THE GRAVEDIGGERS BURIAL

A Short Story

Peerzada Muzamil

"Let me dig more, let the more scorpions come out, and hairy spiders too, let me keep digging till the edge of my shovel hits the inhumed corpse..."

I am coming for you, riding on this black stallion, in the moonlit night, and I am at the steep hill, just a few gallops away from your resort. Do you remember that cursed night, when I beheld you on the furthest of the churchyards, on the bleakest of nights when the wolves howled and the screaming ghosts hastened out of the distorted graves? It is since then I am craving for you.  The craving – craving to kill you – is consuming my soul just like a black hole consuming the fiery stars in the remotest of the cosmos. How iniquitous is it to kill an old stooping man, too weak to stand for even a while? But see, I am wistfully restive, for to obliterate your existence is my fervid desire.

 See, now I’m exactly there, nothing could stop me from reaching the cemetery, not even the howling wolves, neither the screaming bats, and nor the black silence of this nightly breeze. Ha! Ha! Ha! And how could you expect your heathen gods to obturate my path, or your spells to deviate my thought? I am too determined and desperate to kill you. I’ve been dreaming wistfully, for so long, to impale your emaciated throat with a rust-ragged spear and spill every cold drop of the blood from your disease ridden body. No, no, it is not that you vex me but the nefarious chore you execute.  You’ve dug for many hitherto, but tonight I’ll dig for you. 

You, yes you. I am talking to you – you filthy old gravedigger. I have unmounted from the horse, standing aloft at the iron gate of the graveyard, peering through the rusted and spiked gratings. You see, nothing has changed since I last visited here, everything is alike – the distorted graves, hunched and illegible tombstones, stinking undergrowth and stench of the rotten corpses, rattling spiders and scorpions,  profusely growing toadstools,  an old oak tree in the middle, and your forlorn shed where you live with your cursed grave-digging-tools. Lo! Behold your death approaching you. Hearken to the footsteps of your obliteration marching towards you. You might be expectorating inside your shed, unaware of me. How sly I am, how shrewd my intuitions are and how unerringly the clairvoyance is guiding me. No, you’re not coughing. The shed radiates the lethal silence out of it. You are indeed, sleeping in your shed, perhaps dreaming about the tomorrow’s entombments and funerals or about your immortality or about the hopeful serenity of your life ahead. But trust me, I’ll shatter your every dream to nihility, when I’ll kick the oblong door of your dilapidated shed, and awake you and drag you to the middle of the cemetery and tie you to the cadaverous oak tree and pierce your throat with my rusty spear. 

Ha! Ha! There the door of the shed awakes the echoes of creaking, and enhancing my intrepid palpitation. Oh heavens! The ugly stink of your shed is… Whoa! Where are you? Vanished? You filthy old chap, I had come for you from a long distance, to soothe your soul, to lay your body down in peace. But see, how adamant you are. You are not here, ha?  I can see your tools, your tattered bed, a bucket, and the swarm of chirping cockroaches rattling across the damp floor. How has my clairvoyance erred me? You are not here. And what is this sound that is overwhelming me? Have the ghosts risen from their graves and chanting the threnody in a shrill voice? Yes, indeed they are. Whose grave are they encircling? I shall enquire it for myself. Let the ghosts go and let my breathing slow down. I am waiting for ghosts to abandon the grave – waiting impatiently. I am not moving a muscle lest they notice me and banish me to hellfire. Glory to be my shrewdness, how cunning I am.  

Silently and slyly, with furtive acuity, I am peering into outside through the hole, the ghosts are descending back to their graves; they are gone. Now I can disinter the singular grave that they were surrounding. Where is the bloody shovel – here it is. You see the extent of my impatience, I am running towards the grave with a shovel, gasping for breath, perspiring – and there I am.  I can hear stertorous breathing from the grave, the thumping heartbeats. Lub dub… lub dub…. Is someone inhumed alive? No, no. It can’t be? You see, I can pick the shovels of mud with ease. It is still loose and moist. The stench looks familiar and the hastening scorpions too. Let me dig more, let the more scorpions come out, and hairy spiders too, let me keep digging till the edge of my shovel hits the inhumed corpse.

Ahaa! The sauntered skeleton. Somebody had torn the corpse into pieces before burying it. The fractured ribcage. And here is the femur, the toes. The shattered pelvis. The dreadful stench. Let me go for the skull. You see? The Severed neck? The abrasions on the bones of the neck look familiar. Wait, you see, it is the old man – the filthy gravedigger I killed years ago. I can smell him. How imprudent I am, how frail my memory is. I remember, the Friday night, three years ago, when I speared him to death after tying him to the old oak tree, beheaded him, tore the corpse into pieces, chopped its viscera, cut its ears, drilled its eyes out, drank its sticky sweet blood and amassed everything into a shroud and buried it. Yet, I forget it every time and every weekly night I come out of the den, just to kill him. I want to kill that bastard again and again, every Friday night, taste his blood and feel the prurient satisfaction. You see the obsession in me? The madness? How desperate I am to hunt for him again, and how preposterous is it that I am a fortune teller of sorts, I predict, I’ll come for him again, next Friday night, surely and slyly, on my stallion, with my desperate hunger and my rusted spear…