Who: Jen & Rost Where: Cemetery When: Sunday, 2pm'ish 06/10
Jen slept surprisingly little, considering she had been awake for over forty hours that weekend, but sleeping at all seemed to give her the boost to finally drag herself out of the house for a much needed dose of sun and air. The town was extra sleepy for a Sunday noon; despite the beautiful weather there weren't many people out and there was a notable lack of kids out at play. Some part of her felt like she was still dreaming as she rode her bike through the quiet streets but she supposed it made sense that most people were asleep and dreaming considering most if not everyone seemed to have been affected by this bizarre bout of insomnia.
She got off her bike when she reached the cemetery gates and led it for the rest of the way inside. It was one of those places that didn't feel quite as weird when they were empty but then again it was always creepy so she wasn't sure she'd noticed if it was more creepy than usual. Jen wasn't so sure why she loved it so much, considering what she now knew about the supernatural but it was still a sanctuary of sorts and she liked visiting the graves of some long dead relatives she'd barely even known as a kid.
As she walked she wondered if Rost was working today. There didn't seem to be any funerals going on and it was a Sunday after a terrible weekend so she guessed not and didn't bother with going to his little trailer. He wasn't there much anymore anyway and she rarely saw him these days after he moved in with his lovers. That always tickled her a little, that he was dating two people. It was so bohemian and cool!
She was strolling along just letting her thoughts wander when she actually noticed something that made the cemetery more creepy than usual. An open grave with no signs of there being preparations for a burial. Sure there was a pile of dirt, but no little digger or plastic around. Jen stopped, eyed it warily from a safe distance before leading her bike just a little closer. She couldn't help the feeling that if she got too close, someone would push her in - or pull her in, even worse! - so she only got close to enough to see inside, her heart picking up speed. There was an open coffin, the lid askew next to it and there was nothing inside except clothing.
Rost had slept for a while once they’d finally been able to, piled up in bed with his loves. He’d intended to skip work that day, but once he’d woken up somewhat refreshed, he’d changed his mind. It was a good day to do some landscaping work in the cemetery, the sun wasn’t too strong and there was a breeze, so Rost had changed into his coveralls and set off. He’d given the angels a few wary glances as he’d walked to the equipment shed -- their new position was unsettling, especially since all of them were the same now. Rost had no idea what it meant, and part of him hoped that he wouldn’t find out, but he knew better in the back of his mind, didn’t he? He didn’t do his usual walk-through of the cemetery, wanting to get started before he lost the light of day. Rost filled up the weed eater with gas, then carried it off to the part of the cemetery that needed the most trimming. Unaware there was anybody else in the area, much less another emptied grave, Rost pulled the cord to bring the machine to life, and started trimming around the headstones.
The sudden roar of a machine nearby made Jen's heart jolt in a way that very nearly hurt and she automatically stepped away from the grave, even if the sound was coming from somewhere behind her and not from that gaping maw in the earth. It took only a second for her to recognize the sound as one of someone working and not some horrible fiend roaring and she took a few steps backwards from the grave before turning on her heel to rush toward that sign of life. She absolutely did not want to be alone right now and she clutched the handlebars of her bike to the point where her knuckles were white, her grip the only thing keeping her hands from shaking.
She'd never been this relieved to see Rost though she was often happy to see him and she nearly tripped over the pedals of her bike as she rushed toward him, finally letting go of the bike in order to wave to get his attention.
It was the waving motion that caught Rost’s eye, and he looked over to see Jen there, her bike just falling to the ground. His brows rose with surprise, and when he registered the dismay on her face, he turned off the weed eater and started walking toward her. “Jen?” he said as he got closer. She was always pale, but she looked white as a sheet at the moment, and that was never a good sign. Rost didn’t know her extremely well, but he knew her enough to know that she was hard to rattle, for a teenage girl. “What is wrong?”
Jen faltered for a moment and the first thing she thought was that Rost did not need more bullshit like this. How many times had the cemetery been vandalized and something weird happened? It was a small miracle he hadn't quit already. "There's-" she started, her expression turning pained. "I think someone robbed a grave. Again." That was an understatement. She was hoping there was an explanation for it but how could there be? Who would lower a coffin into the ground with just a bunch of clothes in it? It would be a sick joke and she could too easily picture some old little lady coming by and having a heart attack at the sight. God this sucked, she hadn't seen Rost in a while, she had wanted to just stop by and hopefully run into him, chat a little and catch up but no, there was always something, wasn't there.
Quitting had crossed Rost’s mind many times, especially after Greer and Dev had come into his life, but he still considered it a sort of sacred duty that he shouldn’t foist off onto anyone else. This was his graveyard in a loose way, it would take so much time for the cemetery to get used to anyone else taking care of it. That was how he felt, anyway. The news that Jen delivered didn’t shock him, that much was obvious in his face, but it did make him sad. He sighed softly and set the weed eater down to rest against the back of a headstone. “Are you all right?” he asked Jen first, glancing her over. She wasn’t dirty like she’d fallen into an open grave, so that was good. “Where was it?”
His reaction was reassuring, so much more preferable over him looking afraid or angry, even if she didn't exactly like seeing him sad either. She nodded at his question and then gestured behind her. "I'll show you. I thought it looked weird, like it wasn't a totally new grave." She hadn't even checked to see if there was a headstone, too shaken to really linger there once she saw the coffin within. "There's nothing in there but clothes. Why leave the clothes?" She took a deep breath to steel herself as she led the way, leaving her bike behind for now. It might be reckless but the town felt sleepy and her priorities lay elsewhere at the moment.
Rost almost stopped her, almost told her just to point him in the right direction and then wait, but Jen was already moving, so Rost followed. Most of these violations had resulted in just empty coffins, but the image of the poor woman who had been dumped at his doorstep still lived vibrantly in Rost’s mind. “I do not know,” Rost admitted quietly. He didn’t understand any of this, including why anyone would steal a corpse in the first place. All the reasons he could think of were simply horrific. “Perhaps to send the message that all they wanted was the body.” His tone was grim as he said it, and Rost thought again about sending Jen away. She might be out of high school now, but she still seemed like a child to him, and no child should be thinking about such things.
"Sickos," Jen grumbled and now that she wasn't dealing with this alone, she mostly just felt sad for Rost for having to see this happen over and over again. "I don't even want to know why," she added and yet some morbid part of her did want to know. It was different to read about it in books and hear about it on podcasts than it was to actually live it and knowing someone in their town was this crazy was disquieting. "Here," she said, stopping a few feet away from the grave and pointing at it before looking at Rost with a little frown. "We're probably gonna need to call my dad, huh?"
Before they even stopped or got close enough for him to see the disturbed earth, Rost knew where they were going. There had been a burial in this part of the cemetery just a few days before. Someone was taking the fresh ones, as much as it turned his stomach to realize. He lightly patted Jen on the shoulder when she stopped, continuing past her to stand at the edge of the hole and peer down into it. There was the open coffin, the lid broken, there were the clothes strewn about. The idea of someone -- or several someones, more likely -- not only digging up a body to steal it, but to strip a dead person down right then and there ... god, it made him sick. Rost sighed heavily and turned back to Jen with a small nod. “Yes,” he answered. “But I will call, you do not have to stay. This is not good for a young lady to see.” There had been another recent burial that popped into his mind now, and Rost turned to look in that direction. He couldn’t spot it from where they were, but he would definitely check it out once Jen was on her way, just in case.
Jen almost pointed out that she'd already seen it but he was being kind and considerate and she didn't want to be a bitch about it. "You can tell him I was here though, if you need to," she told him, glancing in the direction Rost was staring into, wondering what he was looking for. She didn't think her dad would blame Rost for what happened, there was just no way he was involved. "And I can stay until he gets here, if you want." She didn't even know if it would be her dad who'd show up but it wouldn't surprise her.
Now that he’d thought of it, Rost was antsy to see if the other newest grave was also disturbed. He didn’t want to drag Jen over there though, especially if it was somehow worse. He nibbled on his bottom lip uncertainly for a moment, his gaze still focused off in the distance. “Yes, I appreciate that,” he said, focusing on Jen’s face again. “I must go to check the other recent grave though, will you stay here?” He knew he couldn’t stop her from following him if she was really determined to see, but Rost hoped that she wouldn’t. It might be entirely undisturbed, or it could be another situation like the poor old lady dumped at Rost’s doorstep. “I will return quickly, I promise.”
"Uhm, no," Jen said with a slow shake of her head and an incredulous look on her face. It was a lovely day, but it might as well have been a dark and stormy night with how creeped out she felt so there was no way she was sitting pretty while he wandered off. She didn't even know how far he'd go, if she'd lose sight of him or not, but the thought of staying by herself in any capacity was not ideal to put it mildly. "Sorry, I'm coming." She regretted leaving her bike now but it seemed like a trivial thing given the circumstances.
Rost frowned at her and considered just sending her out of the cemetery all together if she wasn’t going to cooperate. But was it really his place to try to parent and protect her? He doubted the people who had done this were still lurking unseen amongst the graves, but perhaps it was safer to stay together. Defeated, Rost sighed and nodded slightly, his thin shoulders slumping. “As you wish,” he murmured. There was too much going on, he was too tired to argue. Rost turned to lead the way through the headstones toward the other fresh grave, which was a couple of minutes’ walk away.
They didn't have to go all the way up to the grave to see that it too had been disturbed, a pile of dirt next to a gaping hole. Jen could only imagine how upsetting this was for Rost to have this happen time and time again but she was now thinking of the families who'd need to be notified and that was horrific. "You need to get like... Protective wards on this place," she said quietly, reaching out to grasp Rost's sleeve without thinking about it. "Didn't you get security cameras? Maybe they'll actually catch whoever did it this time."
His heart sank as they approached close enough to see the pile of disturbed earth. Would this madness never end? Rost had worked in the Point Pleasant cemetery for years and while sometimes unexplainable things happened there, there had never been so many grave desecrations and robberies in the past. It was sad, all of it was sad. “The owners did, yes,” Rost answered Jen, reaching over to pat her hand absently. “I do not monitor them, I do not know what they see. Maybe nothing. This is some foul magic at work.” He stopped walking before they could see into the grave, and shot Jen a stern look. “Stay right here,” he said, then pulled away to move in closer so he could peer down into the hole. It was just like the first one -- broken open coffin, no body, just the clothes left behind. Rost sighed. “It is the same,” he said as he looked back at Jen.
That would have made Jen frown, but she was already frowning and hadn't really stopped doing that since the first grave and brows could only get so close together. She looked around, tried to see some hints of footsteps, wheelbarrow tracks, something to indicate how the bodies had been removed but nothing stood out to her. That wasn't exactly an easy feat, breaking a coffin, lifting a body out of the grave and carrying it away in the dead of night. Let alone twice. An unwanted visual passed through her mind of some dark necromancers walking the bodies out of there, or witches using their magic to float them away. Rost was right either way, there was foul magic at work, something supernatural for sure. "So do we call the cops or a witch?" she asked quietly though it was just a hypothetical question. The authorities needed to be notified, as did those poor people's families.
Rost was looking around for the same sorts of things, though he wasn’t surprised not to find them. None of this was very surprising anymore, which added to the sadness of it all. Jen’s questions made him sigh again and wish he could just close up the coffins and re-bury them without getting anyone else involved. It wouldn’t be an easy thing to pretend never happened, but it would spare the families some grief. That would be like helping out whoever did this, however, and he couldn’t do that. “Cops first,” he answered, fishing his phone out of his coverall pocket to open it up. He wasn’t going to ask Jen to do it, even though she had a direct line to her father. He had no doubt they would end up sending the Sheriff anyway. Not that he thought the cops could do anything about this, but he had to report it anyway. Putting the phone to his ear while it rang, Rost gazed down into the desecrated grave and bit at the inside of his cheek.
Jen was used to her dad being worried and frustrated with his job by now, but that didn't mean she was eager to pile more on him and she had a similar thought as Rost did, that they could just cover this up and she could investigate it with Phee's help. Nancy Drew didn't have a witch companion with special ties to the earth so she had one up on her there. With no body in the grave, she didn't feel too intimidated to step closer to Rost to look down into the grave. It was easier to be brave when she wasn't alone and when she was closer to him she could hear the dial tone and the voice on the other end. She waited while Rost reported the crime, then lightly touched his arm again. "Did you know them? The people who were buried here?"
He thanked the dispatch woman on the other end of the phone and hung up once he knew that someone was coming. Rost re-pocketed his phone and looked over at Jen. “Not personally,” he told her. He glanced down into the grave, then took a couple of steps back from it. “But I knew their names. From the paperwork when I dug.” He pulled the front of his shirt up to wipe at his eyes for a second. He assumed that Jen didn’t know them either, or she would’ve been even more upset about all of this, so he didn’t ask. But someone knew them and loved them, Rost had glimpsed one of the funerals happening and there had been plenty of people standing around. “I can only hope they are already at peace,” he added in a mutter.
Once upon a time Jen might have told him that they were dead, so they didn't care. She'd seen too much weird shit to believe that anymore but it did make her wonder just how many people became ghosts. Was disturbing a grave enough to anger a spirit who had moved on? Or did it take trauma that happened while they were still alive? She suddenly felt cold, like something was there with them, but at least this time she was certain she'd just spooked herself with her thoughts gone astray. "I hope they just moved on and are none the wiser," she said with a sad smile. "This isn't your fault, you know."
Rost knew for a fact there was life after death. Whether it applied to everyone or only happened in specific cases he didn’t know, but he’d been through too many hauntings to think it was always a hard stop after death. Plus, now he had Devlin in his life to constantly confirm it, poor thing. The thought crossed his mind to call his boyfriend down to come touch the clothes that were left, but it was too late now. The sheriff was on his way and this was a crime scene, so nothing should be touched. He didn’t want to cause his man any unnecessary distress, either. Dev’s visions weren’t always peaceful, and he had a feeling anything coming from this incident would be bad. Rost looked at Jen and gave her a wan smile back. “I know. But I appreciate you saying so.” He glanced around them and gave another soft sigh. “I do feel responsible for this place ... but I know I can not guard against everything.”
He was just one man, it was impossible for him to keep a place like this safe, a place that seemed to draw in bad things, maybe even feed on them. The angel statues were creepy enough on their own, though Jen never knew if they were something evil or if they were a warning, spooky little weather vanes for winds of the occult. Jen looked down at the grave again, her mind working hard at trying to imagine how human beings could do something like that and just how noisy it had to have been. It only led her back to her first imaginings of terrible things so she stepped back and forced herself to focus on the here and now. "I don't think anyone could do as good a job as you have," she told Rost firmly. "Anyone else would have quit after the first spooky thing to happen. You're tough and you love this place more than it probably deserves."
He didn’t understand half of the things that occurred in the cemetery, but Rost did his best to be respectful of all the energies there. He didn’t know if that helped any or not in the end, but it was all he could really do. Rost knew that Jen didn’t know anything either, but her words were kind and made him smile at her with more warmth. “Thank you,” he said to her. “The people of the town give me reason to keep doing it, and that includes you.” His gaze ticked back to the gaping hold in the ground, then re-settled on Jen. “Come, shall we walk back to the entrance to meet the officer? You can get your bike.” If the cop turned out to be Jen’s father, he was sure the sheriff would send Jen back home so they could work, but whoever it was would need to be shown where the emptied graves were anyway.
Jen was kind of glad she didn't have to leave the place by herself and she tried not to nod too eagerly as his suggestion, not willing to admit just how spooked she currently was. She didn't even know what exactly she was afraid of, she just felt unsettled enough to think anything could go wrong. Her bike was still where she'd left it - not that she'd really expected someone to rush into the cemetery to steal it - and she picked it up from where she'd dropped it, dusting off the handlebars. She kind of wanted to hang around while whoever showed up investigated it, depending on who it was she might even be a pain in the ass, ask some questions and learn something, but most of all she just wanted hang out with Phee so as she walked along with Rost she shot her a quick text to check if she was awake yet. She had a bad feeling that the cops couldn't do much more than show up, take some pictures and file a report and she was almost certain now that nothing would show up on those cameras. Either way, she wouldn't get to know much just from staying here longer.
Rost was quiet for the walk himself, finding nothing in his brain to really say. He was just tired and sad for whatever awful thing was behind this whole mess, and once again pondering how it might be to leave Point Pleasant for good. He had his loves, they could all three go somewhere warmer and sunnier, where people didn’t rob graves. Or they could at least go somewhere he wouldn’t have to deal with it personally. Nothing much would come of the police report, he was sure. He would contact the owners as well, once he sent Jen on her way, and let them give him instructions on whether he ought to close up the coffins as best he could and re-bury them. Once he and Jen were on the main path near the gate again, Rost slipped his hands into his coverall pockets and turned to her. “Be safe,” he said, his tone a little absent. “I hope next time is a nicer visit.”
"Yeah, me too," Jen said quietly. She wanted to tell him to be safe too, he was the one who was staying behind in the cemetery, but he didn't need the reminder. "You're not sleeping here anymore, are you?" she asked instead. "You're down in Seaview with your boyfriend and girlfriend?" She couldn't imagine anyone sleeping here. Not because of the graves but because of all the horrible things that seemed to keep happening. He'd been safe all these years and she was sure he had protective wards strong enough to keep him that way but that didn't make it any less frightening.
Rost’s trailer was definitely more well warded than the full cemetery itself -- from what he understood, those sorts of things were easier done to smaller areas than big ones -- but that didn’t make it perfectly safe. Perhaps nowhere was actually perfectly safe in this godforsaken town. He gave Jen a half smile that he hoped was at least a little reassuring. “Yes, that is where I live now, with them. I never sleep here anymore. Just work, during the daylight.” It was sweet of her to ask, but he didn’t want her to worry about him too much. Jen was young and bright and had too many other more important things to worry about. Rost wondered vaguely if her dad wanted her to leave this town behind as soon as she could. He would, if he was her father.
He was right about her father; Grady didn't speak of it but Jen knew he was disappointed she was starting off in a community college in Portland, able to come home every weekend if she wanted since it wasn't a long drive. He didn't make her feel unwanted at home of course, she knew his reasons for wanting her far away just like her twin brother. But Grady chose to live in this town so he didn't get to have much of a say in it and Jen liked it here, despite everything. "Glad you're staying elsewhere," she admitted and gave him a faint smile. "I guess I'll get out of here now. Next time I come see you, I hope things are better."
“I am sure they will be,” Rost said, because he wanted to be reassuring. This sort of thing didn’t happen a lot, so the odds were good that the next time Jen visited would be less traumatic. Rost certainly hoped so. “Be safe where you are going,” he told her. He held one arm out and raised a questioning brow as he moved in a bit closer to her, then gave her a one-armed hug once she consented to it. That done, Rost stepped back and gave her a little smile. “I will see you soon, I hope.”
Jen was happy to hug him back, glad to see he was still his usual warm self despite the grim events. "I'll be around," she promised. "The weather's good now and I have my bike back out so I'll be roaming around when I'm not working." She had a couple of jobs lined up, hopefully she'd have answers from them the next day, if the bosses hadn't completely freaked out with the insomnia that seemed to have hit everyone so hard. "Take care, Rost," she said as she headed out through the gate. "Be safe."