Sunday, 10 October 2010

Zeitgeist

Five o'clock, a cold morning in early March.

Dawn trembled below the horizon, a scintillating arc throwing daggers of light at the silent stars.

A shiver of ghosts sat, inasmuch as they can, round a stone circle at the centre of the graveyard.

Haggard, misty, a Cavalier and a Duke talked of hauntings past. An ephemeral cut-purse bemoaned local gentrification. He now haunted luxury apartments whose owners were rarely there to scare.

A newcomer faded in, a river of light fragmenting around the grave markers.

Conversation hushed.

Ostentatiously displaying his rippling, changing form, he nodded. "'Sup geezers."

Tinny music from his tiny phone scratched ears like a stonemason's chisel.

"He really ruins everything," said Viscount Gamblemere, as one by one the assembly flickered out like the afterimage from a flash bulb.

The newcomer smiled sadly. "Bulbs?" he said. "Well analog."

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