My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,

Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,

And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

-G.K. Chesterton, "The Rolling English Road"

Disclaimer: don't own.

Present Day

"Hello, my love," said Erwin Sikowitz as he knelt by the grass-covered grave. "I've brought you something."

It had been a hard task assembling a bouquet to his liking. Every flower in the florists' shops had long since withered away, so instead he had roamed the green spaces of the city – Wormwood Scrubs, Regents' Park – and plucked each blossom by hand. It took hours; his hands were grimy and calloused, with dirt under the fingernails, his feet were sore and his back ached bitterly from the constant stooping. But it was worth it. For Vanessa, anything was worth it.

He was relieved to see that her headstone was still upright. The slippery clay that ran beneath the topsoil here was prone to cause grave markers to slip and totter over the years; but Vanessa's stood straight as an arrow in the noonday sun, proud and unvanquished by time, just like Vanessa herself when she came to him in his dreams.

"Sleep well." He kissed the cool granite and, shutting his eyes tightly, traced the deep-cut letters of the headstone with his fingers:

Vanessa Anne Townsend Sikowitz

Born May 1, 1977

Died September 19, 1996

Those Who Are Loved Are Never Lost

He still couldn't believe she had said yes to his proposal. Everything about it was madness. He was a twenty-year-old unwashed bohemian-in-training, struggling to make ends meet with community theater productions and occasional spots in used-car commercials; she was nineteen, finishing up her first year of college – brilliant, beautiful, the favorite scion of one of the wealthiest families in southern California. She was better than he in every way – a fact that her father, who hated Erwin with a burning intensity, never ceased to point out to him.

And she loved him. To this day, every time that thought occurred to him, he had to fight the urge to run shouting through the streets: She loved me! Me! Can you believe it?

London was the ideal honeymoon spot. He dreamed of walking in the footsteps of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Dryden, George Bernard Shaw; she, the art history major, was never more content than when she set foot inside a museum. Her father refused to pay for the trip, so she sold her jewelry collection; Erwin still remembered vividly how the old man's neck veins had begun to throb visibly when she told him the news.

London: the world's most wonderful city. Full of color and life, delights and dreams. And yet, not exempt from the blights that infected cities all over the world. Noise. Pollution. Petty crime.

And drunk drivers…

It wasn't fair.

He pulled a grubby sandwich from his inside coat pocket and sat down to eat, leaning against the off-kilter gravestone of one Hezekiah Stern (March 10, 1804 – November 2, 1878, Husband, Father, and Pillar of Moral Rectitude). This was one of the things he most loved about Kensal Green Cemetery: the chaotic hodgepodge of burials past and present, where a soy futures trader who died last month and an aristocratic cavalryman who fell in the siege of Sebastopol could lie cheek-by-jowl in perfect contentment. It was a perfect echo of the wildly mismatched, but unbreakable, union he and Vanessa had forged.

The sandwich having been wolfed down (he had only just now realized how hungry he actually was), he stabbed a straw into a small box of coconut juice and sipped it thoughtfully. No one but he knew that he actually disliked the taste of coconut.

It had been her favorite, though.

He wondered idly whether the kids had bought his rather ridiculous cover story about searching for a "coconut depot". Probably they had. After all, to them he was just eccentric Sikowitz, flitting through life like a drunken butterfly. He never took anything seriously. And emotional attachments? What a ridiculous thought. No one at Hollywood Arts even knew that he had once been married.

Part of him regretted lying to them. But he couldn't have borne it if anyone had followed him here. Soon enough he would return to his duties as leader – he had sworn to himself that he would keep the group together and safe, no matter what it took – but he had needed to do this alone.

Maybe, when he died, he would ask them to bury him here.

A small pile of brownish-orange leaves beneath a nearby oak suddenly began to stir. As if caught in an eddy, the leaves whirled, one by one, up into the air, and were lost from sight.

But there's no wind, he thought.

A smell assailed his nostrils – acrid and fierce. Then a crackling noise, like heavy boots treading on tinfoil, arose where the leaves had just been swept away.

He rose slowly, letting the juice box slip from his hand into the grass. "Is somebody there?"

Run, Erwin Sikowitz. Run for your life.

"Who said that?"

Run, you fool.

"Show yourself, dammit!"

Don't question – obey.

"I don't like taking orders from invisible voices, and I'm not leaving my wife!"

A sigh: Too late.

An indistinct shape appeared before him – tall and green, ringed with purple lightning. Keeping his eyes on it, he edged toward the gate.

Another shape materialized, blocking his exit.

He took off running blindly, and promptly tripped over a fallen headstone. Soft dirt poured into his nostrils and mouth as he struck the ground heavily, face first.

Hacking and coughing, he raised himself up and wiped his stinging eyes. There was a third shape now. They surrounded him, each only a yard away, forming an equilateral triangle. A tendril of light began to unfurl from each.

I'll see you soon, Vanessa.

Three snaps at once; three strikes at once; and what had been Erwin Sikowitz became a cloud of disjoined atoms, swallowed up by emptiness.

The obelisks had no mouths, nor vocal cords; but they could communicate perfectly well, by exchanging information packets in the form of light waves. They flashed one word to their controller: Done.

And it flashed back:

Good.

One down.

Eight to go.