More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse (8 page)

Mayor Espe warned Ruen to cut out the scare
tactics, and he finally did, but only because in May of that year,
1890, one of the coffin bells rang. Luckily, it happened during the
day, while people strolled in the cemetery visiting loved ones. At
first they were confused at the tinny-sounding ring, wondering
where it came from. When they realized it was a coffin bell, the
women rang the large church bell to signal the townfolk, while the
men took off their coats and grabbed shovels.

It was the Halvarson boy, ten-years old,
whom they believed dead of influenza. When they got to the casket
and pried it open, there he was – blue in the face, gasping for
air, but very much alive. His mother fainted, and his father vowed
to tithe that year. “A miracle,” he said.

Later, when the Halvarson boy talked about
his ordeal, he said that it was as if something had awoken him. He
opened his eyes in the darkness of the grave to the sound of
scraping against the coffin’s wood. Doctor Ulland explained how
one’s senses became more attuned at times of panic, and it could
have been something as simple as a snake or beetles exploring the
wooden exterior.

People wondered,
What if the bell had
rung in the middle of the night when no one was around?
They
had barely gotten to the boy in the nick of time; he’d been close
to suffocating. But if no one was around to hear the bell?

Undertaker Ruen suggested Amund to Pastor
Blom, and he was hired within the week.

For the next two months, the dead stayed
dead and the coffin bells stayed silent. The nights were warm, if
not hot, and the weather had been dryer than usual. Tonight,
however, a light rain arrived, and Amund sat under the eaves of the
church instead of lounging on the soft cemetery grass. The candle
in his lantern sputtered as he practiced his aim at marbles on the
flat, stone surface of the walkway at the rear of the church. A
half-whittled stick lay next to him.

In the distance, lightening arched across
the black sky. Amund counted to ten before the low rumble of
thunder came. He went back to his marbles. No Frode and Jacobine
making love in the cemetery tonight. Amund hardened slightly at the
thought of them. Jacobine’s soft moans, her skirt pulled up around
her waist, her breasts exposed to the night air…

Amund slid his hand down the front of his
trousers. Was he the only one who knew about their affair? He
closed his eyes to better imagine them.
Her naked flesh under
the moonlight
.

Something rang softly nearby. A bell.

Amund took his hands from his pants and
stood. Had he really heard it? A bell? The only burial lately had
been of the widow Ingebretson two days earlier. She was in her late
eighties; impossible that she was still alive even if she
had
been accidentally buried alive.

It was the storm. The wind.

He listened.

There it was again; the sound of a bell,
clear even over the rain and distant thunder. He picked up his
candle lantern and jogged toward the widow’s grave. The ringing
stopped as he neared. He stood, waiting.

There. It rang again. Amund dropped to his
knees to examine the bell. Did the wind cause this? The bell was
enclosed on all sides, with only a hole for a cord to reach into
the bell’s housing, and a few other strategically placed holes for
amplification.

Amund pinched the bell cord lightly between
his thumb and index fingers.

He felt a slight tug.
Good God!

He let go of the cord, stood and ran to the
church as the sound of the coffin bell grew more and more urgent.
He rushed up the steps of the three-story bell tower. He pulled on
the thick rope and rang the large church bell until he felt a tap
on his back. Amund whirled around.

“
Easy, boy. Easy.” It was Pastor Blom
accompanied by a handful of men.

“
The coffin bell,” Amund said
breathlessly. “The widow Ingebretson –
ringing!
”

“
Settle down.”

“
You have to believe me.”

Pastor Blom turned to the men. “Shovels!” he
demanded. “Start digging. Hurry, now!”

The men hurried off.

The pastor said to Amund. “You’re absolutely
sure it was the widow Ingebretson? You weren’t dreaming it?”

“
I swear to you,” Amund
said.

The pastor patted Amund on the shoulder. “Go
rest yourself. I’ll have Mrs. Blom pour you a pint.”

Amund sat on the stone floor of the narthex,
witness to the dawn slowly illuminating the large, stained glass
window over the back door. The pint of weak beer did little to calm
his nerves, and he decided to go back outside and check on the
progress of the diggers. More townsfolk had arrived, curious as to
what they’d find. Was there to be another miracle? It would have to
be a
real
miracle this time, if the widow turned up
alive.

The town’s banker, Mr. Thune, finally struck
wood. “Here!” he said

An excited murmur ran through the crowd. The
digging crew cleared the top and edges of the coffin with renewed
vigor. Someone tossed Thune an axe. He struck at the lid with the
blade.

“
Careful,” someone shouted. “She may
be alive in there.”

Thune got down on hands and knees and
shouted at the coffin. “Mrs. Ingebretson, if you can hear me, stay
clear of the lid. I’m going to chop through it.” He jumped back to
his feet and took another couple whacks until he’d cracked through
the lid. Again, he dropped to his knees and put his mouth to the
crack. “Mrs. Ingebretson, can you hear me?”

He tried looking through the crack. “I can’t
see!” He stood and took a few more swings, widening the crack.
“Mrs. Ingebretson!” He dropped to his hands and knees again and
peered into the crack. The crowd waited silently above.

He stood up, a queer look on his face.
“She’s gone,” he said.

“
You mean she’s dead,” undertaker Ruen
said.

“
No,” Thune said, shaking his head. “I
mean she’s not there.”

A gasp went through the crowd, and then
there was talking and shouting. Undertaker Ruen jumped down onto
the cracked coffin lid. “Impossible!” he said. “I put her under
myself!” He got down onto his stomach and peered through the crack.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered. “The axe!” he demanded. “Hand me the
axe!”

Thune handed the axe over. Ruen splintered
apart the coffin lid until there was a large enough opening for all
to see.

It was perplexing. Horrifying. The bottom of
the coffin had been broken through, the bedding that the widow had
laid on torn to shreds. There was dirt mixed with the bedding, and
in the center a depression, as if a hole had caved in beneath.

“
What the hell kind of undertaker are
you?” roared Thune.

“
How dare you?” Ruen responded. “You
think I – ”

“
Gentlemen!” cried Pastor Blom. “I’ve
seen Ruen’s work, I watched the widow’s burial. So did most of
you!”

“
But how do you explain this?” Thune
asked.

The pastor grabbed a shovel and jumped into
the freshly reopened grave. He moved the ruined bedding and dirt
aside. “There’s a hole here,” he exclaimed. He looked up at the
apprehensive faces circling the grave. “Something took her.
Something came up from beneath and took her.”

Amund was no longer alone at night. Five
others joined him, listening for the sound of coffin bells.

No more Frode and Jacobine, Amund thought.
Ah, well.

The men were jovial enough, although fraught
with nervousness. One of them brought cards, and they played poker
for acorns to pass the nighttime hours. The first few nights
consisted of false alarms. A man would swear he heard
something
, and they’d all stop and listen for a few moments
before relaxing again. One night a bell rang out, but it turned out
to be the Frantzen boys pulling a prank. Mr. Thune, volunteering as
one of the new night watchmen, caught one of them and took a switch
to his back.

Over a week into this new vigilance, with a
clear sky, a quarter moon, and thousands of bright stars, Amund
remarked, “There’s thunder. Did you hear it? In the distance.”

“
There’s not a cloud in the sky, boy,”
said one of the men. “It’s probably your stomach. Here, have an
apple.”

A bit later, Hans Bogen sat up. “I heard it,
too,” he whispered. “Thunder.”

Amund nodded. “I heard it.”

Thune said, “I heard
something
.”

The men stood, listening, looking out over
the cemetery, the polished granite and marble stones sparkling
silver with starlight.

Thunder again, only this time they felt it,
too.

“
The earth,” said Bogen. “It
trembles.”

“
An earthquake?” Amund
asked.

“
Here?” Bogen asked. “In
Minnesota?”

“
I felt it, too,” said
Thune.

A bell rang.

They listened for a stunned, silent moment
before Thune shouted. “Quick! Shovels!”

They followed the ringing to its source; a
grave on the edge of the cemetery. It was the Isakson boy, eight
years old, struck down by pneumonia and one of the first to be
buried that year after the ground thawed.

They got to work immediately, slicing easily
through the sod with the blades of their shovels, digging
methodically, bearing down, creating a growing mound of fresh earth
next to the grave as the bell continued ringing. As they neared the
appropriate depth, Thune cried out, “Amund – the axe!” Amund thrust
the axe into Thune’s waiting hands.

Thune chopped at the coffin lid before all
the dirt was removed. They weren’t worried about hurting the boy;
his resurrection was by now an impossibility. But
something
caused the bell to ring. Something had desecrated and stole the
widow Ingebretson.

Splinters of pine flew into the air. Thune
didn’t stop hacking away until his own weight caused the rest of
the lid to break beneath him. He dropped the axe and grabbed hold
of something.

“
Holy Christ, help me!” he
shouted.

Amund jumped in next to him, the coffin’s
bedding again shredded. Thune held fast to something – an arm, a
child’s arm, now mostly bone and rotted tendon. The rest of the
tiny body disappeared into a hole at the bottom of the coffin, a
hole no more than a foot wide. Thune flew backward as the arm came
loose. He tossed the detached arm out of the grave and scrambled
back to the smaller hole, the hole beneath the coffin, and reached
in. His eyes widened in horror. He gasped. “It’s – ”

Even in the dim light, Amund saw the color
drain from Thune’s face. Amund grabbed him around the waist.

“
Jesus God, it hurts!” Thune
cried.

Bogen and Gudbrand Haagen jumped into the
grave and grabbed hold of Thune. There was the terrible sound of
ripping flesh, and the popping of wet bone and tendon. As with the
dead boy’s arm moments before, the group fell as Thune’s body
separated from the limb.

Thune’s scream was high-pitched and
garbled.

“
Get him out of here!” Bogen
yelled.

They scrambled out of the grave and reached
back to pull Thune’s bleeding body up and out. As they did so,
something scaly and large, some snake-like thing, emerged from the
hole and grabbed both of Thune’s legs in a teeth-ringed maw. The
men instinctively loosened their grip as they recoiled at the
sight.

It was all the time it needed to pull Thune
from them, pull him into the hole from which the creature came.
Dirt caved in after it, leaving a depression of blood-soaked soil.
The men stood back from the edge of the grave, panting,
unbelieving, uncomprehending.

“
What...was...that?” Haagen
gasped.

They looked at each other, trembling.

“
What do we tell the mayor?” Bogen
asked. “He’ll think us insane.”

Haagen tried to light his pipe, but was
unable to do so. He bit on the stem in frustration, and then said,
“We must tell him what we saw. There’s to be no hiding it. Better
the town be prepared by the truth.”

Bogen nodded. “Aye, you’re right.”

Amund said, “I don’t know if I have the
words to say what we saw. Even if I wanted to.”

Haagen said, “We do the best we can. That’s
all anybody can do.”

In the predawn darkness, the men walked
across the road to the pastor’s house and woke him. They said
nothing as they led him down the road to the mayor’s house and woke
him, too. Mayor Espe made a pot of strong coffee, and as they drank
the hot, black liquid around his kitchen table, the men told the
mayor and pastor what they had witnessed, each in their own way,
filling in the blanks for each other when necessary, and nodding
encouragement to each other when the speaker was unable to
continue.

Finally, Pastor Blom spoke. “We can have no
more burials in the cemetery until we find a way to stop this.
Otherwise all we are doing is feeding this – this
thing
fresh food.” Blom then looked from one man’s bloodshot eyes to the
next. “I think we should dig up the cemetery. Move the coffins to
unmolested ground.”

Mayor Espe shook his head. “It’s the start
of the harvest.”

Bogen blinked. “I’ve got to see if Tuva’s
all right. I’ve got to make sure she’s safe. I’ll do it myself if I
have to. Make sure she’s safe, and if that abomination tries to
take her, it’ll have to get through me first.”

Amund remembered how Tuva used to invite him
in whenever she baked an apple pie. She died two years earlier from
falling off a horse. “I’ll help,” Amund said.

Bogen nodded and put his hand over
Amund’s.