by Thomas Cater
“I don’t know,” he said.
I could see his conviction wavering. “Come on,” I said. “You only live once. Besides, you’re carrying enough fire power to level a brigade.”
His mouth clenched and his eyes grew misty.
“I promised your mother-in-law nothing would happen,” I said. “I mean to stand by my word.”
I assured him we were not trespassing into the house, and I was wearing a qualified dead man’s suit.
“I just want to open one little grave.”
He was still unwilling to commit.
“How are we going to do that?” Virgil asked. “We didn’t bring shovels.”
I tried to put his mind at ease. “There’s a gate house at the cemetery. I’m sure we’ll find enough shovels there to complete our nefarious deed.”
Had I seen a gatehouse? I wasn’t absolutely sure, but I could recall seeing a brushy overgrown and weedy cemetery with a lone concrete crypt annexed to the wall.
“Come on; let’s get it on,” I said.
I grabbed the slouch hats from the back seat and gave one to Virgil. My knees were trembling as we mounted the wall. I kept expecting skeletal hands and feet to appear. I l stepped next to Virgil in the event skeletal limbs appeared up and grabbed hold of me. Fortunately, they were not operational, or other factors had to be in effect before they appeared.
“Are you feeling strong and righteous?” I asked George. His thick glasses made his eyes appear larger than normal.
“I’m feeling the power,” he said smiling and regaining his composure.
“Don’t go overboard with that feeling,” I said.
Virgil suddenly pushed passed me, flexed his arms as if he had found new strength and strode forward. “I’ll be the point man,” he said and bolted up the path leading to the house.
The dry and brittle branches beneath our feet crunched noisily. The vines were more tangled and the ground hard. The grass was bedding down for winter. I wondered if I would be living in the house before the first snowfall. I imagined myself sitting in front of a blazing fireplace while white snow piled up in darkness.
I wondered if the gas wells were still producing, if the furnace worked, or would I have to mine my own coal for the fireplaces like the barons of the past. The thought of buying fuel to heat the house made me angry. That kind of expense on top of everything else would be catastrophic.
Virgil kept marching toward the house. George walked at my side. I heard him whimper, so I stole a quick glance. A look of agony covered his face.
“You’re not getting sick, are you, George?”
His eyes were glaring at the back of Virgil’s head.
“No, I’m just worried about Mr. Virgil.”
Virgil strode toward the house like a surveyor pacing off rods. I could hear him humming a tune. It sounded like some ancient Celtic ballad far removed from his ancestry. From behind and amid the shadows, his clothes appeared covered with coal dust. Instead of a rifle, he seemed to be carrying a pick over his shoulder.
“Where’d he get the pick?” I asked.
George strained his neck and eyes to see more clearly, and then he whined again.
“Maybe he brought it with him,” he said, but neither one of us had seen it near the car. We exchanged anxious glances.
“That is Virgil, isn’t it?” I asked.
George did not respond, but his eyes narrowed as if he were trying to block out some odious vision.
Virgil was near the steps leading to the house when I called out. He stopped, dropped his weapon, or the pick, and turned. Then he ran up the steps and into the house. I cursed softly and ran after him, afraid of what may have lured him away.
At the steps, I lifted the rifle off the ground and held it in my hands. It was covered with coal dust. I placed it on the ground and motioned for George.
“George, I want you to stay here and work up a few prayers for Virgil and be serious about it. I’m going after him. When I come out, I want to see you on your knees doing what you do best, do you understand?”
His head and entire body were trembling fiercely and his knees were sinking deeper into the thick matting of grass.
Virgil’s footprints were easy to follow. Dark smudges of coal dust and dirt led me into the house. I followed them through the open door and down the hall. In the kitchen, they were less discernible, but led to the basement door. Halfway down the stairs they disappeared. Ground level windows in the basement let in a little light. At the bottom of the stairs, I could hear a moaning sound.
The basement was as large as a limestone grotto. Black glistening walls of coal opened to dark underground tunnels. Sandstone pillars buttressed bearing walls against floor joists near seams of coal.
An immense furnace occupied a corner of the basement adjacent to a bin filled with tons of coal. A dark tunnel, six feet wide, vanished into the seam. It reached to within a foot of the floorboards. A wire gate stood in front of the passage. Beyond, I could see a steel door built into a concrete wall. There were no rails leading into the mine; they were gone.
I could hear Virgil somewhere near the furnace. I moved cautiously in that direction. The basement opened to several cavernous extrusions, which had once served as storage areas, but were now empty.
Virgil was standing near the furnace clawing at a stonewall. At least, I thought it was Virgil. Upon closer examination, I saw an unrecognizable figure covered with black dust. He stood facing an old tunnel entrance sealed with blocks of concrete.
“Are you all right?”
He ignored me and kept trying to walk through the wall. I put a hand on his shoulder and he stopped. At the same moment, the coal dust appeared to vanish from his clothes. His eyes opened and blinked rapidly as if he were waking from a dream. He looked anxiously around the basement.
“I thought you said we weren’t going into the house?”
I tried to hide my confusion. “I couldn’t keep you away from here.”
He complained about the strange things that were happening. He wanted to blame me, but decided instead to blame the house.
“This house is no good,” he said, and shook his head dolefully. “Let’s get out of here. I’m never coming back again.”
I took his arm and turned him once more toward the wall. “Look at this. It looks as if it may have been a mine entrance. Why do you suppose they sealed it up? Take a look at the stone work; it’s identical to the wall.”
“I don’t care if it’s identical,” he said. “I just want to get out of here.”
I placed my hand close to an opening in the seam near the stone and could feel a strong draft.
“So what?” He replied. “So they closed it off. Maybe they ran out of coal, or got too far in and decided to quit. So what?”
I placed my finger in the narrow hole and something bit it.
“Damn!” I shouted, “Must be a spider in there.”
Blood was flowing from a small cut that looked as if made by a sliver of glass or metal. A sucking, slurping sound came from the wall and I stepped back.
“Sounds hungry,” I said, but when I turned, Virgil was halfway up the stairs.
I spotted two shovels propped against the basement wall; it was as if they were there for my benefit.
George was still on his knees chanting when we returned. He didn’t open his eyes until I touched his shoulder, and then he nearly fell over in a faint.
“Come along, George, your prayers worked.”
“Thank God!” He shouted joyfully. I could only agree.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Virgil took the lead again and we walked around the house. We had to chop our way through a thicket of briers and brambles to reach the cemetery. It was larger than I had imagined, about the size of a tennis court. The gatehouse was crammed full of worn-out digging tools. Few gravestones were standing upright. Nine or ten were leaning akimbo, the rest were lying on the ground or covered with weeds. The inhumation dates were barely legible. There wer
e few legible names. I was looking for Elinore’s grave, but not with the thought of exhuming her body. I believed it would make me more comfortable if I could see where she was resting
My mind kept tormenting my body with nervous warnings. I tried to slow the asSamuelt down on my motor or autonomous systems by breathing deeply. There were grassy nodes scattered throughout the graveyard. Weeds and brush had also taken root and established a firm foothold. I found a small indentation in the ground in just about the right spot for an unmarked grave and stuck a shovel in the earth. It sank in easily. I levered a clump of dirt out, emptied it, and sunk the shovel in the hole a second time. It struck something solid.
“Holy shit!” Virgil shouted.
I quickly scooped out several shovels full of dirt. The corner of the coffin was less than a foot in the ground.
“I wonder if they all buried this shallow.” I murmured. “A decent rain could wash them all down the hill and into the creek.”
“It’s happened already,” Virgil replied. “What are we going to do?”
“Bury them deeper,” I said.
“What good will it do?”
“It’s a start,” I replied.
While George and Virgil unearthed the coffin, I attempted to restore the fallen markers. I wanted to know whose coffins we were violating. I found Samuel’s grave. His body, I suspected, would be interred at the proper depth. Elinore, I assumed, occupied a space alongside him. I found several unnamed graves marked simply with stones that bore the initials R.I.P., or ‘Hic Jacet.’ There were also graves of beloved aunts and uncles, some cousins and nieces and an assembly of friends, but little in the way of information to link them to the Ryders. I was also surprised to find the gravestone of Dr. Ezekiel Grier, the only one with an epitaph inspired by Shakespeare’s King Richard III.
‘Cold and fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
It is the dead of midnight the souls I murdered
threaten vengeance.’
George and Virgil were busy opening the final resting place of one Annette Bishop, whoever she might be. I picked a few colorful weeds and flowers, and spread them atop Elinore’s grave, a lonely sight. I resurrected a few more stones from among the weeds and propped them up by using excavated soil for ballast. The first coffin was nearly exposed and we were ready to lift it from its shallow bed.
George signaled for help with the exposed coffin. There was no concrete vault, but the wood was in good shape. I was afraid it might be in such poor condition that it would fall apart when we moved it, but the Ryders believed in using the proper materials for every job. We levered it up with shovels and freed it from the ground.
“This box is heavy. Are you sure it’s not filled with rocks,” Virgil said.
We propped it up against the wall. It was a simple, but a well constructed wooden box.
“Why is the wood so dark?” George asked.
Virgil touched and examined the wood. “It’s black oak. There was plenty of it around 100 years ago, but most of it is gone now. Oak doesn’t keep well in the ground: it must have been treated.”
George nodded in agreement. Any other explanation would have involved something unnatural, and we did not wish to provide support for unorthodox theories.
“Are you going to open it?” Virgil asked.
“No point in that,” I said, trembling at the thought. “We came to re-bury Annette, not to raise her,” I said, mangling a few more lines by Shakespeare.
Virgil chose to ignore the quip. He conceded that opening a coffin might offer more in the way of provocation to unknown forces.
“Are we going to re-bury them all today?” George asked fearfully.
“I can’t expect you to waste all your time out here. If you’ll just help me…” I read the marker a second time, “…put Annette a little deeper into the ground, we’ll call it a day and I’ll do the others at my leisure.”
The suggestion met with approval, and the work proceeded. They refused to allow me to relieve either one of them. I began to wander over the grounds examining each tuft of grass and raised hillock. Not looking for anything in particular, just following my instincts and hoping they would lead somewhere.
I climbed to the ridge of the hill and gazed toward the creek. It was the first time I could see that Scary Creek circled the house. It looped around from the back, flowed passed the front and almost came together again on the other side of the house. A narrow channel four or five feet wide and twenty feet long could shorten the circuitous route of the stream by nearly a quarter mile.
The back and front of the property sloped down to the creek. There were only a few trees where we were working. Broom sage thrived on the side of the hill. A few large elderberry and sumac bushes were blazing in the sunlight with dark blue and bright red berries.
If burying coffins deeper would satisfy restless spirits, I was willing to try. Virgil stood waist deep in the grave ladling dirt. George raked the loose soil away from the edge so it would not fall back in the hole.
The wind began to blow a little stiffer. I wondered if it meant to interfere, to drive us off or do us harm in some way. I studied the little knot of gravediggers and noticed a shift in the coffin’s position. It looked as if it were preparing to fall.
“George!” I shouted, “The coffin is moving!”
He cocked an ear, but couldn't hear my warning.
“The coffin!” I shouted, “It’s going to fall!”
The wind worked against me, carried my voice away from them, back into my face. George stepped out of the enclosed area and tilted his head in my direction. The coffin spun away from the wall and appeared to walk upright for a few seconds. George kept one ear and eye cocked in my direction, but I was silent, engrossed in the coffin’s waltz. I watched it spin and move back and forth. Virgil kept shoveling unaware of the waltzing box. George shook his head absently. I pointed a finger toward the coffin, indicating that he should take note of the wind’s playful tricks. He turned his finger on himself as if to ask, “Me?”
I was nearly ready to concede that I was witnessing an illusion when the coffin stopped spinning and stood stock still in the yard. It began to tilt forward. The wind died down and I heard voices.
“George,” I shouted. “Look at the coffin.”
He turned in time to see the coffin fall. It splintered when it hit the ground. I ran down the hill and Virgil scrambled out of the grave brushing dirt from his clothes and shouldered his weapon. George stood idle at the gatehouse waiting for someone to tell him which way to run. I caught up with them and ran toward the coffin.
Splintered wood was everywhere. The coffin looked as if it had exploded.
“How the hell did that happen?” Virgil wanted to know.
“It was spinning all over,” I replied. “The wind picked it up and spun it around, and moved it here and dropped it,” I said.
“That thing must weigh 200 pounds,” Virgil said. “The wind couldn’t have moved it that easily.”
“I’m telling you what I saw,” I replied.
We slowly approached the coffin, pushed a few splintered boards away with our feet and exposed the skeleton. It was relatively short overall, but a few bones were long and thick. It also had a large skull and sharp canine teeth protruding from the jaw. Long arms and bow-shaped legs extended from a narrow barrel-chested rib cage.
“Christ, that’s no human being, that’s a wild dog,” Virgil shouted.
The chest was massive and the fore arms reached beyond the knees.
“Oh, yeah? Since when did they start giving dogs Christian burials?” I asked, and returned to the stone and its inscription.
“’Here lies Annette Bishop, March 4, 1864; died Nov. 30, 1898, widow of Davis Bishop, beloved daughter of Nathaniel and Margaret Shipley, R.I.P. According to this stone, this was all that remained of a woman.”
“Jesus,” Virgil replied. “Ugly, wasn’t she?”
“Can you imagine what it would be like living with someone
who looked like that?” George added.
“I think we’ve been duped,” I said.
“What do you mean?” George asked.
“Whatever that creature is or was, could not have been a woman. Look at the size of that head, jaw and those teeth. Women don’t get that mean and vicious. No, that was some kind of animal. Something they kept under lock and key and used for a watchdog or some animal they could …exhibit. This could be what scared hell out of Elinore.”
“Is that possible?” Virgil asked.
“What else could it be?” I ventured.
We contemplated the strange skeleton in silence.
“Too big to be a chimp,” Virgil volunteered.
“It’s about the right size for an ape, but not with those canines. And what would an ape be doing in the Ryder family cemetery?”
“Who knows?” George said, “It could be ‘spawn of Satan,’ or maybe it married into the family.”
Virgil stepped away from George. “This all happened before my time. Amy Taylor might know.”
I do not want to bother that old woman with talk about strange pets. Besides, I suspect she knew nothing about this. This was Samuel’s private business.
George and Virgil agreed. “What should we do, put it back, or pitch it into the creek?”
It seemed like desecration to throw it away. If someone cared enough to put it in a box and bury it, it should stay that way.
“It’s not fitting to put an animal in a grave, and I can’t believe that thing is human. Look at the size of its hands. The fingers are nearly ten inches long.”
“Oh, oh,” Virgil said as he bent over the skeleton and touched one of the bones on the hand. “What’s this?” He removed something from the middle finger or paw of the skeleton. “It looks like a ring.”
George echoed his words and turned the possibility over in his mind.
“It looks like a gold wedding band.”
“It’s big, too, what would you say, about 24 carats?” I asked.
