Partner in the Crypt

Elizabeth here: this is primarily horror, and is based on a certain famous public domain short story from the early 1900s. This is not a pleasant story: be warned!

~~~~~ ~~~~~

In the late spring of 1881, Gerald recovered from his broken femur with the aid of the elderly Dr. Bennett. Once he recovered, he immediately went back to his duties as the village mortician. Broken femurs were an extremely rare injury, owing to the bone's sheer resilience. Gerald's case was bizarre: his femur, and no other bones, had broken after only a short fall down the stairs in his home. Gerald was not superstitious, so the peculiarity of his injury did not bother him.

In Gerald's absence, there had been six cholera deaths in the village of Norhampton, all in the last two weeks from an outbreak, which was ongoing. Norhampton, Massachusetts had a population of three thousand, and it was largely unimportant in statewide affairs.

Gerald, a young man in his prime, was happy to return to work. He immediately began preparing to inter the six deceased, currently residing in a small receiving tomb at the edge of the village. All the funeral rites had already been performed by his temporary replacement, and the only remaining task was to place them in coffins and move them to a permanent resting place in a crypt two miles away from the village.

In his small home near the receiving tomb, Gerald read the list of deceased. The cholera victims were Katherine Pedan, Electa Kersey, Elbert Gibson, Christopher Rouse, Moses Perkins, and Henrietta Bourne. Henrietta stood out to Gerald: although the list had a short biography for each of the deceased, Henrietta's biography was only "Vagrant, widow, and suspected practitioner of witchcraft."

He wasn't bothered by the odd description. His only task was to prepare proper coffins and then inter the six bodies, and he did not think too much about their backstories.

Gerald walked to the receiving tomb and opened the doors. Hardened by a decade of work, the overwhelming stench of the dead barely registered in his mind. He measured all six of the deceased, wrote down their measurements, and then rode his horse-drawn cart to the village carpenter.

Although he had known the carpenter for years, he had never learned his name, and Gerald thought it would be too awkward to ask now. His workshop was a hundred year old cobblestone building with a leaky roof. When Gerald opened the old, damp workshop's front door, he was delighted to see the carpenter hauling a coffin away from his workstation. This coffin was rectangular, made of a darker wood, and was twice as wide as a normal coffin.

"Carpenter!" Gerald said. That was how he greeted him: the carpenter never seemed to mind, and Gerald had been stuck with the habit since they had first met. "I'm healthy again and need six coffins."

The carpenter set down his coffin on the damp workshop floor. It was cluttered with timber, saws, and fabricated wooden goods. Sawdust was clumped together on the damp floor. "What for?" he asked.

"You know very well what for."

"Well, maybe that joke will land someday. If you hand me the measurements for your latest batch of bodies, I can have them done in a few days. Also, it's good to see you've recovered."

"Do you have any prefabricated coffins?"

"Only this one, and I was about to haul it out and dispose of it. I made it four months ago for an elderly couple who expected to die together of cholera, but only one of them ended up dying. Do you remember the old Dinsmore family?"

"I met the grandfather just before I had my fall," Gerald said. "He wasn't good company, and much too heavy for my liking. Anyway, how much for this coffin?"

The carpenter gestured to the coffin. "Have a closer look. The timber is rotting and weak, and I was tired the day I made it and bungled a few of the nails, so in conjunction with the rot, the planks are loose in some places. And it's not even polished. You don't want to bury the dead in this."

"I actually do," Gerald said.

"You can't be serious!" the carpenter said. "I know you're not one to skip out on a cheap coffin, but I would never put anyone in this! I will sell it to you if you want, for a third of the price, but if anyone finds out that you buried their relative in this shoddy crate, the blame is entirely yours."

"I'll bury the vagrant in it," Gerald said. "She had no relatives, and was a widow."

"Must have been lonely when she died," the carpenter said. "But I wouldn't bury her in it either. Think of what the dead would feel if they knew they were buried in this!"

"We can assume she was lonely, yes. But she can't know what's happening to her, so she won't mind. Now, how much for the other five? The usual rate?"

After Gerald paid for all six of the coffins upfront, he left the workshop and hauled the massive coffin to his cart. The other five would be delivered later.

~~~~~ ~~~~~

Two days passed before the other five coffins arrived at Gerald's doorstep. Gerald thanked the carpenter, and transferred the five coffins to his own cart. He dragged the sixth out of his musty, dirt-floored shed, and piled it on top. He covered the coffins with a tarp and drove the cart to the receiving tomb.

Gerald opened the doors of the tiny tomb, and the unearthly stench reassured him that the bodies were still there. He went to work, interring each of them into their respective coffins.

The young Henrietta was last. She was the most decayed of the bunch, and had been sitting in the receiving tomb for seventeen days. She was bloating and putrid, and the dim light in the tomb was just enough to reveal her ghastly, oozing skin. It ranged in shades from a sickly pale to shades of mold to a horrid black, caused by the collection of fluid under the skin which had yet to leak. Gerald, thankful for his gloves, tossed her into the massive coffin. There was enough room left in her shoddy, rotting crate to fit another person inside with ease.

But, before closing the coffin, Gerald noticed a few peculiar black shapes on the intact portions of the skin on Henrietta's decaying neck. The markings on her skin there looked almost like glyphs of an unknown language, and had she been alive, Gerald would have thought them to be tattoos. But, because she was dead, Gerald only thought them to be an odd form of decay, and nothing more, and he stopped thinking of them after closing the coffin lid.

The ride to the permanent crypt was short, and it was sunset by the time he reached it. The dirt road led Gerald to a wide, grassy hill. On top of the hill were the ruins of an old church used by the area's first European settlers; it had collapsed half a century ago after a fire, and it was never rebuilt. Gerald was unfamiliar with the circumstances of the fire.

On the other side of the hill from the dirt road, there was a towering stone double door framed by ancient stone brick. The door had a rusty, old, yet strong lock, and there was a tiny slat in the stone above the door for ventilation. Gerald unlocked the ancient crypt with his tarnished brass key, and stepped inside.

The air in the crypt was fresher than the air outside. The few bodies interred here had been buried for almost a century, and were no more than bones. The crypt was a square chamber twenty feet wide, and there were two brick support pillars in the center. Twelve ancient coffins lined the walls. Gerald lit an oil lamp and placed it just inside the door, providing just enough light to see most of the crypt.

Gerald wondered why the village hadn't given him a key to this convenient crypt sooner, and began to load his fresh batch of coffins into the old chamber.

As Gerald lugged coffin after coffin into the crypt, he noticed that despite the ventilation slat above the door, no insects or other vermin had made a home inside. He was happy to know he wouldn't be interrupted by scuttling rats from within.

Soon, Henrietta was the only one remaining on the cart. Her coffin was the heaviest and it took a long time to finally lug it to the back of the crypt.

Happy that his job was done, Gerald was about to leave, when curiosity struck him. He was the only one with a key, and the dead didn't mind what happened to them. And those twelve ancient coffins were right there, possibly brimming with goodies...

Gerald readied a burlap pouch and began with the leftmost coffin by the door. He opened the lid; the crumbling skeleton inside was clasping a small, silver pocket watch in a small pile of bones that was once a hand. Gerald was a watch enthusiast, and to him, it looked to be made by an old Italian manufacturer. He fished it out of the dry bones and put it in his pouch.

He closed the lid and opened the next to examine the next skeleton. When Gerald saw something golden gleaming inside the skull's eye sockets, his hopes were raised. He brought the oil lamp to the coffin, and saw half a pound of ancient gold coins inside, all decorated with ornate runes.

Gerald got a hammer and chisel from the cart and broke open the skull. He looted the coins, not giving any thought to how they had ended up inside the skull to begin with.

Another coffin. Nothing of value in there. Then the fourth. Inside were two ancient bottles of wine. Gerald didn't know much about wine, but even though they certainly didn't taste good now, someone would probably pay a lot for them.

Gerald reached the sixth coffin, and saw a magnificent treasure around the skeleton's neck. It was a ruby-studded gold pentagram necklace. The gemstones looked genuine, and the gold pentagram was two inches wide. The chains of the necklace were spiked, and had some kind of ancient, charred substance on them. It was impractical to wear, but undoubtedly worth a fortune. There was a carving on the back of the necklace that depicted an iron maiden torture device.

As soon as Gerald put the necklace in his pouch, wind howled outside the crypt, and the massive stone door slammed shut. Gerald jumped in surprise.

He set his lamp down and went to open the door again, but when he pushed against it, it barely budged: it had locked when it closed.

Gerald panicked for a moment, then kicked and shoved at the door to no avail. But, he soon settled down. There was ventilation, so he would not suffocate. He was still uneasy, so he decided to go back to looting to clear his head.

In the remaining coffins, Gerald found five pounds of silver bars, some partly burnt, black candles, a book bound in strange leather and written in a language he could not understand, and a sealed, half-full tin of ancient, dry herbs. It wasn't as bountiful as his previous findings, but in total, he figured it was enough to make him much wealthier for a long time. He wondered whether he would keep or sell the book. As he examined it, he thought it might have been a bible used by an immigrant speaking an unfamiliar language of some kind.

With the crypt looted, he set his stash on the ground by the door, started trying to find a way out. There was no staircase leading to the ruins above, but he did still have his hammer and chisel. He had some training as a mason, and figured he could expand the ventilation shaft until it was wide enough to leave.

Gerald was happy when he came up with that plan: escape was inevitable, and no more than a minor inconvenience. Judging by the thickness of the stone ventilation slat, he would be home by morning. But, the door was tall, and the stone ventilation slat was nine feet above the ground. So, Gerald got the idea to stack coffins to make a staircase. He put Henrietta's coffin at the base of the locked door, since it was the largest, and used it as the cornerstone of a staircase made from it and four of the ancient coffins, which Gerald used since they looked sturdy despite their immense age.

The resulting staircase had Henrietta's coffin and another at the bottom, then two coffins stacked on Henrietta's, and then one last coffin at the base. In total, it was slightly over six feet tall. Gerald grabbed his lamp and stepped on the lowest coffin: it creaked under his weight. He stepped up to the next coffin. It and Henrietta's creaked. Gerald ascended to the highest coffin, and all three beneath his feet creaked. But the staircase seemed sturdy. Gerald hung his lamp from a small hook on the ceiling and began to chisel away at the rock around the ventilation slat.

As Gerald chipped away at the shaft, slowly widening it, the sun lowered out of view, and it grew darker outside. Although his lamp was dimming, he wasn't worried at all, and kept going as the room darkened. The moon was out, so Gerald would always have some light to see the shaft by. And even if clouds passed in front of it, he could always resort to feeling his way around.

He worked and worked, and the coffins below creaked under his movements. The hole widened: soon two inches wide, then three, and after the last rays of sunlight were gone, four inches.

Gerald was startled by the cry of an owl outside, and dropped his hammer. The handle fell in the gap between the topmost coffin and the door, and the large, metal end hooked onto the edge of the topmost coffin and kept it from falling all the way to the floor.

As Gerald bent down to pick it up, the coffins creaked as expected, but a wet, squishy sound also came from below him, from one of the lower coffins. He thought it was odd, but gave it no further thought.

The last of his lamp light went out, leaving him in the dark. He now went only by touch and the faint moonlight illuminating only the edges of the hole. Although he could barely see what he was working on, and nothing else around him, he wasn't worried.

Gerald kept chiseling away at the rock. When he shifted his posture, there was another squishy

schlorp

sound from below. Perhaps a corpse had shifted.

But as he widened it by another inch, more odd sounds came from below. A faint sizzle. Wet, slick sounds. A popping noise. Another few

schlorps

. Gerald analyzed the noises as they came, and was confident that none were signs of structural collapse in the coffin staircase. His explanation was that the corpses were shifting from his movements above, and perhaps falling apart, jostling, or leaking fluids.

He triangulated the source of the sounds after a while: Henrietta's coffin. It seemed natural to him that the oldest corpse would leak and fall apart the most, especially after being moved en route to the crypt. So, he kept hammering away.

When the slat was six inches wide, he tried to fit through it, and failed. But he was so close: just another inch or two, and his chest could fit through it.

Then the coffin staircase rumbled and shook with a wet

schlorp

, startling Gerald again. He kept a hold of his tools this time. Maybe a corpse had been in an odd position for a while, and had now settled.

When he was almost done chiseling out the last inch he needed, the timber in Henrietta's coffin started to crack, creak, and groan. Gerald regretted using the flimsiest coffin for the base of the staircase, even though its size had made it appealing at first.

The creaking came to a peak as more wet, slick sounds came from within, and Gerald heard timbers split apart before they were silenced with a

thud

. Yet, the staircase didn't shift much at all. Gerald had a hard time imagining what combination of events below would make those noises, but soon settled for a bizarre theory: the rot in the corpse had sped up the decay in the ceiling of the coffin, causing the non-load bearing parts to fall. This was it, he thought, and nothing more.

Yet when he heard the coffin in the middle of the stack under him start to creak and splinter, he grew worried. Maybe the weight of the corpse had...

Something thudded upward from the bottom of the second coffin below, and more wood splintered.

Schlorp, schlorp, schlorp.

The sounds were far louder than any before. Gerald searched his mind for rational explanations, and found a few flimsy, pathetic ones as his arms shook and he feverishly pounded away at the last protruding chunk of stone. When that was out, he could leave, and be free.

Schlorp, schlorp, schlorp.

He chiseled in a fearful frenzy.

Another

thud

, more splintering wood, and Gerald was horrified: it was coming from the top of the coffin below him. Whatever phenomenon it was was coming upwards through the wood, and he told himself that it was a rational phenomenon and nothing to worry about as he broke into a cold, fearful sweat and quickened his already feverish work pace...

Schlorp, schlorp, schlorp.

Another wooden thud from below, and more timbers shattered. Another series of quick, pounding thuds, all against the bottom of the lid of the very coffin he was standing on, making him almost stumble and fall. The lid clattered as the last protruding chunk of stone fell loose. He was free! All he had to do was climb out of the hole. Gerald tossed his tools through the hole, put his arms through, and stuck his head out, smelling the fresh air and peering up at the lovely gibbous moon as his legs went into the air and he struggled to pull his chest free of the gap...

...and when his legs went into the air and his weight no longer held the coffin lid shut, it opened with a loud thud. Something wet moved, and Gerald screamed when two cold, slimy,

things

grasped his ankles and wrapped around them.

Gerald clawed at the stone as the coiled, powerful tendrils pulled him back into the crypt. He was afraid for his life, afraid of the dark within the crypt, and for the first time in the years since he had first started his job, afraid of the dead and the supernatural.

His head came back through the hole as his legs were pulled through the open coffin lid. His arms desperately grabbed the edge of the hole, but the thing grabbing his ankles pulled him down and away moments later. He had nothing to reach for, and his legs found no bottom in the topmost coffin. He explained it by guessing that the thing had tunneled through the coffins, likely all the way up from Henrietta's coffin, where the thing had no doubt originated.

His legs were dragged deeper into the coffin tunnel: the staircase he had made to escape was now another prison. As his waist passed below the top of the topmost coffin, Gerald's legs brushed against more cold, wet things that wriggled inside the collection of coffins. He tried to thrash his way out, but to no avail: the coffins wouldn't even budge an inch when he tried to push them. They were stuck together, and he could only guess imagine how or why this was the case, given how he couldn't see a thing, save for the rapidly fading light of the ventilation slat.

His torso sunk deeper as his feet finally landed on a squishy, soft, thing on the floor of Henrietta's coffin, undoubtedly part of the thing that was ensnaring him. And another thought occurred to him: where were the bodies? Where were the bones? Or the fabric they wore? There was only the cold flesh of this thing inside with him.

His head sunk beneath the top of the topmost coffin, and his struggling became even more futile as two more cold tendrils coiled around his arms. He screamed, gasping for help, for someone to save him, but even now he knew that there was nobody who could hear him. His legs were pulled sideways into Henrietta's roomy coffin, and the rest of his body was slowly dragged in with it.

As his body was dragged inside of Henrietta's coffin, Gerald felt his body brush against slippery masses of cold, wet flesh, which coated all of the inside of Henrietta's coffin. The tendrils finally dragged his head through the top of Henrietta's coffin, and Gerald was now laying face-up in the coffin. His entire body was in a loose, wet cave, and the light above vanished from view as the flesh finally sealed him on all sides in an enclosed pocket of air.