Jeff Franklin wasn’t a stubborn man by nature. At least, he tried not to be. His neighbors were fond of saying he had a streak of mule-headedness a country mile wide. He suspected it was an affectation of folksiness on their part.
The truth was, he was a levelheaded pragmatist, with a talent for sangfroid. Sometimes, this could be mistaken for stubbornness. This was a case in point. As far as the town folk were concerned, he was dead and buried. He would have disputed that he was dead.
The evidence that he was buried was indisputable. He was dressed in his best suit, with his arms crossed over his chest. It was pitch black, even with his wide open. Moving about, it was clear he was in a confined space.
What he wasn’t convinced was he was dead. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew who’d done this, too. Back when Andy Jackson became president, this part of the country was considered part of the frontier. He’d been among the first wave of settlers, and he’d shown a talent for swindling the frontiersmen, who’d stolen the land from the Indians.
He’d chosen a dancehall girl in her prime to be his bride, and she’d accepted without hesitation. The idea of spending her declining years seeking to peddle her faded charms for a schooner of beer just didn’t appeal.
He had accumulated many enemies over the years, including his two oldest boys. They had inherited his sense of avarice, but not his competitive instincts of a shark. If they tried stealing his empire, they would find his enemies would skin them alive, and gloat over their flayed corpses.
That brought him around to his own predicament. After considering his options, he realized he didn’t have any. Either he would be rescued in time, or he would smother in the darkness.
If it were the latter, he’d had a good run of it. He would be revenged on his children. Either way, there was no point in squawking about it. He closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.
Meanwhile, two men in a dogcart were hurrying to the cemetery. In the back were picks, shovels, trowels, and other tools for digging a hole.However, they weren’t Mr. Franklin’s progeny, realizing they needed the old man to save them. Rather, they were medical students, in search of a cadaver.
They were out to right a longstanding wrong. It was within the last few generations that the medical community began throwing off the shackles of Galen.
Capital punishment, particularly public hangings, was a social event as well as a way to battle creeping lawlessness. Plus, the infant Republic of Texas was fighting with Mexico, and covetous eyes were being cast at the latter’s northern territories.
All of this promised a bountiful harvest of corpses. The problem was shortsighted officials refused to release any of the se bodies. Society was on the march, but medicine remained mired in the Dark Ages, strangled by a lack of cadavers to study anatomy.
Because of societal taboos that went back to the primordial slime of superstition, they were forced to resort to grave robbery. Their confederate for this evening was a large Black man that answered to the name Jebediah.
He bobbed his head upon seeing them. “Evenin’ suh! Gots de shovels?”
His eyes gleamed at the sight of the tools. He rubbed his hands together, his lips pulling back to reveal a mouthful of ivory white teeth. “I gots an extra-special one for ya’s boss.” His expression became canny. “O’ course, I figger that’d cost somepin’ a li’l extra.”
The two medical students exchanged a look, rubbing their hands together. The man had something up his sleeve, and they wanted an idea what it was. “What is this ‘extra-special’ you have?”
The Black man leered, and rubbed his hands together. “Ole Jeff Franklin gots hisself buried jest dis afternoon! Aint’a gotten time ta get cole in de groun’!”
Their eyes widened, and it was difficult to suppress their grins. That would qualify as hitting the graveyard jackpot. The next issue was dickering for a price. “How much ‘extra’ is this going to cost?”
For a moment, Jebediah’s eyes glittered. His eyes rolled up to the side, and he stroked his chin, as if considering the proposition. “Oh…How’s ‘bout double de reg’lar fee?”
That was met with a counter offer, and they spent a couple minutes horse-trading. At last, a price was agreed upon, and they began removing the tools. The two medical students watched as the other man began to dig.
The earth was loose, and he had little trouble digging up the grave. The excitement of the moment soon wore off, and they sat cross-legged on the sod, watching Jebediah work.
It would have sped up the process to get in there, and join him. However, such an egalitarian gesture would have been a shocking breach of decorum. White men did not do Negro work-
Their brooding was interrupted by a hoot of triumph from the Black man. A few more shovelfuls of earth, and the coffin stood revealed. Panting with anticipation, the medical students leaped into the hole.
He watched them pry open the coffin with mixed emotions. Part of him wanted to demand his money, and leave them with their body. The problem was they would probably use it as a pretext to cheat him out of his share. He watched them force the lid open.
Jeff was shocked back into wakefulness by the cold night air. The oxygen had been running out in his coffin, and he was on the verge of spiraling down to unconsciousness. His eyelids fluttered, but his mind managed to reassert itself before he took the fateful step of opening his eyes.
He had no idea who his rescuers were. They might be relatives who realized their mistake, and were hoping to rectify it. Or they might be ghouls, in search of a fresh body. Either way, it seemed the perfect opportunity for a little practical joke.
He continued lying there, as if dead. The medical students were too excited about their body to notice the brief flicker of life. One of them drew a drawstring bag of coins from his frock coat, to pay their confederate.
Both sides were congratulating themselves on how they pulled one over on the other side. The medical students were gloating about how low a price they got their latest cadaver for.The last one had cost more, and wasn’t as well preserved. Jebediah was already thinking about cigars, dice games, and how he was going to lord it over his fellow Negroes.
Then Jeff spoiled it all. He sat up, holding his arms above his head, and let out a low growl. It had the desired effect on the medical students. They let out a wee shriek, and clawed their way out of the hole. Once they were on flat ground, they took off running, as if a legion of demons was in pursuit.
Jebediah was made of sterner stuff. His eyes had never left the moneybag ever since the one white man had produced it. He knew that his brothers down South dreamed of the freedom and opportunity up north. While in theory he was free, the noxious cloud of racism choked out dreams of equality.
He’d taken the job of gravedigger because it provided a sideline of selling fresh bodies to ghouls. The pittance he was paid was not enough keep body and soul together which added a grim necessity to his side business. It meant survival, and some of the little luxuries that made life bearable.
He was hoping the one honky would drop his moneybag when he began running. Blast him all though, he somehow managed to hold onto it. That meant his hopes of payoff rested in strangling the body. They wanted a cadaver, and he meant to see they had it.
Jeff was thrilled at his second chance at life, and wasn’t eager to have a need for his coffin. He rolled back, and delivered a mule kick to his attacker’s midsection.
Jebediah’s eyes widened, and the air whoofed out him. He staggered back, until the hit the dirt wall. It took a minute to draw air into his heaving lungs. By that time, the other man had gotten up, and assumed a fighting stance.
Jebediah launched himself forward, intent on strangling the life out of the white man. Jeff hit him with an uppercut that rocked the other man backward. He followed it up with a left cross, then a right. He often had to defend his winnings against angry frontiersmen, so he had become a good bare-knuckled brawler.
Jebediah soon realized that he was overmatched. His hand flopped around, looking for a weapon he could use against this crazy honky. His hand fell upon a trowel, and a savage elation swept through him. His survival and lifestyle depended upon providing the earthly husks to those who wanted or deeded them. What happened to those corpses after they left his custody was of no concern to him. This whitebread wasn’t cooperating, but he would make sure he went along with the plan.
What he didn’t know was the dead were aware of his depredations, and they were very angry. Some, who were buried with tokens of their wealth, had been stripped of their baubles. They were also aware that the consecrated ground they were resting in was violated again and again by ghouls, who had their own agendas for their earthly remains. Everyone trembled in fear that they would be the next one to suffer violation because of potential economic gain.
Until now, they remained in their plots, not willing to take on their tormentor. However, one of their own had chose to fight back. With a focus to rally around, they were ready to wreak vengeance upon those who preyed upon them.
The word had already passed through the cemetery grapevine, and the first chitinous fingers began to force their way through the grass carpet. A fist punched its way up through the sod. It was bony, with skin the color of old parchment.
A couple of men managed to force enough dirt aside to poke their heads out. They began to wiggle back and forth, until they got their arms and shoulders free. Once they managed that, they had little trouble worming their way out of the earth.
By unspoken common consent, they began to dig at the grave of a woman who was having trouble getting out. Once she managed to get her head and hands out, they each took a hand, and helped her out. She made a series of sounds that were meant to be thank you, but it was difficult to understand it as such.
Her tongue and esophagus had shriveled and dried out long ago. Plus her lips had rotted away, like her nose, giving her a terrible rictus. Her blackened gums were also starting to retreat, making her teeth look bigger.
Still, she had most of them, which she took a lot of pride in. Her burial clothes were also starting to rot, which revealed some of her modesty. None of the male corpses took any notice. She readjusted her burial shroud, and then joined the parade.
Neither men showed much awareness of the rising tide of noise. Jebediah was too intent on what he was doing, and flush with a sense of victory. His opponent was weakening, and he could move in for the kill.
Jeff was resisting him with every fiber of his being. It would have been much easier to just accept his fate, and done with it. The problem was, it went against the grain for him.
When he was fleecing the pioneers, he was following the dictates of survival. He had to make a living too, and he had a knack of bilking them of their ill-gotten gains.
He had been given a second chance at life, and he was damned if he was going to squander it. If the other man was going to use his corpse for his own dark purposes, he would have to make sure he was cold and dead. The problem was, it was beginning to look like the Negro would succeed.
Jeff already had a couple of bruises where he had been conked by the spade. So far, the other man had only been able to hit him with the blunt side. However, he was weakening, and his guard was dropping.
When he heard the first shuffling of feet, he figured Jebediah’s co-conspirators were returning, to help finish him off. Then he caught the first whiff of rotting meat. It soon became clear that there were more than a couple of men moving around up there. The air became redolent with corruption, and a rising moan began to swell the evening.
Jeff continued to fight, but his attention was focused on what was happening above the hole. Jebediah remained focused for a minute longer, but it also began to dawn on him that something was off-kilter. He looked up, and was horrified to see scores of faces looking at him.
Some had rotted away to little more than skeletons, rags clinging to their desiccated frame. Others retained enough flesh to be recognized with ease. Most of them had empty eye sockets, but from deep inside came a red glow.
Their attention turned to the Black man. Chitinous fingers were pointed in accusation, and the low moan of the dead turned to a howl of anger. Once their tormentor was identified, they were ready to take mob action.
Jebediah realized the dead were after him, and he became frantic. He tried scrambling for his tools, meaning to put them in their graves for good. It was too late, though. They had already found them, and were wielding them against him.
He skittered back, just missing getting poleaxed by the pick. Some were already jumping into the hole with him, clawing and biting. He fought to keep them off with his trowel, his fists, and his feet, gibbering and screaming.
His sanity was slipping away as the surreal nature of the situation overwhelmed his ability to cope. They swarmed him, and threw him out of the hole, where the shrieking mob began to tear at him.
Frank Howard, who had been a partner in life, met Jeff. He looked like he was smiling, because his shriveled lips had pulled away from his teeth. He helped Jeff out of the hole. “Hello! Good to see you! When did you join us?”
Jeff frowned, his eyebrows knitting. “Actually, I got sent here a little premature. My kids wanted me out of the way.”
His friend was silent for a long moment, and then pointed to the gate. “I would suggest you get out of here. The folks might not be happy to learn you aren’t one of us.”
Jeff doffed an imaginary hat. “Much obliged to you.” The corpse nodded, and began shambling toward the group.
The medical students were heading back to the cemetery. Sanity began to return once they started running out of breath. They had to retrieve their tools and dogcart, if nothing else. There would be a huge scandal if the grave robbery were linked to them.
Just then, they heard a cart approaching at high speed. It looked as if two fire-breathing steeds were pulling it. A laughing demon with burning eyes urged them on with screams of the damned. Even if they could have unrooted themselves from that spot, there was no place to hide.
Then the cart pulled to a stop in front of them. That was when they realized it was their dogcart! Sitting in the driver’s seat was Jeff Franklin. He gave them a cheery wave.
“Hello, boys. Thanks for the ride home. You might want to go pick up the pieces.” He snapped the reins. “Got to go. I have some business in town that needs to be taken care of.”
The cart was already rolling, and soon it became the two fiery stallions pulling the laughing demon again. The idea of returning to the cemetery caused a cold wave of fear to sweep over them, but they were impelled, drawn like a magnet to it.
The first thing they saw was the gates wee standing wide open. The grave was yawning wide open, but Jebediah and the tools were missing. They were puzzling over this enigma, when a shaft of moonlight illuminated the arch over the gates. It was topped with spikes. On the top was impaled the head of their former confederate.
The skin had been stripped back from the eyes, to pluck them out. The mouth was open in a silent scream, but his tongue had been ripped out, and replaced with his penis. Strange runes had been carved on his cheeks. Even in death, it was clear he had died in an extremity of terror.
They fell to their knees in a semi-swoon. An abomination that should never be seen by the eyes of men had occurred here! Then their sanity was destroyed at a clawing stroke. A chitinous hand burst from the earth, and waved at them, while a dirty chuckle was carried by the breeze.
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