Buried

Buried



         The rain is heavy and cold, almost impossible to see through.  The only light comes from the moon-blue glow of a street lamp that glistens against the rain and gravestones rise up from the ground like large skeletal fingertips pushing up through the mud.  I jog quickly across the slick gravel road, toss my tools over the black wrought-iron fence, and hop over.  It all started the day Pete found that box under the bridge.  It will end tonight.   

I pull a small flashlight from my pocket and try to turn it on.  Nothing happens and I berate myself for not checking the batteries.  After beating the business end against the palm of my hand a couple of times a pale yellow beam cuts through the dark, flickers, and then shines weakly through the rain.  I pick up my tools and move deeper into the cemetery.   

Pete and I used to meet at the old bridge on the stretch of gravel road between our houses.  We’d fish for crawdads or toss bits of gravel up into the air just before dark and watch as bats swooped down at it hoping to catch a moth.  Mostly we went there to shoot our leftover bottle rockets, sticking them in the mud to watch it pop, tossing them at fish in the creek, or throwing them at each other. 

But one day Pete had found an old cardboard box lying under the bridge, soaked with filthy stagnant creek water that smelled of decayed plant matter, half-buried in mud and silt.  There had been a smell coming from the box, too, like some kind of animal.  Curious, Pete had climbed down the embankment and crawled inside to get a look at it.  He had come back out coughing and gagging, laughing and waving a hand at his nose.  Oh man, Jeremiah, that smelled awful, he’d said.  It was like being in a coffin or something.  I’ll never forget that.  I couldn’t say what it was about it, but it was a haunting statement, even then. 

He’d told me to go look in the box for myself.  I hadn’t wanted to—it had smelled awful, even from the road—but I had done it.  And what I saw didn’t just disgust me, it horrified me. 

I had climbed in the box with the flame of a plastic Bic lighter held out in front of me, my shirt held over my nose to guard against the baked death smell of it, but still I had to breathe slow and shallow to keep from gagging.  The air was incredibly thick inside the box, heated by the summer Sun.  About halfway in, my foot slipped in the mud at the mouth of the box and I fell, landed face-to-face with the thing at the bottom, the flame of my lighter cast against its features from just beneath its dried, curled lips. 

I only saw it for a second in the flickering light, but it appeared to be a dog, or maybe a coyote.  I wondered what it was doing in a box under a bridge.  Maybe the box had blown out of the back of a truck and landed under the bridge and the dog-thing had climbed in and died, or maybe it had been a pet that died and someone had put it in the box and thrown it off the bridge instead of burying it. 

Whatever it was, however it had got there, its face was hideous, disgusting.  One of its eyes was glossed over and staring at nothing.  The spot where the other one should have been was covered in whitish yellow pus and its face writhed and undulated with a black swarm of flies that bounced around inside the box with an incessant humming of wings as they fed at the flesh of the ruined dog-thing.  Its snout jutted out, lips drawn back in a vicious snarl that showed its sharp, yellowed teeth.

That’s when I’d heard the soft hiss and phut of bottle rockets being launched.  Pete had lit a whole dozen of them at once by tying the fuses together, and set them at the opening of the box.  I could hear him running away and laughing as the rockets issued forth in a rapid machinegun fire.  They exploded all around me with deafening reports, bouncing off the sides of the box and popping painfully against my skin.  The combined smell of rot and spent powder burned my nose. 

The tiny quick flashes threw shadows in every direction producing a strobe effect inside the box.  With shadows bouncing and flies scattering in a thick black cloud, circling around its head through wisps of drifting smoke, the dog-thing had appeared to be twisting, writhing in agonized movement as something within tried to escape. 

The disturbing image of the dog-things decomposing face has haunted me ever since that day at the bridge.  I used to lay awake at night remembering the way it had seemed to move in the bursts of light and wonder if there had really been something in there trying to escape the dark awful hell inside the box.  I’d never thought about death or an afterlife before that, but after that I couldn’t stop.  I didn’t know if there was an afterlife, but there had certainly seemed to be something in that box with me that day, something inside of the dead dog-thing.  My Science teacher had once said that energy could be neither created nor destroyed.  Only changed.  My first thought had been about the dog-thing, that, whatever it had been before it died, at least part of it was still there, still stuck in its body in the box under the bridge. 

That’s how it began, my fascination with death.  My obsession.  I used to wonder what it was like for the dog-thing to be stuck in that box in its dead body.  I couldn’t imagine what that must be like, trapped, unable to see or touch or to call out for help.  Nothing but its own thoughts for company forever.  How long would it take to go insane?  I wonder how long I could take it and shudder as the thought occurs to me that all the people who have ever died might be lying in their graves and wallowing in madness. 

After that day, I was always thought about death and what it might be like, whether the dead knew they were dead, whether they were trapped in their bodies or if they were able to escape to some extra-dimensional utopia or if they just blinked out of existence all together leaving nothing but a hollow shell of a body behind to rot, to turn back to dust.  I started reading about it and drawing pictures of the dead dog-thing in the dark. 

The more I thought about the dog-thing and death, the more depressed I got.  I wanted to know what came after death, I wanted to know that it was not as bad as I imagined, but I knew I couldn’t know until it happened to me.  And it was absolutely killing me.  I found a new cardboard box one day and snuck it up to my room.  That night I climbed inside of it.  I was able to fit the upper half of my body into it and I lay there imagining that I was back in the box with the dog-thing, the bottle rockets flashing and its face seeming to twitch and move, its eyes pleading with me to help it escape.  Sometimes I would think I could actually see the dog-thing in the box with me.  Or if I got out of the box and got in bed, I could see it outside of my window looking in at me, or in some dark corner of my room with that one yellow eye staring off into the void while the pus-filled socket somehow looked right into me.  I would dream that the dog-thing was chasing me, trying to drag me back to its box under the bridge where it would keep me forever. 

Sometimes I would imagine I was lying in a coffin, dead, and wonder what it would be like, knowing that I would be there in the dark.  I’d try to clear my head of all thoughts, to be nothing but an empty shell, but I couldn’t stop thinking.  If death meant that I would no longer exist or have any thoughts, I couldn’t imagine it.  I couldn’t see how I could ever stop being aware of my own existence, even if my brain no longer worked.  I could only imagine existing in the dark.  No sight, no sound, no feeling.  Just my own personality in a cold, empty void.  It was all so disturbing.  I was absolutely terrified of what death would be.

I never told anyone what I’d seen under the bridge or that I kept a cardboard box in my room so that I could relive seeing the face of the dog-thing night after night while trying to figure out the mystery of death.  I knew that they wouldn’t understand.  They said that I had become withdrawn, that it was like I’d built a box around myself to keep them out.  They had no idea.  It was like being in a coffin or something, Pete had said.  But it hadn’t bothered him.  Not like it had me.  I wanted to ask Pete what he thought death was or if he ever thought about it.  But I never got the chance. 

Pete and I had been riding our bikes out to the bridge.  It had been a long time since we’d been there, mostly because I was afraid of what would happen if the box was still there with the dog-thing in it or if it had somehow found a way to escape.  But by the next year, when we had another surplus supply of bottle rockets, I’d agreed to go back.   

I’d ridden ahead of Pete so I could get to the bridge before him and see if the box was still there, even though I knew it couldn’t still be.  I was nervous, and scared, and if it was somehow still there I didn’t want him to see the look on my face.  I wanted time to make sure I could compose myself before he got there.  Even if the box wasn’t there, I was afraid I might see the dog-thing creeping in the shadow under the bridge just as I’d seen it in the cardboard box in my room or outside of my window.

I was just about to the bridge when he’d yelled at me to slow down.  Jeremiah, wait up a minute! he’d yelled.  I looked back, not realizing he’d been so close.  He was right behind me. 

When I looked ahead again, I caught a glimpse of something large and black as it streaked across the road in front of my bike.  I yelled and hit the brake.  My bike turned sideways, skidding in the gravel, and I laid it down, trying to tuck into a ball as I rolled across the bridge.  There was a sharp pain in my back and head as Pete ran over me with his bike.  One of his pedals, or one of the gears maybe, dug into my skin, scraping the whole way.  Then there was a cracking noise.  I heard Pete yell and looked up just in time to see him disappearing over the edge of the bridge, a look of terror on his face as the rotten railing was falling away beneath him.     

A second later there was a thump as he landed on the ground below.  I stood and ran to look down at him.  His arms and legs were thrown out to the sides and his neck was bent at an unnatural angle.  I was immediately filled with dread because I already knew what had happened.  I hoped that he would somehow be okay, that the angle in his neck wasn’t as bad as it looked, just a trick of the light, but deep down I already knew.  Pete was dead.

I jumped down and landed ankle deep in the mud, fell forward and went face first into the muck.  I tried to push myself out of it, gasping for breath, but I couldn’t.  The mud in the creek bed where I landed was too thick, too soft, too deep.  The mud just gave way as I tried to pull my way out.  I was drowning in it and I only had one thought.  It was like being in a coffin or something.

But I was able to dig out to the firmer ground where Pete had landed.  My mouth and nose were full of mud and I was gagging on it, trying to cough it up.  To anyone who passing by, I might’ve looked like a zombie climbing up from the grave or something.  When I reached Pete’s side, I saw that his eyes were glossed over, just staring straight through me.  Just like the dog-things one eye had.  That was it.  Nothing else.  No pleading or asking for help.  Nothing.  And there was nothing I could do to help him.  But I already knew that.  The dog-thing had come for me, but it had taken him. 

If I was messed up before Pete’s death, I was all the worse after it.  I got rid of my cardboard box.  It just didn’t feel right pretending to be dead while Pete really was.  I want to say that it felt like I was mocking him somehow, mocking his death by what I was doing, and that that was why I stopped.  But that wasn’t it at all.  I was the one who was obsessed with knowing what death was going to be like, and yet Pete, who had probably never thought about it again after that day at the bridge, had been the one to find out.  And it was absolutely killing me.  It felt like he was the one mocking me with his death. 

Even now I dream about the way he died.  We’re on our bikes, approaching the bridge, and I know what’s coming.  I see the yellow gleam of its eye in the ditch and I turn to warn Pete to stop, that he’s about to die, but it’s too late.  The dog-thing darts across the road.  I crash and Pete crashes right behind me, falls through the railing, and I see the look on his face just as he disappears over the edge.  I rush over to help him.  Sometimes I jump down and I see that pleading look in his dead grey eyes.  Sometimes I see a yellow gleam in one eye and the other eye is gone, only a maggot filled socket in its place.  And sometimes there’s nothing in his eyes.  No life, no recognition, no pleading.  Nothing.  And sometimes, when I jump from the bridge, I land in the mud and sink in over my head and I can’t get out.  The mud covers me, smothers me, and I just keep sinking, and the last thought I have just before waking up in a cold sweat is It was like being in a coffin or something.

I walk through the cemetery, shining the light before me, mud sticking to my shoes, and I see what I’m looking for.  Pete’s grave.  I put my tools down and examine it for a moment, running my fingers over the letters as the rain runs over them.  After a few moments I pick up my shovel, raise it high into the air, and slam the head of it into the ground.  There’s a satisfying squelch as the shovel smacks into the mud and slides easily through it.  I lift a scoop out and toss it to the side.  I do it again.  And again and again.

After Pete died, I thought he might come back and haunt me like the dog-thing had, but he didn’t.  I spent every moment trying to figure out what was happening to him, whether he was still here somewhere or if he’d just been blown out like a match in the wind.  I used to ride out to the cemetery to visit him.  I’d sit and stare at his grave and wonder if he knew I was there or if he was just alone in the cold darkness unsure of where he was or how long he’d been there.  I tried to accept the fact that he was dead and that one day I would be too, but I couldn’t stand the thought of him trying to scream for help and not being able to do it, not even able to call out the way the dog-thing had done. 

Sometimes I’d walk around the cemetery and look at other graves.  I’d read the names and dates on headstones and see how old people had been when they died.  I’d try to imagine what life had been like for them, what they had gone through in their last moments.  It became a game to look for the oldest graves in the cemetery, or the person who had lived the longest or the least.  Then I started going to other cemeteries to do the same thing.  Sometimes I could hear leaves crackling or see a dark shadow in the distance with a single gleaming yellow eye and I knew that the dog-thing was there, waiting for its chance to get me, looming over me like death.  I had hoped that Pete would come back to haunt me so I could see him again and ask him what it was like.  Instead, the dog-thing had haunted me more.  Lurking always around the corner, in the dark, in my dreams.  I wanted to get away from it, to escape from it.  I wanted it to come out so I could see its face again, pleading, and maybe I could help it escape and it would leave me alone.

I checked the obituaries one day and saw a funeral that would be held later that week.  I dressed up and went to the cemetery to watch the funeral, to see inside the coffin.  To know what it was like.  I wondered if the inside of Pete’s coffin had been what he thought it would be like when he’d said the cardboard box with the dog-thing in it was like a coffin and I hope for his sake that it’s not.  But I didn’t see the funeral or the inside of the coffin.  Instead, I’d stood off in the distance watching until everyone left and the body was buried.  Then I’d gone over to look at the grave. 

I read the name and dates on the stone and tried to imagine what the person it described had been like and how he’d died.  I wondered if there was something stirring in his glossed-over eyes under all the dirt.  Had he known he was being buried?  Was he laying in his coffin, his personality—his soul if you wanted to call it that—trapped inside his dead body, slowly going mad?  It would make a great horror story, I thought.  Like something from Alfred Hitchcock or Stephen King. 

I kicked at the ground and the loose dirt scattered beneath my shoe.  I’d watched them pack the dirt in on top of the grave with their heavy equipment, but it was still surprisingly loose.  I reached down and grabbed a handful of it, rubbed it around in my fingers, smelled it.  It had a rich smell, deep and earthy. 

I looked around and saw that everyone was gone.  I was the only one there.  Then I started pawing at the dirt, pushing it to the sides.  Dirt wedged into my fingernails and my hands began to get raw from the pebbles scraping and digging against my skin.  I looked for something I could dig with.  The caretakers had filled the grave in with a backhoe, but maybe they’d left something behind.  I saw a small building, a storage shed.  Someone had left a shovel leaning against it.  I took it back to the grave and started digging.     

         I don’t know what I had planned to do when I reached the bottom of it.  In fact, I didn’t really have a plan at all.  I was just digging.  I was so obsessed with death, so obsessed with what it was and what it was going to be like.  Maybe I just wanted to know what the coffin looked like in the ground or to see how deep it was.  Or maybe I just wanted to sit in the grave so I could look up at the sky and to smell that rich earthy smell, to feel the cool dirt in my hands.  Or maybe there was no reason at all other than just because.  But I dug, and I dug until well after dark.   

There had been a loud scraping sound, like metal against rock.  I don’t know how much time had passed by that point, but I know it was almost dark.  I dug until all the dirt was completely removed and the thing the shovel had scraped against completely uncovered.  It was some kind of cement structure.  I’d seen them put it in, but I had no idea how to get it out or how to get through it.  I didn’t even know what it was for that matter.  It looked like a lid, but not to a coffin.  I tried to pry it up, but it didn’t move and I was too tired to try anything else.  My entire body was sore, aching.  I lay down on top of the concrete structure to rest for a few minutes.  That had been one of my most peaceful night’s sleep since Pete had died, although it still wasn’t what I’d call restful. 

I’ve been digging for a while now.  My arms and legs are burning with exertion.  I’m now sweating, despite the cold rain.  Mud is piled high on all sides of the grave and the rain continues to pour.  It’s already soaked deep into the dirt, making the mud slick and heavy. My hands are fields of popped blisters with fresh ones rising up around them, even through the rough calluses I’ve already built up the last few months.  The head of the shovel slides through the mud like a sharp knife through a rotted corpse.  The mud sloughs easily from the side of the grave and a large clump falls from the side.  I stop to scoop it back out and push the mud at the top back to keep more from falling in.

I’d woken up at the bottom of the hole I’d dug early the next morning, covered in sweat and dew and dirt.  I had only meant to be there a minute before getting out and filling the hole back in, but when I woke up in morning light, I knew I didn’t have time, so I climbed out of the hole and left it the way it was.     

I’d gone home and, after a long hot shower, got on the internet to find out what the cement structure had been.  Turns out it was a burial vault, a large cement box caskets are buried in to protect them from moisture.  Most cemeteries require them to keep the dirt from caving in above the grave.  It seems they’ve been in use for some time.

I’d gone to another funeral a few weeks later.  This time I knew I’d need to take a few tools of my own, but I didn’t want anyone to see me with them, so I’d gone to the cemetery early that morning and hid them behind the fence at the back.  That way, if someone saw me later, I wouldn’t look suspicious carrying around a shovel and a sledge hammer.  After the funeral was over and everyone was gone, I’d gone to work.

I dug up the fresh dirt, just as I’d done before.  This time it was a little easier if only because I knew what I was getting into.  I dug down until I reached the burial vault.  This time I smashed through it with a sledge hammer.  The casket lay beneath, fresh and clean.  I tried to pull the lid open, but it wouldn’t move.  It was locked.  I hadn’t considered that the casket might have been locked.  I tried to smash through it with the sledge hammer too, but the only effect this produced was a loud whong as the sledgehammer produced only a glancing blow and I discovered that the casket was actually made out of metal.  I tried to fill the hole before I left this time, but with the burial vault smashed, there wasn’t enough dirt left.  There was nothing I could do but leave it.   

It was a couple of weeks before I had another opportunity to go back out.  This time I’d looked up casket seals to learn how to open them.  I needed a five-inch Allen wrench.  I was able to find one, but I didn’t go out immediately.  There had been a story on the news about a rash of grave robberies.  They said that there had been more than one incident and police suspected that they were all related, but that so far they had no leads.  I knew they were talking about me.  I decided to lay low for a while. 

But the problem was the dog-thing.  It was still there, always there.  The longer I waited, the more I thought about death and about going back.  The more I thought about death, the more I saw the dog-thing, the closer it came to me in the dark.  The last time it had come out, it had tried to take me with it and ended up taking Pete instead.  If it came out, if it came after me, it wasn’t going to let me get away again.  I had to go back to the cemetery before it came after me. 

I went to a different cemetery, one I hadn’t been to before.  It was old and overgrown.  The forest had swallowed it up, trees growing around the headstones, some headstone had fallen or become aged and unreadable.  There wasn’t much of a chance of being seen there, especially late at night.  So I found a grave and started digging.  It was much harder to dig up old settled dirt than dirt that had been dug up and packed back in only hours before.  I only worked at it a couple of hours a night.  It took three nights of work to reach the burial vault.  When I did reach it, I broke through it with my sledge hammer and opened the casket with my Allen wrench.  Inside was a pile of bones, a skeleton in a suit, what had once been a living man.  At first I thought that his burial vault must not have worked.  There was mud and ichor pooled below the bones.  But then I realized that I was wrong, that the vault had worked fine.  It wasn’t mud in the casket.  It was human tissue, flesh and fat and hair that had decayed and fallen away from the bones, slowly turning back into dirt.  Dust to dust. 

When I looked into its eyes sockets, there was nothing there.  They were just empty sockets.  I thought of the dog-things empty socket that had looked at me in the box, that had stared at me night after night in the dark for several years.  Had there been nothing in there after all?  Had I only imagined seeing something in the face of the dog-thing as it wriggled, trying to escape?  Or had this person, whoever he was, found a way to escape that the dog-thing hadn’t found until after I’d gone in there?  I had no way of knowing.  I closed the coffin and buried it back.  I searched through dozens of graves over the next several months and years, only stopping when I was afraid of getting caught.  I saw several bodies during those month, all in various states of decay.  Some of them were fresh and new, almost appearing to be asleep, while others were falling apart, hardly recognizable as human.  But none of them had the look in their eyes that the dog-thing had had.   

Sometimes I wish I could never think about death again.  I’ve thought about it so much that sometimes I just feel sort of burnt out, like there’s nothing else to think about and I should just move on.  But I never can because somehow when I try it feels just as empty and fruitless.  There came a time when I just wanted my whole obsession with death to go away so I could live, so I could be like a normal person again.  But I couldn’t be normal because the dog-thing was still there every night pacing, waiting.  Just like death, it was a mystery that seemed to be looming always in front of me. 

I put my hand in the wet mud on the side of the grave and try to look around.  A white light cuts through the darkness over my head, broken into several long white fingers by trees and fence posts casting their shadows over me.  I wait for the soft whush of rain being displaced by the vehicle and then listen as it drifts into the distance. 

         Another clump of mud slumps over the edge and lands with a splat at my feet.  I grab the shovel and lift it out.  As I do, I hear the harsh scrape of metal against rock again.  The burial vault.     

         I dig faster, harder, my muscles burning, shaking, tiring, my face growing hot even under the cold rain.  My heart is beating with excitement now.  I work fast-paced, tirelessly until I’ve uncovered the vault completely.  Then I climb out of the hole, pulling mud back down into it as I struggle to make my way out, but I don’t care.  I toss the shovel down and look around for the sledgehammer, suddenly afraid I’ve lost it or maybe buried it under the mud.  My heart beats harder and I feel fear running through me, but then I see it leaning against the headstone.  I grab it and hop back down into the grave.  In the excitement, I step too close to the edge and the mud slides out from under my feet. I spill over the edge and land on the vault with a soft thump and I think about the way I had slipped in the cardboard box all those years ago, landing face-to-face with the dog-thing.  I stand up quickly with my sledgehammer in hand, get a good grip, and slam it down onto the concrete.  A small piece chips away.  I swing the hammer again, harder.  And again.  The surface is chipping and cracking, breaking away until it’s falling apart under my feet.  I swing again, a bit wildly this time and hit the side of the grave knocking another large clump of loose mud down into the hole with me, but I don’t care.  I’m close enough now that I don’t have to worry about a scoop or two falling back down. 

I kept digging up graves and looking at the bodies of the people inside them, looking for some sign of what was to come, some sign that there was something there or some sign of how it had escaped.  I needed something to show me that death was somehow not as horrible as I had imagined it all along.  If only there were something I could look forward to, some way to escape the empty shell of a dead body in a cold grave.  But I never could find it.  Finally, I realized what was wrong, what was keeping me from seeing what death was.  I didn’t know any of the people that I had been digging up and looking at.  They were all strangers that I had never met alive.  If I was going to really see what death was, to see what it did to someone, I was going to have to find someone I knew.  And I knew immediately who that was going to be. 

So I had come back to the cemetery where Pete was buried one last time.  I came back to dig him up and look in his eyes and see if there was anything there or if he’d escaped, to lay down inside of his coffin and see what it was he had been talking about when he’d said it was like being in a coffin or something.  If I could see what his coffin was like, maybe I could see what death was like.  Then I could stop thinking about it and maybe the dog-thing would go away and leave me alone.  Death has ruined my life I think, and I laugh.

I swing my hammer again at the cracked surface and large chunks of cement break loose.  I toss them out and keep breaking pieces of the vault away.  The coffin is showing beneath, filthy and scratched from the mud and broken cement, but it appears to be otherwise undisturbed.  I smash away at the lid of the vault until the hole is big enough to open the lid of the coffin inside.

         I pull my Allen wrench out of my pocket, reach down to the edge of the coffin and insert it.  After several turns, I see the seal on the casket giving.  I pull the lid open and look inside.  Pete’s body is there, but it’s very different than the last time I had seen it.  His skull grins up at me, two large dark eye sockets, empty, staring at the sky.  There’s muck beneath the skull, the remains of Pete’s flesh, his muscle, his skin, his hair.  It’s all decayed and has fallen from his bones. The white shirt beneath the black jacket his remains are wearing is stained and filthy with the juices that had seeped from his body as it decayed. 

         This is death.  This is what Pete figured out before me.  I want to ask him what it’s like, but I know he can’t answer.  I can imagine what he would say if he could, though.  It’s like a coffin in there or something.

         I shine my flashlight on Pete’s face.  I almost expect him to sit up and speak to me, to ask me to help him escape or to try to communicate with me somehow, but there’s absolutely nothing there.  There’s nothing moving underneath the surface.  There’s nothing moving in his eyes, or eye sockets.  There’s no Pete trapped inside, not as I could know him or recognize him.  If there’s anything there, or anyone, it’s indifferent, probably insane from the years of isolation and unable to recognize me or my presence.

         I push the body to the side and step into the coffin.  I work my legs down beside him, reach up, and pull the coffin lid shut.  As I do, lightning strikes nearby and casts light across the features of the dog-thing as it stands over the edge of the grave looking down on me.  I hadn’t realized it was there and I jump.  I see its face in the bright light and its writhing and undulating just as I had always remembered it.  I think its hear to take me to its box, to drag me away by the ankle to be with him and Pete.  I slam the lid shut. 

         The air in the coffin is stale and musty, disgusting next to Pete’s body.  It’s the smell of death.  The same smell that had emanated from that cardboard box so long ago.  I place my hands over my chest, close my eyes, and try to clear my mind and experience what it was Pete had been experiencing for years. 

         I could almost go to sleep.  I’m calm, comfortable except for the cold water seeping out of my clothes.  I imagine being dead and I feel like I almost know what it’s like except for one thing.  I can’t stop thinking.  And I can’t figure out where my thoughts would go if I were really dead.  And it’s no clearer or any less horrible than I’ve ever imagined it being. 

Then I hear it.  A clump, muffled but heavy.  My eyes open and I try not to move as I listen, waiting to hear something else.  Was it a footstep?  I couldn’t tell, but I think so.  It sounded like someone had jumped down onto the coffin lid.  The dog-thing, maybe?  No.  I’m not sure what else it could’ve been, but it wasn’t the dog-thing, even if the dog-thing is still there.  But who else could be there and how could I have missed them?  I press my ear against the lid of the coffin to try to hear something else. 

         There’s silence except for the soft white noise of rain falling.  I put my hands against the lid and gently press against it.  Maybe if I can just see outside, I can see what’s going on.  But the lid doesn’t move.  I press harder, and I feel it give a bit, but only just.  Then there’s another thump, and another.  Heavier and louder than before.  I press against the lid to lift it again, but this time it doesn’t move at all.  I press as hard as I can, slamming my palms into it.  I try twisting in the grave so I can push against the bottom with my hands and against the top with my shoulders, but I can’t budge it. 

         I turn back and lay down.  I start to call out to whoever is out there standing on the coffin, to tell them to get off, but I don’t, because I don’t know who’s out there.  Or even if someone’s out there.  Maybe nothing but the dog-thing.  I don’t think I could have missed someone driving into the cemetery and it’s unlikely anyone else snuck into it in the middle of the night with the rain coming down the way it is. 

I wonder what else could make that noise.  For several minutes I can’t come up with anything, but then it hits me.  I remember all the mud I’ve dug out of the hole and how it kept falling back in, how I had to keep digging it back out.  I remember thinking about how I didn’t mind because digging slick mud out of the hole was easier than breaking up and digging out dry, solid dirt.  The mud must have slipped over the edge again and fallen on top of the coffin.  Maybe only a little bit of it at first, but then maybe the whole pile had collapsed.  A whole side wall may have even collapsed.  Whatever it was, it was more than I would be able to dig through.  It’s just too heavy for me to move.  I feel around for my flashlight, but I can’t find it.  What I do find is a small plastic bic in my pocket.  I take it out and light it and for an instant the flame looks like the yellow eye of the dog-thing and I realize that it is in the coffin with me now because the dog-thing is death. 

         I start to laugh.  I knew it was all going to end tonight somehow, but I didn’t think it was going to be like this, with me trapped in a grave I dug myself.  If only I had thought about the way the mud kept running down the sides and falling into the hole as I kept scraping it back out.  I laugh harder as I realize that I could’ve seen this coming.  I’ve spent years running from and searching for death, and now I’m about to finally find it.  And it feels right somehow, because it feels exactly like what’s been happening all along.  I laugh until I can’t breathe.