him to do so. His muscles, he knew, were breaking down with the rest of him.
He peered across the graveyard, down the hill, searching for the source of the voices. His eyes fixed on them: two teenage boys and one teenage girl. Both boys had multiple tattoos, piercings, funky hairdos, and an overall appearance of trouble about them. The girl, despite her candy-colored-red hair, looked like the black sheep amongst them. Not so intimidating. But, for some reason, she had her arm around one of the hooligans.
The boy with the spiked hair took a drink from a paper bag. The other pointed to a grave and laughed. They all mocked the dead and this entire sacred place. They weren't here to visit a relative; they were here to upset the dead, to desecrate this place of rest.
Tony was a thirteen-year-old child with terminal cancer. Still, he was not going to put up with them. He was the new graveyard attendant, and he didn't just work graveyard shift.
He stood up slowly and painfully. He carefully watched the teenagers, making sure they weren't causing any trouble. Soon enough, they were.
The spiked-haired boy took another swig of liquor and spat it onto one of the gravestones. The other boy laughed and kicked over an older, more dilapidated stone, which broke off its base and dudded against the moist soil. The girl simply watched with a grin on her mischievous face.
“Hey! Don't do that!” Tony shouted.
In one fast motion, the three hooligans turned to the frail-looking boy standing beside the big stone vault farther up the hill. They all laughed. They all had bad-intentions set in their eyes. They all walked up the hill toward him.
“And what are you, little baby? Watchguard or something?” The spiked-haired kid laughed. They all crowded around him.
“Eww,” the girl muttered. “Look at him. He looks like he's anorectic. Weirdo!”
The other boy commented, “What are you doing here, kid? You gonna turn us in for havin' a little fun?”
Tony didn't back down. He stared at these idiots like he wanted to beat them up. “This is my home, here!”
The girl burst out laughing. The boys chuckled.
“Seriously, toddler, what are you doing here? Your parents around?” Spikey eyeballed the tike.
“My parents don't care about me. But I care about these people here!”
The chubbier boy snickered. “In case you didn't notice, these aren't people no more. They're stiffs. Dead as door nails. Useless. Fertilizer. They're nothing important anymore. They don't exist.”
What he was saying brought tears to Tony's eyes. Is he right?
“Awwww, little baby's crying. That's right, cry, you ugly little boy.”
They circled him slowly, chanting phrases over and over and over: “Ugly turd.”
“Waaaaa! Waaaa! You need your diapers changed?”
“You weak, pathetic excuse for a kid!”
They continued the barrage of name-calling, and incorporated some pushing into the equation as well. They never let up. Tony couldn't help but weep. Now his new home wasn't even safe anymore.
“Please … go away. Please?”
“Why? You scared of us? You should be.”
“Wanna drink?” Spikey offered Tony. “Oh, that's right. You only drink from your momma!”
The girl stuck her tongue out at the boy and gagged.
“This is my place. I live here. You're not welcome no more,” he grunted.
“What, and you're gonna stop us? Try it, punk. I said try it!” Spikey shoved him.
“Leeeeeave ussss alooooone!” Tony screamed. Just then, his sudden scream was drowned out by an earsplitting, gut-wrenching roar of thunder. A jagged, directional bolt of lightning jerked down from the sky, slamming against the roof of the nearby vault. It was as if doom had come. Maybe, maybe not. It didn't scare Tony an inch, but it made those three teenagers turn and run for cover. They all screamed like girls while they retreated. A brief, sincere smile appeared on the graveyard keeper's face.
“I told you,” he muttered. “This is my place.”
--
Tony spent the rest of the day trying to repair the broken gravestone the one trouble-maker had damaged. He was too young and weak to succeed. The stone must have weighed as much as a German tank.
He laid down beside the vault early during the evening, exhausted—more exhausted than usual. He felt that this night was the final night of his life. After tonight, Tony Willis would be no more. Just an empty body buried below a hallow ground. He just hoped no teenager would come along later down the road and spit beer onto his grave.
He began to doze off at eight P.M. He could feel his heart struggling to pump, his lungs struggling to take in air. Death was seconds away, the most inevitable and most dreadful part of life. His limbs twitched here and there as his body itself began to finally shut down.
Dying was not as bad as he'd thought. It was, in a way, quite peaceful. Soothing. Relieving.
A few minutes later, Tony knew nothing.
--
The following day, his eyes opened back up. His senses returned, and they were more vigilant than before. Much more. Not only that, but he was not utterly exhausted, either. Tony felt the way he had before he had become sick. He felt healthy. Rejuvenated. Alive.
Is this heaven?
Didn't look like it. Still looked like Brooke Hills Cemetery.
Confused, Tony pinched himself as hard as he could with his finger and thumb. It hurt. There was pain, so that meant he was probably still on earth.
The next sound he heard validated this theory: it was the rumbling of a motor climbing the hill. He heard it loud and clear, not through cancerous eardrums.
Tony stood up. His eyes immediately caught sight of a patrol car cruising up the narrow paved road of the cemetery. It was going slow, and the policeman driving behind the wheel was searching for someone. The officer found the culprit when he matched eyes with Tony. Their eyes locked. The boy had been found.
The patrol car sped up. Tony turned and ran as fast as he could through the graveyard, trying to get away. He didn't want to go back to the hospital; or worse: his parents' house. He wanted to stay here, forever.
The cop got out of his car and chased after the missing child, wondering why he was fleeing at all. Despite his bulging gut, he ran pretty fast up the sloping hill, catching up quickly. Tony stumbled here and there, his legs not used to such exertion. When he stumbled the third time, he fell. Officer Garrison had him, and helped him up to his feet. “Tony? Why were you running from me? Don't you know that your parents have been searching for you? What are you doing here?”
“My parents don't care about me. Only everybody here, in this place, gives a crap!” Tony pointed around Brooke Hills Cemetery.
And like that, the boy was torn from his new home and taken back to the hospital he had escaped from.
--
When he arrived, the doctor could not believe the way he looked. Tony didn't look like the same child. Not by a long-shot. He'd gained more weight, more color, and had more visible energy in the way he moved. Just to be on the safe side—and dammed curious—the doctor ordered tests on the boy.
His parents had arrived by the time the doctor received the tests results. For the first time ever, they showed interest in his well-being. They both seemed to care, after all. His mom kissed him and his dad gave him a sincere hug. Both were crying. They'd realized this over the past forty-some hours: you dunno what you've got till it's gone. Their only child was okay.
Better than okay, the doctor revealed. The reason why Tony looked and felt better was because there was no longer any trace of cancer in his body. Tremin could not explain why, other than it being a complete miracle. Further test results revealed that Tony was as healthy as a boy his age could be.
--
During the drive home, the family of three talked and laughed and cried and bonded. Tony told them both about his experience at Brooke Cemetery, and about how he thought the dead people buried there had saved his very life. He also told them about the
weird incident involving the bolt of lightning hitting the top of that vault and scaring away those troublemakers.
His mother replied to this with a strange comment of her own: “Did you know that your great-grandma was buried in the biggest vault in that graveyard?”
That's why the last name on that plaque seemed so familiar!
Tony had his whole life ahead of him again. There was no more worry about transfusions or Chemotherapy or vomiting or suffering or dying a painful death—all that was gone. Today was about playing, having fun, and living life to the fullest.
Days later, after the school bell rang in Mr. Lansing's history class, all the children got up in a hurry to leave, go home. Tony was the last one to get out of his seat. Mr. Lansing now saw a boy of utmost potential standing there. Life in blossom, not death in waiting. He felt very sorry for the way he'd treated Tony before. He just didn't know how to deal with his condition.
Before he left the room, Tony gazed out through the second-story window of Harrington Middle School. His eyes fixed on the Brooke Hill Cemetery off in the distance. These days, the grass on that hill was not so green or lively but yellow and dark. Through some holy blessing, that very graveyard had ultimately absorbed the full extent of Tony's debilitating cancer. It had done more than that. It had given him a reason to hope and to believe that there is more to life than death; that there is more to life than waiting for the worst to happen. Sometimes there is life in death, and sometimes death can spare a life.