Incident In A Tomb Read online

INCIDENT IN A TOMB

  by Rik Hunik

  Copyright 2013 by Rik Hunik

  Oblivious to the rain running down his face, Ward, who claimed to be a distant cousin, reached into his coat, pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and grinned at me. His eyes held an intensity that was beginning to disturb me but his voice was calm when he said, "Relax, security is all on the other side of the property, dealing with that gang of punks I hired to create a diversion." He had e-mailed me a couple of months ago but I had first met him personally just last week.

  I wiped my glasses with a finger and blinked cold rain from my eyes. Our short hike through the woods in a downpour to this private tomb on a little hill had left me so soaked my socks squished in my shoes with every step. I pointed my flashlight at a huge, rusted padlock, securing a severely weathered, hardwood door, set into a wall of tooled stone.

  Bang bang bang. The lock bent, then shattered, and the third bullet sank into the wood.

  Ward smiled and shrugged as he pocketed the gun. "It took me years to track down this private tomb. Just because the owners didn't give us permission doesn't mean we can't get what we want. Come on."

  He pushed at the door and it swung open. Fear of walking into a tomb lost out to the desire to be in a dry place. I followed him into an empty stone chamber twelve feet to a side. It was dry, but still cold. The wall across from me had row upon row of little doors.

  We were here for what was behind one of those doors.

  Ward walked right up to the far wall, brushed some dust away and read a brass nameplate. "'Charles Kirwen.' Must be one of your ancestors, Joe." He moved on, read more nameplates.

  I went to help. Decades of dust obscured the plates but a couple of wipes on each with my hand cleared them enough to read names. I knew many of them from researching my family history but there were some I wasn't familiar with. I resisted my scholar's urge to pull out my notebook and start copying names and dates. All valuable information, but we were here for something that superseded such trivialities.

  "Here he is," Ward announced. "Phillip Howard. Born March 15th, 1737, died August 20th, 1890. That's more than a hundred and fifty years. This guy obviously knew something."

  "If those dates can be believed."

  "According to my research, those dates are just lies to cover up how old he really was. He's just the man we need."

  "I suppose you're right." He'd said it often enough in the last few days. "But don't you think we should try the spell on someone else first? What if we mess it up? We've practiced the words and motions but neither of us has ever actually brought a dead body back to life."

  "Good idea."Ward opened the door next to Phillip Howard's, reached in and pulled at the coffin. "Give me a hand."

  I went over, reached in, pulled. The coffin grated on the stone shelf as it slid out. We set it on the floor. The varnish was flaking but the wood was still solid; it had been a fine coffin in its time. Ward got his hammer and chisel out of his pack and popped off the lock. He lifted the lid a few inches.

  For an instant our eyes met, then together we looked down and he opened the coffin. Dust and bones, a few metal buckles. I'd seen worse in bad movies.

  "Who gets to go first?" I asked.

  "I found this place."

  "But I had the spell you were looking for."

  "You didn't even suspect that it was real."

  "Okay, let's not argue. How about flipping a coin?"

  "Do you have one?"

  I checked. "No."

  "Neither do I. Scissors, paper, rock?"

  "That's childish."

  "Yes, but it works. One, two, three." He had two fingers out, scissors. My fist was a rock.

  Ward's eyes were on me. My heart felt weak. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself. I rehearsed the spell in my mind until I was sure I could execute it flawlessly. I raised my arms and spoke. The alien syllables flowed from my tongue, a bit shaky, but hey, this was my first magic spell. I felt energy flow through me. With my fingers I traced symbols in the air. They hovered there, glowing, for several seconds.

  As they faded Ward said, "That was pretty cool but it didn't work."

  But I saw motion. Rivulets of dust trickled to the bones, clung to them, coated them, built up layer by layer. Flesh and skin formed, but it was desiccated, cracked and split. One arm shifted a quarter of an inch. The mouth opened the slightest bit. I heard a gentle hiss and a tiny puff of dust rose from the thing's lips.

  Ward repeated, "It didn't work."

  I couldn't argue. I stared at the corpse, so dry and dusty. Then it hit me. "Water. We need water."

  "Of course." Ward smacked his palm off his forehead. "Our bodies are ninety percent water. That's all we need to make it work. There's lot's of rain outside but how do we get it into the coffin?" He scratched his head as he pondered for several seconds, then said, "Give me a hand with old Philip."

  He wedged the door open, then helped me get the coffin off the shelf and out the door. He jimmied the lock and lifted the lid. We stepped back inside where it was dry to wait for the rain to fill the coffin with enough water.

  "Hreeeek."

  The dry shriek came from right behind me. I would have jumped out of my shoes if they hadn't been stuck to my feet.

  Ward managed to stop laughing long enough to say, "That gave us a bit of a start, hey?"

  The creaky shriek came again from the coffin. The thing was in agony. I raised my arms, made the motions and said, in reverse order, the syllables I had used before. Darkness settled like a cloud on the coffin. The thing was silent. I flashed my light inside. The dust no longer clung to the bones, the features showed no sign of animation. I flipped the lid down.

  Ward was outside by Phillip Howard's coffin. "This is too damned slow." He stepped inside and swept his light around the empty stone chamber, stopped it on the door. He explained his idea to me.

  While I held the door he pulled the two crude hinge pins. We wrestled the heavy door through the doorway and propped one end against the wall with the lower end in the coffin. Fourteen minutes later on my watch Ward set his flashlight down and marched outside.

  With crisp syllables and concise gestures Ward performed the raising invocation.

  "Get over here with that light."

  This time I was glad for the rain on my glasses. When I got there the thing in the coffin looked like someone being flayed in reverse. I looked away.

  Ward took my light. "It lives. It breathes."

  "And it speaks," said a hoarse voice as an old man with a ghastly complexion sat up in the coffin.

  "Phillip Howard, I presume?" Ward said with a mock elaborate bow.

  "No, I'm Jedediah Willett."

  "But you're in Phillip Howard's coffin."

  The old man laughed. "Well, I ought to be. I was put here to throw people off. Didn't want anyone to get ahold of old Phil's body, you know. There was nothing holy about that man when they buried him, and nothing good could come of disturbing his rest." He stopped, looked around, looked up into the rain. "Hey, where am I? What's going on here? Am I alive? Who are you?" His shrewd eyes studied us. "Hey, you're not after Phil's body are you? 'Cause if you are, I'm warning you, you're looking for trouble."

  Standing behind him, Ward performed the descending invocation. Jedediah's voice stopped, his body slumped and he fell back into the coffin. His skin and flesh dissolved.

  Ward said, "He certainly was helpful, even if he didn't mean to be. Let's find Jedediah's coffin."

  I followed Ward inside, picking up the second light from the floor where he'd left it. He found the right compartment and had it open by the time I got there. With practiced ease we slid the coffin from the shelf and got it outside. A few minutes later the door was i
n position, draining into the coffin.

  While we waited we put the other coffins away. Then Ward stared while I paced. We were on the brink of success but I was having doubts. Why was Ward so adamant that we raise Philip Howard? Jedediah had seemed like a decent sort. He had been willing to talk and I'm sure I could have obtained a lot of interesting stories and information out of him.

  "There ought to be enough water in there now," Ward said. "Let's bring him inside."

  We moved the door and brought the coffin back into the tomb. Ward raised his arms but I grabbed him before he could speak. "It's my turn," I told him.

  His eyes blazed and for a second and I thought he was going to hit me, but he just pulled his arm away and nodded.

  Without delay I went into the raising invocation, then took a step back to watch the corpse regenerate. It was even more repulsive this time and I knew immediately that something was wrong. The body filled out but chunks were missing from the limbs and most of the organs were gone.

  I looked up at Ward, saw fear in his eyes, then looked where he was looking. Weird stuff was still happening. Water and dust had