#HorrorSnippet #2

Just as a preface. I have no idea when I wrote this except that it was several years ago. Pre 2007 is my best guess. I’m not entirely sure where this was going, either.

I’ve been known to get into a state. It happens when I occasionally drink a little more than I should. That summer was a weird one. Hot and humid from beginning to end. Didn’t rain much but the earth got so heavy and moist you could scoop up a hunk of lawn in your hand if you wanted.

I should know about things like that. I was a gravedigger then.

The other thing about that summer was business. On a normal, we dig two graves during the day, in between services. But a lot of people died that summer and a whole lot of them came to Mount Olive.

The director thought we were unsightly in our coveralls, but we couldn’t very well dig holes in our Sunday best. So he decided we should dig graves at night instead of during regular business hours.

None of the three of us cared for his decision, each man making his complaint under his breath or leaving it on his breath in the form of some cheap liquor. We all drank, especially after we started working the night shift. I was half in the bag that night, pushing a wheelbarrow full of flowers to plant over the Simmons plot. Moore was supposed to be backfilling Mr. Alvo two plots over. I was halfway through the flowers when I shouted something I can’t remember now and he didn’t answer. I stood up too fast, clenching at air to catch myself and stumbled over to the Alvo plot. The earth was much too soft to put the headstones in, so it was just a bare, square hole.

“Moore?” I called. “You there?” I peeked over the edge. Moore was a rude fellow and sometimes would deposit on the coffins of the wealthy; a unique keepsake to rest upon the dearly departed for all time.

He was there. What made me leap back was the open coffin, Mr Alvo’s arm hung out. He was still dead but his body had been moved. Like he’d been sat up and dropped back down. The locks had been broken.

“He was moving,” Moore said, standing at the lip of the grave, half-propped on a shovel. “Broke the locks when I looked in. I watched him, crawling out. He looked at me. Then he flopped back over like he was still dead.”

I had understood all the words he had said but I still asked, “What?”

Moore looked at me.

He pointed at Alvo’s body.

“Zombie. I’m gonna re-kill him.”

About a dozen things made sense that would perfectly explain what Moore had seen. I smiled at him, hoping to dial it down a notch.

I need to revise a prior statement. I drank. Most of then other guys did. Moore didn’t. I think I said something to him about hitting the sauce for the first time sometimes hits back, but he fixed me with a steely, brown-eyed stare.

“He’s dead. I been with Mr. Alvo all day. I know dead when I see it.”

“Look, why don’t we go see what Ray is doing–”

“I’m not leaving.” He was staring back into the grave. “I’m waiting for him to come out. I’ll make sure he’s dead. I’ll cut his head off.”

“Well, why don’t you just jump down there and do it now? Save yourself some time.” I was hoping my ridiculous suggestion would bring him to his senses.

“Are you crazy?” he said. “I’m not going in there. I’m not even sure I’m working here after tonight. Besides, it’s too enclosed. I need room to move.”

I left him in search of Ray. I found him inside the business office, in the men’s room. He had the lights out and was standing in front of a mirror with about three dozen candles lit on the counter.

I turned the lights on.

“What, man, owww!” he said, covering his face. “Turn ‘em off!”

I didn’t, knowing he was up to something, but not intending to chastise him about it. I was a drunk, but wasn’t above getting extra curricular on occasion. I wanted to know what he had.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing.” He’d misunderstood the question. And when I realized that I knew he was up to something. I grabbed his wrist to pull his hand away. He resisted, but it didn’t matter. I was big, he was small–simple math.

He tried wiping his face, but the ash smudges were still there. I couldn’t make out what he’d scrawled on his cheeks, but I could see it had been something.

“Look, okay-okay-okay,” he began. “That old guy, he has a lotta money. Had a lot of money. Got two wives buried here. He’d been dying a long time, all right. Tried everything. But then there wasn’t no more anybody could do. He knew he was comin’ here so he asked me to do somethin’.” Ray looked everywhere but at me. I said nothing. “He learned these weirdo spells and paid me a lotta money to learn them and then… after he died… use them to bring him back. They’re super-easy and even a big guy like you could teach yourself.”

“Whaaaat?” I almost walked out.

“Look, I can cut you in. 10k sound nice?”

Like I said. Almost walked out. I didn’t believe the Mr. Alvo business any more than I believed Moore had seen him trying to crawl out of his own grave, but that didn’t mean Mr. Alvo hadn’t believed and given Ray a lot of money.

“Okay,” I said. “Up front. In fact, right now.”

“Sure-sure, man.” Ray gave one of those signature smiles of his that showed all the way back to his wisdom teeth. He had perfectly formed, church-house white choppers save form the big gap where an upper front used to reside. He whipped out his smartphone and plucked at it some. “What’s your bank account and routin’ number?”

I didn’t know if he was calling my bluff or I was calling his.

“Well, I don’t know it,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes. “Okay, you got an email account connected to your bank account? Y’know, like when they send you e-statements?”

I was still a little lost, but that last bit about emails from my bank rang a bell. My daughter had helped me set that up. She was trying to get me to pay my bills ‘electronically’ but that was all so much for me.

“Yeah.” I gave him my address and a few plucks later he looked back up at me and smiled.

“Check your account tomorrow, cool?”

“I guess.” I was linked with something I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be involved in. “So… what do we do?”

“We just help the old man get to a car waiting for him. He’s legally dead so he already has these fake IDs I need to give him–” Ray was wearing a fanny pack and unzipped it, producing a driver’s license and a few credit cards–”and then he’s got a car waiting to take him to Idaho.”

“What’s in Idaho?”

“Potatoes.” He smiled again as if to say ‘Why should I give a damn’ and slapped me on the shoulder. The gesture felt like the underworld equivalent of a handshake.

Were we in business together?

I started to say something about not believing any of this, but Ray spoke again.

“You know, you may as well come in now. It was hard as hell to make that old man to break his own locks. Moore been with ‘im all day and I couldn’t do it myself.”

“Make him?”

“Yeah.” Ray was on a roll now. I could see the weight sliding off his shoulders with each word. “I had to put part of me inside Alvo to get him goin’ again.” He’s got some sort of rig that’s s’posed to keep him going after that, but bit doesn’t work on consecrated ground.”

An alarm bell tinkled somewhere in the basement of my mind.

“Hey, Ray, what would happen if Mr. Salvo died again while you were… attached to him?”

“Ain’t no thang, man. Bullets can’t hurt him. He dead, already. Onliest thing can kill him now is if somebody cut off his head.”

Church bells in the living room now.

He took a step back from me. My face must have looked how I thought it did.

“Moore.” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Outside, standing over his grave with a shovel, waiting to cut his head off.”

We ran.

We began waving our arms and shouting as soon as we were outside even though we were about a football field’s length away. We saw the two of them, hardly bigger than ants at this distance.

Alvo was on his knees, looking like he’d just wormed out of his grave. Moore was standing over him, slowly raising the shovel. Alvo raised his hands, pleadingly and Moore’s arms came down. The blade of the shovel struck and Alvo’s head rolled to meet us.

Ray looked at it dumbly. He looked at me and I could see the life leaving him like water pouring out of a glass.

“Fix it, man. You owe me.”

He fell and didn’t move.

Moore walked casually over. He nodded as if saying ‘Told you so’.

“He faint?” he said, looking at Ray.

“Yeah,” I said. He shook his head and kicked the head like a soccer ball back and forth to either foot back to Alvo’s grave. I watched him nudge the body back in and then begin chucking the mound of dirt back into the hole.

I looked at Ray’s lifeless body, then back at the business office. Ray said it had been easy, he even had handwritten instructions. Could I do it?

I began to walk back. I had to figure this out before Moore checked Ray for a pulse.