The Curator

The manager of Tunner’s Hardware spotted her slipping a wire-stripper into her pocket and called the police. At the age of fourteen—after months of shoplifting—Amber Coleman was arrested for the first time.

Down at the station, her parents kept insisting that there had to be some kind of mistake.

“We have plenty of money. She doesn’t need to steal! And why would a teenage girl even want a wire stripper?”

Six months and four arrests later, the courts ordered that Amber be evaluated by a psychiatrist. She was diagnosed with kleptomania. Naltrexone was prescribed. Over the ensuing months, Amber allowed her parents to believe the drug was working, but that fiction unraveled when Amber went to soccer camp and her mom, who had decided to reorganize the garage, discovered the old suitcase Amber was using to hide items she stole from stores, friends’ houses, and even her own family. Most of it was ridiculous and worthless. Nevertheless, the compulsion to take each item had been irresistible.

Although Amber’s doctor tried to convince her parents that her stealing wasn’t a form a teenage rebellion, they still sent her off to one of those tough love camps for troubled kids out in the middle of nowhere. Amber was so stressed there that she felt compelled to steal from the counselors and her fellow inmates; she was sent home—unsalvageable.

It was Amber, at age sixteen, who discovered a way to save herself. The idea came to her while reading The Thieves of Teocalli, a gripping romance about a tomb robber named Xander Arlington. In the story, he and his partner—Cynthia Collins, a beautiful archaeologist—set out on an expedition to find a lost Aztec temple. They find it, plunder it, and fall in love.

Amber wanted to be like Cynthia, who—despite her thievery—was considered a heroine because she donated her share of the loot to a museum. Amber decided that she, too, would only steal from the dead and, like Cynthia, would donate her “loot” to a museum—a museum of her own making.

The location?

The back of her closet, behind the shoe rack. She just hoped her mother wouldn’t decide to reorganize her clothes one day and discover it.

Amber began spending her free time in the local cemetery, Prescott Memorial. In her little black notebook, she copied down the names and dates carved onto the tombstones. She sat for hours on marble benches and made notes about the people who came to visit—what they looked like, what gifts they brought. She even imagined the relationships that once must have existed between the living visitors and the dead residents. All this information would be carefully written on the little plaques that would accompany each exhibit in Amber’s museum.

On a chilly September night (after three weeks of recording and observing), Amber snuck out of the house and climbed over the wall of the cemetery. She officially became a grave robber by stealing a prayer candle—decorated with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe—off the grave of Josefina Perez. Filled with euphoria, Amber was confident that she was doing no harm. It wasn’t like the dead could reach up and grab the gifts left behind for them. Amber wasn’t doing anything worse than what the groundskeeper, Mr. Molridge, did every Thursday when he cleared off the graves. Amber didn’t know what happened to all that stuff. Did Molridge keep it? Donate it to charity? Throw it all away?

A few days after she’d procured her museum’s second exhibit, a plastic velociraptor off the grave of little Tommy Bickerson, it became evident to Amber that she was being haunted. The soft doleful wailing of two hazy figures hovering around her closet door would rouse her from sleep each night. The identity of the ghosts was obvious: Josefina and Tommy.

Amber tried explaining to them that it was pointless to give the candle and dinosaur back because the cemetery would eventually remove them anyway, but both ghosts were adamant that their property be returned.

Amber began to wonder if perhaps she’d grossly miscalculated the complexity of groundskeeper’s work. Was it possible that he did more than simply gather up the offerings and dispose of them? Maybe he performed some kind of ritual, something to appease the spirits. Amber imagined Molridge, with a torch in his hand, standing in front of a pile of wilted flowers, stuffed animals, and American flags whilst a priest offered a prayer and made the sign of the cross. In her mind’s eye, Amber saw the groundskeeper toss the torch and ignite the bonfire, reducing it to ashes that would be sprinkled reverently over graves during the next full moon.

If that were true, and Amber suspected it was, she’d absolutely have to return the ghosts’ property. She wasn’t unduly upset by this, however. Her plan to keep out of jail and not break her parents’ hearts wasn’t ruined. Permanently keeping the items she stole wasn’t necessary; possessing things didn’t bring her peace. Rather, it was the act of stealing itself that dispelled the intense feelings of anxiety that would so often plague her.

Amber would continue to be a grave robber, but she wouldn’t keep anything for more than a week. It was all for the best; this way she would never have to worry that her museum might outgrow the modest space afforded it in her closet.

Another benefit of returning the items was that it made her a borrower, not a thief. And because those who borrowed had to pay interest, Amber decided that she would improve anything she removed from the cemetery before taking it back. Surely, that would appease any disgruntled spirits.

Therefore, Jason’s velociraptor, which had been uniformly purple, was spray painted a more realistic green. Amber even used a toothpick and some black paint to detail the creature’s eyes and flaring nostrils. Josefina’s candle received a generous application of glitter, thus providing the Virgin with a glorious halo.

Over the ensuing months, Amber snuck into the cemetery at least once a week to remove something from a grave. In her efforts to pay the interest on what she borrowed, she learned many new skills like embroidery, decoupage, and even knitting. Everything she returned to Prescott Memorial was made more beautiful than it had been when she first took it.

On the night of February 14th, Amber was walking through the cemetery when she heard a strange sound. She quickly ducked behind an oleander bush and peeked through the foliage. She was surprised to see a man digging a hole over the grave of Kimberly Weston.

Due to countless hours of observation, Amber considered herself to be an expert on how people normally behaved in cemeteries. She had witnessed plenty of mourners use a stick to make a little hole in the ground into which they would lovingly lay an offering before concealing it with dirt. These small items usually turned out to be rings or necklaces, but Amber had dug up plenty of odd things like plastic trinkets and handkerchiefs.

What was surprising about this man’s behavior was that he was using a shovel to dig his hole. It was no wonder he’d come after dark. If he’d tried doing that during the day, Molridge would have assumed he was digging up a body and called the cops. But Amber knew better; the man was going to bury—not exhume—something, and whatever it was had to be substantially bigger than a piece of jewelry.

Kimberly Weston had died six years ago at the age of thirty-nine. Amber hadn’t seen anyone visit her grave since 2017; Amber was glad someone had finally come again to pay their respects. Perhaps the man was her long lost love. Amber imagined him, twenty years ago, heading off into the world to seek his fortune without ever having confessed his feelings to Kimberly. Perhaps he had finally come to his senses and returned to Prescott to ask for her hand in marriage. Oh, the anguish he must have felt upon discovering he was too late!

Amber couldn’t wait to see the gift he’d brought Kimberly, but the moonlight wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the item he was placing into the hole. Amber could tell, however, that it was about the size of a shoe box.

The man refilled the hole, packed down the dirt with the flat of his shovel, and walked away.

Amber waited a few minutes to make sure he was really gone before turning on her flashlight and leaving her hiding place. She walked past Kimberly’s grave and over to a headstone that read, Ruby Duval, Our Little Angel, 2002-2003. If Ruby had lived, she would have been the same age as Amber. Maybe they would have gone to the same schools. Maybe they would have been friends.

Amber reached into her backpack and pulled out a small pink teddybear. A week ago, Amber had watched an old woman lay it gently on the grave. Amber tried to place the teddybear in the exact same spot. She took a moment to admire the sweater that she had knitted for the stuffed toy before making her way over to Kimberly Weston’s final resting place.

***

An hour later, Amber snuck back into her house, careful not to wake her parents. She placed the shoe box that she’d dug up on her bedspread and cut through the heavy tape wrapped around it. Inside were ten stacks of twenty dollar bills; each stack was wrapped with a violet currency band that read $2,000.

“Twenty-thousand dollars,” she said in a disappointed voice that spiraled down into a sigh. Cash wasn’t very romantic. Amber thought it would have been a more meaningful gesture if Shovel Man had spent the money on an engagement ring and buried it. That would have been absolutely poignant.

Nevertheless, Amber was glad she’d taken the shoe box rather than the ceramic beagle she’d initially planned to borrow from the grave of Robert Castlewood. The story Amber had invented for Kimberly and Shovel Man was completely perfect for Valentine’s Day.

Smiling, Amber placed the shoe box in her closet. She’d keep it there for a few days, but then the money would have to be returned least Kimberly’s spirit become restless.

As Amber changed into her pajamas, she thought about how she would pay the interest. She crawled beneath the covers, and, as she closed her eyes, the words papier mâché popped into her head.

***

Eight days later, Raymond Foller felt relatively sure that the Prescott County Sheriff did not consider him to be a person of interest in connection with the recent robbery of the First Capital Bank. Confident that it was safe to retrieve his cut of the take, he returned—under the cover of darkness—to the grave of Kimberly Weston and began to dig and dig.

Bewildered at finding nothing, he stood and took a few steps backwards. Something brushed across the top of his head. Startled, he spun around and flashed a beam of light upward. There, suspended from a rope anchored to the oak tree, was a piñata in the shape of a heart.

Raymond, dumbstruck, stared at the piñata. It seemed a cruel tease to dangle something so festive so high above the graves, so far beyond the reach of the cemetery’s earthbound souls. Raymond, who had just lost a small fortune, felt like the piñata was mocking him as well simply by being so joyously pink.

The melancholy that always clung to Raymond was slightly displaced by a bubble of rage, and he swung. His aim was true; the shovel pierced the heart with a terrible wound. This act of destruction was met with unexpected grace: Raymond’s anger distilled into one perfect moment of pure wonder as he stood beneath a cascade of peppermints, lemon sours, and a coarse confetti made from violet currency bands.