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Hastur’s breath hangs in the air as he blows on his fingertips. Above the headstone the mist hovers, a halo around the Celtic cross in front of him. The white vapour shifts pewter, then charcoal before it finally vanishes, a ghost of warmth smothered by the cold October night. They say the graves aren’t real. Stones and bones alike had been moved decades earlier. Hastur stamps on the cold, hard ground, trying to work some blood into his numb feet. The toe of his boot scrapes along the edge of the replica marker, a new scar for the well scuffed leather. He knows how burials used to be; even in this part of Britain you needn’t travel far, nor dig very deep to find someone long forgotten.
The pub behind him has taken full advantage of its irreverent location. A stacked grey stone facade leads to the rickety wooden interior crammed with tables and booths assembled from deconsecrated altars and reclaimed pews. The walls are lined with frames displaying faded newspaper clippings of obituaries, each with a votive candle beneath it, holding profane vigil. A wrought iron gate separates the pavement from the patch of garden staged as a kirkyard. Above the pub’s door are six separate stained glass windows lit by braziers so they glow gold and crimson in the pitch black night. Church.
Hastur slides a hand into his back pocket, fishes out a lighter and cigarette from the crumpled carton and tucks it between his lips. It’s too bloody cold for this bullshit but he still strikes the lighter. The cigarette flares just like the windows behind him.
He fucking loves it here. He’s been offering his ‘weekly devotion’ at this Church since he was old enough to make the decision himself. Y’could say it’s his favourite Friday night haunt. He chuckles at his own stupid pun and watches as haze and mist weave and tumble into the night. The smoke lingers, shrouding the cross long after his breath is gone.
The road is quieter than usual, not another soul in sight and no smoking buddies this evening, thanks to the cold. He leans against the granite headstone, raises the cigarette again to his lips, and closes his eyes. There is only the cold, rough stone at his back, the icy breeze riffling his hair, and the prickle of smoke curling into his chest. His lungs burn with each inhale, like he can feel the nicotine and tar coating them, seeping into his bloodstream, warding off the chill. It’ll kill him eventually, he knows. But, after living all his life in this tiny town where time moves so slowly sometimes it feels like it doesn’t move at all, Hastur’s pretty damn certain there are worse ways to go.
“Can I have a cigarette?”
Hastur turns with a start, coughing as he braces himself against the headstone. On the pavement, outside the iron gate stands a man. He’s shorter than Hastur but not by much. His hands are buried in the pockets of a coat too light for the inhospitable night. A sympathetic shiver tingles down Hastur’s back. “What?”
Slowly, the man passes through the kirkyard gate and stops an arm’s length from where Hastur still leans against the gravestone catching his breath. Beneath a proud brow, keen eyes watch him, their colour shifts with the chameleon mists of the night. The man smiles, a wan, thin thing that would be beautiful if only it touched his eyes. He pulls his left hand from the warmth of his coat pocket and extends it in expectation. “Can I have a cigarette?”
He must have come from inside the pub but Hastur doesn’t recall seeing him amongst the sparse crowd. He doesn’t recall ever seeing this man, Hastur would remember if he’d ever seen him. And yet, there is something achingly familiar about him, something he is certain he will remember if the man just stays a bit longer. Perhaps that’s why, rather than pulling a cigarette from the crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds in his pocket, Hastur offers the stranger the half-spent cigarette dangling from his shaking fingers.
Weak light flickers across the man’s rich sepia features as he steps closer to accept the offering. His evening stubble is a dark shadow over the curve of his jaw. The crimson and gold from Church’s windows are deeper, more saturated, heated where their luminescence kisses the apples of his cheeks and stains his full lips. Hastur’s gaze traces the lines of this face and the uncomfortable spectre of recollection rattles at its confines, struggling to break free.
Their hands barely touch as the man takes the cigarette but his fingertips are as solid and real against Hastur’s hand as the gravestone on which he leans. They are also just as cold.
The ash cherry flares as the stranger inhales, a single point of warmth between the two men. For a moment they both hold their breath, watching one another, letting smoke and ice sting their lungs while the wind whips at their cheeks.
Smoke weeps from the man’s lips and nostrils in wispy curls and tendrils that Hastur wants to catch, draw into his own lungs, feel their burn. When the stranger lowers the cigarette and offers it back to him, Hastur takes it. His fingers slide to the spot where the man’s had been. He can feel the indentation in the paper, the slight buckle from the pressure of strong, solid hands. He can feel the unmistakable chill that lingers there, too, even through his own numbed fingers.
The stranger watches, his beautifully full lips parted slightly, as Hastur raises the cigarette again. Try as he might, Hastur cannot keep from trembling. The unease and confusion are plenty unsettling even without the damn cold, even without the soul-deep surety that Hastur knows this man. He is there, in the darkened corners of Hastur’s mind, hanging on the tip of his tongue. It’ll come to him in time, he’s certain of it. When he finally stops trying to remember, the man will come back.
He can almost feel the press of the other man’s mouth against his, his lips parted by flesh rather than filter. He inhales and heat laps and pools against his tongue. The humid, sweet warmth of another’s breath trickles through him, soothing his parched throat. The cherry flares and Hastur follows the glow, the incineration at the end of the cigarette amplified in the depths of the man’s endless black pupils. Hastur sees himself reflected there, porcelain-pale in the brittle moonlight, the flames of Church ablaze behind him. Even the icy wind cannot dispel what lies between them; it abandons its futile bluster and smoke hovers in the stillness. Hastur holds them there, holds the stranger on his lips, in his chest, with his breath. He holds them together in the stinging, prickling cold.
There is one draw left, the butt burned to next to nothing. It belongs to the stranger. Hastur passes him the cigarette. He slots the short length into the man’s waiting fingers and his palm presses against the back of the man’s hand. Over dirty nails, and cracked skin, and rigid knuckles Hastur’s fingers gently curl, reflexively, a muscle memory. A moment to impart warmth, share his heat.
For the first time the man closes his eyes. He bows his head as his ring and pinky fingers wrap cautiously around Hastur’s thumb. He is so cold—unacceptably, unnaturally so—and yet the points where they touch, where frigid skin meets bone-deep chill, are the warmest Hastur has been all night. He would stay here, share his heat with this man, light cigarette after cigarette until it dooms them both. He would stay here, in this place that he loves.
It is the stranger who pulls away and brings what is little more than a burned down filter to his lips. The ash on the end does not crackle and flare with the last breath. Instead it goes dark, it flakes and crumbles and falls to the ground like dirty snow. Hastur is already fishing in his back pocket for the crumpled pack and lighter. Another cigarette, another few minutes, another touch, another chance. He sets them down on the headstone before they can rattle out of his shaking hands. But the man flicks the spent butt onto the ground and Hastur knows the moment has passed. It lands at the base of the marker, one more in the pile of ash and stubs.
The man turns to go with a small, solemn nod and Hastur finally finds his voice. “Come inside. Cold out tonight, you’ll freeze.”
The man pauses at the gate but only shakes his head. “Be warm enough soon.”
Hastur watches him go—waits an unreasonable length of time in the cold even after the stranger has turned the corner—willing him to come back. He knows he will not.
Finally Hastur turns back to Church, to the windows lit by flames and the promise of warmth within. Shivering, he walks quickly to the door and pushes into the pub. The stale heat coils up from the rough, wooden floorboards. It slips through the cracks of his boots and pulls at his numbed feet, tugging him past the threshold.
The icy wind howls behind him, its frigid fingers clutch at Hastur’s coat and hands. Lit lanterns on low-hung rafters sway violently from the gust that bursts through the open door. The votives waver and some gutter out, releasing the first currents of smoke. He glances up at the faded newspaper clippings, lives condensed to a narrow column of paper and ink. In one frame is a man with keen eyes whose colours once shifted with the chameleon mist.
Hastur slams the door shut behind him, trying to banish the cold. On the ledge above, the braziers that illuminate Church teeter on the edge, still burning.