by David Irons
Behind them, Matt, Alex, the priest and Alison alternately flipped from one door to the other, their panic rising as they faced the blocked doorframes around them.
The priest, perplexed, looked around the oval room, his mouth open, as he pushed blond strands of his hair back, his face flushing with responsibility like he should have answers: answers he knew he was unable to give them.
Matt ran back at them. 'I've checked each one of those damn doors. Kristi's right, they're solid, we're not getting out that way.'
'Got a plan then, Red?' Kristi sneered, raising an eyebrow and looking down the barrel of her nose at her with a burning intensity, a look that had made many an on-set shudder.
Thinking on her toes, trying to unify them, Jennifer shouted out, ' I think we got more chance of getting this one open than these others, at least we know it can open.'
Slowly the words sank in. The others all walked towards the marble door they came through, talking amongst their selves how to open it.
'Nice work, Red, I think me and you can get on…' she smiled down at Kelly, an expression that shrank as she looked at Jennifer again, 'for now.'
As they all moved back to the door, the meek Alison kept her distance from Kristi's lashing forked tongue. Together, the men along with Kristi and Jennifer tried to pull the thin, non-existent lip around the marble door, hoping that, somehow, they could slide it sideways or push it back through.
Kristi used her bottled up anger in a pro-active way, disregarding her ever-pampered nails, and went for it, wanting freedom more than a perfect manicure; scrabbling at the door like a caged animal that once knew freedom.
'This sucker ain't gonna budge,' Alex grunted, giving up. 'It's solid. If no one closed the damn thing, I'd put money on it being held shut by some kind of locking device,' he added. 'We're sealed in here.'
Alison let out a small beep of distress. Alex's words made sense. Everyone sighed. Matt looked at the priest. 'Did you have any idea something like this could happen?'
'No…No!' he exclaimed. 'I was just brought here like you. Why would I willingly put myself in this position?’
'What about in those instructions of yours? Does it explain if there's a way to get out?'
'I don't know…' He stopped, realizing something that made his face break into a smile.
'It's automated! There is a control panel on the lectern. I'm sure there's a way to open the door on it somewhere.'
'Oh!' Alison exhaled with excitement, 'check the thing! Yes, it must work like that!'
Kristi pushed past Alison as everyone else followed her to the lectern. Here she was, doing it again, Alison thought, dominating. Acting like their leader, the queen bitch of everything. A silver bolt of hate fired inside her.
The priest ran through the throng, feeling like he needed to get there first, to demonstrate his innocence in this. 'Look, here's my instructions, simple bullet points, step-by-step points.’
Matt grabbed the papers and thumbed through them – seeing that the priest was telling the truth.
'And here's the control panel,' the priest uttered nervously, as Jennifer immediately checked all the buttons on its panel.
'Lights.'
'Film.'
'Speakers.'
'Amp.'
Nothing to indicate it would operate the door; she clicked them all anyway. Lights went down, speakers popped, the projector retracted in and out with its disturbing rattle. Sounds that only exacerbated the tension, added to the dread and the looming chaos, but nothing to give them a chance of escape.
Jennifer reached under the lectern, searching every inch of it blindly trying to find a hidden switch or dial, but touching each side of the podium, she found nothing.
More sighs, more building frustration rose around them in the room like a thick fog over a morning river. 'The ceiling!' Kelly cried out. 'If we could get to the glass ceiling we could break a window!'
Everyone stared up; the stained breakable glass was at least forty feet from ground level.
'We'll never reach it,' her mother said with a sarcastic "nice try" tone.
'The benches – look how long they are! If we stood them upright against the walls, long ways, we might be able to do it!' Kelly cried again.
'It's too dangerous kid,' Matt said. 'We would have to put two straight on top of one another, lengthwise. You know how precarious that would be? You fall off and you're liable to break first, before this marble floor does.'
'He's right,' Alex muttered, dryly.
'The only thing I can think of,' Matt pondered, 'is that we try and use something, anything, and try and get some leverage under that marble door. I don't know, maybe take some of the wood out of those benches?'
The priest's eyes widened, looking at the antique oak benches. He couldn't let them destroy such beautiful things, getting ready to go all, "This is God's house!' to spare them from being destroyed. Then he looked at Kristi's hard face and kept his opinion zipped.
Alex and Matt headed for the pews, quickly followed by the priest. Not allowing the priest a moment to question their decisions, they immediately began dismantling with brute force, kicking anything to pieces that looked like it could be used for escape.
Kristi glared her snake eyes to the vacant looking Alison, then down to Jennifer who was still on her knees checking over the podium. She turned towards Blitzer's coffin; him in his own confined trapped space, the plush oak box. She winced at it. 'Son of a bitch, he always had to have the last laugh.'
Alison frowned at Kristi, about to say something to her, but was immediately cut off, 'Don't do it,' Jennifer said, not even casting a look up to her, halting the woman she used to work with like a stone statue with her words.
Kelly looked at the coffin and back to her mom again. 'Mom, I don't want to be trapped in here near that thing.'
Jennifer, pulling herself to her feet, squeezed Kelly's shoulder again. 'It's okay hun, that box is the least of our problems.'
Staring dreamily at the coffin, Kristi spoke out loud to herself, 'That fuck face always had to have the last laugh, didn't he?' a wild glaze came back into her eyes again. 'Here we are trapped, you're dead, but you still manage to piss me off and scare my kid.'
Slowly she slunk past the group as the room filled with the noise of vicious cracks as Alex and Matt continued to make basic tools from the splintered pews.
Standing right over his coffin, Kristi stared down into the almost glass like polished wood. 'I hope you burn down there, you cold sack of guts,' she blurted out calmly, face wrinkled with undiluted hate.
Her hateful words made Alison's eyes pop out in rage, the ridiculous glasses that covered them the only thing that kept them in. Turning back to Kelly and Jennifer, Kristi smiled a ragged grin, one filled with mean spirited vibes. Then with the quickness of a striking cobra, she reached out in front of her, grabbed the nearest floor standing candelabra; its lit candles spilled burning wax on the floor as she swung it around over her head, bringing its solid, rounded base down with quick piercing blows, scratching the perfect finish of the coffin.
'Fuck you!' she screamed, causing the men to stop destroying the benches and the women to take a step back.
'Mom!' Kelly yelled, leaping towards Kristi, Jennifer holding her back. Kristi, filled with white-hot rage, continued to pummel the coffin lid.
'You no good lousy bastard! Trust me the money wasn't worth sticking with a piece of crap like you!'
Then with everything she had, she swung the rounded end of the candelabra one last time, and struck the lid with a blistering thunder crackle. A screeching whine, like a miniature banshee wailed from the coffin, making Kristi jump back.
Suddenly, its lid, as if spring loaded, fired open. A huge gust of wind wafted over her, a wind she expected to smell rancid of rot and death in, but actually smelt old and damp. A thick white, silky-hued vapour rose from the coffin hiding his body beneath, it slowly evaporated up into the air.
Something seemed to move beneath it.
>
CHAPTER 9
Everyone stopped what they were doing, looking on at the open casket in horror; Kristi, not expecting this sudden jack in a box routine, ground her teeth together. It was a decision made in the moment — in that split second. Enraged at how bad this entire building had made her lose her composure. Yeah, she got some laughs during the service, but the un-opening door not allowing her the big exit she wanted had infuriated her. Her petulant attitude swarmed inside herself with a tenebrous palpability.
She would get their attention again, there was nothing like a bit of controversy to keep people talking. It was a shame nobody had his or her camera phones out to see this. It was in her mind a moment worth preserving forever.
Holding a steely frown, she stepped forward with high-heeled clicks, swiftly bringing the candelabra back up over her head again, knowing this would make an impact, it would make a statement. You can't kill a dead man; and there was no crime in bashing the brains back out of a dead man's reconstructed head. This will get their attention.
Her mouth snarled; she swung the iron rod down through the air, plunging the spindly pole straight towards the dead body of the man who had caused all of this. Gasps and screams broke around her.
'Mooooom!'
'Noooooo!'
'What are you doing?'
She liked that, she had their attention; and then she began to scream, a screech filled with rage; a place easy to get to as the adrenalin of the situation fired through her veins.
She screamed manically, bringing the weapon down into the coffin. Instead of a dull, wet thump of a caved in cranium, a dull reverberation gonged out.
Her grip on the candelabra turned limp, the length of iron twisted to one side, falling down to the floor with a cold crash. Kristi could see straight down into the coffin as the few remaining cold vapours vanquished. Instead of his deathly face, she was faced with something else — something at first she made no sense of, that made her tense up in a moment of shock — a giant torn out hole in the centre of the coffin's plush lining.
Its soft white fabric ripped, ragged, shredded by dirty black handprints, a hole beneath leading to an earthy smell, a deep dark black passage, an escape route that burrowed down to somewhere else below the Earth.
'You bastard!' she screamed, 'you're alive!'
CHAPTER 10
'Mom!' Kelly cried out again.
'What in the hell are you doing?' Alex yelled.
'She's crazy, actually crazy!' Alison said, finding her voice again.
Matt and Jennifer ran over to Kristi's side, ready to calm her, to get her away from the pulverized corpse in the coffin, anything to avoid a repeat performance of what they just witnessed. It was beginning to feel like glorified baby-sitting with this woman being in these closed quarters; and yeah, maybe Alison was right, maybe she was crazy. But approaching her, seeing what she was staring at dumb struck, looking down into the coffin, they too froze up.
'Oh my god,' muttered Jennifer. 'It’s empty.'
Matt peered into the torn-out hole, then let his gut instinct regurgitate up into his mouth. 'I knew it; I knew there was something off about all this. All this will reading crap was to get us in here, to play mind games.'
'Mind games?' Alex spouted, running over to the coffin. 'Son of a bitch, where is he?'
Hearing this, the priest and Alison joined them. She gasped, holding her snot-stiff handkerchief over her mouth. 'Dear God!' The priest exclaimed. 'But… but where is he?' The corpse’s disappearance from its coffin, this was certainly the cherry on the top of the most bizarre service he had ever held.
'Did you check this box when you came here?' Jennifer asked.
'No… No... It was already here, I just assumed… I didn't want to know… I wouldn't look. I've never heard of anything like this.'
'Mind games, huh?' Kristi snorted.
Kelly stepped in further, edging nearer, scared to peek in the wooden box. Even though the grownups said there was no corpse in there, no dead man to linger in her mind during the days and haunt her nights, she didn't trust it. Nervously swallowing, she peered in to see the filthy torn out hole. It was an image that made the butterflies in her stomach turn to a flock of hard winged bats, all tearing against her innards with their leathery flapping. Knowing how her internal fear worked, she knew this image alone would etch into her brain and feed her nightmares. The AWOL corpse and his raggedy escape tunnel: a memory more vivid than any of the hundreds of late night horror movies she had snuck downstairs to watch when everyone was asleep.
Breathing out hard, she looked at her mom, those Disney eyes in full effect. 'He always had to have the last laugh, huh kid?' Kristi sullenly said as she wrapped her arm around her daughter with a closeness no one knew she was capable of.
Calm, thinking and calculating, Kristi turned to the group around her. 'So where is he then? Did anyone see the death certificate?' Everyone just stared at her silently. 'Did anyone see the body?'
'Trust me, I saw it,' Jennifer assured her. 'This guy is dead.'
'I sat over his body… I saw… he was killed.' Alison sobbed.
'This bastard can't be dead,' Matt stated.
Kristi addressed the group. 'How did you all find out he was gone?' Wondering if any of these bastards were in on it with the bastard who wasn't in his box.
'Phone call from the guy arranging the funeral,' Matt replied.
'Yes, yes, that's right,' Alison chimed in, 'Gregory's friend, William Traxler, he was in charge of organizing everything. He was the appointed applicant, he arranged all of his last wishes: the invites, coming here, the will reading, didn't he Jennifer?'
Jennifer, unimpressed, stared at Alison, watching the flustered woman, as she bumbled out her words. She was almost enjoying her squirm waiting for her answer; it was like payment for the bullshit attitude she always had during those long clock-ticking days back at the funeral parlour.
'Yeah, by her words, apparently, he did,' Jennifer eventually said. 'I left the next day after Blitzer died; I didn't want to be part of any of this. I only went back to get my last pay check. I never saw the guy, she just told me what was going on.'
'See!' Alison said, 'I saw Gregory in that coffin. He was dead. I couldn't be there the last week, I couldn't be at work knowing he…' Alison paused, gulped back tears, 'knowing that Gregory was lying next door.' She blew her nose, and then continued. 'Mr Traxler said he would take care of everything, that I didn't need to worry. Jack, our mortician, did double duty on the front desk as well as his makeup… made him… presentable.' Her sentences started to break in grief, becoming wild and jagged, her mind scrambling before their eyes. 'I know Traxler was there looking after the business, looking after the funeral. I couldn't… There was no way Gregory could… no way he could just…'
'Just do a Houdini and presto change, poof, he's gone?' Alex said. 'Well he ain't there now and I don't know the explanation, and I don't like not knowing the explanation. I don't like being cooped up in this place either. This stinks and I want out.'
Matt nodded with agreement.
Alison calmed her breathing and composed herself.
'What's the deal then, preach?' Kristi snarled. 'Something tells me… you know more than you're telling us.'
Panic painted his eyes. 'I've told you,' he yelped with nervous gasps of air, trying to calm himself, 'I spoke to Alison at the funeral parlour and I spoke on the phone to a man. He said he was William Traxler, he posted those papers to me, arranged everything and wired me a payment so…'
Jennifer cut off the priest. 'Payment, huh? What for, the service or aiding and abetting?'
Alex sighed. 'I know this Traxler, an out of towner, a shark, just the same as Blitzer, someone as underhanded as himself. You know this guy, Kristi?'
'I've heard of him,' she growled, thinking that this was another name that could go on her shit list.
'He said it was Blitzer's request I do this,' said the priest in a beaten tone, 'he sent me the car, the directions, all
I knew was that the body was supposed to already be here.'
'Alex is right,' Matt added. 'This Traxler is as devious as the day is long. I looked into him when I was investigating Blitzer. Tax evasion, a few misdemeanours, legally almost on the level: no biggies. But that doesn't mean under the surface he didn't have stuff going on. If these two were friends, I'd trust them about as much as each other.'
'It was Mr. Blitzer's wishes to have his funeral arranged through a third party,' Alison said, 'we did our part, dressing the body, arranging the coffin. But it was William Traxler who took over when...' she started to cry again, 'He… he arranged everything.'
'It all sounds convenient to me,' Alex grunted. 'Blitzer that fuck, he knew what he was doing, he had this all planned.'
'Sounds like this Traxler son of a bitch is the one playing games, even if Blitzer isn’t dead,' Jennifer sighed.
'And you,' Kristi hissed to the priest, his expression dropping. 'You had your fingers in the pie for this gig, and you know nothing about why my ex-husband — dead ex-husband, would apparently go subterranean and dig his way out of his own coffin? That is, if he was even in the damn thing in the first place. This all seems more than a little bit fishy to me.'
Still staring into the dark ragged hole of the coffin's lining, Kelly noticed something, felt something cold and invisible brush against her skin. Watching the torn velvet insides of the coffin, she saw a small ripped flap of the white material rise up and down quickly. Pulling up her sleeve, she held a shuddering hand towards the torn out hole, keeping her outspread fingers perfectly still over the darkness below. 'Going inside can be your way out,' she whispered to herself. 'There's a draft down here!' She said with a shrill realization; the group all turned to look at her and saw her hand stretched over the gaping casket.
Jennifer stepped in and held her hand next to hers, feeling the slight tingle of cold damp air rush over her open palm. 'She's right.'