Off To London

 I latched the heavy casement window against the encroaching fog, the iron handle cold as a dead man’s grip. The carriage carrying the rest of the family rattled down the gravel drive, their silhouettes dissolving into the grey gloom of the moor. By tomorrow morning, they will be safely ensconced in the bright, gas-lit bustle of London, and I shall be left to finish what was started in the damp earth of the churchyard.

"Thanks again, again, and again for the memories... and for the rest of the day," I whispered to the empty room, my voice sounding like dry parchment rubbing together. I watched them leave until the tail-lamps were but pinpricks in the mist.

Then, the vertigo took me.

It was a very odd feeling, for while my eyes beheld the velvet drapes and the flickering hearth of the parlor, I felt the unmistakable press of satin against my spine. Technically, I was still in my coffin, staring up at a dirty white ceiling—the underside of a lid I had no right to have escaped.

The sensation was a dual existence, a cruel trick of the soul. In the parlor, I smelled the woodsmoke; in the dark, I smelled the cloying sweetness of lilies and the metallic tang of damp clay. Every step I took across the Persian rug felt like wading through six feet of suffocating soil.

I approached the bureau, my movements stiff and rhythmic, like a clockwork doll winding down. My task was simple, yet grisly. The family had fled not out of grief, but out of a polite, Victorian terror. They had buried me with the **Blackwood Seal** still clutched in my hand—a mistake that anchored my spirit to the rot while my shadow walked the halls

I caught my reflection in the pier glass. To a casual observer, I appeared a pale, mourning gentleman in a frock coat. But as I leaned closer, the "dirty white ceiling" of my true location flickered into view:The coffin wood is a splintering oak that is weeping in moisture,the lining is of a yellowed silk stained by fluids of the body in a state of decay.

 If it were possible to see my own face it would be sunken with hints of pale grey with unblinking eyes staring back from the depths of heaven or hell.

 

 

I reached into my breast pocket. My fingers did not meet cloth; they dipped into the frigid, phantom earth of the grave. I felt the cold, hard edges of the silver seal.

With a heave that tore a gasp from both my living lungs and my dead throat, I pulled the artifact from the "other" side. The room plunged into a sudden, unnatural cold. The fire in the hearth turned a sickly, transparent blue.

The family thinks they are escaping to London to forget the "unfortunate business" of my passing. They do not realize that by taking my memories, they have kept the door ajar. I sat in the high-backed chair, the Silver Seal resting on my knee, and began to write the letter they would find upon their return.

> "I have finished the work," I scratched onto the vellum. "The ceiling is no longer white. It is black. And it is closing in."

> 

As the clock struck midnight, the parlor began to dissolve. The walls of the room narrowed, the ceiling lowered until I could touch it, and the scent of lilies overwhelmed the smoke. I closed my eyes in the parlor, and for the first time since the funeral, I felt the lid click shut in the dark.

I am done. But tomorrow, when they reach London, they will find that I have not stayed behind. I am in the luggage. I am in the memories. I am the dirt beneath their fingernails