Sleepwalker

Even after working long and exhausting days as the superintendent of his village’s graveyard, Walter had tossed and turned for months every time he attempted to fall asleep.

During the night, the uncle said the next morning, when he restlessly moved around in his sleep, he heard a loud crunching sound. In his dreams he would see human bones broken up and crushed all over his sheets. Then he would get up and sleepwalk around his home for several minutes before going back to sleep. He would wake up with no recollection of having rested but remembering a series of bizarre images assaulting his senses.

To maintain his sanity, Walter had to get answers to the strange puzzles that surged through his brain every night.

He thought the key to unlocking the mysterious thoughts might lie in the cemetery where he worked along with his nephew, Gary, a caretaker.

“Please stay after your shift tonight,” Walter asked the day after one particularly disturbing nocturnal episode. “We will sleep in the superintendent’s cottage and see if I sleepwalk there, and, finally, get to the bottom of this."

Gary reluctantly agreed, but hesitated, both because he feared the creepy things that could happen overnight in a graveyard and also because he knew the reasons for his uncle's excursions held the key to a family secret that, if unlocked, could have dire consequences for both of them.

The nephew had decided long ago to keep the mystery locked away in his thoughts. He also knew he had to keep a close watch on his uncle so that door did not open too soon to reveal the disturbing reasons behind Walter’s nightly trips into the dreamworld.

As darkness enveloped the area the two men watched a number of late night television shows. The uncle eventually lapsed into unconsciousness, while the nephew stayed alert to watch for Walter to begin his nocturnal wanderings.

About a half hour later the sheets shifted as the elder man emerged from his bed. With his eyes open, but with a blank expression on his face, he arose and began walking into the kitchen of the small cottage. He opened a door on the front hall closet and removed a large shovel.

Gary quietly followed as the old man opened the cottage door and began walking into the eerie darkness of the graveyard. They continued down one row of graves and up another until they stopped in front of a freshly-dug grave. In front of him Gary couldn't believe what he saw. The bones that had mysteriously appeared in his uncle’s dream state several nights ago now lay stacked by the grave.

The nephew cautiously moved closer as the old man began digging into the soil and throwing the bones into the grave beside the deteriorating coffin. He then opened his eyes and cried out, “What am I doing burying bones next to my father’s final resting place? Am I trying to cover up something which should remain covered?”

The nephew knew that, if his uncle continued, the whole story that had remained hidden for so long would come out, so he decided to let his uncle in on it. He figured he could either swear him to secrecy or silence him forever.

He said, “Ten years ago my friend Boyd and I found a loaded gun in grandfather’s closet. As we played cops and robbers in this graveyard I pointed the gun at Boyd and it accidentally discharged, killing my friend. Panicked, I stuffed rocks into his pockets and dragged his body into the lake over there. I didn’t think anyone saw what happened. Although the guilt has almost eaten me up alive for the past decade I have buried it deep in my mind until recently.”

The nephew did not know that his uncle and grandfather had followed the boys at a distance into the graveyard and had seen the nephew dump something into the lake that night.

Walter and his father had never pursued what they saw at the lake since, at first, they thought they had observed their young relative throwing something harmless into the body of water and, second, they probably didn’t want to know if Gary had done something horrible.

The grandfather had died six months before and the family had buried him in the family grave site.

Walter thought the secret of that night many years ago had died with his father. That is, until the nightmares and sleepwalking began.

Fate had other plans. Torrential winds and rains during a hurricane about a month before had caused the lake to overflow and the body of Boyd to wash up on the shore next to the family grave site.

While working alone in the graveyard one night Gary had discovered the corpse and planned to rebury it before Walter showed up. The nephew had hurriedly covered Boyd’s remains in a temporary grave.

The uncle knew he had recently seen Gary burying something suspicious, but, unsure of what he had seen, had put it out of his conscious mind.

That incident continued to play on his subconscious. It also led to repeated nightmares and made his sleepwalking more frequent.

Gary feared Walter would add things up and finally turn him in. The nephew crept up behind, trying to wrest the shovel out of his uncle’s hands while raising it to hit him over the head.

The pair struggled and the uncle managed to turn the tables and knock the nephew out.

Walter then put Gary over his shoulder and carried him back to the cottage. When his nephew woke up, Walter told him that it was time to end the sordid tale. He called the local sheriff and went over the whole story for him before waking the nephew in time to be taken away in handcuffs.

A month later, a jury convicted Gary of improperly disposing of human remains. The jurists ruled out murder or manslaughter since he had been a juvenile at the time of the incident and he had not deliberately shot Boyd.