Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Gravedigger's Girl Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE GRAVEDIGGER’S GIRL

Bobby Short began jumping a step before reaching the dusty bag at first base as the ball carried over the high slate fence, over the parked roadsters, coupes, and horse carriages, over the second-floor windows of the John Getty’s cotton mill, and into the red bricks outside the mill manager’s office. The crowd went quiet, but the ten other members of the Page City Black Hats erupted from their dugout in a swarm of smiling brown, and one sunburnt pink, faces.

“Those niggers cheated!” a voice cried from the crowd. “Had to, right?”

There was no rebuttal—how did a batter cheat from the plate, on the road, with an opposition-provided bat, and an ump calling strikes on dirtballs?

In the stands, sweaty palms wiping at his dusty Kansas Kings jersey, John Getty rose to his feet. He was not happy, he was not impressed, but he was no welch. He leaned heavily on a black maple cane with a silver handle in the shape of a monkey’s fist. Nine years without a loss had him cocky. He’d invited teams from all over America to compete. Philadelphia Athletics. Boston Braves. Cincinnati Reds. Chicago White Sox. New York Giants. New York Yankees. The Kansas Kings had whooped them all. World Series campions left Getty Field with their heads hanging, year after year, most didn’t even push the series to the fifth and deciding game—part of that was because the Kings took home field advantage for the first three competitions, but more so, they just didn’t play the game the way the Kings did.

The Page City Black Hats were the first small town team Getty had invited. It was also the first time he’d had any Negros or Jews on his field, the first time he’d seen his boys give their all and come up short, and the first time the bet went on a one-way trip—the Black Hats couldn’t cover their half of the wager and he’d let it slide, curious enough to see what this negro sideshow made of a gentleman’s game.

“Ms. Winter, bring my bag, please,” Getty said.

“You can’t mean to give them the rings!” a woman shrieked from the crowd, manic, livid. “They’re animals!”

At home plate, the Black Hats danced a circle around Bobby Short, a boy of nineteen who’d gone two for twenty-one in the best of five leading up to the last out in a tie game of the ninth inning. Bobby Short: a rookie sub who’d managed to keep his spot because he could track Eggie Creek’s curve ball and never dropped String Bean Newberg’s hundred-mile-an-hour heater.

By the time Getty got to the field, the Black Hats had tossed their faded and salt-stained black hats—littering the brown infield with unwelcome blemishes. Only one member of the crowd had left the scene, the rest stayed as if to bear witness to the death of an era, an apocalyptic event, their world coming to an end.

Getty cleared his throat and Herb Grier swatted at his teammates. He was the manager and first baseman, had been for more than a decade. “Mr. Getty, sir,” he said and nodded.

“That was quite a series. Now, we’d appreciate if you take your winnings and get the hell out of this fine town.” Getty snapped his fingers, looking over his shoulder at the sulky Kings in their dugout.

Robert Whitesmith, the Kings manager, stepped out of the dugout with a small cotton sack, string tie pulled closed tight, in his hands. “Here they are, Mr. Getty.” The bag jingled metallically as it transferred hands. The cowed man turned on heels, his eyes on the dirt.

“The rings,” Getty said and lifted the bag.

Twice a year, Getty had gold championship rings crafted for the winners of two separate five-game series. Nineteen sets of rings belonged to the victorious Kings. Now, one set belonged to the Black Hats.

“And your winnings.” Getty snapped and pointed in one motion. Ms. Winter reached into the leather bag and withdrew $5,000 in banded Benton gold certificates.

“But those niggers cheated!” a voice cried again.

A gentle rumble began, followed by a chorus of moans as Herb Grier took hold of the cash. Behind him, a few of the guys were hopping, unable to help themselves.

“Now get out of my town, and don’t you ever come back,” Getty hissed.

“Wouldn’t dream of coming back here, sir,” Herb said, sneering, but with his face downturned.

Being the rookie, Bobby had already started collecting the team’s gear—including the bats they’d been banned from using after the third game, two days earlier. He slung the big canvas bag over his shoulder and led the hurried parade out to the Hampton Grocery truck they’d borrowed to make the trip.

“I can’t believe they let us leave,” Red Jenkins said, eyeing the steel lunch pail where Herb had stashed the money.

The truck rumbled to life and String Bean called, “All aboard?” through the doorway connecting the cab to the back where the team sat on loose wooden benches.

In unison, the team said, “Yeah!”

The truck pulled from the fine cement curb; none of the passengers in the back, nor the driver, noticed the skinny man rise up from the street where he’d been beneath the truck. They rolled the vast, sprawling countryside for ninety-one miles before coming to the first recognizable landmark. About ten minutes from the town of Page City, String Bean touched the brake pedal and the last of the brake fluid spurted free as he attempted to stop at the railway crossing.

“No, baby,” he said through a gasp.

The cowcatcher of the not-quite-up-to-speed locomotive barreled into the side of the truck, cutting steel and flesh with equal ease. The truck broke into two crinkled balls, trapping, crushing, and killing every member of the Page City Black Hats.

—

Flush with the winnings, the families came to a unanimous decision: the men would wear their championship rings into the ground. They lay, lined in plain pine boxes beneath a sunny October morning, maple leaves trailing down onto the black-clad shoulders of deep breathing men and sobbing women. String Bean Newberg’s wife and sons huddled, teary-eyed, around the family’s tattered Hebrew Bible. The town’s pastor spoke of kindness and quality, he spoke of men who’d been men of the Lord—even if it wasn’t always so. “They were not only champions of their homes, of their families, but were the best ball club to ever play, and now they’re champions at God’s table.”

Damned shame what happened, so many sad faces and angry opinions. Probably they’d been sabotaged, but nobody could say for sure and there’d never be justice even if they could say. That was life and life wasn’t fair.

Charlie Shively leaned on his shovel where he stood about twenty yards away, beneath the shadowy canopy of a huge maple tree. He withdrew a murky grey flask of bucket ‘shine and sipped, thinking. Being a gravedigger in a black labor town had absolutely no perks—unless the shack on the edge of the cemetery counted, and he didn’t see it that way. Stealing from the dead was risky, and not quite a perk, more like back-pay owed, made right. He’d never been so sweaty and tired as he was then. Eleven holes dug and eleven caskets carted into place.

“Ah, hell,” he said, knowing damned well what he’d do before he buried any of those boxes.

The sun went down while Charlie made to look busy and once every family member, friend, and well-wisher departed, he got out his hatchet. He hacked holes right around where he guessed the right hands to be. He didn’t touch any of the three wedding bands he saw, not any bracelets, charms, or watches either, only those gaudy golden rings featuring the words CHAMPS FALL 1926—the rest of the stuff was pret’ near worthless anyhow. He didn’t stop to appreciate or consider, didn’t even slow to ponder any moral quandary, instead he got busy.

Eleven rings went into Charlie’s pockets before he buried the team in their damaged caskets. Plan was to melt the rings down, but it could wait. It wasn’t as if he could sell the gold locally or spend any of the money. No, he’d have to save up for a bus ticket out of town, maybe dig graves somewhere richer, fancier, somewhere he could rob some white caskets of their ritual excess.

—

George Woods entered his woodshed with an armload of stove lengths, freshly chopped and a bit damp. Frieda Woods rocked like a loose ceiling fixture, her eyes bulging and vacant, her tongue fat and purple, filling up her mouth and pushing open her lips. Her feet reached to about two inches from the floor. Her neck hung thirty inches from the crosser beam.

“Frieda, baby!” George woods ran to his daughter, lifting her by her legs. She wore her newest Sunday dress—a gift from Bobby Short that came just a day before the team drove into Kansas—and brown leather slippers. “Frieda, Frieda, Frieda, Frieda,” George moaned and then shouted over his shoulder, “Somebody, help! Somebody, I need help!”

He kept on yelling, ignoring the fecal scent and the lifelessness of the body, he lifted high enough that the rope slackened, until three of his neighbors came running. With the rope cut, Frieda fell into his arms, his head against her chest. Barely, something like a mouse whisper, he heard a heartbeat.

—

Nine hours. Six minutes. Two seconds. Not a moment longer. Frieda never awoke from where she lay on the white cotton sheets of her lifelong bed. Doctor Taylor held her wrist, monitoring his pocket watch, and declared the girl dead a little after 9:00 PM.

Charlie got word of her suicide and started digging first thing the following morning.

—

The service was much smaller, but no less somber. Page City was close-knit enough that everybody knew the girl had been going with Bobby Short, some even cared enough to form an opinion of the courtship, but most didn’t care that much. However, on the case of her suicide, everyone had an opinion.

Charlie saw her pretty face done up in fine makeup and felt sick about the whole deal. Too young, too precious, it was almost as if God had turned His back on Page City.

“If He’s really up there,” Charlie said to the pink evening sun.

The mouth of the shovel moved the wormy soil onto the pine top. Putting it back was infinitely easier than taking it out. A truck rolled by, loud as a tank, and Charlie jumped. The cemetery was a quiet place when it was only him and the dead.

He laughed at himself and mopped his brow with a crusty handkerchief. Standing there, he got to thinking about the future, this time stretching further. In a new town, maybe he could clean up enough for a job in a hotel or at the bus station. Hell, movie theaters hired janitors. All he had to do was keep his nose clean and his mouth shut, get himself some new clothes. The rings would cover that, sure as hell. He didn’t know much about gold, but those rings had to be enough to cover a fresh start.

From his patched pants pocket he retrieved the old flask. He ran his fingers over the engraving: FOR R.G. Not really stealing because above the cemetery dirt pretty well belonged to everybody and a body couldn’t expect to walk past a valuable left on a tombstone for their whole life. He sipped and sighed a hot breath through the three-tooth gap at the bottom row fronting his mouth.

Exhausted, Charlie dragged his shovel a few feet toward his shack. He heard something, a bit like a rat squeak, and stopped.

He scanned the earth behind him, turning his right ear to the way he’d come. He shook his head and took three more steps.

He stopped again. This time it sounded almost like a cat, not meowing, but like when someone’s yanking on a cat’s tail.

The cemetery was still, quiet, dead.

And yet, he paused where he stood, squinting and listening as hard as he could. His eyes closed the rest of the way and he passed the strength from his sense of sight to his ears. Nothing. Not so much as the crinkling of a windblown leaf. He took another mouthful from the flask and then shrugged, shaking his head anew.

He took three more steps and heard it clearly.

“Help!”

Charlie scrambled back to Frieda Woods’ casket, the shovel trailing him like a tail. Smooth and fierce, he swung the tip of the shovel into the mounded sod, flicking it aside, before digging into the brown earth.

“Pleeeaaase! Pleeeaaase!”

The words amid the throaty screams filled his veins with adrenaline. The dirt showered onto the cheap limestone of Frieda’s grave marker.

The screams became smaller the closer he drew to the box, as if Frieda’s air was limited, as if she’d die for real if he didn’t slam the tip of the shovel into the wood. He kicked onto the shovel’s foot groove and the wood cracked a hair. Frieda went silent.

“Don’t you die on me,” he said and kicked again, splintering the casket.

“What you doing, Charlie?” a manly voice cried out from the direction of the cemetery gates.

Charlie didn’t dare stop. He kicked again.

The man sprinted toward Frieda’s grave. His steps loud and cracking through the fallen leaves.

Charlie groaned. He hadn’t heard her for several seconds. He stabbed the shovel into the casket and a chunk went airborne. He tossed aside the shovel.

Hands came down on his shoulders, pulling him back. “Hell you doing, you kook!”

Charlie shook them away. “She’s alive!” He dropped to his knees and worked his hands into the gap he’d carved.

“What?” The man straightened, wide-eyed, disbelieving. He turned left. Turned right. Not another soul in the vicinity.

A groan erupted from Charlie’s throat a half-second before the wood split and chunked away. Through the hole was Frieda’s face, eyes closed, expression composed, as she’d been buried…dead, unmoving.

“No, but…” Charlie said, rubbing dirt into his thinning hair.

“You damned kook,” the man said from the lip of the partially dug grave.

Charlie jerked around, pleading, “She was screaming.”

“Look at her, she’s dead, been dead.”

“No.”

“Yes, dammit.”

“No.”

“Yes, you—”

Frieda gasped, her eyes flicking wide, her pupils falling onto Charlie. “You saved me,” she said, her voice raspy as sandpaper against rough cement.

—

“There’s no two ways about it. What we have here is a straight from God, Hisself miracle.” The doctor patted the pastor on the back with one hand and stowed his stethoscope in the black, leather, home visit bag he carried with him. “I think Mr. McKenzie here will not argue the Lord’s power.”

Pastor McKenzie shrugged. The pastor, the doctor, the doctor’s wife, and George Woods stood around Frieda’s bed where she lay grinning and quiet, not at all bashful about the puffy rope burns surrounding her neck.

“I’d say get some rest and plenty of fluids,” Doctor Taylor said and snapped closed his case. “My dear, I think we’re done here.” He held out his arm for his wife—she acted as nurse whenever it was necessary, but there was nothing left to do, so she took the offered arm.

“You sure?” George said, ringing his straw hat between his hands, sending dusty strands floating to the floor.

“Oh, Daddy. I’m just peachy, ain’t I, Doctor Taylor?” Frieda’s smile unveiled bloodless gums only a couple shades darker than her pearly teeth.

“Well, sure. Lots of rest and fluids, and stay in bed.” He pushed on, quickly. Once onto the short porch, under the pale moonlight, he took out his handkerchief and mopped at his brow and back of his neck.

“Doctor Taylor!”

The doctor and his wife both jumped.

“Did I startle ya? Only me, Todd Shaw.” The reporter from the Chronicle lifted his hat and gave a wave, he was a small, white man, very nearly too short for the rides when the carnival came to Cool Creek, just one mile across the train tracks. “Any update on the girl? I heard there’s a doings and came right on over. Did you misdiagnose her passing?”

“Officially, the girl’s recovering and her being here is nothing short of a miracle. Now, I want you to leave these fine people alone a few days, and you leave me alone in the bargain. Please and thank you.”

“Might be smart to watch it, boy,” the reporter said, though he was damn near forty years younger than the doctor.

The doctor put his head down and held his wife tighter. They pushed on, once out of earshot, he whispered to her, “That girl’s a miracle like I’m Hercules.”

“What’s this?”

“She ain’t right.”

“Be straight here. I saw your face and I saw that way she was grinning.”

Doctor Taylor exhaled and then whispered, but a little louder and with more emotion, “That girl’s dead as Abe Lincoln. She hasn’t any heartbeat at all. Not a bump or a ba-dump. And when she touched me, it felt like she climbed into my head and unburied all my secrets.”

“You better not be pulling my—”

“Doris, something very untoward is going on and you and I are taking a long overdue vacation. We’ll drive through the night if we have to. Not a thing good shall come of that girl returning, mark my words.” The doctor mopped his forehead and neck again despite a chill on the air.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

He scoffed. “Imagine buying that load of news from the man who already called her dead once before.”

—

Charlie awoke to a gentle tapping at the only window of his shack. He sat bolt upright and bit down a scream when he caught Frieda Woods’ face through the warped glass. For a moment, he saw wriggling worms crawling from the corners of her milk-white eyes and mud spewing from her mouth like soft pie from a cow’s ass. He lit a match to see more than the moonshine offering.

It was her. Alive and regular.

“Please, will you let me come in?” she said, grinning. “I need to speak with you.”

“Uh, all right,” Charlie said, looking around the filthy space—murky wash bucket, pissy chamber pot, moldy plates, sweaty clothes littering the floor. The scent was of body odor and mildew. “Yeah, all right.”

Charlie lit a candle, then grabbed a shirt and pulled it over his shoulders and then round belly. He set the candle on his grimy tabletop before stepping into grave-dirty pants, moving quickly. He held the pants closed, his suspenders dangling, bouncing off the backs of his knees, and pulled open the door. He attempted to slide out.

“Can’t I come in?” Frieda leaned, positioning her face to peer around the rising tendrils of Charlie’s bedhead.

“It ain’t so clean.”

“That’s okay,” she said and put a cool hand on his wrist. “I thought my life was finished when Bobby died. He was going to rescue me from this town. We had plans…but then he died and it was over. Then next thing I know, you’re rescuing me. You’re the one. I don’t mind if it isn’t clean, you saved me. Let me make it up to you.”

“How?”

“I could be your maid…more, if you let me,” she said the second part through pouted lips, her head downturned and the right toe of her leather slipper rocking in the grass.

“More?”

“More.”

“Okay, but only so long as you ain’t gonna be offended.”

Charlie stepped aside and let Frieda through. He watched her expression, she didn’t seem to register the smell, and none of the mess troubled her—also, he really had imagined all that nasty stuff, she was pretty as all get-out. She sat on the dishevelled bed and patted the seat next to her.

“I want to know you,” she said.

“Me?” Charlie said. He hadn’t been asked about himself since he was a boy and hadn’t been alone with a woman or girl since before his sister married and moved up north some sixteen years prior. “What about me?”

“Everything. Sit. Talk to me. I want to know you.”

“Does your daddy know you’re out?”

“My daddy is scared of me now. He says he’s happy, but he’s not. I can see it in him. The only man I got looking out after me now is you.”

Charlie said it again as he sat down on the ratty cotton mattress. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.” She took his hand.

He shivered, but began talking. He told of how he came to be the gravedigger after his father’s mule kicked him in the head as a boy and he didn’t have to go to school anymore, which at the time he thought was peaches. He told of how he learned to make potato moonshine from his mother before she passed. He told of how once he caught a silver dollar a white man threw into a crowd of boys when he was waiting at the train stop with Mr. Barnes—who’d been the gravedigger before Charlie took over the job, and the shack. His mouth kept running and he ventured to depths he’d never spoken aloud. He told of the welts on his back and ass from the time he and his sister were caught out on the wrong side of the tracks by a gang of white boys in a Ford truck—his sister got it much worse, of course. He told of how his parents never hugged him in his whole life. He told of how lonely he’d been, and sad about the mule kick, but even more sad because they’d gotten it wrong. He could’ve learned, he wasn’t any Plato, but he could’ve learned to read, sure tootin’. He told of how he’d only once had a woman and she was old and he didn’t really want to because he was just a boy and she was his mama’s fat friend and she smelled like cheese curds and sun-baked catfish and had grey pubic hair. He told and told and told, tears burned at the corners of his eyes.

“My poor Charlie. I’m here now, how you were there for me.”

He sniffled and squeezed her hands. “Ain’t nobody ever cared to know me before. Ain’t nobody ever cared to listen.” Charlie told his deepest secrets, all but one.

“I don’t know why you’d stay in Page City at all. Bobby was gonna take me away and I was happy to be going with him.”

“I do wanna go, and soon.”

“Oh, Charlie, you got to take me with you!” Frieda lifted his dirty hands to her lips, kissed them, and held them close to her face. “Take me away and we’ll live together. You can get a new job and I’ll teach you to read.”

Charlie sat up straight and blinked. “I was gonna leave, just as soon as I got the money to get away. See, I got something valuable, but I can’t sell it local, got to go north.”

Frieda let their hands fall to her lap. “We need a big truck and you can be a country salesman. A big truck like what the grocery had and you can do deliveries to farms where it’s a real hassle to get in.”

“A salesman, me?”

“Well a course you, silly. I’ll teach you how to read just a little and you’ll be good as any damned salesman out there.”

“You think?”

“I know! You won’t be living in no shack. You gonna have running water. You gonna have a wife and kids.”

Charlie blinked rapidly. “A wife? Kids? You mean you?”

Frieda let go of his hands to grab his face. She planted her lips against his and slipped her tongue into his mouth. She then pulled back. “But we can’t do the rest until we leave, so we need a truck, first thing.”

“Where’m I gonna get money for a truck.”

Frieda paused, made a thinking face as she looked at her ashy dry knees poking from beneath her bulky green dress, and then brought up her face, grinning. “Doctor Taylor.”

“What about him?”

“He’s left on vacation and keeps close to three hundred dollars in a Quick Quaker Oats can.”

“How do you know?”

Frieda pouted her lips. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Well, sure.”

“Then you go over to Doctor Taylor’s, get that money, hop on the two o’clock train southbound, buy a used truck—one with lots of room in the back—and come back to get me. Got it?”

Charlie scrunched his face up some, doing a bit of that hard rationalizing, but then relaxed. She owed him and she wanted a man to take care of her. “Yes, I think so.”

“Say the steps back to me,” she said.

He did, and then added, “Then we find a place and get married?”

Frieda kissed him again, long and lingering. His hands wandered, and she let them, but stopped him when they tried to mosey on up beneath her dress. “You marry me first, Charlie Shively. You get us a truck and out of Page City for good and I’ll marry you twice over.”

This time he kissed her.

—

Bringing up all those hard times weighed enough on Charlie’s mind that he didn’t think about how Frieda knew the money was in the Quaker can, but there it was. Images of those white boys the time he and his sister strayed and were caught out clouded his mind enough that he didn’t at all question why she knew a train was coming through. He hopped on near the back, in an empty livestock car, and counted the money. There was a little less than expected—unless he’d miscounted, and he had come up with a different number three of six times.

At the car lot, the white man in a baby blue suit was all venom until Charlie said he had cash for a used truck. Cash in hand even. The man became magnanimous enough to show Charlie the farm trucks around back. The price just about ate the sum of cash whole after all the licensing and paperwork fees, but it came with a full tank of gas and it ran nice enough.

Charlie hadn’t driven anything in a few years, but found it was like a bicycle. Though the Packard truck sure rolled a lot faster than the Case Crossmotor tractor he’d run for the better part of an August back in 1919.

He could hardly believe it. The whole, big thing was coming together and it was mostly his doing. Almost every time he tried anything on his own, it had ended in a mess. Not this time, this time he had it all coming to him.

“But you ain’t on your own, is ya?” Charlie said, almost shouting over the din coming from the engine. “You ain’t never gonna be alone again! That’s all changed and your luck’s finally come in!”

He fantasized about a three-bedroom home with white paint and a white fence and blue shutters and a white and gold bathtub big enough to stretch out in. He fantasized about Frieda, naked, her legs wrapped around him while her body pressed against him where they lay in sudsy water. He imagined four boys that looked like he did as a child. He imagined a fine mint green suit that he’d wear on the road; a nice shave, a nicer hat, shoes so shiny he’d have to squint whenever the sun came out.

He smiled hugely as he slowed to check the train tracks. He bumped over them and kept on smiling as he glanced up at the setting sun. This would be his last night in Page City before the good luck finally started paying him back for all the bad. Sure, he hadn’t been a saint, and the odd time he’d robbed a grave—and Doctor Taylor—but he wasn’t a menace, didn’t hurt anybody. He was simply reacting to a raw deal of the cards.

Well, now he was the dealer at the table, or maybe Frieda.

He rolled by the four businesses that made up the downtown core and past the clustered one-bedroom and two-bedroom houses. He kept on until the huge maples canopied the rough dirt streets and threw shadows over the cemetery and his little shack. He parked on the grass by the wrought iron gates of the fence surrounding the cemetery. So excited, he jogged to the shack at the back corner, beyond the nine rows of stones and open space for six more rows.

The excitement lagged a few notches once he drew close enough to see no candlelight through his window. He stopped by the door and turned to scan the graveyard. He shook his head and blinked rapidly. The flask came out of his pocket and he sipped.

It looked like someone had come along and dug up at least four, no five, no six, no seven of his recent burials. At least! This was very not good.

“Get the rings and get moving,” he whispered and started inside.

The woodstove sat on old bricks, one of the middle bricks was a broken stub, set in loosely. He slipped it away and pulled the cotton sack of rings free. The metallic pinging set his edged nerves at ease, but still, he would take a peek, feel even that little bit better. He withdrew his tobacco pouch and matchbox. He grabbed the brass candle lamp. He lit, lowered the glass cover, and held the flame close to the bag as he tried to work loose the knot with his free hand.

Something clapped and then hooted outside.

Charlie jerked to his feet, banging the lamp off his knee—smarting it something decent—and foregoing his peek into the sack. “Frieda?” he said.

As if from a great distance, he heard her reply, “Come, Charlie, come.”

“Frieda.”

He bolted outside. The sun was all the way gone and a yellow quarter moon owned the sky. His eyes played over the vacant graveyard. He stepped away from his shack, and rather than going for his flask, he withdrew his handkerchief and wiped at his forehead and eyes where sweat bubbled and ran, making the sack of rings jangle and ping with his movements.

“Frieda, where are you?” he called out and waited.

The return volley came some five seconds later, sounding far, but to his left, down the rows of grave markers. “Over here, my love.”

He started off, holding the lamp before him like a beacon. “Come to me,” he said. “Come to my light.”

Seconds passed as he passed two dozen closed graves. His eyes fell onto what appeared to be mounded dirt and the deep shadows they cast. He slowed and called out once again.

“Here.”

The voice sounded close enough that he should see her, but he didn’t.

“Here.”

He stepped, as if lulled by sirens.

“Here, my love.”

Charlie reached the lip of a dug up grave.

“Here. Here. Here!”

He shined the lamp into the hole.

“Hello, Charlie,” Frieda said, her arms wrapped around a greyed and stinking corpse.

The corpse cracked a smile and a worm wriggled from between his lips. It was Bobby Short. “Hi there, Charlie. I think I need to talk to you about the matter of a theft.”

Charlie fell back, startled and terrified. The lamp landed on its heavy base and his ring sack hit the edge of a shovel’s blade where it stood, kicked eight inches into the earth. He rolled to grab the light and rolled back to grab the bag, but it had torn, and under the flame’s glow, he saw greasy bolt nuts. The rings were gone. They were gone and along with them was his future, his way out.

“Where? Where?” Charlie mumbled.

Bobby stood and waved his right hand. “Looking for this?”

The gold championship ring glinted in the moonlight, and suddenly, Charlie lost interest in claiming that particular prize. Life was good enough.

He pushed to his knees and then feet, sprinting through the rows, eying the mounds of dirt—more than he’d noticed before—and making for the gate, and his getaway ride.

“Charlie,” a voice whined teasingly from his right.

He hopped left and cut between the rows.

“Charlie,” a different voice said, same tone.

He hooked back right and nearly stepped into an open grave. He screamed as String Bean Newberg jumped clear out of his resting place and stretched to his full 6’6”.

“You did a bad thing, taking without asking,” he said.

Charlie pivoted like a runner caught in a pickle between first and second and took three steps into the deeper shadows of the cemetery.

Eggie Creek climbed upright and Charlie recognized him instantly by his funny-shaped head. He tossed a rock with his left hand. “Think a befitting punishment might be taking a little something for ourselves.”

Charlie had no words, could hardly breathe. He hadn’t run so hard since boyhood. He cut right again and was working out the logistics to his scaling the wrought iron fence when Eggie wound up and threw a looping curve that skirted the back of Charlie’s head but nailed him in the temple. He dropped and Eggie hooted.

Charlie lay flat, blinking in a daze, listening to the thunderous footsteps drawing around him. His breaths came in and out in harsh pants and he remained wordless until the moment fingers dug into his face, chest, and groin, and began tearing at his flesh.

—

John Getty stepped out from the backseat of his Rolls Royce Phantom and was immediately accosted by a dirty boy waving a sheet of paper, shouting, “Nigger girl says they’s coming to play ball!”

Getty sneered at the boy and snatched the paper a half-second before his men ushered the kid away. THINK YOU CAN TAKE THE REMATCH? WE WILL BE WAITING! He balled the paper and looked around the street. It appeared that the town had stopped to see what he’d do. He thought a moment, then another, and another.

“Take me to the diamond,” he said and climbed back into the car. His men trailed in around him, then Ms. Winter pushed in next to him, and they started off. All those on the street within earshot chased after the local Rockefeller.

Firstly, the old Packard work truck came into focus, and then as they rounded the grandstands, the men out on the field came into view next. Black men and one over-tall white man, all in uniforms and black hats.

But that couldn’t be right. He’d heard it on the radio. Their truck failed to stop for a passing train. The Phantom parked in the reserved space and Getty climbed out, hurrying through the tunnel to the field. He stopped with his fingers entwined in the chicken wire cage and gasped.

The boy who’d cracked the game-winning homer was there, hands crusty with dirt and blood, holding what appeared to be a femur bone, pink gristle clinging to the edges. He nodded and grinned at Getty. “I feel a hot streak coming,” he said.

“Want a couple warm-up swings?” String Bean called from the pitcher’s mound.

“Don’t throw the heat, I can’t catch it!” Eggie said and squatted behind the plate, unequipped for the position, wearing only his pitching glove and uniform.

Bobby stepped to the plate and loosened up, showing he was ready. String Bean reeled back and threw. Getty’s chin trembled as he watched the fat red heart spin, sending a wash of spiralling red fluid in its wake. Bobby eyed it as it went by and thumped into Eggie’s glove.

“Ball,” Bobby said.

“I don’t know, that looked pretty damned good from here,” Eggie said.

“Ball, my eye!” String Bean shouted, kernels of dirt flying from his mouth.

Herb Grier started in from first base. “Getty! Where’s your boys, Getty? Get ‘em out here, ‘less they’s chicken!”

Getty gritted his teeth and turned to Ms. Winter. “My pistol.”

She was wide-eyed, visibly shaken, but she reached into the leather bag she’d spent most of her adult life carting around and withdrew a Colt .32.

Getty took it and aimed for the center of Herb’s head. The shot echoed and the Black Hats stilled. Herb kept walking, despite that the shot had clearly gone through the right side of his forehead. Getty steadied his hand and fired a second round, punching a new hole next to the first.

“Getty! You hear me, Getty! Your yellow bellied bunch better get out here!” Herb said.

Getty gasped wetly. “You’re dead! You’re dead!”

Herb stood only feet away, but on the opposite side of the chicken wire. “And whose fault’s that?” He lifted his left eyebrow, and from the conjoined bullet holes, where the right eyebrow had been, climbed a blood-soaked baby rat.

Getty squealed and spun. His eyes widened far enough to ache. Ms. Winter was crying and shaking. Frieda had linked a cold arm into the woman’s, spilling grave dirt over her wool dress, all the while whispering icy promises of a karmic afterlife.

Frieda smiled abruptly, turning her face to Getty, dew worms squirming like fat eyelashes around her lifeless white bulbs. “I think the boys would like a word with you, and your mechanic.”

Getty’s mouth moved like a landed fish as he backed against the chicken wire. From the far side, fingers dug into the gaps and then into Getty. He wailed to the sky as blood rained from grooves cut into his flesh, and the Black Hats took everything he owed.

XX