Free Lost Signals by Josh Malerman, Damien Angelica Walters, Matthew M. Bartlett, David James Keaton, Tony Burgess, T.E. Grau

we used to, only put a sensor in there, a Givens Sensor, a button a buried man can press to alert whoever’s in the office . . . a beeper and a button and buzzing to let the staff know they better call an ambulance, better go get a shovel themselves . . . and the world laughed at the Givens Sensor until one cemetery agreed and one blinking light came to life and one woman was discovered buried alive and she lived to tell, to talk about it on television, to write a book, and dammit if the Givens Sensors didn’t become law less than a year later   ; every cemetery in America   ; a mortuary revolution and the Givens family got rich, so rich, so many appearances on television   ; in the half decade since the law was passed, six more blinking lights, six people we all thought were dead, six people dug up, gasping for air, ready to write memoirs of their own . . .
    FLASH   !
    . . . not a photo, the photographer long gone, but lightning, again, erupting in the Samhattan sky, skinny fingers across the black   ; deep nighttime now   ; Michael Donner alone in the office . . . eating chips . . . watching a movie, a comedy about dogs and cats . . . reading a book, a thriller about a blind man . . . the storm outside growing, getting meaner, just the kind of night Michael enjoyed at the cemetery, half the reason he’d applied in the first place, imagine me in the office at night, thunder and lightning outside   !   ; a cool gig, the coolest he’d ever heard of   ; a man with a paperback and a bunch of dead bodies, if that doesn’t thrill you nothing will . . . FLASH   !. . . another thunder-crack and Michael smiles, shakes his head, this is cool, this is amazing, sitting here in the office as the black sky cries, as the dogs of Samhattan lose their minds, all bark at once . . . Michael thinks of Father Stockard ’cause Father Stockard has a dog, a famous one here in Samhattan, a wolfhound, one of those huge gray dogs   ; is Stockard quieting the thing now   ?, telling him be quiet dog, I had a dark day, dog, that man stole mouths, dog, or was Stockard already asleep (perhaps) having showered the eulogy off himself . . . Michael doesn’t know, doesn’t really care either, just cares about this movie and these chips and that book and the girl Pamela from school who said she’d like to come visit him one night on the job, liked scary things, fancied herself macabre . . . Michael cares about her, very much so, cares about calling her up and inviting her tonight, right now, and so he does, call her up, says come eat chips with me in the dark, wants to say come let’s have sex in the cemetery office at night if you’re so into the macabre, if you’re so dark as the black nail polish you wear, come on by tonight, Pamela . . . a FLASH   ! . . . CRACK- BOOM   ! . . . lightning again and the girl says yes, she’ll come, but give her a minute, and Michael takes that minute to turn up the volume of the funny movie and chomp another chip . . . gets up to use the bathroom, passing the Givens Sensor Board like one of those Light-O-Rama things or maybe more like the information map at a state park, HERE is where you might see owls, HERE is where you might see moose   ; Michael likes it, the board, never lit, just sitting there like so much potential, so freaky, something to thrill Pamela with, the board and the ledger and the stone cottage   /   office and the creaking chair that he sits in to watch movies, watch over the cemetery, make sure no kids sneak inside (except for the ones he sneaks inside), and of course the lone window in the free-standing office (“the cemetery tollbooth,” Michael likes to call it), the small square overlooking all those graves . . . graves and gravestones and broken limbs fallen from the trees and black leaves in the mud, footprints, many of those Michael’s own . . . it is as cool a view as Michael could offer a lover of the macabre and if