Ivory drummed on the naked bones of his left hand.
His was a rapid, anxious beat—though he was anything but anxious. Agitation and excitement was modus operandi for his line of work.
“Cemetery?” he whispered to himself. “This place is a gala. I can feel it.”
He continued murmuring as he activated the symbols on his prosthesis—what was literally the boney remains of a left hand. Low light spilled from the etchings, illuminating the thick fog of Highgate Cemetery.
Soon enough, phantoms stirred from their sarcophagi, tentatively poking their heads through the sepulchres bordering the serpentine pathways. Their eyes inquired of the ghost courter’s peculiar dress. Numerous artifacts decorated his attire, all from a myriad of cultures’ death magick traditions. A good majority of them were bones from saints kept in vials. Some, however, were scraps of leather skin belonging to creatures on the ‘opposite’ side.
Like moths, the spirits were drawn to the ghost courter. Their eyes licked up the light spilling from his skeletal hand.
Their frosted appearances did not unnerve him. He could feel their hands slip through his clothes, past his heart and scratching between his ribs. He made minor adjustments to the symbols on his prosthesis, then stopped, and looked in a full circle to count the dozen or more forsaken souls currently staring with slack jaws.
“A full crowd, that’s good! I’ve heard that this place might be popular. Allow me to apologize for disturbing you. But I’ll only be a moment of your eternity. Please, call me Ivory. I’ve come from a carnival, but that’s not important just yet.”
Nothing.
He stammered and took a moment to comb back his silver hair. The beginning was always awkward.
“Oh, my! Madame, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he greeted a nearby grandmother wrapped in a threadbare shawl. Her rotted skin left nothing to the imagination as to the contours of her skeleton.
“And you, sir! A shave would do you good, but surely that’s all to be desired,” he beamed, giving another phantom a firm pat on the shoulder with his false hand.
“But what about these two gems? Oh! Don’t you two look a picture in your dresses? How’s about an evening out on the town—you’re surely dressed for it!” A pair of young twins giggled despite their missing eyes as the ghost courter ruffled their pale hair.
With a flourish, Ivory delved into his satchel and produced an abused contraption of spiritualistic gadgetry. The boggling array of silver dials, cogs and even small pistons laid in a crescent shape. This, he placed on the nape of his neck. The device terminated in two ends—ear pieces which tapped his hearing to the dead’s voices and deafened the outside world.
“Don’t be frightened, this will only aid in our discourse,” he said once he’d clicked the contraption to life. A series of piston firings spat steam into the air behind his head as he continued playing the crowd.
After some time, he’d acquired their names and fragments of their personalities. He went through his usual repertoire of black humour to earn their laughter, then, and only after he had secured their attention, did he formally introduce himself.
“I am with the Black Carnival and have a most … shall we say rare opportunity for you all. Your ‘life’ at Highgate is luxurious, I take it. Flowers. Many visitors to entertain you. Many a tear shed on, or nearby your graves.
“What I am offering you,” he said, juggling eye contact, “is this singular chance to have more life than you could have ever imagined now that you are, in fact, dead.”
“Who you callin’ dead?” a courier boy missing both arms called out.
“Sorry to say it, my brave fellow, but that is the cruel term society has placed upon you now that you’ve departed from your body.”
“But we’re talkin’ now!”
“Enough, Tommy. What kind of chance?” the elderly woman asked.
“The carnival I work for will be in London for the next twenty-four hours. Should you travel with us, you can work for days, weeks, goodness, years! As long as you like.”
“Work?” one of the ghosts asked with optimism. “I haven’t worked in decades.”
“Precisely!”
“What will we do?”
“Oh, Madame Madison, what can you do? Greeting guests! Lifting wallets! Handing out tickets! Fluttering dresses! Manning concession stands! Turning spits of meat over roasting fires, blowing up balloons, constructing wonderful stages for our performers! The real question, my poor friends, is what can’t you do?”
“Will we be able to … dance?” Madame Madison asked.
“Why, yes. Yes. Yes of course,” the ghost courter stammered.
“Oi. If we could’a done this before,” a butcher with his head on backwards stepped forward, “don’cha think we would’ve? The dead—sorry lad, it’s what we are—can’t wander from their ‘omes.”
Ivory cracked the knuckles of his living, then dead, hand.
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is where it gets interesting. The Black Carnival is like Highgate. Secure. We have necromancers—”
“You’ve what?”
“Necromancers who secure the grounds. So long as I have a piece of you. An artefact. A memento mori, shall we say, we can house your soul for as long as you like. And, if you don’t like it?” he shrugged. “You can always return. So? What’ll it be?”
After a moment’s consideration, the ghosts left into their sepulchres.
Then a pair of earrings dropped at Ivory’s feet. Followed by a pocket watch, a wedding ring, a letter with a broken seal, two dolls, one amulet, several family photos, a straight razor, butcher’s knife, and lastly, his favourite.
A pair of ballet shoes.
The ghost courter picked up the artefacts, one by one, examining them like pieces of raw gold, before replacing them into his satchel.
Once they were secured, Ivory removed his listening piece, replaced his top hat, and nodded at the line of phantoms trailing behind him. “If you will, ladies and gentlemen, follow me.”
They ventured into the blaring streets of London. Where the roar of modernity sounded of merchant shouts, horns and the clatter of carriage wheels punctuated with tolling bells.
Passersby and those enjoying their morning coffee outside of cafés noticed the man in the strange attire as he jaunted through the streets. A broad, self-satisfied smile played on his lips. And many couldn’t help but notice, how leaves and newspapers and rubbish seemed to flutter about him …
