But, priding herself in not being a busybody like so many of the women her age, Winnet pushed the matter out of mind.
It was towards dusk, long after a nice lunch made of hot pastries and yet another walk about town, that the trio found themselves near the cemetery where the ceremony would be performed in a few days. It was also closer to Lucien and Vivienne’s home than Winnet’s.
Lucien offered for them to walk her back, but Winnet declined. She sent them off, remaining on the bench that faced west towards the front of the cemetery, where the oldest of the graves were.
The sun was setting behind the graveyard and Winnet closed her eyes and leaned back against the comfortable stone bench. She remembered coming here as a child and watching the night descend over the tombstones and grave markers, wondering if the long iron bars that caged the place in were for decoration, or if they held some deeper meaning; a recondite purpose.
She heard him before she saw him. The sound of his lips smacking echoed across the night and caught Winnet’s attention, putting her on alert. She glanced up and down the street, but when the sound came again, she identified its provenance: the graveyard.
He was tall, his shadow lengthened by the way the setting sun cast it forward towards her as he slipped out from behind a tree and threaded his way between the tombstones and markers. His suit was a slim, dark cut, accentuating long legs and long arms and a long torso. He had a white shirt and a long, skinny black tie that ran from his neck to his waist, and a top hat upon his head. From a distance, he almost looked respectable.
He smacked his lips again, face shrouded by the shadows cast by the sunset behind him. Long, pale fingers wrapped over the iron fencing of the graveyard, and he pushed the metal gate open, stepping through. His feet were bare and covered in grave dirt, pale skin tipped in dark, mangled toenails.
Another step outside the cemetery and his gaunt shadow reached Winnet’s feet. She felt a chill run up her spine.
‘Madam.’
The word was voiceless; he whispered it from far away and she heard it as if his lips were at her ear. Every hair on the back of Winnet’s neck stood on end, but she remained still. She knew what he was; not just from tales and rumour, but from memory.
‘Good evening,’ she said.
He doffed his hat. ‘And to you.’
Goosebumps ran up and down Winnet’s arms as he approached, each step of those long legs accompanied by a swing of gangly arms that brought him closer. Before she knew it, he was standing in front of her bench, just off to the side. He tugged on the lapels of his jacket.
‘Might I join you?’
Up close, his voice was no less unnerving. Her tongue was dry and she kept her eyes on the cemetery, on the sunset, watching daylight creep away, taking with it the little warmth left of a spring day.
‘Alas,’ she said, dragging her courage out and pushing it to the forefront of her mind, ‘it only feels as if this bench were mine; legally, you are welcome to sit.’
His chortle was somehow more perturbing than his words. He spun slowly on his bare heels and sat next to her. He left a polite six-to-eight inches between them and lifted the foot on her side up to its opposite knee to rest his hands on his ankle. Then he took a long, deep breath.
‘I love the scent of spring nights, especially this close to the ceremony.’ He tilted his head towards her, then turned to look at her. ‘But you are not excited for it.’
Like the rest of him, his face was unpleasant. His suit and feet and hands were dirty, but his visage was ghastly: dry skin, thin lips of a colour so dark it might be black, and sunken eyes with pupils so wide there may as well have been no colour in them at all. He smiled, each of his teeth sharp enough to be unsettling, the colour of alabaster edged with an oily black rim.
‘I wouldn’t say I’m not excited,’ Winnet countered, remaining as still as she could. She squeezed one hand with the other and dug her nails into her palm.
‘Excitement,’ the ghoul said, black tongue slipping out between sharp teeth to taste the air like a serpent, ‘does not taste like this. This…this is dread.’
Winnet said nothing.
‘What did you do, Winnet?’ He put his elbow on the back of the bench and his chin in his palm; watched her with those irisless eyes.
‘You remember me?’ She felt her heart slip from a steady, nervous pounding to a panicked tattoo.
‘You were just a wisp of a thing back then,’ the ghoul said. His breath wafted between them, foetid and moist. ‘But I remember. Do you remember?’
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came. She nodded instead.
They sat there for a long time, seconds stretching into minutes. She never took her eyes off the graveyard and the dark, starry horizon; and he never took his cadaverous gaze off of her.
Just when she thought she would sit there until morning, he named his price.
Winnet lived day-to-day on the stipend she received for being on the town council. Unlike many of the other councillors, she did not have means outside of her function nor any private funds from which to draw. His price was too high.
And things such as he do not negotiate.
She shook her head and the motion dislodged the tears stuck in the corners of her eyes.
He tsked.
Moments later, he was gone.
The Caravan of Lights arrived mid-morning the day after. Winnet had not slept a wink, choosing to not go to bed at all, and was thus able to watch the procession of seven horse-drawn carriages as it rolled into town.
They were long and slim affairs with polished black wooden frames and heavy black curtains that kept the privacy of those inside. The shade they cast when the morning light pressed against them was pale and faint, as if passing through a dark glass rather than solid wood and dark curtains. Funerary lanterns hung from the corners of the top of every carriage, swinging to the rhythm of the procession’s pace. Each carriage had two horses that drew it along, black mares with shocking white manes and tails that hung straight, almost reaching the ground, held pulled down by ball bearings made of black pearls. Their hooves, smooth and shiny and white, seemed to be made of ivory.
Winnet caught the eyes of one of the mares, who looked upon her with intelligent, pale green eyes. It held her gaze, even as it pulled its carriage along, and it was all Winnet could do not to stop breathing. She tore her eyes away and pulled her curtains shut. But when she pried them open but an inch to peek through, the mare’s gaze remained, and her heart skipped a beat. She closed the curtains once more and did not open them again.
Throughout the day, the Caravan of Lights prepared at the graveyard.
Each carriage held two barefoot workers who wore three-quarter slacks and white shirts with black suspenders and black caps; and one ceremonialist, the men wearing black and white suits with slim ties and the women beautiful dark dresses made of silk and lace. All of them were possessed of a ghastly pallor. The workers strung small funerary lanterns along the top of the wrought iron fence that surrounded the cemetery, each one holding a black candle within; then they draped chains from the branches of the cemetery’s trees from which the townsfolk could hang their lanterns.
The horses were put on the opposite side of the cemetery from the entrance, with blinders that covered their entire eyes, so that none may look upon them.
One hour before dusk, the town stepped out of their homes together, took up their lanterns, and walked to the graveyard.
Winnet was the last council member to arrive.
‘Welcome to the Ceremony of Lights.’
Everyone had gathered in a crowd around the seven ceremonialists, with the council members near the center. One of the ceremonialists, a young woman with raven black hair and pale skin who wore a lace dress that barely reached her knees and no shoes at all, stepped forward to perform introductions.
Winnet remembered her from the last time the Caravan had stopped here, fifty years prior.
‘I am Varlene and I speak for all of us to say how wonderful it is to be here.’ Her nails were painted black, long and sharp, and pushed her hair back to let it flow behind her. ‘The Ceremony of Lights is a chance for you to say your last words to your loved ones that you’ve lost; for them to see you one last time before they step too far past the veil to return; a chance for closure and peace.’
As she spoke, the workers handed out black candles to the townsfolk. Each wax stick had strange, eldritch markings on the surface.
‘It begins at dusk and runs ’til dawn. We are here to thin the membrane between you and your loved ones, but we will not interfere in your affairs. Come morning, we will be gone, and with a little luck, you will all feel better for it.’ Varlene raised her arms up high and spread her fingers. ‘Now hang your lantern, light your flame, and meet your loved ones once again!’
Lanterns were lit across the entire cemetery and Winnet watched with renewed wonder as the pale blue glow from the black candles hit thin air, creating shapes out of nothing that coalesced into wispy and indistinct people. She watched Vivienne, Lucien, and his wife Anais as they stood before the ghosts of Winnet’s best friend and her husband. Marianne and Pierre were shades, then their shapes thickened, grew opaque, and finally reached out and embraced their family.
It was a scene that occurred over and over again across the graveyard: families reunited, loves reignited. Grandparents meeting grandchildren, siblings jostling one last time, lovers saying their true goodbyes.
Winnet held the black match in her hand and observed others in their joy. She wondered if she could say hello and goodbye to her old friends, sit down in placid silence, and wait for dawn without ever lighting her candle. Perhaps the rest of the town would be too wrapped in jubilee to notice one lone woman refusing to participate.
‘Oh, Winnie. You didn’t really think you could avoid this, did you?’
His voice sent a cold shiver up her spine and made her heart leap from a nervous but steady thrumming to that panicked, aching tattoo; a threat that it might burst from her chest at any moment. In truth, that would make for sweet respite.
Geoffrey’s ghost stepped up next to her, watching the others revel. He was as tall and broad-shouldered as he’d been in life, and his shape became opaque before her eyes, solidifying in the night.
Winnet turned her head to see Ortanto, Geoffrey’s friend – his sycophant – standing next to the lit lantern with a smug smile. If her gaze could kill, there would have been one more spirit in the graveyard tonight.
‘You look good, Winnie. Better than the last time I saw you.’
‘A couple of years without you have done wonders, Geoffrey.’ Winnet kept her voice steady and her eyes anywhere else. She couldn’t look at him while they spoke, she knew what that would do to her; how it would dismantle her temperance, how his oppressive gaze would drag her down.
She sensed him leaning closer to whisper in her ear.
‘I meant the other night, when I paid you a visit. Wasn’t it just like old times?’ He had no breath, but still his words felt cold against her skin and made it prickle.
‘There are things on the other side.’ Geoffrey kept his voice low, minding the audience any outburst could summon. ‘Things no one else would choose to bargain with. Darker things than the Caravan of Lights.’ He put his hand on the nape of her neck and she felt her heart thunder. Once again, her fingernails dug deep into her palms until they grew slick with blood. Still, she remained silent, throat dry and eyes closing tight.
It was a scene that had been all too familiar in this town when Geoffrey had been alive and, between those who were too distracted by their own loved ones to notice and those who willfully ignored it for their self-contrived peace of mind, no one said a word.
Winnet knew that Ortanto watched. Ortanto loved to watch.
‘I think it’s time the people of this town know who you are.’ Geoffrey said. He raised the volume of his voice: ‘Hear, hear! If I could have your attention, please!’
One by one, each family and couple, living and dead, turned to look at Geoffrey and Winnet Pierce.
‘Far be it from me to interrupt this august celebration with bad news.’ Geoffrey said, the irony of his words not lost on him, judging by the audible smirk in his voice. ‘But I would be remiss if I did not inform you of a grave injustice.’
Everyone remained quiet. In the fringes of the celebration, the ceremonialists and workers of the Caravan of Lights watched on.
Winnet felt Geoffrey’s grip on her neck tighten. It was a pain familiar in the worst of ways; it robbed her of her will, affixing her feet to the soil of the graveyard.
‘You see, I died here, in this town, only a few short years ago, and while I don’t know the details of the investigation into my demise, I know this: I did not die a natural death. I was not killed in combat. I did not perish on a hunt. No.’ Geoffrey said, those cold, ghastly fingers digging into Winnet’s neck, ‘I was poisoned…by my wife.’
All eyes turned to Winnet as a murmur crawled across the cemetery from person to person, living and dead, at this revelation. She heard a single, audible gasp from behind her. Ortanto, the mewling cretin.
‘She may yet deny it.’ Geoffrey turned to Winnet, leaning down and all but shaking her by the neck. ‘Do you deny it, wife?’
Winnet closed her eyes. Her tears felt warm against her skin, flushed as it was with the frost of Geoffrey’s touch. She remained silent, her stomach coiled and twisted in bilious knots.
‘Her silence, I think, speaks for itself.’ Geoffrey snarled, looking back towards the assembled townsfolk. ‘I, the chair of this town’s council, was murdered by my wife, who then cozened a seat on that very council via the law of inheritance.’ His fury was as cold as his corpse; but it always had been, even when he lived.
‘What will you do about this, my townsmen?’
Winnet kept her eyes shut tight. The silence of the graveyard was deafening.
‘Nothing.’ Lucien’s voice snapped her eyes open, the tears blurring his shape as he stepped out from the crowd, followed by Anais, Marianne, and Pierre.
‘Nothing?’ Geoffrey’s incredulity drained the fury from his voice.
‘We will do nothing.’ Lucien repeated, squeezing his wife’s hand. In the other, he held a leather purse.
‘She murdered me, boy!’ Geoffrey’s voice was thunder across the tombstones and grave markers. Winnet’s body, still held by the vicious grip of her late husband, shook as she bit back a whimper, her blood-stained hands rising to grip at his ghostly wrist and fingers in an attempt to wrest herself free.
‘We know.’ Lucien was calm, though his eyes darted to Winnet, then back to Geoffrey. ‘We’ve always known.’
‘Wha—?’ Geoffrey’s voice rose, but Lucien cut him off again.
‘I remember spending time at your house. Winnet cared for me while my mother worked. You thought I’d be too young to remember that you beat her, humiliated her. You didn’t think anyone noticed or cared. But we all knew, Geoffrey. We just didn’t think we could stop it. Then Winnet put something in your food and you keeled over and the entire town could suddenly breathe. Because we hated you and Winnet did what we couldn’t.’ Lucien said. ‘She put us all out of your misery.’
‘She didn’t kill me to help this town, she killed me for herself.’ Geoffrey barked, even as Winnet dug her nails deeper into his spectral skin.
‘We don’t care, Geoffrey.’ Lucien told him, and the murmur that rippled through the cemetery now was one of agreement.
‘I care.’ Ortanto called out, stomping forward with fury. ‘How dare you?’
‘Do be quiet, Ortanto,’ Marianne said. ‘If we need your opinion, it will be drafted for you.’
Lucien stepped forward again, releasing his wife’s hand and speaking over Ortanto’s fuming whimpers. ‘Winnet may have done what she did for herself, but she did the entire town a favour, Geoffrey. That is why we have bought her a gift.’ He lifted the purse and shook it, jangling the contents within. He weighed it in one hand, and then threw it, past Winnet and Geoffrey, into the dark behind a tree.
She heard the purse hit the dirt and a raspy chuckle crawled across her skin.
‘Payment in full,’ Lucien told the ghoul, who stepped up next to Winnet on her other side, and gave her a decrepit wink with one of those black eyes.
‘What?’ Geoffrey’s grip grew limp at the sight of the ghoul.
‘There are dark things to bargain with on this side, too, Geoffrey,’ Lucien said.
Winnet didn’t move.
‘What are you doing?’ Geoffrey asked, as the ghoul disappeared behind Winnet again and the sound of a scuffle began. But it was not a fight. Geoffrey had no means to put one up.
Everyone in front of Winnet turned away from the sight; they looked sickened by what they saw and moved away to continue their own celebration.
Behind her, the ghoul worked and Winnet listened.
She listened to the sound of phantom flesh being rent, spectral bones broken, and the hideous lapping of phantasmal ichor as it was drunk from ghostly veins. How the ghoul plucked out her husband’s eyes and how they squelched between those alabaster teeth. She heard the sound of blackened lips pulling eerie marrow from long gone bones, and the gurgling of her late husband not just dying again, but being consumed, piece by sopping piece, until the only thing left was a whimper from a mouth and tongue without a body to hold them. And then those, too, were gone with a grisly slurp and gulp.
Winnet held her breath for a long time after. She felt her pulse roaring in her temples, realised her nails had gone back to driving themselves into her much mistreated palms. She stood still as silence spread about the place. Real silence, the kind that falls slow and gentle over an area and it takes some time to be noticed because it is an absence, not a presence.
Her fingers relaxed, from pinky to thumb, one at a time. She let the breath go, then inhaled deeply again, releasing it in a heavy sigh. Her shoulders sagged and she closed her eyes for a moment.
Then she surprised herself by turning around.
At the edge of the graveyard was the ghoul. He gave her a sated smile and plucked the purse from the ground. He clipped it to his belt, then doffed his hat to her.
Winnet watched him turn and walk away. His gangly arms swayed to the time of his steps; a gait so long she almost missed the moment he stepped into a shadow and vanished, swallowed by the tenebrous earth of the graveyard.
Nothing remained of her husband. His bones were buried here, but now they were an anchor to nothing; his essence devoured by the ghoul and its uncanny appetite.
Winnet was quiet in the silence. She weighed the finality of the night’s events and then placed them like a divisory line between what had been and what would be, the way she had Geoffrey’s death. Before, she had been his wife; after, his widow. Now, she would be Winnet.
Just Winnet.
She looked up and saw the moon was further than she expected. The magic of the lanterns would last only the night. She looked towards the celebration, though something held her back, the feeling that she’d forgotten something. She smiled as it came to mind.
Winnet walked to the lantern and blew it out. ∎
Manu Zolezzi is a writer of speculative and horror fiction from (and currently living in) Buenos Aires, Argentina. He splits his professional time between a day job and the narrative design and scriptwriting for an up-and-coming video game, and his free time is spent running and playing RPGs, reading, and writing. He lives with his two cats, the large-and-in-charge Ulthar and Miskatonic the chaos goblin.
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