The Gravedigger's Brand

 

Grave digger

In the shadowed town of Eldridge Hollow, where fog clung to the cemetery like a shroud, Elias Thorne had been the gravedigger for twenty long years. His life was a cycle of earth and endings: digging six feet deep, lowering pine boxes heavy with the dead, then filling the holes with the same cold soil. His hands were maps of scars, his back a permanent ache, his soul worn thin as grave linen.

He had nothing. No wife — she fled the constant smell of decay and his silent nights. No children. No savings beyond a bottle hidden in the toolshed. Just the endless whisper of wind through headstones, mocking a life spent serving death without reward.

One thunderous night, as rain lashed the graves, Elias finished burying a stranger struck by the same storm. Lightning forked the sky, and a bolt hit him full force. Agony flared, then oblivion.

He awoke in a vast, echoing nothingness — neither light nor dark, but an eternal gray. Before him loomed the Creator, a presence of blinding vastness, formless yet all-seeing.

"Elias Thorne," the voice resonated, shaking his very essence. "Was your life fulfilled?"

Elias laughed, a hollow sound. "Fulfilled? I've shoveled dirt for the dead two decades. Buried dreams, secrets, whole families. And for what? Empty pockets and an empty bed. No."

The presence pulsed. "Then would you champion a cause? One to give meaning to the breath I granted?"

Elias hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. Give me purpose."

"So it shall be."

Darkness claimed him again.

He gasped awake on the morgue slab, tag on his toe, the coroner fleeing in terror. Elias sat up, heart pounding. On his chest, branded deep into the flesh, was a mark: an open eye encircled by writhing flames, glowing faintly with ethereal light.

He returned to the cemetery the next day, saying nothing. But the dead noticed.

The first came during a funeral. As Elias lowered Widow Greene's coffin, a chill breath grazed his ear: "He did it. My nephew. Poison in my tea for the house."

Elias froze. Mourners saw nothing, but he felt her — icy fingers on his neck, voice like rustling leaves in a crypt.

That night, the brand burned hot. He confronted the nephew. The man paled, eyes fixed on the glowing mark as Elias tore open his shirt. Confession spilled like blood. The sheriff found the poison vial buried in the garden.

The whispers grew.

Ghosts crowded his dreams, pale faces in the fog, eyes pleading from hollow sockets.

A girl, throat bruised purple: "Boyfriend strangled me. Said I talked too much."

A farmer, skull caved: "Brother with the axe. Over the land."

A banker, lips blue: "Wife's lover. Cyanide in the wine."

Elias listened. The brand seared truth into his skin, guiding him. He saw through lies, felt guilt like rot.

He became vengeance incarnate.

Nights blurred into hunts. The guilty confessed in horror, glimpsing the mark as divine judgment. Some faced the law. Others met quieter ends — accidents in the dark, bodies for Elias to bury himself.

Not all sought blood. Some whispered treasures.

An old miser: "Gold coins under the hearth. Take them — I hoarded in vain."

A smuggler: "Diamonds in the coffin lining of my own grave."

Elias unearthed them under moonlight, the brand warming in approval. Wealth flowed — a fine house, fine clothes, donations to orphans. But he kept digging, kept burying.

The town called him the Grave Warden. Fear followed him like shadows. Criminals vanished or confessed unprompted.

Yet the dead multiplied.

One fog-choked night, a new specter appeared — translucent, ragged, eyes burning with the same flame.

"You," it hissed, voice echoing from the void. "The branded one."

Elias's mark flared painfully.

"I was like you," the ghost said. "Struck down. Offered a cause. I avenged too."

"Then why linger?" Elias demanded.

The ghost drifted closer, cold as tomb air. "Because the cause devours. You mete justice, but who judges you? The wealth? It chains. The whispers? They never cease."

Elias looked in the mirror later. His eyes sunken, skin ashen, the brand a constant throb.

Fulfillment? Or eternal servitude?

The Creator's voice echoed faintly: "Champion a cause."

But the dead pressed closer, hungry for more.

Elias dug another grave at dawn — deeper this time.

The brand pulsed, insatiable.

And in the mist, the ghosts waited.

Forever.

What would you do?