37
Salem
Grave Digging
A n eerie quiet descended with the red sun as it plunged toward the horizon. I clung to Rayne on the back of her ATV as we sped along the muddy road, dodging potholes and lumps of icy snow. As we drove, and dusk fell, the streetlamps popped on, flooding our path with light.
The streets of Marihope were empty, shops shuttered, doors locked. Almost every door had a cross hung upon it and floodlights blazed on front porches, beacons of fiery brilliance that fought against the encroaching night.
Somehow, it only made the darkness beneath the trees seem deeper.
Rayne carried her gun; I carried the shovels. We’d left Loki at home, despite his protests. But we needed to move as silently as we could; his barking could give us away to the locals.
As we passed beneath the rusted iron archway into the cemetery, the temperature dropped.
Overgrown, mossy headstones were scattered beneath the trees, years of decaying leaves and piles of dirty snow obscuring them.
Some stones were so old the trees had grown over them, roots engulfing any record of the dead that lay beneath.
Generations of families were buried together here. Parents and their children. Elderly couples. Beloved daughters and sons, aunt and uncles. It was an echo of another time, when Blackridge was a quiet community which found peace in its isolation, not horror.
Numerous narrow paths twisted beneath the gnarled trees, and I never would have found my way if Rayne hadn’t been leading me. She walked close, her arm occasionally brushing mine. We didn’t speak, we just listened, heads swiveling from left to right in constant surveillance.
Suddenly, Rayne stopped and said, “She’s here.”
The grave before us was newer than the others. The creeping vines had yet to swallow it, and patches of bright green moss adorned the pale gray headstone. A statue of a weeping angel was draped over the stone, her head buried in her arms, shrouded in a long veil.
For a few moments, neither of us said anything. We just stood before the grave, shovels in hand, the weight of what we were about to do suddenly crashing down.
Soon the sun would set completely, and it would only be us against all that lurked within the darkness of night. We were running out of time.
“Should we...?” I motioned toward the grave.
Rayne nodded sharply. “It’s just bones. Just a coffin.”
A pang shot through me as my shovel pierced the dirt; a sense of wrongness made my stomach churn.
But I kept digging, minutes turning into an hour.
The sounds of our shovels spearing the earth and tossing it aside were the only breaks in the eerie silence.
Rayne had to pause frequently; it was obvious she was in pain, but refused to let it show.
“Take a break,” I said when she stopped yet again and leaned against her shovel. She sucked in her breath as if through a straw, and glared at me when I made my suggestion. I insisted, “It’s getting dark. You should keep watch.”
Luckily, she accepted my logic, and faced the forest with her weapon as I kept digging. My back and shoulders ached, and it seemed as if the hole would never end. Was there a coffin here at all? Was it even really a grave?
Thunk.
My shovel struck wood.
Bile rose in my throat unexpectedly, an alarming feeling of unease filling me.
“Rayne.” I said her name softly, and she came immediately to the edge of the grave. “This is it.”
She extended her hand and helped me climb out before hopping down herself. She straddled the coffin, shovel in hand, but she didn’t move.
“It was a closed casket funeral,” she finally said.
“I was so scared of this coffin when I was a kid. Walking past it in church, I imagined all kinds of horrible things. I imagined Mom’s face completely destroyed—beaten, bloody.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t know...” Her shoulders sagged for a moment, and I wanted to reach for her, to somehow let her know she wasn’t alone.
Then she braced herself, and wedged the shovel under the edge of the lid.
Dirt shifted as the lid was pulled open. Rayne’s figure blocked my view, so I couldn’t see what she was staring at until I walked around the edge of the hole.
Empty. The coffin was empty. Except...
Only one thing lay within, and it wasn’t a body. It was a tattered old book.