The Tomb-Keeper

Vigil of the Tomb-Keeper
By The Weird Leviathan


“Quiet, Mort,” Jameson muttered. He was a rough man, unshaven and harsh-eyed. The rain ran between his brows, but paused, unable to bear the thought of running so close to those eyes. His coat wasn’t thick enough to protect him from the rain, but Jameson didn’t notice; all of his attention was fixed on the mausoleum.
Mort dropped down to the balls of his feet and picked up the shovels and picks and crowbar he’d dropped. No worse for wear, but wet from the rain-soaked ground, they clattered again when he rose to full height, and Jameson shot him a warning glare.
“Maybe it’d be easier to stay quiet if you held some of this stuff,” Mort said quietly as he approached Jameson. The mausoleum waited patiently for the men to continue their conversation. It had waited this long, and it could wait a few minutes more.
Jameson simply reached into his pocket and pulled out a large gun. “I’m already carrying equipment.”
The two men spoke no more until they reached the door to the stone tomb. It was a moderately-sized mausoleum made from grey stone. It had all the usual trappings of a tomb—the columns on the sides, the Greco-roman style roof, the cherubs near the apex of the roof that seemed to stare down at them.
“Hey, Jameson,” Mort spoke, shattering the silence. He felt as if he’d just defiled some sacred space by speaking. When his partner grunted in reply, he continued, “You notice something funny about this place?”
“No.”
“There’s no crosses. Shouldn’t there be a cross above the door or something?” Mort asked.
“Could be Jewish. Stop staring at the place and give me a hand. Remember, it’s not the tomb we’re here to get,” Jameson reminded. The two men had trudged up the hills behind the mausoleum, cutting through the forest and then through the back of the cemetery before finding the tomb they were to enter. It was a contract retrieval. Someone had buried something here and wanted it back, and absolute discretion was necessary. Jameson wasn’t going to question it, and neither was Mort. It was good money. But Mort would be happy when the retrieval was behind them. Trudging up here in the rain, late at night, had been hell, and going back was going to be even worse.
Jameson picked a crowbar from the pile of tools in Mort’s arms and inspected the door. It was wood, with an ancient, heavy padlock installed across it. Jameson kicked the door experimentally, but the wood didn’t give, and the lock kept it closed. So he went for his backup plan. Shoving the crowbar between the bars of the lock, he kicked the other end, and with a crack like a gunshot, the padlock fell into the mud. The door slowly creaked open.
Mort and Jameson rushed in to get out of the rain. Mort’s raincoat had helped, but not much. After placing the shovels and lock clippers on the ground (and he was glad to be free of that burden), he pulled the soaking coat off and looked around for somewhere to place it. The inside of the tomb was too dark to see, so he pulled out his flashlight and swept the circle of light about the inside.
It was a curiously stark tomb. The walls on either side were completely blank, and the wall with the door was marked only by the outline of the doorframe. Only the opposite wall held any decoration. It was a large shape wedged into the triangle of the roof, a man’s face with his eyes closed, with his arms poking through a long, incredibly detailed cloak. His hands were gaunt, even skeletal, and far too long in proportion to his head. Below it was a little inscription, simply marked, Keeper.
“Hey, Jameson, you get a load of this?” Mort asked.
“I can’t get a load of anything with you moving the flashlight around like that,” Jameson’s voice came from the darkness. Mort moved the circle of light toward the source of the sound. Jameson stood over a sarcophagus. Mort forgot all about finding a place for his coat, dropping it simply to the ground, and moved toward Jameson.
It wasn’t the sarcophagus that interested him. It was the bones. Two heaps lay on the other side of the stone. It was a wonder that in the darkness Jameson hadn’t stumbled into one of them. Mort dropped down for a better look, and Jameson, having noticed now as well, joined him.
“What are these doing here?”
“No idea,” Jameson replied. The skeletons were in heaps, but they were also fully dressed. They wore suits, but they weren’t modern. They looked like something out of a fifties movie. Jameson grabbed a skull fearlessly and held it up. “But I know what killed ‘em.” He pointed to a hole in the back of the head. “Somebody gunned ‘em down.”
“Aw, shit, think they got the package?” Mort stared at the sarcophagus. The skull tumbled from Jameson’s hands and clattered when it struck the bones.
“One way to find out,” Jameson muttered, placing his hands against the top of the sarcophagus. The sides were covered with flowing calligraphy too small to read in this light. There were endless lines of text wrapping all the way around the base of the coffin and extending onto the sides of the lid. The lid, however, was bare save for a single symbol.
“I think you were right. Hebrew… or something,” Mort said as Jameson struggled relentlessly to move the stone, but it did nothing. He considered helping, but Jameson would ask for his help when he wanted it. So Mort kept the light on Jameson while his eyes wandered everywhere else. For an empty tomb, it held a lot of interest. Why was it so sparse? It looked like they’d simply stopped building after that Keeper was finished.
The Keeper.
Mort looked into the darkness, trying to find its features in the black. He could barely make out the grey slope of its forehead against the abyss. And he could make out the shape of its eyes, staring serenely at the scene before it. Those eyes had watched the skeletons for years, undisturbed. Serene. It held a silent vigil over those entombed along with it, trapped forever in the dark.
“Mort!” Jameson called. That was the signal to help. Jameson had his crowbar wedged in between the sarcophagus and its lid. Mort grabbed onto it, and as Jameson pressed his full weight against the bar, Mort did the same.
And little by little, the lid moved, until it fell aside with a deafening growl of stone on stone.
“There we go,” Jameson said as he looked over the exposed contents of the sarcophagus. There were bones—hundreds of them. Skulls peered up with empty sockets, the remnants of their shredded clothing still clinging here and there. Each had a hole in the back, the same as the bones that had been lying beside the coffin. Resting in the center of the pile was a ball of gold the size of a grapefruit. Jameson snatched it up and held it in front of the flashlight. “I think we found what we’re looking for.”
“I think you’re right,” said Mort. And the crowbar descended on his head. The flashlight went out and rolled away from his limp hand.
He slumped over, twitching as red poured from the hole in the back of his skull. Jameson pulled the crowbar from its place in Mort’s skull and shook off the blood.
“Sorry, bud. Change of plans.” He had thought it was a simple recovery. Maybe some drugs, maybe some documents. Maybe something personal. But he had never expected this, a ball of solid gold. Enough money to set him up for the rest of his life. And he could sell it. He knew people. He had his ways.
He turned, but something in the dark caught his leg. He fell sideways, and pain lanced up his leg as his ankle tore. What was it? Mort? He struck the ground hard. His outstretched arm nudged the door, closing it and shutting the tomb into darkness. Still the hold on his ankle did not weaken. He turned, gun in hand now, and fired. There was no sound of anything being struck.
Just the low sound of stone scraping on stone. Long, sinewy arms moved vaguely in the dimness. There was no breathing, just stone scraping against stone. For the faintest instant, he saw a human face, grey and plain, with eyes fixed upon him… almost serenely.
And at once, it was upon him.
***

The three men looked at the contents of the sarcophagus. It had taken all three of them to move its lid, and now what they saw was not what they had expected. This was supposed to be a simple pickup.
The coffin was full of bones, most with a shred of cloth or two still twined around it, but there was one fully assembled, still wearing a modern coat that was in peak condition. He held the golden orb between skeletal fingers against his chest, jaw stretched wide. They could see through the eye sockets that there was a hole in the back of this one’s skull, too.
One of the men looked away and took his flashlight’s aim with him, using it instead to explore the walls of the tomb. He wanted to see that terrible form again, the sole decoration aside from the sarcophagus itself.
The Keeper stared back serenely. It merely watched over those who were entombed, trapped alongside it for all eternity. And the Keeper held its silent vigil.