The Fires We Burn Against The Dark

DEAR JULIAN STOP YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE HAS BEEN DESECRATED STOP PLEASE RETURN HOME AT ONCE STOP MOTHER STOP

*

From far away it looks almost beautiful. Julian West sits astride his horse, looking down at the city of Wisborg, knowing what he sees now is a lie. A lure. Something horrid only tinted beautiful by its soft coating of snow. The snow, he knows, covers the rotten truth. It’s the snow and the distance that makes everything so quiet. So still. Seem so dead. Like upon entering the city he’ll be its only living inhabitant. Maybe, in a way, he will be. As one of the only dark-skinned inhabitants of the city, he was just as essentially alone.

The winter sun has long ago set, and the full moon hangs low over Wisborg and its dark, skyward-reaching towers. From here, Julian can’t see, but can certainly remember, the gargoyle-topped roofs that used to so frighten him as a child, his father telling him to act like a man if he ever cowered or even shivered at the sight of them. Scattered about the city proper and the surrounding villages, like stars fallen from the sky, there are firelights. Shadows stretch and yawn from them, and Julian wonders who dares to be out at night in a place like this.

There’s Lake Hastur to the west, frozen, the broken bones of the fishing hamlet strewn against its shore. Castle Cassilda to the northeast, the decrepit remains of a once-royal family. In the center of the city, among the very few buildings lit by gaslights, sits the Church of the Pyramidia. It is the biggest building in the city, bearing the unmistakable flag of the Church; black with a single red triangle on it, its tip pointing heavenward.

Julian can’t see it from the hillside, lost as it is within the morass of the city, but he knows it is there. The West House. It presence grinds at him. Hot, like an infection. Like a tumor lurking below the skin. A leering voice in his head. A rot in his soul.

Julian thought about burning the telegram when he received it. Thought about turning away and forgetting such a thing had ever happened to him, that he had ever lived in such a place. But he’d forgotten the power, the control, that this place has over the people from it.

A cold fist clenches around his heart, and he’s pulled towards the city.

*

The city rises up to meet him, and Julian can’t help but imagine it as a giant set of jaws. As a compound fracture. Something decrepit and un-dead rising from a grave when it should just, for the love of the gods, stay in the ground. A thousand horrid, ugly things.

He approaches Wisborg from the south, riding through a small outlying village, guiding his horse along the snow-covered paved road. There are some small stone outbuildings and the occasional chimney, but otherwise the structures are mostly wood.

Against the dark and the cold, there are fires everywhere. Seeing the damage done to the houses, the marks against the walls that may be from blade or claw, he cannot tell, Julian wonders if the fires are to keep those things in the dark he always heard tale about at bay. And then a more frightening thought; what if the houses themselves were cannibalized to keep the fires going? What if there’s nothing out there in the dark? Nothing except the snow, the cold.

As his horse slowly trots down the street, Julian catches a quick glimpse of blood in the snow. A single splatter of red. No trail. No spray. Either way, it doesn’t answer his question.

Even from up close, it’s difficult to tell the city and the outlying hinterlands are inhabited at all. There are people, Julian just has to look for them. He doesn’t turn his head, only his eyes, and sees faces huddled together against the cold, behind doorframes and the cracked glass of windows. Watching him. The men hold rudimentary weapons close but not up. Ready for a fight, but not looking for one. Why would someone come here? those faces wonder. Out of all the places in the world, why here? Why Wisborg?

If I didn’t have to be here, Julian thinks to himself, I wouldn’t. I would be away from here. I would be at peace. And he was. He had been. Miles away. One hand among many others on a farm on the other side of the mountains. A simple life. He hadn’t been happy, per se, but he hadn’t been miserable. So why is he back here?

A large wall surrounds the city, fallen into disrepair in places, outright broken in others. It separates the hinterland from the city proper, thick, iron gates closed against transition.

A man in plate armor steps out of a small guard alcove in the wall, approaches Julian, a lowered blunderbuss in his right hand and a torch held high in his left.

“Who goes there?” An obvious curiosity sweeps over the guard’s face when he sees Julian’s skin. Julian knows they don’t get many people like him around here. They never have. Julian is an oddity to this man. Has always been.

When Julian addresses the guard, he makes sure his hands are in plain view. At this range, the blunderbuss would cut him into so many pieces they may as well not bother burying him. It would certainly be a faster death than to be left out in the cold. Julian says his name only, “Julian West,” pitching his voice lower, deeper, than it normally is. He can hear Courtaud’s deep and grizzled voice in his head, the chiding over the years; This is what a man sounds like. One of the many ways Courtaud tried to ensure he was a man.

“Business?” the guard asks.

“My father is dead. Courtaud West.”

His own name did little to move the guard, but the name of Courtaud West clearly lights a fire inside him. Like everyone else, he’s heard the name of the Butcher of Beacon Hill. Of course, that wasn’t what Courtaud called himself. But it’s nevertheless a title he relished. And by the way the guard’s eyes suddenly widen, inspect Julian closer, he must recall the name of Julian West as well.

The bastard son, Julian thinks. Say it.

But if the guard truly recalls Julian’s bastard heritage he does not say it aloud. He doesn’t vocalize the tale of Courtaud West, one of the most powerful figures in the Church, the man who went years with no sons, only to return home with a dark-skinned one after a years-long tour spreading the Church’s good word to far-off lands. It was one of those tales everyone knew even though no one ever seemed to actually tell it.

“Oh,” the guard says instead, and Julian can see the confusion on his face, the man torn between how he should react to this stranger; show respect to a relative of Courtaud West, or show the same stiffness to someone of Julian’s complexion he always had. The guard decides to do the bare minimum, simply steps aside without another word, signaling to someone on the other side of the gate. It raises. Julian passes through.

Beyond the wall there is only stone construction, and in comparison to the rickety buildings of the village, these seem impenetrable. Julian can see lights in the windows, shapes moving safely inside. Though he can’t see it at this moment, he knows exactly where the West House is, hidden behind blocks and blocks of buildings, hundreds of feet of stone and mortar, and yet he can still feel its eyes on him, like some lecherous vermin.

“Fuck you,” Julian mutters, but a cold wind slides down his throat, steals his breath, wrings the words right out of the air.

Only one place is open, which is good, because it’s the only place he actually wants to be. He hitches his horse into a covered stable in an alley behind a small pub. Goes inside. There is life, but only a little. And what life there is, is lorded over by death; taxidermied hunting trophies hang on the walls above the patrons. Wolves, mostly, predators. There’s a bear here and there, the weapons used to take them down. Men and women huddle together at tables, and Julian hears small snippets of conversation. Things like up there safe in their towers and no one from the Church is ever cold. Those with meals and hot drinks consume them fast, before the heat dissipates. Fires growl and try to stay alive in fireplaces and stoves all around the room. There is a piano in the corner, but it is dusty from disuse, its cover closed, now being used as another table. The patrons glance at Julian as he enters, but nothing more. For once, nothing more. They must not be able to get a good look at him through the shadows.

The beefy bartender asks him what he wants when he comes up to the bar. Not a beer. Nothing cold. No more cold. By some minor miracle they have tea, and though Julian can hear Courtaud’s chiding voice in his head—Get a beer, a real drink—he pays for it with two gold coins glinting with firelight, far more than is necessary. Julian stares at the gold as it sits there on the countertop. Wisborg money. Money he had no use for in his new home. But money he could not, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, bring himself to simply throw away. To donate. He remembered all the times he couldn’t sleep because it was under his bed, or tucked into the back of his closet. The purse he took with him when he left. He’d only used enough of it to book the boat across Lake Hastur. Any more and it felt like he was becoming complicit. Complicit in everything Courtaud had ever done to get that gold.

Be gone from me, he thinks now, dropping two coins onto the bar. If he spends it here, maybe whatever curse has settled upon Wisborg will never leave the valley. The bartender looks at him in awe as Julian retreats into a corner near the fire.

A few moments later, Julian sees a woman come out from the back. The bartender draws her over. They speak in hushed tones. Then she heads straight for him. It cannot be a coincidence. She’s young, a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, redheaded, hair pulled up to reveal a long, slender neck, thin shoulders. Too thin. Too thin all around. Like everyone else in this town, she looks as if she has to decide which meal a day to skip. She’s wearing far too little for how cold it is. When she gets closer, Julian can see her lip is split. It’s an old wound, hasn’t healed all the way.

“I don’t see many men like you around here.”

Julian cannot tell if she means his seeming wealth or his dark skin.

“You look lonely.”

Julian says nothing, but he is. He doubts a single night can fix the loneliness he feels. It hasn’t before.

Take her upstairs, Courtaud says in his head. Do what men do.

“You want some company?” She puts her hand on his knee, and Julian sees dirt under her fingernails. Bruised knuckles. He looks back up at her split lip. In the firelight shadows, his eyes under the brim of his hat, she can’t seem to tell.

“Come with me. I’ll keep you warm.”

Upstairs, they each suffer their own little deaths.

*

Julian wakes to a low slash of light coming in through the window. He pulls the blankets up higher against the cold rather than the light, but that doesn’t make him warmer. What is warm is the woman next to him, and he finds himself pulling towards her even though he barely knows her.

“What’s your name?” He didn’t realize she was awake.

For a moment he thinks about lying, but he doesn’t. He’s used the name once already. What would be the point in lying now?

“Julian West.”

Her eyes open. She turns to face him.

Julian feels the sun on his face. It’s cold. Not what a sun is supposed to be.

“You know of me, don’t you?”

She’s hesitant to respond. “I…I’ve heard of you.”

“You can say it.” But she doesn’t. Neither of them do. Only, “Skin like this doesn’t live in this city.”

There’s a moment of silence.

She asks, “You’ve been gone, haven’t you? To other places in the world.”

Julian extricates himself from the bed, forgetting he got himself tangled in her skirts, his pants, the sweat from the previous night that’s gone cold. He sits on the edge of the bed for a moment, adjusting himself.

“Not far. Just over the mountains.” He thinks of that place now, of the verdant, green hills, wonders what gravity is at work that keeps pulling him back to this place.

“Why did you come back?”

“Someone desecrated my father’s grave.”

“Oh. Do you know who?”

“No. I suppose it could be anyone.”

He reaches down and pulls his coin purse out of his coat pocket. Hesitates. Puts the entire thing down on the nightstand. It’s top is unstrung, so the woman can see the gold inside. He knows it’s more than she’ll ask for. He knows it’s less than she’s worth. But he’s at a place now where he can peacefully rid himself of it. Maybe that’s why he came back here. Maybe that’s what he can tell himself.

She says, “That’s too much.” She looks over at it, curious. Hesitant. As if it all might be some kind of trap. Very slowly, giving him time to respond, to withdraw his offer, she reaches out and takes the purse, pulls it into her lap. She digs through the coins, but they’re all gold. No gold surface with coppers at the bottom.

“Why give this to me?”

If only it were so easy to explain.

Julian says, “Use that to go see one of those faraway places.”

“What? Which one?”

“Doesn’t matter. Any one.”

Without looking back, without another word, he gets up and leaves the room, the building.

The winter sun does nothing to warm the day. Julian glances up at it, wonders at how the sun always looks so much smaller, so much weaker, during winter. Did it actually get father away? He has no clue, is no scientist. Nor is Wisborg a place of it. This is a place of faith. Though how, in what, Julian has no idea anymore. Maybe someone with faith would be able to explain the feeling of invisible fingers on him, pulling him across town. Maybe someone with faith would be able to explain the vast building he knows is watching him everywhere he goes; the Church of the Pyramidia, taller than anything in Wisborg, its stained glass windows like great, lidless eyes.

Julian cuts his horse through the Wisborg streets as quickly as he can, old routes coming back to him easily, like he never left. People are beginning to stir, windows and doors beginning to open, and he wants to get away from them, out of sight, as soon as he can, even though his destination is no friendlier than the streets he seeks to escape.

The West House is on the outskirts of Wisborg, up the hill, in the direction of the Church. Julian must pass another gate to get there, this one guarded by more elaborate soldiers who nevertheless still balk at the combination of his skin color and the name West. As Julian leaves them behind, he can hear them chatter, but only catches the words bastard and savage.

Beyond the gate, buildings begin to give one another some elbow room. Julian can finally see more of the gunmetal gray sky, and there is some grass, albeit dead, instead of only cold cobblestone. The buildings here are in much better condition; no holes, all the windows intact, flickering orange signs of fires roaring in hearths. Fires from opulence, not necessity.

Julian can see his old house halfway up the hill, and for a moment tries to put himself in someone else’s shoes, tries to imagine what they would feel looking up at this place. What they would feel if they didn’t know. Probably something grandiose. Maybe jealousy.

Of course jealousy, the voice of Courtaud says in his head. They were all jealous of everything I’ve accomplished. Still are. But if they were better, if they tried harder, they wouldn’t be huddling down there in the cold.

Like the Church, like the rest of the manors that dot the hillscape, the West House is enormous, its property vast, ringed by a low wall clotted with snow-covered ivy. A wrought-iron gate at the front of the property is topped with the family name and crest; a heraldic wolf. Imagining how it might feel to be someone else, Julian feels warmth, the thought that, like the other houses, this place rises above the rest of the city, rises above the cold, stretching towards the sun, the warmth.

But Julian isn’t someone else. He is himself, and he knows the truth about this house. He ushers his horse forward, through the open gate, up the gravel path to the house and to the front door. Flanked by two stone carvings of wolves. He hitches his horse to one of them, climbs the steps to the front door, and loudly lifts and slams the brass knocker.

It isn’t too long before the door opens. He’s expected after all. And as the door opens Julian realizes he spent so much time focusing on Courtaud he’d very nearly forgotten the person who’d summoned him here in the first place.

The woman who answers the door is much fuller than any of the citizens of the lower city. Chubby, where the people below are emaciated. She holds herself high and mighty, not hunched against the winter, isn’t wearing pieced-together rags, but tailored fur coats, high-collared and thick-breasted against the cold. Her cheeks are rosy from rouge, not chill, and her lips the striking red of the bloodstain Julian saw on his way into the city. The woman looks down at him over half-rimmed spectacles, the vague hint of a smile on her lips.

“Mother.”

This woman is not his mother. But he cannot call her Mary, not even with Courtaud dead.

“You’re home.” She says. “It’s about time. Come inside. I’ll have one of the boys get your horse.”

For a moment, Julian hesitates on the front step. But then that feeling takes over, and the West House pulls at him with its invisible fingers, swallowing him whole.

*

The West House is warmer than the world outside, but Julian feels nothing but chill. His body acclimates to the temperature, flushing, but his mind, his spirit, is even colder than ever. He looks around, remembers the enormous foyer, the big oak pillars, the grand staircase before him, the chandelier above, the wings leading off left and right, down the various gullets of the labyrinthine house. The place looks darker than it should. Oil lamps dot the walls, but for some reason Julian thinks they should be giving off more light. For some reason, he thinks the house itself does not want to be seen.

A suited dark-skinned boy, no older than thirteen, enters the foyer, bows at Julian as he passes, quickly heading outside to attend to his horse. He does not look him in the eye.

“There are still servants.” Servants. He wonders at the cosmic coincidence of him being born into the life of a bastard, and not one of these boys.

“Not many,” Mary says.

“What happened?”

Mary stares off into the middle distance.

“Mother?” It very nearly physically pains him to call her that. He suspects she tottered off simply so he would. “Mother?”

She seems to shake herself out of it.

“Come. Your father is in the next room. I’m sure you’ll want to see him.”

*

They dug him up.
The once-great Butcher of Beacon Hill, laid out like so many of the men he killed. Julian wonders how many that number actually is, if they’re laughing now, wherever they are, if they’ve found some sort of cosmic vengeance after all these years. Enormous blocks of ice surround the corpse, keeping it cold, freezing the rest of the room. When Julian exhales, he can see his breath.

Courtaud West died months ago, and yet he still looks like the man Julian knew. Somehow, they’ve preserved him. Julian isn’t entirely sure of the process, but he knows the Church oversees it, like almost everything in Wisborg. He knows only certain people can afford it. People like his father. Their holy books told them to be returned to the earth after death. And yet they went to such lengths to make sure that never really happened. Pump him full of chemicals so that even after months in the ground you could dig him up and he would still look like himself.

Courtaud was a strong man in life, and appears mostly so in death. He is a bit skinnier, his cheekbones more pronounced, muscle definition lost. But he doesn’t look dead. At least not in the way Julian expected him to. Courtaud is wearing his military uniform, the same one Julian has seen him wear countless times, navy blue and adorned with gold buttons, a crimson sash, and medals of all kinds. In a prominent space above his heart is the biggest, most important medal; a black badge with a simple, red pyramid on it, its tip pointing up, towards Courtaud’s face. A badge of honor from the Church of the Pyramidia.

Courtaud told the story of that medal a thousand times. The Battle of Beacon Hill. He told it as if he had a reason to be proud of it. As if people should’ve delighted in the story of him years ago, in his youth, long before Julian, defending the walls of the Church in a bloody battle from those down below. The people who just wanted warmth. Just wanted food. How much blood was soaked into the dirt and stuck between the cobblestones of the Church?

Gold coins cover Courtaud’s eyes. At a minimum, this is what most gravediggers are after. Julian wonders how desperate you must be to dig through six feet of earth or smash through the wall of a mausoleum for a mere two gold coins, thinks about the huddled masses he saw in the hinterlands. Whoever desecrated Courtaud’s grave would’ve known he had more than those coins. And yet they didn’t take them.

And yet Julian gave his own gold away.

“You said the grave was vandalized.”

“Yes,” the woman who calls herself his mother says from over his shoulder.

“You didn’t say they dug him up.”

“They tried,” she says, taking a seat behind him. “It was just one of them I saw out here. They were halfway done when I chased them off.”

Julian looks at her for a moment before turning back to the thing that was once his father.

“We couldn’t leave him out there,” she says.

Why not? Julian wonders. He wouldn’t have shown either of them such grace. The woman who couldn’t give him a child and the bastard son from another continent.

“He is your father,” Mary says, as if reading his mind. She says it as if that is enough, as if that excuses everything. Because it’s always been this way. Because you have never known any other way.

Julian looks back at Mary. The woman who’d obeyed. Time and time again, who’d been just as complicit as he. If not more. How many times had she spread the legend of Courtaud West, even innocently? How many times had she used the power that came from him? How many times had she acted against her own interests because she was shielded by his powerful arm?

“Why?” Julian asks the room more than Mary, but she answers anyway.

“Because he is your father. My husband. Even in death.”

Even in death, his power lingers.

Even in death, they remain shackled to him.

“Why am I here?” he asks.

“Because something has happened to the family.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

Mary rises from her chair. “Let me show you what they’ve done to his resting place.”

*

The rear grounds of the property are just as opulent as the entryway, just as Julian remembered. Just as lush, even in the snow. Just as unnecessary. What was one family to do with all this space? How had they put it to use? How had they justified it when there were still people living in the hinterlands, in shacks pierced by the cold? Julian can barely remember. He doesn’t think they did, doesn’t think they will, doesn’t think they ever would. The lawn goes on for maybe half a mile until it hits a section of wood. Julian remembers, back there somewhere, are trails, well-manicured by those indentured into Church servitude. And there, at the top of the hill, lording over the rest of the city, is the Church of the Pyramidia. Somehow, it looks even more menacing in the daytime, watching the whole of Wisborg, silhouetted with the tiny, impotent white sun behind it.

With the snow blanketing most of the landmarks, Julian follows muscle memory towards the family plot, keeping slow as he trudges through the snow, Mary behind him. He can see it in the distance, a smaller section of their property enclosed behind a wrought-iron fence. Covered in snow, it looks like a broken bone that hasn’t yet pierced the skin.

He can hear something. At first, he thinks it just the wind. But tilting his head ever so slightly towards it, he realizes it is voices. He’d forgotten, until this very moment, the way the wind in Wisborg has a tendency to shift, to carry, and, with it, bring voices up from below. Julian recalls many such moments from his childhood; playing outside, sitting at the small nook by his bedroom window. He’d be alone, or so he thought, until he was greeted by distant voices brought to him on the wind, strings of conversation from the people in the city below. They said things like

…up the hill…

…church…

…houses…up there…manors…

The wind brought those voices to Julian so often it seemed almost like it needed for him to hear, like the voices were meant for him. Like they were planting winter seeds that would grow come spring.

Julian cocks his head, tries to listen to what the voices are saying now, but it’s unintelligible, nonsense, a cacophony he doesn’t understand. He turns, tries to look down into the city, but there is so much property, so much snow, such a large wing of the house, that most of below is blocked from sight. Julian wonders if their home was intentionally constructed in such a way. He is sure of it.

Mary says, “They’ve been getting louder lately.”

“They’re cold.”

“We’re all cold, Julian.”

“Not like they are.”

“No one’s cold like the dead.”

Julian thinks, Not yet.

The West family tomb is hidden under a layer of snow, or at least it should have been. Most of it was. The fence, the smaller tombstones, those dotting the area around the central tomb are unharmed. But Julian can see the remnants of tracks in the snow, can see the door to the tomb barely standing on broken hinges, the dark maw yawning open. The wind picks up, and Julian hears those cacophonous voices from below, for a moment swears they are the voices of the dead trying to crawl forth.

You had enough of me in life, he thinks, and yet you still want more in death?

He doesn’t realize he’s stopped in his tracks until Mary says something.

“Now you see what they’ve done.”

Julian turns towards her. Out here in the snow, lamp above her head, she looks more old and crone-like. Severe. But she still looks threatening as ever, wielding a power far more dangerous than anything physical.

Julian asks, “Why do you think they’ve done this?”

She says “Jealousy,” without missing a beat.

Julian steps towards her, takes her lamp. “I’m sure that’s not it.”

Mary grumbles something under her breath, but Julian doesn’t hear it, covered as it is by the wind. He steps forward into the mouth of the tomb. It’s even colder in there, somehow. Julian holds the oil lamp high, trying to see as much of the interior as possible. The wind heightens and he can hear voices from below;

…higher…

…not…far…now…

…up there…

The voices strain, warped by distance, contorted through their odd channels of travel, so that they sound as if they might be the voices of generations’-worth of dead Wests. Julian holds the lamp high, but he is alone in the tomb. Or, rather, the only living thing. He’s certainly not alone; dozens of dead line the walls and even the floor. Every tomb, not just his father’s, has been desecrated. Someone has taken a hammer to the walls and plaques, shattering names and letters into nothingness, cracking open the great marble so that the coffins and their dead spill out onto the floor, and Julian thinks that Courtaud had this desecration coming. That whoever did this did what he could not, what Julian doesn’t know if he could ever do, even now.

Mary whispers behind him, her voice as cold as the wind; “Now do you see? What kind of person would do such a thing?” Julian has some idea. What kind of person would do such a thing as butcher innocents, people who were just asking for help, because he believed God told him to? What kind of person would keep his warm house closed to the cold and constant suffering of those below? What kind of person would treat a son, his own blood, the way Courtaud West had? What kind of person would corrupt his own wife so?

The voices that rise up from Wisborg below seem to have some answer, cutting as they do through the wind. Julian hears them getting closer now, so close that they are accompanied by an arrhythmic rumbling. A rumbling Julian recognizes as a chorus of feet.

“Do you hear that?” Mary asks, and for the first time, Julian sees fear in her eyes. She wheels and looks out into the sparse daylight. “They are coming. They’re coming to finish what they’ve started.”

But Julian pays the stamping feet no mind. His head is somewhere else.

“Why did you do this?” he asks, almost unaware that he has asked it aloud.

“What? I did not do this,” Mary says, defensive, still crouching in the doorway of the tomb. “Quickly, we must get back to the house. That’s where it’s safe.”

“Not this,” Julian says. He is fully inside the tomb, but Mary is silhouetted against the entryway, a black cutout against the winter outside. “Everything else. Why were you a part of this?”

Even in shadow, he can see a subtle shift in Mary’s face, true confusion. She doesn’t say it, but she doesn’t understand. And not only does Julian know this, but he knows why she can never understand. He knows she cannot possibly understand. Not being who she is. Not living the way she has. She, at her core, is different. Has been her entire life. Raised in the wealth. In the warmth. Not like the dozens of souls on their way up the hill now.

There are things that only make sense once you’ve been out in the cold.

The voices are coming closer, and Julian steps to the threshold of the tomb, looks out into the just-as-cold living world, and sees the people. They’ve finally arrived, torches raised above their heads as they advance upon the West house.

Mary screams “No!” and seems to debate running out into the snow to stop them, but she is a frail, old woman faced with a sea of muscle and bone and years upon years of anger and abuse that simply cannot hold it in anymore.

She doesn’t move from the threshold.

Julian and Mary watch as they break the house’s windows, kick in the doors, as they track snow and dried mud and dirt from the below city into the house.

Maybe this is it, Julian thinks. Maybe this is the reason he’s come back. To watch it all burn down. To see some sort of cosmic justice finally done. Julian watches as the mob throws torches through the windows of the place he once called his home. The fire catches. A few of them come smashing their way out the back door, the boy-servants with them. They toss them into the snow roughly, but not violently, point away from the house. Down the hill. Julian can see they’re saying something, but not hear what it is over the roar of their voices and the crackle of new flames. The servants pull themselves to their feet and slowly, cautiously, accept the coats the mob drapes around their shoulders.

Julian reaches out, grabs the door of the tomb, and slowly, carefully, pulls it closed so the mob won’t see, closing them in with the dead.

***

T.T. Madden is a genderfluid, mixed-race writer, and nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Their prose has appeared in Ligeia Magazine, Alternating Current, and Pyre Magazine, among others. They have work forthcoming as part of the Nighty Night with Rabia Chaudry podcast, and with Neon Hemlock Press. They can be found on Twitter @ttmaddenwrites.