A Stranger's Grave

by Craig Saunders

  That was how it went in 1985. Do a job ‘til it’s done.

  He laid his new clothes out on the slats of the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  So it goes. Do a job...

  Another thing prison taught a man was how to sleep. Couldn’t teach a man not to dream.

  That was why when John Upbright was being murdered on the other side of the cemetery Elton didn’t even stir.

  *

  10.

  At three-thirty in the morning, give or take a couple of strokes, John Upbright finished with a flourish after pumping his slightly flaccid drunken penis at Tania Reed’s wriggling behind. To be fair to Tania Reed, she wasn’t overly impressed, and left him asleep with his wilting goods and his sagging wedding bells hanging out of his trousers.

  Three cans of Stella sat beside John’s right hand. A can of spray paint by his left. Case closed, maybe, but probably not.

  *

  11.

  ‘John.’

  John gurgled in his sleep. Something about the voice tugged at him, stupor or not. Tugged like...

  ‘Tania.’

  ‘John,’ she said, and he opened his eyes. It wasn’t Tania. He scooted backward, suddenly very, very awake, and extremely aware of the full and floppy condom hanging from his exposed cock.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit, you nearly made me shit myself. Shit,’ he said.

  ‘John?’

  Questioning.

  ‘John.’

  Imploring.

  ‘John,’ said the woman and this time licked her lips.

  John licked his lips, too, because now he’d come round fully to the idea of being awake, he was aware of the woman’s tits, big, heavy and firm. Her white dress clinging to her every curve, and fucking hell, she had curves.

  Fucking Tania had almost been like fucking a boy, and that didn’t really do it for John, though he’d never admit that he’d kind of thought of his best mate Dave there for a second.

  ‘John,’ said the woman. She knelt before him. Thick red lips and wide red mouth and he could see right down her dress. The top half of her tits were on show and were so milky they almost seemed to glow, despite the darkness of the cemetery.

  He found himself thinking about dreams come true, and porno stories, and weird shit like this woman, maybe some horny housewife, out prowling and going down on guys in parks and in toilets, sucking strangers’ cocks on buses...thinking...becoming interested.

  Daydreaming, a little, drooling, a little.

  Until the other one spoke.

  ‘Bring her,’ said a voice from behind him. He whirled and yelled because the vision in white was somehow reflected behind him, but through some warped mirror that wasn’t even there. The same woman, same build, same features, same heavy tits and curves, but different, too. A thick black dress, but with holes torn through, a saggy, pallid face, missing teeth, and breath he could smell even though there were five yards or more between them. Her tits hung like udders, and it wasn’t just her breath he could smell, but something underneath. Something nasty, like a case of Chlamydia untreated and pissed down her legs.

  ‘Bring her. Make her come,’ the old bitch said.

  Her voice dripped honey, like the beautiful woman’s, but he didn’t understand, then he did, kind of. Maybe she was like some fucked-up pimp. Wanting him to give the one in white a seeing-to.

  While the old bitch watched. Got off. Porn shit, but fucked. So fucked.

  Suddenly, thinking of his best mate while he was fucking Tania didn’t seem so wrong. This was way worse.

  A nervous laugh popped out, but he didn’t know whether it was a laugh or hysteria. On the one hand he was horny as fucking hell. On the other repulsed...terrified...

  He was aware he was standing before some evil hag looking horror with a boner. He tried to stuff it back in his pants, but the other voice came, and he stopped, because he couldn’t deny that other voice.

  ‘John,’ said one.

  ‘Bring her,’ said the other. ‘Make her come. Make her...make her...’

  He turned back, tears coming to his eyes but he didn’t know why. The woman in white was right there, smiling, beautiful, and suddenly tugging on his cock with soft and delicious long fingered hands, hands that were cool on his cock. She was pushing her tongue into his mouth and he forgot the hag, the dirty old bitch behind him as he got harder and moaned, but he cried, too, because while the one pulled and kissed and sucked the other was behind him.

  Make her...

  No...I’m going to...I’m...

  But it was like the old one understood, knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t make her come because he was, and too soon, weird shit or not.

  But he screamed, then, because as he came she came, the old one, and she drove splinters into his spine and tore out handfuls of his lungs until he could scream no more, snapped his neck, broke his skull, tore into his brain, her worm-ridden tongue licking and licking and eating his eyeballs from behind.

  *

  12.

  Waking at six in the morning was stuck in Elton’s head after twenty-six years of incarceration. Not being tired after two hours of sleep wasn’t. He had to pull himself out of the hard bed, his hips and his back and as always, shoulder, aching. His once-broken knee screamed out at him, and looking down he saw that it was swollen. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it but grit his teeth as he pushed himself up from the bed.

  He tested his weight on his bad knee and found he could walk well enough, even though it hurt. Not as much as when it had been broken, though, and he could live with that.

  After a coffee and taking stock, he figured he’d finish up later, because you don’t finish a job until a job’s done, and though cleaning the cottage had been essential it wasn’t his job.

  Custodian. Groundskeeper. Keeping the dead tidy, he supposed. Give them a haircut. He’d a list of all he was supposed to do. He didn’t have to dig graves as another guy came in to do that, though he did have to keep the grass short, strim round the headstones, keep the bins emptied, pick up deadfall, lock up the gates at night. Keep an eye on things, the councillors had said.

  Keep an eye on what? Everyone was dead.

  He stepped out wearing a t-shirt and his new pair of trousers. Figured he’d worry about where he’d do his washing when he needed to. First thing, he needed to figure out where everything was. He took a big set of keys with him. One was a giant heavy thing he figured would be for the chapel.

  To one side of the cottage was a row of corrugated tin sheds. He’d start there.

  In the first he found a ride-on lawn mower. A bench over to one side had some tools on it. Good quality stuff, some rust, but more than functional. A jerry can, steel painted green, stood on a shelf above the tools. Someone before him seemed to have been pretty organised. He didn’t know the name of the last groundskeeper. He didn’t suppose it would ever matter.

  The next shed held a petrol strimmer, two stroke, it looked like, and another jerry can full of the fuel mix for it. Two-stroke engine, he figured, but he could mix the fuel easy enough. This shed had more tools, oil, new blades...more for storage than the other had been.

  The third and last shed held garden equipment. Shovel, spade, fork, that kind of thing. He’d never been a gardener, but he knew the general theory behind gardening.

  After exploring his sheds he found the bins, figured out the boundaries of the small domain he’d already come to think of as his.

  Feeling comfortable about figuring out where everything was, and being another step closer to getting to work, Elton Burlock smiled and turned his face toward the early sun. He’d probably smiled more since getting out than he had in all the twenty-six years before. The sun felt good on his skin. The ache in his muscles and even down deep in his joints – that kind of hot ache he got more and more as he got older – even that felt good.

  But he didn’t stand that way, face to the sun, for long, because he was itching to get on with it, because the spring was in bloom an
d the cemetery looked like shit. The grass was well past its first trim of the year. The paths were overgrown, dead flowers littered graves here and there, where maybe people had come to put down flowers for Christmas and they’d been there ever since. Deadfall littered the ground, too, and there were dead leaves piled up in drifts, long on the way to rotting down, but still needing sweeping up.

  Plenty to do, but Elton wasn’t a shirker.

  Pride in his work came from years of toil, before prison, during, and no need to stop now. He knew well enough if he didn’t get to work soon the mourners would be complaining about the state of their loved ones’ graves, and no matter that he was free, he was still the same man and always would be. Underneath a patina of grime, maybe, but unchanged.

  He set out on foot and began a round of the cemetery to see what needed doing, and so met Henry Harrison and his beautiful daughter Emily.

  *

  13.

  Elton walked around half of the cemetery, going anti-clockwise, a man trying to break the habit of being ruled by other people’s time, but still waking at six in the morning no matter what.

  The cemetery was larger than he would have imagined a small market town would have needed, but he guessed the dead would always outweigh the living. Maybe someone long ago had realised this, or maybe the town planners had figured it out as time went on, and the council had sold off more land to the church... Elton didn’t know how such things worked. It didn’t really matter to him. This was his job, right here, right now, nothing else mattered for a time, a least until he got this job sorted and clear in his head. Couldn’t be much to it. Work out some kind of schedule. He could have asked the previous groundskeeper, but he wasn’t around. He’d have to do it himself.

  Wouldn’t be the first time. After all, he’d managed a second degree through the Open University without access to tutorials, just with his own head and time and all the textbooks he could ever want. But that was the past. Degrees didn’t matter now, though he still found himself thinking of books he’d read, things he couldn’t forget. Didn’t matter how much he filled his head with, he couldn’t empty out the old. It just got more crowded in there.

  After half a circuit, a picture filling his head now of the work he’d have to do, he cut back across the old part of the cemetery toward the centre, where he saw the old man sitting in the park. Early still, probably about nine o’clock, but he was there, as he had been before, with a single buggy. This time the old guy had a pipe on the go and a smile on his sagging but surprisingly smooth old face- for a smoker.

  ‘Morning,’ Elton said, smiling himself just because the old guy’s obvious pleasure was infectious, and he was pretty damn happy himself. The morning aches were wearing off, it was a beautiful day, and he had a job in front of him. He didn’t want for anything else. The time he’d yearned for more was long gone.

  ‘Morning,’ said the old guy. ‘Are you the new gatekeeper?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am. Elton Burlock,’ he said, thinking gatekeeper was a funny way to put it.

  He didn’t hold out his hand, because it didn’t seem like it was appropriate. Just two men getting on in years, just passing the time in a cemetery.

  ‘Are you visiting someone?’

  ‘No. The wife’s long gone, but she wasn’t buried here. She was cremated. Scattered her ashes in the garden. She loved the garden.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Elton.

  ‘It’s OK. Long time ago now. I just come here, kind of walk around. Trying to keep the baby asleep.’

  ‘Granddaughter?’

  ‘Daughter,’ said the old man, nodding.

  Elton didn’t say anything. The guy must be seventy if he was a day. Didn’t ask the why’s or how’s, because it wasn’t any of his business.

  ‘Henry Harrison,’ he said, and the old man held out his hand and half rose from his seat, so Elton couldn’t do anything but go to him and take it.

  ‘Pleasure,’ he said, because it seemed like the right thing to do. The smell of the pipe was thick in the air, but somehow pleasant. An aroma of it surrounded the man, but not like a cigarette smoker’s smell, kind of stale, but somehow more moist, more vibrant. It was a good smell.

  ‘You mind?’

  ‘Sure,’ Henry said, ‘Just whatever you do, don’t wake her. Sweetest little girl in the world, but only when she’s asleep.’

  Elton smiled at the comment as he leaned over the buggy and looked. Luckily he was facing away from the old guy, so his shock didn’t register for Mr. Harrison. Elton wasn’t a stranger to weird himself. He’d seen enough crazy in prison to take most of it in his stride. But walking around the cemetery with an empty buggy?

  Elton took a second to compose himself, filling the gap with a meaningless ‘ah.’ Not like the kind of ‘ah’ people make when looking at a cute baby, but just a noise in the back of his throat. Could have meant anything.

  Did he play along, or bring it up?

  Did it matter enough to spoil the old guy’s day?

  Probably not. He wasn’t a stranger to grief. When he’d lost his wife, his child, he’d done some pretty stupid things. Things that had maybe cost him the better years of his life. But then he didn’t bring that on himself, and this old guy probably hadn’t brought this on himself either.

  How long had the crazy old man been walking around with an empty buggy, telling everyone about his beautiful daughter? How many people did like he did, and pretended that nothing was wrong at all?

  He figured, in the space of a few seconds, that what he thought didn’t matter much at all.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘She’s the apple of everyone’s eye,’ said Mr. Harrison, nodding, pleased at the compliment. ‘Just wish she’d sleep a little better. It’s a bastard, excuse me, getting her to sleep. She’ll only go off being walked, and I’m an old man. I can’t walk like I used to. Still, since the wife passed I’ve got time, if not the hips.’

  For some reason Elton felt himself warming to the old man, crazy or not. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to tell him about his wife. But then he figured, he might want to talk about the empty buggy. The lost daughter, and whatever that story was, he didn’t want to hear it. Not today, while he still felt good.

  Besides, when someone’s that deluded, anything they say might be completely nuts. Mr. Harrison might have eaten the baby and killed his wife and knocked up some local convent girl.

  Shit, his wife might just as well be at home getting the dinner ready.

  But he told him anyway, because the feeling he got from the old man wasn’t anything like that. It was comfort, and it was warmth, and in his experience intuition stood you in better stead than intellect nine times out of ten.

  ‘I lost my wife, too.’ He didn’t add that he’d lost his daughter on the same night. Didn’t figure that was the right way to go. Intuition wasn’t even necessary on that point.

  ‘Hardest thing that ever happened to me,’ he said, because it didn’t seem he was finished.

  ‘Must’ve been tough on a young man like you.’

  Young? But then he was probably twenty years younger than Mr. Harrison. It seemed like kind of a compliment.

  Funny how the day was turning out.

  ‘It was. I was younger then. Bad time all round.’

  ‘It always is,’ said Mr. Harrison, using some intuition himself and realising that Elton had gone just as far as he was ready to go on that subject.

  The old guy was pretty sharp, nuts or not.

  ‘Anyway. I suppose you’re a regular feature here, then?’

  ‘I am. Most days. Weekdays, anyway.’

  ‘Well, then. I’ll see you around. It’s been nice to meet you,’ Elton said.

  ‘Likewise,’ said the old man with a nice smile. A warm smile that made Elton feel good that he hadn’t spoiled the man’s day, or the man’s pipe, which he was puffing on heartily.

  Mr. Harrison half rose, and this time they shook hands, before Elton set off on his ro
unds and before the new gatekeeper met John Upbright, or what was left of him.

  *

  14.

  The first thing he noticed was a trio of jet black angels. Each angel faced away from the other in a rough triangle formed of beautiful women. Gigantic wings spread wide from their shoulders. Their hands were held out in supplication, but with palms slightly spread, as though they were holding something that only they could see.

  The features of each woman, similar, but different enough that you could tell they were not modelled from one woman, were stunning enough to take his breath away. There was something disquieting about their black eyes, blind eyes but the angel he faced seemed to be weighing him, nonetheless.

  The second thing he noted, after the angels, was a sickening smell, like the stench of empty bowels, or a blocked toilet. He’d smelled enough of it to know.

  The third thing was the body of John Upbright.

  The boy was a mess - the worse Elton had ever seen.

  He lay face down, but with his head canted over at an unnatural angle, so that he stared at Elton. Or would have, had he any eyes with which to stare. The back of the boy’s head had been...

  Fuck, thought Elton...he didn’t have any idea what had happened to the boy’s head. Or his back. He was ruined. Elton couldn’t think of any other term to describe what he saw.

  Elton gritted his teeth.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said. Not because of the body. More because he was fucked. He knew it from the moment he saw the corpse.

  After that, a tranquil job keeping the headstones clear of moss and the grass mown turned to shit and he could smell it coming over the horizon, because he was an ex-convict with a history of violence and there was a mutilated corpse in his cemetery, one day after taking up his post.

  Harsh, he thought after, that his first thought was of himself rather than the poor corpse, but the ruins he looked at were dead and he wasn’t.