Page 109 of Ever After

Branok smirks at me and carries on ahead of us. His body gleams with a faint light as if he’s trapped moonbeams on his skin. “Yes, it is true,” he calls back. “The veil between the living and the dead is most thin in the hours between twelve and three. It is when ghosts are most energised. I feel it like energy pulsing through my bones.” He looks back and winks at us. “If I had any, of course.”

“What a comedian,” I say sourly. “I still don’t know why we couldn’t have taken the road,” I mutter, taking Levi’s hand as he helps me over the rock-strewn path—evidence of coastal erosion that I’m trying really hard not to think about at the moment.

“Too obvious,” Branok calls. “And the church gates are now locked.” He tuts. “What a world you live in where even the dead are not safe.”

“You weren’t that safe in yours,” I remind him, but he ignores me.

“The church is perched on the headland with naught but rocks and the sea behind it. The cliff path is the only way to the graveyard apart from the main entrance, and the path has eroded over time. The church obviously thinks the graveyard is safe from intruders because of this, and they have only erected a small fence around it. In my day this was a path wide enough to fit a horse and cart through.”

“You had a pack pony called Daisy, didn’t you?” Levi asks. He’s not at all breathless unlike myself. I’m currently wheezing like I’ve smoked forty packs a day for seventy years. “Xander mentioned her in his diary.”

Branok’s mouth has a tender curve to it. “Aye. He always did like Daisy. She was a useful creature. Gentle as the morning but a wee bit contrary with the customs men.”

“In what way?” my husband asks. Only Levi would relish a history lesson in the face of falling to our deaths.

“Smugglers’ horses were trained to do the opposite for commands. So, if I were ever caught by the customs men, I would say woah to Daisy, and she would take off like a bat out of hell.”

I laugh and then grunt as I trip on something and fall flat on my face.

“Are you alright?” Levi asks, helping me up. He cups my face in his hands trying to see if I’m hurt, which is fairly useless as the moon is behind the clouds, and it’s pitch black on the path.

“Fine,” I say, dusting myself down. “It would be rather helpful if you could tell us when a bit of the cliff path is crumbling,” I snap at Branok. “Just in case we end up joining you in the afterlife.”

It seems to take forever to reach the graveyard, but eventually, we rock up by a low fence that’s just as Branok described.

“We’re taking the road back,” I tell Levi. “These signs are giving me the heebie-jeebies.”

The signs I’m referring to are dotted all along the path, warning travellers not to take the path, as it’s treacherous.

“I like the skull and crossbones on them. Very dramatic,” Levi observes.

I snort and look at the fence. “So?”

Levi sighs. “Come on, then.”

I put my foot on a rail, testing it, and then scramble over, dropping down onto soft mossy earth. The moon chooses that moment to emerge and illuminates a section of the graveyard which is obviously old. The stones are cracked and have moss growing over them. Some are leaning and the whole effect is rather horribly like a mouth with broken teeth. To make it worse, a faint mist hovers over the ground.

“Shit, this is creepy,” I say as Levi drops down next to me.

“Ugh,” he says, which seems to sum it up. He looks around. “Can you sense any trouble?”

I take a deep breath and send out my senses. “Not at the moment,” I say after a few moments. “There’s just a low noise.” When he raises his eyebrows, I elaborate. “It’s a low muttering, like when you hear people talking in another room, but you can’t make out the words. Except in this case, it’s dead people.”

“Are you going to be alright?” he asks in immediate concern, and I forget where we are and hug him, burying my face in his neck and inhaling the scent of woodsy cologne and warm skin there. It’s like a comfort blanket to me.

“I’ll be fine,” I lie.

I’d got stupidly excited about grave digging, but it doesn’t feel quite so entertaining now with the menace that drifts around me like mist. It’s a feeling of low-key threat—of being in this place that doesn’t belong to the living and where the dead don’t welcome visitors. It rubs down my skin the wrong way and makes me feel on edge.

The moon passes behind clouds again, and I pat my pocket where I stashed the tubes of salt, feeling their comforting weight. When I look up, Levi is watching me. “It’ll be okay,” I immediately say, although I don’t know whether I’m reassuring Levi, myself, or maybe no one.

He studies me for another few seconds, and then obviously decides to go along with me. “Okay. I looked up online where the magistrate was buried. Luckily, there was information because he was fairly famous in his time. They called him the Hanging Judge.”

“That’d be right,” Branok says sourly. He’s standing on the other side of the fence near us. “He’d hang you if the wind was in the wrong direction, or his eggs were cooked wrong at breakfast. He had that black cap on his head so much, it wore away what little hair he had. Odious old windbag.”

“Anyway,” Levi continues. “His gravesite is known. It’s on the south side with a large statue of a hand holding the scales of justice.”

“Fancy,” I say, winking at Branok. “You could be buried under the symbol of law and order. How richly ironic life can be.” I sound the words out with relish, and he scowls at me.