Why was the house so quiet?
Not that it was usually noisy, so as to speak but, like any old building there were always customary creaks, bumps, and grinds as it settled into whatever it was planning to get up to next. Until today that is. Today there was just an eerie unsettling silence.
Tentatively he slid his feet into his slippers and peered through the velvet curtain. The coaster quietly produced a steaming mug of coffee, but the spoon rather than rattling around with gusto melting the sugar, moved as if in stealth mode, never touching the bottom or the sides, before vanishing. The room felt kind of morbid giving everything a disconcerting, surreal feel.
The Book of Un-Reality sporting a black ribbon tied in a simple knot lay serenely on the desk next to a book of the dead. Each name beautifully inscribed in old-fashioned calligraphy, obviously written with the feather quill that waited expectantly in the glass ink well.
There was six columns to the ledger. Surname and forenames, gender followed by date-of-birth and the date-of-death, but there was also one blank space labelled visitation details allowing room for remarks. Thrumps didn’t recognise any of the names.
He laid his hand on the page to turn it …
“Please don’t do that!” Came a voice from somewhere deep within the shop.
Pulling his hand away as it had been burnt, he watched an old, crumpled figure shuffle out of the gloom towards him.
“Sorry,” Thrumps muttered.
“No need to be dear boy.” The stranger smiled. “You were not to know.”
Thrumps wondered just what he was not to know but simply sat down behind the desk as had been indicated and watched the old man settle himself into an identical high-backed chair that had materialised on the opposite side.
“Now then,” he began. “I suppose you are wondering just what is going on.”
It was obviously a statement not a question, so Thrumps didn’t say anything.
“Let me introduce myself. I am the guardian of the gates, the portal to the realm of the dead.” He nodded with conviction. “The list before you are the ones that have requested visitation rights with the living.” Thrumps looked at the names, even though they made no more sense to him than they had previously.
“See there,” the guardian continued pointing to the last column. “That is where a record will be kept. The dead are only granted one external communication, and that is only granted after they have satisfied the council that it is absolutely necessary for those still living.”
Thrumps had no idea what any of this meant or what it had to do with The Emporium, but then he never really knew anything until after the midnight encounters, and even then, sometimes nothing was clear.
“Each person will have been gifted by a white feather,” the stranger continued. “They will not be expecting it and it can come from anywhere but mostly it will flutter down in front of them whilst they are out and about doing something ordinary.” He paused obviously at a loss as to how to phrase the next bit so it was clear.
“They are compelled to pick it up, to keep it safe and then at midnight they bring it here even though they have no idea why.”
“Are they sent by someone dead?” Thrumps asked.
The stranger tapped the names in the book. “By them,” he said. “They are the ones that need to see the living. What they want to see them about if a private affair, known only to the council when the partition was made. Whatever it is though it must have been important or they would not have got this far.”
Thrumps nodded.
“So,” he ventured. “At midnight they will gather here and await the recipients of the feathers to show up.”
“Correct,” the stranger said. “And then once the exchange has been made, feather for information, the living will go back to their own lives not really knowing why they know what they were meant to, but much happier for it.”
“Does anything bad ever come from all this?” Thrumps asked.
The stranger shook his head. “Too well organised for any of that nonsense my boy. The council have been doing it for years and are rather good at weeding out unpleasantness.”
Thrumps had to admit, he rather liked the idea of messages from the dead.