Exeter, 1888

Okay, so this is a (very) rough draft of Chapter One (maybe) of The Gravediggers, the title of which comes from a famous Nietzsche quote, about God being dead, which I'll cite for you when I feel like it.  Well, okay, here it is:

“…Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?  Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?  Gods, too, decompose…”
      --Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science



You can look up the rest, if you're so inclined.  Just put in keywords NIETZSCHE, GRAVEDIGGERS, THE MADMAN  and GOD IS DEAD and you'll see the entire passage.  And he didn't mean literally that God was dead, but more or less meant that all man-made foundations were inherently nothingness, just a creation to protect us from the horror of the void.  Such umbrella terms include Society, Propriety, Family Values (he didn't mention that one, but he would today; love that one); such thought patterns include "Because I was raised that way," "Because that's what ---- do(es)," and, yes, organized religion.  Anything that ignores the fact that every single thought and action is the sole responsibility of the individual.  In other words, it is Bad Faith to say, "I believe so because that's what it says in the Bible," but it is good faith to say, "I believe so because I have chosen to believe that that's what it says in the Bible."  And I imagine that Good Faith and Bad Faith would be Nietzschean umbrella terms (traditional morality) as well.  But what're you gonna do?

I knew my philosophy degree would come in handy someday.  So, anyway, here's the fragment/draft/chapter.  I won't be including too many (if any more at all) of these, because why would an agent want to represent me if my stuff is free on the internet?  So here you are, and sorry for the above sidetrack---

Exeter, Rhode Island.  April 21st, 1888

Snuffy Stukeley would not have dug up his children had it not been for his neighbors.  Adam Wilcox, Mark Reynolds, John Whitford, the Mooneys, the Gardners, all of them wanted him to dig up his daughters.  They men of each family were with him now, in the burial plot behind his backyard, about twenty feet into the woods.  Their breath a mist in front of their mouths, they all dug at the softening earth of Anna’s, his youngest daughter’s, grave.  The rest of the men did not show that they heard his whimpers as they dug.  Shovel and spade sifted through the now-black soil.  The men grunted.

Edwin Mooney stood and stretched his back, his hands to both hips.  The oldest of them all, at forty-three, he looked at the darkening sky, the slow moving clouds, and wonders at the blasphemy of this.  Melissa Mooney, his eldest daughter—now nineteen herself, the same age as Snuffy’s daughter, Sarah, had been when she’d died—had wanted him to help dig, to help burn the bodies, if necessary.

“Sarah will come for me next!” she often wailed.  “Do you want me to die, too?”

Mary, his wife, had also asked him to help with the bodies.  “At least,” she said to him in bed one night, under flickering candlelight, “it will quiet Missy down.”  Mary had always been logical, he knew.  Very strong.  When he was uncertain, which was often, she was not.

He dug.

“I want it to be recorded somewhere that I want no part of this,” Dr. Harold Metcalf intoned, standing on the backyard doorstep of Snuffy’s home.  “This is a violence against God and good decency.”

“As you’ve been sayin’, Doctor Metcalf,” gasped Mark Reynolds between swings of the spade into the earth.  “As you’ve been sayin’.”

“Jus’ wait, Doctor Metcalf,” Adam Wilcox grunted, heaving shovelfuls of dirt to his left, into the woods behind Snuffy’s plot.  “Wait.  We’ll show you.  One of them’s to blame.  We’ll find ’er for ya, sure enough.”

“It’s just the Consumption, I tell you.”  Metcalf was angry and horrified.  The small town of Exeter, Rhode Island, was turned on its ear, and being led by the likes of Wilcox and Whitford.  Though not as base as Stukeley, they were worse because they were ignorant.  Stukeley, barely more than an idiot—though a great farmer, Metcalf had to admit—wasn’t expected to know any better.  But these men could.  And Reynolds and Gardner, too.  Otherwise good men led by their wives and daughters.  And superstition.

“Tell that to my Hannah,” whimpered Snuffy.  “Tell that to ’er after she’s done tellin’ you how Sarah’s been sittin’ on ’er, and drainin’ ’er.  Tell that to my wife, who says the same.”

Metcalf went to him and placed a hand on one of Snuffy’s shoulders.  Snuffy had stopped digging and stood there, sobbing.

“It’s the fever, Snuffy.  The starvation.  They’re just repeating what they’ve heard.  They’re seeing what’s been told to them.”

Snuffy turned then, and looked at him.  Bloodshot eyes leaked tears that ran his stubbled, cratered cheeks.  “Anna said the same!  Anna said the same and I didn’t listen to ’er!”

Doctor Metcalf removed his hand and stood back.  The others stopped their work.

“I didn’t listen to ’er and look what happened!  Six of ’em gone!  Six!  And now my son’s struck, and my wife!  And Hannah!”  Snuffy slid a soiled and shriven coatsleeve over his flowing eyes, then the back of a gloved hand over his running nose.

“I got six more, countin’ Hannah and my son.  I’m gonna lose my only son,” he wailed.  “He’s due to be married in a month.  I lose him, I lose my name.  Haven’t I lost enough?”

Metcalf calmed himself and offered a hand as he stepped forward.  “Snuffy, I’m sorry.  We’re all sorry that you—”

Stukeley batted away his hand.  “Haven’t I lost enough, now?”

The men stood around them, silent.  After a moment, Mary, his family’s young servant from Wakefield, appeared in the back doorway, clutching a shawl around her neck, sobbing.

Edwin Mooney, still rubbing his lower back, said: “What is it, child?”

She sniffled and hiccupped but finally got it out.  “It’s Hannah.  She’s—she’s gone!”

Snuffy gave Metcalf a last hard, yet weary, stare, then turned, walked slowly past the small headstones in the plot behind his yard, and entered his home.

“Jus’ leave yer good doctor’s hands in yer pockets,” drawled Wilcox.  “Let us work at it.  We’ll find the Devil yet.”

Metcalf, who thought of Wilcox as a common criminal, ignored him.

An hour later, Reynolds’ spade struck the coffin, damaging it.  He swore.  Carefully they slid strong ropes beneath the wood; then, four to a side, with Snuffy at the head and Dr. Metcalf—against his own judgment—at the foot, they hoisted it out and placed it carefully on the rocky ground.  The men offered the crowbar to Snuffy, but he couldn’t do it, so finally Adam Wilcox pried the top of the thin, wooden coffin.  Soon the nails gave, and they lifted it up.  Reynolds, Mooney and Gardner shown their lights.

Anna Stukeley lay in a state of advanced decomposition.  Strands of light brown hair lay scattered upon the red and pink pillow, upon her skull and on both shoulders.  Flecks of browning skin were attached still to the right jawbone and cheekbone, both otherwise the skeleton was bare.  The white and pink dress and black shoes they had buried her in had faded somewhat, and her skeletal hands lay, crossed, upon her chest.  She’d been dead for two years, and she’d obviously never risen.

Reynolds swore again.  The other men murmured as Snuffy covered his face and sobbed.  The doctor walked him into his house while the others replaced the coffin and began to fill in the hole.

When finished, they agreed, they would return home and meet again at eleven to work on the next grave.

Manuscript Info. Garnered from More Free Stuff

Okay, for this as of yet untitled ms.--maybe The Gravediggers?--we'll start with the exhumation of 6 or 7 bodies in 1888 RI, as the father of these people had had a disturbing dream, that he'd had an orchard (which he had) but that half of the trees in his orchard would soon die.  He recognizes this as an extended dream-metaphor, thank you, Freud, and this makes him listen more to his family's eerie complaints.  His wife has been getting sick, and 5 or 6 of their children had already died.  Sarah had been the first, about 19 years old; another daughter was next, though this daughter complains of seeing Sarah, at night, sitting with her (on her?) in bed, causing her pain.  This daughter dies, another gets sick, and has the same complaint.  The last straw comes when the mother gets sick, and a son, who is of age and about to marry a girl in a neighboring town.  The mother complains of the same thing about Sarah.  So all of the bodies are exhumed, and all have their hearts burned on a nearby rock in the family cemetary, and all the problems stop. The mother recovers, but the son, after marrying the girl in that neighboring town and becoming a promising young farmer, dies. 

Nothing is ever recorded about his death, so, ah ha!, that's how "it" spreads.  Vampires, consumption (tb), or plague, I don't know.  But I'm hoping for all three.  Other isolated cases (one family member) will be mentioned also, but only in the form of consumption, to highlight the panic, but to also show how the panic and ignorance of others hides the true demon.

This all sounds like the hokey local superstition and folklore that it is, but I can make this work in fiction.  I'm pretty sure.


This summary of information was obtained through the materials gathered from the free e-books in my free e-Google.  Though I understand that Google may one day soon take over the world--the entire company would make a decent James Bond villain--I have to admit that it is incredibly convenient and useful.  I've got a couple of emails, my other blog site, and my free books all there.  And when I write, I save that writing to a flashdrive, to my emails, to my harddrive, to my Scrivener, and to my free Google documents storage.  I do not work for Google, I swear.  Not only did I get the above composite information from those free books, but I can also get the clothing, speech, beliefs, etc. from the very old books that I saved for free there, too.  My goodness is this convenient and useful.  I repeat: I do not work for Google.

So this is the beginning of yet another new work.  Wish me well, everyone, as I have a tendency to start new stuff with really good ideas and then stop them cold when I get bored with them.  This stuff here, for example, is the root of WIP 7, all novel-length.  I hope to do some combining and shuffling, but, boy, I don't know.

Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden and Jonbenet Ramsay--Books by Profiler John Douglas, with Mark Ohlshaker

The Cases that Haunt Us


One of my all-time favorite books, and definitely not for the squeamish.  The authors cover--in unbelievably great detail and depth--the crimes, aftereffects, motives, evidence and suspects involved in the periphery of the Jack the Ripper killings in Whitechapel in 1888, the Jonbenet Ramsay trial, the Lizzie Borden case, the Zodiac Killer, The Black Dahlia (see the James Ellroy blog entry below this one) and a few others.  The writing about these cases is inspired, impressive, thorough and intense.  They are also, especially when writing about 1888 Whitechapel (Jack the Ripper) and 1950s L.A. (The Black Dahlia), historically accurate and extremely fascinating.  I have re-read this book a few times now, and, like a true classic, I get a new thing out of it each time.  John Douglas's take on Jack the Ripper, especially, is definitive, and obliterates the efforts of Patricia Cornwell and others who have tackled and been derailed by the topic.  For Ripper enthusiasts, this is the one to read.

Obsession

Gruesomely fascinating, as usual.  Very good writer, and it's amazing how he's been able to keep his sanity, considering all of the insanity he's seen.

Mindhunter

Well-written, as usual, and memorable for both the writing and the content.  I wrote in a journal: "It reinforces that Epicurus quote for me: 'If God listened to the prayer of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are for ever praying for evil against one another.'"