23

Things to Cover Our Dead

Peter stopped, to check the wool. It lay slack.

So. Whoever it was, was back home, and Peter knew that every step he took now was a step nearer the mysterious visitor.

He checked the sky. If only dawn were closer. The promise of light struck at his heart. He longed to see the sun, for what evil can occur by daylight?

Nonetheless, by starlight he could see the village in front of him, and now he could even see the wool stretching away toward the village. His breath quickened. It would be soon.

Picking up the pace once again, he hurried on, letting the wool run freely through his hand.

He came to the first houses and saw that the wool ran away up a small alley that he had never noticed before. He must never have made a delivery there, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know where he was going, he just needed to follow the wool. Once again he praised himself for his quick thinking in the hut, and thought of Agnes. At least she would be safe for the time being. Her assailant was somewhere out there ahead of him, presumably climbing angrily back into bed. Well, he would be angrier still when Peter had finished with him.

He followed the wool up the alley, moving more slowly than before, taking care not to make a sound. He was in luck. The snow that had been falling through the night had been gentle but persistent, and enough had fallen to recarpet the streets with a blanket that hid any noise he might have made.

Something bothered him as he padded through the snow, but he couldn’t place it. A few more steps and he turned around. Behind him he could see his footsteps in the fresh snow. He looked forward again, and there was the wool running in front of him.

So why couldn’t he see any footsteps from the man he was following?

The wool turned a corner into a wider street that he knew well. He’d been convinced that it was going to lead to one of the houses he’d already passed, but the trail showed no sign of ending. Ahead lay the back of the priest’s house, but the wool ran on beyond that, and around another corner.

He hurried up the street, glancing at the tarred windows of Daniel’s house as he did so, then turned the corner.

He stopped dead.

The wool led away. There were no houses left. There was only the church before him, but that was not where the wool was taking him.

In the half-light he could now see the grayish line snake out across the purer whiteness of the snow. The wool caught on a stone here, and on a fence there, but it was unbroken as it led the way, surely and utterly, straight into the graveyard.

 

Now, moving as if in a nightmare, Peter’s feet stepped unwillingly forward. The wool felt like wire in his hands. Maybe it was just that it had been frozen in the snow, but it seemed to cut into his skin like metal.

He came to the gate of the graveyard. There could be no doubt. The wool ran over the fence next to the gate, as if his quarry had sailed clean over it. Dumbly, he gripped it, as if it were a lifeline leading him to safety, when in reality it was leading him toward death itself.

The wool wound its way between this grave and that, snagging on crosses, trailing on the ground. At last, his eyes wide open in horror, Peter saw its destination.

There, no more than five feet away, was Stefan’s grave. The wool not only went right up to the grave, but disappeared into the soil itself. Then Peter saw that though there was snow all over the graveyard, and on the other graves, Stefan’s was, for some reason, free of it.

An awful self-destructive curiosity pulled Peter closer. Unable to stop himself, he got down on hands and knees and crawled the final few inches toward the grave. As he approached, something else caught his attention. There was a hole in the soil at the head of the grave, near the cross. The hole was about the size of a small fist, and it was perfectly circular, like a rat hole in a riverbank.

Peter leant over it.

He looked in.

There was just enough light to see inside the hole.

At the bottom he saw an eye.

It was open, seemingly lifeless, though looking straight at him.

Then it blinked.

Peter screamed and ran as if the Devil himself were chasing him.