A Heavy Cloud

            “I think that big honkin’ thing is getting bigger,” Zach said, lifting his phone to capture the mysterious gray cloud hovering just above Farnese Cemetery and, for the first time, fully obscuring their view of the buildings beyond it in a thick haze.

            “It’s so weird,” said Lauren, adjusting her mask next to him, “It’s like it’s collecting there. Just hovering over the cemetery. Like a heavy cloud. It’s so gross.”

            “Yeah.”

            A smog the color of long-rotted flesh had rolled into town a week prior. Local news reported that it was due to wildfires ravaging most of the northern part of the country and that the smoke had blown down toward them, which made sense for a few days. It certainly smelled like smoke.

            But soon, the smoke began behaving strangely. It settled in a single unmoving cloud and appeared to grow heavier every day, sagging miserably above the only graveyard in town.

            Priests advised that nobody should breathe while passing the graveyard. They should wear face masks that had been blessed if they couldn’t hold their breath. They claimed the cloud was full of spirits who were “stuck,” and if anyone breathed it in, it would lead to a ghastly fate beyond our world.

            Then, one day, there was proof. A car crashed into the stone wall outside of the cemetery’s entrance.

            The medical examiner ruled that everyone in the car had died before the collision. Some skeptics said it was obvious that they died in the crash, but the prevailing belief in Farnese was that it was hard evidence that breathing next to graveyards was no longer safe.

            Masks blessed by a priest were required by anyone investigating the scene. Religion ran so deeply in the area that even those devoted to a life of science could be molded into the fears of local religious figures. To them, science existed only to make sense of God’s world. It did not disprove God.

            Lauren wasn’t sure what to believe.

***

            Lauren Connelly was in her twenties with straight, shoulder-length black hair, and her expression was rarely pleasant. Her annoyed, vividly green eyes were often the reason she was assigned to work away from customers at her job.

            She went straight into working full-time for the local grocery store, affectionately called Food Rite, after high school instead of moving for college like many of her classmates. She didn't have the money for college, and once she did have the money from working her way up to manager, she wanted to use it for more important things. Paying to do homework was for idiots.

            Zach Cronbaugh was Lauren's friend who also worked at the grocery store and was even more annoyed with most people than she was. It was a common trait that brought them together as work friends, and it leveled Lauren out. He was a couple years younger than her and had aspirations to eventually leave town. However, he was also in his twenties, and his gap year had become more than a few. He felt uncomfortably settled. The anxious slip of time was weighing heavier on his chest each evening.

***

            "Does it smell like smoke to you? It smells like shit. Do you smell that?" Zach said, lowering his phone.

            “It's like someone who stands next to brush fires a lot died in the bathroom of a bar, and nobody noticed for a long time. This probably sounds weird, but I think the residue from the smoke is stuck to whatever is there,” Lauren said, sensing the rotting presence.

            “Whatever is there? What do you mean? The air? Or, like, the stuck spirits?”

            “I don’t know.”

            They were standing far enough away from the graveyard that they didn't need to hold their breath. Of course, they still wore blessed face masks as they had done any time they went outside since the paranoia began. They were on a hill a block away with a decent view. They didn’t need to be close to the cloud to see it.

            “I guess we should have gone to college because I feel like a fucking idiot looking at this fucking thing,” said Zach, laughing, adjusting his mask, “I’m kidding. Thank God we didn’t do that. We’d be living through the end of the world worrying about putting together a PowerPoint presentation like a couple of assholes.”

            “It’s not the end of the world,” said Lauren.

            “We’re wearing masks that were blessed by the church, Lauren. I don’t even go to church anymore. We’re not allowed to breathe next to a graveyard. Like, it feels pretty fuckin’ end of the world to me.”

            They noticed a gravedigger slink outside of the cemetery gates. He was tall and gaunt with blonde curly hair and wasn't wearing a mask. His crusty brown and dried blood-stained teeth, like he had only breathed smoke his whole life, glistened under the halo of sunlight that ran around the border of the cloud. He was slightly obscured by the gray gas pawing at his shoulders, trying to pull him back in. He was looking at them.

            He unlocked the gates of the cemetery and opened them. His filthy hand waved at them, and they waved back. He beckoned them inside, and they hurriedly walked away.

            “No thanks, bud,” Zach said quietly enough for only the two of them to hear.

            “I still don’t understand why gravediggers don’t need to use the masks. What makes them immune?” Lauren said.

            “What makes anybody immune to anything? Do you know? I don’t know.”

            “I don’t either.”

            “Well, it probably works like how that works.”

            “How can someone be immune to this, though?” asked Lauren, trying desperately not to look back at the gravedigger.

            “I don’t fucking know. And I don’t want to know. Because then I'll be fucking dead.”

            "Because then you'll be fucking dead, yeah," Lauren finished Zach's sentence with him, "It's weird that it only ever really started happening once everyone in town stopped breathing next to the cemetery. People have breathed next to it before, and nothing happened to them then. It was just superstition before everyone started doing it."

            A finger tapped Lauren on the shoulder opposite Zach, and another finger tapped Zach's shoulder opposite Lauren. They both turned around.

            The gravedigger was standing behind them.

            “Oh my god,” Lauren said, startled.

            “Jesus fucking Christ, don’t touch me," said Zach, "Say something. Can you not talk? Is that part of being a fuckin’ weirdo? You don’t talk?”

            “Excuse me,” the gravedigger said in a surprisingly youthful voice, “I don’t speak to people very much throughout the day. I just listen to podcasts and audiobooks in my headphones while I work, and I forget how to, I don’t know, use my voice. You know?”

            Zach and Lauren looked at him blankly. He stared deeply into their eyes, crossing back and forth between them like his eyes were a hypnotist's pocket watch. They had no idea how to have this particular conversation with this particular man.

            “Yeah,” said Zach.

            “I saw you looking at the cemetery. The cloud, right?” the man laughed.

            “Yeah,” Zach repeated, beginning to disassociate in the man’s presence. It was something that happened to him on occasion. When the vibrations of a certain individual were so off with his own, he felt faint, zapped of all energy, as if his spine was crumbling under the dead weight of his short-circuiting mind. It made his voice falter, so he could only really say the word “yeah.” He diverted his eyes and stopped looking at the man directly, forcing himself through years of combating this feeling to say anything else, “Fuck.”

            “Yeah,” the man said.

            “Why don’t you have to use a mask?” Lauren asked, “How does that work?”

            “Nobody has to use a mask. In fact, we wouldn’t have this problem if people stopped wearing them,” he said. “Yes, there are spirits hovering above the cemetery, but think of them like alcohol. Consuming a little is okay, but consuming too much can kill you. When everyone was breathing near the cemetery, it was spreading it out, and it couldn't concentrate enough to hurt anyone. We’re like trees purifying the air and cleaning away the ghosts. Now that people have stopped breathing next to the cemetery, they’re building up to toxic levels. A single person breathing it in now can’t handle it. It overwhelms them.”

            “So, why don’t you have to wear a mask?”

            “Think of it like I have a high tolerance.”

            “Why don’t you set up, like, a big fan or something to blow the cloud or spirits or whatever away?” Lauren said.

            “Yeah,” Zach agreed.

            “Oh, good idea. Let me go set up a big fan right now. Here I go. Watch me go set up a big fan. Thanks,” the man said sarcastically, giving Lauren’s idea a bit more attitude than it deserved. “We tried that, but it didn’t move. The air stood still over the cemetery like you see now. The spirits need to be breathed in. They need to be absorbed into the blood and purified by a living soul.”

            Lauren and Zach looked at each other, unsure if this man had lost his mind. He seemed reasonable for a second. He noticed the turn in their expressions and assured them he was not crazy.

            "I'm not crazy,” he spat, frustrated, before pulling back his growl, “I’m sorry. Please. It's just ­­– people need to start breathing near the cemetery again. The priests won’t listen to us. I honestly think they like it. It’s proof for them that religion is right about the afterlife. It gives the church more power over people. Even though it isn’t proof. It proves there are ghosts in the air. That’s it. It doesn’t prove any religion is true. So, I wish they would just help me out and tell people to start breathing it in. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people, but nobody will listen. They’re too scared. They’ll listen to you, though. Look how cool you two are. Couple of cool young kids. They have to listen to you.”

            Zach and Lauren side-eyed each other.

            Suddenly, an enormous crash shook the sidewalk beneath their feet. Their fading fear of the gravedigger was revived and boosted. They both crouched low, rattled and scared. The blonde man, generally unfazed, only moved enough to look toward the noise.

            Another car had crashed into a stone wall outside the cemetery.

            Blood coated the windows and interior of the vehicle. Glass tinkled on the concrete beneath the car that was idling against the stone wall, its inner workings wheezing. An airbag popped like a red balloon and deflated somewhere inside beyond the thick streaks of brain and bone.

            “Oh man,” the gravedigger said, “Well, maybe this will get a crowd here. If a crowd shows up, you have to help me tell people to take their masks off and breathe in the spirits. If there’s a bunch of us, it’ll be okay. We can spread out the toxicity. I promise.”

            Lauren said, “Oh my god,” holding her hands over her mouth, and Zach pulled out his phone to call 911.

            “Look. Watch,” the man said, pointing up at the cloud. They couldn’t be sure, but under his suggestion, the cloud appeared to get slightly larger, as if a spirit was being added to it, “The spirit of whoever was in the car just got added to it. See? Does that make me look crazy?”

            "Yeah," Zach said before turning away and telling the dispatcher his location and the situation unfolding.

            Lauren lowered her hands. “I believe you,” she said. “I’ll help.”

            Zach gave her an astonished, disapproving glance, shaking his head while speaking with the dispatcher on the phone.

            “Thank you,” the gravedigger said, turning around and walking toward the wreckage. Lauren began to follow him when Zach hung up and grabbed her arm.

            “What if he’s just trying to get a bunch of other people killed and added to the cloud?” he said.

            “Why would he do that?” Lauren asked, stopping.

            “Because he’s a fucking grave freak. I don’t know. Look at him. He loves dead people so god damn much. It’s his fucking whole thing. He didn’t even care when that car crashed. He’s trying to trick you.”

            Lauren shrugged off his hand and continued walking toward the scene.

            “I think he’s telling the truth, and I want to see what happens.”

            "You just saw what happens. You're looking at it right now," Zach yelled, pointing at the gruesome mess inside the totaled vehicle.

            Lauren didn’t respond. She followed the gravedigger toward the scene with Zach not too far behind her. He couldn’t leave her to die. He liked working with her too much. And she was scheduled to work for him the following day so he could drink a 12-pack of lemon shandies on an innertube floating down a river with his actual friends.

            “Can this experiment wait until after tomorrow?” Zach said, “Then we can find out if you’re able to breathe in a place that kills other people when they breathe there.”

            The gravedigger screamed. His sudden shriek filled Zach with dread and pulled at his skin in all directions. It shook his body from his skeleton and stretched it into a trillion tiny pimples. The man was crying, pleading for help. A depraved prophet, he gave his sobbing sermon to everyone within earshot, his voice thrashing through the heavy air. Soon, a masked crowd formed around them to witness the carnage.

            The gravedigger told them his plan. He pleaded with them to remove their masks to dilute the air. To purify it.

            “It has to be all at the same time,” the gravedigger yelled, “So we can dilute the effects. It’s too much for one person.”

            “How many people would it take to do it?” someone asked.

            “Are you kidding me?” someone else yelled.

            “Hell no. I’m not doing that. Fuck that,” another person said.

            The gravedigger looked around. About twenty people had come outside from the surrounding buildings.

            "The more, the better. If more people come here, we could do it,” the gravedigger said.

            “Should we be worrying about the people in the car?” someone asked.

            “No. They’re dead.”

            The crowd grumbled to each other. Dead bodies did not make this an enticing offer. Soon, the ambulance and police arrived. When he asked the ambulance driver if she would take off her mask, she asked him to step away from the ambulance.

            The emergency workers made the group thirty people strong.

            “We could do it with thirty,” the gravedigger said.

            “What do you mean we could do it with thirty?” Zach laughed, the intensity of the situation overriding the scrambling effect the gravedigger had on his mind. “What the hell does that even mean? You’re so full of shit. ‘We could do it with thirty.’ Why that number?”

            “If thirty of us stood next to each other, we would protect each other. It would be divided up enough. The breathing. There are thirty of us here. We could do it.”

            “That sounds so fucking stupid I can’t even with you,” Zach said.

            “Let’s try it,” Lauren raised her voice. The crowd stopped.

            The gravedigger smiled and looked back at the crowd. The emergency personnel worked around him to tend to the pond of twisted human remains, permanently staining the car’s interior and everything around it with muddy death grease.

            “Are you fucking serious?” someone yelled.

            "I'm young, and I'm cool, and I want to try it. Doesn't that make you all want to try it a little bit, too?” she said. Her voice sounded robotic to Zach. Rehearsed. She no longer sounded like his friend.

            Each person in the crowd looked at each other and shrugged, agreeing that it did make them want to try it a little bit.

            “Plus,” she continued, “He’s the gravedigger. Don’t you think he probably knows about this stuff?”

            “He’s a fuckin’ grave freak!” another woman yelled. “I don’t trust it.”

            “I’m not a grave freak,” the gravedigger said, swiftly walking around and making deep eye contact with each person. He caught Zach’s eye, and Zach listened. “I don’t even know what that means. Look at me. I don’t need a mask. It’s just going to keep growing if we let this continue. Soon, it will be touching the other side of the street. Then, it will be touching your homes. I’m telling you. Trust me. This will work. If we all take off our masks at the same time and breathe, it will work.”

            The gravedigger led the group into a circle. He called to the emergency personnel, who waved him off and curtly said they needed to do their “god damn jobs” and that they’d be over in a “fuckin’ second. Just hold on.” He walked over to each of them with Lauren, held their eyes with his own, and quietly asked them to join the group. A brief moment later, they joined.

            “Thank you,” the gravedigger said, his grimy smile darkened under the spreading gloom. Then, after counting down from three in unison, they took off their masks and breathed in.

            Twenty-nine bodies hit the ground. And the cloud got a little bigger.