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Digging the five holes took nearly twenty-four hours, some of it in the blistering sun, some of it in the dark of night and the drizzling rain. The yard behind the old home place became a muddy quagmire, a warren of seeping pits, a maze of earthen, worm-riddled mounds of dirt and rock. Delroy’s back, shoulders, arms, and legs all screamed in a different key of agony. His hands bled from blisters and splinters from the old shovel’s handle. His eyes burned from the steady stream of salty sweat pouring into them.
But he had finally found the body.
Partially shrouded in tattered burlap, skin grey and withered and flaking off blackened bones, eyes long gone and leaving dark and shriveled holes behind, lips peeling back from crooked teeth that were somehow still pristine and white and locked in a hideous leer. A few strands of long, stringy grey hair still clung to the scalp, even though the skin had rotted away in patches, revealing glimpses of skull. The arms were drawn up close to the chest, crossed at the wrists, and the nails were long and caked with dirt.
Leaning on the shovel, Delroy stood at the edge of the grave-hole and stared down at the old woman’s corpse. She had been there in the ground for more than thirty years, and she had lived in the old home place for seventy years before her death. The old woman had never wanted to leave the property, not in life and not in death. She had never liked to sleep, neither. When she was alive, she had wandered the old home place restlessly at all hours. Pacing the creaking hardwood floor, shuffling through the dry pine straw carpet in the yard, wandering as she considered the many foul secrets that had nested in her mind over the years.
Dirt slid from under Delroy’s feet as he scrabbled into the grave. Tangled roots grabbed at him. He crouched next to the shriveled corpse and scooped her up into his arms, drawing her close. He pressed his lips close to what remained of the dead woman’s ear.
“M-mama,” he whispered, “I need to know on of the old truths, one of them things you learned from the hidden ones that came down from the trees on starless nights. I know I shouldn’t disturb you now, but I got enemies aligning against me, and I can’t stop them without your help.”
The body twitched in his arms.
He whispered his question.
The old woman’s head turned—slowly, creaking, spasming—and her lipless mouth brush Delroy’s ear.
She whispered back.
Delroy gently placed the body back into the dirt.
“Thank you, Mama.”
Climbing out of the grave, Delroy felt a wave of sadness wash over him. After all these years, he still missed his mother, still missed her ceaseless pacing, still missed her maddening whispers to the beings that dwelled in the forest long ago.
Maybe those creatures—the hidden ones—still lurked in the woods surrounding the old home place. If they did, though, Delroy had no idea how to conjure them. Mama had always refused to teach him the words, even when he ranted and raged and threatened her. The secret had gone with her when the poison had sent her coughing and wheezing and spitting blood into the abyss.
And she was still stingy with her secrets to this day.
Delroy started to fill the five holes. He saved his mother’s grave for last. By the time he reached her, his weariness threatened to drag him down. His back was rigid with agony. His arms were trembling and weak. And he found he missed his mother a little less than before.
Life would have been much simpler if she had just been forthcoming with her most powerful secrets.
One day, Delroy might need to dig the old woman up again and ask her for a table scrap of unholy knowledge. He knew that when he did, he’d have to dig more than one hole. He could mark her resting place, but she still liked to roam.
Tossing a shovelful of dirt down onto the corpse, he muttered a warning.
“Stay where I put you this time.”
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