Hanging on Bones

Chapter 7: Bony Bones

I wake up slowly. I was never good at this waking up business. Half conscious and half in a dream land I always have a choice. The choice between blissful oblivion where even if scary nothing can hurt me. Or the nightmare of being conscious with constant hardships and suffering, where no amount of work can give me release, and even the best of intentions of those closest to me, turn into blades that are stabbing at my very soul. But no matter how hard I try to stay unconscious, I am always, sooner or later, dragged out to wakefulness by instincts hardwired into my very being, shouting to keep on living.

I really always thought that the cause of this was the genes passed on by multitude of generations, and my own bodily demands overriding my mind. Being dead should have solved that problem.

But it seems I was wrong.

Well… Whatever.

I start moving and stretching. Yeah, I’m still in my grave. I fallen asleep while sitting up, with my spoils of war tangled up all around me. Either way it’s not like I could have lied down. Stuffed deep into my coffin and preventing my beauty sleep is the dirt from making an exit hole. But time to take my bearings.

I have the feeling that sun has long since disappeared. It’s not like I expected otherwise, but it still is reassuring.

I never, ever want to experience that pain again.

To achieve that I will have to get used to my new body and adapt as best as I can. But seriously… this whole situation really sucks.

Thinking on it there seem to be some bonuses at least, huh. Like the ability to get back my head. And the foot bones. Yeah, they reattached themselves. Damn, this is convenient. Not even hairline crack can be felt in the place where they were cleanly cut off. But the cursed arm is still missing though. I feel it and apparently my tossing around and stretching did not dislodge the vase from its position. I’m really glad of that.

Well either way, no use just sitting here.

After standing up I get my bony hand on the lid. Hard push and I’m free to take a look around.

Sticking my skull out proves I’m not in any danger. Quiet and calm night like yesterday. Hell, hopefully not like yesterday but still the weather is nice.

Without going to the surface I start tossing out everything I find in my grave. First goes closest loot. All of it goes to the side, off from face of the grave. Then after I make sure I have enough space to climb out, I change the direction and start piling the earth, dirt and stones on top of the slab. Getting good rest is very important. Not like I would get sore muscles from sleeping in twisted position, but it was way too unfordable while trying to extend my blissful oblivion.

Bit of work and I’m done clearing it up. Everything was thrown out including the pillow.

Hop, and I’m out. Except for usual graves and trees there is nothing worth of notice. Well then. I take the discarded plastic bags and fill them up with excess dirt. No use leaving traces behind, right?

But still… seems like I found my missing rib. After using it to get out of coffin I totally forgot about it. It broken off of me in such a place that I cannot see it easily. Being the third rib from the top, one side used to be connected to the spine and is quite even, while the other side is jagged where it broken off. It’s just small part of whole rib, which is still connected to sternum.

From what I can remember of the moment I died, the pipe that killed me entered at almost horizontal angle on one side, went through whole chest and stopped on my shoulder blade on the other side. Due to some sort of luck, the ribs in the front were spared while the one at back, which was closest to the point of impact, broke.

It’s also curious that it did not reattach itself like the foot bones. Hmmm. Maybe similarly to the missing arm, it’s because of distance and materials separating me and the bone, huh.

Few quick courses between my place and heavily overgrown spot several rows below, makes my grave as clean as new. Well, not really.

I did not get a proper look at it yesterday but my grave is in total mess. Chipped off here and there, moss spreading all around. The part of the headstone and nameplate is missing. The remaining part is so weathered and cracked that it’s completely unreadable.

There goes my identity. Simple inspection would never reveal who was buried here. Go figures. Not like I cared for my name much. I had plenty of enemies and quite a few debts. My name being forgotten would serve me a lot. Still… unless something really nasty happened, in this day and age of digitalisation, the placement of one’s rest is recorded not only in cemetery’s archives, but also available in online database. Screw personal data protection act. It does not apply if enough money is on the table. I doubt anyone would bother with me though.

By the way, does the debts even apply death? I remember something that they could be inherited, but I did not have any kids yet. OH! Right! My life insurance! That must have paid them off! Hahahah at least something I got right!

All the same, better safe than sorry. Screw my past name. From now I’m called Bones. Yeah that fits me perfectly. Like second skin to be exact.

Bony Bones. Well now. Ain’t I sooo creative, huh. To hell with this. Without vocal cords it’s not like I can tell it to anyone.

Hmm… I feel as if I’m missing something important from my previous lines of thought… but I guess I better get back to more down to the ground matters of my loot!

Ha! Yeah! Time to play with the new toys!! Let’s see what we have here…!

…

Damn. Both pouches are gone. The one with money and the one with the scroll. I was prepared for it but it still hurts. Not like I could use any of them but still…

As for the other stuff… What the hell…? After closer examination, it seems that all the blood is gone. I understand that most of it crusted and could have been scrapped off when I was tossing in my grave. Or when disposing of excess dirt. But inside of boots? Come on! How does the blood disappear from there?

Damn, something seems fishy about this… Looking at myself there’s not even a speck of blood on me. I assumed that it’s because of the scorching and smoke coming off of me back at the dawn… Or maybe, tossing of all that dirt scrapped most it off… But that cannot be the case now, can it?

Checking everything again proves the same. No blood at all. What, am I vampire or something? But even vampires don’t make the blood disappear, do they?

Ah hell. F**ck this. Who cares whether I’m vampire or skeleton, damn it. It’s not like I have any choice, now is it? I guess being vampire would even be better, considering all the romantic stories I red. No need to be so frantic.

Every bone I can see on myself is grey-white. There’s no dirt that I suppose should be there but that might be coincidence. The only places I have hard time to inspect, is the upper half of my spine, part of my back and the skull itself. Hard to fix any of that without a mirror.

Wait… there is a way! To become dullahan again!

…

Damn it… Either that chink on top of my spine also regenerated, or something else is stopping me from removing my head. The weird feeling and disorientation would also be too much, I guess.

Mental note to myself: I have to find a series of small mirrors and examine contents of my skull. Yeeey. That will be fun.

Getting back on track. The equipment. First off is the belt. I can immediately put it on myself and start using it. Almost. Using scimitar I have to make additional securing points, but few minutes and I’m set. Next off are the knee protectors. They are from very tough leather and are secured in place by two straps each. Due to lack of flesh they have plenty of free space. But the straps are long enough that using them more as a ropes and coiling them around the bone proves to be working. They might look funny, being much bigger then my fleshless knees, but who cares. I would never win beauty contest either way.

Ha ! One forearm protector for one arm! Seems too good to be true! And it is. No way to strap it in with just one hand. Trying to do it with my teeth heavily damages the soft leather parts, so I abandon my attempt. The boots are waaay to big and will not keep secure. Even filling with earth every little gap between my foot and the boot does not help. My bones simply slide out of it.

That leaves the leather harness and the curved fancy bale – my scimitar.

…

This piece of bullshit of an equipment is so complicated that it takes me about half an hour to figure out. The first obvious clue was that Valkyria carried the big greatsword on her back with it. But there were much more straps, bits and bobs hanging in tangled mess over there. In the end, I concluded that it was designed to be multipurpose weapon holder for behemoth of a person. Our gorilla of a girl, was big and strong enough to carry her huge double handed weapon together with two scimitars at the same time. The greatsword was going from her left shoulder to the right of her back, while both of the curved smaller blades were crisscrossed and hanging on her lower left back with handles sticking out on waist level. The lower one, must have slapped her on legs or something. That’s why she thrown it at me. But the harness itself had also space for various many other weapons of different sizes and shapes. The other scimitar must have been left at that steep stairway. I will have to go look for it if the time allows. Hopefully it’s still there.

In either case, the whole arrangement is way too big for me, so I just cut off the part responsible for scimitars and fastened it securely to my belt. Fits perfect and the blade does provide temporary counter-balance for my missing arm.

Now I’m set! Just need eye patch and bandana to make me a pirate!

Hahaha… ha… right… I take my time carrying unused parts of the loot into my coffin. The night is already nearing its final phases. That means I don’t even have enough time to reach the crossroads the portal was at, much less any further location. I can try for that staircase but it could be close call. And in either case, being found by another group of humans would be… unwise.

That leaves me with erasing all traces of my presence here and search of area close to my grave. Maybe I have some neighbours?

John! Yeah! I bet he was the thief of my money! Contrary to my initial impression of him, he must have been aware! After all, he kept following me with his gaze when I came back. He waited for when I was gone, stole my stuff and then made a run for it! But there was little time left until sunrise so he couldn’t go far, right?

He must have slept somewhere close and I still have chance of finding him.

Making sure everything, including the pillow and my jagged rib bone, is properly stowed away in the coffin, I check for any leftovers or disturbed earth. Naah everything fine. Just the stone lid is little bit shifted from its original place leaving slight gape. Hmm I wonder… leaving it like this would speed up my eventual retreat like yesterday, but at the same time it is dead giveaway.

My one and only companion decides for me. Paranoia.

After shifting the slab into its place I start wandering the nearest rows. Going one row for few dozen graves, then changing it and walking back in other direction. All the graves here are pretty unkempt and covered by moss.

Damn. Seems there’s plenty of us here huh. Every tenth grave or so is empty. Most of them follow my pattern, with lid shifted and hole beneath or just hole to the side of the grave. But over there is huge family grave, like the one I fought on, with whole slab shattered to pieces, revealing very deep mass of ragged earth. Luckily whole place is already covered with grass, leaves and moss so it must have happened some time ago, but it’s as if something veeeery huge and powerful woken up inside and broken out with burst of scattered stone and debris.

What the hell’s up with that? I know those graves have tens of family members in them but then… what ? Did they combine together or something? Damn, I definitely do not want to be an enemy of such a monster.

I better be on my guard with both sides of the fighting here.

…

Little bit more walking around and I found what I was looking for.

Noticing it from the distance I draw out the sword. On top of a grave there is a bottle and some coins spilled among two flat small bags. They have to be the ones stolen from me. But why the hell did he leave them there? It looks like a trap.

Circling it does not reveal anything out of ordinary, so I approach cautiously. The slab is shifted and I can see the hole beneath. How do I do this? He might be inside and jump at me at any moment. If I try to get inside I will be in even more danger… damn it… how do I do this….

Coming closer from the side I try to be as quiet as I can. I smoothly take a quick peak inside. Nothing as far as I can see, with is only half of the way. I back away and think. Damn, what to do.

I guess I will have to risk it. Each time I saw him, John was several times slower than me.

Making up my mind I quickly proceed with action. With my weapon upfront before me, I make headlong descent into the grave. Luckily the hole does not have steep slope and the crash at the bottom is slightly reduced. I will have to think of better ways of doing this. Either way the grave seems to be empty. Damn this also can be part of the trap! I quickly scramble out but there is no one trying to lock me inside. Huh damn my paranoia. It did save me several times but it sure is tiring mentally. At least I didn’t cut myself this time.

Making extensive search of the coffin, reveals it’s empty. The thief had enough time to get away before I reached here, what I’m sure he did. On the other hand why would he leave so much stuff behind?

Abandoned goods resting on the lid are as clean as new. When they were stolen they had enough blood on them that I could not see their original colour. This is strange. Maybe the blood soaked scroll became readable again? But it’s not here. That’s the only thing that is still missing. Was he after the scroll? Or maybe the blood?

Well either way the coins are here so all is good. I didn’t notice before but there are few of different kinds here. All coins have small round hole in them, but there are square ones and round ones. They are also divided by colour, going from green, gold, silver, brown up to blue. Most of them are brown though. I’ve never seen their kind before.

The small bottle on the other hand has red liquid in it. Is it blood? Well never mind, not like I can drink it. But it has to be either precious or indispensable. I doubt otherwise someone like her would carry it around.

I start gathering everything into one of the pouches, when noise catches my attention. Looking around in the distance I see some movement. Damn it, it’s getting light already, but from the increasing loudness and curses it’s safe to assume they are live humans. I won’t have enough time to get back if they keep coming this way. My rotten luck again. No other way but to spend the day in this grave then. Better safe than sorry.

As I descend into the grave my gaze meets something that does not register until after I’ve put the lid back into place.

….

Seven Hells. It said 2213.

…

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