Chapter Text
“It’s right over here,” Jamie calls, already bounding ahead. Lucy follows with slower steps - not quite apprehensive, just nowhere near as excited.
“I believe you,” she says, without real effort. “Can we go home now?”
“No way! You’ll say I lied, I need you to see it!”
“Stop yelling. It’s disrespectful.”
She looks over her shoulder at the only other person in the vicinity; a very old lady carrying a pot of petunias. She’s walking away from them, though, and doesn’t seem to have heard.
“Luce! Over here!” Jamie hisses, and she turns back to see him crouching down a couple feet away, beside a large, simple headstone.
It looks no different than the graves around it at first glance - rough, weathered stone, with a slab of rock on the ground in front of it marking the place of burial. However-
“You see?” Jamie asks, excitedly grabbing Lucy’s sleeve and pulling her down beside him. She gasps a little at the motion, and shakily finds her balance before her skirt gets covered in dirt-
Because there’s dirt everywhere. As if the grave had been freshly dug. The old rock looks steady, but the ground around it is disturbed and, where Jamie is pointing, it shows signs of having been moved.
Lucy’s eyes widen, then narrow.
“Right?” Jamie exclaims. “Creepy!”
She frowns, looking around. “Maybe there was another death in the family-”
“Nope!” Jamie jumps up and gestures to the headstone. “See? No new engraving, or even a wooden placeholder-thingy. The names are so old you can’t even read them right!”
Lucy squints, but it’s true. The stone has probably braved decades, if not centuries of wind and weather. Plus, there are no fresh flowers, just grass and weeds and a couple of thorny bushes that must have survived many a winter.
“But you know the weirdest thing?”
Jamie reaches behind the stone, and pulls out something small and-
Lucy gasps. “Hey!”
“This was sitting on the stone! And it was burning!”
“So why did you move it? Put it back!”
Jamie clutches the little jar to his chest, rattling the candle inside it.
“I was only-”
“You don’t take things that belong to dead people!”
Jamie’s expression has gone sour. “I know that!”
“So put it back,” Lucy hisses, getting to her feet and dusting off her skirt. “Now.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
“You’d better have a lighter.”
“Of course I have- hey. Don’t you dare tell my mum I took it.”
Lucy purses her lips, knowing full well that Mrs. Whitton hates her son playing with fire. “I don’t care. Turn the candle back on.”
Jamie grumbles something, but he does as she says, stepping back to reveal a tiny speck of light against the dark stone.
“Happy now?”
Lucy crosses her arms in front of her chest. “It’s not worse.”
Jamie shoots her a look like he’s judging whether or not to argue, but he seems to decide it’s not worth it.
“...but it’s freaky, right? Someone’s clearly been around here, and there must be a reason!”
Lucy sighs.
“You need to stop reading those ghost stories, James,” she says, emphasizing the last word.
He scoffs. “You’re not my mother, Lucille.”
“That’s NOT my name!”
“So why'd you gotta butcher mine?!”
“Because you’re being stupid!”
“Oh yeah? Well, next time I just won’t show you my discoveries, then!”
Lucy sticks out her tongue, already beginning to walk away. “Sure you will, cause no one else wants to listen to them!”
“You take that back!”
~
Lucy waits for the night sky’s clouds to obscure the moon before she sneaks out the back door. She’s thrown a large jumper over her pajamas and packed her favorite purse, which she’s now clutching to her chest
“There’s no need to be afraid,” she whispers to herself, even as the garden gate creaks softly when she pushes it open. She freezes, waiting for a sound from the dark house - but there’s nothing.
The streets are empty, and yet she hops from shadow to shadow, careful to remain out of sight. It’s too risky, to be caught at this hour. Oh, the trouble - it’d happened once before, in the last town - and it’d been way, way too tedious to explain away. Some people aren’t so susceptible to “maybe you just dreamed it.”
She sighs at the memory. But moving here had been a good idea, given the… potential. Silently, she thanks her parents for their own suggestibility - and for their deep, uninterrupted sleep cycles.
The gate to the cemetery is too tall to scale - plus, climbing would leave Lucy way too exposed. She knows the iron chain is not just for show, either - but it might be persuaded.
(As is true for so many things. The world is full of suggestions.)
She draws it closed behind her, so as not to arouse suspicion.
The shadows are longer inside, and eerier. The moon has decided to show herself again, and Lucy hears her heart beat loudly in her ears. Not only that, the creepy soft light of the candles that are still lit isn’t helping the matter.
It’s a good thing her feet know where to carry her.
She kneels in the dirt, knowing full-well she’ll have to come up with a story to explain the stains tomorrow morning - but this is urgent, and worth the sacrifice.
The tiny candle inside the jar is flickering, but alive. She exhales in relief, cradling it to her chest.
“I’m sorry for Jamie,” she says, eyes pressed shut. The shadows from the fire dance on the inside of her eyelids, and she shudders with the gust of wind that sweeps over her. “He’s just curious, and overeager. Please don’t punish him.”
A flutter of wings, the coo of an owl somewhere above. Lucy shudders again.
“I know. I know, and I’m sorry. He didn’t mean any harm.”
Somewhere across the way, a raven caws.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” Lucy repeats to herself. “There’s no need to be afraid.”
The candlelight spikes, and her eyes flick open.
The flame has hopped off the wick, and is now hovering outside the small jar. The wind seems to gather around it, stoking it, allowing it to grow larger and larger. The heat takes away the shudders in her bones, and she finds herself looking back at the figure before her with a strange calm.
Indeed, says a voice of crackling embers. There’s no need to be afraid. After all… the scariest thing in the night… is you.