Duties of a Grave Keeper

G.K. tossed the abrasive sponge back in the bucket, the water, grey and murky, splashed over the side. He stepped back and admired his hard work by reading out the, now visible, words carved upon the gravestone:

                                                            Helena de Aubrey
                                                                Lost her way
                                                  After one too many cups of tea

Well that’s me for the day, G.K. thought as the last of the evening light dipped beneath the trees. He set the bucket, sponge, shovels, and rakes in his wheelbarrow and headed down the path back to his cottage. The cobbles were overgrown with grass and Persephone’s thyme had burst its borders, invading Harold’s plot, smothering his daffodils. I’ll have to see to that tomorrow. Day after I’ll dig all this soil and grass off the path, make it look prim and proper, he smiled to himself, the wheel barrow squeaking every roll of its axle.

He stashed his barrow and tools in the lean-to shed and headed inside. Two letters greeted him on the doormat, he slashed both open with his pen-knife. The first was a letter from a Olivier Tolbany asking about a grave, probably wanting to know if his ancestor is buried with some treasure, and the second read: Urgent Burial, woman eaten by trolls. G.K. grumbled, ‘Short notice that. If she were devoured what's to bury?’ He huffed, ‘Not for me to ask, guess Persephone’s bush will have to wait.’ He chuckled to himself and tossed the letters on the lone table dominating the centre of his one room cottage, it slid on the pile and wedged itself between older letters and a candlestick. He set the kettle on the stovetop and fed a log to the fire. He dropped into his rocking chair and reached for his pipe, banging the old leaf out of it and packing it with fresh. The kettle whistled and as he poured out a cup of hot water there was a knock at the door. G.K. lit the pipe and headed to the door, the sweet aroma soothing his tiredness. The visitor knocked again. ‘Alright, I’m coming,’ G.K. growled. He opened the spy hatch, ‘Michael?’

‘Quick, G.K., I don’t now how long it’ll take him,’ Michael hopped from one foot to the other. A worm burrowed through his eye and out the side of his head. Gangrenous skin peeled back from his lips to reveal yellowed teeth and blackened gums. His shirt and trousers, formal and sharp on burial, hung from him in tatters. ‘Come on, G.K., get your claymore or something.’

G.K. closed the hatch and opened the door, I haven’t swung that thing for twenty year, doubt I remember how, ‘Start from the beginning Michael, take a seat.’ He gestured to the bench facing out over the graveyard along the wall of his cottage.

‘Yeah. Yeah. That’ll help,’ the ghoul sat down, biting the bone of his forefinger.

‘Stop that, you’ll lose it otherwise.’

‘Sorry,’ Michael trapped his rotten hands beneath his rotten legs. ‘He’s on the far side, near the mausoleums. I heard him before… before sundown so I couldn’t do anything. Going from stone to stone reading the names.’

‘Good luck to him, haven’t gotten round to that side for three summers,’ G.K. drew on his pipe.

‘Yeah well he moved onto the vaults near sundown and I think he found what he was looking for. Started hammering away at the stone, the gate, I don’t know. I dug myself out as soon as I could to come find you,’ Michael bit the bone of his forefinger, then jammed it beneath his leg again.

G.K. exhaled a cloud, ‘Right. Man’s on his lonesome?’

Michael nodded.

‘Weapons? Young, old?’

‘Young. Big sword, big bow, big pack. Big shoulders too. Looks like a hero straight out of the ol’ tales.’

G.K. rolled his eyes. ‘Prolly sent here by some treasure hunter on some damn quest,’ G.K. savoured a puff of leaf. ‘Right. Go rise Rhea, and find the ghosts Melissa and Hugo. Whose crypt was he trying to rob?’

‘The Old Crusader Reynald’s,’ Michael said.

‘God’s Wolf,’ G.K. tutted, ‘this grave robber must’ve heard tale of Reynald’s sword and shield. Go on Michael, I’ll see you up by The Duchess.’

Michael skittered out of the garden and up the path, the bone of his fingertip on the bench. G.K. pocketed it, ‘Never have I known such stress from a ghoul.’

G.K. wheeled his barrow up to The Duchess, her soft features searched the sky, hand outstretched trying to catch the sun, finished with a dribbling of bird droppings cresting from forehead to the corner of her mouth. Night's victory over the day was absolute. The mausoleums and crypts where down the hill, past the wealthy dead, of tall statues and gaudy monuments, too poor to afford an aristocratic crypt. A faint tickticktick echoed over the graveyard, aye, got a grave robber alright, G.K. set his lantern on the cobbles. Michael jittered over to him, ‘Rhea’s gone to scout ahead. Melissa and Hugo are…’

Two hazy blue outlines faded through The Duchess, quibbling. ‘Melissa, my dear, I do not see the advantage in merely scaring this scoundrel off. He will only come back with a gang that our dear G.K. will have to acquiesce too,’ Hugo said, one hand secreted between the buttons of his dinner jacket.

‘No, no, no. We can’t kill a man just for a bit of thievery. Report him to the constables and have him behind bars.’

G.K. sniggered and pocketed his spent pipe. He found Michael’s finger bone and handed it back, ‘Stop biting your bones.’

Michael blushed, as much as a ghoul could, and tried to reattach the bone but he’d chewed through the ligament. ‘Bugger,’ he dropped his bone into the top pocket of his frayed shirt.

‘Constables? Where do you think we are, Melissa? We may as well be lost in the highlands or across the oceans. There are no constables here,’ Hugo grumbled.

‘Then a complaint should be made to the magistrate. That is unacceptable to allow rogues to molest our resting places,’ Melissa smoothed her silk skirts.

‘Alright you two, pack it in,’ G.K. said. ‘Catch him, kill him, scare him off, it don’t matter which so long as we do it before he wakes Old Reynald.’ Michael, Hugo, and Melissa all mumbled their approval. ‘I’ve got rope, stakes, a bear trap, my old claymore, shovels, and some rocks. We’ll lay some traps,’ G.K. pointed to Michael and himself. ‘You two,’ he pointed to Hugo and Melissa, ‘will scare his breakfast out of him. He scampers off, trips over something or runs right into the bear trap, and the problem is solved.’

‘The problem is not solved, G.K. What will you do with him once we capture him?’ Melissa said.

‘Let’s get him in irons first,’ the grave keeper said, uncertain to what he’d do.

‘Rhea, where is he?’ G.K. whispered to the head hidden in the grass. Her auburn locks were matted, ants crawled up blades of grass and into her ears. She rose her eyebrows and moved her mouth but no sound came. ‘Just a second,’ G.K. picked up the head and searched for Rhea’s body. Two tombstones over was a headless woman lying prone beneath a row of sleeping daffodils. He scurried over and passed the head to the body. In a single motion, accompanied by a watery slushing sound, Rhea was whole again.

‘Much better,’ she whispered. ‘He’s over there. Sitting with his back to the Old Crusader’s crypt. Got to put it to the dead knight, his crypt is sealed tight.’

‘Good. I don’t want to deal with Reynald again, the once was enough.’

‘We’re all happy he’s sleeping soundly, he deserves nothing less,’ Rhea said. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ She was crouched with her arms hugging her knees. The ants crawled out of her nostrils and down her leathered skin.

G.K. pointed over to Michael weaving his way between the tombstones with rope and stakes in hand.

‘Ahh, not killing him straight away. Clever. Find out who he works for, what he’s after, and why?’

‘Something like that,’ G.K. said. The dead don’t put much weight in death, he thought.

‘Better to just, you know,’ scrwwg, Rhea drew her cracked thumb nail across her neck. ‘I do alright after my own beheading.’

‘I’m going to set the bear trap and a couple of tripwires. If you see him move or think he’s spotted me or Michael. Adjust this lantern brighter and dimmer,’ G.K. set the lantern on the edge of the gravestone. There was moss along the top and deep in the lettering, I’ll get to this section of the cemetery soon enough, he thought picking off a lump.

‘Alright, I’ll be back at my original spot. Whole of body this time, in case I need to run.’

‘You’re a ghoul, why would you run?’

‘I’d rather remain almost whole than be in pieces. Have you seen the size of this robber’s sword? Wouldn’t want to go up against that, on the block or in an alley.’

G.K. left her to it and snuck back to his wheelbarrow. He slid two stakes into his belt, looped some rope over his shoulder, and hooked his arm through the closed jaws of the bear trap.  Just in case, he thought grabbing the claymore.

The crypts ran along the northern edge of the graveyard in a crescent. Some led down into labyrinthine catacombs while others, like the Old Crusader’s, housed a single body. The grave robber was chipping his way at the stone seal with his pickaxe. Tall, muscled, and well equipped, with flowing blonde locks and a jaw to cut glass but, apparently, not stone. G.K. crouched behind the last tombstone squinting into the velvet dark between him and the robber. Two lanterns flanked the man as he hacked at Reynald’s resting place, a litter of flaked stone by his feet. G.K. pushed the first stake into the ground, thankful for the weeks of rain, and looped the rope around it. He hopped across to the next gravestone and did the same. Next was the bear trap. He set it down a couple feet from the rope and counted the rhythm of the grave robbers swings. With a firm hand he pried the jaws apart and locked them down on the grass as the pickaxe bit into stone. The jaws clicked into place.

‘What was that?’ The grave robber stood and peered into the dark. He tossed the pick to the ground and found his sword, shimmering in the pale candle light from his pair of lanterns. ‘Come out!’

G.K. sat with his back against Mary Gascon’s grave stone holding his breath. He spotted Michael a ways off nestled between two crypts. He gave the grave keeper a thumbs up. Well, at least you set your traps too, he thought.

‘I said come out!’

The dead gave no reply.

The grave robber growled and returned to his work. He attacked the stone door with renewed vigour and in a couple of swings the stone cracked and crumbled. ‘Finally!’ The grave robber said.

Melissa corporealised at G.K.’s side, ‘Should we scare him?’ G.K. nodded and Melissa and Hugo flew over to Reynald’s crypt. The pair screeched and descended on the robber. Hugo passed right through him, causing the thief to shiver and drop his pickaxe.

‘Ghosts! Damn it,’ he ran for his sword, shimmering in the moonlight. ‘Begone or I will seal your souls to this silver sword,’ he swung three long arcs at Melissa and Hugo.

The pair of ghosts floated high above, ‘G.K. this isn’t working,’ they said vanishing like the mist.

He isn’t scared. Bollocks, G.K. sighed and stood up, drawing his claymore. ‘Oi! Get lost you thief,’ he stepped out into the open so the light of the grave robbers lanterns illuminated his face.

‘A grave keeper… I was warned about you. Didn’t think an old man would have the courage to try and stop me.’

‘Who are you? Who sent you?’

‘I’m Garrett, not that that will do you any good,’ the man roared and charged at G.K., his sword in two hands. In three strides Garrett had reached G.K. and swung hard. G.K. parried the first blow, the ring of steel throbbing all the way up to his shoulder. He retreated back, blocking every attack but finding no opening. ‘You ever used that sword, old man?’

G.K. hadn’t the mind to answer and darted behind the tombstone near the tripwire. Garrett circled round, avoiding the tripwire entirely. Never have I wanted Reynald to awaken more, he thought. He blocked another blow and felt the pain in his teeth. He lunged. Garrett parried and sliced into G.K.’s hand. The claymore fell to the ground. G.K. stumbled back and fell into the dirt.

‘I wonder what other treasures are in this graveyard. The Old Crusader’s shield and sword are blessed and worth a fortune. I bet there’s a lot more buried here, just waiting to be found.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ G.K. said. He crawled backwards on his elbows.

The silver sword caught him under the chin, ‘And who’s going to stop me?’

G.K. winced as the tip of the sword sliced through his skin. ‘Oi!’ Michael shouted. Garrett turned and huffed in pain, clutching his eye, he stumbled back, tripped over his own feet, and landed in the bear trap. The plate clicked and the jaws bit into the thief’s chest and neck in an explosion of gore. G.K. sat, unable to breath, watching the life leak from Garrett, he felt something hard and cold touch his hand. It was Michael’s finger bone.

‘Ha! I got him! Did you see that throw?’ Michael scrambled over to G.K. ‘You alright?’

G.K. nodded and found his feet, ‘Now I have to dig a damn grave.’

‘But did you see my throw?’

‘It was a great throw,’ Rhea said. ‘And with your own bone too, I don’t think I’d have the courage to throw my own head.’

Hugo and Melissa sighed into view, ‘Well looks like you got your way,’ Melissa scowled.

‘Indeed. Much deserved too,’ Hugo said. ‘Reynald still sleeps, by the way, if my sense of the dead is correct I’d say he isn’t there at all.’

‘You mean he’s gone?’

‘It would seem so,’ Hugo shrugged. ‘I’m not at all sure where but given that not all the dead rise as ghosts and ghouls they must go somewhere. Reynald as joined them.’

‘Well, good for him,’ G.K. said.

‘And us,’ Rhea added.

The others mumbled agreement.

‘Perhaps we should invest in some swordplay tutoring for you, G.K.’ Hugo said. ‘You have a fancy new sword now. Though I’d appreciate you not swinging it near me or Melissa.’

‘Nor me, I don’t want to know what it does to the dead of any kind,’ Rhea said.

The others mumbled agreement.

‘Michael. Help me with this body. There’s a plot to the south I need to dig for a burial in a few days. We’ll dump him below the casket. See how he like spending a couple decades trying to dig his way of that!’ Gilbert Keith said.

The ghouls and ghosts laughed.

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