Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series

by J. Joseph Wright

“Who are you? What do you want! Why don’t you let me go!”

  His demands fell on silence. He was certain the robots were taking him to the depths of the ancient structure, beneath the mausoleum to those giant conveyers. He pictured his dead body included in the endless assembly line. What those corpses were being used for, he had no clue, and he wanted no part in finding out.

  He cursed his captors, the ones behind this shameful enterprise. Whoever, whatever they were, he damned them to Hell. Spit and cussed and called upon everything he knew that was righteous in the universe to come and strike them down with brutal karmic justice.

  That didn’t happen. Nothing happened but the steady shuffling, the constant shifting, the continuing descent.

  Heavy rumbling. Giant motors humming. He sensed this was the place. This was the mammoth factory where the dead were being transported like consumer goods. He was sure of it. When he felt the casket being lowered and then, with a jolt, hitting the floor, he had no idea what would come next.

  What came next was nothing. Not a sound. Not a movement. Harvey tried to be still in the eerie silence. The constricted space began to take its toll on him, and he lost all control of his caution. No more waiting. He had to get out.

  He pushed and pushed. Hands and knees. With all his strength. The lid had to open. It had to. No luck. Damn thing was jammed. Or worse—locked. His first instinct was to deny it. Push again. Try harder. No avail. It felt like a thousand kilogram sarcophagus lid. His one last chance was to plead for his life.

  “Help me…please! Whoever you are!” he beat his knuckles raw against the solid top. “Please don’t leave me in here…please!”

  Nothing. Even the rumbling had died down, though he heard it in the background. He called out again, determined to get a response, and would have kept shouting if not for a tremendous quake, shaking the casket and jarring the lid open a tiny fissure. He shut up just in time for another heavy shock that moved the lid even further, enough for Harvey to sit up.

  He lost his breath at what he saw.

  2.

  Never in the history of Cemetery Planet had Harvey heard of such a primitive place. He saw it with his own eyes, yet still disbelieved. Sandstone caverns with carved niches loaded with countless human skulls, femurs, ribcages. In the distance, he saw the gruesome ossuary had multiple levels and corridors. He’d heard of such places. Places where people would entomb their dead when population density prevented above-ground cemeteries. The same principal as Cemetery Planet, only underground. He’d seen pictures of the Catacombs of Paris, and even heard rumors that they’d transferred them to Cemetery Planet. Harvey never believed those stories. He did now.

  The high humidity hung like an oppressive fog, and in spots this fog grew thicker before Harvey’s eyes. One after the other, accompanied by a whispering wind, mixing and materializing. A heavy, dense, grayness spilled from between the skulls, from the dark recesses and crevices. Wisps of smoky dust gathered around Harvey like cloudbanks, a sudden storm front in miniature, violent and electric and menacing.

  In the mist he began to see human forms, hazy figures, dozens of them, descending from the domed ceiling to the coffin where Harvey sat dumbfounded. He glanced left and right—nothing but semitransparent figures, all in ancient attire, all sending him dead, cold stares. It put a shiver in his spine, and a sense of dread in his gut.

  Then, with one sighting, all his anxiety, all his abhorrence vaporized, and he scrambled out of the casket as fast as his stiff muscles would let him.

  “LEA!” his voice boomed throughout the cavern. She was on a small landing overlooking the main floor. She opened her arms in a welcoming gesture, sparkling and aglow with joy. The spirits seemed stunned at Harvey’s sudden burst of activity, and even made way as he ran to the stairs. Then, suddenly, a fierce collision with something very fast and very solid stopped him in his tracks.

  “NO! Don’t hurt Harvey!”

  Lea shrieked in his defense. It didn’t help. He regained his footing and made another attempt at the stairs. Another rush of gray slammed into him, this one knocking him over. Lea screamed again. So did the spirits. Cursing, shouting angry, accusing words.

  “He’s one of them!”

  “Yes! One of them!”

  “Criminal scum!”

  “Don’t let him escape!”

  In their vitriolic displays, the misty figures became almost real in appearance…and in presence. Harvey felt one push him—hard—into several others. A slap to his face. A punch to his kidney. A scrape to his neck. A furious attack, and in the chaotic violence, Harvey lost sight of Lea. For a terrifying moment he was beginning to believe this whole thing was a trap. They’d used Lea to lure him into this terrible place and do away with him once and for all.

  For what reason? Why did the spirits want to torment him? He begged for an answer as they jabbed and pecked and clawed at him. He fell to his knees and prayed for a reason. All he got in return were the same, angrily repetitious cries.

  “You’re one of them!”

  “You’re corrupt! A scourge to all that’s decent!”

  His heart pounded in his ear, and the throbbing seemed to be getting weaker. He was getting weaker. His only thoughts were of Lea. He came here to save her and he failed. He convinced himself Lea had gone, so it was a tremendous shock when he saw her again.

  “Stop!” she swished her hands and dissipated several of the spirits. Her own appearance was of smoke and dust too, but she seemed to possess a fury that allowed her more power, and she pushed aside the aggressors, then rushed to be next to Harvey.

  “He’s not one of them!” she shielded him. “And he can help us!”

  “But he works for them!” countered one of the apparitions.

  “There’s no doubt!” added another.

  “That’s true,” Lea admitted, and the ghostly group surged forward, roaring with aggression. “Wait!” she held them off, but just barely. “Let me finish. He does work for them…but he doesn’t know!”

  To that the spirits issued a general hiss of disbelief. Lea wouldn’t accept their dubiousness.

  “I mean it! He doesn’t know anything about it. He doesn’t have a clue, but I know he can help us!”

  The spirits would hear none of it, and rushed forward even more. Three of them overpowered Lea and pulled her, kicking and screaming, away from Harvey.

  “One of them!” the accusations came out again. “He’s working with them…he’s one of them!”

  Before he could blink, the ghosts were swirling about his face, barraging him with blunt force. He’d never felt so much pain from so many places on his body at the same time. Small slices to large bruises to tiny things like his hair being pulled from the follicles or his skin being peeled from his forearms. Torture of the worst kind.

  “We’ll teach him to do this to us!” one of them proclaimed, and they all agreed. “We’ll give him a fate worse than death!”

  “Please listen to me,” Lea lifted into the air, just above the heads of the enraged spirits. “I’m one of you. I’m in the very same situation you’re all in. We’re all facing the same fate, so you have to believe me when I tell you Harvey’s an honest, hardworking man. He would never do anything like this.”

  Grumbling. Groaning. Not one soul seemed to believe.

  “I know you’re afraid. I am too. We all are. None of us knows what will happen, and that’s driving us to this. We need to right this wrong. We need to come up with a way to solve this, but harming Harvey isn’t the way.”

  “You’re just in love with him,” came a gruff grumble. “That’s why you’re defending him!”

  The gallery of ghosts erupted in acerbic laughter.

  “That’s not true!” she insisted. Then her forlorn gaze drifted to Harvey, and he saw tears. “Not entirely. I mean yes, I love him…but that’s only because he is such a sweet and generous man. He’d never do the things you’re accusing him of doing. Never.”

  The group consensus was an overw
helming repudiation of Lea’s claims. They wanted revenge. For what, Harvey still had no idea, and it had him so puzzled, he almost wanted death to take him. If it weren’t for Lea, he would have accepted it by now. But she fought for him, and that in turn made him want to live. The spirits, though, didn’t see it that way.

  Harvey felt pressure on his wrists, ankles, then around his neck. Tighter and tighter. Squeezing the life out of him. He locked eyes with Lea. She struggled against an army of hands holding her in place. All she could do was watch as Harvey was taken closer and closer to his end.

  Then a voice, as familiar as it was commanding, issuing an order that was impossible to ignore.

  “Everyone…stop this madness, NOW!”

  Instant relief. Harvey’s air passages opened, and he gasped for breath. Then he gasped again when he saw the owner of such a commanding tone. Standing atop a staircase like a grand conductor was a man Harvey would recognize anywhere—Kip Broders. His broad shoulders and barrel chest gave him an authoritative presence. He regarded the large open pit below with an air of dignity and was afforded the respect of the leader by his companions. Harvey didn’t know whether to be relieved with this revelation or to be even more afraid. However, he had no alternative than to wait and listen. And what Kip Broders had to say was nothing short of fantastical and frightening.

  3.

  “What is this all about?” Harvey scanned the faces. Dark and angry wisps of steam. Swirling, billowing glares. Harvey took one look at these ominous creatures and his insides tightened. His forehead broke out in a cold sweat. His heart leapt to his throat. But he swallowed his fear, denied his desire to run, and stood his ground.

  “I said, what the hell is this all about!” he didn’t let his stare waver as he met each ghost individually, peering into their souls for answers. “Why are you accusing me of something I haven’t done? And what the hell is it that you think I did?”

  “You really have no clue, do you, Harvey Crane?” Kip Broders stepped down the stairway. All spirits went silent, watching pensively. “You don’t know a thing about what’s going on here. Not a thing.”

  “All I know is what I see. Graverobbing alien cyborgs—and you people. And all of you want me dead.”

  “These souls don’t want you dead, Harvey,” Lea said. “They’re just scared.”

  “They’re scared?” Harvey couldn’t contain his disbelief. “Of what?”

  “Of you.”

  “Why would they be afraid of me? What have I done?”

  “You work for DeepSix,” Broders said. “And DeepSix is working with the Unspeakable Ones.”

  “The-the what? Who are the Unspeakable Ones?”

  Broders paused to let the suddenly agitated souls calm down again. Harvey felt tension in the air almost as if it were a real thing, a heaviness that weighed down the spirits into a sepulchral mood. In that snapshot of time, he sensed their fear, and knew it had to be for good reason. Even Broders had the look, as if he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. Yet he straightened and seemed to gather his courage when he spoke.

  “In all recorded history of the universe, there has never been a species more insidious, more hostile, and more intelligent. They have a name, but the sound of it being spoken is so disagreeable to the ear that others have come to call them simply the Unspeakable Ones. These beings had no capacity for compassion. They lived to conquer, and they threatened a takeover of the entire galaxy, enslaving and slaughtering its innocent inhabitants. But another race of advanced beings fought back. There was a great war, a galactic battle the likes of which had never been seen. After much bloodshed and destruction on both sides, the race of protectors, the ancient species known simply as the Guardians, prevailed.”

  Harvey’s insides were scrambled. He didn’t know what to make of Broders’ disclosure. Broders, for his part, wasn’t finished.

  “The prowess of the Guardians was surpassed only by their goodness of heart. They wanted peace, and abhorred killing of any kind. They gained their energy and resources from the cosmos and never, ever waged war unless they were attacked, or unless they saw a great injustice being perpetrated. Then, and only then did they intervene. And when the war was over, because of their virtuous nature, the Guardians couldn’t bring themselves to kill the Unspeakable Ones’ survivors…”

  Broders swept his sights over the souls in the vast catacombs. The mood became considerably gloomier in anticipation of what was yet to be disclosed.

  “So the Guardians imprisoned them here, on this planet.”

  “Here?” Harvey interrupted. “Here on Cemetery Planet? How could they have done that without someone seeing?”

  “This happened long before any human had set foot on this world,” answered Broders. “For eons these beings have lain dormant, in a kind of pupae state.”

  “Pupae state?” Harvey felt himself sinking further into madness. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Guardians, transformed the Unspeakable Ones’ DNA makeup, changing them into like wormlike creatures that inhabit the depths under Mount Mausolus. They’re helpless things, huddling together, and have no resemblance to the great race of warriors they once were. It was more for humiliation than anything else. But it was also a precautionary measure. The Guardians knew they couldn’t just leave the Unspeakable Ones the way they were naturally. So they changed their physical makeup.”

  “I don’t get it,” Harvey stated his thoughts bluntly. “If these…Unspeakable Ones have been turned into harmless worms and buried underground, then what’s the problem? And why is everyone so mad at me about it?”

  Broders and the other spirits grew agitated. The dark streaks of gray swirled with greater turbulence. Lea must have sensed their surging rage and swooped in to intervene. But Broders composed himself quickly, and he revealed something quite shocking to Harvey with his next statement.

  “The problem is, Harvey, that the Unspeakable Ones, though they look much, much different than they once did those thousands of years ago when they were on the verge of conquering the galaxy, they still, to this day, are the same, conniving, evil, dictatorial beasts they’ve always been. These monsters have been waiting to make their return and take what they believe is rightfully theirs. They have a plan to steal the human corpses from the graves of Cemetery Planet. They’re going to use our bodies like parasites. And they’re getting help. The only way they can do this is with those cyborgs, and with the assistance of DeepSix!”

  4.

  “This is crazy! Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent crazy!” Harvey blurted. “An ancient, warlike race made to live under a mountain. No way. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe a word of it!”

  The ghostly apparitions appeared restless, conversing among one another. The general feeling Harvey got from them was of resentment still, but now they seemed confused. Lea was among them, clearly agitated by what Harvey had to say.

  “It’s not crazy, Harvey,” she was as persuasive as ever, and Harvey, though relieved to see her safe, couldn’t believe she believed this nonsense. What she said to him, though, wiped away his doubt. “Harvey you know it’s the truth. Just think about it. Look at what’s happened to you. Those cyborgs. Why didn’t the scanners pick them up? Because they’re DeepSix androids, Harvey. So is that gigantic factory underground. You saw that place with your own eyes, Harvey. So don’t say it’s crazy. Don’t you dare!”

  He had to clutch his own head for fear it would burst. How could he possibly believe such an outlandish tale? It didn’t take long, actually. He remembered all the problems he’d started having with the holomemorials. He thought about all the graves that had been exhumed, and how it all looked so random at first. However, upon closer inspection, he’d found it was anything but random. Then he thought of his various run-ins with the cyborgs. All these concepts were driving him down a path of acceptance. Before he allowed himself to believe, he had questions.

  “You said this all took place thousands of years ago…why
did these Unspeakable Ones take so long? I mean, Cemetery Planet has been in existence for a long time. Why now?”

  “They’re cunning beings,” Broders told him. “And they know they have to act under the cover of secrecy. Otherwise, if they’re found out before their plan is fulfilled, they’re vulnerable. They had to wait until this planet became basically abandoned. No living soul, besides the caretakers, has visited Cemetery Planet in fifty years. Knowing that, the Unspeakable Ones chose now as their time to resurface.”

  “And DeepSix?” Harvey asked next. “How are they involved?”

  “DeepSix is a corporation just like any other. They exist to make a profit. The Unspeakable Ones are very wealthy, and even after all these millennia have assets throughout the galaxy. Planets of solid gold, diamond, platinum. DeepSix has made a deal with the devil, literally. They’re providing the material assistance, the cyborgs, the vast infrastructure that will enable the Unspeakable Ones to reanimate our bodies and use them as their own.”