2 - BOD (Book of the Dead), continuing the story...

Posting some sections of my NaNoWriMo novel, BOD (Book of the Dead) from last year. Some other things happen between what I posted yesterday and the continuation of the story here which leave her rather frazzled, one of which is a 'crank caller'...


The phone rang again, and absent-mindedly she answered it. “I have been trying to reach you for hours,” said a deep male voice. The connection wasn’t good and there was static on the line.
“What do you want? Why are you calling me?”
“I wanted to tell you that there is a body in the graveyard, in an old and untended section…”
She hung up the phone and began screaming, loudly, hoarsely, and then sobbing. When it rang again, she picked it up slowly, “What do you want?!”
“To tell you that it wasn’t a dream. An old, homeless woman died in the cemetery where you worked. Her body is still there. You must find it and give her a proper burial.”
The line went dead. Shona shivered deeply. She felt suddenly cold, a sense of dread overcoming her. If it were true, did she cause the old woman’s death by dreaming it? Or did she somehow tune into the experience? Why did she dream of a homeless woman freezing to death alone in an old cemetery and now she has been told by an anonymous caller that there is, in fact, such a body. She dressed quickly, locked the door behind her, got into her car and drove to the cemetery.

She passed shops and houses and parks on the way, and people walking on the sidewalks, driving in cars, in the buses, it seemed surreal this morning, this world, its activity, like ants in an anthill, carrying on our tasks, day after day, keeping everything going. Yet there was a spark, something indefinable, a joy to the whole moving, buzzing, profound venture that life is. She felt a tension between her angst and that joy as she sped towards the cemetery, parked, got out of her car, stood, began looking in all the directions, trying to sense which way to go.

Pulling her coat tightly around her, she began walking towards a forested area, in the far corner; it took three quarters of an hour to reach the copses of trees. The area was overgrown, unkept, had reverted back to wilderness. If there were gravestones, they had crumbled over time. She was moving through tall grasses, whitened with the frosting of the night before, for Winter was setting in early, and brushing her feet along the ground, looking for remnants of gravestones. She wasn't sure that this was part of the cemetery anymore. Her foot hit something, and she leaned down to look, but it was only a field stone. She kept walking. She closed her eyes, seeing if following an inclination other than sight might help. She walked, the day was warm, and she puzzled over the dream, since the woman had frozen to death. Her nostrils filled with an indescribable smell, not of decomposition, but something faintly perfumed, and she opened her eyes.

Before her was a white gravestone, buried in the underbrush, half of it crumbled, and she leaned down and felt it with her fingers. She drew back, it had the feel she recalled from her dream. For awhile she simply stood, her eyes shut, swaying in the morning breeze, her mind silent, poised for what was coming next. When she felt ready she opened them and walked to the other side of the gravestone, looking for the body.

There was nothing. Only tall grasses bending under their own weight. Now what? She walked around the area, looking, but not wanting to look. It was difficult. Her foot touched something hard and she bent down to see what it was and saw a whiteness and found herself becoming dizzy.

Her fingers reached for it. She touched it, feeling the smooth calicified length. She picked it up. As she held it, a life came swirling back to her. The burden of a life came swirling into her heart and mind. She felt overwhelmed by the tragedy of this life, its loss, its loneliness, its abandonment. This person had lost everything, and died here, without anyone knowing or caring. What if it were the goddess herself whose bones had lain here for an eternity, awaiting care? Wasn't even an old and ill homeless woman a goddess? Worthy of dignity at death? She stood in the cold wind and felt anger rise in her chest. "I am here now!" she shouted defiantly to the sky and the trees and the birds and the animals hidden in the leaves and in the forest, but she was speaking to a whole culture that left its old and ill and lonely to die in such ways. "You will be buried properly!"

She turned, with the bone in her hand, and walked back to her car. She drove to the nearest police station and walked in and placed the bone on the counter and said to the officer on duty, "I found this in the cemetery, in an old part. It is obviously human. Can you run a check on it, and please let me take the police to where I found it."

The officer looked at her suspiciously. He reached under the counter for a clipboard and some forms. They went into a small office, and he wrote down everything she told him about going for a walk in the cemetery and finding the bone in an obscure and overgrown corner.

After he had finished taking her statement, he left the room, and returned with two other policemen. The funeral home had been alerted and the manager of the grounds was waiting for them when they arrived. She led the small troup of men across the fields of gravestones towards the forest; at the edge of the wall of trees, she pointed to the gravestone in the underbrush and said that was where she had tripped on the bone.

The police cordoned off the area and began carefully searching. After a couple of hours of watching them scour the area, finding bones and carefully placing them in marked bags, she decided to go home. They said they would call her as soon as they learnt anything about the remains.

At home, she lay down, dizzy and exhausted. The scene was still swirling in her mind, as was her dream of a few nights ago. It was so real as to be surreal. Everything made sense, and nothing made sense. She was confused and yet it seemed as if everything was perfectly sensible. She couldn't encompass the fear and relief she felt at finding, not a dead woman, as she had expected, but calcified bones. She wondered what the forensic department would uncover about her death.