Malcolm’s jaw tightened. People had been approaching him all week: journalists, lawyers, charity people, grief-hunters with warm voices and cold intentions. He’d learned to keep his face empty and his answer sharp.
“Go home,” he said without looking.
The boy stepped closer anyway, like fear was chasing him and the only safe place was near the richest man in the state.
“It came from the tomb,” the boy insisted, voice shaking. “From that one.”
Malcolm finally turned.
The kid’s finger pointed, trembling, not at some ancient mausoleum, not at a family crypt with stone angels, but at Noah’s fresh grave.
For a moment Malcolm didn’t understand what he was seeing. His brain tried to shove the world back into its rules.
Then his stomach dropped.
“That’s… that’s my son,” Malcolm said, the words thick as wet cement. “He’s—”
The boy swallowed hard. “I know. People said it today. They were crying. But I heard it just now. Like… like a dog whining. Like someone trying not to yell.”
Malcolm’s heart didn’t speed up. It stopped, then restarted wrong.
He looked at the grave. Just dirt and winter grass, slightly mounded. A wreath someone had left was already half-buried in snow.
He wanted to laugh at how impossible it was.
He wanted to scream because impossible had already happened once, inside a hospital room where a doctor had said the word dead like it was a filing status.
“Who are you?” Malcolm asked, voice hoarse.
The boy hesitated, then blurted, “Jalen. Jalen Brooks.”
Malcolm stared at him, trying to decide if this was cruelty wearing a child’s face or a child carrying a truth too heavy for his hands.
“You’re telling me,” Malcolm said slowly, “you heard my son… under there.”
Jalen nodded, lips blue with cold. “I didn’t wanna come near, but it sounded sad. I thought maybe… maybe it was the wind. But then it did it again. Like, mm-mmm, like that.”
Malcolm’s body moved before his mind agreed.
He dropped to his knees at the edge of the grave. The soil was frozen crust over soft earth. His expensive coat drank the dirt like it was ink.
He pressed his ear to the mound.
At first he heard only the cemetery’s quiet: a distant car, the faint buzz of a light, his own breath punching in and out of him.
Then… something else.
Not the wind.
Not a branch.
A sound so small it could’ve been imagined, except it rose again, a muffled vibration, a tiny struggle, as if the earth itself was trying to cough.
Malcolm’s face drained of color so fast it looked like grief had finally finished him.
He jerked up, eyes wild. “Call 911,” he snapped, but he wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
Jalen blinked. “I don’t got a phone.”
Of course he didn’t.
Malcolm yanked his phone out, fingers shaking hard enough to drop it once. He caught it, dialed, and pressed it to his ear.
When the dispatcher answered, Malcolm’s voice came out too loud, too controlled, the voice he used in boardrooms when he refused to lose.
“My son is in the ground,” he said. “I think he’s alive.”
Silence on the line.
“I need an ambulance at Greenlawn Memorial. Now. I need police. I need… I need equipment. I need someone who can dig.”
“Sir,” the dispatcher said cautiously, “are you certain—”
A muffled groan fluttered up through the dirt again, quiet but unmistakable.
Malcolm’s throat made a sound that wasn’t language. “I’m certain.”
He stood, swaying slightly, and looked around like the cemetery might offer him tools out of pity.
There was only snow, stone, and darkness.
Then he saw the maintenance shed down the path, a small building with a padlock and a faint light glowing inside as if someone had forgotten to turn it off.
Malcolm started running.
He didn’t run like a billionaire. He ran like a father whose world had become a trapdoor.
Jalen ran after him, arms pumping, bare legs flashing in the cold.
They reached the shed. Malcolm tried the door. Locked.
He slammed his shoulder into it once, twice. Pain shot down his arm. The door held.
Jalen’s eyes darted around. “There’s a window,” he panted, pointing.
Malcolm didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a rock from the path and smashed the window. Glass shattered. He shoved his arm through, ignoring the cut, and reached for the latch inside.
The door popped open.
Inside were shovels, a pickaxe, and a small battery-powered work light. Malcolm grabbed two shovels and tossed one to Jalen.
Jalen caught it with both hands like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“You don’t have to—” Malcolm started.
“Yes I do,” Jalen said, fierce and shaking. “I heard him. I can’t just… not.”
They sprinted back.
Malcolm plunged the shovel into the dirt.
The first scoop came up stiff and clotted. The earth fought him. Winter had turned it stubborn.
He dug anyway.
Jalen dug too, smaller scoops, panting hard, his breath coming out like smoke.
Malcolm’s hands blistered. His cut arm stung. The shovel handle grew slick with sweat even in the cold.
He couldn’t think about what it meant if Noah was down there.
He couldn’t think about what it meant if Noah wasn’t.
He dug because digging was a verb, and verbs were better than grief.
Within minutes, headlights swept across the cemetery.
A police cruiser rolled up, then an ambulance, then another vehicle Malcolm recognized with a jolt of anger: a sleek black SUV with tinted windows. His security team. Someone from the house had tracked his location.
Doors slammed. Voices rose.
“Mr. Vance!” an officer called, jogging over. “Sir, step back. What’s going on?”
Malcolm didn’t step back. He didn’t even look up. “Get equipment,” he barked. “We need to open it. Now.”
The officer’s gaze flicked to the disturbed grave, to the frantic digging, to the child in shorts whose teeth chattered like castanets.
“Sir,” the officer said, trying for calm, “we need to—”
A faint, muffled sound rose again.
The officer froze.
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