Cemetery Play - Part 2

By Harlowe Pilgrim

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Part 2 ...

“Where are those children?”

Night was beginning to fall, early on what had already been a dim and dour, overcast day.

“CHILDREN!”

Her call from the threshold went unanswered.

“How they let me worry,” she said to herself. “Those children … will be the death of me.”

She threw on a shawl, and picked up a lantern. The wind growing blustery as she shut the door behind her, Mother struck out hot on the trail of the departed.

“CHILDREN!” she called after them “CHIL-DREN!!!”

Making her way down that lonely road, there no replies to her repeated hailings, urgent as they were becoming.

Darkness was descending, and the mother was fearful.

“CHILDREN!”

It was becoming a cry.

Soon, she came to the cemetery, by which her children had certainly passed, but inside whose somber walls they certainly were not.

She called out to them anyway.

“CHILDREN!”

“Mother …”

A response?

“Mother …”

The voice was muted, but she heard it plain enough.

“Mother …”

She could not tell whom of them it was, for the faintness.

No matter, for surely they were all together.

“CHILDREN?”

She stormed into the cemetery through its open iron gate.

“CHILDREN?”

“Mother!”

The voice was voices, not just one.

“Mother!” they called to her.

She ran into the rows of stones. “CHILDREN!”

“Mother!” This was her youngest calling … her baby. But … they were all her baby. “I can’t find them! Help me! MOTHER!”

“CHILDREN!”

She’d become frantic.

“CHILDREN!”

“Mother!”

She stopped short.

The voices … the voices of her children sounded like they were … could they be? They sounded like they were coming from …”

“Mother!”

Could their voices be coming from …

“Mother, please!”

Underground?

“CHILDREN!”

“Mother!”

Underground! They certainly were coming from under the ground!

She held up her lantern. It’s light was becoming a necessity, as persisted the darkness of night.

“Damn you,” she cursed the encroaching darkness she felt stalking her. “Damn you all to―”

“Mother!”

Her lantern caught the wooden handle of a shovel, standing in the ground amid the monuments.

She ran to it, and found it stuck next to a fresh excavation, a half-dug grave.

“Mother!”

Or was it a half-buried grave? The voices she was hearing were at … her feet.

Without another thought, she began to dig.

“Mother!”

“I’m … I’m coming to you. Mother’s coming!”

The earth flew as she dug.

“Mother!”

She stopped shoveling. “What’s that? Children?”

“Mother!”

Their voices were subterranean as ever, but now seemed to come from … elsewhere.

She climbed up out of the hole she’d been digging. “My children … my loves … call to mother now, so I can―”

“Mother!”

“I hear you! I’m coming! Call to me again!”

“Mother!”

She ran to another spot, and began to dig a fresh hole afront a large family marker, in soil that had lain sleeping a great many years. 

“Mother’s coming, children! Babies! Mother’s coming!”

“Do … you see what I see?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

“That’s …”

“Um-hum. That’s her.”

“I didn’t believe she was … I’m telling you, I never would have believed it.”

“I know what you mean … there was a time … I never would have either. But … you dig graves long enough … and you’ll believe all manner of things you didn’t think you believed in. There’s a lot of sad old souls out here.”

“But how do you …”

“Hey, it’s paying work, ain’t it?”

“Yes, well―”

“So let’s get to it, man. We owe some people a hole in the ground.”

“Okay, okay … but how do we … ?”

“How do we get back to our diggin’? Well first things first. The new guy … has to go and ask the ghost for his shovel back.”

The End

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Copyright 2014 Cock and Bull Publishing, LLC

This piece appears in the ebook Harlowe Pilgrim's Oh My Words! 2014.

Harlowe Pilgrim’s books are available at Amazon, iBooks, 
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