FIRST REANIMATION
The final stitch holding Steve’s bottom lip in place snapped like a piano wire and thwacked him in the eye. His jaw dropped, and his chin landed on the book resting on his chest: an ancient tome with an image of horns and teeth fading into the twisted skin cover. The book glowed to life, flooding the casket with an evil green light. Steve’s body juddered as if he was riding the lightning. With a gasp, he drew in a great gulp of stale air.
He closed his mouth.
The book dimmed, and Steve fell still.
SECOND REANIMATION
Dead again, Steve’s body relaxed. His jaw went slack. His mouth fell open and dropped on the book, which flared to life with its sickly green light. Another blast of energy arced through his body, and he gasped back to life. His body jolted so hard that his bony hand flopped onto the cursed relic, pinning it in place. His chest rose and fell. He coughed out a plume of dust.
Alive?
Alive.
He was alive!
He rolled his eyes around.
White velvet, a mere three inches from his nose. His shoulders pressed tight against hardwood panels. His head rested on a pillow. The memory of his death flooded in, and he suddenly knew where he was.
Six feet underground.
In a casket.
Correction.
Six feet underground and locked in a casket.
Six feet of dirt generated some 2,000 pounds of pressure.
He’d need all of the strength the book could afford.
The book.
The friggin’ book.
He tapped his desiccated fingers on the braided skin cover. The texture made him queasy.
“Alright, man,” he croaked. “Time to get to work.”
He bent his free arm at the elbow, felt the power swell in his triceps and chest, let it build until his arm started to shudder.
Contrary to popular myth, gravediggers did not haunt midnight cemeteries, disinterring bodies for science projects or relieving them of their valuables. Not all the time. Did the odd diamond ring or pearl necklace disappear between the viewing and the interment? Probably. Did an occasional filling go missing or the odd gold watch wander off? Less often the first than the second.
Elijah Washington, Wraithridge Memorial Gardens’s head gravedigger, did not engage in such behavior. He found it in poor taste. But he knew colleagues who indulged. It might have surprised more than a few to learn that said colleagues tended to dwell in the lower echelons of the class system, having earned B.A’s in Tippling or B.S.’s in Chemical Ingestion, which explained why he, not them, was haunting the cemetery at midnight, a bolt-action in one hand and a shovel in the other. He was the only one his boss, Mr. Bruce, could trust not to do weird things to the bodies.
He didn’t want to be there.
He would rather have been home, eating steak and watching X-Files. But the night shift promised extra pay, extra honest pay, and Elijah was never one to back down from the combination of the two. Fortunately, the gig required no disinterment of any kind, legal or otherwise.
There had been a recent bout of vandalism. Gravestones knocked over and grave sites defiled. Kids, probably, though that didn’t explain the digging.
“Maybe it’s dogs,” Mr. Bruce surmised.
“Ain’t no dog can knock over a gravestone, Mr. Bruce.”
“Not that. The digging.”
That was three days before. They were standing over the most recent desecration. The final resting place of Sandy O’Shea. Born in 1909. Died in… well, Elijah couldn’t tell because the gravestone had cracked when the vandals knocked it over.
“That don’t look like no dog,” Elijah said. “That look like a shovel and pickaxe. Whoever done that was trying to go deep.”
“It doesn’t matter, Elijah. We need to put a stop to this.”
“You think ‘bout callin’ the cops?”
“What’re they gonna do? Send a car around to flash its lights for two seconds? Whoever or whatever is doing this will just wait for them to leave. I was thinking maybe you could stand guard overnight.”
Elijah swiped off his cap and scratched the back of his head.
“I dunno, doctor.”
“Elijah, peace of mind is the only thing a cemetery can sell. I’ve already lost two customers today because of this. Pulled up. Saw the mess. Didn’t even stop. Just continued on around the driveway and drove off.”
“Still, that’s a long day for me, Mr. Bruce. You’re talking sixteen hours.”
“I’ll pay you double overtime.”
Elijah gave his boss the side eye. Man was desperate, wasn’t he?
“Triple and you got yourself a deal.”
“Triple!”
“Triple and you give me a gun.”
Mr. Bruce laughed, but Elijah didn’t back down.
“If I’m gonna stand out here in this creepy ass boneyard all night waiting to scare off a bunch of kids with shovels, or if they really is a pack of dogs, I'm gonna need something to scare them off with.”
Mr. Bruce considered it. Squinted off to the side.
“Double and a $100 bonus.”
Elijah pretended to do the math.
“$200 bonus.” He paused for effect. “And a gun.”
Mr. Bruce held out his hand.
“Bring your own gun, and we got a deal,” he said.
That’s how Elijah Washington found himself walking around in a cemetery at midnight, mist swirling around his ankles, the landscape backlit like a horror movie.
Hell.
Not like a horror movie. This was a horror movie.
Three times, he heard something running around and growling in the trees that lined the grounds. Three times, he stomped toward the sound yelling, “Hey!” Once, he thought he saw lights flashing in the dark branches. The sound of whispers and cracking twigs.
Halfway through his shift, he found the most enormous oak tree on the property, took a seat, and unpacked the snack Susan fixed him: a turkey sandwich, potato chips, and a thermos full of hot coffee. He spread it out on the ground and took a bite of the sandwich, reading the headstone to his left as he chewed.
“Steven Mortenson. Eighteen years old. May God have mercy on your soul.”
Another bite. A sip of coffee.
“Mm-mm. May God have mercy on your name. Maybe you can ask for a new one up there. Or down there. Wherever you is.”
Elijah fingered a couple of chips out of the bag. An owl hooted nearby. Or what sounded like an owl. Them kids best not be trying to mess with him. He patted his rifle.
As he scanned the cemetery, a dent formed in Steven Mortenson’s. The dent turned into a hole, the hole turned into sieve, and out of that sieve burst a hand, then another (this one holding a book), then a face, followed by shoulders and chest and torso, and soon Steve pulled himself out of the ground and was standing—burial garb smeared with dirt and mud, face a black pitch of filth, nails encrusted, hair matted—on solid ground.
“YES!” he cried, raising his arms in celebration. “YESSSS!”
Elijah jerked his head around. Eyed the hole in the ground. Eyed Steve.
“Aw, hell nah,” he said.
He deliberately put his sandwich down, got to his feet, and picked up his rifle. Steven’s elation turned to terror.
“No, no, no wait!”
Elijah shouldered the rifle and aimed at the dead thing’s chest.
“You the Devil’s Man,” he said.
He pulled the trigger.
The bullet slammed into Steve’s shoulder, spinning him around.
“And I’m the Angel Rafael.”
He opened the breach, shucked the shell, jammed the bolt forward, and fired.
The second bullet struck Steve in the chest and sent him flying backwards. He landed like a sack of bricks, the book bounced out of his hand, and his body went as still as a stone.
THIRD REANIMATION
Elijah crept toward the demon’s shell, rifle at the ready. If that nasty old bugger so much as twitched a nostril, he’d blast it back to the fiery pit from whence it came.
He inched close enough to nudge the thing’s soiled patent leather shoe. The foot was as heavy as lead. A clump of dirt fell off the toe and landed in the wet grass.
“Uh-huh,” Elijah grunted.
He lowered his gun. A book lay in the grass a few inches from the demon’s open hand. Flesh cover stretched across bone board. He squinted. Shoved the barrel of his rifle under it.
“Don’t forget yo’ master’s book you dirty ol’ demon,” he said.
He flipped the book into the air, and it landed in the monster’s cold, dead hand.
A green glow filled the air, and the demon jolted to life.
“Jesus, save me!” Elijah yelled, stumbling back.
He fired off a wild shot that struck the headstone behind the monster, sending marble chips flying.
“Jesus fuck!” the beast shouted. It pressed the book to its lap and threw up one hand. “Wait, I’m not—”
“Ain’t no Jesus for you, devil!” Elijah cried.
He pulled the trigger again, but the rifle only clicked.
Jammed!
As he fumbled with the bolt, the beast sprang to its feet, threw a shoulder into his chest, and ran off into the night.
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