Prologue.

prologue

They are given many names. The undead. Zombies. But the most accurate term to befitting of their behavior, would be the old Norse word “haugbui”, used to define “mound dwelling” undead. They are tied to their tombs and therefore do not roam. 

I feel like I’m running from the moon. We get in the car at night, we leave my dysfunctional, conservative family behind, and we even try to escape the moon. I realize its position in the sky is fixed and we’re just moving our position of surveillance, but I feel like it always ends up behind us. When it races next to my window I’m afraid. It never slows down, it never speeds up; it just stays there, staring me calmly down. It doesn’t jump out to get me, it doesn’t run away, it just watches and waits. I don’t know why I feel like it’s threatening me. But it is. Anything so unwavering in its observance of the world has plans for those it observes. Anything that can move so fast without breaking a sweat is fearless. The fearless who plot for the future are threatening. And the moon is watching me. Watching me the whole drive home. One hour of constant plotting. You can’t possibly tell me that wouldn’t scare you. The moon is a stalker. I do take it seriously! I don’t care how many other people the moon can see! Right then and there I knew it was watching me.

To build upon this ancient legend, the reader must know the north American haugbui, or more simply in our dialect “hogboon”, is not known for aggression toward those near its grave site. In fact, they are generally passive spirits, consumed by their dark fate, forever chiseling tunneled roadways beneath the surface.

I’ve always loved graveyards. Is that like an addiction to death? An addiction to awareness of my inevitable future? Is it addiction to history? I think it’s aesthetic. But it’s a little bit of history, too… it’s like a miniature village. Well, some graveyards get pretty big… but I mean the stones are like houses. Some are massive and ornate, some are small and classy, and others are generic. Like one of those cookie cutter towns where all the houses are identical.

Graveyards are just like towns, only the world is below the surface. The dead, our hogboons, are like mole people. They create miles of tunnels beneath the grass and plastic flowers brought by little cousin Suzie. Their homes are above ground where the other world can admire them, thinking the dead lay still, thinking they’re paying respects to the deceased who float above the clouds behind some pearly gates. The truth of the matter is while the dead do indeed live in a gated community, the only pearls that can be seen are strung on the neck of great aunt Rita, God rest her soul.

I suppose I’m here today to confess that I did remove that pearl necklace from her helpless corpse. I tell myself it’s okay, though; most mourners have a touch of greed in them, and they often steal from the poor, withered corpses of those who can no longer assert their opinions upon the world around them. Besides, they were promised to me.

If the hogboons go on to construct vast, intricate communities under the earth after their burial, why can’t they fight back when unfairly robbed at the altar? Life for them exists only six feet under. Compare their awakening, or rather incapacitation to that of a mole, which avoids daylight and even appears useless under the suns power. However hogboons rely entirely upon the world below to provide them with the energy to reanimate. They do not float and look down from up above. They do look down, but they look down in death as they did in life. Not upon the accursed lives of their offspring like well-meaning angels, but upon the shit and the mud and the dirt and the bugs crawling willy-nilly through all the mess. They crawl among the lower life forms, they become one of them. Hogboons become aware of the true value it is to be human long after they have the power to use and share it with the world. Such is the nature, and the tragedy of being a creature with complex problem solving abilities.

You can solve every problem but the one of who and what you are in relation to all the other bags of blood in the universe. You know why? Because you can’t look into yourself. Not really. You see your reflection but that is nothing better than seeing your friend or your mother or father or dog or cat, an act which clearly does little to inspire most human bags into a state of pure enlightenment. The Buddhists try… they get arguably close, but you cannot understand your fellow man (or feline) until you’ve walked two moons in his shoes. And again we’re on the topic of the moon.

Does humankind know that corpses come back to “life”, doomed to crawl on their hands and knees for eternity through carefully chiseled dirt tunnels? No. Not that knowing would help us. We thought for the longest time that we’d go to “heaven”, but that preparation never helped anyone.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. Yes. I’m a vegetarian. But I love graveyards. Does that seem strange? Eating dead meat versus walking over a piece of land filled with dead meat. Although realistically I suppose most land is filled with dead meat… somewhere in those layers of time there’s bound to be a body of some animal. But that’s not what I mean. What I mean is dead animals disgust and sadden me, and dead humans are fascinating. I don’t want to be verbose but I can’t help but feel that something is wrong with a vegetarian loving to spend time in graveyards, and I can’t figure it out without taking a metaphorical jaunt… conversationally speaking. It’s as if I’m making up for the lack of regular death in my life by seeking out the company of the deceased. I’m convinced that people get some kind of mysterious or unconscious comfort… reassurance… by engaging with death in some way or another. The dead provide us with a source of power… power less easy to explain when you’re not literally getting calories through the consumption of meat. But power that needs to be obtained none the less! While the meat eaters get some kind of superior, ego boost… power trip through their carnivorous diet, I draw from the vibes of the dead and I am aware of my mortality. Awareness of mortality is in my opinion beneficial, and those who avoid graveyards avoid truth. We eat animals so freely because we disassociate ourselves from the existence of other living creatures and the conditions under which they lived and died… their mortality is not linked to our mortality. Or at least I like to assume that that would be the bigoted mindset of the ignorant meat eaters. Eating meat, to me, is a confrontation of mortality, but it confronts the issue in the most morose, offensive, detached, gut wrenching fashion. It seems like more of an arrogant, condescending attack upon other innocent living creatures than a calm acceptance of the death that awaits us all. A graveyard, in contrast, is a peaceful place of rest, not a vicious slaughter competition. 

The other day, I sat beneath a tree and I contemplated death. For the second time in my life, I experimented with the feeling of hanging. I sat beneath a tree, looked up into its branches, and imagined how my death would happen, hanging there like pale, late summer fruit.

“It would be nice to be dead,” I thought.

“No,” I heard.

I listened. Only the wind blew the leaves on the trees, the tall grasses in the field.

“I would like to try being dead and gone,” I said aloud.

“You do not know what you wish for,” it said.

My two dogs sat near me, breathing their stinky doggie breath on my face, waiting for our indian summer walk to continue. I stood, wiped away my tears of self pity, and I walked away. The wind seemed to carry me down the hill, a gentle urging toward what lay ahead.

She collapses against the rough, dirt wall, all energy drained. The roots, embedded deep within her skeleton extend and dig deep into the surrounding earth, tying her to the spot. She is still as the grave. Constance. Constance Stonewall.