2. The gravedigger

Snow caked the graveyard. The sky, silent as a crowd, and him, walking among the tombstones, wet clothes clutching painfully around him.

Breezes swayed him, blowing into the moist fabric, the glossy black hair, and he shivered, coughing, but he kept on walking.

His teeth chattered and he heard a voice. And he realized all too late that it was him that spoke.

"I will…"

Will what?

"I…"

You?

And…?

He coughed again, harder, hoarser, and he bent against his own arm. The snow made noise as he trampled through it.

"Hello?"

Peter Lake froze. With his alertness, all sound died, and he felt embarrassed for it.

He waited. Became one more dark, silent pillar in a field of death.

"Don't you scare me now, who's there?"

Movement through stillness, a sliding shadow among the stones. Two eyes, vacant as a cloudy sky against a dark, round face.

"You're not a ghost, are you?" A dry chuckle. "Funny how the dead still trample from time to time. I can hear you. Even when you can't speak."

"I can speak," Peter said quietly.

"Well then. Not dead, it seems."

Teeth, crooked and greyed by time. Shaky limbs. A shovel.

"Are you looking for someone?"

A question.

Unquestionable. Irrefutable stuff.

O Come…

Come who?

When he looked around the vision that received him was as blurred and unfocused as this poor man's likely was. A swivel of greys, lilacs, and blues. A touch of silver rimming the frost-glossed stone. Names washed down by night and dizziness.

It was so cold out here, and his garments were wet.

"Hm? Well?"

"I…"

Breathing, in, out. A quiet, heavy tune, yet no movement in his chest.

"I don't know."

"Speak up, will ya!"

"I don't, heh…"

Chuckling was so alien to him. There was no joy to the motion, only a deranged, feverish amusement.

For what? For whom?

He echoed himself. "I don't know."

The old man stepped forward.

"Are you sure you're not dead?"

A new feeling. A flash of exasperation.

"I'd appreciate it if you stopped asking questions, I told you I don't know."

The rise of an old, rusty shovel. A soft push into white fabric, worn metal coarsely grazing the edges of a soundless chest.

Peter felt his body reacting to the shove, swaying back ever so slightly. He was nowhere and everywhere and his feet were heavy with water and doubt.

"Mhm." The gravedigger frowned. "Well aren't you strange."

That was obvious.

"A'ight. This next one, you can answer."

"Try me," Peter muttered.

"Can you hear your heart?"

A harder shove, though his body didn't budge this time.

For it was no shovel that struck or budged. But memory. Color.

A second-brief deluge of blue and magenta. A pair of bare feet, pooled in snow. Two eyes. Two hands. And a question. And an answer, gone too swiftly.

When the fever comes…

Who? Who was speaking? Who spoke now?

Peter Lake did. "No."

One question answered.

The gravedigger scratched his chin, whistling.

"You've touched death. There's the grey at your fingertips. The darkness grazin' your nails. I see hands like those every day. Eyes, as vacant and wild as yours… I understand, I think. I've touched it too. Many times. It shakes you to the bone, but it washes down eventually. When you work in my line, there's but one choice to take in the matter. I'll touch it again. And soon, it'll wrap around me, and I'll not return to tell any tales."

Peter Lake stared at him, breathing thickly. The gravedigger's eyes caught the dim moonlight, curiosity spiked with his bewilderment.

"What's your name, do you know that?"

Peter didn't answer this time, he was tired of hearing the same words. He shook his head in somber silence.

"A'right. Did you die here?"

"Where is here?"

"Calvary Cemetery. Queens. New York City… America."

"Ha…"

"Though you don't sound American."

The world, maps. Lines. Lists of forgotten places…

The scent of the city was familiar. The sight, the stones.

He'd lived here. He'd died here.

"What is now, too?" he asked.

"January 4th, 1917. Happy New Year."

Happy New Year.

Something had happened on New Year's. Something horrible…

But what?

What…

"Your clothes are wet. A drown victim, huh."

"I came from the river," Peter murmured.

"If the water didn't kill you then, it sure will now, you'll freeze over if you stay still… Unless the cold is nothing to you now. Are you cold?"

I'm not cold, I'm not uncom-

Slipping, the sound came and went and left him. Like chatting folks walking past, speaking a familiar name, with a familiar voice. Feet steadfast, not once stopping.

And Peter Lake did feel like one of these stones of death. A rock in a sea-like crowd of phantoms, memories draping and withdrawing like a tide. Grazing him momentarily, then slippering away.

Frustration rose with this analysis of his position. Winter seemed to whistle, invigorated in its strides.

Peter Lake turned to face the old man, frowning. "You take a little too much pleasure in this interrogation, do you?"

An unabashed, crooked grin, faded by the molten colors of the night. "Ah, here, don't undermine my company, little ghost. You'll miss my chatting. Not a lot of people are open to speak with the dead."

"I'm not dead."

"You're not alive."

I'm not alive…

Another jolt. Different, gentler, crueler.

As if a warm, inviting hand had suddenly plastered itself to his chest. A collision of heat and cold. He coughed again, a violent interruption to a brief glimpse into a lost and pleasant memory.

Not… really…

"Stop," Peter groaned, whimpering. "Please stop."

Stop who?

An old gravedigger? The voiceless cold?

"Please…"

"A'right, have it your way." The gravedigger slung the shovel atop his shoulder with a dry sigh of boredom. "I'm past my bedtime anyhow. Keep on moaning on your own."

And then he was going, too. A wave, swollen back into the sea.

And Peter Lake became desperate. "Wait, wait, no, y-! You say you've touched death, too. How long will I wait?"

"Till you're alive again?" the man cackled over his shoulder, walking, snow creaking around him. "Well. That's up to you! It's got nothin' to do with me."

"How long did it take you?"

"I'm a gravedigger. What do you think?"

"That doesn't help me, goddamn it, answer me!"

The old man seemed to soften for a second. His worn gaze lifted to the stars. Moonlight delineated the hideous corners of the shovel, the jagged edges. It had been used for a very long time. Peter Lake felt captivated by this detail, though the reason escaped him like everything else did.

"What I mean is, I touch death every day. I never lost any memories, but I lost my life long ago, and I'm never gettin' it back. So I'm not waiting, see… Huh. I'm not waiting. Not for life, anyways."

The gravedigger made a face and nodded to himself. He grinned, flashing his uneven teeth to the sky. To Peter.

"Hey, it was nice chatting with you, after all. Pity we won't get another chance."

"So I should just accept this?" Peter muttered, undeterred. He wouldn't let the topic go. "That's all you have to say to me?"

"I say, you should quit your whining and head somewhere warm and take off those wet clothes," the gravedigger sneered, his smile dropping. "If you're not already dead, then get a move on, or you'll die a second time and come back even more clueless!"

Peter Lake moved, tried to follow, but the snow had thickened around his legs in a cold, horrible embrace.

"Don't leave me here!"

But the gravedigger had left already, words ominously bleeding into the darkness, dimming down, becoming silence.

Peter Lake would never see him again. With every new step he cursed down at the cold and screamed up at the sky. Stones of nameless death quietly observing him as he carved his path through the snow.

Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.

I don't have a lot to say tonight, it's very late and I wanted to give you this chapter before I went to bed. So here you have it. I may add more to the note tomorrow :3 Here's a quick hug, as always, thank you for being here! *hug*