Unburied

“How did it get like this?” Agnes’ final words ran circles in his mind. What did she mean? Harry had thought everything was going wonderful between them, sure they fought but didn’t every couple?

His mind raced with every possible reason he could muster as to why she would kill herself. It just didn’t make sense to him. Was she forced to write the note by someone? The police did say that she had carved strange markings into her legs although maybe they were wrong. What if they weren’t self inflicted? Perhaps the boy who saw her drown was wrong too and perhaps she wasn’t acting like a zombie.

The coroner called it a psychotic trance state brought on by a traumatic incident. What traumatic incident? Harry sat perplexed in his armchair staring wildly at the half empty bottle of Jack Daniels as he raised it to his mouth. The only sense he could gather was that this was all some conspiracy that everybody was in on but what purpose would that serve?

A knock came at the front door, derailing his train of thought. Harry got up slowly and crossed the living room to answer it although as his hand grabbed the knob he heard it, it was quiet at first but grew louder and louder.

“Open up sweetie, c’mon Harry quit playing around and open up. Harry? Harry! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, LET ME IN, THIS IS MY FUCKING HOUSE TOO YOU KNOW BUSTER!”

Harry recoiled in horror, the voice belonged to Agnes. She sounded manic and angry but he was sure it was her voice. He tried being brave, thinking that it was just somebody playing a cruel prank. Mustering up all of his courage he tried scaring away the intruder with a booming shout.

“WHO IS IT? WHO’S OUT THERE?”

Silence, did it work? He waited a moment before he placed his ear against the door to hear if the presence was still there. The woman was crying softly, and whispering gibberish incessantly. A myriad of emotions surged through him as he slowly moved his hand towards the door handle once more. He went to turn the handle but flinched as something struck the door hard. A bestial roar emanated from beyond the door the likes of which Harry had never heard before. Harry ascertained that whatever waited beyond the door was certainly not human.

This had gone on far enough Harry thought. He pulled out his mobile phone and decided to call the police. Whatever was waiting for him growled from the other side of the door.

“Please state the name of your emergency.”

“Oh thank god, there is someone, or something at my front door.”

“Just one moment please. . .”

Loud scratching noises started at the door. With a renewed sense of courage from the hold music, Harry boomed at the intruder.

“YOU’D BETTER LEAVE, I’M CALLING THE POLICE!”

“I’m sorry sir.”

The phone hissed wildly with static.

“How did it get like this?”

Those words stunned Harry to his core, and he wondered what was going on.

“Excuse me?”

“How did it get like this? How did it get like- garrkle, shhmph ak ch ak ch...”

The operator sounded as if she were trying to talk with a mouth full of water just before the call petered out into garbled feedback. Harry threw his phone as hard as he could at the door, shattering the entire exterior, and sending small pieces of debris flying everywhere.

A deafening monotonous tone began to drown out all other sound; it shook every wall of the house and caused strange reverberations to resound throughout every inch of Harry’s flesh. The sudden noise caused Harry to black out.

When Harry came to, he found himself stark naked in the middle of his living room. He whipped his head around and saw that his front door was wide open. He placed his hand on his knee to help stand to his feet, and was instantly surprised by a rush of pain coming from his thigh; he looked down and felt himself turn white as he saw strange markings carved into his legs. The scared man studied the markings for a long moment, and thought they looked like an ancient language that'd been lost to time.

A tiny hand presented itself in front of his face; he followed the arm up and could not believe his eyes. There in front of him stood his naked wife.

“Y, y, you’re dead, aren’t you? I, I, I, I Identified your corpse. W, wha, what’s going on?”

She smiled her beautiful smile and tenderly ran the back of her hand along the side of his face before grabbing him gently by the hand and helping him to his feet.

“It will all be explained soon my love, you must follow me now. We cannot keep them waiting. This is the way of things. Do you understand? Do you understand how things are to be?”

Harry stood for a moment and thought deeply of nothing and everything. In an instant, everything made sense; even nonsense made sense. He rested his weary brow on Agnes’s naked breast. He held her waist as if he were a lost child who had finally found its mother.

“I just have one question. How did it get like this?”