by J. W. Ocker
Copyright © 2017 by J.W. Ocker
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First Edition
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950093
Cover illustration by Lisa K. Webber
Cover design by Sammy Yuen
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-2457-0
Ebook ISBN 978-1-5107-2462-4
Printed in the United States of America
For Mom
RIP
SEPTEMBER 10
SATURDAY
A small black crow of a boy leaned against the roof of a dead man. The boy’s features, where they were black, were extremely black, and where they were pale, extremely pale. A carefully combed slick of thick black hair defined his northern border, three parallel offshoots of which angled across his forehead like they had been gouged there by the claw of a cat.
He placed his cheek against the cool, smooth sarcophagus lid, his arms lolling across it and obscuring the name inscribed on its surface. The boy seemed to be listening for sounds from the long-dead remains inside, but his pale green eyes were mesmerized by the magic that a pair of men were conjuring less than a hundred feet away, across a throng of granite gravestones and angels. It involved a large pile of dirt, a long polished box, and a deep rectangular hole with precisely cut corners.
One of the men, a tall, bearded clod of dirt dressed in three different shades of brown, was saying to the other, “A major difference between kids and grown-ups is what they think about the important subject of holes. Kids love holes, and dig them often and in as many places as they can. Smooth sandy beaches, flat dirt lots, glistening fields of snow, ladle-shaped mounds of mashed potatoes—there’s nothing a kid hates more than an uninterrupted surface. Grown-ups, on the other hand, hate holes, and generally want them filled, flattened, and fixed out of existence. Potholes, sinkholes, holes in clothes, holes in theories, holes in emotional well-being … and they absolutely can’t stand gophers. Sometimes, it seems as if the entire adult world is dedicated to plugging holes.”
“Poor saps,” grunted the other man, who was pulling himself out of the hole. He was younger and sported a long green coat and long brown hair.
The brown man continued. “Few grown-ups manage to preserve the wonder that something, and in fact most things, can be dug. Even fewer find themselves fortunate enough to make a career out of digging holes. Feaster, we are lucky men.”
“Sure, Moss. And we have the blistered hands and aching backs to prove it.”
They both stared proudly down into their hole. It was twice as long as it was wide, about as deep as a bunk bed was tall, and seemed to be created to the exact specifications of the nearby polished wooden box with brass handles.
“It is certainly a fine hole,” said the man named Moss. “Wouldn’t mind being tucked in there myself, if I do say so myself.” He leaned against his shovel, which he’d planted firmly in the dirt like a flagpole.
“Sure. She’ll love it, I think,” agreed Feaster, taking off his hat and wiping his brow, which was sweaty despite the pre-autumn chill on the air. He flicked an unsettlingly thick earthworm back into the hole with the toe of his boot and looked around, squinting. “Speaking of kids who love holes, where’s Spadeful? Not like him to miss a planting.”
Thus summoned, the small black crow of a boy tore off from his sarcophagus perch and popped his head around the giant pile of dirt that had formerly occupied Moss and Feaster’s hole.
“Ah, ain’t nothing sadder than a kid in a cemetery …” said Feaster.
“Unless that kid is alive,” said Moss. “Nice tie.”
Spadeful’s real name was Douglas Mortimer. Only Moss and Feaster called him Spadeful. It was part of an ongoing joke that started when he was much smaller about how much dirt they’d need to fill his grave. Douglas was twelve years old, but still small for his age. It didn’t help matters that he was wearing a serious-looking black suit that was a tad too big, out of which peeked a little yellow beak of a tie.
“Sorry I’m late. Had to wait for Mom to drop me off. She wouldn’t let me walk over by myself.”
Douglas visited the cemetery almost every day. According to the plaque on the black iron gates at its entrance, the cemetery had been established in 1644. It was a year so far back, that for a long time Douglas had thought the number was the cemetery’s address. Inside, five hundred acres of hilly property stretched to the end of the earth as far as Douglas knew. Large mausoleums sprang from gentle hills, life-sized statues writhed in grief, tombstones sprouted in hundreds of different shapes, their eloquent epitaphs discussing eternity together. A cold stream cut a thin Styx through the back of the cemetery, where it was more forest than cemetery. Over that stream was a covered bridge where Douglas would play “Headless Horseman” when he wasn’t racing through the stones or searching for epitaphs that included his name.
“What’s wrong with Daisy today?” Douglas nodded at the monstrosity behind the two men.
Daisy was a large, yellow contraption that looked like a cross between all the horrible parts of a spider and all the terrible parts of a scorpion. It had originally started out as a simple backhoe loader. A bucket and arm in the rear to dig holes, a loader in the front to fill them back in. Over the years, the two men had adapted this tractor to fit the needs of the cemetery, which amounted to more than digging and filling. Now, Daisy could carry grave vaults, lower caskets, seed and mow grass, install headstones, and do anything one needed for the dead, with the exception of maybe resurrecting them. The only downside to all their tinkering was that Daisy’s various mechanisms only worked about fifty percent of the time. That was why both men were now digging the grave by hand while Daisy propped up their backsides when they got tired.
“Don’t know. I think she decided that we should dig this beauty the old-fashioned way,” replied Moss.
“It’s good for us gravediggers to do that every once in a while,” added Feaster, who always smelled like cloves even when covered in dirt and sweat. “Else we’d never get to use the symbol of our office.” He grabbed his shovel and held it blade-up like a scepter.
“If I were a younger man, I’d agree. Since I’m not, you can take the symbol of our office”—Moss glanced at Douglas—“and dig your own grave.” He stuck both hands in the small of his back and arched himself until a violent series of cracks broke the solemn stillness of the cemetery. Douglas imagined the dead below, annoyed and mumbling to themselves before turning over in their caskets.
“Is this Mrs. Laurent?” Douglas pointed a finger at the wooden box while plopping himself down on the ground, his feet dangling off the edge of the hole like he was sitting on a dock.
“In person,” said one.
“In coffin,” said the other.
D
ouglas looked down into the hole. The grave was empty except for the open concrete grave liner, which was in place to hold the coffin and keep the earth from caving in when the coffin eventually decayed. Douglas saw the tail end of a prehistorically large earthworm squeezing itself through one of the drainage holes in the bottom of the liner.
“Can I see her?”
Moss squinted at Douglas, while Feaster yelped, “What?”
“Can I see her?”
“I guess,” said Feaster after a few seconds. He stretched his shoulders blades back until they almost touched and then stepped toward the coffin.
“Wait a minute there, sir.” Moss lifted a finger at Feaster and then turned to Douglas. “I know you’re just being curious, but I don’t think that would be a good idea, Spadeful.”
“Why?” asked Douglas. Feaster wrinkled his forehead at Moss, and the two earth-toned men exchanged a glance aimed over Douglas’s head. Then the two slowly opened a pair of mirrored grins that seemed, had they been sewn together, to stretch farther than the width of their faces combined.
Moss made a show of looking over his shoulder, and leaned closer to Douglas, using his shovel as a pivot. “It’s because, after she died, they discovered that she was a gorgon.” Feaster nodded beside him in what was either agreement or approval.
“What’s a gorgon?”
“Oh, it’s a fiendish beast, looks like a woman, but has snakes for hair and a forked tongue … well worth staying away from. If you see her face, even in death, you’ll turn into a stone fit to sit at the head of a grave.”
“They didn’t even open the casket for the funeral,” added Feaster. “Would have wrecked the whole thing, all those mourners gathered around suddenly becoming statues.”
Douglas smiled wide, and with two hands, pulled a pile of the moist, newly dug grave dirt toward him, which he started shaping into a castle. “Mom gets annoyed by your stories. She says you’re arresting my development or something.”
Moss swatted the notion away with a calloused hand. “Gah, if it weren’t for us, people like your mother would have to deal with the monster themselves. Heck, without us, the whole town of Cowlmouth would be overrun by them.”
“We’re very important to what you might call the ecosystem of the town,” explained Feaster. “We maintain Cowlmouth’s equilibrium.”
“That means balance,” translated Moss.
“Man and monster must live together, according to a very strict ratio. If it weren’t for the work we do right in this here rot garden”—Feaster stabbed the earth a few times with the blade of his shovel—“who knows what would happen?”
“It wouldn’t be good,” said Moss.
“Somebody needs to keep the dead down,” said Feaster.
“Someone needs to stake the hearts of the vampires when they rise from their crypts,” Moss added.
“Somebody needs to bash the brains out of the zombies when they claw their way back through the earth.”
“Somebody needs to shove the cackling curses of witches back into their toothless mouths.”
“Somebody needs to appease the plights of restless spirits.”
“Ghosts, the poor wretches. Sometimes, they just need a little direction.”
Despite his mother’s cautions, Douglas was hooked, as he always was. He loved their stories of monsters, even if he didn’t believe them. Not really, anyway. Plus, if it weren’t for Moss and Feaster, Douglas wouldn’t have banshees and ifrits and gorgons, or any other exotic types of monster, to run wild in his imagination. And an imagination needed its monsters. Still, he couldn’t be too much of a kid about it in front of them.
“I’ve never seen any.”
Moss leaned closer to Douglas, the pivot of his shovel bending almost horizontal, his face deadly serious. “That’s a good thing, Spadeful. But there are monsters. You can bet your child-sized soul on that.”
A ragged howl ripped across the cemetery.
Moss and Feaster jumped to their feet, shovels at the ready, swiveling back and forth like they were baseball batters who couldn’t find the pitcher.
The howl quickly broke into high-pitched laughter as an angular silhouette stepped in front of the cemetery gates and pinched its face between the bars. “Moss! Feaster!” the form yelled. “Watch out for monsters!”
“That boy,” said Moss. “That demon boy.”
Douglas let out his own laugh and gave a goodbye salute to the two gravediggers. He leapfrogged tombstones until he got to the gate, where the thin form was still quaking with laughter. If Douglas was a crow of a boy, then Lowell Pumphrey was his pal scarecrow.
Lowell was a year older than Douglas, a year wiser, a year dumber, and almost fourteen according to Lowell, but that was just another way of saying thirteen. He was thin and tall, with wrists and ankles escaping in terror from the long sleeves of his orange sweatshirt and the legs of his jeans. Atop his head was a campfire of yellow, curly hair that looked like an anemone sifting the air for food. Douglas didn’t have a lot of friends, but a lot of friends for Lowell Pumphrey was a good trade.
“I was just at your house,” said Lowell.
“What were you doing there?”
“Eating your dinner.”
“Um …”
“I mean, I didn’t go there to eat, but you weren’t there, and your mom offered, so I thought, ‘What the hockey sticks?’ So how come you’re here? I mean, besides the fact that you’re almost always here.”
“I wanted to see Mrs. Laurent get buried. Moss and Feaster said she was a gorgon.”
“Awesome. Speaking of that, I was looking for you because I have big news. This town is about to get crazy.”
“Why?”
“You’ll like this. There’s a monster. In town. And not this Halloween stuff that Moss and Feaster feed you. I’m talking the kind of monster that would make those guys cower in their grave holes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have time now, man. I spent it all eating your mom’s chop suey. Tomorrow, though, let’s meet back here.” Lowell looked around to make sure that nobody was nearby. “It’s the kind of news that we don’t want any coffee-drinkers to overhear.”
“Tomorrow is Mr. Stauffer’s funeral.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m going to that, too. Afterwards, then. Anyway, gotta go. Second dinnertime. Dad’s making meatballs.” Lowell grabbed Douglas by the arms. “Round meat!”
“Sure. See you—”
Before he could finish the goodbye, Lowell bolted away, eating up the sidewalk with his long strides and taking mere seconds before he was little more than a tiny figure in the distance. Douglas could just make out his friend’s upraised arms and barely heard his battle cry of “Meatballs!” wafting behind him. In like a lion, out like a lion. That was Lowell Pumphrey.
Cowlmouth Cemetery wasn’t too far from Douglas’s house. Everywhere that Douglas went wasn’t too far from his house. The town of Cowlmouth was large enough as far as towns went in New England, but Douglas only really went to a few places. His house, the cemetery, school, Lowell’s house, the movie theater, the ice cream shop, all of which were within a few streets of one another.
A few streets are universe enough for a twelve-year-old boy, and close enough to it for everybody else.
As Douglas meandered home from the cemetery, he swished a white twig that he’d plucked from an obliging birch tree along the way. It glided back and forth in front of him like a harvesting scythe. Around him, Cowlmouth was starting to kindle its autumn fires. It was still early September, and only a few impatient trees lifted a red- or yellow-flaming torch in the midst of their mostly green branches. In another few weeks, every birch, every elm, and every oak would be in full five-alarm conflagration before finally fading to brown and being buried under snow for the winter.
Today, he didn’t notice the shifting of seasons too much, though. Douglas Mortimer was as worried as a boy could be, not having had much practice at it so far in life. His mother and fat
her had changed in the past week or two—gotten busier, maybe. They weren’t around to see him as much. And he didn’t understand it. His parents worked from home—Douglas understood that part—but lately, it was as if they not only didn’t notice him, but didn’t want him to notice them.
But it wasn’t just them. It was other adults, too. Like Dr. Coffman, the family doctor. Douglas didn’t know how old Dr. Coffman was, but he always thought him to be the oldest person he had ever seen. White wispy hair on his head, white bristly hair on his cheeks, a cadaverously thin frame. His ears and nostrils were plugged with white hairs, as well, as if his head were full of the richest soil a growing thing could want. The other day, the doctor had dropped by Douglas’s house. He didn’t even say hi to Douglas or offer any of the lemon candy that he always had on him. The kind that Douglas didn’t really like, but liked getting all the same. Dr. Coffman had nodded absentmindedly at him before Douglas’s parents had shooed Douglas out of the room. His parents weren’t normally ones to shoo.
By the time he arrived home, Lowell’s bluster had almost blown away his troubling thoughts. Douglas couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of monster Lowell had been talking about, but judging by the look in his friend’s eyes, it was exciting.
Douglas paused in front of his house. He remembered that his mother had made him promise to have Moss or Feaster give him a lift home. Hopefully, she wouldn’t ask. Besides, he wasn’t even sure if the gravediggers were allowed to cross the borders of the cemetery. Seemed like it was the only place he ever saw them. His mother’s request was weird, anyway. He’d walked to and from the cemetery by himself hundreds of times.
Douglas’s house was a towering construct, paneled and painted a somber forest green, with dark purple shutters and a black roof. The house was old, large, and sprawling, with two big towers like the eye stalks of a snail, and so many pointy gables and dormers that it looked like the architect didn’t know how to draw a straight line. A wide, dark green sign with gold lettering in a comforting script was staked on two granite posts into the front lawn. It read MORTIMER FAMILY FUNERAL HOME.
