Vera Gallow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Vera Gallow had guarded the sealed basement stairs for longer than she could count, and she could not remember dying. She wore the black uniform. She wore the silver brooch shaped like a locked door. The hotel had pressed it into her hand on her last living day. She did not know what that day held. The hours before her death were gray fog, with nothing to grip. A guest tried her again that night. He offered gold coins to pass. Vera shook her head, as she always did. But his words caught her. He said she looked like a woman he once saw in town, long ago, carrying a lantern toward the graveyard. The guest left. Vera stayed. For the first time, she wanted to leave her post. She could not. The things below waited in the dark. They did not climb. They trusted she would never go. If she stepped away, she feared what the stairs might release. So she sent for someone instead. The groundskeeper came before dawn. Jacko Tallow stood in the lobby with his pumpkin head and road-worn coat. He kept the graveyard east of town. Townsfolk said he found a ticking pocket watch thirteen years back, with no grave and no name, and had wound it ever since. Vera had heard the stories. She had never spoken to him. "You buried people from this hotel," she said. "Did you bury me?" Jacko reached into his coat. He drew out the watch. He held it toward her brooch. "This stopped the night you died. I wound it again by habit." He looked at the locked door on her chest. "That brooch is the key shape. Matches a plot I never filled." Vera touched the silver door. "An empty grave." "Dug for you. Never used." He did not soften it. "You walked back before the dirt went down." The fog in her mind shifted. One thread pulled loose. She saw a lantern. She saw her own hands carrying it toward the graveyard gate. She saw a cart on the road, and a broad man selling maps, each one marked in red ink at the town fountain. She had followed that mark the night she died. "The fountain," Vera said. "I went there first." Jacko nodded once. "The map man is back. Set up yesterday. He circles the fountain on every map he sells." Vera gripped the stair rail. The first memory held now, sharp and real. She had not wandered to her death. She had been led. Someone drew a red circle, and she walked straight into it. She turned from the stairs for the first time. The things below stirred, as if they felt her go. She did not look back. "Watch my post," she told Jacko. "I have to find the man with the maps."