Horror Stories(Creepypasta)

107✴Graveyard Lottery

I saw that the Waller family dug up another grave today. Yet again, they’ve sunk thousands of dollars into the hope that they’ll find their son, Alex. Hope has proven to be a costly endeavor for them. As I’ve been told, they’ve spent well over a hundred thousand dollars on digging services alone. The story is nothing new. It keeps repeating itself like a broken record.

It’s such an odd sight to say the least. Every once in a blue moon, Nickolas and Judy Waller return to our town with a team of highly paid professionals. A backhoe is unloaded from the back of a truck. It creeps across the hallowed ground to the area where a concrete statue of Saint Lawrence stands before 36 graves like a lonely sentinel. Through the wind and rain, his facial expression never changes. With a crucifix in the crook of one arm and the other raised to the heavens, he stares solemnly upwards as if to offer the souls below him to the Lord. Saint Lawrence shouldn’t be there. Those 36 graves shouldn’t be there. That theatre fire should have never happened.

The beastly machine revs up its motor and fills the air with cloud of diesel exhaust that’s as dark as coal. Scoop by scoop, the machine slowly claws away at the earth like a tired animal desperately trying to escape the trap. First the sod is ripped from the ground and tossed to the side. Soon after, a few bucketful’s of top soil is piled up alongside the grave before another pile is made for the caramel-brown clay.

While the digging happens, Nick and Judy stand close to each other while quietly praying and singing Hallelujah in hopes that this hole will be the last they will ever have to excavate. Suddenly, the machine pulls up a unique mixture of earth; one that is composed of clay and soil that is black as pitch, and rich with decay. The hired men now know that their work with the machine is done for the time being as they send it crawling away from the grave.

From there, the men put on pairs of rubber overalls and gloves; and respirators on their faces. They then descend into the hole with their shovels. Like a volcanic eruption, scoops of soil spew from the hole until the dull, yet loud sound of metal sticking wood is heard. At a slower pace, dirt continues to fling from the open grave. In time, one of the men climbs out of the hole and retrieves a bundle of rope from the truck. He tosses the rope down and within minutes, the backhoe roars back to life. The rope is then attached to the machine’s arm. With the utmost care and skill by the operator, the old rotting casket is hoisted out of the ground.

The old wooden box is placed off to the side of the hole and is quickly covered by a sheet of tarpaulin to conceal it from curious eyes. Once more, the men descend back down into the hole and continue to carefully dig for several hours. Just like all the other times, the men run out of black soil and find only clay the deeper they go; indicating that what they are looking for isn’t there. Judy in a desperate plea yells to them, “Please keep digging! I know my baby is in there! You just have to go a little deeper!” Just to satisfy her, the men keep on with their work until the sun begins to descend. But as the sun fades away, so too does the spark of hope in both Judy and Nickolas.

When the hole has been dug far below a reasonable depth, it is deemed as a failed venture. The men climb out of the grave and replace the casket and soil in the same order they removed it. The backhoe is loaded onto the truck, the men hand the Wallers a business card, say their condolences, and then drive away. Yet, Nickolas and Judy remain at the graveyard until it is too dark for comfort. They do not gaze upon the grave they have dug that day, rather, they stare with a strange mixture of sorrow and hope at the grave that lies next to it, just waiting to be exhumed. They walk away from the matter for now, while Saint Lawrence remains just as still as before.

The grave that was dug up today was that of Jack Davidson. As I’ve been told, his mother and father finally gave in when the Wallers offered them 400,000 dollars. Now that I think about it, they were actually going to settle for 350,000, but that changed. Just before Paul Davidson was about to sign the papers, Judy made the comment that there was a silver-lining to the loss of his son. When Paul asked her to explain, she said that Paul and the others were lucky that she and her husband had to pay to search the graves of their loved ones. She went on to say that it was better than winning the lottery.