Did you know that professional mourners exist? This is probably the best place for me to start in order to explain exactly why I jumped in a grave when I was nineteen years old. In a lot of places you can pay people specifically to show up at someone’s funeral if you’re worried that not many people would be there otherwise. Sometimes church groups will do a similar thing as a volunteer basis and it isn’t even only a thing for people who died without loved ones. Sometimes schools or organisations will send a contingent off to the funeral of a particularly noteworthy alumnus as a mark of respect.
The way our city did this was a bit different.
English doesn’t have a word specifically for somebody who is given money to jump into an open grave. It makes perfect sense, it isn’t something that people in those countries seem to do, but it does mean that I had to come up with the English term myself. Not even everywhere in our country has them - they’re normal in our city and the closest towns and village but you barely have to drive an hour away and you won’t find anybody who’s ever been one. We’re told not to talk to outsiders about it and when I questioned that I was told that since it’s technically a fake suicide attempt, talking about it to people who don’t understand it could cause them to think about such things.
This all made perfect sense to me. Our city took mental health very seriously so it was completely logical to me that other countries with a less honest approach to the human mind would struggle with a concept like grave jumpers. The fact that this explanation snuck in a bit of superiority over how enlightened we were compared to outsiders probably made it a lot easier to swallow too.
Because needless to say, that is definitely not the reason we were really encouraged to keep our mouths shut.
The story I was told was that grave jumping originated from a feud between two poets. One died and a mourner was so distraught over losing him that she jumped into his grave and they had to fight to remove her. Not to be outdone, the second poet paid off a woman to jump into his grave when the time came and not to leave until after the first handful of dirt touched her face. Other local celebrities caught wind of this and eventually the whole thing spiralled until today when a funeral without a grave jumper is less common than one with.
We all know it’s pretend, of course, but there are still rules in place that allow us to pretend that any one of the grave jumpers could be leaping in motivated by grief rather than a sweet paycheck. Nobody’s allowed to do it more than once a year since it’d be harder to pretend that the man jumping into Robert’s grave is doing so because he wants to follow Robert into the afterlife when you just saw him jump in after Susan last week. Nobody leaves until night in order to both maintain the illusion that they could be dead and discourage competitiveness. A system of ventilated tunnels makes this far less uncomfortable than it would otherwise be.
“Are you going to Lilly’s party next saturday?” Amy whispered.
The lecturer glared at us. In our defence, it was the last five minutes of the lecturer and nothing that would be on the exam. In her defense though, perhaps interupting the traditional end of lecturer message that we should watch out for one another and you never know what’s going on in someone’s head and runaway students are incredibly common wasn’t the most respectful thing we could have done. I kept quiet until class was officially dismissed.
“No. Christopher is definitely going to be there.”
Amy rolled her eyes.
“You can’t avoid him forever. And honestly, you shouldn’t be. Something about last term’s exam stress and your new decision to actually go to the gym is definitely working for you. I mean it! You’ve got a total revenge body right now and you need to put it into a gorgeous and tastefully slutty dress and show that boy what a fool he was for ever thinking he could do better than you.”
I laughed.
“I don’t have a dress that’s gorgeous or slutty that currently fits me. Guess that’s another reason to give it a miss.”
“Buy one. I’m serious, no more hiding away.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t actually have money for a dress right now.” I said.
Amy looked surprised, though to her credit she hid it well. And her reaction was understandable. She’d been friends with me since the start of first term and she knew I lived in a nice place and ate nice food and all in all did not seem to have any money worries at all. What she did not realise was that all of those things were directly paid for by my mother and her suprisingly well paid job in local government. Getting her to give me money directly or pay for a dress she’d disapprove of was not going to happen.
“I saw a posting for a grave jump job on Friday,” Amy offered, “I’m pretty sure they pay as soon as you’re out. First timers are basically guaranteed the slot if they apply.”
Only citizens over the age of eighteen are eligible to become grave jumpers and yet Amy and I were already an oddity in our year for not having done it yet. In my case I suppose it was because even though the way in which my mother took care of me definitely came with strings attached it meant I had never really been close to struggling to get any of the things I actually needed. In Amy’s case her finances would absolutely have benefitted from the boost a grave jump would have given her but she had severe claustrophobia. The tunnels themselves aren’t horribly small but you have to shimmy through a tighter chute to get to those and she couldn’t force herself to even consider it.
I could consider it though. And although I understand that to people who don’t live here jumping into a grave sounds too creepy to even briefly consider doing for any amount of money, I really can’t stress enough how normal it was for all of us. My father’s funeral had a grave jumper at it and as a seven year old child I watched a young woman leap down onto his coffin without finding it disturbing for a moment. It felt right, almost. I was grieving that the world would be so much worse without him and so it made sense for this stranger to act that way as well, even though I knew that it was all pretend. I was glad she was there.
“I’ll do it then.” I said, much to Amy’s glee.
She was right that I hadn’t been myself since the break up and the idea of making Christopher wish he hadn’t left me was more delicious than it should have been. I sent the graveyard contact an email asking to be considered for the role and got a response back barely an hour later. I was told I had the job and there was an attached pdf with basic information about how much I would be paid (a decent amount, more as compensation if I accidently hurt myself as I jumped in or if my clothing required cleaning or replacement), how long it would take (no more than ten hours, basic food and facilities in the tunnel system, only leave when called back up) and of course the name of whose grave I would be jumping into. I made sure to clean an appropriately formal outfit before Friday and then all I had to do was wait.
Friday’s funeral had decent attendance. As someone who had never starred in a school play that hadn’t been mandatory, I suddenly felt slightly nervous. Not that decent acting ability was a strict requirement here. I didn’t technically need to say a thing, though many did, and any level or absense of drama was seen as acceptable for a grave jumper. I suppose that perhaps since real grief can be loud or quiet it made sense that the rules were no different for people who were only pretending. I was able to stand at the front of the group because everyone knew why a total stranger would be here, really. And sure enough, when the priest got part way through one of the previously agreed upon acceptable verses to interupt with a jump I took a deep breath and went for it.
THUD
I’d put my hands out in front of me as I ran towards the grave but when I’d hit the coffin they’d slipped anyway and my face had hit the wood. I remember putting my fingers to my face and wondering if I’d have bruises to conceal for tomorrow’s party before a voice above jolted me back into the moment. The priest was asking me to please leave the grave and for my part I was to absolutely not do that. I could wail in response or keep silent as I chose to but actually obeying him would have been a hilairious faux pas at this point.
The chute to the left of the coffin was easy to see from this angle and I headed towards it. They could probably see it from above if they were trying to but it was just one of a list of things we politely ignore. I crawled over to the chute and slid through it – quickly regretting my decision to wear heels as they almost instantly fell off my feet. I couldn’t easily turn back and get them so I accepted it and headed to the main tunnels barefoot.
The tunnels were darker than I’d imagined and barely tall enough for me to stand up straight. A folded table near where I’d come in had two bottles of water, some snack bars and a laminated print out of information that had already been covered in the pdf. Do not exit until the tunnel alert system tells you to. If you become lost in the tunnel system, follow the directions that the emergency lights are moving in. Remain quiet at all times.
I wasn’t prepared for how boring it would be. There was no clock in the tunnels and I hadn’t had the foresight to wear a watch but I don’t think I even lasted an hour before deciding to wander just as something to do. The lights would lead me back at the end and the alert that would inform me that my shift was up would be played in the entire tunnel system. No part of the pdf or the printout had said that I needed to wait patiently near the table of depressing snacks and so I went for a walk.
I didn’t go far, at first. I had no real sense of where I was going and even when I found the entrance to the larger, older tunnel I still nearly just went back to my sad little table. Heading back though I heard a noise, a dull and repeated thudding. Even though I don’t believe in ghosts or zombies or anything of the such some part of my brain still told me that the man in the new grave I’d jumped in from was trying to escape his coffin. I wasn’t going back that way, no chance. Eventually my shift would be over and a graveyard keeper would be up there waiting for me so I would wait for that moment to go back, a moment where I no longer needed to face the would be zombie alone.
I walked to the larger tunnel and even though the ground was muddier here it seemed worth it for the additional space and distance from the undead who was surely coming from the other direction. It seemed slightly warmer here as well and I stepped cautiously along the muddy floor until I got to a place where the emergency lighting had stopped. It was much warmer now, even though I doubted I had walked for that long. Much as I didn’t want to head back to the noises I’d heard before I didn’t really want to head into pure darkness either and so I turned to explore elsewhere when the air shifted.
As cooler air rushed against me I held my fingers out in the breeze curiously. The air current then reversed with more warmth to it and I still didn’t realise what was happening until it happened again.
Because the next time that cooler air was pulled into the darkness behind me it was accompanied by a snort. Something in the darkness was sniffing me and I was frozen in a terror that I’d never experienced before in my life.
Then I heard movement and my feet finally remembered how to run.
I can run fast. My gym workouts often include some time on the treadmill and I would much rather do a proper run than spend some ungodly amount of time just powerwalking like some people do. In the tunnels though, with mud between my toes and the sound of something racing behind me, there I must have smashed every personal recond I’d ever made. Whatever was following me sounded like a full stampede of creatures at once. There were so many footsteps, not only on the floor but echoing from the tunnel’s ceiling and walls as well. Every corner I took led to a crashing sound behind me but if these collisions hurt my pursuer then it recovered almost instantly every time.
I got to my tunnel and as I climbed the ladder to the chute I saw three long, vine like tongues whip around the corner behind me. I shoved my body into the chute and finally saw the source of the first noise I’d been afraid of.
In front of me was a lattice of metal bars that was clearly intended to come down and trap whoever was stationed in the tunnel. In my case however it was struggling to accomplish this task as one of the high heels that I’d left behind wass blocking its path. Instead the door simply came down to hit my now thoroughly beaten shoe, realised that it could not descend as far as it was supposed to and so rose to try again. It didn’t occur to me right then that you only need to trap someone if you know you’re putting them somewhere that they’re going to want to escape. I had no thoughts at all as I shoved my arm under the gate and pulled myself through, a disgusting tongue just touching the sole of my right foot before I managed to crawl onto the coffin.
The gravekeeper is supposed to provide a ladder to get you out of the grave but of course I was escaping earlier than I was supposed to. I jumped and scrabbled up the dirt in front of me and then crawled away crying for several feet before finally lying on the ground.
“Rose?” a familiar voice asked.
Then the earth shook. I pulled myself up to a seated position and looked at the grave behind me. It’s okay, it’s too big for the chute, was all I could think, it can’t escape. I stood and began to walk towards a confused Amy before a second tremor knocked me off my heels.
And then the ground itself tore open and I finally got to see what I was running from.
Its body was wormlike, in a way. Not segmented though nor smooth like an eel but rippling with muscle systems that I didn’t understand. There were a lot of limbs of various sizes: main, thick legs which presumably bore most of the weight and thinner limbs with too many joints that I guess were for fine tuning and balance. It’s head had no eyes but an incomplete circle of large nostrils around a mouth that was barely more narrow than the width of a coffin.
It seems I’d been right and the creature could not fit through the chute I’d escaped from. What it could do however was tear right through the tunnel wall and ground itself, leaving both the grave and several of those around it as a mess of soil and wood and corpse. Amy was just stood there shaking her head slowly from side to side and I wanted to run and to yell at her to run but I couldn’t.
I still don’t know exactly why Amy had come for me. We hadn’t arranged to meet up after the grave jump and the friend who’d been studying with her beforehand doesn’t remember her saying anything about it. Did she want to check I was okay because she’d recommended it? Had she just wanted company to walk to the other side of town with? Is there anything I could have done differently that would have made her stay away?
The creature head reared up taller than a house and yet part of its body was still underground. The taller it held itself the more my terror deepened and it was sniffing away the whole time.
Then it chose.
The creature shot forwards and grabbed Amy with its dripping tongues and forced her into her mouth as she screamed. The creature’s mouth was too small for the angle that it was holding Amy but it pulled her in with such force that I heard the snapping of her spine and her limbs as she disappeared from view. I think that’s when I threw up, with hindsight. I still didn’t run until the creature slithered slowly back into the hole it had created, the strange limbs making a vague attempt to rebury the opening as it retreated.
I ran then. I ran all the way back to my mother’s house and she answered the door to her shaking, bleeding daughter and with garbled panic I told her that something had burst out from a grave behind me.
The worst hadn’t happened yet, you see. When I play this evening back, as I so often do, there’s something that disturbs me more than the memories of running for my life or the sad and brutal death of my dear friend.
“Did anyone see it?” my mother asked me.
I couldn’t answer, I just looked at her blankly.
“When you left, was anyone cleaning it up?” she asked with more insistence.
After a few seconds of waiting my mother gave up and left to make a phone call. I sat down on her sofa and tried to wipe some of the gore off my face with the palm of my equally disgusting hand. My hands and the soles of my feet were covered in cuts, there was a massive scrape on the front of my right calf and I had vomit covering the front of my dress. I don’t think there was a part of me that wasn’t coated in dirt and there was blood splattered across me that was not my own. My entire appearance was a laundry list of concerns and problems and yet my mother was in another room talking on the phone. It took me far too long to realise why.
“You… knew?” I asked her when she finally came back into the room.
“I didn’t know you’d do this. I would have told you not to. If I knew that you were… to its tastes then I would never have allowed you to do this.”
“But other people could end up…” I trailed off, understanding a little more.
The monster in the tunnels wasn’t a risk of grave jumping, it was the entire point.
“Why?” I asked after some time and my mother laughed bitterly.
“You saw it. If we don’t give that thing what it wants then it will rip the land apart looking for it. It doesn’t go for everyone. Just the ones that are…”
“To its tastes.” I finished for her.
So that’s why most people came out of grave jumping just fine. Those that didn’t come out fine just disappeared, some other motive and timeline given for where they’d most likely gone. Runaways. Abductions. Suicides in a river where no corpses have ever been found.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.” my mother finally offered.
I slept in my childhood bed that night, the physical exhaustion of what had happened finally catching up to me. But when I woke up the next day and stared at the dirt under my broken nails I realised that I couldn’t live here. I couldn’t spend every conversation I had wondering if the person I was talking to knew the truth of the grave jumpers or not. I had an aunt on my fathers side who lived in another country and I begged her to let me stay with her. My mother helped, as it turned out. Perhaps realising that there was no coming back from what I now knew she persuaded my aunt she should let me stay whilst I found something else and sent me away with a sizeable deposit in my bank account.
It’s been fifteen years since I jumped into an open grave and since then I’ve figured out a few things. I realised that the logistics of the graveyard tunnels only ever really made sense to trap us whilst the moster sniffed out who he wanted. If the only goal was to pretend that the jumpers were in a grave forever then we could have just left through a secret exit elsewhere. Lingering in the tunnels until an alert told us to leave is a bizarre system even if the premise of grave jumping made perfect sense.
Likewise, I’ve pieced together why mental health was so stressed where I grew up. The focus was never how we could fix someone’s mental health but how anyone we knew could be feeling terrible enough to want to run away or worse at any time. I understand that these messages were pushed by people like my mother so that when people did disappear then we would assume that we simply missed subtle signs that they were struggling and move on with our lives.
My mother framed the reason for me fleeing the country was a kind of mental breakdown. I suppose she was right, in a way. My aunt never questioned me on exactly what had happened and my mother paid both of us on a monthly basis until I found a job and moved out. We don’t really talk. Occasionally she will send me an email and even more rarely I’ll actually respond.
Which brings me to why I’m writing this. Across all of the years since the incident I’ve never felt the need to tell anyone what happened. I suppose I wanted to shut it away, but I can’t do that anymore. Today I received a postcard from my mother. I don’t know why she changed from her usual email but I suppose that she felt that this was a request that needed to be handwritten.
“Hi Rose,
It’s been a while since we’ve caught up. It’s been so hectic here. Remember the earhtquakes from when you were a teenager that caused such destruction in the graveyard? They’ve been getting worse and the council is very busy trying to figure out what to do. None of today’s young people are as helpful as you were. They try but it just doesn’t work out. If nobody manages to fix the problem soon then it will be incredibly dangerous for everyone, all we can do is hope that somebody does the right thing.
Hope you visit home soon xxx”
My mother’s shock that I’d chosen to be a graveyard jumper had seemed genuine to me at the time. I had thoroughly believed that much though she believed that our monster needed sacrifices she still would have fed anyone else to it than me. Which leaves me to beleive that there’s nobody left that’s ‘to its tastes’ as she put it. If I go back to the tunnels then I’ll die. But if I don’t then I don’t know what will happen. How much destruction can that thing cause? Not to mention, the jumpers go to more than one graveyard. Does that simply mean that the creature travels between them through its own, dark tunnels or are there a family of monsters lurking there? Even if I did choose to sacrifice myself, would that alone be enough?
Hope you visit home soon, she says.
If I choose to stay away, what will be unleashed?