In a bumpy, dark-gray graveyard, long, trailing vines grew wildly on leaning gravestones and decaying benches. Some climbed high on the trunks of old trees, creating a sad, holey roof above this gloomy place. Unfortunately, it won’t catch a single raindrop falling for long hours today. 

I stood there alone, wet, covering myself with nothing but a long monk’s robe. The only protection from the storm was a small space under the roof of a narrow and tall gothic chapel. It was adorned with figures and heads of angels, devils, satyrs, cherubs, and other creatures from the imagination of medieval artists, reaching towards the sky. 

But I wasn’t alone. For hours, my gaze was fixed on the old man, black and motionless. Since the last burial, he had been sitting, staring into space at the new grave. It was richly adorned with flowers that, after a few days, withered, turned gray, and began to decompose in a foul smell. Both in the grave and on the grave. All death, the stinky decay of life, the smell of wet dirt, still fresh dirt, and heavy thoughts. 

I was immune to sadness, fear, horror of death, and the atmosphere of this musty place. I’ve been living here for twenty long years as the graveyard keeper. The cemetery belonged to me as the caretaker and as the grave robber. It’s the only comfort and gain that keeps me here, expecting more burials. 

In the dark years of the black plague, my whole family died – parents, older brother, and sister, along with a three-month-old baby buried in a coffin with its mother. After the funeral, with nowhere to go, I lingered on this cemetery. At night, I slept and cried on the stone tombstones until the graveyard keeper took me in. I was nine and had no future ahead, just an empty black hole. But being an assistant at funerals, digging graves, nailing coffins, or dressing corpses in fancy clothes, was a small spark of hope for a better life. Even stealing from mourners crying over their loved ones was part of that spark. 

Now, after several dishonest graveyard keepers, I became one, and today I wait in the rain until the cemetery is empty, until the old man leaves. I want to open the grave he’s praying in front of today. At the funeral, I noticed a big blue shiny necklace around the neck of the poor old lady they buried. She took it to the grave, unnecessarily. Usually, I dig up the grave, break the coffin, pry open the coffin lid on the very night when the earth and stones haven’t settled yet. But the old man sat here for three days until night, and today’s storm plays into my hands. I’m waiting. And he’ll leave. He can’t endure this weather for long. 

And he left. I took tools - a pickaxe, shovel, crowbar, and a sack - which were carefully stored in the nearby shed next to the monastery building. Two lightning bolts crossed the sky, briefly lighting up the cemetery’s darkness, and the long rumbling thunder gradually gave me courage. I stood with my legs apart over the grave, holding the pickaxe high above my head, and mumbled softly: “...may they rest in peace...” As the steel tip whizzed through the air and deeply penetrated the ground, I added with one breath: amen. 

The soil was heavy, soaked with rain, sticking everywhere - on my shoes, on my coat, on the shovel. I couldn’t get rid of the sticky mud. For hours, maybe even the whole hours, I dug, shouted, cursed, struggled, strained my muscles until they screamed in pain, until a muffled thud on the wood of the coffin was heard. 

With a chisel and hammer, I carved, pulled, and broke a sufficiently large hole in the upper part of the coffin. Suddenly, the wind stopped, the rain ceased as if cut off, and silence spread. Cemetery silence. I covered my ears, stood up, climbed higher to have a view of the cemetery gate, the chapel, and the buildings. The storm, distant from the neighboring parish, faded away quietly, and my concentration suddenly caught a completely different sound. Something rustled, moved, swayed, and rubbed - I heard a faint squeak, almost in ultrasonic tones. What worried me was the source of this sound - the coffin on which I stood. 

One thought settled in my mind and pounded overwhelmingly on the logic of my imagination - they buried her alive. I frantically began to strike the richly decorated ornamental coffin made of precious wood with a hammer until I cut out a sufficient hole. “May eternal light shine upon them,” I uttered and lit a kerosene lamp inside. For a moment, I saw only darkness, but soon I recognized the clothes and the body, moving, turning, and shaking at short intervals, as in an epileptic fit. 

I shook off a disgusting fear and decided to act. “Give eternal rest to the souls, O Lord...” I reached my hand into the coffin hole and grabbed the old woman by the leg, but suddenly, a wave of excruciating pain surged through my body. I pulled my blood-covered hand out and forcibly tore off a huge black rat, hungry for fresh, living human flesh. From the black hole of the coffin, more and more rats rolled in waves, squeaking and scratching on my pants, on my robe. Instinctively, I started jumping, shaking, and stomping recklessly on those disgusting creatures with my fourteen-holed boots with steel tips, which I dug up for a pilgrim who mysteriously died in our abbey a year ago. My hopping and raging in the muddy grave, full of bloody, battered rats, didn’t last long. Suddenly, the coffin lid gave way, and I fell a few feet lower, dropping to my knees. To my surprise, beneath me, there was no body, no poor old woman devoured by rats! 

I felt cramped in the rat hole when, from somewhere below, a piercing squeak echoed, causing all the rats to disappear as if on command. The shrill sound awakened memories from my childhood - the precise sound of my tin whistle, which was my only toy, weapon, and treasure. I wore it on a chain and tearfully put it around my little sister’s neck on the day of our parents’ funeral, helping to hammer nails into their coffin. And now, after years, I hear the sound of the whistle again under these circumstances. 

I lit the lamp again, which fell and went out during the rat attack. Slowly, I bent down and looked into the other part of the coffin that wasn’t destroyed. I saw a gnawed hole near the head and a long underground tunnel, wide and tall enough for me to crawl through. I still have my goal in mind – the necklace still around the corpse’s neck. I won’t give it to you, rats. Either you give it to me, or I’ll get rid of all of you! 

I crawled through the tunnel, about three or four meters, moving the lamp ahead to see, with a big knife in my hand, ready to cut and slice. Suddenly, around a bend, I saw a few rats and the feet of the deceased, with one shoe already slipped off and lying behind her. Her body slowly and jerkily moved forward, deeper into the tunnel, which suddenly changed from a horizontal position to steeply downward. I chased away a few mice and caught the dead woman’s leg just in time, falling down with her as if into a well, waiting for impact. I ended up in a larger hole, some underground chamber; it was no longer a tunnel. I saw more tunnel openings at different levels all around. I lay on the old woman’s body, reached for the necklace, and took it from her neck. The petroleum lamp in the corner was dimly burning out, going out every now and then. I knew I needed to visually cover as much space as possible until darkness spread again, feeling it with every flicker of the lamp. 

Rats and mouse squeaks kept a respectful distance from me, or so I thought. Suddenly, I noticed another, larger creature near the opposite wall. Was it a creature or a human figure? It crouched, swaying from side to side, listening and sniffing, its hands running over mouse backs, playfully twisting their tails with its fingers. I couldn’t see its head and face clearly due to the stone’s shadow, where the lamp fell. Without waiting, I reached out behind it to illuminate my opponent with the last flame. It moved slowly towards me. Two more meters, one more meter. I stood still, waiting for the right moment to sharply light up the eyes of the living horror that had been living underground among the bodies of the deceased for years. 

I quickly lifted the lamp to head height and saw a torn woman’s face, more girlish, but aged by conditions. Blind eyes looked at me through the white mist of clouded pupils, and a diabolical smile revealed sharp triangular teeth accustomed to eating raw flesh. The facial features reminded me of myself in the mirror. There was no doubt anymore. The cruelty of the time justified burying a baby with its dead mother. No one could afford to take a child who would die from the effects of the Black Death in a month anyway. But her immunity and bodily strength were significant. I had a horrifying vision of her, lastly feasting on dead breasts, crying from endless hunger, where devouring decaying skin, muscles, and entrails of her mother, and later anyone buried here for an extended period, was her only liberation. 

I wanted to close my eyes, but I saw in her hands a tin whistle, which she slowly moved toward her mouth, as if savoring it. I watched her slow breath, the hold in her lungs, a smirk on her face with black, greasy hair streaming across it, never combed. At the sharp whistle of the tin whistle, rats poured out of all holes and leaped onto me. 

Sister, my little sister! ... No! ...