I’m a gravedigger by trade. It’s a tough job. Not everyone can cut it but it’s not so bad. You don’t really need nerves of steel to deal with the dead. Now your typical dead body is nothing to fear. They just smell bad and they are sometimes heavy, which can be a pain. But they don’t complain if you drop them or forget something. It’s the weird ones you have to watch out for. You got your standard undead: zombies, ghouls, vamps, and such. They won’t give you trouble if you hit them in the head with a shovel hard enough. You sometimes get a ghost. The priests deal with them. You just have to stay out of their way. Now the scariest thing I’ve ever seen is a skinwalker.

I don’t rightly know what they are exactly. Maybe it’s a parasite or some sort of ghost or maybe it’s magic. I’m just a gravedigger. Not a wizard. All I know is that a skinwalker jumps between dead bodies and uses them like puppets. They can move and talk and do anything you or I can do so it’s hard to tell if you’re dealing with one. That’s what makes them really scary. You could be a skinwalker and I wouldn’t even know it. I met one once a couple of years ago and I wish I never did.

It was at the funeral of the Montgomery girl. Sad story that was. The girl was barely ten years old when she died. I heard she got sick one night and just didn’t wake up the next morning. Real tragedy. Everyone liked her. There was a huge turn out for the funeral. It was standing room only. I reckon half of the town was there. I was in the back as I usually am. Old Father Mathis always gives the same eulogy so after a few minutes I let me mind and my eyes wander. That’s how I noticed the old man.

This was winter and even though the church was crowded it was still fairly cold. Most folk were stomping their feet or rubbing their hands together but this old man was as still as a statue. I didn’t recognize him. He was tall and gaunt with a scraggly white beard. He wore this dark suit and a fancy hat like the kind you see in the city. Minutes passed and he neither shifted nor even blinked. I thought he might have died and was stuck standing up. That happens sometimes. The body gets all rigid. When I reached out my hand to shake him, the old man turned his head towards me. It was an unnatural turn. His head swiveled on his neck like an owl. He stared at me. I stared at him. Those black eyes never blinked at all. “Can I help you,” he whispered and I shook my head. I slowly pulled my hand back and the old man turned to watch the funeral.

I have never felt so scared of someone in my life. I moved as far away as I could from the old guy but I couldn’t get far because of the crowd. Old Father Mathis said his final prayer rites and everyone slowly shuffled out the church doors. Most would be going home but some would stay for the burial. I waited until everyone left and then approached the coffin. The Montgomery girl was a tiny little thing. All spruced up in a pretty red dress with her yellow hair tied in a big red ribbon. Father Mathis offered to help me get her on the cart but she was so small, I told him to go ahead and that I could handle the little girl by myself.

As I walked Father Mathis to the front door of the church, I saw that old man still standing in the shadows watching the coffin. He didn’t even seem to notice us. I parted ways with the priest and hurried around the side of the church to get the cart. I didn’t like the look of that old man and sometimes we get the odd necromancer or vampire who likes to dig up and disturb the bodies. I didn’t want that to happen to the Montgomery girl. I got back quick. It couldn’t have been more than a minute. Just as I reached the front doors, they banged open and a little girl in a red dress with yellow hair tied up in a red ribbon darted past me. As she hurried away I heard this tiny female voice cry out, “Catch me if you can” and then she ducked around a tombstone and vanished from sight. I rushed into the church. There was the old man slumped over an empty coffin. His black eyes stared up into nothing.

I ran to get Father Mathis. When he heard my story, we hurried back to the church. When we entered and he saw the body of the old man I heard the old priest whisper, “Skinwalker.”  I asked him later what a skinwalker was and he didn’t tell me any more than what I’ve already said about them.

However, I can tell you there was quite a stink about the missing body of that little girl. Her family was furious. Accused me of stealing. I’ve been gravedigging for twenty years and I have never lost a body or been accused of anything wrong. Thankfully, Father Matthis believed my story and stood up for me. I’ve seen all sorts of things that go bump in the dark but they were a walk in the park compared to that skinwalker. So the next time you see someone staring oddly at a corpse, they could be a skinwalker looking for a new body.

Argus Fellworn, Gravedigger of Little Hangleton – excerpt of “Scary Stories and Odd Superstitions” by Skeptis Farnsby