EDWIN Gutierrez clutched the bag tight, careful not to spill any of Ricardo Lino’s bones. He stood on top of a wall of tombs stacked one after another. In this part of St. Jude’s Cemetery, walls like it went eight graves high. Despite how endless the array of concrete graves seemed, the city often ran out of space for the dead. Five years in the tomb, then it needs to be emptied. Men like Edwin did the emptying.
Right behind the line of tombs he stood on was another line facing the other way. In between them was a shadowy gap. Probably only ten inches separated the two. Edwin walked up to the edge and peered into the gap. Despite the shadows, he knew what lay below: a pile of rice sacks littering the ground. Some of them had ripped open, revealing the discarded bones within. When time ran out on a grave, this was where its remains ended up.
He sighed as he tied a knot at the top of the sack holding the remains of Ricardo Lino. He could only hope that it would stay intact. That sack, at least, could be Ricardo Lino’s space and only his.
“Sorry,” he said to the sack before dropping it on the pile. It landed with a clatter. The bag split on the side, letting some of the bones poke out. Edwin sighed and shook his head. He didn’t know Ricardo Lino, but hoped the man was resting easy somewhere far from here.
I’d only want the same for Totoy, he thought.
Edwin was about to head home when he heard it. Something soft, yet loud as a gunshot in that silent space. He peered again into the gap. He strained his eyes to see past the darkness and focus on the scattered bones and torn sacks.
Did something move?
Then he heard the clacking of bone against bone. The shadows shifted down below. Insects, he told himself. A part of his mind refused this explanation, though. Insects would not make that kind of sound.
He knelt on the concrete and gripped the edge of the graves to keep himself steady. He leaned forward, straining to see what was down there among the dead. Again, that sound of bone against bone.
His hand lost its grip.
For a moment, Edwin thought he might fall, but his reflexes didn’t fail him. He regained his balance and scrambled away from the edge of the graves. He could feel his heart racing from the near-fall. It made sweat break out on his brow.
Stupid old man. Nako, Totoy would laugh at you if he saw.
But Totoy was dead.
* * *
Home for Edwin was a small shanty made of wood, about the size of three graves stacked upon each other. As far as homes inside St. Jude’s Cemetery went, it was neither the biggest nor the smallest. He and Totoy never had much reason to complain, though. In fact, ever since Totoy died, the space felt far too big for Edwin. Twice as much space for him that he didn’t quite know what to do with.
What Edwin liked about his house though was the view.
Sitting on top of a compact set of graves in the southeastern corner of St. Jude’s, the house boasted a clear view of most of the cemetery. St. Jude’s was so large that Edwin had trouble seeing where the graves ended and the actual buildings of the city began. From where he sat, they all seemed to blend. Towering, concrete dead things with people inside. Some of the tombs were made up of plain, untouched concrete — dirty, rough-looking grays. Others had been painted over with neon pinks, clean whites and pastel blues.
And of course, there were the shanties. Some were hollowed-out mausoleums or repurposed tombs. Others were like Edwin’s home: assembled wooden pieces on top, between and hidden among the concrete graves. Someone once told him that over two hundred families lived in the cemetery. At times, Edwin thought it must be more.
Perhaps, what Edwin liked best about his home was the single grave that sat next to it.
Totoy, dead at age 16, lay in a grave that hadn’t come cheap. Edwin worked twice as hard for a week and still needed help pooling money from some of the other families to pay for the grave.
Edwin brushed some of the dust from the headstone away, then wiped it with a damp cloth.
“How are you tonight, anak?” he asked.
Edwin placed a plastic bag filled with rice and some adobo in front of the grave. “I bought your favorite.”
Some child would probably climb up to take it away later. That didn’t bother Edwin. Food couldn’t be wasted on the dead; they don’t eat.
But sometimes they move.
Edwin forced the thought down. He didn’t want to think about the sound of clattering bones and the dark space between the tombs.
“Nako, anak,” said Edwin, leaning back against the side of Totoy’s grave. “Your father’s getting old.” He laughed to himself thinking about it. It seemed to him he’d lived two lives — before the cemetery and after. The time beyond the cemetery grounds seemed far enough to have only been a dream.
Totoy had never known life outside the cemetery. He had been born inside, and Edwin never had cause to leave the place with his son. Almost everything they needed was inside the cemetery; they just needed to know where to look. St. Jude’s had a little something for everyone here. Families offering to hold classes, water after a half an hour’s walk, food being sold on the corners and by the gates.
That didn’t keep Totoy from always wanting to step out, but Edwin tried to teach him better than that. Things were better inside the walls. Safe, secure. Difficult, yes, but life was difficult anywhere.
And sometimes death, too. Being tossed out of your own grave to be thrown in with rattling bones.
“Old and crazy, anak.” Surely, whatever was rattling those remains hadn’t been anything half as strange as Edwin’s mind made it out to be. Probably some kind of animal. A stray dog or cat that had wormed their way into the cracks. Digging about the bones for something to eat.
“You would have laughed at me earlier, Totoy. Your father’s seeing strange things. You never had time for any of that silliness.”
Even as a child, Totoy hadn’t been squeamish. He grew up and played among littered skulls and stacked graves. As a toddler, Totoy had many bones taken away from him by Edwin. They had been as good as toys. That boy had no time for ghosts. There had been too much life in him for that.
And now gone.
Edwin shook his head. He still remembered that night. Any father would remember his child’s death, he imagined. It was one of those unwritten things etched deep into his flesh where no one could see.
It had only been a year ago when the police raids started. Of course, Edwin had seen the drugs go around the cemetery. People sold it to make money; others bought it to forget their hunger. It was just one of those things that happened in a place like this. Edwin himself never indulged in it and he’d been glad to find that Totoy didn’t, either. They kept their heads down and did their work. Other people’s business was none of their concern. Neither of them realized it had gotten so bad as to draw the attention it did.
The raids came hard and often. Hundreds of armed officers stormed their way through the mud and rushed through the labyrinth of tombs to seize any trace of shabu they could find. There was the shouting, the garbled feedback of walkie-talkie transmissions, and then the gunshots. Muffled only by the cramped tombs, they rang out into the night from every direction.
Edwin could only imagine that it was the sound of war.
It was during the fifth raid in October when it happened. Edwin had been fighting off a bad fever that day and Totoy had insisted he stay in bed. The boy went off and did the work for that day — cleaning and painting graves and whatever other odd jobs came his way. He must have been buying dinner for them when the police came into the cemetery.
When people told Edwin that something had happened, he forced himself out of bed and ran. His racing heartbeats had pounded in his ears, drowning out the sounds of the chaos around him. He had sweat like never before and his limbs had grown exhausted to the point of near numbness.
Totoy’s body lay on the ground, not too far from where Ricardo Lino would be exhumed from a grave seven months later.
Edwin cleared his throat as he pushed thoughts of that night away. The past was past, and the dead were dead. He wiped his eyes, trying not to notice how damp his fingers got.
“I miss you a lot, anak,” he said, placing his hand on the headstone.
As he did, he felt a small vibration against his palm. A focused, isolated sensation that made him pull his hand away and look closely at the stone that bore his son’s name. Then, the sound. Soft tapping echoing from within the grave.
Edwin recoiled from the grave. Surely, he hadn’t heard that. That faint sound of something tapping against the concrete seal. Tapping from within where only his son’s dead body lay.
He crawled toward it, unable to help himself. Again, he placed his hands against the headstone. He slowly pressed his ear against the cold marble as his knees trembled beneath him.
“Anak?”
Tap-tap-tap-tap
It then echoed louder than before. The more he stared, the louder it came. Edwin thought he could hear the clatter of bones beneath. His son wasn’t knocking against the headstone; he was pounding on it.
Edwin scrambled to his feet, retreating from the grave. He took two steps back and the ground disappeared.
He fell off the edge. He screamed as he tried to grab the edge of the tombs. His hands groped for the concrete, but it slipped from his grasp. He landed hard on the ground, on his feet. Pain coursed through his body as he collapsed onto the dirt. He tried to scream. Only a groan escaped his lips, his chest too tight and air coming in hard. He tried to suck in a breath but it only made his chest hurt more.
Tears flooded his eyes from panic and the pain.
He coughed until air flowed back into his lungs. He lay on the ground for a moment, just breathing to regain his bearings. Above him, the night sky was a dull purple. The clouds hadn’t rolled in, but the city sky was never quite clear. Two walls of concrete surrounded him on either side. The space he was in couldn’t have been any more than two feet wide.
Edwin got back up on his feet. It hurt to get up, but he found he could stand without much trouble. He took a closer look at the concrete walls closing him in. These were the backs of the tombs and so there were no grooves to use as handholds or footholds for climbing.
“Hello!” he called up. “Someone help me!”
No reply from above.
Maybe Totoy can hear me.
That thought nearly ripped the breath right out of his lungs again. He heard it that time, right? The bones against the concrete seal as his son tried to work his way out. That had to be it, right?
“Old man. Crazy old man,” he said.
He took in a deep breath and wiped the tears from his eyes. He would have to find his way out of the ground then. Just follow the path until he finds a gap that would bring him back onto the main paths of the cemetery. Then he could just climb back up to the top of the cemetery and find his way back home.
Edwin looked down at both sides of the path. To his left, a space opened a way out. He took a step toward it before a slab of concrete started to move across it. Before he could even think to run, the new wall closed off Edwin’s path.
Edwin’s mouth went dry. He strained his ears to listen for the walls around him shifting or closing in on him. Would he be crushed here between the concrete tombs? He could almost his eyes welling up at the thought of it.
To his right, the path seemed to just go on and on before hitting another wall of tombs at the end. He thought he could spy gaps in the walls that either led back out or to other paths created by the stacked graves. The rumbling sound of shifting concrete traveled echoed through the labyrinth of graves. He couldn’t risk sitting still for long.
“It’s the only way to go, old man,” he said.
Edwin started walking. He limped a bit, his legs still aching from the fall. He kept his hand on the wall to keep him steady. He breathed hard, trying to calm himself down. It wasn’t that bad. He just needed to get out, that’s all.
Something crunched beneath his feet.
He looked down. A skull lay crushed beneath his feet. Edwin sighed and muttered, “Sorry po.”
Something crunched again. Edwin looked down to his feet again — nothing. Then the crunch again. Not of a bone breaking, but of a footstep on the soil. Edwin stood still, hearing another footstep follow. An awkward delay separated the sound of each step. Whatever was walking in the dark spaces with Edwin sounded like it was limping.
And it was behind Edwin, getting closer with each step.
Edwin rushed down the tunnel. He tried his best to run despite his limp. Each hurried step sent a stab of pain up his legs and into his ribs, constricting his breathing. Still, he didn’t let himself slow down. Those footsteps were behind him and they didn’t sound natural.
Don’t turn to look, old man. Don’t you dare turn to look, just run.
So he ran, his slippers slapping against the ground and the soles of his feet. He listened for the footsteps behind him. Despite his efforts, it sounded only like it was getting closer.
“Just don’t look. You’ve done too much looking.”
Then, a thought flashed in his mind: Totoy was behind him. His son had pushed his way out of the grave. Now the boy was coming for his father.
He’s going to punish me. I never let him leave and he’ll kill me for it.
Edwin ran, cursing his own fear. It was the stupid fear saved for the very young and the very old. He hated how easily it had crept beneath his skin and settled there like a parasite. He ran harder, trying to outrun whatever followed him.
To his right, a gap in the concrete. Not out onto the main paths of the cemetery, but another tunnel between two rows of tombs. He stumbled into the new path before it could close behind him. He wished it did: that would at least block out whatever was following him. The gap remained open, gaping like a skull’s loose jaw.
Something dry and stiff brushed against his leg as he ran. Before he could stop himself, he glanced at the ground behind him. A hand, rotted down to the bone, jutted out. It was a finger that had touched him.
Then before, he could look away, he caught a glimpse of what was behind him.
God no, please.
He turned away and ran, not wanting to think on what he’d just seen. But the image of it burned bright. A quick glimpse of that dead thing lumbering after him. A skeleton held together by stringy, rotten flesh, with its jaw hanging slack, walking toward him. Its bones creaked and clattered as it approached, the tatters of whatever clothes it had been buried in hanging from its ribcage.
Beneath his feet, the ground started to crunch once again. The bones were scattered all over the space. Torn rice sacks lay discarded on the ground, leaving only a sea of dirty bones littering the soil that St. Jude’s liked to hide away.
No matter how careful his step, Edwin stepped on a bone. He muttered countless apologies, sending up wordless prayers to whoever he disturbed.
“I’m sorry. I’m just passing through,” he said through ragged breaths. “I need to get out. I’m sorry.”
There was no escaping what he saw before him, though. The bones started to shift, moving and coming together. They formed into skeletons — or just enough of a skeleton to get up out of the ground. The dead dragged themselves up by the concrete walls or dug themselves out of the dirt to sit up from where they had been left. They gaped at him with their empty eye sockets and their jaws hanging open, if they had lower jaws at all.
He opened his own mouth to scream. A rush of panicked screams echoed out to greet him. The dead were screaming, their voices shaking through the very tombs they had been expelled from. They limped toward him, their arms stretched out to him. He screamed again, and again that same chorus of panic drowned him out.
He turned to run, but tripped and stumbled into the dirt. A bony hand grabbed his ankle, gripping him tight. More hands came out of the dark and from the dirt to hold him down. Edwin thought he might burst free from their grasp if he tried hard enough. He squirmed and he pushed, but there was no escaping their hold.
Hands held his arms and legs down to the ground as the dead piled on top of him. The scent of rot and filth filled his lungs. He tried to scream but bones filled his mouth to keep him silent. His muffled screams sounded pathetic through the grip of the dead as femurs and ribcages and vertebrae began to block his vision.
They have found me. Now, they’ll bury me. The old man who pulled them from their rest.
Edwin felt his mind begin to slip away. He wondered if it was insanity coming or death. Darkness began to press against the corners of his vision. The world began to disappear as screams continued to ring out in the distance. Screams and the loud, roaring barks of something worse. Something far too familiar and horrible.
Before his eyes shut, he only thought: Totoy.
* * *
Edwin sucked in a breath and sat up in a jolt. Bones flew in every direction, striking the concrete walls as he sucked in desperate breaths. He looked down, his body covered with bones. He crawled away from them, kicking at them to create distance. He waited for the grasping hands to reach for him as he tried to get up to run. But the bones sat still where they were on the ground.
Edwin breathed hard, standing up and leaning against the concrete wall. He could feel his eyes bulging out of his head. He blinked back the sting of light against them.
Sunlight.
Edwin looked up at the sky. Beyond the concrete tombs, the sky was a drab city blue. The sun was up and the heat made sweat break out on his brow. He had lost a whole night down here somehow. There had been no dreams in whatever sleep had taken him down here in the muck with the dead.
The dead. Edwin eyes shot back down to the ground. The bones lay still where they had fallen.
“Move, old man,” he heard himself say. “Stop looking and move.”
He walked, his body aching with every step. He made sure not to step on the bones, not wanting to disturb their rest.
“I’m sorry,” he said anyway. This was their space, not his.
At the end of the path, a gap in the wall let him back out onto the main cemetery paths. St. Jude’s was up already. Some early grievers had even come in to pray their rosaries or to place food and drink at the graves of their loved ones. Edwin kept his head bowed as he walked past them.
He instead kept his eyes on the ones who lived here. The children in their too-small clothing, the men seeking jobs to do. They moved about the cemetery with hard, gloomy expressions. Something had happened.
It didn’t take long for Edwin to see the police tape. Asking around only confirmed what he figured. There had been another police raid last night. The cops had come in looking for drug dealers and had been ready to shoot down anyone who had gotten in their way.
That might have been the screaming I heard.
There had been shots fired last night. So loud, they had echoed through the cemetery for all to hear. If Edwin looked at the concrete of the tombs, he could see bullet holes. He shook his head every time he saw any of the headstones defaced by bullets.
Only one person died in the raid last night, a record low for one of these operations. That man was a police officer. When the cops had split up to attack different areas of the cemetery, the tight paths and twisting turns must have gotten them lost. One of the officers had been shot while coming down one corner. After he went down, the others canceled the operation to tend to him.
Stories began to spin out from last night’s events as they always did. Edwin heard that the police officers had complained of the shadows and the endless paths. The police had cried out about shifting walls and changing directions, but really they’d just gotten lost in the cemetery. Silly outsiders who did not know their way around the dead. Other stories, too, of people coming within inches of death when the officers had shot at them only for a vengeful spirit to drag the cop away or stop the bullet. Foolish stories told by the very young and the very old.
By the afternoon, Edwin heard people laughing over it already.
* * *
Edwin held his breath before giving the concrete slab that sealed up the grave one final tug. The headstone came free and the stench rushed out of the tomb. Edwin coughed against his arm from the smell before looking into the grave. He pulled the rice sack from his pocket, ready to fill it.
The lid of the coffin within was slightly ajar, a decayed hand reaching out of it. Not only to escape, but also to warn a crazy old man.
“I’m sorry, anak,” said Edwin, placing a gentle hand against the skull. “I’m sorry you couldn’t leave sooner.”
He took greater care packing the bones into the sack than he ever had before.
“It’s a bit too late for me, anak,” he said. “ This place knows me too well already. I owe it too much. I think you still have time, though.”
Once it was full, he placed the sack on the fire he had built in front of his house. It burned through as a wind blew against Edwin and the flames. Once the bones were thoroughly charred, he would crush them into as fine an ash as he could. He didn’t care how long it would take him.
“I owe you this much, anak,” he said.
Edwin would wait for a wind. That seemed best. Scatter Totoy’s ashes to the wind, then let it decide for both of them. He prayed for a strong, powerful wind. One that would carry his son out into the wide world beyond the walls of St. Jude’s.
Somewhere, anywhere better to rest at last.
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