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Rest in Peace (4) : While making your way through Destiny City, you wind up taking a path you’ve never taken before. Maybe you’re following directions, maybe you got lost, maybe you were just looking for a shortcut—things were going well, until you wind up needing to pass through a graveyard. It seems normal enough—until you pass by a grave and get a powerful chill down your spine. When you stop and look at it, you see the gravestone has your name; beneath it, your birthday and today’s date. If you leave and return, the gravestone remains, but the name and dates look like they’ve been clawed off.
Gilbert inhaled deeply, feeling the cold autumn air sting his lungs in the way he loved. It reminded him so much of childhood, of loving the seasons turning, of his deep enjoyment of all things Halloween and creepy. He still loved it, of course, but the enthusiasm is hard to muster up when one must attend to adult duties instead of focusing purely on the barely-contained joy and excitement. It was certainly a feeling he missed, but going back to being a child wasn't exactly in the cards. Unless something crazy magical happened, which he doubted. It didn't seem like the kind of thing that would happen, even in Destiny City. The magic—he knew it was, there was no way to explain all of the weird s**t that happened in this city otherwise, no matter how much he was called crazy for it—the magic wasn't like that. It didn't seem... so kind. Or benign. A lot of bad things happened here in Destiny City, unexplained, inexplicable but people still gave it a shot, because explaining these mysteries in ways that made sense was the only way for some people to try and grapple with the supernatural.
Call him a Boogara, but he believed the supernatural was there. Was with them, every day. It wasn't hard to miss. But skeptics just refused to look any deeper than the surface. It was clear when you put together all the evidence and eliminated variables that could have been something that took away from the real evidence... That it was all real. Just shrouded behind curtains and communication methods that were unorthodox.
So, when Gilbert, as he was doing his normal job of tending to the graves, making sure all of them were clean, that any dead flowers were removed, and so on, felt a powerful chill go down his spine that definitely wasn't associated with the weather, he froze.
Something was here. Or had been. He took a slow, deep breath, and turned a critical eye over to the next row of graves. HE shivered again as he stepped toward them and pursed his lips. What was going on? There was a totally new stone there, beautiful, shining. He knew when people got buried here. Nothing had been planned. But, now, he suddenly noticed the empty grave it was attached to, and curiosity overwhelmed him. Despite instincts screaming at him not to, he had to do his job, and he stepped closer to bend over the stone from behind, tilting his head to read it only partially upside down.
He couldn't help the short scream that left his mouth as he scrambled backwards, falling on his a** and hand clapping over his mouth as he stared, wild-eyed, at the empty grave, perfectly, freshly dug, and the new stone with his name on it. His name. And today's date. He stayed frozen on the ground for only a moment, before he stood and ran in the opposite direction, grateful that he had, at the very least, been smart enough to not stand too close to the open grave.
It was one of the first things you learned not to do, when you worked in a graveyard, after all.
