The reluctant ghoul

The undertaker and I stood at the foot of the young man's grave.

"Is it true?" He peered at my profile, searching for a story I couldn't tell. "Those tits must've been quite something to bring a man back from the dead, dont'cha think?" I remained silent.

"I sure would've liked to have seen the countess have her way with her." His lurid expression filled me with quiet rage.

His skin shone with sweat in the moonlight, and he smelled like the rotting corpses assigned to his charge. I imagined bashing his head with the shovel he carried. His greasy hair and bits of tissue would fly about, spattering against the headstones around us.

"Later..." I promised myself.

The woman of which the wretch spoke was young, aged twenty two or twenty three, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that her remarkable beauty caught the attention of her majesty, the butcher countess Elizabeth Bathory.

Naturally a homely woman, the countess had long ago made a pact with a lustful demon. She lured innocent maidens to her castle with the promise of security and status. Once imprisoned in her filthy dungeons, she drank their blood. Her profit was eternal youth and beauty. His profit was the possession of their souls.

These young women left behind loved ones, of course. Despite the wrath which would ensue at the hands of the royal family, some dared to speak out very publicly about the countesses' evil acts.

The grave at which we stood belonged to such a loved one, the woman's betrothed. He had been sentenced to hanging for slandering the countess' name after she murdered his love. On the way to the gallows, he spat, screaming and fighting, vowing to take vengeance upon her after his death.

Busy basking in the pleasure she took from murdering whomever she pleased, the countess hadn't considered the possibility that they could actually return. A couple of them even got past the guards at the gates and almost into the castle itself. In a twist of irony, the countess had grown terrified to close her eyes at night.

Banished from my own village for practicing wizardry, and with nowhere to go, I had the bad fortune of wandering into the village as these events were reaching a fever pitch.

Her majesty capitalized on my ability to speak with the deceased and assigned me the extremely unpleasant task of finding those souls who hadn't yet moved on. I was to decapitate their corpses, thus preventing their resurrection and retaliation against the countess. It was made clear to me that either I become this ghoul in the name of her service, or add myself to the list of her demon's condemned souls.


"Just do your job, man. I'd like to get this foul business over with as soon as possible." I said, irritably. His face morphed from amusement to contempt. Spitefully, he spat a wad of chewing tobacco to the ground.

As the undertaker dug away, the cemetery grew frigid, and an unnatural fog settled amongst the tombstones. The crickets and the birds had ceased their nocturnal chattering. I could sense the foreboding in the air, and terror reverberated from the man digging before me.

Finally, his shovel struck the wooden coffin with a hollow thud. He cleared the lid of loose dirt and handed me a crowbar. "You're on your own from here. Hope you're as strong as you look, lad." He spat once more, then lumbered down the path leading to the entrance of the cemetery, fog swirling in his wake.

Evoking the incantation to summon him from his death slumber, I pried open the coffin. The ceremony was temporarily interrupted as the stench overwhelmed me, but I managed to stifle a gag and resume with a rag to my nose and mouth. It didn't take long for the corpse to stir.

The once handsome young man was a hideous sight. Fluids oozed from his nose and ears. His eyelids drooped heavily, and the orbs behind them had begun to sink into the skull. An animalistic, guttural sound emitted from the putrid lips pulled tight across his obscene grin.

Most think of the dead as sluggish, slow in reflexes and crippled by their physical decay. In many cases this is simply not true.

With lightening speed, the corpses' hand shot toward my face. I managed to dodge just in time to avoid having my eyes gouged by rotting fingers. My scythe flashed in the moonlight, and within a split second the deceased man's head was hanging in my grasp.

The lids draped closed, and I knew there was no resurrection for this young man in the name of vengeance. There would be no justice for his beloved, she was just another soul added to the sea of condemned in hell. I whispered a quick prayer, hoping to ease his final passage.



The path back to the cemetery's entrance was soft underneath my feet. The creatures began to sing their songs again, and the fog had cleared, making way for the luminous moon to shine fully in its glory. I stopped to breathe in the fragrant scent of moss and earth surrounding me. Owls called to each other, making their way to meet in the night.

As I contemplated the beauty of my surroundings, sadness overwhelmed me. Once I worked in harmony with life and death, I was part of nature and it's cycles. Now I was orphaned from the bosom of the natural world, fettered by my duty to carry out the despicable deeds of that spoiled abomination residing in the castle on the hill. I longed for some form of redemption, something to warm my numb soul.

Now to find that undertaker...