THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Five 'Digging In The Dirt'

By Al Bruno III

 

October 10th: A few weeks after playing the Graveyard Game, Sara Bishop began sleepwalking. Her wealthy family in Clifton Park was incredibly upset—not out of concern for her well-being, as they had made it clear since her childhood that she was considered the runt of the litter and, worse, a girl. No, they were upset because, to the prestigious Bishop family, mental health issues were simply unacceptable. Just like not flying first class or mingling with minorities, it simply wasn't done.

You see, Sara was a menopause baby, a surprise of the highest order for her mother, father, and two thirty-year old brothers. She had what she called a 'begrudging childhood.' Whatever her family did for her, they did begrudgingly. I know some of you might say, "So what, she was rich?" but just think about it: every trip, every gift, every gesture—they made sure she knew the price tag. They even ragged on her about the cost of her tonsillectomy.

And no matter how much gratitude Sara expressed, it was never enough.

With a family like that, is it any wonder she ended up not being good at making friends? With a family like that, is it any wonder that after getting a scholarship to a prestigious university, she simply didn't go? Is it any wonder she stayed up nights researching cryptids and creepypastas? Bigfoot, you could make sense of. But your own mother treating you like less than garbage? Not so much.

Each night, Sara woke up a little further from home. At first, she dismissed finding herself in her bedroom doorway as a half-conscious trip to the restroom or kitchen. But soon, she was waking up in the hallway, then at the top of the stairs. The night she found herself standing in the front doorway, she went to her family for help. They offered more accusations than advice, making it clear in no uncertain terms that she would not be allowed to embarrass the family by seeking any kind of professional help. Instead, Sara's mother handed her a bottle of opioids and told her not to do anything stupid.

The pills had no effect. She started staying awake as long as she could, but in the end, sleep always won out.

Then, one night, as her brother was coming home from a night out with his friends, he found her stumbling down the driveway in her panties and t-shirt. He almost ran her over. When her father found out, he called her a slut.

So she started sleeping in her clothes and shoes, barricading herself in her room. But it did no good. She kept waking up further and further down the street.

Then, when all hope was almost lost, she called me...

###

…And I blew it. I invited Sara to spend the night at my place, I would sleep on the couch, and she would sleep in my bed. Thank God Mrs. Vincenzo changed my sheets for me on a weekly basis.

 She blamed herself for this situation, for playing the Graveyard game, but as far as I was concerned, I was the one responsible. I had more experience in these matters, and I had lost so much for wanting to see the secrets that hid in the shadows.

Staying awake to watch over her should have been a simple matter of working on my blog, but Sara couldn't sleep. She asked me to watch a movie with her. It was the least I could do. And that was how I learned her favorite film was This Is Spinal Tap. I'd never seen it before, but damn if it wasn't hilarious. After the movie was over, we got to talking. She told me about her profoundly toxic family, and I told her a sanitized version of the preternatural entity that had destroyed most of my family. All that confession finally made her feel sleepy, and she said she wanted to sleep on the couch. I told her it would be safer for her to be in my room, that was, there were two doors between her and the outside world, but she said she couldn't stand to be alone.

Lord, did I understand that feeling.

So I camped out on the recliner with a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a mystery novel called The Case Of The Barking Clock. Well, it turns out the only mystery about that novel was how many drugs the author was in when he wrote it. I don't even remember falling asleep, but I did.

When I woke up, it was a little after 2 AM, and Sara was gone.

First, I blundered around my apartment, calling her name. Then, I ran down the stairs and started combing the neighborhood street by street. The night air was thick with a damp chill, and even though I was running along the sidewalks, I heard the faint rustling of leaves echoing around me. Each step seemed to drag as if time itself had slowed in the darkness. I called her name; no one answered, aside from an old man yelling at me to shut up from his second-story window.

So I doubled back to my place, jumped into my beat-up AMC Pacer, and started combing the streets that way. All my headlights showed me were empty sidewalks and closed storefronts. My eyes strained to see any sign of movement. Nothing. Then, to make matters worse, a cop pulled me over for driving suspiciously.

As I sat there waiting for the cop to write up my citation for driving fifteen miles an hour in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone, I prayed he wasn't one of Detective Bradshaw's pals. Then it hit me where I should have gone in the first place.

Once the ticket joined the others in the glove compartment, I started driving again, but this time, I headed straight for Pinewood Cemetery—the place where this nonsense had begun.

The idea that Sara would be there was one of my loopier notions. The abandoned graveyard was at least twenty miles away; in a sane world, it would take her hours to get there on foot.

But my world hasn't been sane for years.

 Albany's familiar landmarks passed in a blur. I was sick with the unsettling feeling that time was slipping away. My route to Pinewood Cemetery took me through some of the older, more rundown parts of the city and out onto the rural byroads. The streetlights became dwindling specks in my rearview mirror. Three AM was drawing close.

Three AM. The witching hour.

Certainly! Here's a revised version while maintaining the narrative voice:

I'm a city boy by nature, and I hate country roads, especially at night. They're too dark and isolated, with shadows below and cold stars above. The further I drove, the more alone I felt. A pair of headlights rounded the corner in the oncoming lane, glaring like those of a truck or SUV. They blinded me, and suddenly, I wished for a bit of isolation again. I was so busy cursing and fumbling with the sun visor that I almost didn't notice the vehicle swerving into my lane and accelerating.

It bore down on me, and in that terrifying moment, I saw it was Bus 55. Time seemed to slow as I took in every detail—the chipped and faded paint, the grimy windows. I could vaguely make out the shape of the bus driver, but his face was obscured in shadow.

With a surge of panic, I yanked the wheel, sending my car screeching into the opposite lane, careening along the ditch, and smashing through part of the guardrail. As I corrected course and found myself back on the road, I had a perfect view of the retreating vehicle.

And the nightmares that rode that bus had a perfect view of me. They crowded around the rear windshield, figures of men with faces painted in grotesque shades of gray and black. Their expressions twisted into mirthless grins. In the center of them stood the one who had spoken my name over a month ago, and he gave a little wave.

I sat in the middle of the road, trying to catch my breath. I whispered a chant reminiscent of Psalm 23 but with a lot of 'Fuck' interspersed. When I stopped shaking, I turned my car around and drove the rest of the way to the outskirts of Pinewood Cemetery. Parking in a secluded spot, and unlike last time, I remembered to grab my satchel out of the back seat. With my knees still watery, I started walking along the fence line.

I wondered to myself, what was that damn bus doing out here in the boonies?

This wasn't its regular route.

Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

I found the hole in the fence easily, the same one that first Sara and then I had squeezed through before. The graveyard lay ahead, a sprawling expanse of crumbling tombstones and overgrown paths. How long had it been since there had been a groundskeeper? I couldn't imagine. The wind rustled the leaves in the trees, an owl hooted somewhere in the distance, each sound amplifying the stillness of the night and adding to the sense of foreboding. I retrieved my flashlight from the satchel, its beam cutting through the darkness as I slipped through the gap in the fence.

Moonlight filtered through the ugly trees, casting equally unpleasant shadows. To my right stood a ruined mausoleum, its wall crumbled and empty stone niches where bodies once lay. I shuddered, pondering where those bodies had gone. Had they been taken by the authorities or something more sinister? Over the years, I'd learned there were many ways for a corpse to leave its grave. Stealing one was so simple, even a blogger could do it.

Sara was at her namesake's grave, illuminated by a faint glimmer of moonlight, her figure almost ghostly in the dimness. She was kneeling, her hands caked with dirt as she clawed through the earth, muttering under her breath.

At first, I tried to call her by her name, but she didn't notice me. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, her fingers trembling as they worked at the cold soil. With careful urgency, I reached out, gently pulling her away from the grave's edge. "Sara," I whispered, my voice barely a whisper.

"What's happening to me?" Her voice trembled, barely audible over the whispering wind.

"I don't know," I admitted. "But let's try and find out."

I pulled out a collapsible shovel from my satchel bag and told Sara to go back to the car. She refused, her eyes a mix of fear and determination. I had her take the flashlight and keep it trained on me.

Like I said before, digging up a body is so easy even a blogger can do it. The sun would be up in three or four hours, so I worked as fast as I could, the rhythm of my shovel crunching into the dirt breaking through the night's silence. The ground was stubborn and thick with roots. I was sweating and shivering all at once. My back started to ache, and then it REALLY started to ache. Around the time exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me, my shovel hit something hard.

The casket containing the remains of Sara Bishop's namesake was nearly two hundred years old. I had conducted research on the woman, but I chose to keep my findings to myself. According to historical records, she had been executed by hanging in 1848 for murder. However, rumors circulated widely, originating from unreliable sources. Some claimed she was the high priestess of a doomsday cult, others accused her of murdering children, and there were even whispers suggesting she was not entirely human.

Straddling the ancient casket, I positioned the shovel carefully, its metal blade scraping against weathered wood. With determined force, I pried and prodded until the lid yielded with a resounding crack, and the aged wood splintered apart. I asked Sara to bring the flashlight closer, and we both screamed at what it revealed. I clenched my eyes shut, then opened them again.

Inside lay the remains of a long-dead woman, but they had been grotesquely altered by some mad taxidermist. A caul of pockmarked flesh stretched over her face, and both hands had been removed, replaced by animal appendages—one serpentine, the other bestial.

"Gorgo..." Sara wept, her voice trembling. "Mormo... Luna... thousand-faced moon…"

###

October 11th: Before I filled the grave back in, I smashed the twisted shape it contained about twenty times in one of my standard acts of futility. Then I brought Sara back home to my apartment above Vincenzo's Pawn Shop and did my best to care for her. She spent most of the morning vacillating between catatonia and hysteria, but she's asleep on my couch now. I don't think she'll sleepwalk again, but I pushed the coffee table in front of the door just in case.

I am not sure what I am going to do when I start my shift downstairs in about an hour. Maybe Sara can nap in the back room? Maybe the forever patient Mrs. Vincenzo will keep an eye on her for me? I don't know. I'm just sitting on the floor, trying to figure out what the Hell I'm going to do.

This is a possession, but it isn't the result of some vengeful witch or surly phantom. What am I dealing with here?

Gorgo, Mormo, Luna, thousand-faced moon… What are you? How am I going to stop you? And why, upon closer examination, did I find that the 'grotesque stitched-together monstrosity' didn't actually have any stitches at all?