I left the office one day to run and find an anniversary gift for Karen. Twenty five years we had been happily married, and for this gift I had decided to go all out. I thought I would mark the event with a nice, expensive necklace, or watch, or something of that nature. I knew of a very unique jewelry shop several blocks away from my downtown office. The shop had a reputation for offering unusual one-of-a-kind pieces, expensive, but worth it. Sorting through tray after tray set before me by the proprietor, my eye suddenly caught sight of something that came across as very familiar. It was a large ruby ring with rather large diamonds encircling it. It looked just like the one my father had on the last time I saw him. I picked it up and looked inside. Turning it around I saw that it had been inscribed. Looking more closely I began to make out the writing: "To George with love, your wife Helen." I couldn't believe it. How could this be? I looked again. I knew then it was true. It was my dad's ring. The one he was wearing when he was buried. But how? I asked the jeweler what the price was.
"Forty two hundred. And that's a bargain," he answered. "The diamonds themselves are worth that much. And the ruby is one of the finest I have ever seen."
"Where did you get it?" I asked.
"I buy my pieces from different places. Different traders and sellers from all over the country. I believe this one came onto the market only a few years ago. I'm not sure what it's history before that is, though. Very unusual, don't you think?"
I paid the price with no argument. I had to get home, and I had to take this ring with me. I called my office and told them I wouldn't be back today. I probably wouldn't be back for several days, though I didn't as yet know what I was going to do, or even how to think about it. I needed a little time to think.
Two days later I was again pulling into Gunlock, and again I was greeted with the dusty roads, later turning into asphalt with the official beginning of Main Street. There was the old city building, the food market, and that big expensive house. Somewhere in this city was the answer to why my father's ring was in my pocket, and not under six feet of dirt, inside a solid mahogany casket, and on my father's right hand. I wasn't sure where to start looking, but I thought maybe I would stop and ask a few questions. Hanson's drug store came to mind, mainly because inside there was an old fashioned soda fountain, complete with round spinning seat tops, and every flavor of soda one could wish for--and I was thirsty after the long drive.
After being served my "wild indian" float, I started to talk to the soda maker behind the counter. "Say, do you know the Godfreys very well?" I asked him.
"Well, a course I do," he replied. "They're the most well known people in town. Matter a fact, there's been some talk a changin' the town name to Godfreyville. Nobody really likes that idea; but, shucks, with the kind a pull them Godfreys have, I guess the town'll be named 'bout anything they wanna name it."
I questioned him some more. "Well, how come they have so much pull around here? It seems rather unusual to me that a simple funeral director and his raggedy looking brother would command such a high place in the community. What gives?"
"Why didn't ya know?" he answered. "'Bout everything ya see 'round here is owned by them two. Nearly all the old houses, and all the new ones belong ta them. They've lived here all a their lives. Used ta be real poor like the rest of us. But the last ten to fifteen years, why somehow they've gotten real rich like. The rest a us in this town can't figger out how they done it. Lotta people die around here, and they's mostly rich folk. But the funeral prices 'round here ain't any higher than anywhere's else. Rich folk wouldn't go for that any more'n the rest a us, ya know. But that's the way it is. They sit in that big mansion that ya see when ya come inta town, just sittin' there, buyin' up all the houses and land as the people die off. Sure wish I knew their secret so's I could do it too."
I walked out of the drug store wondering what to make of all of it. I didn't want to go talk to my mother quite yet. It would just upset her, me having the ring and all. So I drove to the cemetery. It was still early enough in the evening to have an hour or two of daylight to look around. Maybe I could find some clue there before darkness set in.
As I walked to my father's grave something just didn't seem to be right. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. I looked around at all the graves. "There is something different or unusual about these graves," I said to myself under my breath. "What is it?" Some of the graves look right. Wait, no only the graves that have small inconspicuous headstones look normal. What is it about the graves with the elaborate headstones? Obviously the bigger headstones mean people with money, the wealthy ones. I had already figured out that somehow the jewelry was being stolen from the corpses, and probably by the Godfreys. That would account for the Godfrey's increasing wealth. But how were they doing it? I watched Jake bury my father. If graves were being dug up afterwards, people would have noticed it long ago. I would have noticed it that night in the cemetery. How, then, are they getting the goods out of the caskets. Is it being done somehow between the viewing and the grave side? Is there some trick to the caskets, some way to get in them with people watching? But what is it with these graves.
Then it struck me. The rich graves were unusually flat, without a ripple, but slightly recessed down about a half an inch or so clearly marking the edges of the grave itself. The poorer graves, I guessed, evidently did not have those wooden stakes implanted two feet below the surface to keep the ground level. But then I thought, why would the stakes make that kind of a difference. What did the stakes do to make the ground above so perfectly level? The dirt would simply fill in around them, wouldn't it? I thought back on how the stakes were placed--an equal distance below the surface, sticking out about six or seven inches into the grave, as if...yes! As if they were going to support something, maybe a strong flat board or piece of metal, to support the rest of the dirt above it.
"So what then," I asked myself in a low whisper. If they're not digging up the graves from above, then.... I shuddered, from below?! I couldn't bring myself to think about that development any further, not just yet. The thought was just too horrible. I sat down by my father's grave and allowed my mind to go blank. "I'll think about this a little later. I'll just sit here a few minutes and then I'll think about it." The sun was now beginning to set, and a cool breeze moved the air gently around me. I laid back into the cooling grass. It felt so good, and I was so tired. Just rest here for a minute or two now...just rest a minute...just a min....
I awoke with a start. It was now very dark, and I had heard a noise. I looked around but saw nothing. The air was cold. I shivered, but not from the air. It was something else that chilled me to the bone. I heard the noise again. It was a scraping sound from over there, no, no, from over that way. I heard it again. This time it was more than a noise. Somehow I felt it, like the earth below me somehow quivered. I leaped to my feet and moved a few feet to the left. I heard it again, and I seemed to feel the earth shake even stronger beneath me.
I panicked. My heart started pumping, and I turned to run when, after taking a few steps, I tripped over something and fell. I landed in fresh, damp earth. The scraping noise suddenly stopped, and I froze. My heart pumped louder and faster, and I broke into a cold sweat. I tried to think, but my head was exploding with fear. I laid there motionless, my fingers buried into the soft dirt, my feet still caught in whatever I had tripped on.
After what seemed like several minutes in my frozen state and hearing the noise no longer, I reached back to what was still wrapped around my foot and found that I had tripped over several flower arrangements, still quite fresh, but piled in the heap. I then realized that I had fallen onto a fresh grave, a grave I had not even noticed as I approached my father's grave. But the noise. What was it?
I slowly gained my composure enough to raise myself up to a sitting position. I then turned over onto my knees and began to bring myself to a standing position. As I stood up, I had the impression that the ground under me moved with the change of my weight. I took one step forward, and all of a sudden the ground under me gave way with a loud snap and my leg disappeared into the ground, and I sank clear up to my thigh. Then something grabbed my leg from below and I felt a piercing pain around my ankle. I screamed in terror and pain, and just as I did, the rest of the ground seemed to lift up in front of me, and I fell, or was pulled down into the grave. I fell several yards and landed on my side, the dirt from above cascading down onto me. I heard a wild shriek, and as I looked up I saw an object crashing down towards me. I jerked my body sideways just as the object smashed into the ground just to the side of me with a loud metal thud. Instinctively, I grabbed at the dim image before me, and I latched onto the handle of what I immediately recognized as a shovel. I jerked it away from the force which had tried to hit me with it, and it came loose. I swung the shovel wildly and with all of my might in front of me and struck something squarely. I could feel the shovel blade sink into something, and my stomach turned at the immediate thought of what I might have just done. Then all was silent.
There was a dim light somewhere in the area, not direct and clearly visible, but a light that seemed to be shining around some corner or something. I reached for my penlight, fumbled with the switch, finally turned it on and shined it in the direction of where the shovel had come to rest. There, in the yellow light of my flashlight, lay Jake Godfrey, with the shovel blade imbedded into his head just above his right eye. His eyes were wide open, those shark eyes of his, seemingly looking straight at me, but now seeing nothing.
I tried to get up, but my ankle was broken. Jake had clamped onto my foot with a heavy chain, and in pulling me through the grave surface, tipping the board and the dirt on top of me, and sending me through the opening to the cavern below, my ankle had suffered the break. I would have to wait until the morning light, and the early visitors to the cemetery to get me out of here. I had no other choice. I laid back and tried to sleep...sleep with Jake staring his death stare, his head split by the shovel. It all started to fit together now, how he had tunneled underneath the surface of the cemetery, digging out the caskets from underneath, and robbing the corpses of their valuables. I would spend the rest of this night next to this underground creature who lived among the dead. I did not like to think about all of the corpses which most certainly were also somewhere very near.
Later, after I had been found, removed from my tomb and treated, I learned that Jake had, in fact, removed hundreds of caskets and their corpses from their resting places, had stolen not only jewelry, but their very clothing, and had then discarded the corpses. The caskets had been recycled back to the funeral home and resold to later customers, and the stolen valuables had been sold throughout the country as expensive specialty items. The cemetery itself had become a network of underground tunnels, with sturdy pylons holding up the grave surfaces while the coffins were removed and filling materials were put back in their places. The corpses, hundreds of them, had been neatly stacked in a separate cavern only a few yards away from where I had spent the night with Jake. Thomas Godfrey had already been arrested, and his future was very uncertain. It would take months to identify the bodies. It would take years to resolve all the legalities of the matter. And the nightmares? Well, I'm sure they'll never go away.
And somewhere out there, someone is wearing the eight hundred dollar suit, the white silk shirt, and the blue and silver silk tie that my father was buried in.
I prefer never to know who it is.
Go back to the Home Page
