 I have a superstitious mom. She was always a sort of person who adhered to silly nonsensical rules, like not stepping on cracks or tossing salt over your shoulder if you spill it. Rules that may or may not even have had any true origin or reason. Things that people follow blindly, even though we all know there are absolutely no consequences for breaking, but follow anyway. One of my earliest memories actually involves my mom nervously demanding that I hold my breath until she says otherwise. I don't remember where we were coming home from late at night, but mom and dad were in the front seat and I was in a car seat half asleep. Then she said urgently, Jason, hold your breath. She'd smacked dad on the arm. You too, please just do it. Then she'd gulped in a big breath and held it as we traveled on down the foggy night road. Once she released her breath and said, okay, my dad laughed. He was used to her superstitions and normally just went along with it to make her happy. Why do I have to hold my breath, mommy? I'd asked mom swiveled in her seat to look at me because we were getting ready to pass a graveyard. Didn't you see it? I hadn't seen it, which I was glad about. It probably would have spooked me out. I shook my head. Well, anytime you pass a graveyard at night, you must hold your breath until you make it safely passed. I frowned and wrinkled my nose. You do? Why? I asked. She gave me a serious look. Son, you just do. That's why to be safe. That's why it's so important to always pay attention to your surroundings. Sometimes I think back to that and I laugh a little to think it's important to pay attention to your surroundings for the sole purpose of knowing when you're passing a graveyard. It's sort of funny. Do you know what it takes to get hired at a graveyard? Like as a job? Well, actually, in my case, it took exactly no effort. It took my dad drinking coffee with the city workers at the local diner on Sunday mornings and volunteering me when they said that they needed a part time groundskeeper. I didn't particularly care for the idea, but I did like money and spring had come. So the weather was getting pretty nice. So I guess I didn't mind too much when I started working Monday, Wednesday, Fridays after school and Saturday mornings at our town's small cemetery. I'd go and prune bushes, pick up fallen tree limbs, cut the grass, weed, eat carefully around tombstones. I was a teenager, but that was a pretty nice kid. I felt respectful of the place's residents and I treated the grounds with proper reverence. I even came to enjoy the job. Sometimes when I came, there would have been a funeral at some point earlier in the day. The casket would be lowered into the ground and the mourners gone by the time I arrived. But the grave would be uncovered with a pile of dirt still next to the chasm in the earth waiting to be filled in. Or I would arrive on a Saturday to find a grave or two dug a deep perfect rectangle awaiting a funeral later in the day yet to have a casket lowered in. I heated to admit it, but I always liked the smell of the freshly dug graves. It generated a natural earthy scent. Sometimes I felt the graveyard smelled old and stale and also a little like an old lady due to the mixture of flower arrangements, both growing and wilting away. It was probably all in my head. I supposed it was normal to just think that a graveyard smelled odd. Well, because a graveyard was an odd place. Nonetheless, I liked the ageless smell of the fresh turned earth. I never saw anybody digging the graves. Month after month passed, and I never so much as caught a glimpse of anyone doing it. I also wondered why the graves were left open after a funeral. Why the grave digger didn't come and fill it in right away. It seemed sort of eerie and maybe a safety hazard. Normally, I was alone in the graveyard during my short shifts, but once in a while I would cross paths with another city worker who'd come in on some sort of errand or task. The guy who sort of ran the graveyard. If that's a thing, was a grumpy old guy who never had much to say. One Saturday morning, I asked him about the grave digger. Hey George, I asked, how come you never see the guy who digs the graves around here? They were in a small office next to the main mausoleum, and George's eye shot up from the stack of papers he was shuffling through. What kind of question is that? He grunted. I shrugged. I don't know. I was curious, I guess. George gave me a sharp look, staring at me for a second. He orcs at night. He finally barked. Oh, always? Like he never needs a night off to work in the day instead? He was glowering at me then. Boy, it's a job for the night time. Now, if you ain't got nothing to do, I reckon you should just skedaddle. So from then on, I got sort of obsessed with the grave digger. Thinking of it as a job that had to be done strictly at night just made it all the more strange and alluring to me. Who was this person? What had drawn him to this sort of work? What was he like if he'd been spending a lot of time at night all alone digging graves? What did he look like? Why? Why on earth did he do this? I talked to my friend Jacob about it. I told him one day about all the open graves that popped up in the morning time. What grouchy old George had told me about the night grave digger and my general fascination with this person. Jacob stared at me blankly. Dude, you're nuts. I laughed. Seriously, I think working in the graveyard has gotten to you. I need to tell your parents to make you quit that job. I chuckled again. Nah, it's a surprisingly okay job. Nothing creepy or like crazy making has ever happened. I bugged out my eyes and lurched at him playfully. He ducked out of my way. Seriously though, I continued. Don't you ever think about what certain jobs are like? Like being a garbage collector or an NFL football player? Those are two really random selections. But yeah, I guess. I kind of think a lot about law enforcement. I might like to go that route when I'm older. See, that's exactly what I mean. You think about jobs and wonder what the job is like and maybe about what sorts of people do certain jobs, right? Jacob shrugged. Yeah, I guess. Seems legit. So yeah, then you get what I'm saying. You're already thinking about a law enforcement career. What I want to know is who wakes up one day and goes, boy, I really feel passionate about pursuing a career in the field of digging graves. Jacob cracked up laughing. Okay, yeah, I guess I see your point. So the guy never comes around except late at night. There's literally no way you could get to meet him. I don't think so. So I guess you have to go there at night then. I frowned. There is no way I could get out late at night unnoticed. And anyway, it's illegal to go in a cemetery past dark. If you don't work there, dude, you do work there, Jacob informed, rolling his eyes. Well, I mean, it wouldn't be my time to work. So it wouldn't be okay for me to be there. And look, anyway, don't you think it might kind of freak him out if someone just showed up late at night? Jacob thought about it for a minute. Well then, I guess your only option if you really wanted to get a look at this guy would be to install a camera. What? I asked, sure, just a little motion activated camera, like a ring doorbell or something. Just put it somewhere that it most likely won't be noticed. And it'll just kick on when someone moves near it. That sounds sort of stalkery, Jacob shrugged. You sound sort of stalkery, dude. Would that be pretty sketch though? Like don't you think we could get in trouble for this? We? Jacob asked with a laugh. I mean, I suppose you could get in trouble, but the trick would be to leave it somewhere low key and then get rid of it once you're satisfied. And if someone finds it and bothers to trace who it belongs to, which come on, they probably won't, then you could just make up something about being worried about vandals and trying to do a community service. Whoa, great idea. I said, you know, you have sort of a criminal mind for someone who wants to be a cop. Ha, well, maybe that'll make me an excellent cop. Within the next week, we've gotten a hold of a small motion activated camera and set it up to notify my phone when it was triggered. I happen to know that a funeral was scheduled for that Saturday. So I planted the camera where it would be definitely triggered near the site of a new grave. Jacob planned to spend the night at my house that night so we could finally see this mysterious grave digger. I was super excited. But then felt really bad for being excited about anything involving a funeral. We spent the evening playing video games and eating pizza. We periodically checked the camera from my phone, which could be done even if no motion activated it. We repeatedly saw just the still quiet gathering gloom of the evening falling over the cemetery and nothing more. It got later and later, though, and eventually we both fell asleep watching horror movies. The gentle jingling sound of chimes woke me up. It was the alert I'd selected for when the camera was activated. I sprung awake and had to shake Jacob since he was apparently less enthused about this project and didn't want to wake on his own. As I woke my friend, I fumbled to push the buttons to call up the camera on my phone. Jacob rubbed the sleep from his eyes and we both settled to watch. There was a bank of graves visible and further in the distance behind them, the stone door to the mausoleum could be seen. That, as it turned out, was the motion that had triggered the camera. I pushed a green button on the screen which activated sound so that I could hear as well as see what was happening before our eyes. The heavy stone door, only meant to open on very rare occasions, was sliding open. Not only was it odd to see the door open at all, as far as I knew there was a special tool required to open it. The door scraped noisily against the stone floor. A murder of crows nearby was roused by the noise and fluttered upwards in a flurry of shrieking cause. It seemed like eternity before the door finally finished its slow open and what stood there in the dingy dusty gloom made me drop the phone. What the crap is that? Jacob cried. We both scrambled to get the phone back to watch as the thing inside made its way out. It had a slow shuffling gate, seemingly to drag one leg and haul its bony shoulders forward as though it was walking against a hard wind. Its body was rail thin, almost skeletal, with tattered old fashioned clothing hanging from its frail frame. The skin on the face was sagging and paper thin, but the worst part was that there were holes in various places where you could see clean through to the bone beneath. Its hair was white and wispy, all but a few wiry tufts missing. It had gaping black sockets where I should have been, but instead only empty darkness pointed out toward the night. My heart was beating a million miles per minute. Jacob punched my arm. Dude, what the heck is happening right now? My wide eyes remained glued to the nightmare depicted on the screen. I have no idea. The thing moved forward and after an eternity it finally reached the grave site scheduled to be excavated for tomorrow's funeral. It stared down at the ground and then dropped to its knees. It began to claw at the black earth. Jacob and I watched in shock and horror as the thing slowly and methodically dug the grave with his bare, clawed, skeleton hands. We watched mesmerized for a long time until finally Jacob spoke up. Maybe we should call the cops. This is seriously messed up. Without taking my eyes from the screen, I replied, I mean that grave was scheduled to be dug tonight and he's doing it. Doesn't it stand to reason the cops already know about this guy? He is the grave digger. Jacob shook his head. No way, no way this is legit. That guy is like a zombie or something. I shrugged, having no idea what to make of it. I can't believe I'm saying this, but yeah, it looks like a real life zombie. Real dead zombie, you mean? And are you forgetting zombies eat people? I chuckled, only movie zombies, Jacob. Oh, okay, yeah, you mean real life zombies are nice kind old souls. Is that what you're saying? Please. Finally, I put the phone down. I don't know what this is Jacob, but the city runs both the cemetery and the police department. And when I asked George about this, he acted all weird and secretive about it. And like it was just a well known fact that graves are dug at night. So whatever this is, I think that the people who run our town already know about it. Jacob frowned deeply. But if it's dangerous, he whispered, I shrugged, I don't know. I don't know what to think. Right now it looks like it's just doing its job. After some more debate, we decided to put the phone away and sleep on it. The next day, the funeral would happen. The casket lowered into the grave and the grave would be filled in the following night. So we agreed that Jacob would spend the night again Saturday, and we would watch again to see what happened once there was a dead person waiting to be buried. The next morning, I reported for my shift. I gave the fresh grave and the mausoleum a wide berth and hurried to complete my tasks. The place had a whole new air of creepiness about it, and I was interested in getting the heck out. That night, Jacob and I were much more eager to go to sleep early. We fully expected to be woken by the chimes this time and decided the best way to pass the time would be to sleep until it was zombie time. Plus, we were both exhausted from staying up so long watching the creature the night before. In fact, we named our zombie Clyde. As expected, we were both woken by the soft chime of my phone. This time, Jacob sprang to wakefulness as quickly as I did, and we called up the view of the camera. Clyde must be a creature of habit. He emerged from his strange apartment just as he had the night before, stiffly and slowly. He made his way to the grave he'd worked so hard to dig the night before. Only then did his routine change. The bony character dropped down into the grave. For a long time, there was nothing else to see. We were almost ready to give up and turn it off. When all of a sudden, Clyde's bony fingers emerged from the grave and dug into the earth. We watched with fascination and horror as Clyde rose from the grave. He holed himself out of the earth, but the thing was, Clyde was holding an arm in his hand. And he was eating it. Oh my god. What is he doing? Jacob shrieked. And then we heard some noise from Clyde. He grumbled and moaned as he chewed on the arm. There were wet sloppy sounds as the raw teeth gnashed between his ancient teeth and snapping sounds as the sinewy flesh broke off the bone. His face was smeared with blood, dirt, and shadows of decay. I had the spinning, pounding rush of blood in my head, watching without believing what was happening. I told you. I told you, zombie-z people. Jacob declared, whispering this time, I thought about it for a minute before answering, but at least it's a person who's already dead. Jacob shoved my arm and stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Are you serious right now? I mean, I get that it's super disgusting, but you have to admit he isn't hurting anybody. I cannot believe what I'm hearing. Jacob muttered. What if it's some sort of deal? Clyde does this admittedly horrible job that nobody wants to do, and in exchange he gets what he needs. Jacob shook his head. This is the most messed up thing I've ever heard. No, look, hear me out. What if it's like the way it is in every graveyard? Maybe all grave diggers are like Clyde. What if it's normal? Jacob stared at me like he was sort of considering punching me. Jason, you've lost it. We absolutely have to call the cops. I frowned. Do cops even have any authority over creatures who are clearly already dead? I mean seriously. The graves get dug right on schedule when they need to be dug. Then like magic, they get covered in whenever someone needs to be buried. Do you think George and the other city people seriously don't know how that happens? Jacob sat back and pushed the phone away, contemplating what I'd said. I mean, it's just like my work there. I hardly ever see George. He just leaves a list on the desk in the office of tasks I need to complete. I wouldn't magically know what to do if no one tells me. Clyde, well, Clyde seems like he might be even less cognitively inclined than me. So, so what? Jacob interrupted. So, somebody's telling him what to do. Jacob shuttered. Gross. Jacob didn't want to watch anymore, but I did. Clyde went back down into the grave and came out with more pieces of whomever was down there. He trudged his morsels back to the mausoleum home and then came back to methodically fill in the grave in much the same way he dug it. Job well done, Clyde. I whispered. Even though my Clyde theory made good sense, Jacob became obsessed with keeping careful tabs on the grave-digging monster. He downloaded the camera app on his own phone so we could both watch even if we weren't together. For two weeks, Clyde's routine continued the same way. He only emerged at night if there was a grave to be dug, otherwise his stone door stayed closed and he didn't come out. He always employed the same methodical and archaic way of digging and covering the graves. He always took parts of the bodies within. It was an unbelievable way to live, but Clyde's routine nonetheless. The problems began when a terrible thing happened in our town. Nobody died for over a month. Obviously, that sounds like it's actually a really good thing to have happened for any community. However, by the middle of the summer no graves had been dug and one night the chimes woke me up. I watched with great interest as Clyde came out of the tomb, even though I knew there was no grave needed. He stumbled out, seeming far less coordinated, his motions more jerky and unstable. He looked around, his head thrashing in quick panicked turns. I imagine that if Clyde had eyes, he'd be looking around frantically. My phone rang and it was Jacob. I was able to pick up the call and go back to the screen while talking to him on speaker thanks to the marvels of modern technology. What's he doing? Jacob asked urgently. No idea. I admitted. Jacob and I silently watched Clyde for a long time. He remained in front of the tomb, looking around frantically with that horrible, eyeless face. Then he leaned his head back and roared, a sound of ancient primal rage. A sound so terrifying that I hurried to shut off the camera. What's wrong with him? Jacob said. I didn't want to admit what I was thinking, but I said it anyway. It's been too long since anyone died, Jacob. He's hungry. In the light of day, we couldn't see a way that this was really our problem or that we should involve ourselves any further by alerting authorities. Plus, we both still agreed that the authorities had to know about this. The problem arose when the girl disappeared the following night. It was an older, teenaged girl. In fact, I'd heard of her before as she just recently graduated from my own high school. Her car was found the morning after she went missing, abandoned alongside the road just outside of town. She'd been coming home late at night from out of town, and presumably her car had run out of gas. Authorities assumed she'd gotten out to walk to town and from there they didn't know what happened to her. She could have been picked up or something could have happened to her once she reached the city limits. There were no leads, but foul play had not been ruled out. The thing of it was, the night this girl would have gone missing, we were woken by the chimes. We'd watched as Clyde had shoved out of the mausoleum. We'd never seen him move so fast. He loped the opposite direction from the graves and was soon out of the camera's view. It was only moments later when Clyde returned, and he was dragging a teenaged girl, her body limp and lifeless, her throat ripped open, and dripping blood. Oh my god. Jacob had murmured crazily as we sat on the phone together mesmerized by terror. We both disengaged the camera. We have to call the police now. We have to, Jason. This has gone too far. I raked my hand through the air. I still think there's no way that they don't already know about this. I insisted. Look, we can't do anything to help her now. Let's just think this over and talk about it tomorrow. Once news broke about the missing girl the following morning, the whole town was abuzz talking about how another person had once disappeared on that very road back in the 70s. That one had been a jogger in his 40s. Everyone was fascinated by two strange incidents on the same street in one little old small town. Jacob and I were able to do some digging and discovered that when the last victim disappeared, the town had been in another long period of no deaths. The puzzle pieces came together and we began to see that as long as Clyde stayed fed, he was fine. But if he was hungry, then it wasn't safe to go past the graveyard at night. And for some reason, the higher ups in our community were letting this happen. Maybe it was a tradition. Maybe it was a pact with the devil. Maybe it was like this everywhere. Maybe it was why you have to hold your breath going past a graveyard at night. If you hold your breath, the zombies don't know you're there. What might happen to a citizen who became aware of this dark conspiracy and attempted to confront the authorities? After all, they were willing to accept the horrible deaths of a middle-aged jogger and a young woman driving at night. In fact, they would need to protect these secrets at all costs. We were suddenly happy we hadn't gone to the police. Well, don't hate me for this, Jacob. But he got what he needed. Maybe it'll be fine. People here can't stay alive forever. People will start dying again and Clyde will go back to normal. Jacob looked at me like I was insane. At the same time, he couldn't argue with my logic. What could we do? The problem was, the ban on death continued. People were apparently going through some weird, super-healthy, super-careful streak in our town and nobody died. Another six weeks passed and brought us into the fall without a single death. Then we were woken one night by the chimes. Just as he'd done the night of the unfortunate girl, Clyde came out of the mausoleum just to wish for a grave, scream at the moon. We have to stop him, Jacob said urgently, when he showed up on my doorstep by six a.m. the following morning. If anybody goes by there, he's going to kill him. What are we supposed to do? We can't know when someone will go by. If we get woken up by the chimes, it'll be too late for us to get there and warn the person. We have to be the people that go by. We'll know he's coming and we'll cut off his head. Are you crazy? I demanded. He's just some decayed old dirtbag, Jason. We can do it. Jacob and I got into a big fight about this. In the end, he agreed to give up the idea, or I threatened to go to the police after all. And we were both more scared of that idea than we were of Clyde. So we laid the whole thing to rest, barely speaking over it, and simply prayed someone would soon die of natural causes. But three nights later, I was awoken by the chimes. I sat bolt upright, instantly awake and filled with a bottomless sense of dread. Despite the fact that I'd initially thought we wouldn't be able to help, whomever stumbled into Clyde's domain, I was driven by the urgent feeling to try. I only lived five blocks from the cemetery, and someone was about to die. I had to try. I didn't even touch my phone, just leapt from my bed and ran. I ran until my lungs felt like they'd explode, but didn't slow at all. Within a half block, I could see who was standing before the black iron fence to the graveyard. It was Jacob. He seemed frozen to a spot. Clyde was tearing through the grass and the graves, covering an alarming amount of ground, and Jacob looked absolutely paralyzed by fear. Whatever he'd planned for this big heroic mission had been overridden by terror in the presence of the grave digger. Oh my God, hold your breath. I said, trying to pick up my frantic pace. I was moving faster than Clyde, but Clyde had a lot less ground to cover to reach Jacob. Hold your breath, Jacob, hold your breath. I screamed as my feet continued to pound the pavement. I was almost to my friend by the time my demand had left my lips. Snapped out of his trance by my voice, Jacob slowly turned his head to look at me. I got to him just as Clyde reached through the fence. My fingertips grazed Jacob's sleeve, even as Clyde yanked him brutally into the bars. Without a second's hesitation, Clyde ripped out Jacob's throat with his teeth. I stared in horror as the life drained from my friend. Somewhere in my mind, I heard my mother's voice then, Jason, hold your breath. But the words did not compute as I gulped in desperate breaths of air. Clyde's face snapped up. If he'd had eyes, they would have been trained on me. He released Jacob, and my dead friend slid sloppily into the ground. Clyde began to amble clumsily toward the opening in the gate, which was merely ten feet away. He would soon get out of the graveyard, and I had no weapon with me. Hot tears streaming down my cheeks, I finally collected myself enough to suck in a giant breath of air into my lungs and hold it there. Clyde stopped in his tracks. His head with the dead empty eye sockets stayed trained in my direction for just a second. Then he turned and ambled back toward Jacob's fallen body. I turned and I ran. Days later, after Jacob's horribly sad funeral when my family had returned home, I walked into the kitchen where my mother was making coffee. Mom? I asked. She turned and gave me a sad smile. Do you remember how you always said to hold your breath when you pass a cemetery? Mom's pretty face fell. I watched the color drain from her cheeks. I whispered, Do you know the story behind that superstition? Her eyes darkened and it seemed a shadow fell across her face. No, sweetie. She said softly, just an old superstition. She was lying. I could see it. She knew the truth. We moved away not long after that. We stuck around just long enough for my parents to find a place for us to go. A place that wasn't anywhere near a graveyard.