Epitaph, page 7
There were two dull thuds as his hands connected with the areas to his right and left.
The thought he’d dismissed so quickly because it was so ridiculous came thundering back into his brain and this time he found he couldn’t dismiss it so easily.
Why are there no lights? Why can you feel satin beneath you, to both sides and above you? Go on, smart arse, what’s the answer?
This was the most vivid dream he’d ever had, he told himself. It must all be part of it. Some kind of Freudian nightmare brought on by what had happened to him today. That was the answer. He was still asleep and this dream was so realistic because he’d drunk too much and his mind was more fevered than it had ever been before and. And.
And what?
This was no dream. He sucked in a deep breath. A breath full of that strange smell he couldn’t identify. He trailed his hands across the satin beneath him and to both sides of him and, when he raised his hands, above him, too. He knew why it was so dark. He understood why he could see nothing. He realised why he was lying down.
The thought refused to be dismissed this time because it appeared to be, ridiculous or not, the only thought that was correct. The only assumption, irrespective of how inherently ludicrous it was, that ticked every box on his mental checklist. He had to accept the explanation because there was no other. He felt the breath catch in his throat as he tried to think of any explanation other than the one he now knew must be correct.
Paul Crane was lying inside a coffin.
21
Frank Hacket waved good-naturedly as he passed the door of the pharmacy, one hand guiding the trolley full of linen.
There was a faintly putrid smell coming from the piles of dirty cloth he was transporting. The linen had been removed from the bed of a burn victim barely five minutes earlier. Frank could smell the pungent odour rising from his cargo but he barely acknow ledged it. He’d smelled worse.
He knew the woman who worked in the pharmacy. She was a little younger than him and she assisted the three pharmacists, one of whom was on duty more or less twenty-four hours a day themselves.
Frank knew those more exalted beings merely to nod at. He was beneath them otherwise and they never failed to let him know it. But the woman who worked there was different. More on his level. She didn’t sneer at his lowly position. In fact, she chatted to him most days when she had some spare time. There was a large staff canteen housed within one wing of the hospital and Frank usually had his lunch there, sometimes with the woman from the pharmacy.
He sat patiently and listened to her problems and her complaints, nodding and smiling in all the right places, offering sage words where he thought it appropriate. She talked about her teenage daughter and how she had become increasingly hard to control and how, on one stupefying occasion, she’d returned home to find the sixteen-year-old naked on the living-room floor with her nineteen-year-old boyfriend. The woman from the pharmacy had been outraged but still laughed about it when telling Frank the story. He couldn’t see what was so amusing but he’d smiled when he thought it appropriate. Just as he’d smiled when she told him of her drunken nights out with her friends and how much alcohol they each consumed in what, to Frank, seemed a pointless waste of time and money.
The exchange of information wasn’t always reciprocated, though. She knew that he was married and that he had a young daughter but that was about it. Frank didn’t mind hearing what other people had to say about their own lives but he’d always been reluctant to share too many details of his own, even with people he felt comfortable with. No one at the hospital knew any more about him than they needed to know and Frank was happy with that. What went on away from work he felt was his business, not something to be shared. Besides, he’d never been comfortable talking about himself. It had always been easier to listen to others.
Frank had been at the hospital long enough to have made plenty of friends among the other workers and one of his closest companions was a male nurse in paediatrics. The man hated being alone and when lunchtimes came around he invariably sought out company when eating his midday meal. That was how the two of them had first met. Frank had been sitting eating his sandwiches, reading his paper when the man had approached him and asked if he could share the table. Frank had assented and they’d hit it off immediately. There were, Frank had found over the years, some people who that just happened with. He could count them on the fingers of one hand and that included his own wife. Their relationship had been like that at the beginning. Not so much now, though, he lamented. Now was different. She was more demanding and yet, at the same time, more distant. He wished he knew why. He wished he could bring himself to ask her but, he told himself, perhaps he didn’t want to hear the reasons.
He slowed his pace slightly as he passed the pharmacy door, peering back to look at it.
The door was left unlocked but that was partly due to the fact that at least one person was meant to be on duty in there twenty-four hours a day. However, that was not always the case. Sometimes, especially late at night, the solitary occupant of the pharmacy might have to leave for a couple of minutes even if it was only to answer a call of nature. When that happened, if someone entering knew what he or she were looking for and where to find it, they could acquire almost any drug they desired.
Frank stopped and looked up and down the corridor once more.
It was empty in both directions.
Later on that evening it would be even quieter.
He turned and began pushing the trolley once again.
22
Paul Crane screamed.
He couldn’t think what else to do.
He opened his mouth and bellowed as loudly as he could. It wasn’t a recognisable word that he roared in the confines of that satin-lined box. It was just an animal exhortation of dismay, horror and fear all mingled together in one wrenching cry.
This couldn’t be happening. It was impossible. Things like this only happened in horror stories. He remembered a film he’d seen when he was a kid. An old black and white one with Vincent Price or Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi. One of the old stars. One of the greats.
Does it really matter who was in the fucking thing?
The film was called The Premature Burial. It had been about some guy who had a morbid fear of being buried alive and, needless to say, he’d ended up being subjected to his worst fear.
Ray Milland. That was the actor who’d been in it. Not Vincent Price.
Does it really matter who the star was? You’re in a fucking coffin.
Paul felt his body beginning to shake. It was like a spasm. The kind of muscular contractions that grip someone when they’ve got flu. Where you feel cold but you’re running a temperature of over a hundred, that kind of feeling. Only this was ten, twenty, a million times worse, wasn’t it? If only this spasm had been caused by flu and not by the realisation that he was in a wooden coffin.
He clamped his teeth together and closed his eyes tightly, hoping that the spasm would subside. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead. For a moment he wondered if he was going into shock. Perhaps the realisation of his situation had pushed him over the edge into a state of shock.
He tried to rise once again, as if that simple act would break this spell and return him to reality because, surely, this couldn’t be reality. How could he be inside a coffin? Even considering his situation caused him to shake uncontrollably once again. Thoughts whirled around madly inside his mind, a mixture of the bizarre and the logical as he struggled to come to terms with what had happened here. Paul tried to take several deep breaths, tried to slow his racing heartbeat and attempted to stop his body from shaking so violently.
Think. Think. How can this have happened?
But did it really matter how it happened? All that matters is that it has happened. Somehow, you have ended up inside a coffin. Someone thought you were dead and they put you in this box and buried you.
‘Oh, God,’ he said aloud, his voice quivering just like his body. The contemplation of his situation was making him worse. He was breathing too rapidly. His head felt as if it was filling with air. Paul realised that he was hyperventilating but there was little he could do to stop himself. Fear washed over him in unstoppable waves. Terror poured through his veins like ice. His heart felt as if it would burst right through his chest.
Stop. For God’s sake calm down. Try to think.
But he couldn’t. He was unable to summon rational thoughts in his current state. Who the hell would have been able to calmly appraise what had happened to them and why they were here? Would anyone who had woken up inside a coffin be able to quietly consider how they might have got there? Anyone’s first reaction would be the same.
You’ve got to get a grip. You’ve got to calm down and think.
He raised his head and thumped it against the lid of the coffin so hard that it hurt.
Slow your breathing down.
He closed his eyes tightly and tried to obey the inner voice. It was impossible.
You’ve been buried alive.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ he gasped. ‘Jesus. Jesus.’
He screamed again. And again. And again. He banged on the lid and the sides of the coffin. He hammered away until his fists hurt, frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t create much of an impact because he couldn’t get the leverage in his cramped and confined position. Nevertheless he continued shouting and thumping, not really knowing why but unable to think of anything else that he could do. He even kicked out with his feet, feeling the bottom of the casket. For five minutes solid he thrashed and kicked and pounded.
And screamed.
23
Laura Hacket watched the figure as it moved slowly around the room and she felt the tears running down her cheeks.
She couldn’t scream because of the tape that was wound so tightly around her mouth but her body jerked almost rhythmically as she cried, lurching up and down in her seat with each inhalation. Her nose was running, too, and bubbles of mucus kept forming at each nostril the more she cried, bursting instantly as she sniffed.
Laura couldn’t take her eyes off the figure even though she wanted to. She didn’t want to look at this thing that had taken her. This thing with hooded black eyes, no nose and a zip where its mouth should have been. But no matter how much she tried to look away she couldn’t.
She was beginning to wish that it had left the tape on her eyes, too. At least that way she wouldn’t have been forced to look at it as it moved back and forth in the room.
Laura would ask it if she could go home if it should take the tape from her mouth. She would tell it that she had to be home or she would be in trouble with her mum. She would plead with it if she had to. Anything just to get out of this place and get away from this thing. Whatever it was. She wanted to ask it why it had grabbed her and stuffed her into the boot of its car. Why it had put grey sticky tape around her eyes and mouth and why it had secured her to this old wooden chair.
She would ask it if it knew Mr Peter File, that dangerous man who her dad hated so much and who did bad things to children like her. Above all, she wanted to ask it if she could see her mum.
She wanted that so much. She wanted to be held and cuddled by her mum. She wanted to be home. She wanted to be anywhere other than where she was now. Alone here in this empty room with this thing.
Laura was shuddering as she sat on the chair, her whole body trembling. It was deathly silent inside the room apart from her own sobs. She couldn’t even hear the creature breathing unless it came close to her and then the sound was like someone breathing into their hand.
It had come close to her twice. Once to remove the tape around her eyes and another time when it had moved to within just three feet of her and stood silently looking at her, its head sometimes inclined to the right or left, as if it was studying her, taking in every single detail of her face.
Then, Laura had wanted it to remove the tape around her mouth. That was when she would have asked it the questions that plagued her. But all it had done was just stand there like some kind of horrible statue, just looking. Just waiting. Then, after a moment or two, she had watched as it had turned its back on her once again and wandered off behind her towards something that she couldn’t see but, through her tears and her sobs and sniffs, she had heard something that she couldn’t identify. A sound that was vaguely familiar and it made her cry even more.
It sounded like pieces of metal clanking together.
Like knives.
24
Paul Crane collapsed exhausted, his arms by his sides, his head to one side, perspiration covering his face and chest.
He was murmuring something unintelligible under his ragged breath.
Prayers, perhaps?
He had been hammering away at the coffin for more than fifteen minutes but to no avail.
Was it fifteen minutes?
He suddenly remembered that he was still wearing his watch and he tried to look at it. Pointless, really, because it was so impenetrably black inside the coffin that he couldn’t even see the lid that was mere inches above his face, let alone the face of his watch. Perhaps if he could get the glass over the face off then he could feel the hands and work out the time that way.
And how are you going to get the glass off? Did you slip a chisel into your bathrobe pocket before you passed out?
Paul exhaled deeply, exhausted and drained of energy. However, he noticed that his breathing had slowed somewhat. His exertions had taken his mind off his pre dicament for precious minutes and, in that time, his heart had slowed and his breathing returned to something like normal.
He sucked in a deep breath, held it, and then released it as slowly as he could. If he could get his breathing and his heartbeat under control, he reasoned, then he could calm himself and begin to think logically. Think of a way out.
He took several deep breaths and concentrated on releasing them slowly, forced himself to exhale a little at a time. The longer he did this the more the fuzziness inside his head seemed to clear. He had a headache.
It could be a hangover from all that booze the night before.
The night before. He had no idea of the time. He didn’t know if it was the following day. An hour after he’d passed out or minutes after he’d achieved the oblivion he’d needed so badly. That was the first concrete fact that he was aware of. He had absolutely no idea what time of the day it was or, indeed, which day it was.
It’s actually the second concrete fact, isn’t it? The first is that you’re in a fucking coffin. The first is that you’ve been buried alive.
‘No, no,’ he said to himself, as if denying the facts might change them.
Deny them all you like. You are buried alive. Face it and deal with it.
Paul felt sick. A wave of nausea that made him sweat again and, for one terrifying second, he thought he was actually going to be sick.
That’ll be nice inside this box. The stink of your own vomit mingling with your own sweat and Christ knows what else. Don’t throw up.
The feeling passed and he was grateful for that. What he wasn’t grateful for was the terrible thirst that he was suddenly aware of. His throat felt raw. Some of it doubtless caused by his frantic shouting. His mouth was unbearably dry, too. Paul tried to generate some saliva by rubbing his tongue against the roof of his mouth and then against the inside of his cheeks. It helped a little but not much. What little saliva he generated he forced back and forth across his clenched teeth. The unbearable dryness inside his mouth began to recede somewhat.
Well done. Try and deal with one thing at a time. One problem at a time.
A line from a hymn suddenly popped into his mind.
‘One day at a time, sweet Jesus,’ he muttered.
One day at a time. Sweet Lord.
He didn’t know why his brain was processing these random thoughts the way it was. They seemed to be flying about inside his head like tennis balls.
Sweet Jesus. That’s who you need help from right now.
‘Help.’ He spoke the word quietly. How was he going to get help? Who was going to help him?
Paul tried to force those thoughts away, aware that his breathing was speeding up again. He knew he had to try and remain calm, irrespective of how difficult that might seem. He had to keep his mind clear and think his way through this.
He dug in his robe pockets, wondering if there was something in there he could use.
Use for what?
He found some balled-up tissues in one of them and that was it.
No chisels to dig your way out. No sweets magically placed there earlier to stop your mouth feeling dry? Tough shit.
‘Think,’ he told himself. ‘Concentrate.’
On what? You’re in a coffin, six feet underground. There’s no way out. No one can hear you. No one knows you’re here, and even those who do aren’t going to think you’re alive, are they?
Paul took a deep breath and held it.
What’s the last thing you remember?
He exhaled slowly.
He remembered being in his flat, in front of the tele vision. He’d drunk nearly three-quarters of a bottle of vodka upon arriving home. That was excluding whatever he’d drunk at the bars he’d visited before that. So, somehow, he’d gone from the sofa in his flat to the inside of a coffin. How? If he could figure that out then perhaps he could work out how to get out. Consider the whole problem. Think of it as an equation. Someone had to have put you in here so someone knows you’re here. Think about how it could have happened.
Think.
‘I am thinking,’ he told the voice inside his head.
Better not talk to yourself. I told you before, it’s the first sign of madness. Still, I suppose you’re entitled to go a bit mad when you realise you’ve been buried alive. Carry on.
No one had been expected at the flat. It wasn’t as if Amy had turned up and found him collapsed and called an ambulance or doctor or something. If that had happened then he would have remembered being taken to hospital. Wouldn’t he?
