Grave Consequences

Simon Graves was most aptly named when he was born for when he was older, he could not find a job that could hold his interest enough for him to keep it; with the exception of grave digging. The grave digging turned to grave robbing when he found out how much he could actually find on the bodies compared to how much he was making after an honest day of back breaking digging and cleaning. His family, as well as most of the town he grew up in, would be horrified with what he was doing, so that's the reason he kept on the move. All throughout the South, Simon would ride the rails in search of places he hadn't been, so as not to raise suspicion.

Once he would make it to a town, he made sure not to stay too long, otherwise he would be placed into the forefront of the local sheriff's eyes. And he didn't want that. Simon had just made it into town when he met an old man inside a Birmingham speakeasy that had been in the same profession. This man was quite the character. Dark features turned sallow and leathery with age. One leg slightly longer than the other, just enough to notice his hitched gait.

The most disturbing feature that Simon noticed that separated this man from the rest was his face. Not so much as the skin of it, which was like any and all of the local farmers that were drowning their woeful days in the bottom of the forbidden mountain dew; it was the various knots and missing pieces that would draw the eye in horrid fascination or make a person lose their appetite. He would sit around the local speakeasy, weaving his tales of his macabre past, from what the locals had told Simon when he asked them. He had let it be known what he used to do. Back when he did it though, it had been for science or so he said. Local universities would pay him a nice fee for bringing fresh corpses to them. They didn't care about the rest, as long as they were fresh.

So he would keep the jewels and the coins; one time he tried to take the gold teeth, but the school rejected the body because he mangled the face too much trying to take out the teeth. That was when the law had been brought down on him. He had thought he had been stealthy. Thought that no one knew of his work, but of course, the medical school knew. Desecration of a body. When Simon heard this part of the man's story, he felt like someone socked him right in the gut.

Simon, himself, had never ever stayed around a place long enough to ever hear those dreaded words. The foulness of it ringing in his ears, tore through his carefully placed countenance and he left the gin mill. Thoughts of what might have happened to the old man while he was in prison raged in his head. He had met a couple of men who had been to jail, that one night stay every so often because of a drunk and disorderly. Local sheriff would just prop you up in one of their two cells and let you sleep it off until morning, feed you and then you went on your way, or that's what was described to him. But the Big House... that was something different entirely. Rats in cells, chewing and biting at you when you try to sleep. Being the newest member in there also probably came with its own set of horror-filled initiations.

Simon walked down the streets, trying to keep the fear from his gait. He worked such a morbid job, but it was freedom. That's what he had always craved. Freedom. His childhood had been as constant as what he had heard rumors of prison to be and he didn't want that. As the youngest of twelve, he had never had his own clothes. Everything passed down and darned to fit his scrawny frame.

When he was older, at the age of six, it was time to help on the farms. Collecting eggs, pulling weeds, milking the cows, and stringing tobacco. For five long years, that was his days, until his two older brothers went to Europe to help in the First World War. That was when he learned the extra back breaking work on the farm. Threshing, planting, hauling wood for the winter, building fence, barn raising, plus many more jobs that it would make a person's head spin. By the end of the war when his brothers did not come back, he had yet another thing thrust upon him, getting a job in town to help bring in money to support the rest of the family.

He tried, oh how Simon had tried, but he could never stick to job more than a week and after the first five jobs, the rest of the town was slow to take him on for anything. So he left his family at the age of fourteen to strike out on his own. It wasn't until the third town he was in, that he found the job for him. Grave digging and maintaining the grounds.

The digging part, he could do without, but it was few and far between so it wasn't as demanding as he originally thought. He spent most his time cleaning and weeding around the graves. It didn't pay much, but each new part of the cemetery he cleaned piqued his interest. He was actually cleaning in the oldest part of the graveyard when he saw something that would make him take on his newest and last job to ever try for. In the oldest part there were graves that had a brick overlay that had started to break down. He walked over to the damaged grave-site and his eyes widened in amazement. Inside amongst the bones was rings, necklaces, and coins. A haul unlike what he had ever seen in his life. He quickly reached inside and snatched everything he could see and quickly left town. Since that first time, there was no turning back for him.

That's why he had been in Birmingham that day he had stepped inside the saloon. He had never been to that part of Alabama and he had heard that they had one of the largest cemeteries in the South, so he knew he had to go there. He was just merely passing the time until sundown when he heard the man's story and had to leave. As he continued walking the streets, he would glance around every so often ensuring no one was following him, the man's story and how nonchalant he was telling it made Simon feel as though his earlier departure would have made him seem suspicious. He would never see anyone behind him, but the niggling feeling of eyes watching him from everywhere never left his body.

He wound his way through the streets just waiting for nightfall. He had already went to the cemetery the night before and had hid his shovel and pick in a copse of trees situated near the edge of the older part of the graveyard. As dusk settled in, Simon felt more confident in heading back towards the cemetery. He settled down beside his supplies and waited for the last caretaker to lock up for the night. As he waited in the darkness, he felt the paranoia slip from his body and he finally began to relax.

The clanging of the wrought iron gate slamming closed woke Simon from a light slumber and he waited patiently for the flickering of the caretaker's lantern to disappear in the gloom. “Finally,” he whispered aloud as he grabbed up his shovel and pick and crawled out from the brush. Simon quickly made it to one of the graves he had scoped out early that day, posing as a mourner complete with flowers in hand, and sets to work.

The cold hard ground would not give into his efforts easily. Each strike from the shovel's blade against the hard-panned earth echoed painfully in the dark. He huffed in frustration as he took a quick break and surveyed his surroundings. The gloom of night distorted his environment, causing him to mull over if he was in the right area to begin with. That morning, the area he had visited had been grassy, with soft moist soil, a perfect place to dig. The area now was as hard as the road he had traveled on to get to the cemetery.

In the light of the moon, he saw a building in the distance. Moving closer to the edifice, Simon realized with sudden glee that it was a mausoleum and that the door was slightly opened. He ran back to his pack in the copse of trees and hurried back to the vault with pack in hand. Rummaging through his belongings, he pulled out a box of matches and a candle. Kerosene was hard to come by for him and even harder to keep while being constantly on the move, so it was best for him to candles instead of a lantern. Also, the candle's light was easier and quieter to extinguish than a lantern, though the amount of light lent was fainter.

He pushed the heavy vault door the rest of the way open as he lit his candle and peered inside. Bones littered the crypt. Simon recognized all different types of animals in the piles. Rats. Cats. Snakes. Even a raccoon and opossum bones were scattered about. Pushing the bones out of his way, Simon moved through the mausoleum towards the coffins in the back. He ran his hand over the edge of the sarcophagus and grinned madly when he realized that it was still intact. Simon set aside the candle in a small alcove to the right of the casket. Reaching back into his pack, he pulls out a pry bar and starts to wiggle it into the seam.

Stone on stone sounds through the room as he tries to gain purchase between the two slabs. A frown formed on his face when he realized that the sound was coming from behind him. Simon glanced over his shoulder, but in the darkness of the vault outside of his circle of light formed by the candle, he could not see what was making the sound. He stopped his movements to listen to the sound better, but it stopped as soon as he did. “Must be the echo in the room,” he muttered as he went back to his gristly work.

The sound came back louder this time as he worked. Simon paid it no heed until the slam of stone followed by a gust of wind that blew out his candle stopped him dead in his tracks. He reached for the matches in his shirt pocket and struck one against the side of the wall. Grabbing the candle before it could go out, Simon surveyed the area to see what had happened.

“No,” he murmured in quiet displeasure. “No!” he cried again louder as he ran towards where the door to the vault was. The door, which had been standing partially open before was now sealed tightly into its grooves. Not even a fingernail could get between the seal of the entrance. He ran his hand through his sweaty hair and huffed in frustration. Setting the candle down, Simon goes back to the coffin, seemingly forgotten at the slamming of the door, to get the pry bar.

Simon strained with all his might to fit the pry bar between the seams of the door, but it would not fit. Crying out in anger and fear, he slammed the bar across the door creating sparks in the dimly lit burial chamber. He threw the pry bar down after several minutes of vain effort then dropped to the ground panting heavily from the effort. He took a few moments to catch his breath and during that time he looked about the room to see if there was another way out.

He had heard of people building these mausoleums with a safety feature built in just in case the relative that had been entombed inside were not actually dead. But, if this vault had one, he could not see it. So Simon stood back up kicking some of the bones on the ground, scattering them across the floor more. In the faint light of his candle he could see something written on the floor of the vault.

Simon grabbed the candle from where he had left it. Kneeling done among the bones, he wiped away the debris and nearly dropped the candle once he saw what was written.

'Whoever enters,

their soul I keep.

Pray to God,

it's time to weep.'

He settled the candle on the floor beside him and did just as poem said. Simon reflected on everything in his life, trying to figure out when exactly everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket. Suddenly, the candle started to sputter and his panic raised higher. He jumped up from his spot on the floor and started to claw at the stone door screaming for someone to let him out; his hands bloodied from the hard granite. The candlelight went out and an unnatural scream echoed throughout the vault.

The next morning, the caretaker made his rounds through the cemetery. His last stop of the day was always the oldest portion of the grounds. As he made his way down the path towards the oldest part, he noticed something out of place. A shovel and a pick next to the Dodge plot. He glanced around to ensure no one was nearby that the items could belong to and settled his wheelbarrow on its legs and walked over to the plot. The dirt and grass was not disturbed, but the caretaker could tell that the objects had been there throughout the night, due to the sheen of dew on them. He furrowed his brows trying to think if all the equipment had been accounted for in the shed, when he saw out of the corner of his eye a sight which would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Splayed in the center of a grassy knoll some fifty yards from the Dodge plot was a body. A fresh body from what he could tell. Slowly making his way over to the corpse, the caretaker would glance back and forth at his surroundings, hoping no one would get a jump on him as they had possibly did to the poor soul on the ground. Finally making his way to the body, he stared in amazement at seeing no signs of foul play, though the man's hands were bloodied. Like he possibly clawed his way out of something. A look of fear crossed the caretaker's face as he quickly crossed himself. Leaving the wheelbarrow with his supplies, he ran all the way back to the church and would not leave it the whole day even when the pastor tried to lock up for the night.

He ranted and raved about the Rapture was upon us and that he saw for himself where one of the dead had clawed its way out of ground to be taken home. The pastor looked on at the caretaker in concern. He knew the man was old, but did not realize that he was quite possibly going senile. To assuage the caretaker, the pastor sent out a couple of the grave diggers that were still near the building, who had been working on a plot that needed to be ready for the next day, to investigate the area. Two hours later, they came back to the church, confusion written on their faces. They had found nothing.

The only things they had seen in their search was the wheelbarrow and the shovel and pick the caretaker had seen near the grave plot. No horror-stricken corpse with bloody hands. The pastor nodded his head softly and had the grave-diggers take the caretaker home. There was no need for him to be there anymore. No need for any of them to be there at this late hour. As he locked up the door for the night, he looked over at the graveyard. The full moon lit the headstones in an almost supernatural light. He shook his head knocking the slight twinge of fear he had felt as he had looked upon the site and left for home.

Further back, in the oldest part of the cemetery, on a grassy knoll sat an old mausoleum. In the preternatural light the door slightly crept open. Watching. Waiting.