Haunted

Chapter One

 A chilly Sunday morning whisked deep into the dreams of one Sweeney Todd, gooseflesh erupting upon his bare arms and legs, the limbs covered in sweat and the blanket tossed haphazardly in the floor beside his stained shirt and black pants. He lay on his back with his face to the ceiling wearing only his knickers. His eyelids twitched in his dreams. By the window, thick flakes of snow fell, and his fire only smoldered, as he hadn't awoken to feed it since the wee hours of the morning when he had finally retired.

Ordinarily his dreams were tormented enough to dissuade him from sleep. But not this morning. This morning he saw the first Christmas he had spent with Johanna—the last he had spent with his family. They swirled in front of a small green tree and opened meager gifts and laughed, and then Lucy sang to the crying baby until she fell asleep. He took the infant from his wife, and Johanna promptly burst into tears again. Lucy began to croon softly a lyrical lullaby he had never heard before: "May there always be angels to watch over you, to guide you each step of the way, to guard you and keep you safe from all harm, loo-li loo-li lai-lay..."

His reverie fell away as a sing-song voice echoed up the stairwell, and the newly awakened barber sprang out of bed to fumble for his pants. "Good morning, Mr. Todd! I made us some breakfast!" Mrs. Lovett rapped three times upon his door, but before he had the chance to call out that he needed one more moment, she barged in on him. "My, oh my, you must be freezing!" She dropped her platter of steaming food onto the desk, and then she whirled to stoke the fire. "I keep telling you, there's no shame in having a rest downstairs with me sometime. It certainly never gets this cold." He bent over to pick up the bloody shirt from yesterday, but she swiped it from his grasp. "Ah-Ah! This is over a week worn. Smells like you've got a body mouldering away inside it. It gets washed today, Mr. Todd."

He frowned. He supposed many men didn't have their widowed neighbor doing their laundry, but then again, he didn't care to do it himself—and the way his clothes often turned out after a day's work, he wouldn't know where to start. Before he dared to broach an argument, Mrs. Lovett spun around and stared at herself in the cracked mirror to adjust her dark hair. "Now, hurry up with breakfast. I need you to go with me to the grocer, let you pick out something to eat. Trouble with you married men, none of you know how to cook a lick. My ole Al couldn't have warmed a pot of water if he tried. Now, some bachelor comes in the shop, he tells me how to roll my crust."

Tongue darting tentatively over his lips, Sweeney found himself at a loss for words; the presence of Mrs. Lovett often left him speechless. She was so simple yet so enigmatic. In the years of his absence he hadn't thought once of her nor of her fat pig of a husband, yet now she was his closest friend and arguably the wittier one of them. So regularly she reflected upon Albert, but she didn't mourn him, not the way he mourned for Lucy. It seemed she relished in his absence, or at least had a new sense of freedom without him there. He could never fathom an appropriate response to her when she mentioned the late bloke.

Any mention of their old lives, save for the necessary discussions of the judge and the beadle, made Sweeney Todd incredibly uncomfortable. "What about business?"

"It's a Sunday in December, Mr. Todd." Hair now pulled down to frame her face, she lifted a finger to the window. "Nobody be wanting a shave today, I don't suppose, unless he's in the mood for an awfully cold face." The shopkeeper smoothed down the hem of her dress. "Besides, we'll have two or three days of meat anyway from that bloke you offed yesterday. Fat fellow, he was. Don't suppose anyone will miss him?"

Shaking his head, he replied, "Cab drivers are a dime a dozen." He eyed the steaming plate and scratched awkwardly at his bare chest, one eyebrow quirked upward and the other hovering low over his eye. The mixed feelings of exposure and embarrassment and hunger stimulated him.