The Gravedigger’s Genie

This short story was my Round 3 submission for NYC Midnight‘s “Short Story Challenge” writing contest in 2019. In this phase of the contest, participants are given a time limit of 24 hours to write a short story that includes a specific character and theme or concept and a maximum limit of 1,500 words; unlike the previous rounds, writers could select any genre they desired.

My prompt for this story was Fairy Tale (genre) / Side Effects (theme/concept) / Gravedigger (character).

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In a quiet country hamlet, there lived a man named Collen who was responsible for burying unsanctified bodies in the village cemetery. The lonely life of a gravedigger was all he had known for twenty years of his life. It was honest work for a moderately dishonest man. Collen frequently helped himself to the possessions of his charges before laying them to rest; his hovel was filled with baubles that surely would have gone to waste if he had left them in the graves. One day, as Collen admired his collection, he set to work cleaning an ornate phial he had acquired from the body of a Moorish traveler. The filigreed bottle dangled on a chain, and the gravedigger suspected that the metals used in the piece could be worth a small fortune if he could polish away the layer of grime clinging to the jewel-toned glass.

“I’ll make you as pretty as any gem in the queen’s crown,” he muttered as he cleaned. The phial became painfully hot under his touch, and he dropped it quickly as though he were handling a live coal. Wisps of smoke emerged and gathered into a human shape that nearly brushed the ceiling: a muscular, half-naked physique, draped in gilded chains and shimmering silk, with bare feet and a shorn scalp that gleamed in the weak candlelight. The specter’s eyes flickered like two burning embers as they regarded the trembling peasant. Collen tried to scream for help, but the phantasm raised a hand before he could make a sound. It snapped its fingers and conjured a scroll out of the air, which hovered before Collen and unfurled without being touched. The illiterate gravedigger couldn’t make sense of the letters on the parchment until an alien thought crossed his mind like the memory of a church hymn:

Greetings, Master, from your friend – the living soul of Fire and Wind.

With this contract, you’re promised this: the attainment of your greatest wish.

Riches, glory, or love’s sweet flower – all these and more are within my power.

Call on me thrice, make known your will, and your desire I shall fulfill.

This being, seemingly gifted with powerful magic, was freely offering its services to him. A shrewder person would have been suspicious, but Collen was a simple man – at that moment, his greatest desire was to soothe the ache of hunger in his stomach. “I don’t know if your power comes from Heaven or Hell,” he said to the creature, “but I sense no ill intent in your proposal. Spirit, I am nearly starved to death. I wish to have a feast worthy of a duke’s table!”

The phantom nodded and wrung its hands like a miser. Food suddenly tumbled into Collen’s lap – game pies, a mutton roast, and a flagon of wine. Every dish was piping hot as though it had just come from the kitchen. Collen ate his fill for the first time in weeks and laughed until he cried. “Surely, you must be a servant of the angels!” he exclaimed. The specter grinned down at him, its eyes flaring brighter. With its task complete, the phantom bowed to its new master and dissolved back into smoke. Collen draped the chain around his neck so the phial, now cool, could hang close to his breast. He swigged more wine and took up his shovel to go about his evening tasks.

A funeral had happened that day, and the gravesite needed filling before he could work on new plots. Despite the deepening twilight, the mourners were still gathered around the open pit. The family matriarch wept openly in front of her children while her husband twisted his hat to the point of ruin. Collen kept his distance but tried to eavesdrop to determine the quality of valuables that might be buried with the dead relative.

“Mabiley has to stay here forever, Mummy?” asked the little boy.

“Only her b-body – her soul is g-gone,” his mother replied through her tears. “Hopefully, the angels have made a comfortable p-place for her.”

“Will she get to have a wedding in Heaven?” the girl asked.

The woman couldn’t speak any further. The children began to cry along with her. Collen was moved, especially by the news that this family was burying a daughter who had barely come into her maidenhood. What a precious treasure to lose to a cold, heartless grave! It had to be fated that Collen, a collector of discarded riches with a magical servant at his disposal, should be the one to acquire such a prize.

He touched the phial and felt it warm again until it almost burned his skin. Once more, smoke transformed into the towering apparition. “Spirit of the bottle, I wish they could find the peace to leave this place. Let their grief go away so they can return home with no sadness in their hearts.”

The shining specter snapped its fingers. The weeping at the grave ceased.

“Good riddance,” growled the father. “Now we can go about our lives without suffering the shame of her.”

“Damn her,” snarled the mother. “Why did the saints curse me with such a disappointment for a daughter?”

The parents spat into the grave, and their younger spawn followed suit. There was no trace of grief left – it had been replaced with anger toward the deceased girl. “Come,” said the bitter parents, “let’s leave the gravedigger to his miserable work.”

Collen giggled as he watched them go. “It’s good I was here! The maid deserves to be honored by someone who truly cares for her.” He threw aside his shovel and sat beside the grave, pondering his next move. This wish would require careful articulation, lest he play host to a rotting corpse. Collen rehearsed his words before activating the phial for the third time. “Spirit, I wish you would bring this maiden back to life in the quality she had before her life’s thread was cut short. Let her have no memory of her family, but give her only love for me.”

The specter bowed to him and then reached down into the grave. It helped the girl climb out of the hole and led her to the astonished Collen. She was slender and petite and bore no traces of decay; although her head was shrouded in grave-cloth, he saw she had been blessed with golden hair and a delicate heart-shaped face.

He held her hands in his. “I wish to take you for my wife,” he explained.

“Since you have saved me from the pits of Hell,” she murmured through the cloth, “I am yours, body and soul.” Collen dismissed his specter and led the girl back to his cottage. As night fell, he gave her all the pleasures that had been withheld during her first life while taking those he had been denied during his years of solitude.

The gravedigger woke at dawn in Mabiley’s embrace. He turned to look upon her and saw that the shroud had been removed during the night. Although the structure of her face was lovely, he was horrified by the monstrous appearance of its features. Her nose had collapsed into two pits, and lesions scarred her pale skin. She was no innocent virgin; this was the Spanish disease – the damning mark of an unfaithful wanton! This was the quality she had had before her death, and this affliction had surely been the cause of her demise!

Collen leaped out of bed. “Now I understand your family’s cruelty toward you!” he howled in disgust. “Whore, you’ve put the curse on me now!”

“I thought you were meant to be my family,” Mabiley wailed. “I thought you loved me!”

Panicked, Collen searched for his clothes. “The spirit can fix this! I can wish it so!” But the phial was not bundled in the clothing, nor anywhere in the hut. Collen ran out to search Mabiley’s gravesite and saw something shining at the bottom of the pit. When he climbed down, he did not find the beautiful bottle but instead a pile of glittering sand perfectly matching its jewel-toned glass.

The horrible realization struck Collen that these grains were all that remained of the magic phial. The specter had vanished, and Collen was left with no wishes and no way to preserve his life. The doomed man hurled sand toward the sky and screamed at the heavens, raging against the cruel fate that had befallen him. When the sparkling grains fell on the mound of grave dirt, the soil began trickling into the pit. Eventually, the whole pile cascaded in, refilling the hole and burying everything inside.

Collen had robbed his last grave, and as his reward, he would never have to dig another.