Disclaimer: Fox logos, the LXG trademarks and characters do not belong to me. I make no profit from this venture, the folklore/ghosts stems from Black Hart Storytellers and Meercat Tours.
Author's Notes: So here we are folks, the first chapter. Thanks go to my reviewers. I must apologise for the lateness, it's that time of year here in England when A-levels rear their ugly heads, deciding which university you get into, so there is much panicking and revision! Once again, let me know if you want to read more, or if I should give this a higher rating- I'm not sure what's what, but I'd say this is about a 12A in England.
Shards
Chapter One: He ruin'd me,
He burned. Literally.
His lungs hurt with a deep-down insistent ache and each time he swallowed his throat rasped, tightening like steel coils.
His skin dripped with sweat but he was bone dry on the inside.
The dryness inside was slowly replaced with the feeling of his gut bubbling, a boiling that spread to the fat under his skin.
His skin tightened, his skin split slowly, his skin began to char.
He tried to open his eyes and mouth to clear the oppressive heat, but they seared.
He tried to move but each motion brought an agony and dizziness.
He lunged for a way out
And fell out of bed.
Some looked, others didn't. No-one stopped him. Skinner; his muscles tightening to warm the deep marrow-ache from the cold, cloying air of Edinburgh, walked up the Royal Mile; a gentleman thief whose little hairs brushed sightlessly against the sleeve of his coat, feeling their way through the cold dark just as he did each time he woke up shaking with sweat, fearing he had burned away.
A dredge to move yourself through the soupy darkness, light the oil lamp and check that the fat under your skin hasn't boiled. Wash away the sweat, claw on your clothes and then a walk to the breakfast room; muscles tight with last night's fear to find you are alone. The team, taunt and secretive with the oyster's knowledge of what is inside the Nautilus. He needed to go out into the cold where there was no palpable tension and restriction except that which coated his muscles now. Half way up the hill and he was exhausted. His lungs burned.
Hislungshurtwithadeepdowninsistentacheandeachtimeheswallowedhisthroatraspedt ighteninglikesteelcoils
It's cold. HisSkin But he's warm. DrippedWith Skinner takes a detour, SweatBut Niddry Street HeWas, down into the cold, BoneDry slough through the dung in Cowgate, OnThe along and up to Greyfriars TheInside:
A little church, a lot of tombs black with age.
He looks to the right, down the slope of the hill.
Wilhelmina Harker perched in front of the Grim Reaper.
She looks directly at him, "It is so peaceful here-" She begins,
"Makes a welcome change." He finishes.
There is a pause where nothing happens, no birdsong, no wind, no movement. Between them the air is coloured with the smoke of burning. The cloying scent of flesh, faeces and distrust. Skinner breaks it by crunching down the incline towards her, a fast monologue delivered to the air above her head: "I'm feeling cooped up; we're all so secretive lately, and then-" He crushes bone under his foot and winces, "-there's those wiccos-"
"Wiccans" she corrects.
"Wiccans, who give me if not the heebie jeebies then a definite feeling of unease." He finishes and frowns at her. "You?"
She smiles, looks off towards a little gate just up the hill from where they sit, where the priest is burning old debris. "A definite feeling of unease. And bad dreams?"
The shift is infinitesimal. "I just- don't trust what I can't see-"
She smiles broadly, a sharp grin. "Previous experience led you to this conclusion?" He frowns. A cloud of smoke making his white face oblique. "I'm sorry, please continue."
"I dream of being burnt. Alive. And it's not previous experience leading me to this conclusion-"
"Touché."
"-It's a slow roasting. Not a blast of flame, a slow burn."
"Prolonging the agony?"
His face twists the greasepaint. "What do you think?"
"Then it's perfectly explicable-"
"Really?"
"-you are not dealing-"
"Oh don't patronise me-"
"-with the experience-"
"I'm not dealing? Well of course I'm not f-"
"-of being so close to dying as well as-"
"-ucking dealing with it, I'm so busy dealing with you-"
"-you think you are-"
"-and your secrecy and screams in the night!"
"-What?"
He looks nervous all of a sudden. "I hear you, every night, and if it's not you it sounds like Jekyll-"
"Screaming?" Mina looks inscrutable for a moment. "I do not scream-"
He looks completely exhausted, alone and cold. The smoke is drifting past them.
"-But, there are dreams-"
"Ever since they came on board? Their packages, bet you there's something dangerous there, we're fools to agree to help them Mina-"
"Mirrors." She states, through a clear patch in the air. "All those packages contained were mirrors."
He looks away and back again. "And your dreams- they're not worth worrying about?"
"The dream. Singular. I am here, at night. On top of that mausoleum-" she points to a small tomb, black with age, the roof a dome with an egg on top. "-and the church is gone, so I have a clear view down the hill. And at the base, the very base is a figure, with a spindly silhouette, dancing; a terrible clown dance, a puppet's ballet- all arms and legs and crooked pirouettes.
"As part of the dance it jumps- impossibly large distances, but each growing smaller and smaller as if the effort is becoming too taxing, landing awkwardly time after time as it moves up the hill towards me. Its clothing is in tatters- a long dark coat shredded so it looks like a big black bird; and it takes a final leap landing directly below me.
"It continues to dance, hopping and panting, and although I'm afraid of this tapping, whispering thing I don't want to be left alone, I don't want to let that figure pass me, so I start to dance moving in the same way- a dance of friendship hopping and skipping and waving, but I see it begin to tense and I know it's going to jump again, so I dance harder, frantically moving until it whirls around, it's eyes bulging and spittle spraying from it's mouth.
"It's a corpse and it screams to me 'Not dancing! Trying to stay alive!' And with that it takes its final leap, fighting every inch of the way and vanishes through those gates."
She looks at the gates, wide open and bright in the smoky sunlight. Skinner's face darting from the gates to the mausoleum to Mina and all around the church yard, eyes inscrutable behind his glasses.
"Fighting all the way?" He asks finally.
"All the way up the graveyard." She responds frowning as the fire at the gates flares briefly.
On the grass behind Mina a blackbird hops, pecking at the ground for worms.
"I need a drink." Skinner finally states.
Two bottles of whisky later and he was beginning to regret the "when in Rome..."
Standing in the freezing cold, pissing against a wall at eleven o'clock while shattered glass crunched underfoot and Mina waited round the corner, Skinner braced himself with one hand and squinted as the world around him span. Beneath him the glass bubbled blackly and he groaned, staggering away, fastening him trousers as he lolled around the corner, back onto the street.
The glass continued to simmer after he left; alive, moving blackly across the cobbles.
TBC...