Blood Born

Chapter 6

6  Grave

When next the man opened his eyes, he was lying on a fresh grave in the middle of a cemetery.  To his left was the dark expanse of the unlit cemetery and to his right was a wooded area, through which he could see a fence and an impressive Victorian iron gate down the path beside him.  He knew the place, but he knew it at some level that came without details like names or other useful data.  There were streetlights beyond the trees, and they cast their dappled light into the cemetery but not as far as his grave.  All around him in the darkness, he could just make out the forms of gargoyles and stony angels keeping watch, defying the dead to rise.  None of them remarked upon his presence.

He turned.  Behind him was a new gravestone:  pale and clean.  In the dim light he could just see the words it bore.

Jonathan Alan Drake.  

Born April 6, 1969.  

Died March 17, 2004.

Beside it was another:

Yvonne Marie Isabelle Drake, née Guillaumot.  

Born August 13, 1972.  

Died March 17, 2004.

Neither name meant anything to him.  If he were Jonathan Alan Drake then the woman in the grave beside him was likely to be his wife, although the addition of her maiden name was an odd touch.  Evidently they had 'died' on the same day.

He was perplexed.  One minute he was in a coffin, the next he was awake and lying on a grave.  Even though his efforts underground were extreme it was still beyond his capacity to explain exactly how he could have done such things.

He noticed that he had forgotten to start breathing again.  That was decidedly out of the ordinary.  He was still more curious than shocked, however.  Without really thinking about his situation too much, he set off stumbling in the direction of the road he could see just in the distance beyond the trees.  There were no people about, cemeteries usually being fairly undesirable locations for nighttime activities, so he had time to glance down at his state of dress before making a possible mistake by presenting himself before a passerby.

The clothes he was wearing were the sort of things one would expect to get buried in.  He was in a suit, but it was completely covered in blood and mud.  He stopped and examined his jacket.  It was torn and filthy, and it was pinned at the back to his waist.  Not to the waistband of his pants, that is, but pinned straight into his flesh.  He pulled the pins out and winced with each one.  He located half a dozen more unwanted piercings and removed them.  His clothes were a horrific mess, and needed replacing before he showed himself in polite society.  He looked pretty much how he imagined someone would look after having performed such an act of self-exhumation as had been his recent pleasure to undergo.

This raised an interesting question:  what were his plans for the immediate future?  Unfortunately, he was completely without an answer.  He stopped in confusion for a minute or so.

He turned away from the road, headed back to his erstwhile grave and plopped down cross-legged on the earth.  He shoved soil back into the hole he had created and then replaced the few turves that had been displaced in a fastidious act intended merely to consume time rather than as an attempt at deception.  He stared at the inscription on the small monument.  Nothing suggested itself to him.  He turned his attention to the adjacent stone.