Graveyard Society

By Everett Wair Sr.

Graveyard Society is an adult comedy story about a young gravedigger, Neal Sounders, who is murdered by his neighbor. When he is laid to rest, his soul rises from its grave in a cemetery where souls of restless ghosts wait to return back into the real world or wait to make their final transition. In a very active cemetery, Neal Sounders is granted seventy-two hours to return back into the real world to avenge his untimely demise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645440024

Book preview

Introduction

Ghosts. In folklore, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shape. Really…?

Well, let me tell you that I used to be a skeptic. I really didn’t believe that there was any truth about ghosts, spirits existing. Allow me to enlighten some of you out there who are the same as I was, then you judge for yourself.

When I was about six or seven years old, I remember my grandmother and great-grandmother talking about seeing a lady ghost in the front yard where we lived in Little Rock, Arkansas. At that age, I never gave it a second thought about what they said. I never saw a ghost when I was there.

Now, we lived in a St. Louis apartment that had a bedroom that led up about thirty to forty steps to it. I was asleep in the bedroom alone. The room was dark. Suddenly, the bedspread started being pulled slowly off me. Mind you, I was the only person in the bed in that room. I was so afraid, my little legs jumped out of the bed and headed to the stairs that led down to the rest of the apartment. I leaped all the way to the bottom without touching a single step. Don’t ask me how I did it. I was afraid as hell at that age. To this day, I never told anyone about that night until now in this book. Now, nothing happened until my mother passed away ten years ago. I was living in our house in Chicago when she got cancer and passed on. Me and my two sons were living in the house alone. One day, I was asleep in the basement bedroom when something shook my bed and woke me up. First thought was that one of my sons was in my bedroom, but I saw no one in the whole basement. I sat up on the edge of my bed, looking around curiously.

Suddenly, I felt something making an indentation on the bed beside me. I looked at it, and there was a round indentation, like someone’s butt sitting right next to me. Then whatever it was raised up. I couldn’t see a human figure or anything. On a different day, again in my basement, we had a pinball machine that didn’t work, which was just there. I was sleeping again but was awakened by a loud boom! I jumped up, looking around the basement, seeing nothing. Something told me to look at the pinball machine. Damn…the pinball machine glass had exploded into a million pieces. To this day, I don’t know what made it do that. But when my mom passed, my father told me that he was in the same house alone, washing dishes. For some reason, he looked over at the dining room table. When he did, two wooden pegs tips at the top of the chair popped right off the chair. I didn’t believe him then, but he swore it actually happened.

One last incident for you. Shortly after we buried my mom, I was asleep on the basement sofa. Something made me see both my mother and my grandmother at our back door. I remember going to the back door, pulling the curtains back and seeing them together. I guess, in shock, I woke up.

That led me to thinking about spirits being in our everyday presence—even though we sometimes can’t see them. On my way to work on the Chicago Transit city bus, I would pass by a cemetery. I would wonder if the dead’s souls were there. If they were, if they were active in the cemetery. Maybe… Maybe not… Who really knows? But every time I pass by a cemetery, I wonder if any of the souls there have their own graveyard society. In closing, I’m sure that there are some of you who have had some sort of ghostly or spirit experience. As for me, I am a true believer. Now enjoy Graveyard Society.

Chapter 1

It’s fall in the city of Chicago. A Chicago Transit bus stops at the corner of Cottage Grove and Sixty-Ninth Street as Neal Sounders, a young graveyard digger, an expecting father and husband in his thirties, stands waiting for it to arrive. He pulls a newspaper from the side pocket of his overalls. The bus pulls up to him and comes to a stop; its door opens. Neal enters the bus, pulls coins out of his pocket, and drops them into the pay machine. He walks to the center of the bus and takes a seat.

The bus has a few passengers, such as an attractive young African American woman in her midtwenties. Neal gives a glance at her white blouse showing the gold crucifix hanging just above her breasts. Her short skirt comes to a stop at the center of her thighs as she crosses her gorgeous legs, which showcases a pair of expensive high heels with red soles. She needed no stockings.

Her legs are perfect, Neal thinks to himself.

The bus proceeds down Cottage Grove Street. Neal stares out the window. The bus approaches the southwest corner street of the Oak Woods Cemetery. From Neal’s seat, he could see the graveyard’s hundreds of gravesite and mausoleums. Thoughts came to his mind. When I was a child, the old folks would sit around and tell us stories of ghosts and spirits.

Neal notices a seagull flying over the cemetery, and this breaks his thoughts. His mind goes back to his thoughts. I’ve always thought those old stories were just figments of imagination.

The bus comes to a stop. The bus lets Neal off the corner of Cottage Grove and Sixty-Seventh Street at the northwest street corner of Oak Woods Cemetery. Oak Woods Cemetery was established 165 years ago on February 12, 1853. It covers 183 acres. It is the setting for a mass grave and memorial for Confederate prisoners of war. It is also the final resting place of several famous Americans, including Mayor Harold Washington, Ida B. Wells, Enrico Fermi, John Harold Johnson, Louis Rueckheim who coinvented Cracker Jack, and Chicago’s flamboyant drug dealer, Flukey Stokes, who buried his son in an automobile-style coffin, including tire wheels and a steering wheel. Son’s body is seated behind the steering wheel with real money in his hands.

Neal stands at the corner, scanning the area. Cars pull into the gas station while other customers pump gas into their cars. Kids run out of a small neighborhood store entrance across the street from the gas station. Neal starts walking toward the cemetery entrance.

As Neal walks along the six-foot-tall concrete cemetery wall, a lady of the night walks toward him. She’s an attractive young Caucasian high on crack, wearing a short miniskirt, fishnet stockings, high heels, a bra covered with a Chicago Bulls jacket. Her long hair is in corn rows. She pauses to light a cigarette. Neal’s eyes scan her body from a distance.

She walks past Neal but stops and asks him, Hey, handsome, you wanna fuck? A blow job?

Neal looks shocked. He squints his eyes and replies to her, I don’t think so.

Fuck you! she yells back at him. She storms away. Neal looks puzzled as he pushes one side of the huge green steel gate to the cemetery yard and enters.

Among the many mausoleums and headstones are flowers on various graves—some fresh, some dried and dead. Neal scans the grounds and sees his uncle Heywood off in the distance on a hill sitting under a tree. He looks at the cemetery’s office just to his left. He walks to the office building door and enters. Moments later, he comes out with a shovel in his hand, ready to start work. He stands and looks at the different gravel-paved road, which led to various sections of the cemetery grounds. He chooses the one that will take him to his uncle. He can still see him from where he’s standing and starts his walk. As he walks, he can’t help thinking about all the mausoleums in the yards that have famous dead people residing in them. What if they still have some sort of a presence on earth? he thinks. Naw, crazy thinking, he says. Neal approaches his uncle.

The sixty-year-old man with salt-and-pepper hair to match his beard and mustache stares at Neal approaching him. Neal notices by his uncle’s side is a brown bag, and inside is a bottle of Jack Daniels. His uncle’s shovel rests against the tree. His overalls have a rip at the ankle on the right leg.

How’re you doing, Uncle Heywood? Neal asks.

I reckon, nephew, I reckon. You just getting here, nephew?

Yeah. Neal rests his shovel on the tree next to his uncle’s and sits down.

Man, I wish that funeral procession would come on in here, so I can get home before it gets dark, says Uncle Heywood. He hands Neal the brown bag with the Jack Daniels inside, and Neal pulls the bottle out, screws off the cap, and takes a drink.

You sound like you’re afraid of the dark or something, old man.

Watch that old man shit young buck.

You afraid you might see some dead people walking or something? Neal asks. He mimics, I see dead people! I see dead people!

Not dead people I’m afraid of, nephew…ghosts.

What? Ghost? Man, get real. Neal props his hands behind his head against the tree and stares up into