The Town Whispers: Season 1

Chapter 7.5: A Gravedigger's Task

The hands of a gravedigger are worn and thick from an age of work, like Charon ushering souls between the worlds of the living and into the flurry of souls and chaos that lay just beyond the river Styx; a gravedigger lays spent meaty soul prisons just beneath the earth, to be ripped apart by bugs and roots alike.

And that's what he was; the thing Albit called "The Man In The Cave". Amongst other things, he was a gravedigger - the last guardian of an innumerable, unimaginable number of children, who he'd ushered beneath, and beyond, well before their time.

[shovel digging in earth]

THE MAN: I've got something in my pocket for you. It's a weird voice with a smile... the worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out, and sported his eyes and his temples about.

[digging sound stops]

The grave was expertly dug with tight edges, but not as deep as to keep the body he lay in the clutch of the hole safe from the frost of winter, or the hunger of scavengers, but the point wasn't to stash this small body he lay down, safely away.... It needed to be close enough when it was needed, the nutrients stored in dreams that now lay dead, the fortifying strength of the marrow in the thin and fragile bones.

The body once known as Matthew was fertilizer, meant to fortify the earth in which the "Man in The Cave" lay him gently.

THE MAN: You did what all good men strive to do, and what very few ever accomplish. Sweet, young Matthew, you've left the world grander place than you found it.

Clutching the shovel again, after taking a moment to examine the placement of the body, pulling his legs straight, and placing his neck at a more natural angle, the "Man in the Cave" began to pile the dirt on top of Matthew.

[shovel begins digging earth again]

THE MAN: Behold me, Thou false one! Behold me! Remember Matthew the Brave! Here may he lie.

Humans are dirt born in flesh, a temporary shell to be torn asunder by time, the "Man in the Cave" knew that. This ritual wasn't for Matthew; Matthew was dirt, Matthew was manure- Matthew was born to feed something greater than himself.

The remnants of more graves, older graves, and some newer graves, were dotted about in the clearing, where the man in the cave had buried Matthew as well.

Matthew's only honor in his death was to be the keystone in a ring of children buried in the dirt of an otherwise insignificant clearing in the woods.

Having finished his job, The Man in The Cave, brushed the dirt from his leathery, thick, worn hands, and grabbed his shovel, before leaving Matthew, and leaving his personal graveyard of lost and forgotten children behind.

[Whistling and walking noise, and then it fades as he walks away]

[Rain Noise]

Rain fell that night, and then the night after that, and the worms in the rich dark earth wriggled about to surfacing and spastically wriggling before diving back in to eat Matthew. Each insignificant bite as his softening flesh, boring holes through him, holes which the rain would fill, and soften him, for what was to come next.

When the rain finally stopped, the earth which had been beaten with a trillion hammering rain drops, dried, flat, and immaculate, no sign that Matthew or anyone else had been laid to rest, no sign to remind the world that Matthew ever lived at all.

It was then a giggling boy and girl fell into the clearing, thinking nothing of what lay beneath their feet, only thinking about one another and what could be. 

...

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