NEW: descending night.

 

A long sliding moan - from high to low, broke through the descending night, silencing whatever creatures circled the coming darkness. The moan even silenced the creak of the trees as they shifted in the stiff breeze. Whatever was abroad - ghost-wise, needed a point in which to stay fixed to this outer world, and knowingly, Nathaniel was that fixed point, maintaining as he he did, his presence in the moonless night.

The pathways and byways between the world of the ghost and the outer world - our world, are many. They are convoluted, twisted, they shift and shimmer beyond our eyesight. They are always open, always available, but only to the dead. However, if you had the flexible sight of certain individuals, like Nathaniel, those who could see both the spectres of the dead, and the pathways that led them along the void, then you either saw yourself as lucky, gifted - or exceedingly unlucky, and therefore cursed.

Nathaniel preferred to see himself as neither. What sight he had, and he had more than one avenue in what was often referred to as second sight, was useful at times, and a hindrance at others. Standing alone, listening intently to the moan that had just slid through the night, he felt himself - useful. There would be more that he would this night than ever reached the lives of most of the living, and when he was done, he would sleep as well as he could, as well as the dead would let him.