Necrology

A brilliant Monday morning: the sun shining brightly through the damp, mist-filled air onto the black gothic fence that encloses the periphery of the withering ossuary.  The gravediggers, languid and distant, perform their tasks of gardening the dead.

            “Hey, Don!” Vic bellowed to the stocky man on the hill above.

            “What is it?”

            “Come on, man.  It’s lunchtime.” 

            “What time do you have?”

            “About eleven-thirty.”

            “I’ll be right down.”

            Don sauntered down the hill with a small brown bag in his hand.  It was an exceptionally nice day, and they didn’t want to waste it by working, so they would go to the thickly wooded area where they usually hid-out for lunch, and drink.

            “How’s it goin’, man?” Vic asked as they strode through a myriad of mossy stone monuments.

            “Dug two graves today,” Don replied.

            “You got any more to do?”

            “Nah, just landscapin’.”

            “Good, then we can take a long lunch.”

            “Yep.”

            They lumbered across the marshy land, their construction boots plunging deep into the soft, clumpy mud produced by the previous night’s rain.  Don and Vic strolled around the bend ahead of them and came upon a thicket adorned with neglected gravestones and strewn about slabs.  Behind this was fixed a small, crumbling mausoleum of no particular significance other than additional cover from the sight of their supervisor.

            “Man,” Vic said, pulling the wax wrapping paper off his sandwich.  “I’m really tired today.”

            “A lotta work, huh?”

            “Nah, not really.  Just a wild party over the weekend at Frank’s place.”

            “How was it?” Don asked, chewing his food.

            “Unbelievable!  There were so many girls...it just blew my mind.  You shoulda come.”

            “Sorry I missed it.  I wasn’t feelin’ too well.”

            “That’s too bad.  Well, there’s another party Friday.  Wanna come along?”

            “Why not.”

            After lunch they decided to indulge themselves.  They were paid well and could afford the good stuff.  “Ah, uncle Jack’s sour mash whisky,” Don advertised, producing his monogrammed silver flask.  “Just what the doctor ordered.”

            “It’s a good day for it,” Vic said as he pulled a dark liquor bottle from his coat pocket.

            They sat drinking and talking for a while and then grew silent, as they frequently would when they started to feel the dulling effects of the alcohol caressing their brains.  After a few minutes, Vic stood up.

            “Hey,” he said.  “Let’s walk around a bit and look at the headstones.”

            “Nahhh, man.  I think I jus’ wan’ tuh sit heeere an’ drink mah boooozze,” Don said.

            “C’mon, man.  Don’t you feel stiff from all this sittin’ around?”

            “Well...”

            “Besides, I want to go to the liquor store and pick up a six-pack.”

            “Well, in that case, all right.”

            “Let’s go then.”

            Don rose to his feet and they began to walk across the graves, stumbling at first, being careful to stay away from the road lest they be seen by their supervisor.  They proceeded with stealth through a hole in the fence and out to the store around the corner.  The blazing sun was an affront to their dilated pupils, causing them both to squint from the pain which came from deep inside their heads.  The street seemed extraordinarily hard and mean to their heavy feet, every motion a laborious enterprise.

            Having arrived at the liquor store, they proceeded to the refrigerators in the back and peered through the dirty glass.  It seemed as if time had stopped and, through the rapture of his intoxication, Don could hear the sober humming of the large white machines.  After some time, Vic slid one of the cold doors open, pulled out a six-pack of Miller, and brought it to the counter.

            “That’ll be four dollars and fifty cents,” the man behind the counter said to an elderly bald man wearing a dirty green sweater and dungarees.  The old man fumbled through his pockets, extracting some crumpled singles and silver change.

            “I...uh...” the old man uttered in a rasping voice.

            “I’ll take care of the rest of that,” Vic said haughtily, while Don vacantly observed.

            “Much obliged,” he said with gratitude as Vic handed the owner the money.

            The three men left together and started back to the cemetery, not waiting until they returned before consuming part of Vic’s purchase.  Vic pulled a beer out of the bag and handed it to Don while he asked the old man if he wanted one. 

            “Sure,” the old man replied as they walked around the corner.  Vic gave it to the old man who quickly twisted the top off and guzzled it.

            “My name’s Clifford,” the old man said.

            “I’m Vic, and this is Don.”

            “Good to know you.”

            “So, you live around here?” Vic asked.

            “Not much livin’.  Drinkin’.  Walkin’.  Dyin’ mostly,” he said, hoisting his bottle in the gesture of a toast.  “I got a place on the tracks about five blocks down.”

            “You’re homeless?” Don said.

            “Yep.  Family got tired of takin’ care of an old drunk,” Clifford said.

            “How do you get money to live?” asked Vic.

            “Beggin’ and pickin’ garbage for bottles and cans.  There’s a shelter a few blocks away where I can get some free food.  Sometimes, I have to pick through the trash for food scraps.”

            “Aw, man.  How could you do that?” Don said.

            “I don’t do it too often.  If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything.  It’s the price I have to pay.  I know I’m killin’ myself, but every time I go off the wagon I hop right back on again.”

            After a few moments of tense silence, during which time they all continued to drink, they approached their secret entrance to the graveyard.

            “What’s the matter?” Don asked the old man, who had stopped abruptly.

            “I’m not goin’ in there.”

            “Why not?” Vic asked.

            “It’s haunted.”

            “Haunted?” Don said. 

            “Come on, you don’t believe that do you,” Vic mocked.  “We’ve been working here for years, and not once did we see any ghosts.”

            “I was there.  I saw it.  A few years ago, with a couple of drinkin’ buddies.  We was just sittin’ there drinkin’ and then we saw it.”

            “Saw what?” Don asked.

            “I saw it.  It came out from behind one of those mausoleums in there, black as pitch.”

            “Oh yeah.  What was it?” Vic asked mockingly.

            “Don’t know, but it was black as pitch.”

            “What did it do?  What happened?” Vic asked.

            “It was there, black as pitch.  I saw it.”  Clifford was becoming incoherent.  Nothing he said seemed to make much sense.  He began to shudder and finally fled down the street.

            “Hey!  Where are you going?” Don yelled.

            “Let him go, man.  We gotta get back inside before someone sees us.” 

            As they passed though the hole and continued to skulk about, Don felt as if his perception had been altered, as if he were previously blind and could now see.  Sounds of footsteps, dry autumn leaves, birds, and wind.  He was drunk.  He found himself a visitor in a strange world, unable to fully relate or empathize with its creatures.  A foreboding feeling came over him.  He was alone.  Locked up in a cerebral shell.  But there was Vic walking quietly beside him, drinking his beer.

            As they walked back to the grove, Vic looked at the tombstones, stopping occasionally to read the more interesting and bizarre epitaphs aloud to Don:

Death is no stranger to those who know

The painful pallor of Life’s last glow;

The barren trees of Winter’s end

Foreshadowed Death, my only friend.

            “These people sure got a depressing way of writin’ about things,” Vic said to Don as they continued their walk.  They went farther and Vic stopped a few graves down to recite another inscription:

He lived and died and took a bed

In the earth of beloved dead;

Now feasting worms and their kind

Have stripped him bare from whence they dined.

            “Aw, man.  Now that’s just sick!” Vic proclaimed, as Don looked on with indifference. 

            They meandered back toward their hideout and came upon a peculiar site.  “Hey, check this out,” Vic said as he hunched over the grave.  Upon the headstone was engraved the name, EQUIMANTHORNE and an inverted five pointed star with various symbols inside it.  They gazed curiously at the tombstone, noting its simplicity and symbolism.  Vic put the bag down and grabbed another beer.  As he twisted the top off the edge caught his flesh, causing it to tear.

            “Ah, damn!” Vic exclaimed.

            “What is it?” Don asked.

            “I cut myself on the damned bottle cap.”

            Vic’s hand was hemorrhaging profusely from a deep laceration on the end of his index finger, and before he could stop the bleeding, an ample amount of the crimson fluid had trickled onto the grave.

            “Aw, man.  I think I’m gonna need stitches,” he said, wrapping it in a piece of cloth he had just torn off from his shirt.  Then, suddenly, Don noticed a very threatening cloud formation rapidly encroaching the perimeter, and soon the sun was obscured, making everything go dark and yellow, and the graveyard became enveloped in a thick, brooding fog.  The clouds rumbled menacingly as the wind began to howl, electrifying the atmosphere.  Don felt the tension building up in the pit of his stomach when the skies issued forth a torrential downpour of icy-cold rain.  He nervously reached for his flask and took a swig.  Vic was bewildered as he looked around anxiously.

            Don felt the ground shift below his feet.  He fell backwards, injuring his ankle.  There was a rapid displacement of soil in front of the tombstone.  Don could see the earth break open, sifting wet dirt through the widening crevice.  Vic screamed as the ground devoured his legs.

            “Help!  Don!  Please!  Help me!!”

            The grave became a voracious mire, a whirlpool of damnation.

            “HURRY!  HURRY!!  FAST!!!

            Don crawled over to Vic and clutched his hand as hard as he could.

            “Hold on!” Don yelled.  But Vic’s hand was too wet and slipped through his grasp.

            “NO!  OH GOD!  HELP ME!!  NOOOOO!!!”

            Vic was swallowed up into the pit, his clutching fingers raking the moist black earth.  Vic’s screams were replaced by the nauseating sounds of his last breaths drowning in blood and bog.

            Don lay there petrified and unsure of his state of mind as the mud funneled downward into the pit.  A dreadful, interminable silence ensued.  Then the earth belched up Vic’s smoldering remains.  Don heard a maddening sound, a creaking sound which could only have been the rotted coffin of the grave at which he was situated.  He was assaulted by the noisome air that followed and caused him to reel.  Hideous, demonic laughter boomed into the air accompanied by the utterance of those three words that would haunt him for the rest of his life: “I am alive!”

            Somehow, Don managed to get to safety, for the police found him staggering through the streets during the early morning hours, babbling to himself.  They brought him to Creedmoor State Mental Hospital where he was immediately sedated upon arrival because he was hysterical and becoming violent.  He slept for several days, during which time he was plagued by nightmares, nightmares from which he couldn’t awaken, nightmares of Vic and his terrible demise at that unholy grave.  That same scene played over and over again in his dreams until they were replaced by the voice of that thing which took his friend’s life.  This time, however, that voice was calling to Don.

            When he finally regained consciousness, he was much calmer, although he still spoke of “that horror in the graveyard.”  The doctors suspected that he may have suffered a nervous breakdown, yet the police still couldn’t locate Vic.

            Don knew that his story was too fantastic for anyone to believe, and if he kept going on as he was he would be committed indefinitely, so he made an effort to compose himself and behaved in a calmer, more rational manner.

            Seeing that Don was no longer inclined to become violent, the doctors removed the restraints that bound him, moved him to a less restricted area of the building, and allowed him a certain amount of freedom to move around.

            Don was still greatly disturbed by what had happened the previous week and found it impossible to sleep.  He was very nervous and had an ominous feeling that something was going to happen to him.  He felt trapped in the walls of the hospital and hoped they would release him soon.

            At almost four o’clock Sunday morning, Don, in one of his episodes of terror-induced insomnia, was in bed writing a desperate letter to one of his friends, warning him about the tragedy that had taken place in the cemetery.  Most of the staff had gone home, and he felt his hopelessness waxing.  A clap of thunder broke the unspeakable silence of the usually cacophonous asylum.  When he heard the storm coming again, Don started writing faster and more erratically.  He then heard that diabolical voice which had shaken the very foundation of his soul.  He dropped his pen and frantically scrambled toward the door, but he was too late.

            The next day, a nurse came in to find his room in shambles with many broken objects on the floor and blood everywhere.  The window had been shattered, and the bars of the window torn out of the wall.  When the authorities were called in they questioned the other patients and were told that a storm had suddenly broken out that night and a few moments later they heard glass shattering, objects crashing to the floor, and a shrill scream.  A white mist flowed into the hallway followed by a disgusting stench.  Then there was a gargling sound which was followed by “a flopping and scratching.”  After this, a prolonged silence ensued and three large, darkly robed figures emerged from Don’s room, swung the main doors of the corridor open, and left with a large sack dripping with blood.

            The credibility of these accounts is questionable, for those who reported them were mentally disturbed patients at the sanitarium.  No one, however, knows where Don is, and the only evidence of what may have happened to him is a bloody room and the letter of a man who must have surely been mad.

The End