And the fifth. [spoiler]He stared down at the parchment, folding it up and placing it into the envelope before sliding it back into the desk drawer. He looked out to the cold grey skies outside the window, tinged with fog and mist, over hills of tombs and graves, some cast under shadows of ancient, twisted trees and their gnarled roots. Well. That was certainly informative. Cromwell’s letter set him at ease somewhat. Maybe it was the way the man scrawled across the parchment. Like he was talking so sure of himself that he knew someone would come to take his place after he was gone. He thought about it. And he almost felt…..reasured? As if the old and now previous Gravekeeper was waiting for him. Expecting him. Wrote everything down in this house, just for him. He looked out to the graves beyond the cold window. Was the previous keeper out there, somewhere? He found the idea rather funny. What if he was? And he bumped into him as a shuffler? In the silence of the house and the vague sound of the wind outside, a sound resounded through the door that almost made his heart skip and knocked him out of his chair. One. Two. Three. Three, slow, heavy knocks on the wood of the door. Silence and wind howled outside the walls of the house. The grey sky and fog, unchanging. One. Two. Three. He scrambled up to his feet, suddenly, aware. Aware of the reality of things. He was surrounded. By graves of the dead. Dead who could rise and come back, and walk. One. Two. Three. The knocks continued. And fear, found itself traveling up his spine. The fear of something. Something beyond the door. As it knocked, yet waited for him to open it. He tried to picture it. What would be waiting for him outside. He couldn’t do it. He knew, that inches away through the wood, outside, right now, there was a corpse. The fear. The paralyzed stillness was beyond him. He had never known this before. One. Two. Three. And then, reassurance found him. Carefully written words from somebody who’d been doing this long before he ever set foot here. “….or when they find you, give them a trinket.” He nodded. That had to be it. He faced the door, and closed his eyes. Took a deep breath, and counted, in hushed breath alongside the knocks. “One.” “Two.” “Three.” His hand found the latch on the door and he pulled, listening to the creak of old iron hinges, and for one brief moment that fear overwhelmed him as he pressed beyond the veil of what was unknown, and into reality. The latch unhinged, the door pulling back, his heart skipped, breath stopped, frozen in place as the old iron hinges groaned, and the door opened. And there it was. Looking at him. Decay so old that the corpse was dry. Thin, bony shambles of what remained of it stood in the doorway, staring at him. He was paralyzed. It had no eyes, just empty sockets, an ugly visage of missing teeth as its mouth was stretched dry and there were no lips, accented by the hard bony features of its skull through the remnants of skin that once clung to it. But in the place of its sockets, a dull light flickered. And through the shreds of the clothing it wore, under the visible ribcage pressing through a skinny frame, was a dull glow. But as the wind howled along, and the moment passed, the fear, the shock, all faded. The corpse raised an arm, bony fingers curled with one left pointing to him. He looked down at himself, to see the pocket watch dangling from his pocket. He raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly. He grabbed the watch, holding it up. “You want this then?” Grabbing a dial on the back of the watch, he twisted it, and the watch clinked and clicked. The dead corpse before him stood taller, eyes alight with wonder. He closed his own eyes. It didn’t even have eyes. But the lights in the sockets of bone. He felt like it still had eyes. Slowly, cautiously, he held the watch out on the chain, dangling it over a bony hand that extended so much faster than bone and tight dry flesh would have eluded to. He dropped the clinking watch into the awaiting hand, and the corpse clutched the watch close, holding it up to its head, as if trying to listen to its inner mechanisms, before clutching the watch close to its heart in both hands, before it turned, slowly, and began to shuffle away from his door. In the fog, he watched, as the shambling being hobbled along the path, through graves upon graves, and disappeared into the mist. He closed his eyes, exhaling deeply as he realized that he’d practically been holding his breath the entire time. He closed the door, slowly, looking out to the fog, the graves, and listened to the howl of the winds. The latch clinked, the door shut. [/spoiler]