On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 177, of 240 so far.

In the Ground

They stood far back from the small crowd of mourners, several rows of gravestones away, pretending to visit the last resting place of a loved one. The sky was grey, but brighter than it had been an hour ago, and the temperature was moderate. It would soon be midday, but the service would already be over by then.

“Going to be a long night,” the man said, and the woman nodded, even though nightfall was many hours away. They would both be here in the graveyard, acting in a supervisory capacity, well into the small hours of the following morning.

“What was this one’s name?” the woman asked, and the man gave the barest shrug.

“Can’t remember,” he replied. “Something like Callan or Callow. First name was Meredith. Or maybe it was Melanie. Or Mary. Does it matter?”

The woman rolled her eyes, but then she shook her head. It really didn’t matter what the deceased had been called. What mattered was the task ahead.

She could see the mound of earth near the grave site, covered by green fabric so as to be less offensive to the eye. It was a custom that puzzled her. After all, everyone could see the hole that had been dug, and it stood to reason that it’d be filled in with the same soil that had been taken out of it in the first place. But people were sensitive about anything related to death, and if a big green textured tarpaulin made a burial service a little easier on them, then that was just fine.

“Team is waiting just down the road,” the man said. He was looking in that direction, and the two vehicles that always accompanied them — a cement mixer and a long-wheelbase nondescript panel van — were just barely visible through the trees that lined the vast municipal cemetery.

“Did they already do the casket swap?” the woman asked, and the man nodded distractedly, still looking at the vehicles.

“At the funeral home,” he replied. “Nobody noticed. Didn’t even need any kind of excuse. They can match just about any commercially available box these days. It’s the bespoke ones that are the problem, but I’ve not had one of those in a long time.”

The replacement caskets looked identical to the originals, in virtually all cases. Even the undertakers didn’t notice the swap-outs, which were done in the middle of the night beforehand. There had been a few isolated incidents when a team had been caught in the act, but government identification and cover stories — often including the possibility of biological or radiological contamination — usually smoothed things over. The important thing was that the bodies were transferred into their new coffins, which had almost exactly the same weight and dimensions as the existing ones, with the only two differences being undetectable to the casual observer.

The first was an embedded layer of carbon-ceramic-silver armour mesh, cocooning the entire interior once the lid was closed, embedded in the lining. The second, on a time delay so as to trigger hours after the interment and ground-filling were complete, was a set of twelve explosively-triggered hooked bolts which completely sealed the lid onto the casket’s body, fusing themselves solid in the process.

“Are they redoing the grave itself on this one?” the woman asked, full of questions today, and the man glanced at her in mild irritation. He nodded.

“Fifty percent extra depth. The coffin stays in the same place; they just fill underneath, then up to about a metre below ground level. Rebar and crushed glass mixed into the set.”

He said it in an offhand way, as if he was talking about the weather. The woman blinked. “You ever think about how much all this costs? I know it’s not for many people, but still.” The man shrugged once more.

“It’s good value for the taxpayer’s money, considering the alternative,” he said. “Oh, and you’ll like this. Do you know where the budget comes from?”

The woman frowned as she considered the question. She’d never wondered how the department was funded before, always assuming that it was just a secret channel of money from the government. But everything had to be accounted for.

“Military?” she suggested, and the man shook his head, smirking a little now. “National Health Service, then?” she asked, and the man laughed.

“I like that,” he replied, “and it makes sense in a way. But no. It comes from environmental and civic renewal; those programmes you see on the sides of buses. Greener Spaces, Places for People, Urban Rewilding; all that stuff. Bicycle lanes. And wider pavements for wheelchairs and baby buggies. I think it’s earmarked as soil enrichment and roots removal at times, and sometimes as landfill reclamation. Really classy stuff.”

It was logical, the woman thought. A flexible budget that was almost entirely discretionary, and activities whose costs almost no-one could estimate. Most importantly, it was boring, not inviting any scrutiny.

“So I can tell my mother that I’m doing environmental services work for the government,” the woman said, raising an eyebrow, and the man laughed again.

“You can’t tell your mother a damned thing besides the story you already gave her,” he replied. “And she’ll live a longer and happier life because of it. She’ll sleep better too.”

There was silence for a few moments as the funeral service came to a close and the mourners began to leave.

“Talking of sleeping,” the woman said, tilting her head in the general direction of the fresh grave, “when are we expecting Meredith to wake up?”

The man glanced at his watch. “Not for at least another twenty-four hours,” he replied, “but we always err on the side of caution. She’s from a really old bloodline; one we’ve had dealings with before. Hence the precautions.”

They both bowed their heads as a small group of the mourners wandered past them on their way to the parking area. After they were no longer within earshot, the woman turned to the man once more.

“And the family and friends… they have no idea?”

The man shook his head. “They never do,” he said. “Only happens after the person dies. They change. It’s some kind of metabolic malfunction, with a genetic basis. It’s heritable too. Not guaranteed, but enough to put half of those people at the funeral on our watch list. Hopefully they’ll never have to find out about it at all.”

“Still,” the woman said, her voice thoughtful, “she was someone’s daughter. A mother. A grandmother, by the looks of it. And by all accounts just a little old lady.”

“Put those thoughts out of your mind,” the man said, straightening his coat in preparation for the work that lay ahead. “They all had loved ones, and they were all loved, just like you and me — but that’s where the similarity ends.”

He turned to look directly at her, and even though she couldn’t see his eyes through the dark lens of his sunglasses, she knew his gaze was locked on her. The man leaned closer, to make sure he wouldn’t be overheard.

“Sweet little dead old lady or not, in a day or so she’s going to wake up angry, and a lot more dangerous than she ever was up here, and hungry for things that her family wouldn’t want to think about. Our job is to make sure she stays in the ground where she belongs.”

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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