title: Ghosts in the Cemetery: A Pictorial Study
author:  Stuart L. Schneider 
description: Stuart L. Schneider is an accomplished author whose enthusiasm has led him into varied fields of historic ghostly research. Rebecca Benjamin has been a practitioner of the image-driven photographic style for over fifteen years and focuses on older cemeteries.
zlib_text: **Alastair Reynolds**
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## **Diamond Dogs**
  
  
  Copyright (c) Alastair Reynolds 2002
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## **ONE**
  
  
  I met Childe in the Monument to the Eighty.
  
  
  It was one of those days when I had the place largely to myself, able to walk
  from aisle to aisle without seeing another visitor; only my footsteps
  disturbed the air of funereal silence and stillness.
  
  
  I was visiting my parents' shrine. It was a modest affair: a smooth wedge of
  obsidian shaped like a metronome, undecorated save for two cameo portraits set
  in elliptical borders. The sole moving part was a black blade which was
  attached near the base of the shrine, ticking back and forth with magisterial
  slowness. Mechanisms buried inside the shrine ensured that it was winding
  down, destined to count out days and then years with each tick. Eventually it
  would require careful measurement to detect its movement.
  
  
  I was watching the blade when a voice disturbed me.
  
  
  'Visiting the dead again, Richard?'
  
  
  'Who's there?' I said, looki