THE MOURNER
WHO NEVER LEFT
By
Gitangshu Adhikary
Goa, 1958.
There are faces that belong to grief.
There are faces that belong to death.
And then there are faces that belong to something that
patiently waits between them.
Chapter One: The Eyes
That Refused to Close
By sunrise, Domingos Pereira had already buried three
people.
The old fisherman had drowned after his canoe overturned
during a squall.
A six-year-old girl had succumbed to fever.
The village priest had died in his sleep with his rosary
wound so tightly around his fingers that no one could pry it loose without
breaking the beads.
Death had become routine in São Bartolomeu, a sleepy Goan
village tucked between the Arabian Sea and endless coconut groves. The Portuguese
flag still fluttered over government buildings, church bells dictated the
rhythm of life, and every road eventually led to the cemetery overlooking the
sea.
Domingos knew every grave there.
He had dug most of them himself.
For twenty-eight years, he had washed the dead, dressed
them, prayed over them, and lowered them into the earth.
People trusted him because he treated every body as though
it still carried a soul.
The dead, after all, deserved dignity.
It began on the first Sunday of May.
An elderly woman named Rosa Fernandes had died quietly
after evening prayers.
The family filled the small whitewashed chapel with hymns.
Candles burned beside her polished wooden coffin.
Everything was ordinary.
Until Domingos leaned over to straighten the lace around
her neck.
Her eyes opened.
Not slowly.
Not weakly.
They snapped open.
Wide.
Clear.
Terrified.
He staggered backward so violently that he knocked over two
candles.
Rosa's pupils darted desperately—not toward him.
Past him.
Toward the entrance of the chapel.
Her lips trembled.
Her throat strained.
No sound emerged.
Then, with impossible urgency, tears rolled down both
cheeks.
Actual tears.
Cold.
Fresh.
The room filled with relatives praying loudly enough to
drown every other sound.
No one noticed.
Domingos looked toward the doorway.
Someone stood there.
A tall man dressed entirely in black.
Hat pulled low.
Face hidden beneath the shadow of the brim.
Hands folded behind his back.
Perfectly still.
He appeared to be mourning.
Yet no one spoke to him.
No one acknowledged him.
When Domingos looked back at Rosa—
Her eyes had closed.
The tears remained.
"Did you see that?"
He whispered to Rosa's daughter.
She frowned.
"See what?"
"Your mother..."
"My mother is dead."
"No..."
He pointed.
"She opened—"
The daughter stared at him with genuine confusion.
"Her eyes never moved."
Neither had anyone else's.
Only Domingos had seen them.
Or so he believed.
Twenty-nine days later...
It happened again.
Chapter Two: Every Thirty
Days
The second corpse belonged to Joaquim Silva.
Forty-three.
Heart attack.
Healthy until breakfast.
Dead before noon.
The funeral proceeded beneath relentless monsoon clouds.
The church smelled of wet stone, incense, and lilies
already beginning to rot.
Domingos adjusted the crucifix resting on Joaquim's chest.
Again—
The eyes flew open.
Again—
They ignored him.
Again—
They stared toward the entrance.
This time the mouth moved.
Barely.
One word.
"Run."
Domingos froze.
His skin tightened across his bones.
Every hair on his arms rose simultaneously.
He turned toward the church doors.
The same mourner stood there.
Exactly where he had stood before.
Same black suit.
Same hat.
Same impossible stillness.
Rain poured around him.
Yet his clothes remained perfectly dry.
The dead man's pupils widened in absolute horror.
His fingers twitched violently inside the coffin.
Then everything stopped.
Eyes closed.
Muscles relaxed.
Silence.
Domingos rushed toward the doorway.
No one blocked him.
No one questioned him.
Outside...
Only rain.
The man had vanished.
He asked every family afterward.
"Who was the gentleman standing at the entrance?"
Blank stares.
"What gentleman?"
"The tall man."
"There wasn't anyone."
Every answer identical.
Every funeral.
Every month.
Every corpse.
One opened its eyes.
One tried desperately to speak.
One stared at the unseen mourner.
No one else ever acknowledged him.
Domingos stopped sleeping.
Chapter Three: The Faces
Beneath the Soil
The nightmares began with the cemetery.
Not as it existed.
As it had once been.
Centuries earlier.
No church.
No crosses.
Only red earth.
Torches.
Rain.
Dozens of bodies buried upright.
Still alive.
He woke every night tasting soil.
His fingernails packed with dirt.
His lungs burning.
Some mornings his wife found muddy footprints leading from
their bedroom to the front door.
Bare footprints.
Only one set.
His.
He had no memory of leaving the bed.
Then came the dreams that were not dreams.
He stood beneath an enormous banyan tree.
Villagers surrounded a freshly dug pit.
Inside knelt a man whose face was identical to his own.
Not merely similar.
The same eyes.
The same scar on the chin.
The same trembling hands.
Only older.
Clothed in faded robes unlike anything worn in modern Goa.
An elderly woman screamed.
"You buried him alive!"
The crowd ignored her.
The man inside the grave looked upward.
Not pleading.
Apologizing.
"I didn't know he was watching."
Soil covered his face.
Darkness swallowed him.
Domingos awoke choking.
His mouth filled with fresh earth.
Actual earth.
His wife screamed.
Doctors found nothing wrong.
Priests blamed exhaustion.
Domingos knew better.
The dreams were memories.
Not his own.
Yet somehow...
Entirely his.
He searched church archives dating back hundreds of years.
Dust coated every ledger.
Every baptism.
Every death.
Every forgotten burial.
One brittle record from 1689 made his hands shake.
It described an execution.
A grave keeper named Domingos Peres.
Punishment:
Burial alive.
Crime:
Ignoring warnings from the dead.
He stared at the faded ink.
His heartbeat slowed until he could hear individual pulses
echoing inside his skull.
The name.
The occupation.
Even the scar described in the priest's notes.
Impossible.
Yet terrifyingly familiar.
He had lived before.
He had failed before.
And something had waited through every lifetime.
Chapter Four: The Man Who
Attended Everyone's Funeral
Domingos began watching the mourners instead of the dead.
Every funeral.
Every procession.
Every burial.
The man in black always appeared.
Never early.
Never late.
Always moments before the coffin reached the grave.
Always alone.
Always perfectly still.
Birds avoided flying above him.
Dogs whimpered whenever they approached.
Children cried without understanding why.
Yet adults walked directly past him as though passing empty
air.
Only those about to be buried acknowledged his presence.
Only they looked terrified.
On the seventh month...
The corpse belonged to Father Miguel.
The priest had collapsed while delivering Mass.
Even in death, serenity remained upon his face.
Until...
His eyes opened.
They fixed themselves upon the mourner.
Not fear this time.
Recognition.
The old priest forced air through lifeless lungs.
One whisper escaped.
"You found him again."
Domingos leaned closer.
"Who?"
The dead priest's gaze shifted toward Domingos.
For the first time.
His pupils filled with unbearable pity.
"No..."
he rasped.
"He found you."
The eyes rolled backward.
The coffin slammed shut by itself.
The church bells rang.
Every bell.
Although nobody stood in the bell tower.
That night, Domingos returned alone to the cemetery.
Moonlight washed the graves silver.
Sea wind carried the smell of salt and decay.
Someone stood among the tombstones.
The mourner.
Closer than ever.
Still faceless beneath the hat.
Domingos forced himself forward.
His knees trembled uncontrollably.
Every instinct screamed to flee.
Instead he asked—
"Who are you?"
Silence.
The figure slowly raised one gloved hand.
Not toward himself.
Toward the graves.
Every grave.
Simultaneously.
The earth shifted.
Softly.
Almost gently.
Then...
From beneath the soil...
Hundreds of pairs of eyes opened.
Not bodies.
Only eyes.
Looking upward through the dirt.
Watching.
Waiting.
Every eyelid blinked together.
Domingos stumbled backward, vomiting violently.
The figure never moved.
Never spoke.
Only watched him watching them.
Chapter Five: The Final
Procession
The village awoke to discover Domingos missing.
His house stood unlocked.
His bed untouched.
His boots remained by the door.
The cemetery shovel had vanished.
So had every burial register he had ever kept.
Search parties found nothing.
Not blood.
Not footprints.
Nothing.
Three weeks later...
A fisherman noticed freshly disturbed earth near the oldest
section of the cemetery.
Authorities dug carefully.
Expecting perhaps one body.
They uncovered twelve.
All centuries apart according to the clothing.
None had decomposed.
Every corpse resembled Domingos Pereira.
Every face identical.
Every pair of hands shredded, the fingernails broken to the
bone as though each had clawed desperately upward through impossible amounts of
earth.
Each body wore a different century.
Each skull faced the surface.
Each mouth remained frozen open.
Trying to warn someone.
No explanation entered the official parish records.
The graves were sealed again.
The priest ordered silence.
Families obeyed.
Life resumed.
As it always does.
Years passed.
Then decades.
Goa changed.
Empires disappeared.
Languages shifted.
Concrete replaced old Portuguese homes.
The cemetery remained.
People still died.
Funerals still filled the old church.
And once every month...
One corpse still opens its eyes moments before burial.
The grieving families swear nothing unusual happened.
The priest sees only peaceful faces.
The mourners notice only one another.
But somewhere near the entrance...
A solitary figure in black still stands without moving.
Watching.
Waiting.
Patient as history itself.
Those doomed to die soon always see him.
Those already dead always fear him.
And every so often...
The corpse's eyes do not look at the stranger first.
They look past him.
Toward someone standing quietly among the living.
Someone whose face carries an inexplicable familiarity.
Someone who suddenly feels dirt beneath their
fingernails...
...and remembers, with unbearable certainty, that they have
already been buried alive before.
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