More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse

by Joel Arnold

  Reading troubled Amund; the letters appeared jumbled and backward. And math – not his strongest suit. He liked working with his hands, and he helped the undertaker when needed. It was the undertaker who recommended him to Pastor Blom.

  His job here was two-fold; keep away potential vandals or body thieves, and listen for the ringing of the coffin bell. He’d been on the job a month already, and none of these things had happened, yet. Every once in a while local youths would sneak in, trying to scare each other, and once he caught Frode Wangen and Jacobine Overland embracing fervently on the edge of the cemetery. Frode was only a year older than Amund, and Jacobine was the wife of Gunnar. Amund scared the kids away, but he let Frode and Jacobine keep doing what they were doing without announcing his presence. He watched them from behind a gravestone, the moonlight shining on their exposed bodies, and he wished he was Frode in those moments.

  The town’s undertaker, Morten Ruen, started selling the coffin bells the previous summer. “What could be worse than burying your loved one alive?” he’d ask the relatives of the recently deceased. “This way, if by some miracle, they awoke, they have a way of letting us know.” He’d lower his voice to a whisper. “It has happened, you know. Coffins have been dug up for whatever reason, and the evidence of their struggle was clear as day. The fingernail scratchings on the coffin lid, the look of terror frozen on their faces...”

  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.

  Dawn crept over the land. Mayor Espe slowly rose from the kitchen table, spread his hands, and said, “I’ll go down to the fire house and ring the alarm. Gather the people and tell them what has happened. They can decide for themselves what they want to do. I can’t tell them not to move their loved ones. But I also can’t tell them not to tend to their farms if that’s what they need to do.”

  Pastor Blom nodded. “There will be no judgment from me.”

  Amund followed Bogen back to the cemetery as the fire bells rang in the distance.

  “You don’t have to do this, boy. You need your sleep,” Bogen said.

  “I’m fine,” said Amund.

  “I only hope – ”

  Amund frowned. “I’m sure she’s fine, too.”

  As Bogen and Amund dug toward Tuva’s grave, more townspeople arrived with shovels and wagons. Word had gone out, and the townspeople who hadn’t been there early that morning when Thune disappeared into the earth, stared for a while at the hole he’d been dragged into, dragged into by some kind of monster. The dirt had already caved back in on itself, leaving a small depression. The townsfolk steeled themselves for the task at hand, ready to dig up their loved ones or lend a hand to those who needed it.

  It was solemn work. Occasionally, a soft crying could be heard. At other times, one of the men digging would whistle or sing a quiet tune. There was the smell of sweat and freshly turned earth and the decay of reopened coffins. The women and childre
n brought food and water and beer to the men, and kept the coffee brewing in the church.

  Bogen’s Tuva was still there, unmolested in her coffin, and Bogen relatched the lid. He, Amund, and a couple other men hoisted the coffin out of the grave. “Where will you put her?” Amund asked.

  Bogen shook his head. “I don’t know. On the farm, I guess.”

  “Do you think it will be safe there?”

  Bogen stared at Amund a moment. Before he could answer there was a shout of “No, God!”

  It came from one of the Mikkelsen brothers. Amund ran over to them and looked down at the graves of their mother and father, dead from a barn fire years earlier. Their coffin had been splintered from the bottom, the corpses removed from below.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. Amund squinted at the cloudy sky.

  Knute Mikkelsen tossed the remnants of his father’s coffin up and out of the grave and began frantically digging in the disturbed earth at the grave’s floor.

  More thunder, closer now, but the clouds were not dark. There was no lightening.

  A scream rose from another grave. Two screams. Amund looked toward the sound. A woman lay on her stomach, reaching over the edge of another reopened grave, holding onto something and screaming.

  Amund ran to her.

  Jacobine Overland, she of the nocturnal couplings with the much younger Frode, holding onto her husband Gunnar’s arm as a creature gripped the lower half of his torso. It bit down on Gunnar’s waist. His screams stopped, cut off abruptly as gouts of blood erupted from his mouth.

  The creature disappeared back down into the earth, taking the lower half of Gunnar with it. Jacobine continued holding onto the upper half of her husband’s body. His head remained tilted up toward her, eyes fixed on her, face frozen in agony.