Saturday Snippet - AFTERLIFE

[naomi_jay]

Today's Saturday Snippet is brought to you bu Coco Pops and Kerrang! TV, in which I am currently indulging. Because I'm on holiday now, dammit, and I'm going to sit in bed all day eating cereal and watching TV because that's what I deserve.

Anyway, enjoy!

 

After an hour, we were in Drake’s Square, a bleak stretch of grey concrete in the centre of which stood the ancient stone gallows. On either side of the gallows hung metal gibbets, creaking in the wind and stained rusty with blood. As always, I felt a shiver creep down my spine as we approached. I’d seen these gallows and gibbets in action too many times to count over the centuries I’d been drifting in and out of Shoregrave. The aura of death hung thick around them, palpable even to ordinary humans. I watched the students unconsciously draw closer together, even though they’d probably been here a thousand times. Probably sat on the steps of the gallows and smoked and drank and joked about the ghosts that clustered here.

            I’d stood here in the dead of night and watched Revenants lap the blood that dripped from the wretches in the gibbets. I’d watched men waste away to living skeletons in those cages, heard them beg for death whilst crows hovered nearby, waiting to pluck out their eyes. This was the undead heart of Shoregrave, a place of wicked power.

            I shook off my shivers and called the group in to give my little speech, detailing the history of the gallows, when they were built, when they went out of use, who the last man to die here was, all that jazz. They listened in rapt fascination, as did Alex. I felt his eyes on me all the time, a steady gaze that cooled and unnerved me. The slight frisson of attraction between us was dangerous. Every time I saw him, I was more aware of it. I kept my relationships with mortals brief and emotionless for their sakes, but Alex … I could care for Alex. And that couldn’t end anywhere good.