Fire only chars.
Water cannot drown.
Air cannot strip skin.
Earth can only claim his bones,
Putting him deep into the earth where the dead belong
The tapping on the window didn't bother Skulduggery. October brought only dark nights twisted by the wind. It brought naked trees and metal like rain. It brought skies perpetually veiled in clouds, mourning for the summer that had passed. It brought the damp and decaying leaves. October was a month for the dead. The tapping began again, the wind hammering the branch against his window with a furious intensity, like it too wanted to be inside where it was warm and dry. Each tap echoed through the empty room, making water drop from the ceiling and the foundations shake. The wind was wrong to want to be in here. Nothing was warm and dry.
Skulduggery tried to sleep again. The twig rattled once more against the dirty window. He lept up, possessed by an irrational rage and made to fling the window open, but stopped. Standing just outside, with its fingers on the windowsill, stood a skeleton. The white bones stood out against the darkness of the surrounding fields. Despite being of nature, it defied it too, simply by existing. The very fact that it stood there seemed to displease the wind and it shrieked louder than ever. The dead should be in the ground; the whole of creation knew, understood and enforced that. Skulduggery punched the window and the glass shattered into uncountable pieces. The wind howled with delight and tore round the room, stripping the walls with the little pieces of glass. They picked against Skulduggery's bones and he looked up out into the October fields. He was quite sure he was never going to become accustomed to seeing his reflection without wanting it to disappear. The wind howled in agreement.