Miss Gertrude the Gatekeeper

Miss Gertrude the Gatekeeper

Miss Gertrude Grey is the Gatekeeper of Greymere Cemetery. Her father the venerable Professor Gideon Grey died leaving poor Gertrude with only the crumbling house filled with books and the skeleton key to the cemetery gates.

Each night she listens to the gears of her father’s collection of clocks waiting for them to toll the hours of the night. After midnight when the fog is thick in the empty streets she ventures out to the Greymere. She stalks the night voluminous skirts whispering against gravestones. From her pocket she withdraws a map of the cemetery each mausoleum and crypt carefully drawn. She follows a winding path, skirts brushing against headstones and crypts until she stood before the stature of a long forgotten lady.

Gertrude removed the skeleton key from around her neck and slipped the key into the intricately carved base of the stature. The key turned and Gertrude listened to gears grinding and turning before a small door slid back. She stepped through into the darkness and down a creaking spiralling stairs deep below the cemetery grounds. At the bottom of the stairs gas lamps flicker to life and Gertrude enters what was once her father’s laboratory. It is filled with rusting hulks of machinery, broken gears and levers, books, and dusty glass bottles filled with strange items and coloured liquids.

Everywhere are scattered notes and drawings in her father’s precise handwriting, piled high on the work bench, pinned up on the wall. Gertrude reaches out to brush her fingers against her father’s notes and the tools gathering dust upon his desk. A ghostly smile crosses her face as she picks up a small heart shaped machine from his desk turning it over and over in her hands looking at it through a golden filigree magnifying glass. She picks up a pair of delicate tweezers and sets to work adjusting the tiny cogs and springs within the apparatus.

Miss Gertrude locks the gates at night of ancient Greymere Cemetery, but when the hours dwindle she spends her nights in her father's secret lab building the machines he never finished and creating new clockwork curiosities.

Gertrude will be listed in my little etsy shop in a few moments.