“I am the Skeleton King,” rasped the skeleton as it clawed its way out of the ground, covered in dirt and splinters, its movements stilted and unnatural.
“Uh huh,” said the gravedigger, and smashed the skull with his shovel.
The gravedigger adjusted his thick gloves and began to toss the now-unmoving bones into his burlap sack. There were no visitors in Ravenshore’s cemetery tonight – there weren’t most nights at this late hour – but sometimes there were, so as he collected the fragile old bones, the gravedigger imagined what he’d be saying if there were onlookers. He was always refining his little speeches, just in case.
This happens more often than you’d think. Creating undead requires varying amounts of magical energy – usually necromantic – depending on the body mass and the required power. Skeletons are the weakest, lowest tier of undead, requiring and consuming even less energy than a slow-moving zombie. So little energy, in fact, that they can arise spontaneously from ambient magical energy, no soul or necromancer required. In other words, skeletons are relatively common in old cemeteries, easy to dispatch for anyone with a heavy club and passable reflexes. And getting rid of pesky undead before they become dangerous is just another part of the job. Well, it is now – the first time a skeleton jumped out at me, it scared me half to death!
But… hold on a moment. The gravedigger paused and turned the fractured skull over, letting it rest in the palm of his leather gauntlet. This thing had spoken. What had it called itself? Skeleton King? That was unusual. Skeletons didn’t speak.
The gravedigger peered into the eye sockets of the skull, its interior illuminated by starlight through the fresh, jagged hole in the dome. The bone was old, and a few teeth had been missing even before the gravedigger had knocked out the rest, but Ravenshore’s cemetery was officially about four hundred years old and located on an even older burial site, so the state of the skull didn’t mean much. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, but then, he had only basic working knowledge of necromancy and undead, only enough to do his job.
He shrugged and tossed the skull into the sack with the rest of the bones, then clapped the bone dust off his gauntlets, shouldered the bag, and continued on his rounds.
The rest of his shift was routine. He cleaned up a vulgar spray-paint cartoon on a headstone before cranky old Arty could spot it, trimmed some hedges and trees that had grown a little too far over the path, raked up the day’s accumulation of leaves and wind-blown trash, and chatted with some of the regular ghosts he’d been getting to know. Not all the ghosts remembered him, but he didn’t take offense. The older the ghost, the more they tended to fade away or loop. He asked a few of the more self-aware ghosts if they’d heard or seen anything about a Skeleton King, but none had.
Near the end of his shift, he ran across a fresh ghost he hadn’t seen before. She looked like a young lady, and the gravedigger reminded himself not to be deceived – ghosts could appear the way the soul saw itself, rather than the way the person had looked at the time of their death. The ghost lady was dressed in a formal gown, its colour indistinct due to her monochrome, translucent appearance, but the gravedigger could plainly see the mud and dirt around the bottom of the dress and coating her bare feet. She looked disoriented enough that this might have been her very first apparition.
He looked down at his own clothes. He looked plain and common: generic overalls, rough-spun shirt, simple leather boots and gauntlets, the burlap sack over his shoulder, and all of it hand-crafted – with his radio handset tucked safely in a side pocket, he could have been from any era.
He adjusted his knit cap and gave the ghost a tentative wave. “Hello. Can I help you?”
The ghost lady focused not quite on the gravedigger, but more like inside him, as if she were looking into his soul, and he tried not to shiver. Her lip trembled, and her hair floated too slowly. “Where am I?” asked the ghost, her voice thin, like a light breeze in autumn trees.
The gravedigger knew better than to be blunt. He’d made that mistake enough times when he’d first taken the job. At best, fresh ghosts might think he was joking, and at worst, might hurt him or themselves or damage the graves with the force of unfamiliar new abilities.
He didn’t answer the question directly. He set his special shovel down, but near at hand. “Can you tell me today’s date?” he asked, his voice low and gentle.
“The third,” replied the ghost with a slight frown.
“Of which month and year?” asked the gravedigger.
The ghost’s frown deepened, but a hint of a smile tugged at her lips. “Sir, how can it be that you know not the day?”
He shrugged. “Please, indulge me.”
The ghost straightened her back and put her hands on her hips. “It is, of course, the third day of the harvest moon, in the three-hundred-and-seventeenth year of the Dragon.”
That put her probable time of death well over four hundred years ago, maybe as many as five or six hundred – the gravedigger didn’t know the history that well, but he knew enough. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to recall what he’d learned of that period’s speech patterns and colloquialisms, then smiled and engaged with her. Her name was Annette. It took him a half hour to get her to recall what she’d been doing – horseback riding in the woods – and another hour to gently lead her to realize that she’d had an accident and died. He didn’t tell her that the Dragon had been dead for over four hundred years. She might be ready for that later, but not on her first apparition. With firsts, his job now was to orient her and make her feel safe, so that she wouldn’t be a danger to herself or others.
Annette and the gravedigger spoke until sunrise. His pocket watch buzzed, signaling the end of his shift, and he gathered his sack and shovel and politely excused himself. Before he left, Annette did her best to take his hand, and this time she was warm.
“I am the Skeleton King,” rasped the skeleton as it clawed its way out of the ground, covered in dirt and splinters, its movements stilted and unnatural.
“Hey,” said the gravedigger, a frown creasing his forehead. “You’re the second skeleton to tell me that this week.” He smashed the skull with his shovel.
The gravedigger picked up the skull and peered into its broken orbitals. How strange, he thought, for this skeleton to not only talk, but to say the exact same thing as that other one. It was a different skull – the last one had already been sent for de-animation, and besides, this one was clearly larger and older. It had no special distinguishing features, other than its new cracks and holes from the shovel. It was otherwise your typical skull, fragile and missing some teeth and discoloured with age. Still, the gravedigger gave it one more suspicious looking over before tossing it into his sack with the rest of the bones to be de-animated. Maybe he’d make a note for this one to be de-necromanced, too, in case there was some kind of enchantment or ghost attached to it.
Hm, maybe that was it – a ghost. Perhaps a ghost was playing a trick on him? Sir Rasiah or Callian might think this kind of thing funny, but if it were them, it was odd that the gravedigger hadn’t heard even a whisper about the prank from anyone else.
Skeleton King? Well, maybe he’d look it up, ask around, see if anyone had ever heard that name or title before.
He got back to work. Gravedigger was really more of a traditional title, at this point – he did dig graves, yes, but with an excavator that only took up an hour or two, three at the most, of the dusk-to-dawn shift. Most of the time he was more of a combination security guard and therapist for the dead.
Tonight he didn’t have much of the therapy part to do; at this time of year, close to the holidays, he spent more time guiding late night visitors and chasing off kids who dared each other to prove their bravery among the ghosts.
Those tasks kept the gravedigger so occupied that night that he forgot all about any kind of research.
“I am the Skeleton King,” said the gravedigger, imitating the rasping voice and stilted unnatural movements of the skeleton with one hand, and holding his beer with the other.
The others around the table laughed. “So what did you do?” asked Carlan, spilling a bit of her drink in her enthusiasm.
“I smashed its skull and moved on to the next one,” shrugged the gravedigger. “But that’s not the point. Any of you ever run into something like this? Heard about a Skeleton King?”
The gravedigger looked around the table in the dark booth at the back of the quiet bar. Some of the others seemed to consider for a moment, but all shook their heads one by one. The gravedigger sighed. The informal Gravediggers’ Guild was vital for dead gossip, job advice, and emotional support, but not so useful for fact-finding.
“Hey,” said Hughard, slapping the table for emphasis, accidentally tugging on his long beard and nearly knocking over Baruch’s drink. “Why don’t you ask at the library and the archmage’s tower?”
The gravedigger smacked his own forehead. Of course, that made sense. He didn’t think as well during his weeks on, after long overnight shifts. And both places would be open now – the only socially convenient part of working the nights was that he could do his errands after work. At least tonight was his last night for two weeks. He’d get the ball rolling on the Skeleton King and have a few good days of sleep before worrying about it any more.
“I am the Skeleton King,” rasped the gravedigger, coughing at the end of the sentence and dropping a crooked hand to his throat. “Sorry. Excuse me.”
The librarian stared at him with raised eyebrows. Maybe the voice and gestures were unnecessary this time. The other gravediggers had laughed, but getting drunk together after work was a different atmosphere than working the circulation desk at the public library.
“How urgent is your research request?” the librarian asked, the clacking of his typewriter pausing for a reply.
The gravedigger shrugged. “Not very. It’s work-related, but not dangerous, and I’m starting my two weeks off, so I have time.”
Wait, did he remember to – yes, the gravedigger was sure he’d left a note for Arty about the Skeleton King. Well, either way, Arty may be a cranky old man but he still had passable reflexes and a mean swing. He’d be fine.
The librarian nodded and clacked away at the typewriter without looking at the keys, maintaining eye contact. “Very well. Within three to five days we should be able to tell you whether the information exists in any of the city’s branches and retrieve the books for you, or if you prefer, with an additional three to five days we can collate and summarize the information for you.”
“The second one, please.” The gravedigger rubbed his eyes. “I think I’ll be asleep for most of the next three to five days anyway.”
“I am the Skeleton King,” rasped the skeleton as it clawed its way out of the ground, covered in dirt and splinters, its movements stilted and unnatural. “Aw shit hey wait wait –”
The gravedigger couldn’t stop his swing but he threw himself off balance and merely grazed the skeleton’s skull with his shovel.
“Come on, man!” complained the skeleton. “How many times are you gonna do this to me? I’m just trying to get a leg up here.” It held a leg bone in its hand and waved it around.
“Er,” said the gravedigger, shifting his grip on the heavy shovel, keeping it ready just in case. “Sorry, habit. The job, you know.”
“Yeah yeah, I get it, can’t have mindless skeletons wandering around where they aren’t supposed to,” said the Skeleton King as he pulled himself out of the crumbling earth. “You’re faster than the other guy who has your off weeks, by the way. With him I was up and walking around almost every day before he snuck up and nailed me.”
The gravedigger hefted his shovel, not yet wanting to lower his guard, but trying not to appear too threatening. The library and the archmage’s tower had, quite surprisingly, turned up no information or historical references of any kind to any sort of Skeleton King. Lich Kings and Necromancers, sure, plenty of those in the early history of the world. Skeleton dragons and giants, sure, scary enough to write about. But no real self-respecting necromancer or dark lord ever relied on skeletons as important enough to make intelligent or capable of speech. Too fragile compared to zombies, ghosts, ghouls, mummies, and the like. Your generic, bargain-basement type of undead, really.
There was only one option left. The gravedigger kept his grip on his shovel, took a deep breath, and said, “So, look, I’ve actually been thinking of asking… Skeleton King? What’s that all about?”
Having pulled itself fully out of the broken grass and black earth, the skeleton sat on the headstone and brushed itself off. “I control skeletons. I’m the king of the skeletons. The Skeleton King, if you will.”
The gravedigger frowned. “But you are a skeleton.”
The skeleton waggled a bony finger. “No no. I’m a disembodied soul who can possess and control skeletons.”
“How… does that work, exactly?” asked the gravedigger. He lowered the shovel, held it in one hand, still ready, but getting back into his comfort zone. He talked to ghosts all the time. This was similar enough, he supposed.
“You know,” said the Skeleton King, tapping on his chin bone with his finger bone as he rested his elbow bone on his palm bones, “I’m not quite sure actually. I don’t seem to have any memory beyond waking up in a skeleton and panicking and trying to get out, and not being able to, and panicking some more.”
“That sounds tough,” said the gravedigger, shifting to lean on his shovel. “What happened next?”
“Well,” said the Skeleton King, rapping out a rhythm on his kneecaps. “I couldn’t see anything. No light in a grave, you know. Couldn’t really feel anything either.” He held up his hands and stretched out his fingers, all dirty, muddy browned bone. “No flesh or nerves, you see.”
The gravedigger nodded. It was quite apparent.
“I assumed, waking up in a wooden box with about the right dimensions to be a coffin in what I was pretty sure was a grave, that I was probably some kind of zombie or skeleton or vampire or something, so I tried to focus and see if I could sense any special undead powers or anything. It was hard to focus at first, trapped in the pitch black underground, but I had a lot of time on my hands, you know? So eventually I started to sense something, had the feeling of being in two places at once. Messed around for a while and – not really sure where this idea came from, magic, am I right? – was pretty sure I was controlling a skeleton. I think I got it to dig its way up, but then it went dark and I couldn’t sense it anymore.”
The gravedigger nodded along with the story.
“I tried a couple more times with similar results, and soon got frustrated and banged around inside the coffin for a while. Lucky for me, it was pretty old, so it caved in eventually. Shoddily made, too, I’d say. Or maybe cheap. Coffin makers tend to lose out on repeat business when the undead can break out too easy.”
The gravedigger continued to nod. The Skeleton King wasn’t telling him much new, but part of his job was listening, and he was good at it. The part about controlling other skeletons was interesting, anyway – the gravedigger had noticed an increase in skeleton activity shortly before he’d encountered the Skeleton King for the first time.
The Skeleton King didn’t seem like the kind of personality that needed prompting to continue talking. “So, you know, I clawed my way out of the grave, pretty ho-hum everyday undead stuff I guess.” He mimed climbing and digging with his bone hands and bone arms. “When I finally made it to the surface, I was so happy. Felt like an eternity trapped down there. So I announced myself and – bam! Everything goes dark.”
“Oh,” said the gravedigger, standing straighter. “I suppose that’s where I came in.”
The Skeleton King pointed and nodded, the bare skull giving the impression of a grin. “I didn’t know it yet, but yeah, that’s right.”
“Um, sorry?” said the gravedigger with a shrug.
“Ah that’s all right,” said the Skeleton King. “Gave me time to practice jumping between different skeletons and controlling lots of them at once.”
The gravedigger heard a faint sound of feet shuffling in the grass behind him, and something dry clacking against itself, and before he could react his arms and legs were grabbed and pinned by many pairs of dusty, dirty skeletal hands.
“Hey, now,” said the gravedigger, struggling to remain calm. The skeletons weren’t hurting him, and didn’t feel particularly strong, but there were… two… three… eight of them crowded around, two pairs of hands holding each of his limbs. It was part of his job to stay calm and composed, but this was quite possibly the most alarming thing that had ever happened to him at work.
The Skeleton King reached out and pried the shovel from the gravedigger’s hand. “Wow, hefty,” said the Skeleton King. “I can totally see how you could smash a skull in one blow with this thing.”
The gravedigger swallowed hard. “Is that a threat?”
“What?” The Skeleton King looked at the gravedigger, slack-jawed, then back at the shovel, then back at the gravedigger. He dropped the shovel to the ground with a heavy thud. “No, no, not at all. Just observing. I don’t hold it against you, fella. Like you said, just doing your job, right?”
The gravedigger pressed his lips together and nodded. He took a breath, gathered his thoughts, and decided that he may as well try to get more information, if the Skeleton King wasn’t planning to hurt him immediately. “So… you… mentioned being able to jump between different skeletons? You mean your consciousness?”
The Skeleton King nodded and put his skeleton hands on his skeleton hips. “Yeah, that’s right. Whenever you smashed me I’d wake up in the next nearest skeleton.” The gravedigger flinched as the voice continued from behind him, over his right shoulder. “And I can swap over to other skeletons at will.”
“What do you plan to do with your… powers?” asked the gravedigger, licking his lips which felt as dry as the hands grabbing him.
The Skeleton King put a foot up on a headstone and struck a pose. “You know, I hadn’t really decided yet.” He gazed across the cemetery, skull grinding ever so quietly against the first vertebra. “But I think, to start, I’ll take over this whole place and raise every skeleton I can.” The skull swivelled completely around backwards to stare at the gravedigger. “And I can’t have you getting in my way.”
The gravedigger felt his fingertips go numb. His fear must have shown on his face, because the skeleton king stepped down and waved his hands. “No no, still not a threat. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Probably. I’m not entirely sure yet.” A bony finger tapped a bony chin. “Well anyway, throw him out, gang. This place belongs to the Skeleton King now. Spread the word.”
“I am the Skeleton King,” said the gravedigger, downcast and unenthusiastic. He sat in a battered chair in a dark room, lit only by the electric lamp on the heavy desk in front of him.
“The Skeleton King,” repeated the woman sitting behind the desk, tired and deadpan. She rubbed at her dark-circled eyes with both hands. She looked like she’d been tired for years.
“I’m sorry to have woken you so late,” said the gravedigger, trying not to stare at the thick, fluffy pyjamas under the military bomber jacket the woman had thrown on. “It’s somewhat urgent, though, Ms. Morowa –”
“Just call me Kat,” she sighed. She began to reach for a lower desk drawer, then stopped herself and rubbed her eyes again. “Why’d you come to me, specifically? Seems like more of a Protectorate job.”
“I went to them first,” said the gravedigger, “But they told me that they have more urgent cases from the Nightmare incident a few weeks ago, and ongoing issues with the refugees. They said they’d send someone when they become available, maybe in a week or two.”
When he mentioned the Nightmare, he noticed her flinch and sigh. “Sorry, do you remember any of – sorry, I won’t mention it again.”
She shook her head. “It’s fine. Still, though – why me?”
The gravedigger shrugged. “I asked the desk officer if he could recommend anyone who’d dealt with the undead before. He said he knew a P.I. who’d helped out the Protectorate on a few cases and came through when it counted.”
She nodded. “Fair enough. Did you catch his name?” The gravedigger shook his head. “Fine. I’ll figure out who… Well, anyway. I’ve mostly done ghosts but I have a few tricks for dealing with things. Well, one trick, I guess, but it’s a good one. Tell me everything else you remember about this Skeleton King.”
He did. As the gravedigger spoke, at some points in his tale, he noticed Kat’s eyes dart to specific objects on the seemingly-haphazard shelves on her office wall – a vial of some kind of black dust, a strangely-shaped crystal, a set of candles, a distorted human skull. Her eyes never rested there for long, as if she’d dismissed the ideas as soon as they came to her.
When the gravedigger finished his story, he thought Kat had fallen asleep in her chair. He waited a moment, and was about to clear his throat when she yanked open a desk drawer, reached in, pulled something out, and slammed it onto her desk – a holstered, heavy chrome revolver.
“I am the Skeleton King,” rasped the skeleton staggering around on its patrol of the outer fence of the cemetery. “This is my domain.”
“Is that him?” asked Kat.
The gravedigger peered out from between the leaves of the tree they’d climbed, and he shrugged. “Impossible to tell. He could be in there, or he could be making the other skeletons talk.”
“Do you know what he wants?”
“I don’t think he knows what he wants,” replied the gravedigger. “All he told me so far is that he wants to control lots of skeletons and take over the cemetery.”
Kat climbed another branch up to get a better view. Probably watching the patrol patterns, the gravedigger assumed. He wasn’t impressed when he first met her, what with the fuzzy pyjamas and exhausted, impatient demeanor, but he of all people knew that you shouldn’t judge people too harshly on their off times.
She appeared much more professional now, dressed sensibly in heavy boots and jeans, everything clearly broken in, not well-maintained so much as chosen to be able to take a beating. She wore the same sheepskin bomber jacket that she’d thrown on over her pyjamas earlier – it looked silly then, and appropriate now, if unseasonably warm. She dressed a lot like he did: somewhat plain and neutral, but tough stuff that would hold up well. Practical. He liked that.
“Hey,” she hissed down at him, and he shook thoughts of her out of his head. “If things get dangerous here, I’m gonna have to shoot him.”
“That won’t work,” he whispered back. “If the skeleton he’s in gets destroyed, he’ll just transfer to the next one.”
“Not if I shoot him,” she said. “With your job, I get the feeling you won’t like this – I don’t really want to do it anymore – but if I have to, I can permanently destroy souls that aren’t bound to a living body.”
“Oh,” said the gravedigger. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He knew that souls lingered after death until they faded away, and several religions taught that that isn’t the way things were supposed to be, but… it didn’t seem right to destroy them prematurely. Sort of like dying all over again. Not really murder, because a deceased soul couldn’t have the same kind of experiences as a living being, and in fact many of them had quite terrible experiences.
But had the Skeleton King really done anything wrong? Did he deserve to be dissolved into nothingness just because he was inconvenient to cemetery visitors? Surely he was owed a chance to… well, the gravedigger wasn’t really sure, but maybe the Skeleton King could be useful or happy somewhere? It wasn’t the same kind of situation as a cranky or vengeful ghost haunting.
The gravedigger shifted on his branch. “What are they doing?”
“Digging up graves. Getting more skeletons. There’s, uh, a lot of them now.”
“Oh…” He climbed up a little further, being careful not to put too much weight on Kat’s branch. From here, through the leaves, he could see the cemetery. It wasn’t too far off from sunrise, but the sky hadn’t begun to lighten yet, and the only illumination came from the warm electric lamps dotted along the cemetery paths.
She was right – the skeletons were making a mess of things, and there were a lot of them. He watched as skeletons emerged from the ground and turned to the grave beside them to help dig out more skeletons, brushing off remnants of skin and clothes and hair as though they were offensive.
This would be a terrible mess for him to clean up, both literally and socially. He couldn’t imagine how the families would feel to find that the bodies of their loved ones were being reanimated into some kind of skeletal… workforce? The word that came to mind first was army, but they weren’t aggressive.
Or perhaps they weren’t aggressive yet. What, really, could the Skeleton King want to do with dozens, maybe hundreds, of skeletons under his control? Would he come up with any ideas beyond spreading his control across more and more skeletons?
The gravedigger took a deep breath. “We have to put a stop to this as soon as possible. Before they dig up everyone in the cemetery. This could be a real threat.”
Hearing the tone of his voice, Kat looked down with narrowed eyes, and he could tell she knew that he intended to go with her, no matter what she said. “You have something in mind to fight with? I can’t cover every direction at once.”
“Let’s start by sneaking into the tool shed,” replied the gravedigger.
“I am the Skeleton King,” rasped the skeleton with its arms raised. “Leave this place, for it is my –”
“Get out of my cemetery,” said the gravedigger, and smashed the skeleton to bits with one of his sledgehammers.
He inspected his modified tool. He’d taken two of the mid-sized sledgehammer heads, made for heavy chiseling work for roughing out statues and reliefs, and attached them to longer handles so he could hold and swing one in each hand. After the first impact, this one had held up perfectly.
He turned to Kat. “He knows we’re here now. He can see through and control all of them. Skeletons aren’t known for their speed or durability, but with this many, things could get tough.”
She gave him a look like this wasn’t her first battle, but didn’t snap back at him – she only nodded and lifted her revolver. “Let’s go.”
They fought their way through dozens of skeletons, following the paths and the lights toward the center of the cemetery where the undead were thickest. The gravedigger wasn’t a trained fighter, but he was strong and had stamina to spare, as well as a greater reach than any of the skeletons. Kat, meanwhile, was doing something odd with her revolver – she would point and pull the trigger, and there would be no roar of gunfire, but the skeleton she’d pointed at would simply drop into a pile of loose bones.
But the gravedigger didn’t have time to wonder about what she was doing. She was a silent fury, turning shambling skeletons into collapsing heaps of bone, and he kept close but out of her way, smashing anything that got too close or leapt out from a hiding spot. Bony hands clawed at them from the ground – he shattered them. Undead clambered over headstones and overturned earth to stumble toward them – she shot them into inanimate piles.
The sky was just beginning to yellow with the first hints of dawn by the time the gravedigger and Kat arrived at the center of the cemetery. The round, three-tiered fountain commemorating the forgotten dead had been clogged and piled with debris – wood, by the looks of it mostly pieces of coffins – to form a soggy makeshift throne where the Skeleton King sat, crowned with lashed-together finger bones, surrounded on all sides by dense rows of animated skeletons.
“Hey,” shouted the Skeleton King, pointing at the gravedigger. “What did I ever do to you, man? And you –” He pointed at Kat, paused a moment. “Who the hell are you even?”
Kat raised her gun to point at the Skeleton King. He collapsed, the skull bouncing and rolling down the throne to splash into the bottom tier of the fountain. Kat turned the revolver slightly to its side, and she looked at it with an odd expression.
“You didn’t pull the trigger?” asked the gravedigger.
“No.”
“Careful, he’s –”
“You think you could stop me that easily?” came the Skeleton King’s voice from somewhere in the mass of undead. “I saw what you did to the others. Broke my connection to them somehow, stopped me from getting back in. I’m not going to let you hit me with whatever that is.”
Kat raised her arm, and the gravedigger put his hand on her wrist. “Hold on, let’s at least try to talk to him.”
She rolled her eyes, but lowered her gun.
“What do you actually want?” asked the gravedigger, shouting at the group of skeletons.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that,” replied the Skeleton King. “What can I do with the situation I’m in? I don’t have any memories from before being a skeleton. I don’t know who I was before this, or even if I ever was a real person. For all I know, I’m just the one skeleton who happens to be able to think, and that gives me some kind of magic skeleton power over other skeletons.
“Nobody likes skeletons. Nobody likes the bodies of their beloved families climbing out of their graves and walking around. Skeletons are the weakest, least useful kind of undead… at least in small numbers. But do you know how many people have died and left skeletons behind? Me neither, but it’s a hell of a lot! Plenty more than the people who are alive now. But to figure out my place in this world, I need to be able to defend myself. I need more skeletons.
“And you know who has an awful lot of skeletons in this city? The living!”
The gravedigger screamed. He felt wrong, suddenly, like something was inside him that wanted to get out. “Aggkljkl,” he shouted at Kat. He could move only his lips and tongue, not his jaw.
No.
He couldn’t move his jaw bone.
He struggled to move. He could feel his muscles straining, but it was as if his skeleton were fixed in space relative to the ground. It was the worst thing he’d ever felt – like he could move if only he tried hard enough, but he knew in his bones that he couldn’t.
What an awful expression that was. ‘In his bones.’
Kat raised her pistol, pointed it at the gravedigger’s head, and pulled the trigger.
“I am the gravedigger,” he assured Kat, lying on the cool dew-damp grass in the citrus-yellow morning light.
“Good,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder. “That must’ve been awful for you, but it was the stupidest thing the Skeleton King could have done. Jumping into your body got him in one obvious place long enough for me to antimagic him out of existence.”
The gravedigger didn’t know what antimagic meant, but he was glad she could do it. He groaned, both in non-physical existential pain and in annoyance. “This is going to take a lot of cleanup work.”
Kat tilted her head toward the gate, where an old man in overalls stood beside his truck with hands on hips, shaking his head at all the overturned earth and loose bones lying about. “It’s his problem now, though, right? Your shift is over.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess you’re right.” He looked out across the cemetery, covered in mounds of dirt and bone, and then back to her. He opened his mouth, hesitated a moment, and said “You know, the Protectorate guy who sent me to you warned me you could be grumpy and mean, but we worked well together and you’ve been nice to be around.”
She shrugged. “I was dealing with some issues. That ended recently. Thinking of making some changes. After… what happened, I’ve been too exhausted to be grumpy and mean.” She shook her head. “Not sure why I’m telling you this. Too tired to filter maybe.”
He looked up at her, sitting next to him, knees tucked up and arms around her legs, bundled in her heavy jacket despite the morning warmth. “Hey,” he said, forcing himself up on his hands. “Any chance this could count as a terrible first date? I promise to make it up to you on the second one.”
She smiled but didn’t make eye contact. “No. Sorry. There’s someone who… It’s… I don’t have room for that in my life right now.”
“Ah, that’s OK,” he said, lying back down. “I don’t spend a lot of time around the living, guess I need more practice. Thanks for your help. I couldn’t have done that without you. Send your invoice to the cemetery and I’ll make sure you get paid. And if you ever need someone to talk to… well I mostly deal with ghosts, but I’m a good listener.”
She rubbed her eyes and turned to look at him. “Actually, that sounds nice. Coffee non-date tomorrow night at the Overlook Cafe after we both get a good day’s sleep?”
Idris smiled. “Sounds perfect.”
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