Rosemary Must Be Fed
a short story about what lurks in the graveyard
This was written for the 30 Days of Fright Writing Challenge, prompt 9: beneath the graveyard
I’m back-tracking to prompt 9, since it took me a while to revise this to my liking.
Rosemary Must Be Fed
The old man sat on a bench under a streetlamp, against the iron fence, outside the gate of the old village cemetery. The one that wasn’t used much anymore on account of the new one opening over on Elm Street fifteen years back.
It was deep into night. Too late for kids to be out.
But they came around the corner, talking in not-so-hushed whispers. Three boys and a girl. Dressed in black.
The old man didn’t usually see anyone.
He sat here round this time every night. This is where his Rosemary was and this is where he’d come and sit every night til it was time to join her—the love of his life. He’d tried, more than once, but… well, it hadn’t worked out the way he’d hoped. He adjusted the patch over his right eye and felt the scars that trailed across to his ear. He needed to pay his dues to her family, he supposed, before they’d accept him.
So now he left offerings at the tomb once a week. Dead animals he found. Wrapped packages, and even half a cow once, from the butcher over on Market Street. He and Rosemary used to stop in there, back in the day, when they sold fresh turkey sandwiches from the back counter.
She always ordered fried potatoes with hers. She always was a good eater. He sighed. Those were the days.
The kids were close now. He expected some rude comment. This generation, you know. But one of the boys just nodded and said, “Evening sir.”
He moved his crutch out of their path. “Evening kids.” He looked up. He could see a crowbar sticking out of a rucksack. “What’re you lot up to over here, this time o’ night?” But he knew. Night before Halloween. Mucking about in the graveyard. Scaring themselves.
At least they were out and about instead of glued to their phones or ipads or whatnot.
“Just telling ghost stories in the cemetery,” the oldest-looking boy said. Maybe fourteen. “A little midnight picnic.”
“Nothing illegal, I hope,” the old man said with a note of jest in his voice.
“No, sir,” the red-haired girl piped up.
“Might put a call in to that Rosemary chick,” another boy said. The old man frowned in the lamplight, but no one noticed. “They say you can call her up like Bloody Mary or something.”
The older boy smacked him in the arm. “It’s just some dumb game.”
“Oh, I’ve been around a while,” the old man said. “I’ve heard the stories about ol’ Rosemary.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’ve seen her and her kin here in the graveyard, you know,” he said.
The kids didn’t react.
“Yup,” he said, tapping his stump of a leg and waggling the remaining fingers of his left hand. “You best be careful. Don’t be wakin’ up anything too… hungry.”
They thought he was joking.
Of course they did.
Nervous laughter. He forced a laugh, too, and waved them off. “Stay outta trouble,” he called to their backs. The iron gate creaked as they slipped through. He hoped they would leave well enough alone. They had been polite kids, after all. And the girl, she reminded him of his niece Stacy, all grown up now and living in Tampa. On the other hand… “If you meet her, I ain’t coming to rescue you kids!” he called after them and heard their laughter fall back to him on the breeze.
+++
“Kyle, dammit, hold the flashlight steady, man.” Kyle’s older brother, Roy, had his crowbar wedged under the corner of the stone coffin’s lid. Max was at the other corner with his. They heaved, while Penny stood aside.
The four were inside the cool stone interior of the Owen mausoleum, where Rosemary was supposedly buried. Not many people really knew where Rosemary was because Owen was her maiden name. Penny was pretty proud of herself for doing that bit of research.
There had been a door of iron bars, but the lock had long since rusted away, so getting in wasn’t a problem. The floor was littered with leaves and paper debris blown in—what you might expect. But also, a heck of a lot of small animal bones. Like, did they just crawl in here to die, or what?
“Penny, we got it! Look!” The boys were peering in at what she assumed were the remains of the legendary Rosemary. But when she came over, she and Kyle shone their flashlights down onto a dark hole and a set of stone stairs leading down.
+++
Rosemary had gotten interested in her family lore. Wanted to check out the family tomb for herself. It was 1978 and they were high on newlywed love and weed and cheap wine when they’d snuck into the cemetery that night, whispering and laughing, just like those kids. “They say you can get into the family crypt,” she’d said. “I just want to have a poke around.” She always had a bit of a morbid bent.
She went ahead with the flashlight. Always ready for an adventure, was his Rosemary, always something new. It was dark and dank, cool, with a rotted musky smell. He remembered that smell to this day.
She shone her light into recesses in the stone wall, empty. Bones of small animals crunched underfoot. Then the noises came, from the darkness ahead.
He could still see flashes of canine-like mouths and clawed hands when he closed his eyes at night. They turned her, they did. Into one of them. She was family after all. But not him. He tried to save her. Lost more than a leg and eye in the process. Lost his true love. To them. Her—literally—rotten, stinking, ghoulish family.
The papers said he and Rosemary had been attacked by a wild animal, maybe a pack of wild dogs. Said he was lucky to be alive. Her body was never found. Not a piece of it.
+++
“Yoo-hooo? Rosemar-eee?” Kyle’s voice echoed in the stone tunnel.
“Quiet!” Max hissed behind him.
“What?” he said, turning his head. “There’s nobody down here to hear us. Chill out.” Kyle knew Max was the most fearful of the group, and he liked being braver than someone. “Rosemary? You home?”
Kyle’s and Penny’s flashlight beams splashed over stonework walls, illuminating dark recesses.
“Give it rest, Kyle,” Roy said. “You might disturb a flock of bats or something.”
The tunnel was wide enough for all of them, but Penny straggled at the back. There were a lot of animal bones down here, too, piled where the wall met the floor, as if pushed aside. Wait, was that a cow skull? “Guys, this is weird…”
Roy cut her off. “Oh, it’s not that weird. Long time ago, people built family crypts underground like this,” he said with authority. “My dad told me about it. They put the bodies in holes in the walls, or in coffins down here.”
Penny covered her nose and mouth with one hand as they moved forward. A smell was growing, like potatoes and wet dog. “Then where are they?”
“What?”
“The bodies.”
The noise came then. A snuffling, growling sort of noise. From the darkness ahead. Shuffling movement, like clawed feet on rock. A rising stench of rotten decay.
Kyle stopped and the others stopped short behind him. His flashlight beam seemed weak in the blackness.
+++
The night air was warm, with a hint of rain coming. Sound travels well on air like that. On the bench, the faint screams from the mausoleum just reached the old man’s ears. “I said I wasn’t coming to rescue you kids,” he muttered.
The old man sighed. A sad sigh, really. He unwrapped his turkey sandwich as the screams slowly died away. “Well,” he said to himself, “Rosemary’s gotta be fed.”
If you’re interested in doing this 30-day horror-writing challenge, or reading other stories by other writers in the challenge, it’s hosted by
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Shades of Pet Sematery here. With a pinch of Lovecraft and a dollop of Romero—if he wrote stories instead of filming them. I like it. Don't forget to submit it to TIF this Friday. It's that good!