Chapter 45: Earl Is Pulled Below

Thurs, November 19, 2074 10:12 pm: Arbormoor Forest- Arbormoor, Pleasantview

Whenever anyone asked Earl about why he had gotten into his line of work, he was always quick to cite the advantages- His hands were too calloused to draw splinters. The ruined muscles in his back and shoulders made him appreciate a good rest better than the average man. And after twenty-five years of digging graves, he'd become well accustomed to the idea that death does, in fact, come to us all. It was not a distant threat or even an occasional musing. It was the weight that taxed his aging arms and blanched his straining knuckles. It was the deep red clay that never seemed to wash from his work clothes. It was the moment when he stood eye-level with the ground. He was more than ready for death. He was immersed in it.



James clapped his palms against the front of his overalls, summoning great clouds of dust and coughing wildly as that same dust filled his lungs.

"You alright," Earl inquired, gripping his hips and stretching.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine." James wiped his nose with the ragged back of his gloved hand. The work was playing havoc with his health but like Earl, he had a family to feed. James leaned his rake against a wooden marker.

Earl's eyes grazed over the growing number of crates that littered the forest floor, each housing the delicate remains of children that died around the time his father was born. If these children had been Residents, they would not have spent the past eighty years anonymously heaped into a mass grave in a derelict garden. It was beyond sickening. It was inhuman.



"I'm gonna pack-up and head home. You leaving here before sunrise?" Earl folded his arms over his chest and nodded affirmatively.

"I'll be outta here soon. I just want to make sure that everything is set for tomorrow. How many more bodies we got coming in from the Tellerman place?"

"Two more teenaged kids tomorrow." Earl absently kicked a rock that was embedded deep in the ground, thinking of his own thirteen-year-old daughter at home.

"Shame, ain't it," Earl said quietly.

"It sure is," James responded. Earl smoothed his moustache between his thumb and forefinger.



"So I'll see you early tomorrow," Earl asked.

"Yep. Don't work too hard out here."

"You know I won't. Have a good night, James."



"You do the same."

Earl watched as James's red and white striped torso disappeared into the trees. A low wind blew, carrying dead leaves as it went. They tumbled over the toes of Earl's boots and he thought that they looked like horses galloping across a hillside. He scratched his balding head and began to make an about-face when he heard a twig snap to his left. He turned reflexively in the direction of the sound. What met his gaze made him subconsciously question his vision.



There was a young man perched on the edge of a coffin, his shoulders hunched. Earl was momentarily at a loss for what to say or even think. He should have heard this guy coming. Or seen him. Or something. Earl's fascination went just as quickly as it came only to be replaced by annoyance. Just when he thought that his night was over, some nut-job hiker decided that it was ok to use a coffin as a chair.

"Buddy, what do you think you're doing?" The man on the coffin did not even stir. But when he spoke, his words dispersed through the air like raindrops on the ocean.



"Where are you putting her?" His voice was quivering and plaintive. Earl's eyes darted over the coffin beneath the intruder. How this guy knew that there was a woman inside and more importantly, why he cared was confusing enough to silence Earl. When Earl failed to reply, the intruder slowly shook his head.



"You can't put her here," he said quietly. It was something very akin to a plea. This man was deranged. It was as simple and as infuriating as that.

"Listen, I don't know what kind of sick freak you are but-"



Earl was cut-off when the intruder leapt up from the coffin and landed on his feet. Replaying the instant in his mind, Earl realized that this man did not so much jump as fly. Earl couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. It became a fierce act of determination just to keep his bladder in check. What he had just witnessed was impossible.



The intruder took one step forward and Earl took several quaking steps back. Earl could not even begin to guess at what this man was but his entire body shook like a hare cornered by a fox. He was torn between an instinct to flee and an inclination to keep the intruder in his field of vision. Ultimately, he decided that there was really only one choice.



In the time that it took Earl pivot his body in the opposite direction, the intruder was upon him. He seized Earl by the shoulder, spinning him around so that their noses were almost touching. Earl had spent the better half of his life staring out of empty graves, peering between blades of grass like an insect. Now, he felt as though something had taken hold his ankles, insistent on pulling him under. The ground was slipping above Earl's head and all that lay below was darkness.