S2/E6 | The Graveyard

a Loa, sure, AH, after you. Over here, to your right is the oldest portion of the graveyard, the only part of town older really than the church. This is where some of the builders were buried as they died that first winter building the holy structure, those that were still members of the faith. Of course, there's an underground river that runs far below this spot, and as their bodies rocks, it carries them to the ocean to be with the father in the sea. Lovely. No, why don't

they just give them a burial at sea? Well, that right is reserved only for our saints, those whom the Father Calls too loudly enough for the others to hear. See, think of this burial as sort of a purgatory. We dissolve into the earth over time, enter the water table and it cleanses us before returning US home. I see, is someone else here? M Hmm, I don't know. Let's see. Hello, hello, hello, perhaps it's the dead. It's a joke. Oh, who's there then?

Two pilgrows? You here to see someone in particular? Are you just window shopping? MM HMMMM, are you? Stop? Stop right there, miss m sorry about that. You just can't. Are you unwell? M H in a sense, death is a trickster. I know because I was playing it's game. I know from after what happened to this town and what happened to poor Alice. There's no man in the cloth. But I worked for one year. It's been a grave digger over thirty years and put more folks in the

ground than I can remember. So, as you could say, as affiliated used to be, you could put a person in the ground, rattle off a few prayers, tip your capitaries and glass to the dearly departed. Not No more. Need the lighthouse. Over there you'll find a cliff hundred and thirteen foot dropped down to the cove where the ship had wrecked. That day, same day death started playing pranks. We formed a rescue party. Scaled the cliffs down to

the rocks below. Looked like a small transport vessel. The riptide had hammered her against the rock so over and over till there were nothing but splinters and oil all along the cove. Most of them bodies was already buried neath the sand and seaweed. Some crabs got to them before we could, so there weren't much left of them boys, just skulls and cartilage, white flesh dangling off the skeletons like little flags flapping in the wind. Except one fellow.

Followed a trail on the black sand along the coved weight collapsed. The Gulls was on umn and nearly pecked his ears clean off. He's gashed and gnarled from a reef too. Blood everywhere. I think it was porter, John Porter. He was the first to get close to the poor bastard. Porter checked for a beaten heart. M He's alive, still alive, port calls out, and then all of a sudden a man's arms shot up, clutched old porter by the collar brought him down to his crusted lips so he could

whisper in his hair. Poor soul managed to get a few words out so John could hear a final breath, but gurgled up to the salt water and sand and has collapsed long. Don't put me down there, don't put me under. The man wheezed and then he was out. Died right then and there, still clinging the John Porter's coat. There was talk of sinking him. I wouldn't have it.

Neither man deserves a proper areal. I says. Being a grave digger means I'm of the business of the church here and as such, well as no shepherd, mind yee. But in the absence of any clergyman on the blood soiled beach that day, it figured. As next in command, we managed to hoist the dead man to the top. I've dug the grave foreverend came gave us a sermon for the unknown fellow about how it could have been any one of us. So we're all God's children and soul well, we laid that man down to rest and

that was that, or so we thought. Porter got the deeper first John Porter. He'd gone back down to the mill to make up for his shift with the six set in. Next day his skin started turning black and flesh from bleeding inside. By Day three he was bleeding on the outside, and by the morning of day four he stopped bleeding because his heart stopped pumping. At least. They couldn't find no pulse. So as I dug another grave, then them others from the mill got the fever. Had

to dig three more graves that Sunday. Next day, seven more holes. My hands were so sore from digging I had to soak them the buckets of salt water and ice. Then them government man came down from the bureau. Said we needed to dig up the first man and the one we'd collected from the shipwreck. They brought a medical examiner with them to do the Autopsyne so as I

dug him up, pried open his casket. Of course, that's when we noticed the marks, terrible scrapes and gougers and the coffined lid, finger nails ripped off and embedded in the pine. Turns out that man weren't dead when we put him under. Poor bastard woke up down there no escape from the dark and the cold, no ways out of the tight confines of his two by six box, no telling how long before he ran out of breath. Government man said it was happening all other places too.

showed US them headlines. People fallen into a coma like state. Death was full in them doctors into thinking these poor bastards passed dawn ye here. And when them graves was unearthed and them container's pride open, they found grisly evidence of mistakenly buried victims, their frantic attempts to escape the casket, and so on. GENEVIEVE was next. GENEVIEVE sellers, she's head nurse up at the infirmary. Took a quick she's presumed dead. The very next day the whole town gathered for her funeral.

That's when it happened. The Reverend was halfway through the observance, mid prayer. Grant to the souls of all our faithful departed, your mercy, and so on. Father, we pray that genevieve sellers may know the blessings of everlasting life, life and so forth. Right then, old genevieve sellers sat up, sat right the funk up in a casket. Quarter of the congregation either wretched or fainted right where they stand. And my wife Alice. Well, she froze up to the fright

overtook her, pure shock. I couldn't breathe neither. I had to shake her heart carried her all the way home. So it was decided on what had to be done. Ye here, and we proceeded to dig them other's arm the once. We just buried lucky them. Holes was fresh and the earth was loose, and sure enough, quarter of them bore the signs, the Tell Tale marks of premature burial.

Fingers gnarled to the bone of trying to claw their way out of them boxes, their faces stretched in terror, their eyes fixed and permanent, anguished, and I knew death was near. And John The show its jow's Ratlin laughter. I could almost hear its hands clacking together in cruel applause, because that's when the panics set in, every one overcome with the fear that they might meet the same fate

like a fungus spreading out across the village. Constant state of terror like that can damage the spirit of a town like cowers, and it did. The fear crept into my own house too. Jove valance completely mad. First she got restless, stop sleeping, stopped eating too poor sweet alice became obsessed. The unholy terror of being buried alive slithered in her brain like a nest of worms. I gave her medicine to knock her out and woke to the sound of her wheezing and choking in her dreams, like

she was suffocating. She's clawing at the darkness just an inch from her face, like as though she's trapped. I jostled her and she woke up with a start, sucking in a deeper igged breath, like she's broken through to the surface from the watery depths after almost drowning. After them tears, she'd start to Weil, sobbing into the night.

Of course. That's when the fever set into so that built her special box, a casket with a little pool stringle that run up to an eight foot poll all the way up to a pretty silver bell above ground, a safety device in case she's put down premature so she could just pull the cord and ring the bell for to signal us if she weren't all dead. When I showed it to her, she nodded real polite like and thanked me, the corners of her mouth uncoiled in that pretty smile of hers, just at her far away stare.

That night she doused herself at linseed oil and try to burn herself alive. I walked in on her. She's trying frantic light to strike the wet match. Next Day her fever was burned and hot and her fingers was black. MAG sertain, she says, I'm dead. If I fixed me, that wouldn't box killy. Promise you will if he loved me, if you really I would love me. Thems were her last words. I couldn't do it, though. How could? I am now? That's when I noticed I's hot with fever too.

I carried Alice in me arms and lay there on that stone slab over there. Picked all the buttery weed from them woods, collected all the column mine and maiden hair fern from the cliffs and I surrounded her lifeless body with bouquets of them wild flowers. Figured I should wait a turn before putting poor alice in the earth. Waiter spell and see if she don't come back to me. And I waited till the night air filled with that

sickly sweetness. I still waiting and taking diggin up all the mothers we buried just to make sure they ain't still breathing. Fever is set in full now. My brain it's boiling. I don't know if it's for me grieving, nor the fever. My eyes is a blur now. I don't know if it's swore, my tears or lack of sleep. My hands is black now. I couldn't tell you if they're staying from the soil or if he's black from the sick. Alice has been lying on that slab for a long time now too. I think she's gone. I

can't be too sure. Now I can't tell the essence of mortal decave a cent to them dead flowers. I don't know as was his actual no more. I don't know how long I've been here digging, neither. I don't remember how I come here, how to exit. I don't know whether I'm even living anymore at all. Like I says, death is a trickster. Yeah, H well, I do hope you recover. Yeah, well, hear any bells ringing in here and you don't see me go fetch the pastor got it?

M Hm, of course. Shall We? Yes, have a good day, sir. MHM. This way. Will he be all right? The father gives and the father takes back. Everything returns to him. Waits. What is it? I think? M H this this grave stone? What about it? It's familiar. MM HMM. Is it? I know it. The name George Barrow. MM HMMM. Well, does it mean anything to you? All right, I don't know. It just seems so weird. It's making my head hurt again to try to remember. Well then, maybe back off

a little. It will come interesting. What just how the mind works? Don't thing. Who is George Barrow? He was a citizen. Did you know him? I know everyone. The moment has passed. It's gone, the feeling of familiarity. Well then it will come back come. I have stops to make to prepare for the gathering tonight. We must go by the butcher and a warning. If he offers you samples, decline. Tomorrow, on thirteen days of Halloween, the butcher's shop nothing but

glamor for everything that appears. No this, no matter what it is or what it looks like, or how much begs and pleads, even if it looks like someone you know or new, there's nothing there but unholy evil and death. Do you understand? No matter what, even if everything inside of you struggles with him, even if it's a child. Thirteen days of Halloween the Graveyard, starring Kathleen and Jimmy, Bethany and Lynde and Aileen Lloyd. Written by Dan Bush

with addition nil material by Nicholas Takowski. Sound Design and mixing by Rima Il Kali, engineering by violent FERTZON, DUBWAY STUDIOS NEW YORK. Casting by Jessica Losa. Created by Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with executive producer Aaron Manky. A production of I heart radio, grim and mild and BLUMHOUSE television.