Ruslan Walenty

Ruslan Walenty was a man in Glina who died in the spring. He went suddenly, in the chest, at the table. His family buried him the next morning with the priest's words said beautifully over the mound, and they did not put the stone beneath his tongue because nothing had happened the last time, or the time before, and the old woman who buries the dead in Glina was not called. Eight days later his wife Dana went to bed well and did not wake. Then the girl. Then the boy Milo began to go gray, and his uncle sat on a stool beside the bed with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging and would not leave the room. Babcia Krol had told them about the stone. She told the priest. The priest said the rites were sufficient and the stone was superstition and read the words beautifully. Ruslan did not lie still. He was in the ground at the far end of the cemetery near the tree line when Andrei and Yara arrived in Glina. The cross on his mound was tilted. The mound was dark. From the hill at night, if you opened your shutters, you could hear something slow and wet from the direction of the graves. Like chewing. Except nothing chews that slow. Andrei climbed the hill in the dark and opened the grave from the top with his hands. He put the stone in. He closed the grave. He came back down the hill. Milo recovered.

The shroud eater doesn't rise. It doesn't leave the grave. It stays where it's put and it chews, night after night, and what it eats is the cloth they buried it in, and what it costs is the living who share its blood.