Everyone knows, deep down in the quiet places of their heart, that death is not the worst thing that can happen to them. Death is understandable. Death is comprehensible. Death has a shape and that shape is your shape, in the end, in the earth. Death is huge and solemn and vast-mouthed, and it is final.

The unquiet dead deny that truth. They spit upon it. Whatever they will do to you, your mind whispers between its teeth, it will not be death. They will not be so kind as to kill you. The chill touch of their fingers promises something unspoken, unspeakable, shaped like smoke. That is why you walk through buying sheep from a local shepherd like a sleepwalker, eyes vacant, your smile never reaching them. The formless shape of their fury lingers on you like a shroud. It is the fear of seeing a pale face among the trees when you stand framed in your own doorway. It is the fear of a presence in the quiet hours of the night. It is the fear of that which is worse, in all ways, than death.

So when you induce the sheep to kneel by the simple graves, your hand is not steady as it saws through the neck and spills the blood freely onto the thirsty earth. It shakes as if frigid. And you know that this sacrifice must be enough, that they cannot, must not ask you for more, for the head of a king, because if you refuse them... you do not know what will happen. And that is the worst of it all.