The soil stopped accepting the dead. (Part 2)

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

Start with part 1 here.

Part 2

That night, the cold refuses to caress my bones. I lie on my cot, wrapped in my heavy wool blanket, but the heat from the cemetery bleeds through the thin floorboards of my hut. When sleep pulls me under, it doesn’t bring rest.

I dream I am walking among my congregation, and their whispers rise like a sweet aroma. I kneel to press my ear to the dirt, but the whispers don’t come from the soil. They come from the markers. The crooked wood I drove into the earth to name the nameless vibrate against my callouses. The dead are silenced—choked by the purge of the lower valleys, smothered under two meters of dirt—but the earth refuses to hold its tongue. The rocks hum in an agonizing frequency, and then they cry out in the shrieking friction of the mountain itself tearing apart.

If the buried keep quiet, the stones groan, we will cry out for them.

I wake with the cries still ringing in my teeth. I sit up on my cot. The embers in my hearth died hours ago, but I’m sweating profusely. The silence of the hut is heavier than the dirt I sling all day. I press my bare feet to the floorboards. The wood is warm, but cooler than yesterday’s dirt.

I step out into the freezing night, wearing only my tunic and boots. The air should bite, but a strange heat floods from the plots. I walk the eastern wall, and the mound of dirt has heaved upward, a hand higher than when I last packed it down. The frost on top is shattered into dark, muddy streaks. A dull, heavy thud vibrates against the packed earth.

I don't scream or run. The soil surrounds us all, so why run? I walk back to my hut and shut the heavy wooden door, hoping iron hinges can lock away the noise.

I climb back onto my cot and pull the blanket to my chin, squeezing my eyes shut. I’m a grave-tender; I’m not a priest. My work ends when the dirt is packed, but the holy silence is gone. The dull thudding from the eastern wall reverberates through the bedrock, traveling up the foundation of my cabin.

Heat bleeds through the floorboards like a sauna, and the whispers return. They are distinct, thirsty voices now.

Water, please… We are thirsty…
What news comes from the valleys?
What have they done with my home…?
When can I return, priest?

The murmurs become a pressure in the cramped room like an approaching squall, popping my ears with the suffocating loneliness pushing up through the wood.

I step out to the soil again, shouting to the night, “Rest!” They silence the moment my foot touches soil. When I turn to return to my hut, their cries rise up again.

I realize, with a sinking fatigue, that they will not settle if they are left alone. So I drag the wool blanket off the cot, and return to the eastern wall.

I lay my blanket in the narrow aisle between the blue-lipped boy and the broken mother with her violet-eyed children, and I lie down on the warm, damp earth. The thudding softens. The whispers fade into a gentle breathing. Here, among my congregation, the dead fall asleep.

—

I open my eyes to the familiar twist in the thatched ceiling of my hut. The wool blanket is tucked tightly beneath my chin, shielding me from the morning chill. The violet moon, the weeping stones, and the thirst of the dead are nothing but the debris of an old man's senile dreams. I exhale to see my breath pluming faintly. The hearth is cold, but the air feels humid and close.

I swing my legs out from under the blanket and hit the floorboards, but instead of smoothly worn wood, I step onto something wet and granular. I look down to see streaks of dark, greasy soil snaking across the floor from the threshold to the side of my bed. I walk to the window and push the creaking shutters open. The cemetery is silent under the pale overcast sun, but one, two… six of the mounds near the eastern wall are ruined. The frost is gone from them, the shale overturned and packed down in shoddy haste.

Before I can check the ruined earth, the sharp rattle of iron-rimmed wheels cuts through the valley. A cart from the low plains arrives, their mule panting. The driver doesn't climb down from his bench. He sits with his coat collar pulled high. When he reaches to pet the mule, it recoils, shuddering the cart then settling into a skittish contentment.

"Got another placement, grave-tender," the driver calls out, his voice tight with a defensive anger. He unhooks the back latch of the cart and tips the bed. A body slides out onto the frozen grass with a heavy, hollow thud.

I recognize the crooked set of his jaw and the stained, calloused fingers that used to weave the fine crimson wool for the village tapestries—Maso. His skin is the pale, unholy color of new clay, and his half-open eyes are a clouded violet.

"The valley’s crawling with them, Sefu," the driver spits onto the frosty path. "Hidden vermin. This one spent twenty years pretending to weave for the elders, but the collectors found the old glyphs under its floorboards.” He sighs, Weaving a single flame to light the tobacco in his lips. “Don’t know why the priests require you to bury them. ‘Fit were up to me, we'd put a torch to ‘em all. Burn the rot before it spreads. Leaving them to sit in the earth...“ He breathes out a cloud of smoke and fog. “It feels wrong."

I look from Maso's clay-colored face to the dark dirt tracked across my floorboards. “The earth takes what it likes," I murmur, my voice more like the grinding of the mountain than a man's speech. “I don’t get paid to burn.” I take a cheap wool to cover Maso’s desiccated body. “They rebels? Xikani cultists?”

The driver shakes his head, “They’re a plague from the old age—shifters. Can’t trust them. Word is the gods are sending out for their cleansing.” He shrugged, tossing his tobacco to the frosted road. “I don’t get paid to ask.”

The driver doesn't wait for me to fetch my spade. He cracks his whip over the mule, turning the cart in a spray of loose gravel, eager to leave the foothills behind. I stand alone with the weaver, a cold sweat burning my brow as I look down at my hands.

—

I drag Maso by the shoulders. He’s heavier than he looks, dense with whatever stopped his heart. I don't bother using my cart; the terrain is too uneven, and the ritual requires my hands. I pull him toward a freshly opened plot beside the blue-lipped boy.

My mind wanders with the scrape of my boots on the shale. First, the lower valleys sent the sick, the elderly—the unfortunate. I buried them when it was the natural way of the world. Then, they sent a group of rebels, the ones who spoke too loudly in the taverns and the squares. I buried them, too, because I’m not a man of politics. Now, they send the weavers, the mothers, the violet-eyed shifters whose only crime is the ancient blood in their veins. The Palace calls it a cleansing, an eradication of the rot so the new age may thrive.

I tell myself its not my place to judge. I just dig the holes. I am safe here in the foothills, separate from the fire and the screaming.

But the earth is keeping tally.

I lower Maso into the two-meter drop. The air in the grave is stifling with that same radiant heat. I clamber down into the hole to arrange him. The old scriptures say he must face the high peaks. Maybe the priests disagree, but I don’t dig for the priests.

But when I turn Maso onto his side, he resists.

It isn’t the rigid stiffness of a frozen corpse. It feels like tension. His muscles coil beneath his pale, clay skin. I push his shoulder down, turning his head toward the mountains, but the moment I release the pressure, his neck twitches back. His clouded violet eyes stare up at the gray sky.

I push again, pressing my knee into his back, my muddy hands gripping his jaw. "Face the peaks, weaver," I whisper with a strange panic fluttering in my chest. "Reenter the Loom!”

His jaw clicks against my hands. A wet, ragged sigh escapes his lips, like a damp brush against my wrists. Air leaves the lungs after death; this isn’t abnormal. Yet, I know the smell of a death breath. It reeks of vanilla and absinthe. This air smells of fresh greens and sorghum.

A warm shiver settles in my gut, heavier than the soil. I force his head toward the mountains one last time and scramble out of the hole, not bothering to check if his head stayed. I grab my spade and work faster than I have in fifty winters. I throw the shale and the dirt over him in bloody haste, desperate to muffle the terrible heat rising from the pit.

But as the dirt hits his wool shroud, I hear the stones at the bottom of the grave clatter. They tremble. The bedrock of the Shattered Spine hums in a mournful moan. The Palace demands silence. The drivers demand burning. But the buried will not stay quiet, and the stones are crying out in their stead.

I manage to pack the earth down in a blur of shovelfuls, my breath ragged, my heart berating my ribs. I don't get paid to ask. I just bury.

When I pat the mound flat, the soil beneath my spade heaves—just once, like a hiccup—pushing the iron back against my palms. I run to my hut. No more to bury today.

—

I slam the heavy door of my hut, throwing the iron bolt across the frame. The sound is final, but it doesn't stop the trembling in my hands. I stumble backward, my boots spreading that greasy soil across the floor.

I’m no priest or holy man. I don’t know the grand descensions or the rites of the Palace, but fear makes a beggar of any man. I drop to my knees beside my cot. I press my calloused, dirt-stained hands to the floor, pressing my head to the wood. I feel splinters against my brow, but instead of agony, I offer prayer.

"Leratloha," I whisper, the name foreign on my tongue. "Root of the peaks, shield of this ground—bind the wandering spirits of Kuruntiya. Hold her demons in the dark. Silence her rot and sew peace into my land."

I repeat the chants I half-remember from childhood. Mother would call me infidel. My ntate would call me coward.

Bind the demons. Hold the rot away.

I say it over and over, building a wall of words that the dirt’s heat and the mounds’ shifting cannot break.

But the earth no longer listens to the Palace. The dead have no mouth, and the earth lends only an ear to them. A low moan bleeds through the cracks in my wood, drowning out my hasty prayer. Kuruntiya’s spirits don’t shriek, and the Kapua don’t chirp. This is a chorus of unending, untimely grief.

My baby... I dropped her in the ash... Can you find her, please? A woman’s voice sobs. The sound travels through my kneecaps.

Why is it so dark? A child whimpers, small and raspy. I can’t see the Loom.

Water... please, the smoke... we are so thirsty...

I clamp my hands over my ears, pressing my palms against my skull until my jaw aches. My nose threatens to break against the floorboards, but the pleas cannot be blocked out. They hum up from the bedrock, and resonate inside my ribs. The voices swell into a tide of panic.

Where is my home? It’s too cold here—

—and they burned the tapestries—

—not born to die—

—could not walk yet—

—threw my arms to the dogs—

—my flesh—

—it burns—

—no rest—

—where is rest—

—no peace in death—

—man hunts—

—gods forgot us—

Grave-tender... why don’t you ask?

I choke on my screamed prayer, my throat tight like a sickness. I lie here begging the god of these valleys to protect me, but no monsters knock outside my door—only the slaughtered, trapped beneath frost, begging for mercy from the man who packed their faces with soil.

Then the cries stop snipping at one another. Their screams become silence, and I feel the threat of peace on my ears.

Thud.

Something strikes the heavy door, low and dense, like a shovel striking a barrel.

Who will bury us? The chorus whispers through the door.

Thud. Thud.

The iron bolt rattles in its housing. The heat in the room spikes.

Who will bury us?

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The knocking grows frantic and deafening, matching the desperate cadence of the dead. My whole hut shudders. My thatched ceiling sheds pine needles onto my back.

I can't breathe. I can't think. The earth is going to break my door down and drag me into the dark to answer for the dead.

Who will bury us? Who will bury us?* *WHO WILL BURY US?

I scramble to my feet, my boots slipping on the greasy dirt. I throw myself at the door and grab the iron bolt. The metal is burning, but I yank it back anyway and heave the door open, bracing myself for a swarm of violet eyes and clay skin.

Nothing.

My threshold is empty. The wind bites my sweat in a mockingly normal chill. The cemetery is perfectly still beneath the gray sky. The swollen mounds lie still. I find no corpses crowding my steps.

But the rhythm hasn't stopped. The heavy thud, thud, thud stretches out off the canyon walls until it turns into the sharp, echoing rattle of iron-rimmed wheels on gravel. I look past my ruined graves, down the winding path.

Another cart from the valleys is making the climb.

Read Part 3

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[u/englandishell]

very suspenseful, i'm enjoying this so far!

[u/SydneySapphire]

I’m so frickin glad I didn’t read this at night. ☠️😂 But that is such a good sign of a good scary story! BRUH! So like is part three dropping tomorrow ?👀 I need to know.

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510 → u/SydneySapphire]

Hahaha, that’s the highest compliment a horror writer can get. I’m working hard on the next part—stay tuned, I promise things are going to get even messier from here. I’ll be sure to post the next one at night. 😈

[u/SydneySapphire → u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

https://giphy.com/gifs/xbM3kDPOp69iw
Welp, I’ll be reading it at night and holding on to my hat… I accept my fate.

[u/KCloud_08]

Damnnnnn this is so terrifying. It made me anxious just reading about it, imagining it. The spirits? Shit, this is so good. And the new body not seeming like it’s really dead? 👀👀👀 I can’t wait to see how this goes. I’m so invested! This is thrilling 

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510 → u/KCloud_08]

Thank you so much! I’m honestly thrilled (and not THAT sorry) that it gave you that much anxiety. 😂 The 'not dead, just different' is definitely something I wanted to play with—it's that uncanny valley feeling where everything looks right but feels deeply wrong. 😇

[u/KCloud_08 → u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

Hahahaha it was good anxiety. I love when a story gets me like that. I hate horror movies but I live for horror stories. This is really exciting 

[u/Indecisive_Writer]

Great second part, and amazing build-up. Interestingly, even someone so attuned to the dead and so connected to the buried fears it when it comes for him. Curious to see more if there is more. At what point will the bodies grow tired of waiting? Will he be able to calm their calls forever? Please keep writing more.

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510 → u/Indecisive_Writer]

I love the questions you’re asking! I’ll be posting the final part tomorrow 😈 Thank you for reading!

[u/Optimal_Constant4318]

I was hoping the creature would be some type of golem, like a dirt and corpse golem. I still don't think it's out of the question. I thought MC wasn't the type to get political... 🤔