The Black Chapel
IX
The back streets and darker alleys of Bridgeville
still thrive and bustle with energy late into the night, however covert
and stealthy it may be. There are still thieves in this city, my
city, though their numbers have thinned considerably in the past century.
Times are too prosperous, it seems, for thieving to be worth anyone’s while.
But there are pockets of resistance: deals made in whispers in dark alleys,
murders and assassinations, streets you would not walk down without fear
of your life.
I breathe deeply of the
putrid air that surrounds me in the twilight. It will be dawn soon,
and so the hurried activity of the night is slowly fading with the stars.
Fewer and fewer figures slip through the shadows, and a sleepy calm crawls
through the streets like a fog.
Though most would hurry
past, the cemetery is place of perfect rest and calm. They fear their
own mortality; I have it to envy. As dawn approaches, a mist hangs
within the cemetery, as if reluctant to break it communion with the dead
beneath the tombstones. At one time there had been a church that
stood nearby, brooding over these grounds like a mother. It was destroyed.
I set the flame.
The stars are still shining
brightly in the summer night sky, though they seem to do so only reluctantly
over the darkness of the cemetery. A slight breeze has come to push
the shadow-filled mist away. When you look closely there are darker
figures, shadows of shadows, unbound souls whirling and darting within.
I have spoken to them on occasion, of the tombstones, of the church, of
the stars and death. But they no longer care for my company.
Not since Nicholas came
here to die.
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XI
