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Copyright © 2018 Willie Dalton
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author. You must not circulate this book in any format. Thank you for respecting the rights of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Edited by Lessa Lamb
Cover & Interior Design by We Got You Covered Book Design
www.authorwilliedalton.com
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
The Story Continues…
About the Author
To my Daddy,
This isn’t one my books I would have wanted to you to read, but I know you would have been proud of me just the same. I miss you more every single day.
The scent of freshly turned earth filled her nostrils. The air was warm on her skin, but not thick or heavy with humidity. It could be hard digging graves on hot nights, though not as hard as it was in the winter. The thought of working in winter made her shiver: icy air burning her throat and lungs; sweat running down her back under all the layers of clothes, while she chipped away at the frozen earth.
But tonight was a good night; the air was nice and she could observe the lightning bugs flitting about. The dirt turned easily beneath her shovel. The job would go by fast. There was no big tangle of roots to cut or fight, and the rocks she dug up were handled by the shovel alone. If only every night was this easy.
“How’s it going, girl?” A deep, ragged, voice cut through the darkness.
“Another hour and it should be done,” she said, and kept shoveling. The light from her lantern showed her the progress she was making on the grave, but she couldn’t see anything outside of the pit.
“You’re moving fast tonight,” the old man’s voice replied.
“It’s been an easy one,” she grunted as she tossed out another shovel full of dirt.
“Here, let me work on it a while,” the old man said as he clambered down into the hole with her.
“I don’t mind to do it; I know you haven’t been feeling your best.” She looked at him, watching for signs of pain or fatigue.
“Nah, I’m ok right now. It’s been a while since I worked on one,” he said, taking the shovel from her.
She relinquished the shovel and climbed up on the edge of the grave. She watched him dig. Even at his age and in ill health, he still dug much faster than she did—something only decades of experience could teach, she supposed.
Her eyes wandered around the quiet graveyard; normal people would be uncomfortable out here this late—well, except for a few wannabe-devil-worshipers, who always looked silly. Then there were the hoodoo and voodoo practitioners who stopped by to get graveyard dirt for their magical workings; they were usually nice, and respectful of the dead.
She’d lived in this graveyard pretty much her whole life. She had been born from her mother’s death. A brutal car accident had killed her mother a few weeks before she was due to give birth. The first person on the scene had been a former E.R. physician, who just happened to hear the crash. He called for an ambulance, but knew there was no time to wait to get the baby out, since the mother was already deceased. He'd cut her mom open on the roadside and saved the baby’s life: her life.
Her dad had been so grief-stricken that he’d shot himself in front of his wife’s grave, with no thought to the baby beside him.
The cemetery caretaker, who was also the local gravedigger, had taken in the baby to raise, and dug a grave for her dad next to her mom.
It was a good life, although most people didn’t understand it. He was good to her: he’d sent her to school, taught her his trade when she’d showed an interest; and above all, he’d loved her. He told her stories of how he’d worked with her when she was a baby: sometimes he’d let one of the local church women babysit while he dug, other times he’d swaddled her up and let her sleep on a blanket while he attended to his duties.
When she was old enough to realize grave digging wasn’t the most normal job in the world, she’d asked him about it.
He’d told her he hadn’t always been a gravedigger. In his younger years, he was a doctor—an E.R. doctor, to be exact.
He’d spent many years saving and losing lives, counting each loss as a failure on his part—until the day he realized: not everyone could, or even should, be saved.
Some people were so far gone or broken by the time they came to him that it would require machines to keep them alive, and even then, it would only serve to prolong their remaining days. They had to take enough pills to fill a bathtub to keep their hearts pumping and make their pain bearable, then take more pills on top of those to keep the others from killing them.
True, for some, anything was better than death. Even though they were keeping death at bay with the fire of a dimming torch, it was better than surrendering to the unknown.
Others wanted to die, and they told him so; they cried and yelled at him for saving them, for stringing out their suffering, either mental or physical. And in a lot of situations he understood their frustration; he learned quickly in his career that there were fates far worse than death.
He had wanted away from all of it, but hadn’t found his new calling until he treated the town’s cemetery keeper. He thought being around death all the time would be too sad. But the little old gravedigger just seemed peaceful. So, he asked him his secret.
The cemetery keeper told him, “Dealing with the dead is easy. You dig their grave, bury them, pay your respects, and watch over their final resting place. It’s where we all end up on this earth.” He followed it up with, “Being around so much death, you can see it in people when their time is close, even if they don’t realize it yet. But I realize it, and I’m leaving soon.”
It turned out the old man was right: he was soon diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he took on the doctor as an apprentice, and taught him everything he knew to continue as the cemetery keeper in his place. He gave him his cabin on the grounds to live in, and all the tools he would need.
The doctor had lived there by himself a few years, then one night he’d heard a gunshot. He’d found the body of a dead man across the grave of a woman he had recently buried. Next to the man’s grizzly corpse was a screaming baby that had been left in her car seat. The man recognized the baby as the one he delivered on the roadside only a week before.
Being a well-respected man in town, and knowing all the right people, had worked out to his advantage. The adoption had gone through quickly, and from the first night, that little girl was his.
She had heard all the stories and walked by her parent's graves every day, though she couldn’t say she felt a lot when she saw those aging headstones. The gravedigger (or Ray, as she called him) had been her dad. Even watching other kids at school with their parents, she didn’t feel like she was missing out. She wasn’t envious of their fights with their moms, or of the awkward conversations with their dads. Ray never grounded her, but then again, she never asked to do anything.
She liked being at the cemetery with him. The smell of the grass and tending to the stones and flowers made her happy. Digging the graves made her happy.
<
br /> She watched Ray dig for a while until she could hear his labored breathing.
"Here, let me finish it," she said, jumping back down into the hole. “Who is this one for?” she asked him. It always felt a little funny when it was for someone she knew or saw often, but she liked to know just the same.
Ray leaned against the dirt and eyed her as he used his handkerchief to wipe away the sweat from his head and neck. She was strong and capable; he had done a good job with her—as well as anyone could have, he thought.
She stopped digging and turned to face him, waiting for his response.
“It’s mine, Hel.”
She stared at him. While part of her mind searched for words, the other part scanned her body for emotion. Nothing. No words, no feelings, just a hollow emptiness.
She started digging again.
It was just a few months past my twenty-second birthday when Ray died. Lucky for me, the mayor and important people in town honored his will and let me keep my job and cabin. After all, they knew I could do the work.
Death doesn’t stop for grief. I dug at least six more graves right after I lost Ray, and had barely slowed down since.
Being busy doesn’t bother me, and my routine didn’t change that much—even though it’s just me now.
I go into town once a week for groceries and new library books. Everyone tries to be nice to me, and most people know who I am; but I’m still the weird girl in town, even though they’ve known me for years.
It’s a typical small Appalachian town. You knew where it was because you grew up in it or near it; otherwise people only found it by getting lost trying to go somewhere else.
I missed Ray, but I hadn’t mourned him—at least, not in the way most people mourn. I didn’t cry or get angry. I did miss having him to talk to, so I talked to myself. Maybe one day, I’d get a dog or something.
It wasn’t uncommon for my phone to ring late at night or early in the morning with someone telling me about an upcoming funeral. I generally had about three to five days from the time of the call to get the grave dug.
Certain times were busier than others, though, like holidays; people always seemed to die more around holidays. That could make it hard to keep everything on schedule. Sometimes it took Ray and I both working on separate graves throughout the night to get it done. That could pose a challenge this year.
Many people asked why we didn’t get modern and use heavy equipment, like most cemeteries nowadays. Ray believed every person deserves to have someone work hard for their final resting place: to have someone pour their sweat and attention into the job, knowing it was where we all end up.
Also, here in the Appalachian mountains where we live there are little hidden family cemeteries stuck way up on hillsides. Big machinery can’t always get up those steep places, so when that happens, they call us as well.
This morning was no different from many others: I got up and made my coffee as usual. The cabin was quiet except for the creak of the floors under my feet. I could feel the chill of autumn creeping in through the window screens. It was just cool enough to make you reach for your robe first thing in the morning, but you knew you would sweat by noon. I resisted the urge to turn on the heat, knowing coffee would do the trick, if it ever finished percolating.
Ray, would only drink percolated coffee; he said it was the only way worth drinking it. I would drink other coffee if it was offered to me, but he was right: his way was the best.
I made my breakfast the same as most mornings: four eggs, four pieces of bacon, and a biscuit. Ray said getting plenty of protein was important in our line of work because it was so physical. I’d load up on vegetables with dinner. Every day I did the same things, wandering from chore to chore around the house, hearing Ray’s voice telling me what to do and why to do it. I was grateful he had taught me how to take care of myself, and that he left me capable enough to maintain the job he trained me to do.
The phone rang.
“Caretaker,” I answered.
“Hey there, Helena. How are you?” Mr. Akins asked.
“I’m good. How are you?” I didn’t really care about formalities in business conversations, but I was polite just the same.
“I’m well, thank you. We need a spot for a young woman in plot sixty-five-A,” he said.
“Ok, when do you need it?” I asked.
“By Thursday morning.” He said the words like he was trying to spit them out. “I know that’s pretty fast. Can you do it? I can have Joe come down with his backhoe.”
I felt my face get hot, but allowed only confidence to come out of my mouth. “I got it, Mr. Akins.”
“Great, thanks.” He hung up.
They kept giving me less and less notice. Ray they had respected, because they’d known him as a doctor before he took on the job; they assumed he was eccentric from all his time in trauma. But let a young woman do the job and everyone freaks.
With a sigh, I put my long, dirty-blonde hair up on my head, washed my coffee cup and plate in the sink, and put on my jeans and boots.
I grabbed my gloves, mattock, and shovel from the porch. I knew where the space was, so I didn’t bother taking my map with me.
It was still early, and the sun was hiding behind fluffy gray clouds. It looked like it could rain later. I thought how great it would be to get half the work done this morning, and the other half tonight, if the weather cooperated.
I used the mattock first to break up the earth so it would move more easily, then I used the shovel to clear what I had softened. Repeat… for hours.
The crunch of gravel under tires caused me to look toward the iron gate at the entrance of the cemetery. I saw a silver Jeep park, and a man got out. His hair was sleek, long, and black; his clothes were black, and his skin was pale. A goth, maybe?
I watched as he meandered around the cemetery. He’d occasionally stop to read a name or take a picture of a headstone. I had seen a few goth teenagers stop by here before, but he looked older, and not as dramatic. From where I was I didn’t spot any eyeliner or black lipstick. Maybe he just liked wearing black.
This cemetery was old; there were tall tombstones well over a hundred years old, covered with moss and worn by time. The spiked iron fence was nearly seven feet tall, and went the full perimeter of the fifteen-acre lot. The gate itself was intricate and made a very satisfying creak when opened or closed. People had asked me to fix the noise a few times because it was “creepy,” but I enjoyed the sound, so I let it stay.
The tall man finally looked my direction and saw me watching him. He stared for a moment, and then he did something I didn’t expect: he raised his camera and snapped my picture.
Annoyed, I called out, “You should ask for permission before taking someone’s picture.” He smiled, and I realized he was quite handsome underneath all of that darkness and hair. He walked towards me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as he stepped in close and offered to shake my hand.
I held up my hands, still inside the dirty gloves, and shrugged. I saw no point in taking them off; my hands would be sweaty and gross.
“If you don’t like the picture I took you can delete it,” he said looking at me.
He had the bluest eyes I had ever seen.
“It’s ok, I guess.” I hesitated. “But why did you want a picture of me standing here in work clothes?”
“I was just fascinated when I saw you. I’ve stopped at a lot of graveyards, and I’ve never seen anyone, especially a woman, hand digging a grave. It was beautiful,” he said. He eyed me, and then the grave I was digging.
I wasn’t sure what he was calling beautiful, but it made me feel strangely proud.
“I’m Raphael,” he said.
“I’m Helena,” I replied. “Hel, for short." I knew his given name probably wasn’t Raphael, more like Ralph. But I preferred to be called Hel, and most people refused, so I’d call him whatever he liked.
“Hel?” He gave a slight smile and raised an eyebrow. “You dig gr
aves and your name is Hel?” He was grinning now.
I found I was grinning too, but I wasn’t really sure why. “Yes, I prefer Hel, but most people call me Helena. Only Ray ever called me Hel.”
“Who is Ray?” Raphael asked.
“He was the last caretaker; he raised me,” I said.
Raphael nodded. “Where is he now?”
I walked about ten headstones down, three across, and pointed.
“I’m sorry” he said, and a look of concern passed his face. “Did you…” He paused, then started again. “Did you dig his grave?”
I looked down at Ray’s headstone and smiled. “We dug it together.”
“He helped dig his own grave?” he asked.
Impressively, he managed to look a little paler.
“Yep.”
I walked a little farther into the cemetery. There was a big statue of a weeping angel looking down over the grave of an infant. The angel’s face was nearly worn smooth by time and weather. All my life I could never decide if I liked her, or found her somewhat menacing. I named her Gabrielle when I was ten.
I stopped a few stones behind Gabby and pointed again. “These are my parents.”
Raphael walked over and put his hand on my shoulder. I flinched; few people had ever touched me, and they weren’t strangers like this guy.
“I am so sorry,” he said.
I let him keep his hand on my shoulder. “It’s nothing to be sorry about. I don’t remember them.”
“Do you have any other family or close friends?” he asked.
“No family that I know of from my parents, at least none that cared. Ray had a few family members and an ex-wife, but I never had much to do with them. Friends?” I just kind of shrugged.
The Girl Who Digs Graves Page 1
