The young woman's name is Janine, stamped in gold letters on the badge that still clings to her crumpled uniform. This lies on the floor, discarded like she was at the end of yesterday's work day. They procured a hundred excuses, but she knows the real one. The restaurant is losing money and what little reputation it still retains to the ghost epidemic. With lost spirits seated at its tables and wandering in and out of its restroom, the last thing it needed was a waitress whose gaze made it clear she could see them.

The apartment's nighttime peace is broken by the squawking of her alarm. This is the third time it has rung, and for the third time, she snoozes it, hand fumbling in the darkness. The offensive noise is extinguished, but its echoes ring like sound's ghosts against the fog that clouds her thoughts and makes it hard to care about anything. She once valued the alarm's persistence for its ability to drive her out of bed. Now, it just makes her want to stay longer.

She resents having to wake to her alarm again this morning. Even after stripping her of her job of six years, the restaurant still has the power to make demands on her schedule. At least her visit today will be the last of that.

The fourth alarm wakes her for the fourth time. She turns it off now, then lies in bed, thoughts wandering through all the potential consequences of not turning up at the restaurant today. The list is an unattractive one. Faced with little choice, she pushes herself up and nearly falls to the mattress again as the cold air of the apartment wraps her in an unwanted hug. A draft leaks from the corner of the window. When the wind gusts outside, it's enough to sway her heavy curtains.

A windy day, at least, will be good when it comes to ghosts. Or bad for the ghosts, but good for the ghost problem... she is never sure which way it falls. Even ghosts were people once, and she can imagine no greater emptiness than wandering Old Saint Boniface just looking for a place to get out of the cold. Those that died in summer seem to feel winter's bite, at least until their memories fade and they no longer recognize that their clothing is a poor fit for snow.

How much of that effect is just association? She doesn't know... nobody does. The ghosts do not speak, and nobody who speaks to them seems to be heard. Or at least not understood. She wonders if they hear the living world as little as she hears the ghost one. Which is, to say, not at all.

The rattle of her windowpanes makes Janine want to crawl back into bed. But the restaurant could fine her if it so pleased, should she fail to return what she owes them. She drags her legs off the bed and sits at its edge, just staring at the stiff pile of fabric on the floor. She has enough money in the bank for one more month of rent. She will not miss the restaurant, nor her boss, nor her job, but the prospect of securing another one is a mountain too daunting to even walk through in her mind. She has few transferable skills. Even her rank remained stagnant over six years of work, as remaining in the same position proved more comfortable than constantly learning, or having to face customers with something more closely resembling a smile.

Had she made herself less dispensable, she might still be employed right now, but the fog over her thoughts and feelings only makes another mountain of that. She shuffles into her slippers and leaves the uniform where it lies, heading to the bathroom instead. A splash of water over her face does little to rouse her. She picks up her comb and faces down her hair, thick and black as her mother's, but unkempt and dull. It falls lank on one side of her head, but arches up on the other, a sleep-sculpture she already knows even water won't quell. She makes a half-hearted attack with the comb, then gives up. Keeping her hat on will do.

The thought of breakfast makes her stomach turn, so she returns to the bedroom and struggles into a warmer outfit. Then she pushes aside a full laundry basket and several stray shirts to reach her closet for a clothes hanger. Several hang empty from the bar across the closet's upper half, above the pile on the floor that contains most of her clothes. She unhooks the straightest hanger and shuts the door again.

The uniform holds its shape like a deflated person as she picks it up off the floor. Its stiff fabric was never comfortable. Janine thrusts the hanger through it, stringing it up and dropping it on her bed before moving about her apartment, slowly gathering mitts and a hat, scarf, and jacket from wherever she dropped them the night before. She trudges back for the uniform before putting on her boots and shutting the mess of her living space behind a locked front door.

The hallway is, as ever, empty.

Janine pushes the elevator button, but the metal box masquerading as modern infrastructure is a long time coming. Leaving gives her more energy than coming home, so she takes the stairs down. Her steps quicken until she pushes through the heavy front door of the old, converted church, out into a crisp winter's morning.

There is no sun, but she likes the grey. The only ghosts on the street are the ones who don't have work to attend to, either because they've lost their memories, or because they died too young, too old, too rich, or unemployed. The living people on the street are much the same, though perhaps with a heavier emphasis on the rich and the young.

A gust of wind rips up the street. Trees bend in a macabre dance, and children and rich folks alike drop their heads and lift hands to their hats. Janine's own is pulled down snug. She thrusts her uniform under one arm, not caring that it will get covered in snow by the time she reaches the laundromat. The wind whips up a street-bound blizzard, though the sky today isn't in the mood to deliver. It emptied itself last night, dumping an ankle's depth of white over the city.

Janine takes a deep breath, heedless of the ache it drives through her lungs. Snowflakes and cold sting her cheeks, turning her fawn skin rosy and peppering her eyebrows with crystals. She descends the steps with more spring in her feet than she's had in days. Someone else's mitten tumbles by. She ignores it and starts up the street, eyes squinted against each blast of wind.

The route to the nearest laundromat still in business brings her within a block of the city square. After dumping her uniform in a small machine and paying for a wash cycle, Janine walks the rest of the way to the open space that lies at the heart of Old Saint Boniface.

Keepers of the city's history often say the Stonechurch bell tower is one of the oldest landmarks for miles around. Debate on the origin of its name still wracks the ranks of those who cared, for while it is made of stone, it is not—and never had been—used by a church. In fact, nobody is quite sure of its original purpose at all, though it has served many over the centuries. Some five hundred years ago, city clockmakers installed twin clock faces on it, powered by an elaborate system of gears. The tower's bell now rings on the hours and their halves, and while petitions have come and gone to rename its housing the Stonechurch clocktower, the old moniker has stuck fast.

The tower itself rises straight from the square, like the steeple of a church long buried beneath the cobblestones. Its stout base is four-sided, five meters to a side. These comparatively simple walls are broken only by a heavy wooden door battered by the fist of time, its brass handle worn to a polish bright enough to wink even in the dim winter's day.

Past the tower's base, its architecture turns breathtaking. Vertical stone ribbing soars up the sides of each tiered level, terminating in pinnacles decked with carved spurs like stone leaves. Arches, their tops bluntly pointed, frame windows of antique glass. More march in strict lines between the pinnacles, forming little fences that ring each tower level as if to shelter the next as it rises.

The tower's top terminates in a crown of minor pinnacles. A spire once speared the sky here, but lightning burned it down enough times that people stopped rebuilding it long before the clocks arrived. The belfry now stands at the highest point of the tower. Its four pillared corners leave ample gaps between them, through which the tower's single bell can be seen. It itself is not big. Standing on the ground, it would rise inches past Janine's knee at best. Yet its toll... she has never heard one like it.

Janine stands at the square's edge, lost in the slow turn of the clock. At the base of the bell tower, the old woman who dances in the square steps and turns, her colourful, patched skirts swirling about her. She is of East Asian descent like Janine herself, with hair long since gone grey, and laugh lines crinkled deep at the corners of her eyes. She has been here every day for as long as Janine has lived in the city. Nobody pays her any mind, as her dance seems harmless, and she smiles brightly at anyone who meets her gaze.

Janine shuffles her feet to keep them warm, waiting. Her laundry finishes on the fifty-five, but though someone else is undoubtedly in line for the machine, she does not move until the clock's minute hand clicks into place over the hour.

The bell stirs. It swings once, twice, soundless still, but gaining momentum. Janine counts to its third swing and then closes her eyes.

And the bell tolls.

It is deep. Warm. Rich with time and age and history, like the smell of autumn leaves and old stone. It is the voice of a city that had been here for centuries, coexisting with the surrounding countryside. And it thrums through Old Saint Boniface like the sound itself is alive.

Even the dead stop to listen.

The bell rings ten times. When the wind chases its final echoes from the streets, Janine opens her eyes and gives the tower one long, last look before turning and leaving the square. Ghosts dot the way ahead. Many are in their summer dress, like the bell was enough to tempt them outside. Janine does not flinch at the shiver that comes with passing through a knot of them. She pulls her coat tighter about her shoulders and leaves them standing there, their faces at peace, looking back the way she came.