However, a very few number of grown-ups manage to preserve their wonder at the fact that something, and in fact most things, can be dug. And an even fewer number find themselves fortunate enough to make a career out of digging holes. In fact, two such lucky men, Moss and Feaster by surname, were at that moment standing beside a glorious example of the species that they had created themselves…and they had the blistered hands, dirty fingernails, and aching backs to prove it.
Their hole was twice as long as it was wide, about as deep as a bunk bed was tall, and it seemed created to the exact specifications of a nearby polished wooden box with brass handles like one would see on a fancy chest of drawers.
“Now that’s a fine hole. Wouldn’t mind being tucked in there myself…if I do say so myself,” said Moss, a tall bearded man dressed in about three different shades of brown. He leaned against his shovel, which was planted proudly in the dirt like a flag pole.
“Mrs. Laurent will love it, I think,” agreed Feaster, taking off his hat and wiping a brow that was sweaty despite the pre-Autumn chill that blessed the air. Feaster was a younger man than Moss, with a long coat, long hair, and an air of cloves about him. His fashion palette ran more toward the green and his shovel leaned against a large yellow contraption that looked like a cross between all the horrible parts of a spider and all the terrible parts of a scorpion and which the two gravediggers affectionately called “Daisy.”
Daisy had originally started out as a simple backhoe loader. A bucket and arm in the back to dig holes, a loader in the front to fill them back in. However, over the years these two men had adapted this tractor more to the needs of the cemetery. Now Daisy could carry grave vaults, lower caskets, seed and mow grass, install headstones, and do just about anything one could for the dead besides resurrect them. The only downside to all their innovative tinkering was that Daisy’s various mechanisms only worked about fifty percent of the time. Which was why both men were now manually digging the grave of Mrs. Laurent while Daisy merely propped up their backsides.
Feaster flicked an unsettlingly thick earthworm back into the hole with the toe of his boot and looked around with squinted eyes, “Now where’s Little Shovelful? Not like him to miss a planting.”
Thusly summoned, a small black crow of a boy popped his head around the giant pile of dirt that had formerly occupied Moss and Feaster’s grandly welcoming hole. His features, where they were black, were extremely black and, where they were pale, were extremely pale. A carefully combed slick of thick black hair topped it all off, three parallel offshoots of which angled across his forehead like they had been gouged there by the claw of a cat.
“Ah, the Devil himself.” said Feaster.
“Nice tie,” was Moss’s greeting.
Little Shovelful’s real name was Douglas Mortimer, and only Moss and Feaster called him Little Shovelful, which they did as part of an ongoing joke of how much dirt they’d need to fill a grave for him. It wasn’t Douglas’s fault. He was only eleven years old, and small for his age at that. It didn’t help matters that he was wearing a serious-looking black suit that was a tad too big for him and out of which peeked a little yellow beak of a tie.
“Hi, Moss. Hi, Feaster. “Sorry I’m late. Had to wait for Mom. She wouldn’t let me just walk over by myself for some reason.” The pair nodded blankly. “What’s wrong with Daisy today?”
“Not sure. I think she just decided that we should dig this beauty the old-fashioned way,” replied Moss.
“It’s good for us gravediggers to do that every once in a while,” added Feaster. “Else we’d never get to use the symbol of our office.” He grabbed his shovel and held it blade-up like a scepter.
“If I were a younger man, I’d agree. Since I’m not, you can take the symbol of our office and…” Moss glanced at Douglas “…dig your own grave.” He then stuck both hands in the small of his back and arched himself until a violent series of cracks broke the solemn cemetery atmosphere. Douglas imagined the dead below mumbling to themselves in an annoyed fashion before turning over in their caskets.
“Is this Mrs. Laurent?” Douglas pointed a finger at the wooden box while plopping himself down on the ground, his feet dangling off the edge of the hole like it was a koi pond.
“In person,” said one.
“In coffin,” said the other.
Douglas looked down into the hole. The grave was empty except for the open concrete grave liner, which was in place to protect the coffin and keep the earth from caving in when the coffin itself eventually did. It was a solid, heavy receptacle that must’ve been buried sometime in the past. With Daisy currently being obstinate, there was no way the two gravediggers could have lowered it in by themselves. Mrs. Laurent must have made her funeral arrangements in advance. Douglas just caught the tail end of a large earthworm squeezing itself through one of the drainage holes in the bottom of the liner.
“Can I see her? I didn’t get to at the funeral.” He raked his hand across the stripes of hair on his forehead. “It was a ‘closed casket’ ceremony.” He spoke the phrase like it was a newly learned one. The two earth-toned men exchanged the kind of quick glance that was aimed to go over children’s heads.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Little Shovelful,” replied Moss.
“Why?”
“Your parents didn’t tell you why it was a closed casket?” asked Feaster.
“No.” In fact, his mother and father had been uncharacteristically silent about the circumstances of Mrs. Laurent’s death.
Moss and Feaster exchange a pair of grins that seemed, had they been sown together, to stretch farther than the width of their faces combined.
Moss made a show of looking over his shoulder, and then leaned closer to Douglas, using his shovel as a pivot. “It’s because she’s a gorgon.” Beside him, Feaster nodded what was either agreement or approval.
“What’s a gorgon?”
“Oh, it’s a fiendish beast, snakes for hair and a forked tongue…well worth staying away from. If you see her face, even in death, you’ll turn into a stone fit to sit at the head of a grave.”
“Good thing they closed her casket. Can’t have that kind of thing wrecking a funeral,” added Feaster.
Douglas smiled big and pulled a bit of the pile of moist, newly earthed grave dirt toward him with two hands and started shaping a castle out of it. “I think Mom is starting to hate your stories. She said yesterday you guys are becoming a bad influence.”
Moss feigned hurt. “Please, Little Shovelful, if it weren’t for us, people like your mother would have to deal with the monster themselves. Heck, without us, the whole town of Cowlmouth, would be overrun them.”
“We’re very important to what you might call the ecosystem of the town,” explained Feaster. “We maintain Cowlmouth’s equilibrium. Man and monster must live together according to very strict proportions. If it weren’t for the work we did right in this here rot garden,” he stabbed the earth a few times with the blade of his shovel, “who knows what would happen?”
“It wouldn’t be good,” said Moss.
“Somebody needs to keep the dead down,” agreed Feaster.
“Someone needs to stake the hearts of the vampires when they rise from their crypts.”
“Somebody needs to bash the brains out of the zombies when they claw their way back through the earth.”
“Somebody needs to shove the cackling curses of witches back into their toothless mouths.”
“Somebody needs to appease the plights of restless spirits.”
“Ghosts, the poor wretches. Sometimes they just need a little direction.”
Despite the cautions on the part of his mother, Douglas was enrapt. As he always was. He loved their stories of monsters, even if he didn’t believe them. Well, at least not completely. Plus, if it wasn’t for Moss and Feaster, Douglas would never have had banshees and ifrits and gorgons, or any type of exotic monsters, to inhabit his imagination. And an imagination needs its monsters. Still, he couldn’t be too much of a child about it in front of them.
“I’ve never seen any.”
Moss leaned closer to Douglas, the pivot of his shovel bending almost horizontal, his face deadly serious. “That’s a good thing, Little Shovelful. There are monsters. You can bet your child-sized soul on that.”
