I mean, you see things on television and in movies about someone lying in a coffin or in a grave, and it’s always this hideous, terrifying experience. I’d been to my grave before, and it had disturbed me every time. I guess maybe I was past all that.
Death is only frightening from the near side.
I sat back against the wall of my grave, stretching my legs out ahead of me, leaning my head back against it, and closed my eyes. There was no sound but for a bit of wind in the cemetery’s trees, and the muted ambient music of the living, breathing city. Cars. Horns. Distant music. Sirens. Trains. Construction. A few birds that called Graceland home.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so . . .
Peaceful. Content.
And free. Free to do nothing. Free to rest. Free to turn away from horrible, black things in my memory, to let go of burdens for a while.
I left my eyes closed for a time, and let the contentment and the quiet fill me.
“You’re new,” said a quiet, calm voice.
I opened my eyes, vaguely annoyed that my rest had been interrupted after only a few moments—and looked up at a sky with only a hint of blue still in it. Violet twilight was coming on with the night.
I sat up, away from the wall of my grave, startled. What the hell? I’d been resting for only a minute or two. Hadn’t I? I blinked up at the sky several times and pushed myself slowly to my feet. I felt heavy, and it was harder to rise than it should have been, as if I’d been covered in wet, heavy blankets or one of those lead-lined aprons they use around X-ray machines.
“I always like seeing new things being born,” said the voice—a child’s voice. “You can guess what they’re going to become, and then watch and see if it happens.”
My grave was about six feet deep. I’m considerably over six feet tall. As I stood, my eyes were a few inches above the top of half a foot of snow that covered the ground at that spot. So it wasn’t hard to see the little girl.
She might have been six years old and looked small, even for her age. She wore a nineteenth-century outfit, an almost ridiculously frilly, ornate dress for a child who would probably have it splattered with dirt or food within the hour. Her shoes looked handmade and had little buckles on them. Over one shoulder she was carrying a tiny, lacy parasol that matched her dress. She was pretty—like most children—and had blond hair and bright green eyes.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello,” she said, with a little Shirley Temple curtsy. “It is a pleasure to meet you, the late Mr. Harry Dresden.”
I decided to be careful. What were the odds she was really a little girl, as she appeared? “How did you know my name?”
She folded the little parasol closed and tapped it against the headstone. It was made of white marble. Letters had been inscribed upon it in gold, or at least something goldlike, and it still gleamed despite about a decade of exposure. It had a pentacle inscribed beneath its simple legend: HERE LIES HARRY DRESDEN. Beneath the pentacle, it continued: HE DIED DOING THE RIGHT THING.
For a moment, there was a strange, sweet taste in my mouth, and the scent of pine needles and fresh greenery filled my nose. A frisson rippled up and down my spine, and I shivered. Then the taste and scent were both gone.
“Do you know me?” she asked. “I’m famous.”
I squinted at her for a moment. Then I made an effort of will and vanished from the bottom of the grave, reappearing beside the child. I was facing the wrong direction again, and I sighed as I turned to face her and then glanced around me. In Graceland there’s a statue of a small girl, a child known as Inez. It’s been there for going on two centuries, and every few years stories circulate about how the statue will go missing—and how visitors to the graveyard have reported encounters with a little girl in a period dress.
The statue was gone from its case.
“You’re Inez,” I said. “Famous ghost of Graceland.”
The little girl laughed and clapped her hands. “I have been called so.”
“I heard they debunked you a couple of years ago. That the statue was just there as advertising for some sculptor or something.”
She opened the parasol again and put it over