The Graveyard Shift

             I watch the sunset blend its russet reds with the subtle starlight of dusk. The canvas in the sky matches the palette of autumn leaves as they twist and tumble in the steady breeze. Such life they seem to have, for their dry and withered states. Deceased but still living, they dance through the air before finally coming to rest above the cemetery’s inhabitants. They hide the displays of bouquets in their various shades of life: offerings for loved ones long since departed.

             The gravestones jut upward from their leaf beds, the only shades of gray in the entire gated grounds. With my leaf blower, I relieve them of their colored cover and send the leaves sailing once again. Nothing dead rests here.

             “Oy!” A gravestone shouts. If I didn’t know any better, I would never have recognized the small slab as such. “Keep it down, eh? People are tryna sleep ‘ere!”

             I roll my eyes. “You can’t sleep, Ben. Not here.”

             “Tha’s Benjamin to ye, pipsqueak!” the grave rumbles.

             “You say something, Dustfart?” I aim the air nozzle at the grave.

             “O-Oy! Quit that!”

             I snicker before pointing my weapon back toward its intended adversaries.

             A solemn silence proceeds the whimsical atmosphere. “…Ye know I need more time, kid.”

             “More time,” I repeat as I move along my scheduled evening route. A sad smile slips past my void expression. That pitiful excuse for a grave has never seen a bouquet, let alone a single flower. If his son hasn’t shown up in who-knows-how-many decades, ‘more time’ is never going to help crotchety old Ben.

             I pass another grave and relieve it of its leaves. A lovely flower ring of lilacs has been placed over the headstone’s right corner. The girl’s name is easily readable in emblazoned gold lettering. “Evening, Sally.”

             “Good day to you, Demitri!” the grave sings. A warm aura radiates from the headstone.

             I smile. “Cheerful as ever, I see.”

             “Yes, very much so. My family visited me again, look!”

             I look down once my trusty leaf blower has done its deed. “Chocolate chip this time?” For all the attention she gets from her loved ones, it’s no wonder she stays. Still, she has a limit like everyone else.

             “Yes! Mummá always remembers my favorites.” A pair of leaves spin by for an instant, blushing brightly. “I wish I could eat them, but it would please me more if you enjoyed them in my place!”

             “Really? For me?” I gasp with the comical inclination that this has never happened before. I turn off my gale gun (accompanied by an exaggerated ‘Finally’ in the distance) and help myself to a cookie. I shouldn’t indulge on a gift intended for another. But Sally insists, and her family believes she eats them. With the lively aura she exudes in the presence of all others, this comes as no surprise to me. 

             I continue my rounds as usual, passing greetings along to all the graveyard’s occupants, whilst paying my respects to those departed. I think again of old Dustfart, and how I’m going to have to break the news to him soon. I have some leeway in my decisions as Gatekeeper, but I’ve granted him far too much time as is. If his soul decays much more, he won’t be able to make it to the afterlife.

             “Better get it over with,” I shrug as I trudge up the hill to his grave. It’s taken me all night to cover the entire cemetery grounds, and I’ve come full circle with the morning light. I spend my short journey contemplating what to say to him, having avoided the thought all night.

             “Ben, it’s time…” I sigh with the best I can come up with once I reach earshot of the grave. I have never assumed the dead have better hearing than the living, but it’s apparently not worse.

             “But I just got here.” I startle at the sound of a voice, familiar but much younger than Ben’s rasp. It fills my ears with the dizzying resonance of the living, almost like a shout (though I can’t imagine it is). This is not Ben.

             “And who are you? How do you know my name?”

             I stand corrected.

             “This is my son, Ben,” says Benjamin, which I shall now refer to him as. I acknowledge this in silence, for only I can hear the dead. A hunched figure rises; I mistook it for Benjamin’s grave in the morning gloom. It’s a middle-aged man. His physical likeness to all I know of Benjamin makes me believe for a fleeting moment in visible ghosts.

             I realize the awkward silence has extended longer for Ben than it has for me. “I’m the Gatekeeper here. And I was telling Benjamin it’s about time he got a visitor.”

             I realize, once again in pointless hindsight, that I meant groundskeeper, but the eventual dissolution of the man’s confused expression tells me that, in his mind, he has already made the correction for me. “…I see. You look a little young to be working here.”

             What, do I have to look more like the decaying dead to work at a cemetery? The nerve of some people. “I’m older than I look,” I state simply. It’s no lie.

             Ben quickly loses interest in me, and his thoughts linger back to his initial intent. “May I have some time alone with my father?” His voice seems steady, but there is no foundation underneath it.

             I grant his wish without hesitance, though I can’t help but watch from a distance. The man talks to the sad stump of a grave for a time. I can make out no words, only tone. It’s weary and aching, the sound of heavyset regret. There’s another note to it, but I can’t place its meaning.

             Young Ben’s posture holds steady and measured until the wind picks up. His shoulders hunch forward as he shudders and shakes with the leaves in the morning breeze. Finally he falls to the grave, embracing the closest proxy to his real father that he can ever have. The breeze picks up a wailing sob, and for once I am unsure if it came from the living or dead.

             I leave them be until Ben finally tears himself away from his father’s grave. The leaves settle about his feet as he walks in a defeated gait. He doesn’t look back.

             I approach the stone stump. “Benjamin?”

             The stone resonates the sound of tears and mortality. “It’s time, Dem. It’s finally time.” Again, there is a twinge of something I can’t recognize. Perhaps it is something only those who have lived can understand.

             I lift my hand, calling Benjamin’s spirit from its petty grave. There are a few cracks in its ethereal light where it decayed with time. I curse inwardly. I was careless with this one. I should know better than to form attachments to the dead by now.

             Luckily, his spirit mended itself just enough from its meeting with Ben. I smile as I lift my hand to my face. No more than a shallow breath is needed to send Benjamin soaring with autumn’s colors, his bright blue aura matching the palette of early dawn. I follow suit soon after as his guide through the Gate. I shall return with the dusk to tend to my beloved leaves.