Chapter 1: The Reflection That Shouldn't Be
Rain fell in thick, gray sheets, soaking the black wool of Fred’s only suit. It was cheap, and it smelled like mothballs and regret. He stood at the graveside, hands shoved deep in his pockets, the cold seeping through the thin soles of his shoes. The priest’s voice was a drone, a soft hum battling the wind and the drumming of water on umbrellas.
“...and though Gordon Edgley’s passing was peaceful, we take comfort in the life he lived…”
Peaceful. Fred almost snorted. His uncle Gordon had died of a heart attack while attempting to re-shelf a first edition of The Canterbury Tales without a ladder. He’d been found with a smile on his face and a dozen rare books cradled in his arms like a literary sacrifice. There was nothing peaceful about it; it was purely, quintessentially Gordon.
Fred tuned out the priest and watched the rainwater gather in the worn letters of the granite headstone. Gordon Edgley. Bibliophile. Eccentric. The only family Fred had left.
A flicker of movement at the edge of the gathering caught his eye. A man stood apart, under the twisted branches of a dead oak. No umbrella. He wore a long, dark trench coat and a fedora pulled low, hands likewise buried in his pockets. He seemed… separate from the scene, an observer rather than a mourner.
Fred frowned, blinking rain from his lashes. The water pooling around the man’s feet… it wasn’t flowing right. It gathered in a perfect, still circle, defying the mud and the incline of the hill. As Fred watched, a fat drop fell from the fedora’s brim and shattered the surface.
For a split second, the puddle became a mirror.
It reflected not a human face, but a smooth, polished skull, with a grin that was both empty and impossibly expressive.
Fred jerked his head up, heart hammering against his ribs. The man in the trench coat hadn’t moved.
A jagged fork of lightning tore the sky open directly above the cemetery. It didn’t fork or branch. It was a single, blinding lance of white energy that struck the dead oak with a sound like the world cracking in half. Wood exploded. A limb the size of a car tumbled down, crashing onto the path exactly where the mourners had walked minutes before, sending up a plume of splinters and smoke.
Screams cut through the rain. The priest stammered into silence. Umbrellas wilted as people stared, open-mouthed, at the smoldering wreckage.
Fred’s gaze snapped back to the figure under the now-shattered tree.
He was gone.
The trench coat was gone. The hat was gone. In the stark, electric afterglow, standing calmly amidst the steam rising from scorched bark, was a skeleton. It wore a sharp, tailored suit, a scarlet tie knotted perfectly at its cervical vertebrae. It adjusted its cuffs, plucked a stray splinter from its lapel, and turned its hollow-eyed gaze directly on Fred.
The skeleton tipped its fedora.
People were running now, stumbling through the mud, their grief forgotten in a surge of panic. Fred couldn’t move. His feet were rooted to the sodden earth. The skeleton began to walk toward him, its steps making no sound in the churned mud. It moved with an unnatural, fluid grace.
It stopped a few feet away. Rain pattered through its ribcage.
“Terrible weather for it,” the skeleton said. Its voice wasn’t the rattle of bones Fred expected. It was smooth, cultured, with a hint of dry amusement. It sounded like a late-night radio host. “Funerals, I mean. Though I suppose it sets the appropriate tone.”
“You’re…” Fred’s voice failed. He tried again. “You’re a skeleton.”
“Astute observation. Fred, isn’t it? Gordon spoke of you. Often.”
“Gordon knew you?”
“We had mutual interests. Rare books, mostly. And the odd spot of trouble.” The skeleton—Skulduggery, a name surfaced in Fred’s stunned mind from his uncle’s rambling stories—looked past him at the grave. “He wouldn’t have wanted all this fuss, you know. He’d have preferred a wake. Preferably with single-malt whiskey and someone attempting to recite Chaucer from memory.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled in Fred’s throat. He clamped it down. “The lightning. That was you?”
“An unfortunate necessity. There was a… presence… in that tree. Nasty thing, feeding on the grief. Best to clear it out before it got any stronger.” Skulduggery leaned closer, the rain misting through the space where his nose should have been. “Gordon left you something. It wasn’t in his will. He knew his death might attract certain attention. My job is to deliver it, and to ensure you don’t end up joining him prematurely.”
“What? Why? What did he leave me?”
“Keys,” Skulduggery said. “To his house, yes, but more importantly, to a certain trunk in his study. And, by extension, to the world that exists just beside this one. The one he was a part of. The one you’re now standing at the door of, whether you like it or not.”
Before Fred could process this, a new sound cut through the steady hiss of the rain. A low, rhythmic thud, like a muffled heartbeat coming from the ground. The puddles around Gordon’s fresh grave began to tremble, concentric rings spreading out across their surfaces.
Skulduggery’s head tilted. “Ah. That was quicker than I anticipated.”
The soil over the grave erupted.
Not a wild explosion, but a precise, horrible bulging, as if something beneath was pushing upward with deliberate force. A hand, gray and slick with grave-mud, clawed its way into the air. The fingers were too long, the nails black and sharp.
Fred stumbled back, a raw sound of terror choking in his throat.
“Gordon?” he whispered.
“Not quite,” Skulduggery said, stepping smoothly between Fred and the grave. His skeletal hands emerged from his pockets, and they were glowing with a soft, gold light. “That is what we call a lich. A memory-thief. It’s taken Gordon’s form, but it’s empty. Hungry. It wants what Gordon knew. It wants what he left for you.”
The thing that had been Gordon Edgley hauled itself from the earth. It stood in its burial suit, dripping mud and rainwater. Its face was a blurred, unfinished copy, but its eyes were pits of cold, voracious darkness. It opened its mouth, and a sound like rustling pages and distant screams poured out.
Skulduggery’s voice was calm, almost conversational. “Fred, I suggest you get behind that rather large headstone. This might get a little undignified.”
The lich lunged, a blur of wet earth and unnatural speed.
Skulduggery Pleasant didn’t move. He merely lifted one glowing hand and snapped his fingers.
The air between them solidified into a wall of shimmering heat. The lich hit it and recoiled with a shriek, tendrils of smoke rising from its stolen skin.
“You’ll find,” Skulduggery said, advancing as the gold light around his other hand twisted into a long, wicked blade of pure energy, “that I object quite strenuously to people disturbing my friends’ final resting places.”
Fred crouched behind the granite monument, the carved angels glaring down at him. He peered around the edge, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He saw the flash of the energy blade, heard the lich’s unearthly wail, saw Skulduggery move with a dancer’s terrifying elegance.
This was impossible. This was insanity.
But the mud on his knees was real. The acid smell of ozone and decay was real. The skeleton in the impeccable suit, currently driving a blade of light through the chest of the creature wearing his uncle’s face, was undeniably, horrifyingly real.
The fight ended as suddenly as it began. With a final, silent convulsion, the lich dissolved into a pile of ash and rich, dark earth, indistinguishable from the grave soil. The rain began to wash it away.
Skulduggery dusted off his hands, the golden light winking out. He walked over to Fred, who was still crouched, trembling.
“Up you get,” Skulduggery said, offering a bony hand. “The ceremony, I believe, is over. Yours, however, is just beginning.”
Fred stared at the offered hand, then up at the smooth, grinning skull.
He had no home. No family. A skeleton had just fought a zombie at his uncle’s funeral. And somewhere, there was a key.
Slowly, feeling like he was plunging into an icy ocean, Fred Lawrence reached out and took the skeleton’s hand. It was surprisingly warm.
“My name,” he said, his voice finding a strange steadiness, “is Gera Deare.”
Skulduggery’s grin seemed to widen. “Is it now? Well then, Gera. Let’s go find those keys.”