Epitaph (8 page)

Gina Hacket adjusted the oven temperature once again, easing it down by a few degrees.

She didn’t want the food to spoil. She wanted it to be perfect when she dished it up for herself and Laura. She wished that her daughter was home now. The silence inside the house was beginning to become oppressive. Even with the radio on and the vacuous ramblings of the presenters in the background she still felt as if there was no sound filling the void that surrounded her. As she listened she heard a woman giggling as she chatted to a man with a distinctly effeminate voice. They were talking about films and music and premieres and the kinds of thing that were beyond Gina’s comprehension. The woman started talking about a showbiz party she’d attended and all the celebrities she’d seen drinking champagne. Gina felt her depression growing even deeper with each passing word.

She looked around her small kitchen wishing that she could taste some of that kind of life. Just once. That was all she wanted. Just a chance to live well for a short time. It might only be for a week
but to live a life of excitement for even so short a time would be enough for her. If only so that she could say she’d experi enced it, no matter on how small a scale. When she was out sometimes she saw groups of women shopping or sitting having coffee and she envied them so much that it hurt. She envied their friendships and their situations. She guessed that their husbands had such good jobs that they didn’t need to work. How else, she reasoned, could they be sitting in a café in the middle of the day laughing, chatting and eating lunch?

She had friends but they were all in a similar position to her if she was honest. None of them had too much money to spend. Two were divorced, one was bringing up two children alone (the fact that she didn’t see or even know the father of one of them didn’t help). The others struggled by day-to-day in the same way that Gina did. They had nothing to look forward to. No excitement in their lives. At least she had her meetings with her lover, she consoled herself. The meetings might be snatched and hurried but they were better than nothing.

Weren’t they?

What would ever come of the relationship? She would never leave her husband. She’d certainly never leave Laura. And yet, she’d told herself, if her lover should offer to whisk her away to a better life would she be able to refuse? It was a dilemma she’d thought about many times but one she feared she’d never become embroiled in. He’d never ask her to move in with him, would he? Instead she would have to make do with their illicit encounters and the temporary rush of excitement and pleasure that they gave her. Crumbs of comfort in a world devoid of anything approaching fulfilment.

Gina wandered over to the radio and changed stations, twisting the frequency knob until she heard other voices. There was some
static, some foreign words that she didn’t understand and then more voices.

She listened for a moment. It was a discussion about politics.

Gina shook her head and turned the dial once more. There was more music. Classical this time. She moved to another station and found a tune that she recognised and liked. She eased the volume up slightly, hoping that the infectious lightness of the song would somehow transmit itself to her.

It didn’t.

Gina looked at the wall clock and checked its time against the electronic digits on the cooker. She sighed.

Laura should have been home by now.

Paul Crane bumped his head as he tried to turn over.

The impact startled him awake.

He muttered something under his breath, wondering what he had banged his head on and also why it was so dark in the room.

He tried to move a hand to touch the part of his forehead that he’d struck but he couldn’t. His arm wouldn’t move more than an inch.

Again Paul wondered why it was so dark. He couldn’t see an inch in front of him and what the hell was that smell? Try as he might, he was unable to identify it.

He tried to sit up.

A couple of inches and his head collided with something once again.

‘What the hell?’ he grunted.

If this was a dream it was certainly more vivid than any he’d ever had before. What was going on? Why was it so
dark and why couldn’t he move more than an inch or two in any direction?

Beneath his hands he felt slippery material. It wasn’t the leather of his sofa and it wasn’t the cotton of his sheets so he obviously hadn’t managed to make it into bed in his drunken state.

If you’re not in bed, why are you lying down?

The internal voice was back again.

And why is it so completely and utterly pitch-black?

He didn’t remember putting out the lamps in the sitting room. He certainly hadn’t turned the television off. That much he was sure of.

So where’s the light then, dummy?

He lay perfectly still for a second, breathing in that peculiar smell then he pushed outwards to both sides of himself, half expecting to fall off the sofa or discover that he was actually lying on the floor, wedged against the sofa and the coffee table.

That was it. That was what had happened. He’d rolled over in the night and fallen off the sofa, so anaesthetised by the amount he’d drunk that he hadn’t even realised. He was still wearing his bathrobe. That had to be the answer.

So why is it pitch-black? Have you gone blind? That’s what they say about too much masturbating, isn’t it? Makes you go blind. See, they were right.

He tried to rub his eyes, to clear his vision but, once more, when he lifted his arms his elbows banged against something solid. Solid but covered in that same slippery material that was beneath him. He reached up and discovered that the fabric, whatever the hell it was, coated the
area above him, too. Just above him. Barely four inches above him.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ he said aloud but his voice sounded muffled. Constricted. Compressed. As if someone had taken his words and stuffed them into a matchbox.

Ha, ha. Hilarious analogy.

A thought struck him but he dismissed it immediately. It was too ridiculous to entertain for more than a split second. Too imaginatively crazy to be worth dwelling on.

Then why can’t you sit up? Or turn over?

He felt the material beneath him, using his fingertips as a blind man would to read Braille. Only it wasn’t words that were registering in his mind now; it was that thought that had come to him seconds earlier but been sent packing because it was so stupid.

Paul tried to swallow but his throat was dry. He always felt that way after a heavy drinking session. But this wasn’t the dry-mouthed morning-after feeling he had now. His mouth was dry because he was suddenly frightened. He lifted his hands and ran them over the area above his face and chest, then he did the same on either side of him, still desperately trying to identify the material that surrounded him. There was something beneath it, too. Something harder and more solid. He balled both hands into fists and struck out to both sides simultaneously.

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.

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.

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.