Everything speaks if you know how to listen.
Even the dead.
Most people know this, even if they do not believe it. It’s why they fall quiet when they walk past a churchyard. It is why they choose to hear the rush of their own blood in their ears or the tumble of leaves over a gravestone. It is why they read epitaphs with the same held-breath care as a Ouija board—why they take comfort in the distant dates. Yet, if you stop long enough and look at the numbers, you might feel your pocket watch ticking against your chest, urging you to hurry on to your next appointment: Go, go, go, don’t think too hard about what is to come!
But perhaps you are not afraid.
Perhaps you are one of those people who pause at the smell of cool forgotten earth, who follow the call of the underworld down spiral staircases, where stones drip and skulls line the walls. Their epitaph is different from the rest: STOP! THIS IS THE EMPIRE OF DEATH.
You halt.
The lantern you lit with your many-colored matches sputters. You feel the breadth of these tunnels—their depth—as your own breath echoes. (Out. Out. The darkness sucks it back in.) You wonder why the bones are stacked just so: What was the mining engineer thinking when he shaped several heads into a heart? Was it a cruel joke? Some commentary on love outlasting death? Or could it mean something more?
If you stand in front of these skulls long enough, they might tell you.
You might hear about the rise and fall of Maximilien François Marie Isadore de Robespierre, who cut off many of the heads that now surround his own. Vive la Révolution! Vive Monsieur Robespierre! Neither of these lasted as long as the Sanct himself wanted. And, oh, how he wanted. Justice, at first. Power, next. Then more, then more, then more—the pull of blood as it sluiced from Madame Guillotine was too tempting. He went too far. He got too close. He lost everything. His heart, his jawbone, and even his teeth.
Or you might hear the story of the man who wrenched them out, one by one.
He dug the Sanct’s secrets from his skull using a hair comb—of all things—even though the piece was purely decorative. There was an opal moon at the top, they say, much the same color as the flame in your lantern.