48 Hour Short Story Contest

The Gravedigger

It was a clear, moonlit sky when George left his house, one of those eerily quiet and bright nights that haunt you in your nightmares. The trees casted long shadows over the frosty grass and there was a slight breeze in the air. George took a deep breath and could feel the pinch of the cold air in his lungs.

He hated fall and even more than fall he hated winter, the thought alone of those long, dark, snow filled months sent chills down his spine. He was used to it of course but he couldn’t help feeling angry for being born into such a northern climate, yet he had never left. He often wondered why he’d stayed; after all he didn’t have any real family here.

He had been adopted into a middle class family when he was two, the early years had been happy ones but then the family business had gone bust and living got hard. He, being the adopted boy, often got the short end of the stick and after a while he couldn’t take the guilty looks of his supposed family as they starved him to feed themselves, so he left.

But where was he to go? This was only a small isolated town and George had never really been anywhere else. So he went as far away from town as he could without actually leaving, the graveyard. The graveyard lay about a mile or so outside of town, up on a high but gradually rising hill. The hill was surrounded by forest but at the top they had all been cut down to make room for the graves, and every year they would cut another ring of trees to make room for new graves. The silhouette of the hill against the night sky could be seen all the way from town and was a popular subject in old horror stories and urban legends.

When George had first arrived at the graveyard it had been a stormy September night and he didn’t have any plan, he had hid from the storm inside a crypt where Old-Joe, the owner, had found him almost frozen to death. Joe had taken George under his wing and given him a place to stay, in exchange for work of course. That was almost a decade ago and Joe had since passed away, George still spent sleepless nights mourning his only true friend. Joe had thought him everything there was to know about the cemetery business and George had worked hard to earn his wage and in his will Joe had left the entire business to him. Every inch of the place reminded him of his old friend, it made him want to leave but it also made him stay.

Business was booming, the water in town had been contaminated a few years ago by some large company that had since left, leaving people jobless and dying of various cancerous diseases. There were rumors in town of a big lawsuit and a settlement but George didn’t trouble his mind with town talk, he liked being isolated from the rest of them.

George grabbed the shovel from the shed and headed out to the cemetery. It was late October and the ground was starting to freeze, soon it was time to bring out the mechanical digger but for now he could still dig by hand, he enjoyed doing stuff with his hands.

He had two graves to dig and one to fill, “Another busy night” he thought cheerily as he walked down the hill to the edge of the clearing. He took pride in his work, Joe had thought him about the tradition of grave digging and how in some cultures it had even been a highly respected profession. Joe had always dug at night and George had adopted the habit, he had once asked Joe why he only worked at night to which he simply answered. “My soul cries in the light but sings in the dark”. George had not understood what Joe meant then but he did now, he too enjoyed the night much more than the day. At night it felt as if he had the whole world for himself, he was the only human alive burying the last of his kind and all his worries seemed to melt away into the darkness. He didn’t care much for company, Joe had been the only person he could really talk to but Joe had a habit of drifting into his old thoughts, sad thoughts, and their conversations often ended awkwardly. Joe had been a troubled man; he had been wounded in the Vietnam War, both physically and mentally, and had since had a tragic life. His wife had left him when he started drinking and he, too, had fled to the cemetery hill to live a life of solitude. George had been a welcome help at the cemetery since Joe had to use a cane to get around on bad days.

George arrived at the grave that needed filling; there inside the coffin lay a man named Ford, George couldn’t recall his first name. It had been a small service with only a few relatives present and George could remember them placing something into the coffin. Relatives often placed objects that had been of special value for the deceased, these objects could sometimes be valuable. The thought made George glance at his golden watch, it didn’t work but was his favorite possession. There might be something valuable in this coffin as well. It was a bad habit of George to loot the coffins before burying them, he didn’t need the items for money or anything but there was a special thrill in the act, you never knew what you’d find. What would it be today, a war medal or a golden necklace perhaps?

George carefully lowered himself into the grave, stumbled a bit and almost fell flat onto the coffin but managed to regain his balance at the last second. Suddenly there was a crack in the distance, like a twig breaking. George stood up on the coffin and took a look around, It was a deep grave and he could barely see over the edge. There was no one there and he immediately felt foolish. Who would be sneaking around the graveyard in the middle of the night? Probably a fox if he didn’t imagine the whole thing.

Laughing at his own stupidity he jumped off the coffin and opened the lid, chills went down his spine, he was used to bodies but they still managed to affect him every time, which was not something he would admit or show in public. “It’s just a dead body.” he said to himself, took a deep breath and started going through Mr. Ford’s pockets. Mr. Ford looked to be around 40 years old and was wearing a black, expensive looking suit which George knew to most probably be an illusion. The Undertakers were known to replace expensive suits with cheaper replicas to make a profit, people had no respect for the dead anymore.

There seemed to be no objects laying on or beside Mr. Ford and his pant pockets were empty, George continued his search on the jacket and suddenly he felt something hard in the inside pocket. He quickly took the object out and held it up in the moonlight to examine his find. A wave of disappointment washed over George, it was a pen, a plastic felt tip pen. Maybe there was something inside it, he thought and cracked the pen in half, black ink sprouted all over his hands and shirt, damn!

George let out a deep sigh, he had been looking forward to this find the whole day. In anger he threw the broken pen out of the grave and slammed the coffin lid shut but it wouldn’t close, something was blocking it. He turned to look at the problem and gasped, one of the corpse’s legs was hanging out of the coffin in mid air blocking the lid from closing. A spine chilling terror grabbed his body, shaking it from the inside. He hadn’t moved the body when going trough its pockets, had he? He scanned his memory for reassurance but all he found was pictures of the black pen. He kicked the leg to get it back in the coffin but it was stiff and wouldn’t budge. He grabbed it with both hands in an effort to twist it inside, suddenly there was a crack and George could feel the bone break, Mr. Ford was going into the afterlife with a broken leg.

Suddenly there was a “thump” sound behind him and someone grabbed his shoulder violently, George turned in panic swinging his fists at what he was sure was Mr. Ford returning from the dead to regain his stolen possession. He hit something, or someone, in the head and heard a grunt and a body hit the ground. As his head cleared he had to look twice to be sure he wasn’t seeing things, there was now two bodies lying in the grave. Mr. Ford was still laying in the coffin with his broken leg but beside him on the ground, barely visible in the darkness, lay another body.

Panic took over George, he had no idea what or who that second body was but he didn’t care, he had to get the hell out of here! He slammed the coffin shut and was scrambling out of the grave when he heard a loud, confident voice behind him.

- “Not so fast Mr.Connely.” George turned around in panic expecting to see something horrible but instead the second corpse was now standing up, pointing a gun at him. The Man was middle aged and looked agitated, his right eye was swelling. There was something gleaming on the left side of his breast, a badge.

- “You’re under arrest for stealing from the dead; you have the right to…” And the police officer took a pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket and threw them to George, they landed on the coffin with a “thunk”.

George didn’t know what to do, he bowed down to grab the handcuffs but just as he was lifting them off the ground he threw them at the officer’s gun and lunged towards him. There was a loud “crack” as the gun went off but the officer had missed his only chance, George was now wrestling the gun out of his hand with all the force his body could muster. There were not clear thoughts in his head he just had to get that gun. There was a long struggle and another “crack”, before George could grasp what it was he had just done the police officer had already fallen to the ground, he was dead.

A mixture of hopelessness and guilt took over George, he had just killed someone. Not just anyone, a police officer. He sat down on the coffin still grabbing the gun, it felt as if he was falling into a black hole and the world around him was disappearing.

He was awoken by another wave of terror shooting through his body, had the police officer been alone? They always had a partner, didn’t they? He jumped onto the coffin and peered out of the grave expecting to see a police raid racing towards him, but there was nothing, the graveyard seemed as silent as always, almost too silent. He climbed out of the grave, threw in the ground and set off back to his house, he had to clear his head.

Later that night as George filled the grave, now occupied by two corpses instead of one, his mind was silent. He had searched the property and decided the police officer had arrived alone, he had then decided to bury both of the bodies and leave the town forever. He had no idea where was was going, not even what direction he should take. There was a certain excitement in this feeling, he was a fugitive heading into the unknown.

And as he walked away from the filled grave with dirt filled hands he left back the shackles of his old life. And for the first time in his life he felt free.


(2050 Words)

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