The Dead Ringer

My father has recently died. I mention this only because his death is now forcing me to return to the place of which I loathe beyond any other. He was a Gravedigger, he had once tended to Scott's Hill Cemetery. My father and his before him lived on that nasty plot of land digging holes and keeping the grounds. From adolescence, I've had a great distaste for his profession, much unlike my older brother. My brother felt great pride when he thought about the generations of Scott's before us keeping the tradition. He knew the job came with great social persecution and isolation, but he felt himself a martyr, taking the job no one else would. I, however, looked out onto the fields of gray fangs protruding from the dark soggy ground and felt nothing but bone-chilling disgust. It was never in me to care for the dead and we were all quite aware of this. When I was of age I left and never turned back, and all these decades later I was being summoned. The letter detailing my father's death was brief but devastating. I may have hated his job description but I loved my father. I returned only out of respect for his life and guilt for my abandonment. Facing my brother after years of aversion would be almost as difficult as putting the old man in the ground. Our reunion was set to be staged in the office of my father's lawyer, where the reading of his will would be held.

"To Hank the eldest son, I give the earnings I have accrued over a long life of thankless work. You were a loyal son and stood by me." The Lawyer spoke matter of factly from a small sheet of yellowed-paper. Before Hank could interject the man continued.

"To Samuel, you never appreciated our trade or the life I built for our family. To you, I leave the task of the digging and tending of the graves. This is a labor you take with you until your dying day."

Both I and my brother reacted in equal abhorrence. We both erupted into howling and spitting not unlike feral cats. Solemn sadness was now replaced by horrible rage and disbelief. But the Lawyer interrupted once more, for a final time.

"I tell all of my clients this. While notarized your father's word is not law. If you two truly wish to trade lots, this is up to you. You are his sole surviving heirs and can do as you wish. These are only your father's last wishes, do with them as you wish."

We left the office for the cemetery, to give our father a send-off. We would be the only attendants of his funeral. Gravediggers live a lonely life. Dealing with the dead separates you from the living. Most avoid all association with men dealing in this trade. Neither of us spoke of his will, but we both knew that I would leave and never return. Hank would stay as he had before, these things need not be spoken. They were a given, like that the sun would rise again tomorrow and that the cock would roost in the hen house. We dug our father's grave together, Hank and I. I cannot lie, my heart was in unrest and hammered against my ribs as we lowered that box down into the earth. I could feel his two small eyes peering into my own, those two eyes looking through the pine box and into the guilt in my throat. His gaze set it ablaze and almost erupted me into a coughing fit. Instead, I cried a silent sob. The sob of a son who knows he has no right to sob. The sob of a son who left his family and never looked back. Now I stand here as if I was kept away all this time. As if my father wasn't here, waiting for me. Now he's waiting for me.

"Samuel help me with this." my brother finally grunted. I nodded obediently, he then promptly led me to a shed outside of our childhood home. Inside was a mess of spades and cobwebs.

"Over here," Hank said pointing into a corner that contained a contraption I recognized well. It was a bell.

"How often do these bells toll?" I asked Hank as he finished constructing the bell and subsequently filling the grave.

"More than I'd like to admit," Hank said back gruffly. His answer sent liquid ice into my spine. While not entirely common, premature burial happened enough to warrant precaution. The precaution might save lives but it sewed my fear. Every time I see the grave bells I can only think of the hellish scenario it implies. Six feet underground, you arise. Only in consciousness do you rise because your pine box only permits an inch or two of movement on all sides. Immediately panic sets in because whether open or closed your eyes only see, as in death, darkness. As you panic you draw ragged quick breaths, unfortunately, these only hasten your demise. You manage to uncross your arms and in natural instinct, you begin clawing at your prison. But instead of breaking away and liberating you, the coffin holds and your fingernails break instead. When exhumed years later for relocation, the gravedigger would find your eyes and jaw wide in horror and fingers scraped raw to the bone. The bell is a means to prevent this.

Hank was finished with his work and motioned for me to follow. I meant to make my exit. My gut was full of lead and my instincts told me not to remain into the night. This place was ungodly and I should have bid my brother farewell, but my legs carried me after him, and my guilt lifted my hands to drink as well. We drank deep into the night until the sounds of the birds faded and the songs of the crickets deepened. The liquor was brown and our voices were quiet. My brother and I never had much to say to each other. I guess living on the land of the dead helped you to speak their language. As the hours grew longer and our stupors grew stronger my paranoia become apparent. Every bump and gust of wind was a ghoul coming for my skin. I was never meant for a life of solitude amongst a field of horrors, my brother and father never gave me shame but we all knew I had the stomach of a coward and that if cut I would bleed yellow. My brother must have had the same thought because he smirked and said

"It's been a while since you've been home, aye brother?"

I took a swig and looked into his eyes "Yes, and with every passing moment I am reminded why."

Hank looked as if he might laugh but then his face grew steely "Well father saw you fit to tend the graves," he took another deep drink from his brown bottle "He gave you the title I bled and sweat for."

I wanted to laugh as well but like my older brother, my face grew cold too "And the title you shall have. You and I both know our fathers is the final grave I shall ever tend." As the words left my mouth I was reminded of a saying my father had always repeated: "Don't tempt fate, she has the cruelest sense of humor of all." Then in that silence over the cricket song and the wind's howl, both my brother and I heard the ringing of a bell.

The two of us shared a gaze neither of us showing a glimpse of humor or even fear, but disbelief. However, the fact that both of us had heard the noise without speaking a word proved it must have been real. Then again the bell rang, the brass bell was swinging steadily now.

"Maybe it's the wind Hank," I almost pleaded, my stomach was now full of that heavy putrid fear. My brother shushed me and lifted a finger to his mouth. And then as if part of a theater production thunder cracked like a whip and rainfall hit the ground heavily and began a torrential downpour. Hank stood to his feet and looked into my eyes. He didn't speak words but we both knew he wanted me to stand with him. "Get the spades, Samuel, I'll find the dead ringer."

I wanted to stand and help my brother and to this day I pray to God to forgive my cowardice. I wish more than anything that I could turn back time and stand with my brother. Not only to avoid his fate but my own. Instead, I sat, my dumb mouth full of a heavy tongue and void of any words. Hank scoffed and before he slammed the door behind him he grunted: "Be gone by morning."

The echo of the door was almost muffled by another crack of thunder as if triggered by Hank himself. I turned back to my drink but sipped no more. With every passing minute, I paced passed the door my brother stormed out of. Each time I passed it I fully intended to charge into the rain and search for my brother. The digging of a grave is hard work in the heat of day let alone in the midst of a tar-black rain shower. I inherited this job yet I sit here like a child sick with fear. I, again, reached for the handle of the door but hesitated, again, however this time not due to my fear but a noise. The noise was familiar and until I heard it I hadn't realized it ceased in the first place. The bell was ringing, but quite unlike before. It was no longer swaying rhythmically and steadily. Now it seemed as if it were being frantically abused. The clamor rang out above any of the sounds nature was producing tonight. The bell was calling out, out to the only one who could be listening. I've prayed untold times about this night. I wish I could say I've come to terms or some sort of equanimity about what happened next. Unfortunately, I feel the same soul-wrenching guilt I did that night, and the following morning even more so. I awoke that morning surprised I managed to even slip into sleep. I thanked the bottle, lying somewhere emptied until I remembered my brother. I looked around his small cabin and found nothing. He never came back. The warmth of the sun's rays along with the light that accompanied it was enough to lure me from my hole. I feared to even run my eyes across the horizon. As if in cruel response it were unnecessary because not a whole three yards from where I stood, sat my brother. His body, leaning against a tombstone, was sopping wet and his skin was sallow and grey. He had the appearance of a man long since deceased. I rushed to his side and grasped him. "Hank!" he groaned in response, to my relief he was alive but in my haste to check on him I ignored the blade in his gut. Through a miracle like none other, my brother survived the night, alone. He leaned towards me as if wanting to speak and I was quickly on my knees eager to hear what could be my brother's final words.

"Wasn't no dead ringer...couple of grave robbers. I caught," Hank paused his eyes squeezed tightly shut along with his teeth in a painful death grimace. "I caught them in the act. They left me for dead. I tried ringing for ya."

I could do nothing but look into my dying brother's eyes and cry a coward's lament. Sometimes I think he knew that I heard the bell from its first ring until it's last. Every clang was received and ignored as my brother lie out in the cold rain. Bleeding on the land he deserved to inherit, on the land he was promised to keep until his dying day. In a cruel way, he got what he wanted.

Unfortunately, my father's was not the final grave I would dig, neither was my brother's. As commanded I took the labor of digging and tending to the graves and will keep it until my dying day.