A Gravedigger’s Musings

Rich people, poor people, highly influential individuals, and those who have been ignored their entire lives, I see them all eventually. A white person is covered with the same dirt as the black person resting on his left and the yellow person resting on his right, or the brown person lying by his head and yes, even the red person by his feet. In my job, all people are truly created equal. It is also true that after the grieving relatives and well-wishing friends leave, never to be seen again, everyone left behind in the dirt is treated exactly the same, because they are.

It's with these afore-mentioned facts in mind that I was thoroughly perplexed when I received my instructions about the manner in which our newest resident was to be laid to rest. I have worked at this cemetery for over forty years, and in all that time, I have never been asked to place a body in a mausoleum. There are four such structures on the cemetery grounds, each one in various states of disrepair.

The families who originally had them constructed back in the late seventeenth century were the wealthiest in the colony. According to legend, the structures were built to protect deceased family members from witchcraft and other satanic debauchery. They believed that the two-foot-thick stone walls and roof, plus an iron door, coupled with a sealed casket placed into an interior wall vault, would protect their loved one’s body and soul. They also protected the corpses from body snatchers. The residents of Salem, Massachusetts, were preoccupied with the occult back then. I thought none of those aristocratic families still existed, but I was wrong.

Early Friday morning, a Lyft car stopped in front of the cemetery maintenance garage. The driver got out and asked one of my fellow gravediggers for me by name. He pointed me out to the driver, who immediately walked over, handed me a sealed padded envelope, and left. None of the deceased families had ever requested me before, so you can understand how my emotions fluctuated between confusion and grateful for the recognition. I gathered my wits and tore open the mysterious envelope.

The envelope contained a page of handwritten instructions and a heavy cast-iron key. It was obvious what the key was for, but having never interred a body in a mausoleum before, I figured it would be a good idea to see what this family member expected me to do. The instructions discussed nothing different from an in-ground burial right up to the last paragraph. That’s when the hammer dropped. They wanted me to open the existing wall vault bearing the Wiccan five-pointed star with a circle around it. Next, remove the existing corpse, place the fresh body inside the wall vault, then place the original cadaver in the new casket and deliver it to the waiting hearse. Why would I, or anyone for that matter, want to do such a thing? Then I took a third item from the envelope, a cashier’s check for $10,000 made out to me.

The lock had been set for approximately one hundred and fifty years, so it took some convincing and a little help from a generous application of cutting oil, but I eventually won the battle of wills. The door begrudgingly swung open on its rusty hinges to reveal a room that no human had looked upon for centuries. The moldy walls and spiders dangling from their webs appeared to recoil from the intruding sunlight bursting in from the open door. A powerful, dank odor of rotting flesh rushed from the room, causing me to gag. This was not a place I would be staying long—not even for ten grand.

Two days later, I returned to the mausoleum to prep the site three hours before it was time for the new occupant’s arrival. I had left the door open a crack so most of the noxious smells had dissipated, but the spiders were unwilling to vacate their home. Using my chisel, I scraped the mold-covered walls until I located the pentagram-marked vault. The old wall plaster was easy to remove, and within an hour, I was looking at a wooden casket adorned with strange runes carved into the lid. Now it was a simple matter of sliding the box out of its vault and onto the wheeled cart we used to transport caskets from hearse to grave site.

They say curiosity killed the cat, and now I understand how true the saying is. If I were going to swap corpses, I felt it was only right to see what condition a two-hundred-year-old cadaver was in. I expected a skeleton wearing an antique dress, but I was only half right. The open lid revealed a beautiful, perfectly preserved woman dressed in a black gown. Stunned by this discovery, my revelations were just beginning. She opened her eyes and raised her arm to keep me from closing the lid. With a seductive smile across her face, she stared into my eyes and slowly sat up. In a dry voice, she asked, “What year is it, please?”

At least the witch was polite. “2025, I answered, trying to hide the total fear that was racing through every cell in my body.

“Then it is time,” was all she said before levitating from the casket and out through the open door. My initial reaction was relief, but that was once again pushed aside by curiosity. I raced to follow her only to have the iron door slam in my face. Darkness engulfed me as fear once again took hold.

I eventually escaped from my tomb, but I never encountered the resurrected witch or her minions again. It wasn’t unusual to hear rumors of strange occurrences around Salem and the surrounding towns, but nothing that could be verified. At least I was $10,000 richer.