Caretaker of the dead

The moon was shining high in the sky, illuminating the small stone chapel and shedding light to the tombstones surrounding it. They were orderly around the building, but their placement became more and more disordered the further away they were, until they stopped near the fence cutting off the graveyard from the rest of the world. There was one stone road leading from the chapel to the graveyard entrance, and several more trodden dirt roads among the headstones. Only one person frequented these paths.

The door of the chapel opened up with a loud creak that echoed tenfold in the silent night, and an old man stepped outside. He had no hair, and his clothes seemed old and dirty, covered in many patches. The healed-up remains of a deep cut scarred his face where his right eye should be. He was morbidly thin, his bones practically showing beneath the skin. He was carrying a shovel and a rake in one hand, while holding up a lantern with the other. He closed the door behind him and stepped onto the road.

The old man was the caretaker of the graveyard, Pastor. Having no home to go back to, he’s been living in the chapel for many long years. He knew all the steles well, and they knew him too. He dug most of those graves, and was there when their new residents arrived. It made him feel somewhat responsible for the graves. Nobody else would take care of them, and without him they’d just be overgrown with weed. The dead deserved better.

It’d be false to claim Pastor had any kind of love for the dead, because he didn’t. But his hatred for the living served a similar purpose, and in the end he generally found the graves to be a better company than people. He claimed that people care too much about material needs, chasing it their entire life just to lose it all in the end. He said that people in general care about themselves far more than other, sometimes to malicious extends. He knew that was true. He experienced that firsthand many times throughout his life.

The dead don’t need anything but an orderly grave. The dead won’t come after you to try and harm you. The dead cares not about themselves and will listen to your woes.

Sometimes the dead will even answer them.

Pastor let out a tired sigh as he started walking among the mounds of dirt, following one of the many paths his feet trampled over the years. He held his lantern high as he looked around, examining the graves. The light of the moon and the lantern combined into many distorted shadows patching the ground around him, but he gave no heed to the creepy shapes. He kept walking, his bones practically rattling with each step. His one sunken eye swept over the surrounding area until he reached a certain spot.

While the place was not marked, and looked mostly like any other part of the graveyard, he could easily tell that this was the place where he stopped working last night. The majority of his job consisted of making rounds around the mounds of dirt, making sure each and every one of them looked orderly, without as much as a spot of weed on them. He softly put the lantern and the shovel onto the ground, grabbing the rake in his two shaking hands before he stepped over to the next grave in line. He stopped in front of it, putting the end of the rake onto the ground while holding it up in front of him with both hands as he stared at the gravestone, waiting.

Isolde Lockwood. 1965 – 2002. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee.

A faint white shade began appearing above the grave. Slowly, it became more and more visible, taking the form of a young-looking woman. She had long hair and big eyes, her frail form floating inches above the mound. Her pale face betrayed no emotions as she locked eyes with the caretaker. He was unfazed, watching the apparition. Several minutes passed in dead silence until the woman slowly nodded, as if approving, then soon after she faded away, disappearing without a trace.

When she was gone, Pastor grabbed up his rake, putting the head gently onto the mound and using it to even out the dirt after the exposure to the wind and rain made it look uneven. He took great care to make it look orderly and get rid of any potential weed he came across.

The silence covered the graveyard like a blanket, making it feel completely detached from the outside world as Pastor kept working. The sound of the lantern’s flame burning, the clumps of dirt rolling around beneath the rake, his bones rattling silently with each of his movements, all these small noises emphasized the unsettling silence. Pastor didn’t mind. To him, it was peace.