This Is Uplifting

The cemetery gates squalled on their rusty hinges, clanging shut behind him.

Dwayne Hayes flinched. It was close to midnight; he had to be quiet. If Mum and Dad found out – sneaking out this late on a school night? – they’d ground him until his thirtieth birthday. But the risk was worth it, and they wouldn’t catch him if he were careful. Holding his dog-eared book and crumpled notes to his chest to hide them from the wind, he scuttled along.

On either side of the uneven path winding up the hill, gravestones leaned, this way and that. Each was in various states of weathering, and they covered at least fifty shades of grey between them. Moss and lichen clung to the stone, smothering half the words. The other half of the inscriptions had softened into oblivion under the rain. Between the graves, dead grass stuck up like Dwayne’s cowlick first thing in the morning. Autumn’s decaying leaves carpeted the ground, scenting the air with their musky smell. Gnarled trees wobbled in the breeze. It was as if they had risen from botanical graves and were now stretching their aching backs.

He grinned. This place sure was creepy, all right. And, yeah, it gave him the willies. But it also showed him that his plan was a good one – it would work. Step one: raise the dead and freak out everyone in town. Step two: enjoy a holiday as school shut down whilst the adults scrambled to tackle the problem. His spell better work. He’d spent more time on this than the entire year’s homework combined. His parents thought he’d finally understood their pleas to apply himself. Little did they know, he’d buried his nose in the Latin dictionary for necromantic purposes. Dwayne followed the path, panting and sweating as he climbed the incline.

At the top of the hill, the town’s most ancient graves clustered. Some of these were now only slabs of stone, any epigraphs, names, and dates long since lost to the tombs of time. The odd cross leaned towards the ground, like things caught sleeping, soon to awaken.

Catching his breath and arming the cool sweat from his eyes, Dwayne surveyed the lay of the land below.

From this high point, the land fell away towards the town lights. The further down you got, the newer the burial sites became. The latest residents slept close to the cemetery’s wrought-iron fences.

Soon, they’d have to expand the cemetery to keep planting their expired citizens here. But that wasn’t Dwayne’s problem; that issue belonged to the adults. And in a few minutes, they’d have another task. He uncrumpled his notes and opened the dictionary to the earmarked page. Dwayne cleared his throat. He raised his free hand to the sky, feeling self-conscious even though he only had an audience of the dead. He started to mumble at a little below his average speaking volume. ‘Uh, surgite, ah, mortui, e-et… um, surgite e terra.’

The wind blew as it had done since humans became bipedal, let alone started burying their dead.

A slight frown creased his brow. Dwayne hadn’t said it loud enough. Even his dad would have yelled, ‘What?’ How were the spirits supposed to hear him? Dwayne squared his shoulders and stood up straighter, as Mum constantly nagged him to do. He neatened his notes. ‘Surgite,’ he said, louder, ‘mortui, uh, surgite— I mean, et surgite e terra.’

The wind quickened its pace and started to circle him. An ethereal moan rode the midnight airwaves.

Goosebumps prickled up all over Dwayne’s skin. He hadn’t imagined that. Something was happening! He repeated it, louder, faster. ‘Surgite, mortui, et surgite e terra!’

The wind swirled around him, sending eddies of fallen leaves skittering. Overhead, thunder rumbled, and a metallic tang fragranced the air. The cloudy, moonlit sky took on eerie shades of purple and green.

He reread it. He didn’t falter – the letters had taken on their own life and marched, lemming-like, from his tongue. ‘Surgite, mortui, et surgite e terra! Surgite, mortui, et surgite e terra! Surgite, mortui, et surgite e terra!’

Underneath, the ground groaned and sighed. The soil shifted like a duvet over a dog’s wagging tail, and the sounds of wood splintering rose from the dirt.

Grinning, wild-eyed, hair standing on end, Dwayne stepped back onto the path. He was now yelling so the spirits could hear him over the roar of the wind. ‘Surgite, mortui, et surg—’

The ground exploded outward in sods of earth as the dead spilt out from their graves. The tombs at the top of the hill vomited out dusty bones with tattered scraps of skin still attached. Their joints knocked together like a D&D player’s dice as they prayed for a natural twenty. Further down the hill, the bodies rising from the burial sites became more and more human. At the cemetery’s edge, that year’s fresh crop levitated from their forever beds, lifted by hands unseen.

Dwayne laughed, whooping like a maniac. He kept his hand raised to the heavens and continued with his spell. ‘Surgite, mortui, et surgite e terra!’

The lifeless bodies rose from the grave. And rose and rose and kept on rising. Soil falling from them and powdering the ground like snow, they soared skyward. Funeral garments flickered in the storm like kites made out of corpses.

Dwayne frowned. They weren’t stopping. ‘Uh…’

Up above the treeline they floated, this sea of sleeping souls. One or two got caught in the powerlines and burst into flames. Severed cables bounced, breakdancing along the ground.

No, this wasn’t what he wanted at all. Dwayne dropped his hand, face drawn in confusion. ‘No, wait. What?’

At that, the spell broke. The levitating dead – those not entangled – dropped from the sky like rotting hailstones. They crashed down at awkward angles. Fragile bones splintered. Heads, limbs, and torsos went scattering. One landed on their back on a headstone, their pencil-strength spine snapping. Another crashed down atop a parked car on the street. The windows exploded outward, the metal crumpled, and the alarm went off. Several impaled themselves on the fence’s upraised arrows. A couple became stuck in the limbs of the trees, dangling – forbidden fruit. One carcass landed back in its grave without so much as a knock.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no. Dwayne had tried to raise the dead, but he’d ended up raising the dead instead. But in a much more literal sense. He always knew his Latin was bad, but this was oh so bad. Bad, bad, bad. He guessed he’d mistranslated something somewhere along the way. It appeared you couldn’t translate all English phrases one to one.

From the direction of the car alarm came a wounded howl. ‘Oh, God! MOTHER!’

Dwayne grimaced. Oh, this was going to be so bad. He’d wanted some time off from school, but it looked like school was all he was going to be doing for a considerable while. Mum and Dad would come down on him like a tomb’s lid. But through it all, he found at least one tiny thing somewhat uplifting and clung to it with a death grip. With his indefinite grounded future to look forward to, his Latin was going to get a hell of a lot better.

Dwayne might get the spell right next time.

---

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Written for the November 2024 #Blogbattle: ‘Cemetery’