“Come on lad, put yer back into it - keep digging that slow, we’ll all be fucked by sunrise.”
Uncle Derek’s furious brow somehow emanated ever more anger than usual, a fury which failed to subside as I picked up the pace of my shovelling.
Normally I reckon anyone else would make a quip about how digging up their Grandad’s grave on their 18th birthday was an awful way to spend their time, but surprisingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to do it. Eighteenth time I’ve been around for one of these, if we’re being honest. No, it’s not by choice either, rather by necessity. It’s been a few years since the day I’m describing here, so I now have the full context and picture of why this yearly tradition takes place.
“Uncle Derek” I began, being careful to not slow the pace of my digging. “Since I’m 18 now, can you finally tell me why we do this? You always said you’d tell me when I was an adult, and now it’s official, I could go and buy a pint right now.” Neither of us said anything in the haze of his cogs turning - the only noise was the rhythmic sounds of shovels hitting dirt, and the wind sailing through the trees around us. In the periphery of my vision, I couldn’t see his head torch move, so I knew his gaze hadn’t faded from the task at hand.
For a few seconds he stopped and started, hesitation palpably rising in the laboured breaths he made with each dig “I guess me and your old man did say that… fine. But just know, once that cat’s out of the bag, there’s not a treat in our arsenal that can tempt it back in. It’ll be your burden, to know and swear to secrecy, until the time comes where it’s you guiding your younguns on this same road. Deal?” The digging sounds had stopped now, and I looked up. My sweaty, troubled uncle extended his hands towards me, an expectancy shining in his eyes. How can a man’s face still be that beetroot and sweaty in weather as cold as this? “Deal.” I repeated, taking his hand in mine for a shake. Wish I’d remembered just how strong his handshakes were back then.
“Fine, we’ll have to talk and dig. Then we can get this over with, and you can treat us both to your first pint… well, first legal pint, eh lad?” The smirk stayed as we released hands, lifting our tools and synchronising our digs once again. I really had to hide my weekend partying better, didn’t I?
First, I’ll need to give you some preamble to explain what goes on, since a lot of this is contextually based on the yearly occurrence. For as long as I can remember, me and Uncle Derek have journeyed out to the far reaches of the counties, always on my birthday, and always digging up Grandad Ernice. The shovels might have changed, and the different trendy outfits I’d been courting may have varied based on where I was in life, but the plan was always the same..well, mostly. Find the site, dig him up, and then a bag was placed over my head.
I’d wake up the next day in my bed, hands burning, head swimming with pain. I learned pretty sharpish that nobody would acknowledge the events of the previous day if I tried to discuss them, so I didn’t waste time with that. I say the plan was mostly the same, because there’s a part of my synapse wagon that’s convinced we’re never going to the same places. I’m not the most observant, but I’d began to study the lengths of journeys, the things we pass, the sounds the world makes - they didn’t always line up. I did once ask Uncle Derek to explain - he quickly spat out some fumbled explanation of gravesites being expensive and the most economical thing to do being transporting the grave around, stopping graverobbers and that. What they’d rob exactly I don’t know - we certainly aren’t a wealthy family, and Grandad died long before I was born.
With that out of the way, we can go back to Uncle Derek’s little speech.
The consistency of our shovels hitting the ground had started to make Derek’s sentences sound like spoken word poetry. An artistically challenged man he was mind you, so there was some humour to be found there. Despite these sounds fading into the symphony of the night, and despite the shoulder pain that was emerging, I found myself entranced in hearing every word he was saying.
“You see lad, when we’ve brought you here every year on your birthday, it’s not because this is the highest level of entertainment. I spent 30 years on a building site, believe you me - the last thing I want to be doing at 1 in the morning is even more physical labour. No, this is something we’ve been bound to do since me and your father were about your age, same as our father before us. I suppose that’s the first bombshell - Grandad Ernice isn’t your actual Grandad, and being a corpse, he’s definitely too sober to be our old man. We called him Grandad too, but we’d learned that he was probably more of a great, great, great Grandad, if anything. Neither of us had met him too, but like you, we made yearly trips to visit him, to dig him up and…well… what happens next, is what you don’t normally see, on account of being bagged up like a cabbage and that”.
That was a point - I’d not seen Derek bring the bag my face is usually covered with, where was it? Almost as if he read my thoughts, he continued.
“Well, like you identified, you’re the ripe age for a pint of pub piss now - and spiritually, that means you’re now in the unfortunate spot of having to do things a little differently. Your soul knows the age and weight of yer bones, there’s a maturity at a cellular level that no creams or lotions can dissolve. In previous years, the unknown forces have taken a sort of grace on your youth, shielding you from the worst of it. Now that you’re all grown up though, their pity is more fleeting, and unfortunately, you’ll need to be awake and wide eyed for what comes next.”
The silence after his last sentence was deafening, to say the least. I felt like I was now hyper aware of every little sound echoing around us - the cold felt harsher, the floor felt harder, and the quick glance I took at Uncle Derek’s above eye caterpillar had me almost convinced that we were seeing it grow in real time. The man should really see someone about that monobrow, it looks like some software’s trying to point out a spelling mistake on his forehead.
“Simply put, if this tradition hadn’t been carried out yearly, we’d all be royally burned to a crisp, if superstition is anything to go by. When I turned 18, like yourself, my father gave me this letter that explained this whole damn thing.” He held up a battered envelope, and snapped his fingers for me to look at him - I took a momentary digging hiatus to catch a glance of the battered yellow envelope he was holding up to the moon, in a pose of almost-conquest. With a head nod that signalled “right, you’ve seen the envelope, keep digging you lout”, I went back to introducing shovel to soil.
“It’s a long letter, and I know yer a brainy lad and all, but maybe you can read it later given the little time we’ve got. The long and short of it is that whenever this Ernice lad was knocking around, he’d made a couple of right sorry blunders that quite frankly, should’ve meant neither you nor I should be standing here digging right now. Proper cocked it up to speak plainly - man was a selfish, nasty piece of work that by some miracle, saw the error of his ways and did what he could to fix them. Including making pacts with things of all manner of dark and primal. One day, he’d gone so far with his conniving and scheming that the man he loved nearly died for it, and out of sheer desperation, he beckoned towards him something thirsty. Thirsty for the rage, pain, and gluttony his soul contained.”
The word thirsty seemed to set off something in his brain. Uncle Derek signalled to me to look up again, and I took the bottle of water he handed me. Pseudo-grave robbing was dehydrating work, after all. Glugging down the warm water, I wiped my lip as I handed the bottle back, taking hands on the shovel once again. Feeling the weight of Derek’s expectation like his eyes were feeling the weight of his substantial eyebrow (that’s the last reference I make to it, I promise), I began to dig, and his voice roared to life again.
“That thing, if the letters are true, undid his mistakes. Brought Ernice’s fella back from the brink of being, granted them with riches untold - aye, financially, but also, set up the convenience for them to be able to adopt a young’un, something which two men as lovers wouldn’t normally have had the luxury of doing back in them days. Now, as you’ll discern from the rather sombre tone until now, this wasn’t some malevolent entity doing this out of the goodness of its heart, no - there was a price. A real one too, one that’s unfortunately spilled down like piss onto our legs as well. It’s why we do this.”
Derek stopped, as the sound his shovel hit made changed - metal. We’d found the coffin.
Looking up at each other, I saw him collect his breath.
“This is what comes next lad”. He said, placing his shovel to the side, now digging with his hands. “The bit you don’t normally see, I’m warning you now, it’s not pretty. It’s part of the deal. Now, that entity - it wanted real form. It wanted to walk, to breathe, to eat like we do. Banished from the possibility of salt on earth, it wanted a taste of the unknown. Apparently, the place that thing calls home is what we might refer to as purgatory, or limbo, or what a conversation with the wife feels like. It knew it well, and it knew how to bring people back, to either side of that divide. And so, the deal was made. Once a year, it would be granted form to live through those urges, to feel what it’s like to be us. All Ernice had to do was slip on a hexxen ring, and he’d wake up the next day, completely unaware of the past 24 hours. For the first few years, it seemed harmless, but the spirit got greedy. It started taking days, weeks, months. Ernice would wake up god knows where, caked in blood, vomit.. sometimes his own, sometimes from sources unknown. The manner of devious acts it got up to were not in short supply either, and Ernice knew there was only one way to bring an end to that thing’s reign of terror.”
“You see, a few times he’d tried not putting on the ring, refusing the call to action, and things would happen. Started small, knives going missing, ghastly faces at his windows at night. He even tried taking his life. The problem with that, is how do you escape an entity that lives in death’s dominion? He’d snap back to each time, fully unscathed. It took his son’s scream from being dangled by his shin by unknown forces out the window for him to realise he had to fight this another way.”
“He suspected that the being’s energy was growing each time, and the entity was reliant on resting back in the “in-between”, which is why it would let him go in the first place, why the ring would even come off. He knew what he’d have to do. He’d have to take the ring, and himself, to his grave. So, sure as anything, he wrote his letter detailing all this, left it on his bed for his husband, and he climbed into this coffin, presumably slipping on the ring and bringing an end to all this demonry… or so he thought.”
Derek was looking cautiously at the coffin, now fully uncovered. He looked at me expectantly… and I burst out laughing. At the time, this was great fun to me - Uncle Derek had obviously cooked up this story as some kind of adult hazing ritual, and the man’s performance alone could’ve netted him a BAFTA with ease. Real Edinburgh fringe material this.
“Very funny Uncle… I might’ve believed those stories as a kid, but I’m 18 now, and-”
“STAND TO ATTENTION LAD!” he bellowed, my feet habitually stepping together and my spine uncurling from its usual gamer curve. “Did I laugh once during that story?” He was close to me now, finger buried in my chest. His breath unavoidably smelled like coffee and chocolate. ”Do you think I’m the sort to go around making up ghost tales for my own amusement? If you’re not taking this seriously, you will put both of us in very real, very serious danger. For fuck sake, shake off this idiocy and listen to what I’m telling you if you don’t want this to be your last birthday”.
I’d not heard him shout like that in years… maybe he thought this was all real? He wasn’t that old now, somewhere in his 60s, but I’d heard stories of the brain going a bit funny on you as the hairs greyed. Was this one of those things?
“Now lad, your eyes are normally covered for this next bit, or you’re asleep, so I’ll need you to listen to me and listen real bloody quick. When I open this coffin, do NOT breathe in until I give the signal. It’s not just the smell that will get you, but the mouth is the easiest way into the body for any shady actors. You’ll be able to see now, so brace yourself for a bit of a shock - a body this old doesn’t look how you’d expect, and the nasty entity lurking within likes to pull a trick or two to really fuck with you. Treats the human shape like clay if it feels so inclined. So, no breathing, no flinching, and absolutely no visible signs of terror. I don’t care if your heart tells you to run, you plant your feet and you stay still or you’re done for. Oh and shit, don’t look him in the eyes - not that he has any, but your father did it once and well… where is he now? Any voice you hear that isn’t mine, is not to be trusted. Even if it sounds like me, be wary and listen out for my angelic yet dulcet twang - you can’t emulate a lifetime of sausage rolls and pints. This is uncharted territory every time, and it’s not fun in the slightest. Now, for your part in this.”
Derek took a set of chains out of his backpack, handing them to me. “I need you to tie me to that tree just there.” I took the chains, and looked him dead in the eyes… he was really believing all this, wasn’t he? I didn’t comment on it, his wrath was one of the things I truly fear, but I did what he said, and I tied him to the tree. Honestly, I half expected all our family and friends to come out with a surprise cake any second now.
“Right, I’m secure I think.” he said, tugging on the chains. “Good. Right, lad - get that coffin open, and follow these exact instructions. Take the body’s right hand in your right hand, shake it like you would an old friend. Then, cross your left hand OVER your right hand, palm up - when you feel your hand get heavy, close your eyes, take 3 steps back, and turn around 180 degrees to face me. DO NOT LOOK BEHIND YOU AFTER THAT. Then, walk over to me. Put the ring on me, specifically on my right index finger. MY right, not yours. It’ll be a squeeze, but you damn well make it fit. Then, go home, sleep for a bit, play videogames, do whatever. After 24 hours, take it off me, we’ll throw it back in that coffin and piss off to the pub, and not think about this crap for another year aye?”
“Hang on, wait” I said, still catching up “If you’re being serious about this ring thing, you literally just told me it’s possessed by a demon or whatever and that putting it on lets the demon thing use you like a bike. Why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t, we’ll miss our window - this coffin will piss off somewhere else, we’ll not have the time to track exactly where it’ll appear again, and you and I will be in trouble with the old familiar spirit we’ve got sandwiched in there. You want honesty, lad, all cards on the table? I’ll trade it for forgiveness. We covered your eyes as a kid… because we made you put it on. It made the most sense, you’re only little, it couldn’t fully take you. Kids’ brains are small, full of thoughts about plastic toys and sweets, untouched by the burden of growing. Taking the ring off after the mandatory 24 hours was easy enough. Imagine trying to pin me down to do that if I wasn’t tied to this bloody great log.”
I still didn’t believe it, but fine, I’d play his game - I was almost sure I was being recorded for a prank now, but I didn’t care - it was cold and dark and I wanted to get home already. So, I put my hand on the coffin door, and yanked.
Peering down into the coffin, I saw… well, I don’t really know how to describe it. It was like a leathery person made from a mashed up combination of meat and dirt, bone sticking out in places I didn’t think we even had the capacity for bone in. Fiction or not, being this close to a corpse was fucking weird. I carried out the instructions, my brain screaming at me to get the hell out of there right now. I forced myself though, and did what Derek said - I took the thing’s right hand in my right hand, and gave it a firm shake… the moment my skin touched what I think we’d normally call skin, my entire composure changed. The fear of this thing had been replaced by a deep familiarity, and trust, and compassion… It was like an old friend. I KNEW this person, I had nothing to fear. I knew that this person was a person too. I was so sure. As I shook its hand, I remembered what my dad would always say. “If you’re shaking someone’s hands, it’s only polite to look them in the eyes”, and so I did. The idiot I am.
The thing in the casket looked back into my eyes, despite having none itself. The fear was back now, but my hand was locked in, I tried to wrestle both my hand and gaze away from it, but I was cemented. Forced to watch, as the meaty grin extended, and as I heard bone and flesh snap into place. The muffled sounds of Derek screaming and wrestling with the chains did little to distract me, and I felt the world turn tiny as I fell backwards into the coffin.
I couldn’t move. I was stuck. Facing forward, I saw that fleshy form, slowly walking towards Derek, who was still protesting very northernly. I watched, as it slammed down on his leg with the nearby shovel, muffled screams presumably amplifying in volume as bone was protruding from his leg. The chains almost seemed to bubble away, as the thing grabbed Derek’s arm, ripping it off with extreme force. If I could as much as blink I’d be blinking up a fury right now, but I could only watch as my Uncle sat there up against the tree, bleeding. I could only watch as that thing melted into him, the two merging before my eyes like the mixing of water and juice. I couldn’t even cry.
After what felt like a hundred years, my brash but loving Uncle stood up, his broken leg and absent arm now seemingly replaced by the same fleshy being I had now taken the place of in this grave. I watched as his new appendages fizzled and writhed into familiar forms, and as he held up his new arm to the moon, a faint glint of a ring could be seen.
The person now piloting the skin of my Uncle gave me that same unearthly grin, as the coffin door slammed shut, sinking me into darkness.
When I came to several years later, it must’ve been by fate - they found me buried, comatose, only by chance of a construction firm finding the coffin submerged deep in a sewage drain. “Mind boggling” the report said, given the previous day, that drain had only just been cleaned. I couldn’t answer the police questions, the hospital found no illness within me. I was in tip top shape. You’re probably thinking the same thing I am - how?
I later found out by way of a bus advert, that I’d been buried for six years. Somehow living asleep, with no food nor water to keep me going. It was even more surprising that after six years of no food, I’d barely been able to finish my dinner. Less surprising still, was that my favourite videogame series still hadn’t had a new entry - is it bad that my first thought was to get back into the coffin?
I’m writing this because I need you to keep an eye out for me. That thing killed and stole my Uncle, and I don’t know where it’s gone - but I’m going to try and find it. Six years is a long time, and it could be anywhere now.
If you see a short, fat, exceptionally northern man wearing a ring that looks far too expensive for him, be vigilant. It’s a vague description, but rather annoyingly, my uncle was an exceptionally unremarkable man. It’s not a lot to go on, but if you even THINK you’ve seen him, let me know where and when - I don’t have a plan yet, but I’ve got time to make one. Let’s stop it from taking anyone else.