The dead were climbing out of their coffins one after another.
The cemetery swayed with stumbling corpses—confused, wandering without aim, or sitting on the mortuary biers staring blankly.
In the small, lingering dissonance that remained after the old order dissipated, they fruitlessly tried to remember and reason, to snatch at the uneasy shadow lodged in their hearts.
And the very keeper who ought to have watched over this graveyard, who ought to have kept the dead from waking and growing restless, was guiding those awakened corpses, sending them away from this temporary resting place, sending them home.
The dim streetlamps lit this uncanny scene.
Even Agatha, who could no longer feel the warmth of the living world, felt another cold spreading from deep within her soul.
She stood dazed by the path, watching Duncan shepherd the moving corpses out one by one, as if trapped inside a strange, surreal dream.
“All right, you’re the last one,” Duncan said at last.
The final, tottering corpse took the road home—a young man murdered, a terrible hole torn in his chest.