A Bribe For The Ferryman

by D R Cartwright

  Could she still hear? Was she still conscious of what was happening around her? People believed that coma victims were capable of hearing their loved one’s voices. People had woken and had recounted what had been said to them. Was this the case with Rachel? And if it was what could Beth say?

  What did you say to someone dying?

  “I’m so sorry. It should have been me…”

  * * *

  She remembered that day now. It was blurred and surrounded by black shadows, but she had been aware of what was going on and remembered everything that was said. She remembered the pain she felt when she realised she had to part with her sister. That alone should have been enough to kill her. In a way she wished it had. At least with death she wouldn’t have found herself in this predicament.

  But what this predicament was exactly, she still wasn’t sure. Everything was misted with confusion.

  Closing her eyes, she concentrated on her rapid, terrified breathing. She needed to get a grip on herself. Panicking was useless. There had been no reply to her calls and she needed to get herself together and think. No one was going to rescue her. She had to do that herself, and in order to win she needed to keep herself together.

  As difficult as it was, she slowed her breathing, taking deep breaths through her nose and exhaling though her parted lips. Gradually her racing heart slowed. It didn’t become relaxed – that would have been impossible, but it was enough for her to gain control over her fears.

  She opened her eyes.

  It was still just as dark. A spark of hope had ignited when she closed her eyes, hope that when she opened them again she would be somewhere else, that this was just a bad dream she waking from but the blackness quelled any hope. She was here. This was no dream.

  A tear dripped down the side of her face, wetting her hair and causing strands to stick to her skin. She wanted to wipe at it but whenever she raised her hand it hit the roof of her confines. If she wiggled enough, she was sure she could manoeuvre her hand up to her face. She gave it try, exploring how much room she actually had around her.

  There wasn’t a lot, and claustrophobia began to bite with its sharp teeth again. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing once more. The bite began to release.

  When she thought about her confines, one image came to mind, an image that sparked her panic over again. It reminded her of the space inside a coffin.

  But how could this be?

  How could she be inside a coffin?

  This realisation awakened more memories of the desecration.

  * * *

  “Why?” Mrs Teasdale said as she looked over the sight of her daughter’s grave. “She was only laid to rest a few days ago. Who would do such a thing?” Her sobs were loud and echoed across the graveyard.

  Brian held his arm tightly across his mother’s shoulders and squeezed. To mourn the loss of a daughter was hard enough, but to be witness to this desecration should never have been allowed. He remembered the look in his mother’s eyes after the police came knocking on their door to explain what had happened. Their apologetic look had been a harsh contrast against his mother’s disbelieving eyes. At first she had laughed. What they were telling her couldn’t be real. That kind of thing didn’t happen anymore. Those tales came from hundreds of years ago in poverty stricken cities, where doctors and scientists paid for the delivery of stolen bodies.

  Grave robbing was a thing of the past.

  So why would anyone want to steal poor Rachel’s body?

  As she began to realise that what she was being told was true, Mrs Teasdale’s face grew deathly pale and serious. Her wide eyes promised tears, followed by a wail and a breakdown, but she fought these back. Instead she insisted on going down to the graveyard to see for herself.

  Brian knew it was a mistake to go. She was still delicate after the funeral and her daughter’s grave was still fresh. Having to face up to these horrors would be too much for her, however Mrs Teasdale possessed a stubbornness that she had inherited from her own headstrong mother, and when she was set on doing something, there was no stopping her. Mrs Teasdale was in her shoes and coat within seconds and heading out the door before anyone could say anything.

  The sight of Rachel’s fresh grave was heartbreaking. Fresh clumps of earth had been pushed up and rested in mounds around a deep hole, a hole that contained an open coffin. The stone, thankfully, was still in one piece. Obviously those responsible were interested in a prize as opposed to needless vandalism. But that was still no excuse. Rachel was missing.

  Mrs Teasdale inhaled deeply, struggling to keep her emotions under control, and Brian gave her shoulder another squeeze. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that everything was going to be alright, that it would all be over soon but he couldn’t. He didn’t know if everything was going to be alright. He didn’t know if his sister’s body would ever be found, or if she would be allowed to be laid at rest again like she should be. He couldn’t reassure his mother.

  And he resented his other sister, Beth, for piling so much pressure on his shoulders. Where was she? Rachel may have been a twin sister to her, but she was still a sister to Brian. Beth wanted time alone to grieve, which was understandable, but it also meant the task of consoling their mother with his job alone. Who could he fall upon for support? Where the hell was she?

  “Someone needs to contact Beth and let her know what’s happened,” Mrs Teasdale said, her voice trying to sound strong despite its weakness.

  Brian nodded. “I’ll do it.” No one else would.

  As a camera clicked from the other side of the grave in their direction, Brian knew it was time to leave. Journalists were now gathering, intruding, and making it impossible to grieve in private.

  * * *

  Beth sat on her sofa, her legs crossed beneath her and a share bag of onion rings on her lap. She hadn’t eaten much in the last few days and hunger had crept up on her. The bag of maize crisps had been the most accessible item to grab in her larder, and whilst not very nutritious, it filled a hole.

  The TV flickered in the darkened room, the screen showing scenes from ‘A Knight’s Tale’ with Heath Ledger. The film had been Rachel’s favourite. She had adored anything with Heath Ledger, and by sitting on her sofa watching it over and over again made Beth feel like her sister was there with her, watching it beside her, sharing her bag of onion rings.

  She missed her sister so much. She still couldn’t believe Rachel had gone. Looking down at her bag of crisps, she felt her hunger dissipate again.

  Her phone lit up, casting a glow across her lounge, and a twinkling tone echoed out, indicating another message. She knew it was her brother. He had been calling all afternoon, and when she failed to answer, the text messages started. She knew she should answer but she didn’t want to. No doubt he only wanted to know how she was. She had barely spoken to her family since the funeral, preferring to be by herself. To speak to them would mean to see their grief, something that would be a continuous reminder that her sister was nothing more but a memory. She couldn’t deal with that just yet. She still wanted her sister here, alive and well and sitting next to her during movie night, and slumming it on her sofa with ‘A Knight’s Tale’ on repeat allowed her to feel that one step closer to her wish. She didn’t want to be reminded of the truth. She didn’t like the truth.

  Instead she buried herself in the film, smiling at a part Rachel always laughed at. She had never understood why her sister found that one part so funny, but now she couldn’t help chuckle every time she watched it, whether out of habit or at the memory, and always it caused a single tear to roll down her cheek, followed by a sigh.

  Where was her sister . . .

  A knock on her flat door brought her out of her comfort zone and back to reality. Her eyes glanced at the time that glowed from her DVD player. It was 9:20pm. Who would be calling this time of night?

  Brian.

  It made perfect sense that he would come round. It was obvious that he had given up trying
to call and had bitten the bullet and come round. She wasn’t going to answer it but as her brother knocked a second time she knew she had no choice but to throw her crisps to one side, climb from her sofa and make her way to the door.

  When she opened it, she expected to see her brother’s angry face. She knew he wasn’t happy about her abandoning their mother in her darkest hour, but she needed time to heal by herself. What use would she be to her mum when she couldn’t even support herself? People healed in their own way. Why couldn’t others accept that and leave her be?

  The face that peered back at her as she swung the door open was far from what she expected, and she stared in disbelief with wide eyes. A scream lodged in her throat, preventing her from taking a breath, and before she could react, her vision blurred, blackened, and she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  * * *

  “You have no idea what it’s like,” Rachel said, grunting with the exertion of digging away at the wood’s floor by torch light. “Everyone thought I was dead, even the doctors, but I wasn’t. I was very much alive and very much aware of what was going on around me.” She stopped, leaning on her shovel deep in the hole as she caught her breath and stared over at her sister. “Can you even understand what it feels like to know everyone around you, everyone you loved, is abandoning you to death?”

  Beth watched through teary eyes. It was all she could do. Her disbelief at what she was seeing paralysed her.

  Rachel was alive.

  But she couldn’t be.

  “You died,” she said, her voice weak and shaky. “We buried you.”

  Rachel smiled. “Yes, you did, didn’t you.”

  Beth opened her mouth, wanted to ask how all this was possible, but nothing came out. Instead she watched as her sister, a once beautiful young woman who now looked skeleton thin, drawn and deathly pale, continued to dig, plunging the shovel in the ground and throwing mud up onto a bank that she had made. Her eyes were telling her that this woman was her sister, but her heart was screaming that this was someone she no longer knew. This wasn’t Rachel. This was someone deranged and mental, not her sister.

  She closed her eyes and felt the few contents of her stomach churn. She had blacked out in her flat. From there she had no idea what had happened and how she became to be sitting in a dark wood, leaning against a tree, bound at her wrists and ankles with wire. An animal shrieked somewhere among the trees, followed by a chilled gust of wind, sending a shiver spiralling down her back. Her PJ bottoms and t-shirt were not designed to fight off the night chill in a wood.

  “No, you could never understand how it feels; you who has everything, you who was always the prettier one of us, you who always stole the attention wherever we went. I just tagged along for the ride. I was only there to help draw more attention from people. God, I can still see the looks in everyone’s eyes as we walked in. They always thought they were seeing double.” She gave a chuckle, looking up at the dark sky through the branches of the trees, looking back over past memories before her face turned sour and she directed her gaze towards Beth. “Then you stole every ounce of attention that was thrown our way. You had to be the centre of everything!”

  Beth opened her eyes again, her heart racing in her chest. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Whenever they went out, they worked as a pair. She never stole any limelight from her sister. They were in it together. Always.

  Pain raced up her leg as the wire dug in. She gave a quiet hiss, not wanting to attract her sister’s attention, and leaned forward to see how much damage it was doing. Without the torch light, she couldn’t tell for sure. If she could get her wrist bindings off, she could then work on her ankles. She wiggled her hands, pulling and tugging.

  “Still, as selfish as that was of you, I can’t remain bitter about it. We did have our good times.” Rachel threw the shovel up over the edge and out of the hole she was digging. It landed a few feet from Beth, causing her to flinch and freeze from her wiggling.

  Rachel climbed out from where she stood and shone her torch light behind the tree Beth was leaning against. Beth’s heart pounded with fear as she watched her sister walk past, followed by the sound of her grunting with exertion and something large being dragged across the leafy floor. What was she doing?

  After a minute she re-emerged, dragging what appeared to be a large box. Stunned, Beth watched, wondering what she was up to and what she had planned. As Rachel worked to put the box in the hole she had dug, she continued talking.

  “I heard everything in the hospital. I heard mum and Brian crying over me, mum praying, and the doctors talking about me. I knew then they thought I would die. And funnily enough, I was okay with that. I knew that you were safe, that you were okay after the accident – but one thing did bother me. I never heard you cry over me like mum and Brian. Why didn’t you cry, Beth? Why weren’t you upset that I was dying?” She paused and looked up, expecting an answer.

  Beth swallowed, her throat dry. “I didn’t believe you were going to die. I thought you were going to pull through. You were always the strong one out of us both.”

  Rachel considered this for a moment. “Obviously I wasn’t strong enough.” She carried on struggling by torch light as Beth continued fighting with her bindings. She had to get out of here. Her sister was acting crazy. She had no idea what she was up to and she didn’t like it.

  “I figured it was something like that. I’ve had time to think about it, you see, and I reckon I would have been the same if the tables were turned. Still, now’s the time to find out.” She flashed Beth a grin before pushing the box in the hole. It landed with a thud, fitting perfectly in the hole dug. It was almost like – like a grave!

  Beth’s heart froze in her chest as it dawned on her what was happening. Her sister was digging a grave and the box was a make-shift coffin. Was her sister intending on killing her?

  “And there was one other thing that bothered me,” Rachel continued as she stood and slowly made her way over. “It was the last thing you ever said to me. It was the admission that it should have been you. You should have been dying on that hospital bed. You were the one driving. You were the one who lost control of the car. It should have been you with the internal injuries. It should have been you they pronounced dead, you they buried alive, you who was trapped inside a coffin for days on end. It should have been you!”

  Beth gasped, her shock and panic rising to the surface together. “Buried alive? But you were dead? The doctors confirmed it. We had no reason not to believe. You died in front of us! It had nothing to do with me!” She gave a sob, not even able to comprehend what her sister had been through.

  “For days I lay in that coffin,” Rachel said through gritted teeth as she edged her way closer. “Days I lay there, trapped in total darkness, unable to move and struggling to breath. The air runs out, you see. You eventually start to feel tired, drained. But that’s long after the thirst, the hunger, the madness. Can you imagine what that must do to someone’s mind? It breaks it, I can tell you.” She tapped a finger on the side of her head as she slunk nearer. “Breaks it into pieces until all you can think about is revenge on the person who put you there. You!”

  Beth shook her head. “No!”

  “You let them take me, Beth! You knew I was strong! You knew I would pull through, yet you told no one and you let them take me! I was screaming for you, Beth, screaming for help and asking why you were doing this to me, but you didn’t hear me. You just let them take me. You let them bury me! You buried me alive!”

  “I’m sorry!” Beth shrieked, sobbing. Rachel was so close now she could smell the rancid odour that lingered on her, an odour caused from decaying inside a coffin.

  “It’s too late for that, sister. As you said, it should have been you. Now you’re going to find out just what it’s been like for me, only this time there’ll be no escaping. I’ve made sure of that. You’re going to die beneath the ground where no one can hear you scream. . .”

  * * *

  She re
membered now. She remembered everything. She remembered every single event that led up to this moment.

  She remembered the look of anger on her sister’s face, and the look of hate. Out of everything they had both been through, the hate had hurt the most. It hurt both of them. They had shared the same space and been carried together for nine months by their mother; they have been through everything together, and shared a lifetime together. They were practically the same person, sharing thoughts, feeling, hunches. To recognise the hate between them was like piercing the heart with a blunt knife. It was worse than the situation she was now finding herself in.

  Her sister hated her.

  Another tear rolled from her eye and down the side of her face and she wiggled in her dark confines to get at it. How had their lives twisted so very much? What had happened? What had made her sister turn on her so harshly?

  She knew the answer to that question. It was embedded in a remembered memory. The threat of death made people act in unpredictable ways.

  The gleam in her sister’s eye in the wood had been as predicted. It had been full of hurt, pain, fear, but there was something else that she hadn’t been able to put her finger on. Now she could see it clearly.

  It was knowing.

  Had she seen it before things would have worked out differently, would have gone to plan. But because she hadn’t, she had missed the vital clue. She was unaware of her sister slipping her bindings, of her sister hitting her in the face and making a dive for the shovel. As she screamed in madness and darted after her, the last thing she saw was the blunt spade coming full force towards her.

  Rachel’s head continued to throb.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had taken place after that. Beth had dragged her over to the grave she had dug, had thrown her in the coffin, put the lid on and had buried her alive.

  This was the second time Rachel had found herself in this predicament, trapped inside a coffin, buried under the ground and waiting for death, only this time she knew death would come. The coffin was sealed, designed never to let its occupant out – an occupant that should have been Beth. Her sister was the one who should have been lying here, screaming, panicking, dying, not Rachel. And Beth had known her sister’s fate as she put the lid on. She had even said so. Those words, the new last words her sister had spoken to her, was something she would remember until the last minute.