With the movement of the thinning fog the pallid glow of the full moon dances on the faces of the men in a slow wave, the dying pulse of the weakening Winter night. Cast in that dim light the men twist and contort their slim bodies striking the cold hard earth in a disciplined concordance with the rusty shovels that they grip tightly in their hands. With as much graceful symmetry they sling the sod and clumped dirt to either side of their hole as though it were crying. They struggle against the ground as their breath floats ephemeral against the frigid air fading into an obscured end. The shovels strike hard against the earth to expose the edge of a flimsy wooden box hastily constructed. Rejuvenated by the promise of this crude buried treasure the men lock eyes and smile sinister, howling and whistling into the darkness as they dig with a determined intensity and crazed vigor.

Along the gravel path the boy could see those withering bouquets in varying states of decay gently bitten by the night's frost and nestled against the sweating gray monoliths that jut from the field in orderly rows as a crop ready for harvest. His gradual ascent to the top of the knoll was an intimidating voyage through the densely packed slabs of cheap cracking stone giving way to the sparse monuments of an unfamiliar but vast eternal grief. The busts of winged seraphs loomed above weeping frozen tears perpetually from their fixed eyes that gaze through him without limit. The otherwise austere crosses consumed by thin tendrils of vine or thick coats of clumped moss cast competing shadows from the low morning sun whose cool light projected askew across his countenance. At the summit beyond the gauntlet of despair was a mouth into the ground. It leaked steam swirling from a heat hidden inside the throat. The visible walls were lined with railings of bones tied together with yellow twine like crude cilia. Avoiding the transfixing power of the dark the boy affixed his gaze below at her where he could see in the distance the gaunt frame of the groundskeeper holding his ragged top hat in his gloved hands standing at the base of the hole transfixed by the presence of a pit where nothing at all should have been.

Out of sight held below the bar in the blistered palms of his calloused hands he stares mesmerized from under the wide black brim of his gambler hat as if in solemn prayer. From the cradle of his filthy fingers stared the hollowed holes of a human skull the size of a small snuff box carved expertly from an exotic sanguine beryl. The other was bellowing with laughter at the women, tired and slim from early consumption, that accessorize his dirty arms while eyeing the paper bounty plainly piled next to an empty pint glass. The arresting crash of a glass hurled against the mirrored wall sends the bartender downward scrambling as bits of glass and mirror fall fast to the floor. This proves an opening salvo in a barbaric brawl that erupts with a pathological immediacy as if rehearsed. Over the cacophony of the chaos the baritone blast of a shotgun and the ensuing tinnitus in his left ear is enough to rile him from his covetous meditation. Reaching for the weapon at his side he calmly dispatches the crazed bartender with a single shot causing him to slump lifeless, bleeding out a desperate flood of blood that carves paths like a river around the littered glass debris and trash. Stepping over the seizing bodies of the women, whose slender throats have been cruelly slit by the other man, they each grab a bottle of the first spirit within sight and ignoring the pleading gurgle temporarily escaping from the floor they disembark the light into the welcome black stumbling as they howled.

They come teetering up the trail carrying their implements against their shoulders at an angle like marching soldiers with their arms and covered now in the russet color of a stranger's dried blood crying from the exhilarating comedy. An imposing shadow frightens the first man intoxicated still by adrenaline and shine that causes him to throw their lamp leftwards carelessly in a frantic preparation for battle. Wielding the dull shovel and twirling around like a ball and chain he decapitates the lurker sending its head careening and landing with a dull thump to roll unnaturally at his feet. The disembodied head wept with those still eyes staring ceaselessly in the moonlight. Amused by the absurd theatrics the other man caresses the outer sockets of the crystalline skull in some nascent nervous compulsion when they hear a rustling near the lamp. The first man curses as he lights their lamp again revealing a grotesque staircase of bone beckoning them below into the unknown. Descending the earthen larynx they learn to stick to the center of the tapering tube so as to avoid the sharp edges of broken bones that surround them as cadaverous stars in the sky adorned with corporeal trophies from hapless passersby. At the end of the spiraling innards they find themselves in a cul-de-sac encircled by symmetrical pillars of skulls and bone supporting this makeshift atrium. At its zenith an imposing chandelier of remains swings gently as though alive. From the flank a club of worn bone cuts through the silence splitting the man's skull in half from the tremendous force banishing the lamp to lingering oblivion. In the oscillating light cast the other man glimpsed in horrible strobe their assailant: a slack jawed skeleton standing eight feet tall without a scrap of flesh and now mottled red in parts by the spurting blood played. Somewhere the sound of a familiar screaming pierced the air as the right hand of the creature extends open towards the remainder as if expecting an offering or divine payment as the dying light gave out.

Working through the brisk morning the groundskeeper had restored the majority of the piled dirt to ground. From the embrace of the fog the boy seemed to materialize of ether before him holding a trinket large and glowing red in his tiny hand standing stoically and motionless at the base of the grave. Silent but with calculated premeditation the boy jumped into the dirt landing with enough impact to lose his footing and his grip on his treasure. Even from his vantage six feet away the groundskeeper recognized the form and shape of the crimson talisman and in its inert position it appeared comfortable in sepulcher. Before it could rest in perpetuity the boy plucked it gently from where it lay while simultaneously prying the lid of the wooden box ajar. In the sliver of black the boy stuffed the item inside and sealed the coffin. The groundskeeper helped the boy scramble out from that shallow hole and watched him grab a shovel to help finish reinterring his departed mother.