Post by Non Compos Mentis on Nov 30, 2006 15:08:55 GMT -5
The clock tolls for the twelfth hour, its booming chime ringing out continuously for over ten seconds as the wave of noise bounces off the straight faced slabs that make up the walls. The old man had insisted on the antique grandfather clock being placed into his crypt when he died so that he knew what time it was if he woke up. In life he was like that, paranoid and cautious, in death he seemed to remind everybody of this with the constant, irritating chimes of the clock at his side. Even beyond the grave he irritated those around him, convincing the workers in the cemetery to check in on the clock every day to see if it had stopped working, causing great annoyance to those on shift who thought the tomb was creepy, even in graveyard terms. It was a massive thing, standing as tall as a the man that was now occupying the casket in front of it, and was almost merged into the background as it was completely made from dark timber and dulled metals.
The door to the small mausoleum had fallen of years ago. The hole in its place used to be occupied by a domineering oak block, carved ornately into patterns depicting the defining moments of his life, from birth to success to death. The door, however, had been the second thing in the crypt that had given up and left its living purpose. The solid wood and hard, reinforced hinges had worn away over time, the battering winds and rain scratching away at every atom it could reach, finally resulting in the door coming to a crashing halt five meters away from its original place, bouncing off the stone steps beneath it. The attendants had not had the decency to put up another and now every time it rained the small room was flooded and the casket became moist with the droplets.
It had been raining only days earlier, the water had entered the small macabre abode through the doorway and had remained in their thanks to the perfectly straight floor. All the water did was sit there, stagnant, creating a dangerous sheen on the already polished marble floor. My boots, sturdy as they are, slide and squeal on the surface making it a health hazard in a place where health wasn’t really a main concern anymore. The old man was able to buy this place with the money he had earned from being at the top for his whole life and now it was a reminder that it had always been tough at the top, living as a champion in a world of jobbers. It was so easily to slip and fall from the pedestal, he was testament to that having fallen to his end and lost everything he had strived to hold.
Looking out through the gap left by the absent door, all I can see is the endless, regimented rows of gravestones. The stones look almost identical from here but they are from all shapes and sizes, showing all manors of statues and figures attached to the main stone by the common link of the person sitting six feet below the ground. There is no sound at all but the occasional wisp of wind and the hoot of an owl nesting in a nearby tree. Suddenly there is a thud, the crunching of soil and a metallic slicing noise before the scattered noise of the same dirt hitting the ground.
I turn towards the doorway, for the first time noticing the expertly carved and designed arch above the doorway. The stone molded lovingly into swirls and loops, providing a scene of water and the ocean. Yet, the expertise of the architect or sculpture would never be noticed by anybody alive and was paid for with the money of a dead man. The old man had wanted something in the room to show what he was all about during his life, he wanted a last hurrah, no matter how big or small, and he paid for it with the one other thing that meant something to him, the one thing that gave him any status, his money. The man that made the designs wanted some prestige for his work but all he had was an old man’s death wish, his last word etched onto a wall.
I walk to the doorway and exit the crypt onto a small, stone porch like attachment to the building. I stop to look around and see the cold nights mist closing in on me. The white smoke, swirling around over the graves of the deceased like their lost souls, kept in limbo on earth to settle some unfinished business. The ghostly specter of the fog continues to thicken, closing in, making it hard to breath almost. I can feel the last breath of every person that is lying under the ground, the last words ringing in my ears like a screeching for mercy, a desperate cry for a last piece of love and affection. I suppose its lucky that I have grown accustomed to it, otherwise it could send me mad, delirious with depression.
Ahead of me are continuous rows of the same gravestones that were there just before, a day ago, a month ago and for as long as I can remember before that. Just one difference exists between this night and any other before now, I am looking at them from the crypt. The old man’s resting place was too decrepit and disparaging for most people and hardly anyone went in anymore, this is the first time I have been in for the whole time I have known this place. It still looks the same though, I know every word on every last tombstone in every last damn row in the entire cemetery. This is my devotion, this is my craze.
I walk forward, down the steps, my boots rapping on the stone and echoing throughout the whole cemetery with no earthly voice or sound to accompany it. The whistling of the wind is the only thing that even seems real but even that has the essence of the supernatural, the whaling of the inhabitants of this select piece of land. I come to a short rest at the bottom of these steps, relieved to finally be away from that place, the place where only legends from old take their place, making their achievements known for a slight moment longer. Now I feel the dense but yielding turf underfoot, waterlogged still from the night a few days ago. It should have evaporated but light never seems to penetrate the inherent darkness of this place, the water in the ground has only become toxic and putrid.
Ahead of me lies a narrow, winding path that leads throughout this area of the graveyard. The crypt had been a small intersection before the next section of equally depressing gravestones. I move towards the path, covered with the same deep green grass beneath m feet now. The dark tones of the lawn merge effortlessly into the blackness of the night with no resistance, not any effort to hold it back from its way into the realm of death. I move, reluctantly, forward into the darkness myself, wishing that the path into the realm of death is not real and all that lies ahead is another patch of turf and more, laborious gravestones. Truly, it was only the grass and stone lying ahead but it felt different to any time I had walked past the transition point before. It normally felt like a lesson in how to be beaten and how to fall like a dishonored soldier in battle. The unending, unmerciful harrowing from the stones usually took its toll by this point, ending me into a depressing stupor. But now, this time, it felt like I would not be beaten by the stench of death, I would not fall to the depressing silences, I would not die because of the voice of death. I would not be beaten.
Forward into the path I stumble, looking uneasily to either side of myself at the rows of gravestones staring up t me like domineering figures, sentinels of the dead. I continue on along the line as the stones watch up at my every move like an eager audience, desperate for a good show but still wanting to see me crash and run back home. The audience stood to attention, watching me, seems to follow me along the tack as I walk into my arena, the place where my effects are known. They seem anxious as if something is lying in wait ahead, waiting for the event.
The path ahead seems like the last one I will even walk down. It is the route to my final destination and the place where everything I have ever worked for will come to a head. Everything I have dreamt of and everything I have prayed for could lie at the end of the path but I cannot see ahead that far, there is no was I can predict what is ahead. Perhaps it is death, perhaps it is everything but that, I do not know.
That noise of slicing metal followed by dirt hitting the ground pierces our ears once more. The haunting audio seems to have accompanied me since the old man’s crypt and now it had reminded me that it was the very reason I was taking this path. The reward, or torture, at the end of the long, winding road was what had caught my attention for what now seemed hours ago. It was enticing and made me give up all my previous pre-conceptions about this area of graveyard and to walk forward to challenge it head on. The noise smacks me again, another lump of dirt hitting the ground and hitting me in the head like a hammer.
I look down to my left and see five names that I had not grown accustomed to seeing because of my absence from this area before now. The names and their matching stones seemed to stand out from the almost identical masses of stones around them, there was no explanation except that the names on them were, perhaps, more abstract and imaginative than the day-to-day ones that lay everywhere. From left to right they read like a fantasy book, like characters from an epic adventure, who know they may have been in a real life one. Luis Malave, Ace Anderson, Lantlas, Seth Sinn and Al Laiman. Definitely not normal names, one that stood out like pas champions in the Amphitheatre, warriors of virtue.
I left these objects of curiosity behind, focusing on the noise that had continued unabated. The noise was strong enough that I could follow its echoes straight to its location. Ahead of me I can see the slight glint of metal for only one moment before it vanishes into the night’s darkness once again, then the same thud of earth echoing throughout the cemetery. I continue on forward, my boots sinking slightly into the surface of the grass and my thoughts rushing quickly through my mind. The queue of organized, regiments gravestones begins to peter out until all that is left is the open ground, no grass, no foliage, just the ground and the open soil into which people are laid to rest. Further in we see the metal again, flying upwards and suddenly what light there is in front of me disappears and all I can do I shift to the right as much as possible before a sod of earth hits me in the shoulder with almost no warning. I clutch my limb and shuffle off to the side where I see the source of the attack.
A pit. One leading straight down into the unholy ground itself. One that could lead straight to hell if the ground had wanted it to. Looking into the hole there appears only to be darkness, a thought approaches me that the earth had been thrown by Satan himself, a lashing out from the depths of hell manifested in the throwing of dirt. Such a thing would not have surprised me now. However, moments later I see a figure rise up out of the abyss. His large figure rearing up its legs like a creature created by the engineers of hell. The figure was wearing a long, knee length, pitch black trench coat as well as black pants and a black shirt. His footwear was unseen, merging into the deep brown murk under his feet. His hair was wet, sticking to his face and his features worn away by the ravages of his life. He dug a shovel into the earth beneath his feet and threw it up onto a mound of the same substance above him, above the hole.
“What are you doing? That’s my job”
I ask. It had been my job for the last 30 years. I was the person that made the portals that these people used to enter their own personal afterlives.
“I’m burying some unfinished business”
The creepiest, most unemotional voice escapes his chapped, dry lips. He scarcely moves an inch from his ritual of digging then throwing, digging then throwing, digging then throwing. Far be it from me to stop a man doing my job, all I do is stand and look at him doing this job that he feels is destined for him to do. I look over to the heap of debris from the hole and notice my shovel sticking out from the pile, covered by it.
“You brought your own shovel?”
Once more he didn’t break step, digging and throwing, digging and throwing. His eyes remained fixed on the ground, his mortal enemy that he wanted to remove as quickly as possible.
“I wanted to do this with my own hands, my own tools.”
His voice was fanatical, his stature that of a barbarian. He help his shovel like a weapon, driving it down into the earth, trying to kill it and remove its influence on him. The weapon in his hands was no longer an implement of construction, it was an implement of war against a new enemy that he had rarely fought before.
“So, who are you burying?”
The man didn’t answer, all he did was nod his head in the direction of the pile of earth. I move towards the moist, dense grit and see that something is protruding from it other than the shovel. Closer and closer it moves into view, a picture, a photograph. It showed a face, partially obscured by the dirt from the pile yet most of it was clearly seen. The photo clearly showed a man around thirty years old with thinned hair, a ragged beard and pretty much the same ravaged appearance as the man in the pit. On the top of the page were writing two words, one almost completely covered by the dirt. The words read Phinehas G.
“You gonna be alright on your own out here?”
The man stopped for the first time and simply stood alone in the pit. He turned slowly and eerily as if scouting prey. His trenchcoat was open and it revealed a glistening golden belt around hi waist. He wore it with pride, a symbol of his personality and his status. His eyes lit up and he stared at me like nothing I have ever seen before.
“Leave, Now.”
I heard him loud and clear. He wasn’t going to make small talk. He wasn’t even going to move. But his intentions were clear. If I was going to stay here it would be my last moment and if I didn’t leave the hole would be my own. I didn’t want to stay, he was making me as jittery as a palsy patient doing brain surgery with a pipe wrench. I moved, quicker than ever before, back the way I came, back through the audience of tombstones and back past the crypt that now seemed as if it was heaven. I heard the thumping of dirt for the last time as I made back onto familiar territory. I left him there, digging and throwing, digging and throwing, digging and throwing.
The door to the small mausoleum had fallen of years ago. The hole in its place used to be occupied by a domineering oak block, carved ornately into patterns depicting the defining moments of his life, from birth to success to death. The door, however, had been the second thing in the crypt that had given up and left its living purpose. The solid wood and hard, reinforced hinges had worn away over time, the battering winds and rain scratching away at every atom it could reach, finally resulting in the door coming to a crashing halt five meters away from its original place, bouncing off the stone steps beneath it. The attendants had not had the decency to put up another and now every time it rained the small room was flooded and the casket became moist with the droplets.
It had been raining only days earlier, the water had entered the small macabre abode through the doorway and had remained in their thanks to the perfectly straight floor. All the water did was sit there, stagnant, creating a dangerous sheen on the already polished marble floor. My boots, sturdy as they are, slide and squeal on the surface making it a health hazard in a place where health wasn’t really a main concern anymore. The old man was able to buy this place with the money he had earned from being at the top for his whole life and now it was a reminder that it had always been tough at the top, living as a champion in a world of jobbers. It was so easily to slip and fall from the pedestal, he was testament to that having fallen to his end and lost everything he had strived to hold.
Looking out through the gap left by the absent door, all I can see is the endless, regimented rows of gravestones. The stones look almost identical from here but they are from all shapes and sizes, showing all manors of statues and figures attached to the main stone by the common link of the person sitting six feet below the ground. There is no sound at all but the occasional wisp of wind and the hoot of an owl nesting in a nearby tree. Suddenly there is a thud, the crunching of soil and a metallic slicing noise before the scattered noise of the same dirt hitting the ground.
I turn towards the doorway, for the first time noticing the expertly carved and designed arch above the doorway. The stone molded lovingly into swirls and loops, providing a scene of water and the ocean. Yet, the expertise of the architect or sculpture would never be noticed by anybody alive and was paid for with the money of a dead man. The old man had wanted something in the room to show what he was all about during his life, he wanted a last hurrah, no matter how big or small, and he paid for it with the one other thing that meant something to him, the one thing that gave him any status, his money. The man that made the designs wanted some prestige for his work but all he had was an old man’s death wish, his last word etched onto a wall.
I walk to the doorway and exit the crypt onto a small, stone porch like attachment to the building. I stop to look around and see the cold nights mist closing in on me. The white smoke, swirling around over the graves of the deceased like their lost souls, kept in limbo on earth to settle some unfinished business. The ghostly specter of the fog continues to thicken, closing in, making it hard to breath almost. I can feel the last breath of every person that is lying under the ground, the last words ringing in my ears like a screeching for mercy, a desperate cry for a last piece of love and affection. I suppose its lucky that I have grown accustomed to it, otherwise it could send me mad, delirious with depression.
Ahead of me are continuous rows of the same gravestones that were there just before, a day ago, a month ago and for as long as I can remember before that. Just one difference exists between this night and any other before now, I am looking at them from the crypt. The old man’s resting place was too decrepit and disparaging for most people and hardly anyone went in anymore, this is the first time I have been in for the whole time I have known this place. It still looks the same though, I know every word on every last tombstone in every last damn row in the entire cemetery. This is my devotion, this is my craze.
I walk forward, down the steps, my boots rapping on the stone and echoing throughout the whole cemetery with no earthly voice or sound to accompany it. The whistling of the wind is the only thing that even seems real but even that has the essence of the supernatural, the whaling of the inhabitants of this select piece of land. I come to a short rest at the bottom of these steps, relieved to finally be away from that place, the place where only legends from old take their place, making their achievements known for a slight moment longer. Now I feel the dense but yielding turf underfoot, waterlogged still from the night a few days ago. It should have evaporated but light never seems to penetrate the inherent darkness of this place, the water in the ground has only become toxic and putrid.
Ahead of me lies a narrow, winding path that leads throughout this area of the graveyard. The crypt had been a small intersection before the next section of equally depressing gravestones. I move towards the path, covered with the same deep green grass beneath m feet now. The dark tones of the lawn merge effortlessly into the blackness of the night with no resistance, not any effort to hold it back from its way into the realm of death. I move, reluctantly, forward into the darkness myself, wishing that the path into the realm of death is not real and all that lies ahead is another patch of turf and more, laborious gravestones. Truly, it was only the grass and stone lying ahead but it felt different to any time I had walked past the transition point before. It normally felt like a lesson in how to be beaten and how to fall like a dishonored soldier in battle. The unending, unmerciful harrowing from the stones usually took its toll by this point, ending me into a depressing stupor. But now, this time, it felt like I would not be beaten by the stench of death, I would not fall to the depressing silences, I would not die because of the voice of death. I would not be beaten.
Forward into the path I stumble, looking uneasily to either side of myself at the rows of gravestones staring up t me like domineering figures, sentinels of the dead. I continue on along the line as the stones watch up at my every move like an eager audience, desperate for a good show but still wanting to see me crash and run back home. The audience stood to attention, watching me, seems to follow me along the tack as I walk into my arena, the place where my effects are known. They seem anxious as if something is lying in wait ahead, waiting for the event.
The path ahead seems like the last one I will even walk down. It is the route to my final destination and the place where everything I have ever worked for will come to a head. Everything I have dreamt of and everything I have prayed for could lie at the end of the path but I cannot see ahead that far, there is no was I can predict what is ahead. Perhaps it is death, perhaps it is everything but that, I do not know.
That noise of slicing metal followed by dirt hitting the ground pierces our ears once more. The haunting audio seems to have accompanied me since the old man’s crypt and now it had reminded me that it was the very reason I was taking this path. The reward, or torture, at the end of the long, winding road was what had caught my attention for what now seemed hours ago. It was enticing and made me give up all my previous pre-conceptions about this area of graveyard and to walk forward to challenge it head on. The noise smacks me again, another lump of dirt hitting the ground and hitting me in the head like a hammer.
I look down to my left and see five names that I had not grown accustomed to seeing because of my absence from this area before now. The names and their matching stones seemed to stand out from the almost identical masses of stones around them, there was no explanation except that the names on them were, perhaps, more abstract and imaginative than the day-to-day ones that lay everywhere. From left to right they read like a fantasy book, like characters from an epic adventure, who know they may have been in a real life one. Luis Malave, Ace Anderson, Lantlas, Seth Sinn and Al Laiman. Definitely not normal names, one that stood out like pas champions in the Amphitheatre, warriors of virtue.
I left these objects of curiosity behind, focusing on the noise that had continued unabated. The noise was strong enough that I could follow its echoes straight to its location. Ahead of me I can see the slight glint of metal for only one moment before it vanishes into the night’s darkness once again, then the same thud of earth echoing throughout the cemetery. I continue on forward, my boots sinking slightly into the surface of the grass and my thoughts rushing quickly through my mind. The queue of organized, regiments gravestones begins to peter out until all that is left is the open ground, no grass, no foliage, just the ground and the open soil into which people are laid to rest. Further in we see the metal again, flying upwards and suddenly what light there is in front of me disappears and all I can do I shift to the right as much as possible before a sod of earth hits me in the shoulder with almost no warning. I clutch my limb and shuffle off to the side where I see the source of the attack.
A pit. One leading straight down into the unholy ground itself. One that could lead straight to hell if the ground had wanted it to. Looking into the hole there appears only to be darkness, a thought approaches me that the earth had been thrown by Satan himself, a lashing out from the depths of hell manifested in the throwing of dirt. Such a thing would not have surprised me now. However, moments later I see a figure rise up out of the abyss. His large figure rearing up its legs like a creature created by the engineers of hell. The figure was wearing a long, knee length, pitch black trench coat as well as black pants and a black shirt. His footwear was unseen, merging into the deep brown murk under his feet. His hair was wet, sticking to his face and his features worn away by the ravages of his life. He dug a shovel into the earth beneath his feet and threw it up onto a mound of the same substance above him, above the hole.
“What are you doing? That’s my job”
I ask. It had been my job for the last 30 years. I was the person that made the portals that these people used to enter their own personal afterlives.
“I’m burying some unfinished business”
The creepiest, most unemotional voice escapes his chapped, dry lips. He scarcely moves an inch from his ritual of digging then throwing, digging then throwing, digging then throwing. Far be it from me to stop a man doing my job, all I do is stand and look at him doing this job that he feels is destined for him to do. I look over to the heap of debris from the hole and notice my shovel sticking out from the pile, covered by it.
“You brought your own shovel?”
Once more he didn’t break step, digging and throwing, digging and throwing. His eyes remained fixed on the ground, his mortal enemy that he wanted to remove as quickly as possible.
“I wanted to do this with my own hands, my own tools.”
His voice was fanatical, his stature that of a barbarian. He help his shovel like a weapon, driving it down into the earth, trying to kill it and remove its influence on him. The weapon in his hands was no longer an implement of construction, it was an implement of war against a new enemy that he had rarely fought before.
“So, who are you burying?”
The man didn’t answer, all he did was nod his head in the direction of the pile of earth. I move towards the moist, dense grit and see that something is protruding from it other than the shovel. Closer and closer it moves into view, a picture, a photograph. It showed a face, partially obscured by the dirt from the pile yet most of it was clearly seen. The photo clearly showed a man around thirty years old with thinned hair, a ragged beard and pretty much the same ravaged appearance as the man in the pit. On the top of the page were writing two words, one almost completely covered by the dirt. The words read Phinehas G.
“You gonna be alright on your own out here?”
The man stopped for the first time and simply stood alone in the pit. He turned slowly and eerily as if scouting prey. His trenchcoat was open and it revealed a glistening golden belt around hi waist. He wore it with pride, a symbol of his personality and his status. His eyes lit up and he stared at me like nothing I have ever seen before.
“Leave, Now.”
I heard him loud and clear. He wasn’t going to make small talk. He wasn’t even going to move. But his intentions were clear. If I was going to stay here it would be my last moment and if I didn’t leave the hole would be my own. I didn’t want to stay, he was making me as jittery as a palsy patient doing brain surgery with a pipe wrench. I moved, quicker than ever before, back the way I came, back through the audience of tombstones and back past the crypt that now seemed as if it was heaven. I heard the thumping of dirt for the last time as I made back onto familiar territory. I left him there, digging and throwing, digging and throwing, digging and throwing.
