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Jump to navigationJump to searchThe Grave Listeners by William Frank (view source)
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''A tale maudit set in a time when medicine was part superstition and partly an appeal to ancient authorities, and the prospect of being buried alive was frightfully more common. In that horrible situation, your only hope was that a Grave Listener sitting at your grave would be there to hear your cries for help.'' ''In an old, poor village, on a cemetery on a hill, a loutish Grave Listener, an impish five-year-old boy and his little stuffed Bunny are up against a strange plague, a soigné stranger, and a frightened, vengeful village. It will be a depraved little journey, with all its Witchcraft, savagery and comedies of human nature, that tumbles to a towering end.''
The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. For Volushka is a Grave Listener and, for a fee, he will ensure your dear departed loved one has not awakened in their recently buried coffin. Nobody, except perhaps the little boy Benzi, likes Volushka but they accept that grave listening is a necessary job and someone has to do it.
