Bone Task

Bone Task 

I- The  Grave Digger

Walt kept these things in his kit. A 36 inch snubnose shovel with a T handle. A 2 foot spade with a sharpened blade,  A blue steel sifter with a 13 inch width, Six 12 foot tarps, A 4 inch sledge hammer, and a crowbar. He showed up at the burial grounds and recovered the kit from a bag he hid in the grass by the statue days earlier. The Mausoleum gate finally appeared in the moonlight and fog. Walt stood in awe, his boot sucked in by mud, sweat and blood dried on his shirt.

He tore the page loose and let it disintegrate in the cold wind. The clouds strangled the starlight from the night sky. Trees bursted into flame from the speed of the dropping temperature then they collapsed under the weight of snow. The walls of the Mausoleum arose. 

Red bright stones in the walls shined like windows with lights within. Curious murmurs and errant chatter echoed as high above a cliff hawks looked down. Sharp black rocks closed in on the boundaries. Bones of animals and man alike littered the ground. 

Spires, bladed cylinders, chains of barbs, heavy curtains of spider web infested with millions of eyes covered the stone walls. The roof stretched up to the edge of the cliff. Blocks and steel rails sealed the door. They hissed at Walt when he touched them. His hands frozen within the gloves, he began climbing. 

Walt heard voices from within. Living voices. Warm voices. He felt them vibrate against the jagged balls of spikes. Spiders bit his hand until it swelled up and turned green. When he slipped, the spires hooked his clothes and tore them to the skin. 

He pulled his kit with him on a strap around his chest. His knife slipped out of his boot and fell to the rocks below. Once on the roof he inspected the damage, He reached his hands beneath his belts and armor, but he found six bleeding wounds, but no broken bones, no internal damage. He stripped his heavy clothes off and tore his t shirt apart to wrap the wounds shut. Then he began looking for the sun vent. 

Once he found the cap he began pounding it with the crowbar and hammer. From the hole he created in the ceiling, he tethered a rope and descended. He put a respiratory mask over his face, and searched with a flash light. Inside of one empty catacomb he saw a freshly disposed body. Not neatly placed but stuffed into the rear and hastily covered. He pulled her out, and began examining the body. Nothing that could work on the website. 

He tore open the sealed catacombs along the walls, the caskets had been broken into long ago. Then he began to smash the floor to pieces. Beneath the floor he discover a smaller chamber beneath the mausoleum with one undisturbed casket. He smashed it open, and hit it big. Just as the scripture told him. Just as he had prayed. An entire skeleton. 

Walt wrapped it up in a tarp and sealed it in a bag. He went up the rope, and climbed down. The exhilaration made his heart race so fast that he didn't notice how numb his fingers and face had become. He wondered about the body he found within. Ragged, no cards, no money. A bottle of Mariisnk Vodka. She probably got in to escape the cold, and it closed on her.

Walt was trapped too. Debts, children, forsaken property, dead dreams. All the way home he wondered about how long she suffered in there. How long did she stay cramming herself into that empty slot. The last thing he did before leaving with the skeleton was place her body in the casket, and close the lid.

II The Medical Student 

The Mausoleum loomed before her. Just as the grave digger showed. He warned her that’s no place for newbs.  She bought the bones by the bucketful from him on the internet. He told her to avoid the Mausoleum but she was overcome with academic inquest, the secrets, knowledge, ancient wonder. The gate wide open, she entered. 

Rain from outside poured down the hole in the ceiling. It splashed down on the tile floor, then washed down the holes carved into the floor. The casket lay submerged at the bottom of the chamber.  She lowered herself into the sand and drowned blocks. The water sent shocks of cold into the core of her body. She tried to push the lid off but once she got it to lift a blast of hot air turned the chamber into a fountain. The gate slammed shut. Icy shadows filled the air. 

The ground quaked as gas clouded her mind. Blades appeared on the walls. The more silty water rose, the closer she stood by the walls. Shivering did nothing to warm her body. The cold air seemed to funnel beneath her. A surge of energy boiled from within the Mausoleum. The walls vibrated with awakening spirits. With the shadows and the cold against her, she felt herself pressing against the razors on the wall, she felt them enter her soft flesh before the casket below finally opened. 

The water washed away as the casket broke apart. The pedestal collapsed, and the water and sediment and loose bones  rushed down a chute. She found the chute to consist of a few tunnels that were finally broadened into a wide drain beneath the Mausoleum. Crawling in the mud, covered in bruises in cuts, she shimmied down. She got stuck a few times, and a few times the water level rose up so high that she had to suck on air pockets in cracks along the ceiling. 

However at the bottom of the chute she did not find a way out as she hoped. She found heaps of bones rolled up and stacked. One casket stood up in the middle, its door off, surrounded by drain gates and flood tunnels. Its hand wings were in the skeletal hands of the deceased. Something stood up inside. A ridge of solid bone down the middle of its skull, its skull was shaped like a dog’s almost. Yet it had two spines. When she touched it, she felt something entombed breaking free, and seeing the sun for the first time in millenia. 

The walls and ceiling twisted around her as she slid through the drain gates, tearing her clothes, slicing open her flesh, carried away by freezing gray water. She hid in a small space in the tunnels, but knew time was running out. She heard what she awoke pacing, fluttering, stomping and chirping. It ate the the marrow out of the bones and spoke to the dark. The steaming blocks of the Mausoleum seemed to listen. Soon she knew the water would drop, and she'd have another chance to escape. Yet the dangers of the Masuolean increased. Floating pillars of fire, collapsing floors, poison fumes. 

III The Monster

In the dark belly I lay dormant, lulled by the sweetness of forgotten souls. In a heavy slumber I am satisfied with the feast. From the shadows I watch fools disturb my resting place. The aroma of lingering guilt fills the palace. The deliciousness of weakness. The shadows of their hearts!

From within the shadow walls I taste the fates of the intruders. A terrible reality intertwines between us. Fear calls to me, and chaos ignites my power. In their panic, the old incantations are useless. 

When the casket opened, I awoke like the wrath of the forgotten. I talk to the spirits in the walls. I can feel how the wizards of old tried to confine us. Time wore down those once impenetrable magics. 

When the entrance slammed shut, I encroached on the makers of meaningless incantations. I drew nearer under whispers of despair. Threads of desperation came unraveled in the dark. 

At that moment they were mine. Within me, captured by an unquenchable hunger, a feast of regret!

IV The Mausoleum 

The girl stopped breathing. She had hidden beneath a stone ledge while the creature paced through the tunnels, dragging its bones against the walls and whispering her name. It knew everything about her—her ambitions, her lies, her failures, the reason she had bought the bones. She had wanted to be the first to discover something nobody else had found. Now she understood that the mausoleum had been built for something far older than any cemetery. Beneath the layers of inscriptions she found the warning: THE DEAD ARE NOT BURIED HERE. THEY ARE FED HERE.

The creature emerged from the darkness and told her the truth. The mausoleum was not its prison. The mausoleum was its mouth. The floor broke beneath her and she fell into the lower chamber.

Three nights later, Walt returned. The skeleton was gone, the buyer had disappeared, and black water had begun leaking from the bag he had carried home. He followed footprints through the snow back to the mausoleum. The gate opened for him. Inside, the corridors seemed longer than before, and hundreds of footprints led downward. He found the medical student alive beneath the earth, covered in blood and mud. She looked at him and whispered, "It followed you."

The walls began to move. Thousands of eyes opened inside the stone. The creature emerged from the darkness in pieces—a skull, a wing, a hand with too many fingers, a spine dragging across the floor. Walt finally understood what it wanted. It did not feed on flesh. It fed on guilt. His debts, his failures, his dead dreams, the woman he had left in the casket, every regret he had carried into the mausoleum had become food.

Voices came from inside the creature. His children. The dead woman. Everyone whose grave he had ever opened. They called to him and told him they were cold. Walt dropped his crowbar. He looked at the girl and told her he was sorry. Then he ran toward the creature, giving himself to it so she could escape.

She crawled from the mausoleum at dawn. For three days she told nobody what had happened. Then she opened the notebook she had carried from the tunnels. A drawing showed Walt standing beside a grave with the creature behind him. Beneath it were the words: THE GRAVE DIGGER BRINGS THE DEAD. The next page showed the student inside the mausoleum: THE STUDENT OPENS THE DOOR. The final page was blank.

Then words began appearing.

THE THIRD MUST CARRY IT OUT.

Three knocks came from her apartment door.

"Open the door," Walt's voice whispered.

She looked toward the window. The snow outside was untouched except for a trail of footprints leading from the woods to her building. At her feet lay a small black stone glowing red from within.

She picked it up.

From somewhere beneath the earth, the creature whispered:

"Now you know."

The lights went out.

Beneath the floorboards, something began digging.