Brian Freeman - Dark Screams - Volume Six

Without further ado, Clow outlined his plan, which he thought was a good one. They were going to the North Grounds to fish out the body of a handsome young girl who had succumbed to a gas leak, been found dead in the morning by her mother. That was what they were going to do. Dr. Gray would be very happy at such a fine and healthy specimen of eighteen years without a spot of damage. And if while they were there, this ravenous colony of rats showed, they would give them a taste of ball and powder, send ’em running.

“And if we find some of them burrows under the ground? Why, we’re going to set out our bait and kill the bastards and their brood.”

Kierney thought about it. “It sounds a fair plan and surely I’m game.”

“Me uncle Roy said they did it out to Ramshorn,” Clow told him. “Them rats he spoke of… a horrid and foul throng they were. They infested the burial grounds, overrunning not only the aboveground vaults and crypts, but literally honeycombing the earth itself with their tunnels, chewing their way into boxes, and devouring the corpses. Oh, a profanity it surely was.”

“And they poisoned them?”

“Aye, it was the only way. Great sections of the graveyard were collapsing from all that digging going on beneath.” Clow pulled at his wipe. “By this point, why, the sextons and caretakers were not above employing anyone who could help. So they turned to the resurrectionists. And old Uncle Roy? Did he help them? Why, sure he did. He right away knew what to do.”

“Baiting them?”

“Aye, but just not baiting them like any old rat catcher, but baiting them with what they loved best… corpses. Dozens of corpses injected full of poison. The rats got to ’em, and in the following weeks, no more rats.”

Kierney shook his head. “Is this a true story?”

“Why, sure it is.”

“Aye, but at the Glasgow High Churchyard, Sammy, no rats burrowed into that mausoleum… no rats made a burrow like that. It were something else.”

“Well, then,” Clow said, “perhaps tonight we’ll find out what.”

The North Burial Grounds was a city of the dead.

Soon as you came through the gates you saw that. In every which direction, tombs. High and low, set into mounds and atop hills. Some were gray and crumbling and covered in wild ivies and vines, sinking into the moist earth, and others stood tall and white and pristine. And between them, slabs and obelisks and marble crosses, intensely crowded gravestones and narrow peaked monuments. Here were dark gray headboard-shaped tombstones with weeping angels and winged death’s heads. Rectangular stones set with rosettes, spades, and hourglasses. And among them, ornate limestone ovals and tall slate half-ovals embellished with skulls and serpents and half-moons. And all of it lorded over by death angels spreading their marble wings and tall, brooding skeletons gripping scythes, their skull faces threaded in cobweb and grave fungi.

“Very quiet,” Kierney said as Clem pulled them through the snaking roads and between stands of craggy black oaks. “Just the way I like it.”

There was a wind, and it was especially chilly here. The trees were stripped of foliage, the byways and footpaths plastered with wet leaves.

“Just ahead,” Clow said, “near to the pauper’s field.”

They both kept an eye out for the Churchyard Watch but saw nothing that concerned them. They passed a silent watchtower and it was dark, festooned with creeping shadows, lifeless as the burial yard itself. Clow reined Old Clem to a stop beneath a pool thrown by interlocking tree branches above.

“Now to business,” he said, his breath frosting in the chill air.

They meandered through the gardens of stones and around leaf-blown sepulchers, pausing at a morbid winged seraph that was very old, its features worn and indistinct. Clow, gripping a spade and pick, sniffed the air for the scent of fresh earth and found it nearly right away. Just on the other side of a wild expanse of bushes shivering in the wind.

“Here she is,” he said, sighting a fresh headstone. “Here’s our girl.”

Kierney brushed leaves away from the grave, tossed aside a funeral wreath, wound his scarf tighter around his throat, and set his hat atop a pointed monument. “Well, me love, we’ll get ye out of that awful place and quick we will.”

He rubbed his hands together to drive the cold out and spread the tarp next to the grave. He pulled on his dirty apron. Then, spade in hand, he began to dig. The ground was very loose, only lightly packed by feet stomping about. It took him about ten minutes to square off the upper half of the grave, dumping clods of earth onto the stretched tarp. Then the real digging began. Since they had Clem with them, it would be necessary to expose only the top of the coffin. Then they could snap the lid and fish their treasure out.

They worked in shifts, first Kierney digging feverishly and expertly while Clow kept watch. When he was down three feet, Clow took over. When he reached the lid and brushed away the dirt, exalting as always in the rich smell of soil, he climbed up out of the grave.

“Make ready, Mickey. I’ll bring Clem around.”

Kierney tossed aside his coat and jumped down into the grave, inserting the broad hooks firmly beneath the lid, arranging the sacking to muffle the sound of the cracking. The casket shifted beneath his weight, but he thought nothing of it. He waited for Clow. Through that cramped opening above, he could see the denuded tree branches scraping together beneath the eye of the moon. A gust pushed leaves up into the air and dozens of them settled down into the grave.

Finally Clow arrived and tossed down the ropes.

It took them less than five minutes to secure the lines to Old Clem’s harness. Then they walked the big draft horse and the ropes pulled tight and with barely any exertion, the upper lid snapped with hardly a discernible noise. Kierney jumped down, undid the hooks, and tossed the sacking up. He pushed aside the fragments of the casket and saw the young lady within.

Even in the moonlight, she was attractive, he decided. Her cheekbones were high, her lips full, her face framed by flowing red hair. “Oi, she’s a beauty, she is. Old Dr. Gray, that buggering pervert, he’ll fall straight in love.”

Often, to quicken things, the rope was noosed around the throat and the body fished up roughly. But this girl was in perfect condition and they didn’t want to damage her. Kierney lifted her up as far as he could and looped the rope under both of her arms, making a tight sling.

“Quit romancing her, ye sick bastard,” Clow said. “I’m freezing me balls off up here.”

“Not much warmer down here, I’m saying to ye. In fact, it’s—”

The words dried up in his throat. The coffin shifted beneath him. First this way, then that. It trembled and sank down deeper an inch or two.

“What? What the hell is it?”

“The box,” Kierney cried out of the hole. “It… it’s moving… I’m coming out.”

He scrambled to his feet, taking the ends of the rope with him. He tossed them up to Clow, started pulling himself out, and then, beneath him, the coffin shuddered… and dropped. Kierney went with it.

Clow was hanging over the edge of the grave, seeing the deep opening below. “Mickey? Mickey? Are ye well?”

“Fuck,” Kierney called up to him. “Bloody fuck… I’m in one of them burrows. Drop me rope, drop me a fucking rope, ye hear?”

Clow threw a line down there, felt it tighten as Kierney gripped it. “Are ye coming?”

There was a flickering light from below and Clow realized he had struck a match down there.

“Sammy?” he called up. “Bring yonder the guns and the lantern. There’s work to be done.”