Epitaph (13 page)

Paul Crane felt the tears flowing gently down his face as he lay motionless in the coffin and he wondered if he should try to control himself. He feared that once the first tears came he would be unable to stop those that followed. He wondered if this might be the beginning of the complete mental collapse he’d been expecting for some time. And not that it was surprising.

Was this the last straw? The final, unavoidable thread that had just snapped? Was there truly nothing left now other than to lie here and die?

He allowed the tears to flow freely, neither able nor willing to stop them. Why should he? What else should he do? Lie here stoically tasting progressively foul air until he choked and gasped on his final breath?

He wondered when his life would start flashing before his eyes; that was supposed to happen when you died, wasn’t it?

How can people know that? The only ones who’d know would
be those about to die and they wouldn’t be able to tell, would they?

Did you really get a full review of your life from birth through to the very end? Was it like a slide show or a video? Did it last longer if you were older? Could you pause it at the good bits and fast forward through the rotten parts?

You’ll know soon, won’t you?

He laughed humourlessly once again, surprised at how many times he’d managed that particular action in the past thirty minutes or so. Or maybe it wasn’t that long. Time had become meaningless inside this box. It could have been a matter of minutes since he had been so enthused with the idea of escape and then so crushed by his latest defeat.

‘
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.’

That wasn’t a line of film dialogue. It was from a song. He was sure of that. It was unfortunately, wherever it came from, appallingly apt.

‘Dying time is here.’

More meaningless words flooded into his mind and he tried to keep them out, tried to concentrate on anything else.

Like what? The fact that the air inside this box is definitely a little more bitter to the taste than it used to be or that it is also getting warmer inside here?

Both of those effects, he assumed, were due to the increasingly prevalent concentration of carbon dioxide inside the casket rather than oxygen.

If that’s the case it won’t be long until the end now then? Get ready for the film show.

Paul closed his eyes and wondered where his own recollections would begin. Where his mind would start replaying the memories like some kind of internal projector.

Would he see his own birth, he wondered, but from the inside out? Would he actually feel the slap when the doctor smacked him to ensure he was breathing?

All sorts of delights on the way, then?

His earliest memory was of a thunderstorm. He had been in his pushchair and his mother was pushing him down a narrow country lane with a canopy of trees over it and they had paused to shelter from the torrential rain. Paul could still remember the coal-black sky and the brilliant white flashes of lightning that tore across it. He tried to think how old he must have been then. It couldn’t have been much more than three, he told himself but, if he was three, what was he doing in a pushchair?

Another mystery to be solved. Perhaps the rerun will give you the answer why.

If only life was like a video that you could rewind, fast forward and erase, he thought. Would he, he wondered, do anything differently? Would there be people he’d treat better (or worse)? Would there be things he’d do that he hadn’t done? Things that he had done that he would never even contemplate a second time around?

It was all academic really, wasn’t it, because he wasn’t going to get a second chance. Not now.

He thought how he would grab that second chance if it came. He would enjoy every single moment of his life, savour every second of the good times and try to cope with the bad a little more competently. But there was to be no second chance, was there? All that remained was the
wait until the air ran out completely and death began to take a hold.

Paul shook his head, trying to force that ever-present thought away but finding it increasingly difficult. Perhaps, he reasoned, he finally had come to accept his fate. Could this be why the thoughts of his own demise wouldn’t budge this time around? No matter what he did, had his unconscious mind finally taken over?

Think about some of the good times in your life. At least have a thought you want inside your head when the time comes.

‘No,’ he said, aloud and more tears began to flow. ‘This isn’t fucking right. This isn’t fair.’

The words were spoken with a mixture of resignation, fear and anger.

Go on, cling to that anger. Use it. Better to be angry than resigned. Go out fighting.

He pushed against the lid again. He even managed to punch it.

‘Fuck,’ he rasped and he punched it again.

But he could get very little power into the blow from his current position and, instead, he tore at the satin above him with his nails.

There was a loud tear as a portion of the material came away.

Beneath it Paul could feel the bare, polished wood of the coffin lid.

He rubbed his fingertips against it, noticing how cold the wood felt to the touch.

That would be because of the tons of fresh earth that have been dumped on it. The earth that’s keeping you pinned underground even if the coffin lid isn’t nailed or screwed down.

Paul ran one thumbnail against the wood and managed to push into it slightly. He picked at the indentation like a teenager scraping the head from an acne spot.

Another idea struck him like a thunderbolt.

‘What did they say?’ Frank Hacket asked, taking a drag on his cigarette.

‘They said they couldn’t do anything yet,’ Gina told him breathlessly.

‘Yet, what do you mean yet?’ he insisted.

‘There’s a time limit before they can list her as missing.’

‘How long?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘What do you mean you can’t remember? Gina. They told you something important, you’ve got to remember.’

‘I can’t fucking remember,’ she shouted angrily, cutting him short. ‘All right? I can’t remember. If you want to know then you ring them and see if you can remember what they tell you. I’ve got other things on my mind, Frank. I just want to know where our daughter is.’

Hacket sighed wearily.

‘So do I,’ he reminded her.

‘So what do we do now?’ Gina demanded. ‘If the police won’t help us, what do we do? She could be anywhere.’

‘I’m thinking,’ he said distractedly.

‘What do we do, Frank?’

‘I told you I’m thinking,’ he snapped.

‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘No, she’s not dead, Gina.’

‘How do you know that? How can you be sure?’

Hacket clenched his teeth, wishing there was some way that he could feel as much conviction in his heart as he’d tried to put into his words.

‘Tell me how you can be sure,’ she persisted.

Hacket swallowed hard and tried to control himself.

‘There’s got to be an explanation,’ he continued, as calmly as he could. ‘She might be hiding somewhere. She might be scared to come home in case she gets told off. It might have started off as a joke and now she knows it’s gone too far.’

‘Laura wouldn’t play a joke like that.’

‘How can we be sure, Gina?’ he said, trying to sound a little more jovial. ‘She’s a playful kid. She might.’

‘She wouldn’t play a joke like that,’ Gina snapped.

‘She might with some of her friends.’

‘Then where are the friends, Frank? They’re all at home, their mothers told me when I rang. None of them have seen Laura since they left school.’

Perhaps she got lost somewhere.’

‘Got lost walking home from school?’ Gina interrupted. ‘Got lost walking the same route she always walks? She isn’t lost, Frank. She’s missing. Our daughter is missing. It’s nearly dark now and she’s not home. God knows where she is.’

‘Ring her friends’ houses again.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know what else we can do,’ he admitted disconsolately.

‘I’m going out to look for her again,’ Gina announced. ‘I’m going to walk around like I did before but this time I’ll stay out until I see her.’

‘You can’t. What if she comes home while you’re out?’

‘Then you come and help me or you come home and wait while I drive around or you drive around while I wait. Help me, Frank. Do something.’

‘Call the police again. Talk to them.’

‘They won’t do anything yet. How many fucking times? Look, I need you here now. I need you, Frank.’

He felt the sweat beading on his forehead.

‘I’ve got another two hours before I can leave,’ he told her.

‘We’re talking about our daughter, Frank,’ Gina reminded him. ‘Are you going to put your fucking job before her?’

‘Don’t you dare say that to me,’ he snarled. ‘I put nothing before Laura. She’s all that matters to me. She’s the most precious thing in my life. She’s the only thing in my life.’ He let out an angry breath. ‘I’ll be home in half an hour. I’ll tell them what’s happening. They’ll understand. When I get back we’ll decide what to do and where to go.’

‘And what do I do while I’m waiting for you to get here?’

‘I don’t know, Gina,’ he snapped. ‘Try praying.’

He hung up.

If he could only pull the slivers of wood away then he could open a hole in the lid.

Paul Crane ran that idea through his mind over and over again as he felt his thumbnail sink into the wood of the coffin lid.

It was possible. It had to be.

Digging your way through thick wood and then up through earth. Go on then.

He pushed the internal voice to the back of his mind. Stifled its insistent interruption and continued picking at the coffin lid. It was more difficult in the pitch-blackness because he would not be able to see how much progress he’d made but he kept his thumb in position, moving it back and forth, occasionally withdrawing it slightly to feel the indentation he’d created. He used his index finger as well, eager to widen the gap as quickly as possible, trying to ignore the fact that the groove he’d managed to carve with his nails was less than a millimetre across. It was hardly an escape hatch, was it?

Nevertheless, he persevered, the perspiration pouring off him as he worked away. He realised that, as ever, time was his problem.

‘Time is on my side.’

Or not, as the case may be.

Even if he managed to open a fist-sized hole in the box, how long would it take him to do that? An hour? Longer? He wondered if he had an hour’s worth of oxygen left inside the box.

‘Don’t think about that,’ he told himself, his voice echoing within the cramped confines of the coffin. ‘Don’t think about anything except getting out.’

He yelped as he bent his thumbnail backwards.

‘Fuck,’ he snarled as the sudden pain shot through the digit. He allowed his hand to drop to his side and he lay there for a moment until the discomfort subsided then, slowly, he raised his hand again, feeling across the lid for the small gash in the wood.

He couldn’t feel it at first and his heart thudded a little faster against his chest. Had he imagined it? Had his scratching and clawing been worthless after all? He ran his fingertips over the wood, pushing through the rent in the satin until he finally found the gouged area of coffin lid. Paul let out a sigh of relief and concentrated on the gash once again, rubbing a little more quickly with his finger and thumb, becoming impatient when the groove didn’t seem to increase either in depth or width. He scratched more aggressively at it, grunting in frustration in the process.

‘Come on, come on,’ he gasped.

He felt more pain in his fingertip. Sharper and even more severe than the first time.

A splinter had come free from the lid of the box. It had buried itself in the soft flesh behind the nail of his index finger as deep as the cuticle.

Paul was surprised by the extent of the pain. It felt as if the end of his finger had been dipped in boiling water. It was agony.

However, he dare not stop and he scratched frenziedly at the coffin lid, feeling something warm now running down two of his fingers. Another splinter speared into the pad of his middle finger and he shouted in pain once more.

It was another minute before he finally pulled his hand away, aware that at least one nail was hanging off and that he had sustained two deep splinters. His hand was shaking and he could feel the blood running from his fingers. He imagined it soaking into the satin beneath him. Staining the material as surely as the sweat that was pumping from his body.

He punched at the lid with his other hand, furious with the box now. He vented his rage and fear on the wooden casket as if it were a living thing, pounding against the lid and the sides, shrieking like a madman, ignoring the pain in his right hand and the blood that sometimes sprayed up on to his face or chest. He could feel the warm droplets landing on him as he thrashed about impotently. Paul kicked at the bottom of the coffin, too, until it seemed that every part of his body was fighting against the casket that held him captive.

When he finally lay back, exhausted, his face and the rest of his body was dripping with sweat.

The pain from his right hand seemed to have intensified
and his index finger was throbbing mightily. Paul lifted it slowly to his mouth and tasted the blood there. When he ran his tongue slowly over the digit he could also feel one end of the sharp splinter that had torn its way down behind his nail.

For a second he considered trying to remove it. If he could tease the end of the splinter with his tongue then he might be able to grip the sliver of wood with his teeth and pull it free. But, in the darkness, it would be all the more difficult. He allowed his hand to flop down uselessly beside him again and merely lay there, gasping for breath.

His situation had worsened considerably if that was possible. Now, no longer was he merely trapped in a coffin below ground but he had exhausted all his hopes of escape, his hands were bleeding and throbbing and his oxygen was running out more quickly than he’d imagined it would. The heat within the box was also building. The sweat was puddling around his sternum when he lay still and he could feel it soaking into the satin beneath him as well as slicking his face and neck. This, he guessed, was due to the change in the compos ition of the air inside the box. The concentration of carbon dioxide must now be higher than that of oxygen. Surely if that was the case then the end was much nearer than he feared.

He sucked in a breath and tasted the acidity on his tongue. The realisation made his heart thump faster. Paul was beginning to feel light-headed.

That knot of fear he’d felt in his stomach began to enlarge once again but this time it refused to be controlled.
He could feel it swelling and bulging like some out-of-control tumour, feeding on his terror and bloating him until he could barely move.

And then he heard the voice.