"What's the shovel for?

The question hits Glare's brain like a well executed vulgarity in a Catholic school library. She smiles thrillingly at the mystery of the shovel in her hand. Not the mystery of it's function but the mystery of what purpose a function like this hole digging tool is necessary for.

"Well, Raj, we're going to dig up a potential body tonight. A legend, if you would like to know the details. It's someone who's supposed to be dead but might not be!"

Raj shrugs in the way he believes cool people shrug and lights the cigarette that's dangling like a tiny limb from his lip. He purses and sucks as the lighter flicks. He takes a deep breath and turns a quarter of the white dart into ash. As he breaths out with a smile on his face, he shrugs and passes the little tarry cancerous formaldehyde stick to Glare.

" Whatever, I'm in."

Glare takes a long lung puff and hands the cigarette back to Raj.

The two friends walk like a teenage prank down the street beside their high school in the city of Veridiction. The education building is a blackened red brick structure and has dark windows like eyeless eyes. Its internal darkness seems obsidian, like voids with unknown horrible things watching, such as the school custodian or, well...the school custodian.

"I hope that "happy crappy" isn't here tonight."

Raj abruptly halts his walking and almost spits his smoke down the open collar of his shirt. He laughs and speaks all at once after his fingers clasp the cigarette.

"Is that what you guys call him? No wonder he goes out of his way to be mean to you and your little buddies."

"The dude is awful to us no matter what. It's like he just picked us for when he's in a bad mood."

"Or you're the cause of his bad mood. I know you Glare. You're what's known as a shit disturber. I mean, just look at you."

Glare stops and looks at herself. She shrugs and pretends with all of her might to swing the shovel at him. Raj flinches and gives Glare a stiff middle finger. She smiles and makes Raj flinch with the blurry swinging shovel a second time.

Eventually they get to the baseball diamond that from another perspective looks like a square and head out upon the short grass of left field. When they arrive at the periphery, Glare throws the shovel over the chain link fence and easily climbs and jumps over it.

"Damn, you're agile. I'm not, so give me a minute."

Raj looks like a baby seal climbing over a giant wall. His foot gets caught on one side and his head and shoulders dangle over the other side and he can't move due to the struggle of his bulk and incoordination.

"A little help here?"

Glare kicks the fence and Raj falls head first onto the grass.

"You broke my smoke!"

Glare shakes her rainbow dyed hair and walks away, dragging the spade shovel behind her like a zombie holding it's own entrails.

"I think it's right here, under the bleacher. Shall we?"

"Yeah, fine. Dig."

"You don't wanna help?"

"There's only one shovel, doofus."

"We'll take turns. That way, if we get caught, we'll both look like we've been shovelling instead of just me."

"Ah, I see. You don't want all the heat. Yeah, ok. In a bit."

Glare accidentally bangs the bleacher with her first upswing thrust of the shovel. The noise echoes everywhere. She raises her eyebrows and grinds her teeth.

"Oops."

Raj grins while holding his ears. "Yes, good one. Whoops a daisy."

As no other shovel on metal sounds occur after the loud incident, Glare stabs her shovel into the ground. She gets two feet down and three feet across before wiping her forehead with her sleeve. She takes off her green army jacket and drops it away from the pile of dirt she's created, revealing a sweaty tank top. Then she continues digging. At four feet she stops again.

"Hey, Raj. Your turn, buddy."

Raj flicks a cigarette away and saunters over to the hole. Glare stabs the pile of dirt with the spade and sits, crisscross applesauce beside the hole.

Raj huffs and puffs as he manages to hit five feet down before relinquishing the shovel back to Glare's impatient hands. The pile of dirt is getting taller and wider at this point.

Glare climbs down into the hole and throws dirt over her back, hitting Raj's face.

"Oops. Sorry."

"Right. So that wasn't on purpose."

"Hey, my back's to you. Of course it was on purpose!"

She eventually reaches six feet and her shovel bangs across something solid. She digs around the edges of it and pries it out with the spade. It's a hollow metal box. An artifact of another era. She hands it up to Raj and climbs out of the hole.

Raj asks, "should we try and open it?"

"Duh"

"Ok, how? It doesn't seem to have a lid or a door or anything. It's not a safe or a lock box. Tell me, how do we open it?"

"With our weapon of exhuming box destruction!"

Glare stabs the edge of the black metal cube with the point of the space and breaks it partially open.

Immediately, a rancid hand grabs the outside edge from within the box. The hand in gnarled and rotted. Then another bone exposed hand crawls out and starts pulling the broken part of the box further open.

Glare and Raj are as paralyzed as mice being dropped into a snake enclosure. They are statues at Medusa's gaze. They are terrified.

The ugly hands have broken the box enough that a forehead appears. It has clumps of long grey hair spewing from the cube. Then the eyes appear. Pure white orbs that stare into the two teenagers.

"W-w-who d-d-did y-y-you s-s-say was b-b-buried here?"

"I didn't. There was no one. I was pranking you and happy crappy..."

By this time the arms have crawling out of the box and are trying to pull the rest of it's dead body out as well. The white cataracts continue to stare blankly at Glare and Raj.

"W-w-what d-d-do we d-d-do?"

The thing pulling it's torso out of the box answers Raj's question in a cracking, distorted voice.

"Run."

Glare decides to chop the head off of it with her shovel.

Thwump!

It's head flies off and rolls toward Raj, stopping directly in front of him. It stares up at him and it smiles in a rotted face sort of way.

"So, you want to play with me. Ok. I'll bite."

It laughs like something is actually funny and tries to bite Raj.

Glare spears the severed head with the shovel, cutting it almost in half while Raj urinates down his leg. Then she begins bashing it to a pulp with the shovel and her boot. Raj decides to get in on the action and jumps up and down upon the busted face. Glare then kicks it. Unfortunately, it flies directly into the hands of the body thats standing beside the box. It places it's mushy skull head back on it's body and proceeds to stumble around until it falls into the hole.

"I guess it couldn't see anything?" Glare shrugs.

Then she notices another head protruding from the box. A hand comes out and waves at her. The head speaks.

"Hi there. Thanks for opening this tomb to the living. It's one of a kind. We've been in here for decades. Would you like to have a look around inside? It has very nice accommodations. I particularly enjoy the absolute darkness and unending smell of rotting flesh. Such good times."

A hand jumps out of the dug out hole and grabs Raj's ankle. It pulls him down swiftly. His body makes a thud as he's pulled down into the depth of it. He screams but not for long. Then Raj's severed hand, held by the other thing's hand, waves at Glare from out of the hole.

"Hi, Glare. Hello. I'm Raj's hand. Hieeeee!"

And so Glare drops the shovel and takes the rotting corpse's initial advice. She bolts out from under the bleachers and jumps the fence. Glare doesn't look back. Not even when the shovel screams by her, just barely missing the decapitation of her head.

The two dead bodies pull Raj toward the box and stuff him in it, but by bit, piece by piece. Then they turn into dust and blow into the box as well. The damaged part repairs itself and then closes up tight.

The custodian walks from out of the shadows in a denim tuxedo and a chain wallet like a nineteen nineties apparition. He picks up the box and throws it into the hole.

"Fuckin kids."

Then he disappears and all of the dirt blows around in a miniature tornado until the hole is filled.

As the moment passes, there is a banging noise from underground and the almost inaudible sound of a voice.

"Glare! Glare! Get me out of here, Glare!"

"Shut up, kid, and join the club. We're going to play eat the new guy in the dark. Ready? Run."