I’d taken a job as assistant groundskeeper at the graveyard because cash was thin and so was I – thin to the point of my ribs playing tag with the knobs of my spine – and also because I thought maybe I’d get a couple of good stories out of it. Or bragging rights, anyway; there’s always someone who’s willing to stand you a beer or two if you’ve got a weird enough job, even if nothing much out of the way happens between clock punches.

As far as jobs go it wasn’t exactly a brass band affair. There were a lot of stiffs rolling around underfoot when I’d sneak off under the laurels to cop a smoke, but they were quiet and kept to themselves. They didn’t bother me any – what’s a corpse, anyway? Just a bunch of bones and dirt moldering away – but some of the people who’d come mooching around after them got under my skin plenty. The hoodoos were the worst, thin washed-out people with shadows under their eyes like winestains who were after bits of the earth for their gris-gris bags and crossways affairs. We took turns watching the place at night, old man Murray and I, driving them off when we could and generally making pests of ourselves for anyone there as shouldn’t be there.

Like I said, the hoodoos were the worst, if only because they never took an honest poke at a fellah, but always cast their little bones and piles of pins after you. I had to deck myself out just to hold my own, bags and signs and bits of things hanging out of my sleeves like the sides of a blown tire, and at that I wasn’t doing any too good. They were smarter at the game than I was – long practice – though if it’d come to a scrape or a craps game I wouldn’t have seemed such a slouch. They weren’t mean, any, it was just that they had a job to do and I was part of it. Eventually it all got to be a bit much and I moved on and left the job for the next poor schlub. The hoodoos sent me a little sachet of stuff as kind of a going away present, which I thought was big of them. No hard feelings, I guess, but I’m just as glad to be shut of them. That sort of nonsense keeps you up at night.

Chilson and Murphy came to the top of the hill through a half-hearted rain, dry enough under their weatherproofing but damp in spirit and dismal in outlook. The chill that went along with the rain had wormed its greasy fingers into their collars and settled in the joints of their hands and in the spaces between their ribs. They creaked when they moved, like trees in a high wind. At the top of the hill they paused to catch their breath. Chilson looked out over the sodden valley that unrolled on the other side of the hill and shifted his shoulders around inside his sealskin coat. “Pissin’ sort of a day,” he said.

Murphy made a noise in his throat that might have meant anything. “No sort of luck today. Nothin’ with any sense’s movin’ around today.”

In the sky off to the southwest the clouds broke up and sunlight spilled through. Chilson and Murphy stared across at the light through the rain and watched a dragon break free of the clouds and draw them in its wake. Its neck was stretched full out, as through the head were hauling the lissome body along behind it through sheer grit. As it flew across the sky the clouds came trailing after, moving northwest.

“Well, damn,” said Murphy. “No wonder.”

At the end of the promenade there was a pedestal with a shallow place in the middle that was just a little too deep to be accidental. The pedestal itself was made out of a soft, black stone that crumbled when he touched it and left smudges on his fingers. He wiped long smears onto his khakis, which were already dark enough to give the lie to their name. The light in the room wasn’t so good, not after filtering through a century’s worth of dead leaves and cobwebs and grime, just bright enough to make him think he was seeing more than he really was. He had a couple of candles in his pockets but he was saving those for the long walk back to the sunlight. There were a few places in the tunnels where things got tricky.

The thing he was after floated over the little hollow spot in the pedestal, about the bigness of his thumb and round and shimmering white like a pearl. It spun slightly in the dead air, catching what little light there was and playing it back against the distant ceiling. He squatted down on his heels and eyeballed the thing with a sour twist to his mouth. “I’m wise to your game,” he told it. “I’m wise, me. You’re waiting for me to reach out and try to take the piece of you, yeah. Then you’ll go off. That’s an old game, and I’m wise to that one. But here’s the other side of it. Here there’s nobody to look at you and want you and try to steal you. I’m, what, the first person down in front of you in decades, yeah? And so you’ve been left alone and maybe you’re sick of that by now. Maybe yes, maybe no. But if you come with me, maybe there’ll be new people to try to take a swipe at you, and maybe you can play your little game with them. You play your game with me, though, well, maybe you get me and maybe you don’t. Maybe I get out but you stay in here. What’s the percentage in that game? What do you look to get out of it?”

The thing spun in front of him like a model of the world. Only the light moving across his face let him know that it was turning at all.

He shrugged, and his face tightened up, becoming for an instant a much younger face. “All right. We play your game.” He rapped the thing with a grubby fingernail and its wings unfurled, until the tips just brushed the dark rafters. At the center was a tiny little bead with a slash across it for a mouth. “We play your game,” he said again, and it opened its mouth and sang its note at him, one endless vibrant note the color of a scorcher.