A town can be more than a town. It can be a home, an opportunity if you look carefully enough, a place with history that stretches back for centuries if it’s been lucky enough to be around for that long… and it can also be a trap.

The feline moved out to this part of the United States when he realized that the location had amazing home prices. His parents were great, sure, but it was time for him to have his own space… and considering that he was working from home at this point, anywhere that had an airport that he could rideshare to for cheap enough was going to be good for him. Not like he wanted to be isolated in the middle of nowhere, right?

Isolated? No. In the middle of nowhere? … Yeah. Traveling made it easier with the work that he did, and he still had his online friends that he could talk to and even fly to to visit, but in physical spaces? The town was… well, it was charming in its own way. Fucking killer Halloween celebrations for one. Fall was so nice out here, too, with the way that the forests that surrounded the town seemed to turn into a beautiful dazzle of reds and greens and yellows and oranges as the months progressed. Interesting local legends that were a bit of an inspiration. The art scene was neat with a good indie cinema, but the people there were kinda pricks so he did not find much there. Carnivals showed up every so often, too, so that was the occasional fun weekend out. Other than that…

No real friendships to speak of in person. It was clear to Circ that it was not a place he wanted to stay at forever, and that meant starting to build up more money for a move. He cycled through jobs in town, thankful that at least the place was walkable… and very gradually, he started to pick up on some of the strangeness about everything around his new home. Missing posters everywhere. More vacant houses than there should have been. No camping equipment at all, nobody that even sold outdoor gear. Things were off enough that he did not need to dig any further to know that there was a darkness underneath the town itself, like a low hanging fog that wisped at the ankles and hid a drop into the depths or a bear trap ready to break through bone. There was the vaguest growing feeling that his new place of residence was a dead end in more ways than one. He needed to go, and that meant making money.

He kept cycling through work until he ended up responding to a job request for a groundskeeper at the Certain Soil Cemetary. They were offering training, and it was not like he was doing much with his free time… He was brought on by Smith, a pig that was a part of a rotating group of four grave tenders at the plot of land, and shown how to keep the foliage well-tended and pruned, how to prepare graves for burial, how to keep headstones looking clean and unstreaked by rain… He was very gradually prepared for nights, when the true work at Certain Soil began.

The thing about this burial patch was that here, the dead did not want to stay dead. The dead got up when night fell, mingled and talked with one another… and they were actually friendly. The iron bars around them were not meant to keep them from getting out… they were meant to keep the rest of the world out. There were much more awful things nearby than ghosts, after all. Many of those ghosts knew what the horrors of the town and the forest nearby were like… and after such horrible ends, they mainly just wanted company and to be left alone by the world. It meant that a lot of them were incredibly chill and simply eager to spend their evenings floating around the graveyard, catching up with each other. The most trouble that they had was the drama of embarrassment and social positioning that kept an indeterminate amount of time haunting interesting. For the ones that were not content to simply be amicable towards the tenders, the ghosts, and themselves… well…

That was also why Circ was being prepared for nights. Between learning how the other grave tenders managed to deal with the unruly dead and talking to some of the other ghosts, he quickly learned how to not only stay alive in the graveyard, but to also stay alive in the town itself. A lot of the horrible nature of the surrounding location could be managed with a bit of extra care to where it became downright livable, ironically enough considering who he was talking to about it. He took to the position, and the knowledge needed to thrive in it, far sooner than expected. The grave tenders kept life after death comfortable for the ghosts and managed the fences and unruly guests, and the ghosts kept their tenders alive through using their knowledge of the town and the Black Cat’s Path to keep them alive.

With that, the nights started to seem less… dark. More manageable. The growing paranoia that he was going to end up on one of those missing posters before he got out started to fade with understanding, as much as his fears about the town were confirmed and he still wants to leave, scanning for affordable housing in better parts of the country and building his savings. The glow of Halloween decorations and those orange and purple house lights, the refreshing chill of fall, the beauty underneath the horror that surrounded him all started to show themselves again past the fear.

It was beautiful at times, too. He could share stories to grandmothers of their still-living children and explain who had planted flowers on their graves. Circ saw loves and bonds that transcended death, that lingered even as ghosts started to let themselves fade together into whatever came beyond this. There was a beyond past this, another grand land to explore, this was proof of that that he never would have found out if he had not fallen for the lure of this patch of America. He spoke to felines from centuries ago and told them about technological wonders that they never got to experience. Smith and the others sometimes brought in a projector and showed them whatever films they could grab. The local band that formed amongst the graveyard spirits beat the piss out of whatever garage bands were trying to play in town, for sure. The ghosts had a Halloween tradition of leaving the graveyard at night and returning at daybreak… well, all but the assholes that Circ made sure howled and flailed frantically in their tombs and coffins instead of turning the 31st of October into the 31st of Shit. They would float upwards into the sky, drawing into the horizon, heading up towards the moon to a party within the forest of the Black Cat’s Path, to a place not meant for anyone or anything mortal, hundreds of them rising up and sailing away to take delight and freedom and revel in the fact that they could not be harmed by somewhere so very treacherous. They all seemed so overjoyed to head to that party deep in the woods, and as they were struck with starlight, they all gained the most brilliant glow to them that made them look like paper lanterns fluttering away into the night…

Circ has tended the graves at Certain Soil for five years at this point. The pay is alright, but the benefits… the benefits are amazing.


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Wow.

I think this may be one of my favorite commissions I’ve ever gotten. I absolutely love what  munks did with this, look at Circ, LOOK AT MY CAT, HE LOOKS SO HAPPY. Munks basically hit a home run so hard he fucking pegged one of the helicopters filming the game. And the fucking ghosts are super cool as hell and I love the little special guest that snuck in and just… augh, it’s GREAT. IT’S FUCKING PRETTY AS HELL.

I think this is gonna be a good October, everyone. <3