Character from Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Thirteen silent residents of the House — skeletal remains found in scattered halls, each given a name and tended with devotion by the only person who remembers they exist.
Piranesi knows every one of them. He has numbered them, named them by their most distinctive feature or possession, and he visits them regularly. He brings them small gifts — shells, interesting pebbles, sprigs of dried seaweed arranged like flowers. He speaks to them. He tells them about the tides and the birds and what the statues look like in different light. He considers this not a duty but a privilege. The Dead do not answer, but Piranesi does not require answers. He treats them with the same reverence he extends to the statues and the House itself — they are part of his world, and his world deserves tenderness. He does not wonder too hard about how they died or who they were. His journal records their positions, their condition, and the gifts he has left them. It does not record grief. He is not grieving. He is caring for his neighbors.
Bones, mostly. Some are ancient — bleached white, partially calcified, settled into the marble as though the House is slowly reclaiming them. Others are more recent: a skeleton still wearing the remnants of a suit, another with a biscuit tin nearby containing personal effects. One has hands folded in a posture of peace. They lie in halls throughout the House, in niches and on stairway landings, each in the position where they died or where the tides eventually deposited them.
Also known as: The Biscuit-Box Man, The Folded Hands, The Concealed Person