Disinterring the Vortex

Somewhere among the ashes within a coffin buried beneath the dirt sits something valuable that a client requests a cemetery to retrieve for her.

There's been a shortage of TDGs in the Botanic Graveyard ever since the Vortex took over our security. It all started the afternoon Sandra Dune entered the cemetery office asking us to disinter the ashes from her late husband’s casket.

“I don’t want to keep them you understand” she had emphasized “I merely wish to retrieve an item from the urn and then you can put them back again.”

Apparently her husband had hidden something of significant value within his late grandmother’s ceramic ash urn, which had sat untouched on a mantelpiece to the day he died.

“Brandon thought it would be the last place anyone would ever think to look. I had forgotten all about it until about nine months after the funeral. By then the urn had already been placed in his casket and buried with him.”

I gave her the necessary paperwork to complete and forewarned her of the expenses associated with such an exercise but money seemed no object. She also insisted on being present when we disinterred the ashes so I told her we’d have everything ready the following Friday at 1:30pm.

Requests for disinterments are not uncommon at the Botanic Graveyard. We average one every couple of months, mostly for grave re-use, a process where the casket is exhumed and grave dug deeper. The casket is then replaced at its new depth, making room for more subsequent interments.

A bitter southerly chill met us the morning of the Disinterment. The paperwork had been completed with no objections from any of Sandra’s immediate family so we started removing the sods and unearthing the Dune plot just after 9am.

Everything seemed to be going to plan when the digger unexpectedly broke down. We tried unsuccessfully to hire another one but ended having to resort to finishing off the remaining three and a half feet by hand.

“Makes no difference to me,” asserted Yak “I’ve dug more graves with shovels and spaces than you’ve had hot dinners.”

We call him Yak because he can talk the legs off a donkey. Most of his yarns are fairly tall and tend to veer towards the exaggerated side but he is a conscientious team player with a heart of gold.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get it finished dead on time.” he promised, snickering impishly at his trite pun.

Yak’s “we” consisted of himself and Curtis, a troubled youth from Struggle Street in his early twenties. A little green behind the ears when it came to manual labour but what he lacked in experience was more than compensated by his dogged determination.

“Yep, you can depend on us.” assured Curtis, handing Yak the shovel and spade like a nurse at an operating table.

His pallid face looked uncharacteristically cheerless and I started having doubts that he was going to make it through the day without spewing. It was the first time he had ever been involved in a disinterment. Sure he had assisted with a few burials but never actually witnessed the removal of a casket lid.

The horror movies, comics and ghost stories of his childhood had no doubt influenced his preconceptions with ghastly images of decaying ghoulish brain obsessed zombies riddled with maggots crawling from their graves in search of luckless victims. Yak’s grim anecdotes of past disinterments would not have help either.

Despite my initial misgivings the grave was dug and everything set up by 1pm. We erected a canvas blockade around the area to obscure the proceedings from the general public and the insensitive gawks of truant disinterments groupies, or TDGs as we call them.

Curtis and Yak had already donned their orange bodysuits, white masks, and blue surgical gloves when Christine from the health department arrived. You get to know them well in a job like this.

Sandra turned up about 1:45pm with an entourage of in-laws. She told me a relation had rung to forewarn her about a disgruntled family member planning to disrupt proceedings.

“Afternoon, sorry about the late arrival” she apologized “There was another pile-up on the motorway.”

“Traffic can be a trial.” agreed Yak.

(Someone once told me that one man's tragedy is another man's inconvenience.)

“We’ll make sure everything goes to plan.” affirmed the in-laws.

Curtis’s pupils kept shifting from one to the other of the assembly. He took periodic peeps down the grave and seemed obsessed with the small collection of Disinterment Apparatus that sat on a green mat beside him.

“Best we make a start,” suggested Yak, giving Curtis a friendly pat on the back.

Yak jumped down into the grave and proceeded to unscrew the lid off Brandon’s casket. Despite being down for less than a year the weight of the dirt had already caused the wood to split. He handed the screws up to Curtis, who placed them to one side in a small box.

Curtis tried to act nonchalant as he helped Yak lift several long sections of lid out of the grave but gasped when he saw what remained of the body. The Dune family had been against embalming Brandon and well the results spoke and smelt for themselves. He staggered backwards and wavered slightly for a few seconds then dry-wretched.

“You okay?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders, wiped his eyes, and then returned to the edge, ready to assist Yak again in whatever way was required. I felt proud of him for that.

“Give us the ladder, Curt.” ordered Yak.

Yak retrieved the ceramic urn and cleaned it of dirt the best he could before climbing out of the grave and handing it to Sandra. She had also donned a pair of disposable gloves upon Christine's insistence.

“You don’t realize how much this means to me. You’re real sweethearts. All of you.” she said appreciatively.

We had erected a sizeable tent not far from the gravesite. Inside was a desk and chair for her to sit and sift through the ashes in private. The office would have sufficed but the tent meant less distance for her to walk.

Cicadas shrilled and the sun played “peek-a-boo” with dark clouds as we waited for Sandra to do her business. Yak told another of his trademark yarns. Curtis pretended to be interested but his attention was elsewhere, withdrawn perhaps into some foreboding netherworld.

Yak suddenly halted the yarn in mid sentence and pricked his ears at the sound of excited whispering and the

trampling of brittle undergrowth, amplified by the stillness of the afternoon.

“Bloody TDGs” grumbled Yak. “Should be in school, not skulking round here getting their thrills watching disinterments! I have half a mind to go over there and…”

His sentence was cut short again. This time by something more sinister that chilled my heart. It sounded like the roar of a disgruntled bear.

I looked round and saw a bony hand grappling at the far-left side of the grave. Creaking and clattering, Brandon’s dilapidated corpse awkwardly hauled itself out of the hole and dusted grit from its filthy abdomen.

“Where’s my ashes?” it snarled “Give them back-they’re mine!”

My mind quickly raced to the movie “Creepshow” by Stephen King, where the murdered father crawls from his grave demanding his "Fathers’ Day Cake."

“Plagiarism from beyond the grave” I mused.

“Whose got my ashes?” it repeated, approaching with its hands outstretched. “Give me my ashes!”

Sandra’s in-laws made a beeline for their cars while Christine, not really knowing what else to do simply stepped back to let the furious corpse pass. Curtis stood gob-smacked and looked to Yak for answers, or comfort or maybe both but

Yak was just as perplexed by this hitherto inexperienced chaos.

The ground shook as the corpse quickened his pace. His dilapidated innards loosened and fell to the ground and by the time he reached the tent all that was left of him was his skeleton.

With a mighty battle cry he brought his left hand down on the tent, gashing a hole in the canvas. A scream shrilled from within.

Yak and I both rushed to help, but Brandon quickly overpowered the both of us and rested the urn from Sandra's feeble grip. Ashes spilt from the unsealed lid and joined the small pile already lying on the desk.

“I won’t let you have it!” he taunted retrieving a small key from deep within the ashes. “It’s mine.”

“You’ve got no use for it now.” argued Sandra but her words fell on absent ears. Brandon smacked her across the face, then hurried away from the tent, clutching the urn in one hand and the key in the other.

The "Botanic Graveyard Algamac" includes all our procedures and bylaws, but fails to mention any guidelines on how best to stop a disgruntled skeleton that refuses to give back the ashes.

We chased after the skeleton but struggled to keep up abreast of its pacing. It veered from pathway to pathway and

started toward the array of lemon woods, which marked the far-western border of the cemetery.

Out from their hiding place sprang two frightened TDGs and started running for their lives. The smaller of the TDG duo suddenly stopped in his tracks and hurried back against the terse orders of his taller contemporary.

My heart skipped a beat and I felt certain he was a goner until the skeleton unexpectedly tripped over the TDGs misplaced backpack and lost his grip of the ceramic use. It flew towards a nearby headstone and smashed on impact.

A strong northerly breeze whisked through the trees dispersing yellow leaves in its wake and swept the ashes into a dark whirling vortex. The wind strengthened and vortex became denser and denser then started growing outwardly, slowly forming the shape of a haggard witch-like demon.

“You give her that key back right this minute!” scolded a powerful voice from within the vortex.

“But its mine,” the skeleton pouted, tightening his grip on the key “I had it first.”

“Do it Brandon or I’ll make you wish you had.”

“That not fair you always…”

A dog’s head suddenly poked out from the vortex. Foam oozed from the gaps in the side of its enormous jaws. It snarled menacingly, showing off its razor fangs as its demonic eyes studied skeleton’s bones with ravaging malice.

The Skeleton paused for a short period, carefully considering its choices then finally rose to its feet, fetched the gold-key and reluctantly handed it back to Sandra with insincere apologies.

“Now back to the casket with you and be sure to stay there!” ordered the vortex. It then turned its attention to the two TDGs “and as for you two rapscallions, be gone quickly. I never want to see any of your kind around here again.”

The smaller of the two collected his bag and joined his friend, who turned and blazingly gave everyone the fingers from a safe distance. Seconds later the snarling dog leapt from the vortex and chased the groupies out the cemetery gates and we have not had any TDGs since.

The vortex dissipated and fell back in a heap on a near by grave. We gave Sandra a replacement urn from the office and it was buried back in the casket keeping an ever-watchful eye on our skeletal nemesis. Curtis, an artist at heart, made a Mural of the chase out of the shattered ceramic pieces that sits in the office even now as I write this account to put for the Botanic Graveyard memoirs.

And as for the key? Well to this day I am still at a loss to what it opens.

Yep, Botanic Graveyard TDGs have been scarce as hens’ teeth since the Vortex took over our security.

Author's Note

Something that came to me whilst working at a local cemetery