Victor paced by the front door, frequently checking the ticking grandfather clock in the corner of the hallway. It was almost three in the morning.
He's been gone for almost an hour! What's taking him so long?
His father had insisted that Victor should not accompany him to retrieve the three undead men from the graveyard. Victor had argued with him, but he understood his reasoning.
He doesn't want me to be associated with it if he gets caught.
At that moment, his father bustled through the door with two large wooden crates on a dolly. They had the Van Dort company logo on the front. He fell to the floor and gasped for breath.
"Us Van Dort men were not made for heavy lifting," he wheezed, rubbing his arms.
Victor quickly closed the door behind them, peeping out the window into the night to make sure that no one had seen them.
"Let's bring them into the dining room away from the door," his father breathed.
They dragged the boxes into the dining room one by one. Once they were in, his father double checked that all the curtains were completely closed before turning on the light to be as dim as possible, but enough so they could still vaguely see their surroundings.
His father took a crowbar from the inside of his coat and propped the closet one to them open. Victor bent down to glance into the crate and saw Arthur and George smooshed together.
"About time. I was nearly about to suffocate," George complained.
"You don't need to breathe," Arthur reminded him.
His father helped the two men from the crate. They stretched out their bones and took a seat at the dining table.
Arthur extended his right arm out in front of him. "I think I lost a finger in the move."
Victor noticed a lone bone laying at the bottom of the crate. He crouched down and picked it up carefully with the tips of his thumb and index finger. He admittedly felt a little weird about touching a bone from another human, especially one sitting right beside him.
"Ah you found it!" Arthur took it from his hand and clicked it back into place. "Thank you young man."
His father sighed as he cracked open the other crate to let Mayhew out. "Sorry for having to bring you all in here that way. I didn't have time to think of or execute a way to transport you three more comfortably."
"What took you so long?" Victor chimed in. "No one saw you right?"
"I wanted to avoid any houses until absolutely necessary so I took a roundabout way here. Everyone should be asleep at this late hour so I don't think I was seen. Even if I was," his father knocked on one of the crates, "they wouldn't know what was in these things."
"It was a smart idea Victor," Mayhew said as he climbed out his spot in the crate.
"Thanks Mayhew," his father smiled, resting his arms on the wooden box Mayhew had just come out of.
"Well, what now?" Arthur asked, focusing on twisting the finger that had fallen off during the move to the house from the graveyard.
"Victor and I have come up with a plan that should work. We were thinking of sending a note along with the woman who just passed tonight. Hopefully it'll reach Elder Gutknecht and he'll use a spell to get you all back."
"Hmm," George said, stroking his beard. "Sounds like a solid and simple enough solution to me."
"The funeral will be held in the morning the day after today. You three are welcome to stay here until we hopefully hear back from the Elder."
They set up the three in the living room for the night. Victor brought over extra cushions and blankets for them, while his father rummaged around in the kitchen to find some food and drinks.
"They can eat and drink things?" Victor raised an eyebrow.
"Of course they can," his father answered, not turning away from the cupboard he was grabbing some biscuits out of.
Victor didn't think it was anywhere near as obvious as his father appeared to consider it to be, but he didn't bother questioning it further. There were a lot of parts about this whole situation that didn't make much of any sense to him, and he was starting to figure that maybe it was best if he just accepted it as it was like his father seemed to do.
"We'll be alright Victor, this is more than enough," Mayhew reassured.
"Well alright, I just feel terribly sorry that you all had to be disturbed like this."
"My mother-in-law just passed recently, so you can keep me up here as long as you like," Arthur said jokingly.
George and Mayhew shook their heads.
"If you need us, the master bedroom is just down the hall over there and Victor's is on the opposite side," his father said, pointing to where the rooms were.
"I'm sure we'll be fine."
His father exhaled and turned to Victor. "I guess that's it for tonight then. Nothing else we can do besides wait for the funeral."
Victor nodded.
The two said their good-nights and went off to their respective bedrooms. Sparky squeezed out of the master bedroom when his father opened the door, and he bounded happily across the hall to Victor.
"Good boy," he whispered, scratching Sparky behind the ears.
As he and Sparky nestled into bed together, Victor struggled to fall asleep. He felt relieved that they had a good plan, but he couldn't shake the anxiety he had felt ever since he had gone into the pet cemetery to dig up Sparky.
That someone would find out.
Well, he was now mostly worried that word would spread around town. The first day of the fair started that evening, so he hoped the distraction would keep the eyes of those in the town off of them. He had no real reason to believe that the three boys wouldn't tell anyone else about what had occurred. He just had to keep hope that they could bring everything back to normal before that happened. And if the plan didn't work…
Victor shook his head. He couldn't think that.
He pulled Sparky closer to him and managed to fall at least half asleep for the night.
...
Victor had been the last one to wake up that morning. When he had seen the time he had bolted out of bed and rushed downstairs only to see his parents and the three men casually conversing at the dining table. He let out a sigh of relief.
"I canceled your tutoring for the day Victor," his mother informed him. "I told them you were sick." She shrugged.
Victor had completely forgotten about his studies with everything going on.
"Yes they probably wouldn't be too happy to see us," George snorted, taking a sip of some tea.
"I don't think many people up here are that happy to begin with anyways," his father commented.
"The living are much too serious and stiff," Arthur said. "They just get too focused on trivial things."
"That's for sure," his mother muttered.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, surprisingly to Victor. He kept expecting a knock at the door or a word to come from the town crier at every minute, but the hours passed and no such event occurred. Everyone in the town looked to be busy with the setting up of the fair, as he had hoped. Victor spent the time with the three guests, and he became more relaxed and confident in their plan as the day wore away with no issues.
"So what happens to everything you eat and drink?"
"It stays or it passes," George replied, flipping through a deck of cards.
"What do you mean?"
"It stays or it passes."
And that was pretty much how the four used up their time together. His father was absent for most of the day since he had work, and his mother came in a few times to offer refreshments and make small conversation here and there. Victor could tell she wanted to mostly avoid the dead newcomers. He figured that the situation reminded her too much of the night his father almost married Emily, so he did his best to leave her be. He felt somewhat responsible for what had happened, and didn't want to make it any harder on his family.
His father came home later that evening with two bouquets of flowers.
"We'll hide the note in here."
For once the Van Dorts actually had to bring out the extra chairs to set around the dining room table. They didn't typically ever have guests over, seeing as so few people in the town weren't apprehensive of their family. It was one of the most lively and talkative meals Victor had ever had. He was a little saddened that tonight would likely be the first and last time he would ever experience it for a long time. Once the men were brought back to the Land of the Dead, he'd have to get used to the coldness of those living in the town again.
Morning seemed to come in a flash, and before he knew it his father was shaking him awake to get ready for the funeral.
"It's a shame that Lady Bennett has passed," his mother sighed as she adjusted his bow tie.
"Yes, she has always been friendly with us despite the talk of everyone else," his father replied solemnly.
"One less person here that actually treats us normally." His mother looked at the ground frowning.
His father had explained the night before that Amelia Bennett along with her mother had been able to reunite with her father when the dead had risen all those years ago. Her father had passed away when she was a child, so it had been a welcoming reunion for them that night.
While his mother double checked that the curtains were all completely shut before they left, Victor brought down Sparky from his room and asked Mayhew if he could watch over him while they were gone. The three hadn't yet seen Sparky, and they spent a good while marveling at him.
"His heart is still beating!" Arthur said incredulously.
"Even though he's got all these stitches and everything…," chimed Mayhew.
Once Victor became reassured that Sparky would be safe with them, he hurriedly made his way out the door where his parents were waiting.
The morning was misty and chilly, leaving the cobblestone and their clothes slightly damp. Clouds hung in the sky, but every so often would move to make way for some beams of sunlight to shine through. He was able to make out some of the tents on the other side of town from the fair. They had been closed up and shut down late last night, waiting to be opened up again in the evening.
Victor hadn't been to many funerals in his short lifetime, but it was as quiet and somber as he remembered them always being. After gathering at the Bennett's house where they were able to pay their respects to Lady Bennett's husband and sons, everyone made their way to the service. It was led by Pastor Galswells, who had given Victor the creeps ever since he was a child.
The service seemed to drag on forever, with Victor anxiously glancing over to his mother every other minute to make sure the note hidden in the flowers she held was still there. His father sensed his tension, and squeezed his shoulder to offer some reassurance. He took a deep breath, but it didn't help that everyone seemed to keep trying to sneak peeks at them whenever they thought his family wasn't looking. Victor had gotten used to this over the course of his life, but they seemed to be doing it even more than usual that morning.
"Are they whispering and staring at us a bit more…abnormally today?" he asked his father in a hushed breath as they watched them lower the body into the grave.
His father was silent for a moment before answering. "I've noticed it too. Let's place our flowers as quickly as possible and try not to draw any unnecessary attention towards ourselves."
Leaning over and muttering something into Victoria's ear, his father took her hand and they quietly waited until the first few people began to arrange their flowers into the grave. They walked over together without making eye contact with anyone and placed the bouquet concealing the message with the others.
As Victor watched the light filtering through the trees illuminate the colors of the pale petals resting in the grave, he overheard a woman whisper to another.
"They're saying he dug up his dead dog and brought it back home."
"Yes, that's their curse! The dead come back to life with them…"
Victor's head snapped up and turned to look at them, eyes wide.
He caught their attention and the two young women stared back in fear. One grabbed the other's arm and scrambled away from him. She accidentally bumped into his father in the process, recoiling with a shriek.
"Ahem!" Pastor Galswells scolded. "Please honor the dead respectfully, Mr. Van Dort."
The woman who had collided with his father turned towards the Pastor. "They shouldn't be at Lady Bennett's funeral at all! Especially with their son sneaking into graveyards and digging up graves!"
Silence spread throughout the graveyard. Though the lack of shock on the other attendees' faces cleared up Victor's confusion about all the gaping they had experienced that morning.
They already all knew.
The boys had told after all.
"Now now," his father said calmly, raising his hands. "I know stories like these spread throughout town about our family, but they are all false rumors-"
Before he could finish, a scream from behind interrupted them. One of the Bennett sons was holding a hand over his mouth, with the other pointing shakily at the grave.
"She's…she's…she's-!" he sputtered.
Everyone turned, watching in horror as two stark white hands gripped the sides of the grave, and the corpse of Amelia Bennett lifted herself from her coffin.
Yeah I wrote two new chapters to this ten year old unfinished story. I apologize for my absence. I was absent from myself for a long time as well. There are two more chapters after this one, and they will be uploaded in the upcoming weeks. FULL promises this time my lads none of that flaky bs old me used to do.