Cemetery Wedding
by Mia Dalia
Of all the many nuisances the Laurel Hill Cemetery’s ghouls have had to cope with over the years—and there have been many, from population booms and busts and the industrial revolution to gentrification, community tree planting projects, vandals, loud mourners, goths, Halloween junkies, junkies in general, etc., etc.—nothing irked them quite as much as hipsters.
This strange generation that has sprung up in the neighbourhood seemingly just recently already taking over like some particularly invasive species. Some of the ghouls have traveled and all of the ghouls agreed that Brooklyn hipsters were the worst.
A very specific brand of precociousness and entitlement, ugly clothes, complicated diets, terrible manners.
“Ugh,” you might hear some ghoul say. “I barely want to eat one.”
“I wouldn’t eat one if I was starving,” another might counter.
Of course, it isn’t likely that you would get a chance to overhear such an exchange. Ghouls are nocturnal creatures and you’re not one of those weirdos who hang out in cemeteries at night, are you?
Besides, even if you are, odds are you wouldn’t understand the ghouls’ language. They have one, of course. Most species do. To a human ear, it might sound guttural and wet, like someone trying to talk while enthusiastically plowing through a plate of gristle. To a ghoulish ear, it sounds lovely. They have quite a few poets in their midst. Most of them aren’t as pretentious as human poets, albeit their rhythms and rhymes would be lost on non-ghoulish listeners.
It’s an acquired taste. Most things are.
Some might say living in cemeteries and feasting on the flesh of the dead is an acquired taste too. Not a ghoul. A ghoul would never say that. But some might.
Laurel Hill is the oldest cemetery in Brooklyn. It stands proudly, and unsurprisingly, on a hill, and overlooks an impressive swath of land that once used to be beautiful. Then people came. Then people died. They built a cemetery to put their dead. Then ghouls came.
That’s generally how it works. In that order.
The ghouls would never live somewhere that isn’t a cemetery. They like to live close to their food source. Like most species.
The ghouls’ existence is contingent on humans and, frankly, they resent it, that stifling dependency. Alas, there has never been a push for alternative food sources in the ghoulish community. Nothing else has ever tasted right. And so, they are stuck, slaves to their diet.
They eat people, but that doesn’t mean they have to like them.
To ghouls, all humans are tasty, but some are more distasteful than others. Hipsters are, as mentioned, the worst.
“It’s the millennial brand of hipsters,” Grag would say.
At just 117, Grag was the youngest of the family and thus considered to be an expert on all things modern.
Grag, for instance, was the ghoul to get your Wi-Fi to work.
Slowly but surely the ghouls were entering the twenty-first century, acquiring technology and learning to use it. Not all, some were simply too recalcitrant, too determined to hold on to the old ways, but there were still plenty of people being buried with their iPhones these days.
Like pharaohs of ancient times, entombed with their most precious possessions.
Torryd was the ghoul who could pass for a human the most. They all could, here and there, in low light, in a cloak. Well, it used to be you’d need a cloak, nowadays the fashions were so bizarre that worn and torn clothing was hip, so you really could just wear whatever and get away with it. Mostly.
Until they notice the greenish/greyish skin, the mottled texture of it. Until they see the daggers for claws and the fiery slits in the yellow eyes.
Torryd wore sunglasses and a beanie to cover his pointy ears. He had somehow managed to cultivate some human contacts and now was able to acquire random treasures from time to time, like DVDs and SIM cards.
He traded them for the jewelry pillaged from the dead who no longer needed it. The dead no longer needed anything—they were food. No one ever stops to consider the needs of their food, or they’d go hungry. And stay hungry.
Between Grag and Torryd, the ghouls were able to slowly make their way into the new century. Mostly through TV and social media. They scorned it, but it amused them too. And there were some really good TV shows out there. As addictive as marrow.
When Zirragh became the only ghoul to follow and correctly interpret all the lines of succession of Game of Thrones, didn’t she get the tastiest, choicest cuts for months? You bet she did.
Generally speaking, a life of a ghoul is an easy one. At least, as it might be understood by a human. Ghouls don’t go to work or worry about rent and bills; they always have a home, always have enough to eat, always have a community. So long as the cemetery of their choosing stands, they are all set.
Sometimes cemeteries get shut down, relocated, or razed in favor of condominium developments, in which case ghouls have to move. They do so by night. It doesn’t happen very often because people are sentimental creatures and tend to form strong emotional attachments to places where they deposit the dead flesh of their loved ones.
The ghouls do not share this fraught sentimentality. When one of their own dies, which happens from time to time, they eat them. Waste not, want not, is a ghouls’ motto. Well, it would be, if they ever thought to have one.
Depending on the size of the cemetery, it may accommodate one or more families of ghouls. Laurel Hill, for example, has three. They tend to get along. They are united on most issues, especially their impassioned hatred of Brooklyn hipsters.
It is only this bizarre generation that thinks it’s a good idea to walk around the cemetery like it is a park. A cemetery is NOT a park. It is a place for the dead. Respect should be shown. Perhaps, fear.
But no, hipsters have taken to strolling around. Sometimes they even bring their kids. And dogs. A cemetery is most definitely NOT a dog park. At least, most hipsters pick up their dogs’ poo in their neon green biodegradable plastic sacks.
The ghouls do not understand how a species can consider itself superior while picking up the fecal matter of others.
Sometimes the ghouls snatch and eat the dogs. Dogs are an acquired taste; most don’t like them.
The ghouls almost never snatch and eat the children, because humans are irrationally crazy about their offspring. The ghouls had lived through a search party once and never cared to repeat the experience.
Theirs used to be a decent neighborhood, ghouls like to reminisce, of stately family homes with good mortality rates. Then the estates got subdivided and more and more people came. Younger people, who were louder and lived longer and had, it seemed, no respect for tradition. None at all.
But this, this latest assault on all decency and accord, is unacceptable. This time the hipsters have gone too far.
The ghouls have braved daylight for this—their harsh sibilant whispers and sharp disdainful glances are pure disapproval. Affront, even.
Someone is having a wedding in their cemetery.
A couple is young, or young-looking. It’s difficult for ghouls to tell human ages. Some of the ghouls think they recognize the couple—they‘ve seen them taking walks around the cemetery. Now they have a tiny child, a funny-looking thing with a disproportionately large hairless cranium, that makes the ghouls salivate.
Some of the ghouls have had infants before; the taste, they say, is unforgettable.
There are some other adult-size humans around, who appear older than the main couple. Ghouls think they all have a similar ugly look to them, which means they are likely to be related.
“That child must have been born out of wedlock,” Ortg tsks. He is the oldest and most traditional of all the families.
Most ghouls favor tradition—it is what has kept them alive for all these centuries. Their family structure is less exclusive and more communal. They have several recognizable genders and sexual orientations, all of which are treated equally. In this, as with many things, they are advanced compared to humans.
When a new ghoul family establishes itself, they have a moonlight celebration, choose a name for themselves and a place to live. The celebration is usually accompanied by a feast. Most things in the ghoul world are accompanied by a feast—they are prodigious eaters.
The ghouls have seen what a human wedding is supposed to look like on TV. They know it isn’t supposed to take place in the middle of a cemetery with only a few people present.
It is meant to be a large gathering, sometimes in a church or a banquet hall, with large crowds, music, dancing … These stupid humans didn’t even bring any food.
Their small dog looks like an oversized rat. It strains its overlong tether and makes for one of the trees. Ragul reaches for it, and Ortg slaps his claw away. Ragul pouts, but, really, he should know better. The interest of the community always comes first. This is another way in which ghouls are superior to humans.
The small dog, stupid as it looks, senses danger, and backs away from the tree.
“This —” Ortg gestures toward the small gathering of humans “—cannot be allowed.”
The ghouls murmur in assent.
“This is dangerous. This might set a precedent. Others might come and do this too. Disgrace our home that way. A cemetery is a place of sorrow, mourning, darkness. It isn’t meant for weddings, for—” Ortg searches for a word then spits it out resentfully “—joy.”
The ghouls agree. Ortg always knows the right things to say to rouse them. Most of the time he sleeps, but when he is awake, he is a force to be reckoned with.
Daylight aggravates their ghoulish skin. Who knew something so leathery can be so delicate? The sun penetrates through their stolen sunglasses and pilfered hooded jackets and baseball hats and burns their eyes. They are angry, irate, ready to defend their home.
The male hipster is shorter than his female, a fact that the female accentuates by piling her messy mop of curls high on her head.
Torryd has seen the style and thinks it looks terrible. The only time it didn’t look terrible was in that old movie he once saw on DVD, something about a bride. Torryd wishes he was back in his crypt watching more DVDs, he has recently traded an old necklace for a box of them.
The owner of the necklace didn’t care; he ate her, and she didn’t care about that either.
His home is a crypt that once belonged to a human family prominent enough to have a crypt. The line must have died out, he thinks, for there hasn’t been anyone new buried there in a long time. The crypt has been slowly but steadily falling into disrepair. At least, on the outside. On the inside, Torryd and his family have made it very nice and homey. A mausoleum of old bones and new tech.
It makes his skin crawl to have a human wedding take place within shouting distance of his crypt. How rude.
Tarryd thinks he definitely remembers the female of the couple; she tried to talk to him once when he was doing his best human impersonation, waiting for one of his trade contacts. He rushed away as soon as he could, of course. The sound of her voice was even more irritating than a normal human voice is to a ghoul.
There she is again, that hideous laugh. Tarryd wants to put his headphones on (he had recently traded for an awesome pair of wireless noise-canceling Beats), but he doesn’t want to be rude to others.
There is a fat human of indeterminate gender and age standing between the couple, presumably this is someone who will officiate their union.
Why here, of all places? Torryd thinks. It’s almost like they’re asking for it.
Ortg has laid out a plan. It’s simple and should be effective. The ghouls begin the collective screamhiss, the shrillness of which is meant to be upsetting to human ears. And yet, after a while, they can’t help but notice how ineffective it is.
“It’s the decibels,” Argrog says. “These humans are louder than us.”
And so they are. Their voices are squawking, heavily accented by something that sounds too harsh for Brooklyn, something that Marlatra, who fancies herself to be something of a linguist and does indeed have a predilection for human tongues, especially with ketchup, eventually places as Queens/Long Island territory.
Most human voices sound hideous to ghouls, which results in ghouls watching almost all of their TV with subtitles on.
The ghouls try other scare tactics from their arsenal but nothing seems to disturb these humans. And to be fair, the ghouls simply do not have that many scare tactics, they usually operate during different hours, shift at different frequencies. There are not enough methods in their arsenal for dealing with humans because they so seldom have to deal with humans.
Sure, they can just jump out and tear them limb from limb, and sure, that has been done before, quite effectively, but that is more of a last resort sort of thing.
It is then that Ragf does the only thing he can think of, something he saw on human TV that is sure to ruin the scene the way it did in the movie. He stumbles out from his hiding spot behind an ancient headstone, ambulates slowly and waveringly toward the clearing with the humans, and vomits.
Good thing he had a large meal not too long ago. A delicious morbidly obese corpse. People were getting fatter and fatter, and Ragf liked it. It was the most considerate thing humans have ever done for ghouls. Well, after establishing cemeteries in the first place, that is.
Ragf’s emesis is long, loud, and lavish. Blood, gristle, even some bone.
There’s no way any human wouldn’t leave after that, he thinks. Even some ghouls might.
“Hey man, are you okay?” the groom asks him.
Ragf is petrified. Unlike some of his family, he isn’t used to direct human interaction. He moans, doing his best zombie impression, then pretends to collapse.
The groom, to his horror, is trying to pick him up. The bride offers him something brownish in the bottle. Ragf drinks so he doesn’t have to talk. It tastes awful; he spits it out immediately. What is that?
“Oh no, you don’t like that?” the bride says. “That’s my best kombucha. I just fermented it this week.”
While it stands to mention that all ghouls understand humans just like no humans understand ghouls (outside of a few notable exceptions), Ragf has no idea what kombucha is. He hopes it isn’t some poison. But what if it is? What if the humans are brewing ghoul poison? He wouldn’t put it past them. A human killed one of Ragf’s family elders about a century ago, and Ragf has never forgiven them.
The groom tries to lift Ragf to his feet and give him some money. The other humans are shoveling dirt onto the vomit with their feet, making jokes about it all being organic.
The older female says something inane about how it’s all meant to be exactly the way it is. What a stupid concept, thinks Ragf, as he waves off the cash and staggers away. Stupid, stupid hipsters, Ragf thinks.
They aren’t even appalled by his body odor, and he knows for a fact that he is strikingly rank. Ragf prides himself on being one of the rankest males in Laurel Hill cemetery. It makes him very attractive.
In fact, he notices that the groom reeks a bit too. Nothing like a ghoul, but sharp sweat undercut by something earthy.
Freaking hipsters.
Ragf shakes his head, his grey jowls flap. “Sorry, Ortg. Sorry, everyone. I tried.”
“It was a valiant try,” Ortg says kindly. “But they leave us with no choice.” Ortg’s face is a tapestry of wrinkles, but his eyes still shine brightly. He is a formidable leader of ghouls.
“Attack,” he commands. And the ghouls follow.
“Dibs on the baby,” Marlatra shouts. They are her second favorite thing, after tongues.
For a while, the sylvan serenity of the cemetery is torn by shrill cries, but soon the noise subsides into tearing of flesh and loud satisfied mastication.
The original plan was to leave the remains behind as a warning, which would have worked wonders back in the day, but now will only invite police and scrutiny the ghouls do not wish to deal with. So they clean up the scene. Neatly.
“Campground rules,” Grag jokes. “Leave the place in the same or better shape than you found it in.”
Soon, the place is clean, like a dog-licked plate, like nothing ever happened.
The ghouls retreat. They do not normally eat during the day and their meals sit heavily in their stomachs. They will sleep for days to digest this, to rest from this.
And then, they hope, things will get back to normal. No more weddings in the cemetery. Some things must remain sacred.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Mia Dalia’s short stories of horror, noir, science fiction, mystery, crime, humour, and more have been featured in a variety of anthologies, magazines, literary journals, and narrative podcasts. Her fiction has been voted top ten of Tales to Terrify 2023 and shortlisted for the CWA’s Daggers Awards 2024. Mia’s the author of the novels Estate Sale and Haven (forthcoming), and novellas Tell Me a Story, Discordant, Arrokoth, and the collection Smile So Red and Other Tales of Madness.
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