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The Graveyard

Mark Pearce

    There was always a mystery about the gravedigger. He lived in a shack at the edge of the cemetery. In all his years in the town, he had made no friends. Some believed it was due to the natural aversion people have towards those of his profession; others believed it was a result of the mysterious nature of his arrival in town and the mystery of his past. No one knew where he came from or what he had done before arriving in Cleftville.
    And now, he was dead. Among his effects were found papers identifying him as Jason Morgan, a notorious outlaw who had robbed the Morristown Bank twenty years earlier, then disappeared without a trace. Schoolboys had often hunted for the “Lost Treasure of Jason Morgan.” And now it turned out he had lived among them for twenty years. Where could he have hidden it?
    In a moment of epiphany, the townsfolk thought of the cemetery. For years, Morgan had been planting the deceased of Cleftville. What else might he have planted with them?
    A fever overtook the town. Some rushed into the graveyard and began to dig with their fingers. Others took the time to dash home and return with shovels. There was no organizing principle. As they dug up a grave, they would push the coffin up onto the surface of the earth to check the soil beneath it, then they would jump out of the hole and drag the body half out of the coffin to see if there was gold in the coffin itself. Finding nothing, they would dash to the next grave and begin their frenzied digging anew.
    It took hours, but eventually they desecrated every resting place in the cemetery. No treasure was found. In a sudden sheepish sobriety, unable to look each other in the eye, they slunk home, each to their own abode.
    At well past midnight, an old vagabond came ambling down the road. He had been drifting in a more or less southerly direction for the past few weeks, sleeping in haylofts, riding the rails. The town of Cleftville was asleep as he passed through the graveyard.
    In the dim light of the quarter moon, he could tell there was something wrong. He stopped in the midst of the cemetery and squinted his eyes all around. At that moment, the moon came from behind a cloud and the whole scene became clear. Every grave was open; every coffin lay askew beside its hole, and a body was halfway out of each coffin.
    When the townsfolk arrived at the cemetery the next morning to undo the ravages of their debauch from the night before, they came across a mystery that they were never able to solve and which passed into the local town legend.
    They counted three times, and came up with the same answer all three times. No one could explain it.
    There were sixty-seven holes, but there were sixty-eight bodies.

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