The Most Frightening Story Ever Told (9 page)
Read The Most Frightening Story Ever Told Online
Authors: Philip Kerr
“That fool Rapscallion needs to get a proper cash register. Sure, this one belongs in a police museum. Take my word. It could have killed you, son, and no mistake.”
“Mr. Rapscallion did warn me,” said Billy. “About the cash register.”
“You might need this.” Mr. Stoker handed Billy his business card. “In case you should wish to sue your employer. I'm a lawyer, you know.”
“Sue?” Billy shrugged. “Why would I want to sue?”
“Nervous shock,” suggested Mr. Stoker. “Or a possible whiplash injury from having to duck that drawer so quickly. My advice would be to see a doctor and have yourself checked out, as soon as possible. Just in case you sustained some kind of injury you don't yet know about.”
“I've seen enough doctors to last me a lifetime,” said Billy. “Besides, Mr. Rapscallion's not my employer. He's my friend.”
Mr. Stoker nodded. “Well then, we'll say no more about it, eh?”
“Yes, that would be best,” said Billy. “Honestly, I'm fine.”
And when the sale was concluded, Mr. Stoker left the shop.
Ten minutes later Mr. Rapscallion returned from the bank.
“Sell any books?”
“Yes, I soldâ¦a few,” said Billy, and recited the three titles that had been sold to Miss Danvers and Mr. Stoker.
“Excellent,” said Mr. Rapscallion.
“Your daughter dropped by,” added Billy.
“Oh yeah?” Mr. Rapscallion tried to look indifferent. “What did she want? Money, I guess. It certainly couldn't have been that she came in here because she wanted to buy a book.”
“She didn't say what she wanted,” said Billy.
“That figures.”
“I liked her. She wasâ¦pretty.”
“You think?”
“Definitely.”
“Did anything else happen while I was out?”
“No.” Billy grinned. “Nothing at all.”
Before very long, Mr. Rapscallion was frequently relying on Billy to mind the store while he went to the bank or to get a latte from the coffee shop. Sometimes he got one for Billy, too.
One day, the mailwoman, whose name was Janine Delafons, delivered a rather formal-looking envelope on which, in very fine handwriting of the kind for which you really need a good fountain pen, was Mr. Rapscallion's full name and address:
REXFORD
ERASMUS
RAPSCALLION
THE
T
HIRD
C/O
THE
HAUNTED
HOUSE
OF
BOOKS
65
HIGH
STREET
,
HITCHCOCK
,
MA
01779
“I wouldn't have ever guessed that Erasmus was his middle name,” admitted Janine.
A little later on, Billy watched Mr. Rapscallion come behind the cash register and open the envelope.
“What is it?” he asked.
Mr. Rapscallion showed him a letter and a large square of stiff card with a lot of embossed writing and a golden edge.
“It's an invitation,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “To the B.A.B. dinner. They want me to make a speech about independent bookselling.”
“What's the B.A.B.?” asked Billy.
“It stands for Bankrupt American Booksellers,” said Mr. Rapscallion.
Billy frowned. “You're not bankrupt,” he said. “At least not yet. So why have you been invited?”
“Good question,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “And thanks, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For sounding like you were surprised I should get myself invited to such an event. Except, of course, that I was joking. It's actually called the Board of American Booksellers. Not the Bankrupt American Booksellers, although I sometimes think it should be. Every time I go to the dinner, I think that everyone there is on the edge of going out of business.”
Mr. Rapscallion looked thoughtful for a moment, which meant he kept on gathering his ponytail and drawing its length through one of his heavily ringed hands.
“You know, that gives me an idea,” he said. “This is a ticket for two people. Me and a guest. And I don't have anyone else to take. Last year I hardly wanted to go myself. But I guess I'll have to go because they seem to want me to make a speech. And, well, since you've been working here, you do kind of qualify as an American bookseller. So how would you like to go along with me, Billy?”
“Me?”
“Well, why not?”
“Wouldn't you prefer to take your own daughter? Altaira?”
“Are you kidding? She'd hate it. It was Altaira who first started calling the B.A.B. the Bankrupt American Booksellers in the first place. She thinks the whole business is on the edge of going belly-up.”
“Or a lady? Miss Danvers, for instance?”
“Miss Danvers?” Mr. Rapscallion nearly choked. “That nutcase? I'd rather ask a skunk to tea than take her along.”
“Then what about Janine, the mailwoman? She's attractive.”
“True.” Mr. Rapscallion looked embarrassed. “But if I was going to ask her, then it's plain I'd actually have
to ask her,
if you know what I mean. And the fact of the matter is that I just don't have the nerve to ask her anything except what kind of day she's had. Besides, she's not even a bookseller, so I don't know why we're even having this conversation. Do you want to come to the stupid dinner, or not?”
“Yes, all right,” said Billy.
“Of course, as a minor you'll have to get permission from your parents,” said Mr. Rapscallion.
“I'll get my dad to write you a letter,” said Billy. “Will that do?”
Mr. Rapscallion nodded. “Good, well, that's settled. Now all I have to do is think what the heck I'm going to talk about. In my speech.” He shrugged. “To that extent, it's like real life, I guess.”
“Can I see the invitation?” asked Billy.
“Sure.” Mr. Rapscallion handed it over.
“Oh my god,” said Billy. “You didn't tell me that it's in Kansas City. This is so great.”
“It's always in Kansas City. At the public library.”
“You don't understand. I've never been out of Hitchcock in my life. I've never even been to Boston, and that's just nineteen miles away. This is so fantastic.”
Mr. Rapscallion winced. “No more numbers, please. I told you. I've always had a thing about numbers.”
But Billy was so excited about the idea of going to Kansas City he had quite forgotten Mr. Rapscallion's fear of numbers. Besides, he didn't really understand how anyone could ever be nervous of numbers. Especially in the Haunted House of Books.
“How far away is Kansas City?” he asked unwittingly. “Exactly.”
Mr. Rapscallion closed his eyes and looked weary. “Now you've done it, Billy.”
“Done what? All I asked was the distance between Hitchcock and Kansas City.”
“Let me see now.” Mr. Rapscallion started counting on his fingers. “Boston is one hour ahead of Kansas City. One thousand and eighty-nine nautical miles. Except of course that we can't go there by ship. On account of how there's no water between here and Kansas City. Not enough to put a ship in, anyway. So we'll be going west. By plane.”
“We're actually going on a plane?” Billy gasped.
“We're certainly not going by covered wagon,”
said Mr. Rapscallion.
“I've never been on a plane,” said Billy. “I'd better get myself some ID.”
Mr. Rapscallion was still counting, madly. “That means we'll have to take account of the curvature of the earth. And using the great circle formula to compute the air travel mileage, as the crow flies, so to speak, I should say the distance is exactly one thousand two hundred and fifty-three miles. Which will take us three hours and twenty-seven minutes. That's aboard a Boeing 707, which normally seats one hundred and fifty passengers. But only one hundred and thirty-nine on a Boeing 757-400.”
“It's okay,” said Billy. “It's okay. I just wanted to know how far it was. You can stop now.”
“Shh, let me finish,”
said Mr. Rapscallion. “Now then. The total carbon footprint for a flight on the 707 from Boston to Kansas City is seven hundred and two pounds of CO
2
. That will give us each a carbon footprint of around four and a half pounds of CO
2
, so call it nine, there and back. That's assuming the plane is full, mind. So it could be more.”
“Thanks,” said Billy. “I think you've answered my question. Really.”
“
You asked me this, Billy. This is your fault.
Of course, the flight time ought to be less than that. I mean, if you were to assume a flight speed of five hundred miles an hourânot unreasonable on a 757âit ought to be just two and a half hours. But they fly slow to save on fuel. So you can't make that assumption.”
“Hello-oh,” said Billy. “Mr. Rapscallion, sir. You can shut up now.”
Mr. Rapscallion was starting to look desperate. He nodded at the Brown Bomber.
“Hit the key, Billy.”
He said this even as he started off on yet another calculation. “Incidentally, Kansas produced a record 492.2 million bushels of wheat last year and that's enough to make 35.9 billion loaves of bread. Of course if we drove there it would take us twenty-two hours and forty-seven minutes,” added Mr. Rapscallion. “Assuming an average driving speed of fifty-five miles per hour.
Hit the key on the Brown Bomber, Billy.
At six dollars a gallon for gas, that meansâ”
“But the drawer will hit you,” protested Billy.
“âin a car like mine, that gets twenty-five miles to the gallon, at a steady fifty-five, we'll use approximately fifty gallons of gas, which means that we'll spend around three hundred dollars in gas to get to Kansas City. And three hundred back again, which is six hundred dollars; and we would spend forty-five and one-half hours driving, in total, spending thirteen dollars an hour on fuelâ¦.
For Pete's sake,
hit the key, Billy!
”
Billy hit the key on the Brown Bomber. The drawer came flying out of the cash register like an express train and struck Mr. Rapscallion square in the tummy like a car trapped on a level crossing. The impact carried him halfway across the shop and dumped him on his behind at the front door, where he sat like a pile of junk mail.
“For every locked mind there's a key to find,” said Mr. Rapscallion, rubbing his stomach in pain.
Billy rushed to Mr. Rapscallion's side. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I think I'll live,” said Mr. Rapscallion, standing up. “Thanks for helping me out there, kid. Once I get started on those numbers, it's like I get trapped inside an electronic calculator and I have to keep doing the math on things. Stupid things. Once I get going, I have to see the process right through to the end. Until I can't think of any other numbers to calculate. Sometimes that can take days. So it's quicker if something hits me. That breaks the chain of concentration, see?”
“There was a boy in my class at school who was a bit like that,” said Billy. “People used to say he had an allergy to asparagus. But if you ask me, that guy would eat anything.”
Mr. Rapscallion smiled. “Sounds to me like what he actually had was Asperger's syndrome.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, that makes more sense, doesn't it? Dumb of me.”
“Forget about it. Anyway, that's what I have. A mild form of A.S. It just means that sometimes I appear to be a little eccentric.”
“If you ask me, the world would be a pretty boring place if everyone was the same. So three cheers for eccentricity. That's what I say.”
“You're right,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “If it wasn't for eccentricity, we'd have to light the streets with gas.”
The next day Mr. Rapscallion left Billy in charge of the shop for a whole morning while he went to the dentist. When, an hour later, the front door opened, it was to admit neither a customer nor Mr. Rapscallion but his daughter, Altaira, who preferred to be called Redford.
“You seem to have a knack for coming in here when your father is out,” Billy told her. “He's gone to the dentist and won't be back until lunchtime.”
“That's all right,” said Redford. “As a matter of fact, it was you I came to see, not my dad.”
Which was true, only she hadn't actually realized this until she said it. There was something about Billy she liked a lot. He wasn't the same as other boys she had met. She thought that most of them were dorks, always fooling around and saying stupid things. But Billy was more thoughtful than them. Sensitive, too. She appreciated that.
“Oh?” Billy blushed and nervously smiled a little ghost of a smile. “That's nice. Er, what can I do for you, Altaira? I mean Redford.”
“Nothing.” Redford bridled a little with embarrassment. “Do I need a reason for wanting to talk to you?”
“No, of course not.”
“I was passing, okay? I thought I could just hang out here awhile with you.”
“Okay.” Billy shrugged. “That'd be great.”
“Only don't make the mistake of thinking I have nothing else to do with my time. I do. I'm actually a very busy person. In that respect I'm quite like my dad. At least that's what my mother tells me.”
“Right.”
“As a matter of fact, I knew he wouldn't be here,” said Redford. “You see, my mom is also my dad's dentist. I know that sounds weird, given that they're not actually married anymore. But this is a small town and good dentists are kind of few and far between. Personally, I wouldn't care for the idea of having my ex-wife in charge of my dental procedures. I would be too worried that she might take the opportunity of inflicting some extra pain on me. Then again, if I was my mom I might find that idea just too tempting to resist.”
Billy smiled. “You've got such a lot of imagination it makes me wonder that you don't like reading.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, but did he tell you why?”
“No. But he kind of implied that it's because you hate him.”
“That is so not true. And typical of my dad to believe he's the reason. He's not. You want to know the truth?”
“Sure.” Billy shrugged. “If you want to tell me.”
“The fact is, it was one particular book in this shop that put me off reading,
forever,
” explained Redford.
“Gee, that must have been a really bad book.”
“On the contrary,” said Redford. “It was a really good book.” She paused. “But there was something about it I didn't like.”
“That sounds like a book I want to read,” said Billy.
“To be more accurate,” said Redford, “it was an anonymous story in a book called
Juvenile Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
My dad thinks it might actually have been written by the young Edgar Allan Poe. But he doesn't know for sure. Nobody does. He's shown it to all kinds of experts who can't say for sure if it is or if it isn't.”
“Scary, huh?”
“I don't know that âscary' is the right word,” said Redford. “It's not the kind of story that makes you look over your shoulder or keeps you awake or anything. It's more subtle than that. And it still haunts me, to this day. Like the memory of a terrible accident.”
“I know what that's like,” said Billy, and told her about his own car accident.
“Hey, I'm sorry,” said Redford when Billy was finished. “If I'd known that you'd been in a car accident, I wouldn't have used that as an example to explain how the Poe story stays with me.”
“It's no problem,” said Billy. “I'm over it. Honest.”
He smiled at her to make her feel comfortable again, and she found herself smiling back at him. Fondly.
“But I'd still like to read that story,” he added.
Redford grinned. “You sure about that?”
“I like scary stories.”
“Why?” Redford shook her head. “Why do people like being scared so much?”
Billy thought for a moment before answering. “I think we've just evolved that way,” he said. “Somehow it's tied in to our survival. We like to test ourselves. See if it's still there. Maybe if we hadn't had it, we'd have died out long ago.”
Redford nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”
“What is it called, anyway?” Billy asked her. “This story?”
“The Pocket Handkerchief,” said Redford.
“And where can I find a copy?”
“Fortunately, there's only one,” said Redford, pointing at a little revolving bookcase beside the sales desk. “I'm pretty sure he keeps it in there with all his other rare books and first editions.” She knelt down and quickly found the book she was looking for. “Yes, here it is. But do me a favor, okay? When we see each other again, don't tell me your opinion about it. It gives me the creeps just to think of anyone reading it.”
“Sure,” said Billy. “Don't worry. I won't ever mention it.”
“And don't tell my dad I was here. I don't like him knowing what I've been doing.”
“All right. If you insist.”
“I do insist. It'll be our secret.”
Billy loved the two of them having a secret. No girl had ever asked him to keep a secret before. It was like they now had a bond between them. He was already looking forward to the next time Redford came into the shop. At the same time, he could hardly wait for her to leave so that he could find the story; and as soon as she was gone, he opened the slim volume and started to read.
by Anonymous
PART I
I cannot remember precisely when I met Scipio for the first time but I have the strong sense that he knew me before I ever came to live in the house of his master, Mr. Aââ, in Richmond, Virginia, during the year of our Lord 18â.
I was aged only two when that happened, my own father having died of the consumption, and my mother married Mr. Aââ with a haste that bordered on the indecent. For myself I do not remember my own father at all but, if the reader will permit the apparent contradiction, I have never forgotten him. He was buried in the churchyard of St. John's Episcopal Church, where, it is said, General Benedict Arnold, the traitor, quartered his troops and their horses during the War of Independence.
Another six years passed before my beloved mother, Elizabeth, also succumbed to the same malady as my father, leaving me and my brother, William Henry, alone with our stepfather. She was just aged twenty-nine. I was myself but eight years old at the time, yet not a day has passed since then when I have not thought of her.
Scipio, who was one of my adoptive father Mr. Aââ's three house slaves, and very well educatedâit was he, not Mr. Aââ, who usually helped me with my Latin homeworkâtold me that on several occasions he saw my mother on the stage in Richmond, for she was an actress, and thought she was one of the handsomest ladies he ever saw. This is also my own opinion.
Memories grow dim, however, and the one portrait I have of her is I think a porcelain miniature which makes her look like a child's doll and, at the very least, something not alive; that is its greatest failing. Would that were all. But I am also reminded of my mother as something not alive whenever I look at the only other thing of hers I now possess, which is a white pocket handkerchief with her initials stitched upon its corner. This is to hardly state the truth of the matter, however, which is that whenever I contemplate this handkerchiefâas, from time to time, my strange nature compels me so to doâI am obliged to think of her as something dead and in awful torment. I confess I have often thought of burning the handkerchief; and yet cannot by reason of the fact that it serves to remind me that my living suffering is deservedly shared with her eternal one.
I am now aged twelve and while I am eternally grateful to Mr. Aââ for taking my brother and me into his home, the want of true affection has been the heaviest of my trials. Indeed, my sense of grief and loss is sometimes so heavy that it might reasonably be supposed that I had been bereaved but recently. Especially since it is my habit to go walking through cemeteries and I confess I can no more pass a newly filled grave without stopping to consider the fate of the poor wretch who lies beneath the soil than another boy of my age can ignore the sight in a grocery store of a jar full of candy.
My stepfather says I have a morbid disposition, and I must admit that as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by death, and rare is the night that I do not stare into the too solid darkness of my room and imagine death's hard unseen face staring coldly back at me.
Scipio said that it was perfectly natural that any child alive should be interested in death, for you couldn't have one without the other, and that back in Africa, where he came from originally, a boy such as myself who demonstrated such an interest in the afterlife would have marked himself out as a future houngan, which is a kind of priest or witch doctor. Scipio also told me that his own grandfather Msizi had been a great houngan and knew better than anyone how to connect the world of spirits and ancestors with the living world of human beings.
“All the same, young Master Edgar,” said Scipio, “it seems to me that you got all of eternity to find out the answers to these questions. So maybe it's best you don't go rushing that particular inquiry.”
I persisted, however, with the result that Scipio and I often talked about what might lie on the other side of death's mildewed curtain, although the poor man might easily have felt by reason of his station that he was obliged to indulge my youthful questions about the matter upon which I most earnestly wished to know more, and that was this: What is it really like to be dead?
Persistence paid off with the discovery that Scipio himself was in possession of a houngan's secrets and knew very well how the world of the living might become better acquainted with the world of the dead; and I must confess that I took unfair advantage of our relationship, constantly badgering that unhappy African to give me a clearer account of exactly how such a closer acquaintance might be achieved.
Finally, and with great reluctance, he told me something of what I wanted to know.
“Anybody who wants to find out what it's really like to be dead,” he explained, “has no choice but to go and visit with the folks in the underworld. That ain't easy. And it ain't for the faint-hearted, boy. If you is going to visit the underworld, you needs to find yourself a door. Ain't but one place in Richmond to find a door like that. The cemetery. And don't think I'm talking about a stroll around them headstones like you is partial to. I'm talking about something much more profound, in the true Latin sense of that word.
“The plain fact is, Master Edgar, you needs to get yourself buried alive. Just like one of them vestal virgins from Roman times, when they was accused of violating their vows. They got sealed up in a cave with a small amount of bread and water, so that the goddess Vesta might save them, supposing they was innocent, of course. Or like Saint Castulus, who was chamberlain to the emperor Diocletian. You remember what happened to him? They buried him alive in a sand pit on the Via Labicana.”
I knew the story well, of course, and I was hardly as horrified at the idea of premature burial as perhaps Scipio had hoped I might be.
“It's not just that,” continued Scipio. “It's the way you is buried, too. You got to be buried alive with the lid of the coffin facing down. Now, most folks who get themselves buried do it the other way, of course. With the coffin lid facing up. On account of that's the general direction they want their souls to travel in. But if you is going calling on the underworld, you got to be going the other way. You got to head down.”
“That's it?”
Scipio laughed. “ââThat's it,' he says. Listen to yourself, boy.” Scipio laughed some more. “Being buried alive even for a short while ain't no Sunday school picnic, boy. For one thing, you got to last from dusk until dawn without going plumb crazy. Why, one solitary hour of buried alive would be enough to drive most folks mad. Let alone one whole night.”
“If I am going to visit the underworld, then, strictly speaking, I can hardly be buried alive for the whole night, can I?” I said, with precocious logic. “The coffin lid has to open like a door, you said. In those circumstances it doesn't make any sense for me to be afraid.”
“Land sakes, I do believe you're not,” he said, with some admiration. “Very well, Master Edgar. You figure out a way to get yourself buried alive and Scipio promises he'll have a quiet word with his granddaddy to come and fetch you out of the coffin to give you the five-cent tour of the underworld.”
“Very well. I will.”
And, sooner than either of us expected, I did exactly that, albeit in circumstances that, perhaps, did not reflect well on me.
When a boy in my class at Richmond Academy called Wilson began regularly to bait me for being an orphan and Mr. Aââ's adopted son, he made himself my enemy and I was soon plotting how I might humiliate him in return. One day, when he started to make light of my poor mother's death, I called him a coward and when he denied this I challenged him to swim the span of the Mayo Bridge, which is some four hundred and fifty yards, and Wilson accepted.
I have always been a good swimmer. At the age of eleven I could swim the James River from Shockoe Bottom to Rocky Ridge. The distance of our swim was not so great for me but when the river is in flood as it was then, the current is strong and even a good swimmer risks being swept away. Which is what happened to poor Wilson; and when eventually his drowned body was recovered from the water at Hampton Roads several miles downstream, they buried the boy in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
Almost as soon as Wilson was in the ground I was pestering the understandably reluctant Scipio to help me put my plan into nocturnal action. No, that is incorrect. I plagued him, like he was that hard-hearted pharaoh of Egypt and I was the prophet Moses.
“Wilson's grave is just soft earth,” I told Scipio, “so his coffin should be easy enough to dig up. We can disinter the body tonight and I will take his place in the coffin until morning.”
“You're serious, aren't you?”
I nodded. “Scipio, please try to understand that it's something I feel compelled to do.”
“Ain't you afeard, Master Edgar?”
“Yes, of course I am,” I confessed. “But I still want to do it.”
“Very well. I'll help you. But listen here, you can't never talk about this. Not never. Not to nobody. If'n we get caught or anyone ever finds out what we done, they'll hang old Scipio for sure. You hear?”
“Yes,” I said. “So long as you are alive, Scipio, I won't ever peach.”
By which you may reasonably deduce, gentle reader, that poor Scipio is dead. But more of that anon.
St. John's Churchyard was largely full by 18â, which is why the city of Richmond established Shockoe Hill Cemetery. It was outside of the city and to the northwest of the river and, as cemeteries go, rather a pleasant place where I had sometimes walked, being full of trees such as Virginia elm, pin oak, silver maple, locust, Kentucky coffee, eastern red cedar and yew, and all enclosed by a high brick wall that Scipio and I were obliged to scale after dark, for the cemetery has a gate that is locked every night at eight o'clock. This was to our advantage, however, as the locked gate and the high wall of Shockoe Hill made it seem unlikely that we would be disturbed. It was also fortunate that my stepfather was away at the time and there were only the other house slaves, Mammy and Thomas, to notice that we were not at home and neither of them would ever have informed on us.
In the lowering darkness we set to our nefarious work with pick and shovel excavating the unfortunate Wilson's coffin. It was a hard task for a man and a boy and took the best part of an hour. By the time we had hauled the simple pine box out of the grave I was exhausted and almost looking forward to resting in peace awhile. But I was certainly not looking forward to seeing the dead face of my enemy, Wilson. Perhaps it was guilt, but I had half an idea that he still might awaken and accuse me of getting him drowned. This apprehension was hardly diminished by the sight of the dead boy's face, for he hardly looked dead at all and, indeed, so lifelike did Wilson appear to me that I felt compelled to offer him a double apologyâonce for bringing about his untimely death and again for disturbing his eternal rest.
Gently, Scipio collected the body from the coffin and carried it to the shadow of the brick wall that enclosed the cemetery, and there he laid him down and covered him with some sacking that the sextons had used to line the edge of another open grave that was to be filled the following day.
Then, equipped with a burning tallow candle and a few provisions, I lay down in the coffin on my front. Before Scipio closed the lid on me for the night, however, I sought some assurance from him that all would be well.
“You did remember to speak to your granddaddy, the houngan, Scipio, and tell him to expect me tonight?” I said.
“I can't say for sure that Msizi will be there,” said Scipio. “But I told him, all right. The man knows you're coming to visit awhile. Reckon it'd be rude not to show up and say hello, given all the trouble you and I have been to here.”
“You won't leave the cemetery either,” I said. “Not to go and get a drink from that still in Rocky Ridge like you did last Saturday when you didn't come home until late. I sure wouldn't want you to forget to come back here and dig me up again in the morning, Scipio.”
“I'll be here all night. Like we agreed.”
“Because I think it would be a terrible way to die. Inhumation, they call itâbeing buried alive.”
“Don't worry, Master Edgar,” said Scipio. “I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy. 'Sides, I got to come and get you or else there is nowhere to put your friend Wilson.”
All the same, as Scipio put the lid on the coffin and hammered in a few small nails so that I might more easily be lowered into the grave, I wished that I had thought to bring a Bible with me so that I might have made the slave swear a solemn oath not to leave me buried alive, forever. But were there not many other things that might go wrong with my plan? What if my air ran out? What if Scipio had a heart attack and died before he could dig me up again? What if he was apprehended before he could tell his story? And what if having been apprehended he did tell his story and no one believed him, as well they might not? After all, I knew from my own experience that few if any twelve-year-old boys were as strange as me. Had my own stepfather, Mr. Aââ, not said so? My imagination generated a hundred different anxieties that crowded in upon my mind as I felt the coffin containing my living body descend into Wilson's grave.
Billy stopped reading and shivered, not sure that he had the nerve to read the rest of the story; and yet he knew he would.
“I couldn't ever do something like that,” he said. “Not in a million years.”
