76 - Eleventh Tale of the Japanese Cemetery - The Graverobber

"Today, the bodies of the dead are cremated before they are interred in this cemetery," Miu said, as she found one of the remaining candles. "Yet before that, when bodies were buried whole, the families feared the predations of

THE GRAVEROBBER

A shadow crept over the wall in the northwest corner of the cemetery, a shovel over one shoulder, a sack, pliers, and a crowbar tucked down her trousers. The moon was dark, and no one was there to hear her bare feet on the turf, yet she still found herself holding her breath as she crept among the stone and wooden markers. She had not been able to see where the bride was buried, but she didn't need to, either. Row by row the shadow tread, until she came to where her bare feet found naked, new-turned earth.

We may call the shadow Katsuki. That was not her real name, but she had left that behind in San Francisco, along with a cruel husband. Since that time, she had wandered. Boot hills had given up meager ritches: a few gold teeth, a few pocketwatches, a string of pearls. Enough to keep moving. That was the trick, in those days; to get the business done with swiftly, and be gone to dispose of the loot somewhere far from where relatives and loved ones might find out.

By touch, Katsuki found the stone market. She laid out a large sheet, planted the blade of the shovel into the fresh-tamped earth and got on with her work. The earth went on the sheet, which would be poured back into the hole, the better to conceal this night's work. If it bothered her that this was her first Japanese grave to disturb, the dark of the moon hid it from her face, and there was none there living to see it.

The people of Dagon's Hollow did not normally bury the dead with riches. Katsuki had no hope to find jewelry or fine clothes that might be profitably pawned. No, she dug for the bride's teeth. The future father-in-law was a dentist, the only one for a hundred miles, and had done his best for the young woman for years before the marriage. It was ill luck that baby had come before the wedding ceremony, and neither bride nor baby had survived.

Katsuki's shirt was damp with sweat when the shovel hit wood. She widened the hole and found the edge. Not too thick, and secured only with nails. The terrible crunch of the breaking wood sounded impossibly loud in the quiet cemetery, and for a moment Katsuki paused in her labors.

Something fluttered overhead. A bat, perhaps. She waited, counted to ten. Then bent back about her business. Her hands thrust into the hole she had made in the coffin lid.

They did not flinch when they touched human hair, long and loose. Or the cold, clammy flesh of the dead. Her hands had touched far worse corpses. Those dead by plague. Those swollen with corruption. She knelt and found the cold, delicate lips. The hard teeth behind them. Reaching back to her belt, Katsuki pulled out the pliers.

Then the lips closed on her fingers. Katsuki froze. A cold tongue licked her fingers. Katsuki stood there frozen for a moment, her piss nearly ran cold. A woman buried alive. That's what it had to be. She had heard of such cases, but this was her first. The graverobber swore. It was one thing to steal from the dead, another to pull the teeth from a living woman.

The tongue explored her fingers as she thought. With a sigh, Katsuki dared to whisper.

"Hold on, I'll get you out."

She pulled her hand back to grab the coffin lid and widen the hole—and the tongue slid out of the mouth and wrapped around her wrist with the coiled strength of a serpent.

Katsuki swore. She pulled. The long tongue slithered up her arm. It pulled at her arm with terrible strength. The graverobber planted her feet on the edges of the coffin and pushed down.

Slowly...achingly slowly...Katsuki pulled her arm back. The tongue seemed to stretch out, still trying to drag her down into the darkness of the grave.

Then a pair of hands shot out of the hole and grabbed Katsuki's ankles.

The coffin lid collapsed. The earthen walls of the hole shook, then collapsed. Madly, Katsuki tore her arm free from the tongue, tried to scramble upwards.

Then she felt it. A tear in her pants. Something long, cold, and wet against her crotch. She swallowed a scream, not wanting to be caught like this, even as it pushed inside of her. Licking, penetrating, over and over. Grimly, Katsuki tried to climb out of the hole...but the earthen walls were crumbly, now. Her shovel was out of reach. And that tongue!

Hours. Trapped waist-deep. Sobbing and gasping from the relentless licking. Sometimes the tongue pressed too deep, and Katsuki had to stifle a scream. Sometimes the pleasure grew too intense, and then she had to bite her wrist to stop a very different kind of scream. The stars wheeled overhead, the night wore on. With each shuddering surrender, Katsuki seemed to sink deeper into the earth. Her strength grew less. As the sky turned from black to midnight blue, she sobbed aloud. Unable to withstand it any longer.

"Please," she begged. "Please, I don't want to cum anymore, I don't..."

Steps on the ground. A face peered down into the hole. Stern. Matronly. Dressed like a Shinto priestess.

I will not tell you the words exchanged, the bargain struck. The shovel was lowered, and she who had gone into the hole as a graverobber emerged as the cemetery's new gravedigger and caretaker of the grounds.

Her trousers were gone, torn to shreds. Every hair on her crotch had been licked off, and the mons itself was red and swollen, licked raw.

Katsuki very happily took to her first official duty, in filling the hole back in. Down there was a mouth full of gold teeth, her pliers, and an unquiet spirit. The priestess said a prayer.

Miu laid a hand on a grave. It was a very old one, the stone more weathered than many others in the cemetery.

"There are other stories, of the caretaker. That was her first run-in with the supernatural, but far from her last. Perhaps later I will tell you another."

So saying, she pinched out the candle.