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Draw your blade.
Fasten your armor.
Prepare for war.
The Unsheathed collection brings to life nine powerhouse tales of epic fantasy filled with daring duels, gruesome slaughter, and the ringing cacophony of battle.
Edgar Lopez, a rotund man about to crest the final hill that separated middle age from senility, scratched his chin in amazement. “Thirty years I’ve worked here…” he muttered to himself and the glazed donut sitting on a cheap paper napkin in front of him.
“What’s that, Ed?” Gabriella, one of the college interns, called from her desk a few feet away. In the astronomy world, Edgar was something of a legend. He had worked at the Apollo Observatory and Space Research Facility longer than the handful of interns had been alive. He had a well-earned reputation and a list of awards and achievements that would make any scientist blush.
Despite his history, he didn’t feel like a legend. He felt like a failure. A stack of field reports sat on Edgar’s desk and stared at him. It was his last day, and Edgar had resolved himself to let his paperwork rot.
“Ed?” Gabriella asked again, this time with a hint of concern lacing her otherwise beautiful Spanish accent.
“Oh, nothing,” he told her politely, “just wandering off. You know how it gets.” Gabriella nodded and returned to her computer screen. “Oh, Gabriella?” He peeked his head over his monitor with the flash of an idea running through his head.
“Yes?” the eager intern replied. Edgar wasn’t sure, but he vaguely remembered that Gabriella was only a sophomore at the university and a foreign transfer at that. She would blindly follow him anywhere… and she wouldn’t be missed.
Edgar rose from his desk with the lumbering speed of a limp sloth. A lifetime of watching the stars through a telescope had added more weight to his belly than glazed donuts and coffee ever could. “Come with me,” he told her. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Gabriella verily leapt to her feet and grabbed a field report clipboard from a peg on the wall. “Yes, sir!” she chirped at his heels. While everyone called him Ed when he was at his desk, the moment he stood up changed the rules. Since the observatory was located on the grounds of an active military base, proper protocol had to be followed everywhere outside the offices.
Edgar made his way down a long hallway surrounded by computer monitors and busy interns. He smiled to himself and basked in the realization that he would never have to return to the observatory again. In just a few short hours, his time would be up.
Edgar and Gabriella arrived a few moments later at a large black door two floors beneath the office area. Large red letters across the top of the door told them where they were: the Deep Space Tele Relay.
“I don’t think I’m allowed to go in there, sir,” Gabriella said apprehensively. “Professor Moun-”
“Never mind your professors,” Edgar interrupted. With a heavy hand he unlocked the door and flipped on a light switch. A long hallway with several glass doors presented itself.
“What is this place?” Gabriella asked as she followed Edgar into the hallway.
“The Deep Space Tele Relay was built in 1978 after the Wow! Signal was picked up by the Big Ear Radio Telescope at Ohio State. It took a while to get it calibrated, lot of tinkering and the like, but we had it operational by the eighties.” Edgar stopped in front of a sliding glass door and pointed to the banks of computers and technicians working inside. In front of the four rows of computers was a giant screen with dozens of technical readouts and constantly changing charts and graphs.
“What does it do?” she whispered, peering through the glass like a little girl at a puppy store.
“After the Wow! Signal, we knew we weren’t alone. The public knew it too, but for whatever reason, they didn’t seem to care as much as us nerds here. We built the relay to send messages to the exact location where the Wow! Signal originated.” Edgar kept walking down the long hallway to another heavy black door.
The intern stopped in her tracks, and her voice caught in her throat. “I-I was taught that we never heard anything after the Wow! Signal. None of the radio arrays ever picked up anything like it again. That’s what we were all taught.” Gabriella shook her head, and a creeping sensation in her stomach told her to turn back. None of it made sense. The black door at the end of the hall lurked like a huge monster from her nightmares ready to devour her.
“Don’t believe everything your professors teach you, Gabriella,” Edgar said with a casual laugh. He punched in a long sequence of numbers on a metallic keypad next to the door. A series of clicking sounds emanated from the mechanism, and for the first time that day, Edgar smiled. “A few years after the Wow! Signal was recorded, the deep space tele relay located the origin. It was moving at an incredible speed, so it was hard to track at first.”
Gabriella’s eyes grew wide. “What source? A pulsar? A quasar? Those don’t move, do they?” Everything she had learned in all her advanced astrophysics and astronomy classes was rapidly dissolving into useless dribble inside her brain.
Edgar chuckled and turned to face her with a hand on the doorknob. “Everyone expected the source of the signal to be a quasar. You’re right… quasars don’t move. No, what the tele relay discovered was a vehicle traveling at near the speed of light.”
“My god…” Gabriella gasped. She muttered something inaudible under her breath in Spanish. “Why hasn’t the world been told? Why are you keeping it a secret?” For a brief moment, she thought of fleeing the observatory and running straight to the press.
Edgar laughed and pushed open the door. A world of strange sounds and flashing lights spilled into the otherwise dark hallway. Gabriella’s senses were completely overwhelmed. “Come with me,” Edgar commanded with just enough authority in his voice to ensure that Gabriella obeyed. All thoughts of running vanished the moment she took a step.
“The world isn’t ready to know, Gabriella,” Edgar explained as he walked into the laboratory. Dozens of scientists in white lab coats worked at stations with computers, beakers, slides of organic material, and all other sorts of equipment. Despite the door rarely being opened, none of the scientists seemed to notice the new arrivals.
“How long has this been down here?” Gabriella wondered aloud. She stepped out of the way of a scurrying scientist and noticed a smell she certainly knew but had trouble identifying. The scientist bowled past her to a large metal box with a series of complex locks. Once he opened the door, the man placed what looked like a tissue sample inside and locked the container once more.
“Watch. I think you’ll enjoy this part.” Edgar pointed to the box and took a step closer. After a moment, the device began to hum and vibrate with energy.
“That smell…” Gabriella remarked, still struggling to place it in her mind.
Edgar gave the woman a fatherly pat on the back. “We were surprised too,” he said. “The material they use to coat their communications smells like cedar mixed with dark chocolate. Altogether quite pleasant, if you ask me. We call it Gwycin Gel.”
“Wait…” Despite her advanced intellect and years of training, her mind couldn’t grasp the realities of what she was learning. “A substance to coat communications?” She shook her head. Then her eyes went wide and she gasped. “Who is they!” she practically screamed. “Who are they?”
Several of the scientists at nearby stations turned for a moment to regard her outburst, but none of them were bothered enough to speak. Edgar turned the intern to face a large poster hanging inside a protective glass case. “Have you heard of the Greys?”
Gabriella’s eyes devoured the information on the poster faster than her mind could process it, turning the images and captions into a blurred mess of science fiction delirium. “You can’t mean…” she sputtered.
“Oh yes,” Edgar reassured her. “The Greys are very real. When we finally locked onto their ship’s signal back in the early eighties, we couldn’t believe it either.”
“Roswell?” Gabriella asked with eyes wider than flying saucers.
Edgar shook his head. “Just another CIA hoax,” he explained. “The Greys had never been to Earth before 1986—or so they tell us. Honestly, we don’t know. All the evidence leads us to believe that none of the UFO stories you’ve ever heard are true, but in the end, we have to take them at their word.”
Gabriella looked back to the poster and the half-sized drawings of little grey aliens that fit the international stereotype so perfectly. A million questions whirled through her head at once. “Where did they land?” seemed like the most pertinent inquiry to rise above the maelstrom of her thoughts.
“Not far from here, just an hour or so south of the base.” Edgar motioned for the intern to follow him deeper into the complex, and the wide-eyed girl readily obeyed. “Ever heard of Hanger 18?” he asked.
Gabriella followed the man down a long hallway. “Only on the History Channel when they talk about…” she had a hard time saying it, despite knowing it was all true. “Aliens…” The word left a sour—yet intoxicating—taste in her mouth.
“That’s where they docked their ship,” Edgar explained as though he was stating something as banal and mundane as the color of the carpet.
“What ship?” Gabriella shouted, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.
“Shhh.” Edgar placed a hand somewhat forcefully on her shoulder and stared into her brown eyes. “You know…” he began slowly, drawing the intern’s intense gaze into his own. “Would you like… to meet one of them?”
“You’ve just been working too much, Herbie,” she says. She’s been saying that a lot these days. More and more over the past few months. Sure, she’s right, I know it, but what can I do about it? My name’s the one on the front of the business—not like I can just close the front door and take a week to myself. I drop two sleeping pills into the palm of my hand and fill a glass of water. The bathroom mirror is dirty. Probably has been for a while, just like everything else. Just like me.
The pills go down the hatch, and I tilt the bottle to count how many I have left. They’re prescription, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get more before I run out. Not that I can’t afford them, I can, but when would I have the time to see my doctor again? Not to mention there’s usually a wait just to get in. Last time took me three weeks to see him for a fifteen minute consultation and a sloppily written prescription. But at least the pills work.
“Herbie?”
I forgot what she was saying. I peak around the corner from the bathroom and nod my head. “Be there in a minute, darling.” At least she still looks good. Not that I would divorce her or anything if she didn’t, but I aged like hell on legs. Looking back in the dirty mirror, it’s hard to remember when I started letting myself go. Ten years ago? Twenty? How did she manage to stay so perfect when I started wrinkling and gaining weight before I had even gone totally bald?
I shake my head, turn off the light, and pull the bathroom door closed behind me. Our bed is nice, and the sheets are always immaculate. But then again the bed better be nice seeing as I was the one who made it. My grandfather taught me woodworking and carpentry every summer once I turned ten and was strong enough to work the tools. Herbert Walker’s Custom Furniture. I often wonder about my life, my business, and how everything turned out. If my grandfather hadn’t owned a woodshop, what would I have become instead? A few of my friends from fifty years ago went on to college, but most of them stayed in town like me. Plying trades. Working with our hands, not our heads.
All those other boys I used to hang around with—where are they now? I haven’t really seen any of them in four decades. Just William, and that’s only because he owns the bank where I’ve held my accounts for all these years. But all we do is say a few passing pleasantries. If I took the rest of that bottle in the bathroom, would he care to come to my funeral? Probably. But just to save face among the townsfolk who knew we were acquainted.
“What’s wrong? You have that look again.”
She’s been saying that a lot lately, too. I work too much, I stare off into the distance, my diet has gone to hell… the usual litany.
I sigh and turn to face her. “Just thinking, that’s all.”
“Work?”
“Of a sort,” I answer.
“Want to talk about it?”
Truth be told, I do. But the pills are already doing what they’re meant to do, and my eyes can barely stay open. “Maybe in the morning,” I tell her. “I’m tired.” There’s a stack of books on my nightstand that I haven’t touched in years. I think of picking one at random and starting it, but again the pills are directing my body like a conductor at an orchestra. The books will have to wait. Just like always. I reach past them and turn off the short lamp, bathing the room in darkness.
Part of me wants to rebel. There’s a spark somewhere deep inside my chest that screams against the rest of my body, begging me to at least do something. Pick up a book. Turn the light back on. Go throw up the pills and experience life for once. Talk to my wife. Have sex. Do something!
But I can’t. I close my eyes, and the dull, placid curtain of chemical sleep wins yet again.
I haven’t dreamt in years. Just like everything else in my life, sleep is boring and uneventful. I’ve heard news stories about artists getting vivid inspiration from their dreams or police detectives solving cases in their sleep—but not for me. Just a blank wall of black. I wake up in the same position I fell asleep in, my wife already gone from our bed and downstairs making breakfast. Another tradition born over fifty years of repetition. She’s an excellent cook, and the smell of biscuits and gravy is already wafting over the sheets, a bit of smoke from peppered bacon frying in a pan mingling with the morning light. I glance at the alarm clock: 6:40am. I haven’t set the damned thing in years, but somehow my body never forgets.
I get up, slide into my slippers, and make my way to the bathroom. My back, knees, and seemingly every other part of my body clicks and creaks with the movement. It takes me ten minutes to shower, brush my teeth, and get dressed. I’ve never been one to waste any time. But as I stand in front of the mirror once more, I realize how much a lie that is. Haven’t I wasted so much? Nearly all of it, I suppose. Seventy years. Well, it will be seventy in two months. The pill bottle is standing at the edge of the white cabinet next to the sink. I give it a gentle tap, and it falls into the trash can with a few tissues, an empty toilet paper roll, and a handful of cotton swabs. If she notices, I can say the bottle fell by accident.
Downstairs, breakfast is ordinary. Everything tastes wonderful, but it is ordinary in the sense that I’ve eaten my wife’s cooking for so long that even a breakfast which should make me happy is just par for the course. Run-of-the-mill excellence.
I arrive at work right on time. 7:45am. Fifteen minutes before open. I check the day’s orders on the master inventory sheet before heading to the back of the stockroom to make sure everything is on track to be finished before the customers come in to retrieve their goods. Only a light schedule today with three pieces slated for completion. Two of them, a matching sofa and end table, are already finished. The final piece just needs one last coat of stain and then a few hours to properly dry. It’s a big wardrobe with some custom carving along the sides that a young lawyer is buying for his new fiance. The piece is stunning, but the man who bought is a real ass. Either way, money is money. It’ll keep food on the table for another month or more.
I’m getting the stain ready to finish the wardrobe when the side door opens. My apprentice, the only other person who works in the shop, comes in with a large metal cup full of coffee in his hand. “Hey man,” he says, ever the cheerful one. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know.”
He sets his coffee on the counter and puts on an apron over his button-down shirt. “Light day today,” he says.
I nod in agreement.
He picks up a brush and starts going over the back of the wardrobe. He does excellent work, and I have no doubt he could be making pieces in some big city somewhere for tens of thousands of dollars, but like me, he just never left town.
The two of us work in silence for a few hours until the chime on the front door rings. “I’ll get it,” he says, leaving me in the back.
A few minutes later he returns. “Hey, this guy wants a custom order. Seems odd. You should handle it, and I can finish the stain. Doesn’t need more anyways.”
I nod, wipe my hands on my apron, and head to the front of the store. The customer is dressed in a nice suit with a matching hat. He looks smart, probably college educated, but it doesn’t take a psychologist to know he’s upset from the amount he’s shifting his weight and fidgeting with the cuff on his right shirt sleeve.
“Hello,” I say, shaking his hand. “What can I make for you?”
The man offers a weak smile. “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don’t know. But in either case, I need a coffin.” He looks around the shop as though realizing for the first time that I sell kitchen tables, cabinets, and other home furnishings as opposed to the trappings of a cemetery. “Do you do that sort of thing?” he tentatively asks.
“I’ve made one or two in the past, but I can do it.”
“Good, good. What, uh, what sort of information do you need? And how much will it cost?”
I guide him to a small table and grab a notebook and pencil from my desk. “Well, I suppose the first thing I need to know is the size. Do you know her height and weight?” I write the time and date at the top of the paper.
“Well, not exactly, but she was average, I’d say. Maybe my height, thin build.”
I write it down. “Well, what kind of wood would you like? Anything particular? I think poplar and oak are the most common, but I have lots of wood to choose from.”
He thinks for a moment, his eyes downcast. “Would it be possible for me to see the wood?” he asks.
“Certainly.” I stand from the table and usher him to the back where my apprentice has just finished staining the wardrobe. Along one wall is where I keep all the different species of wood, and I point to them each in turn, explaining their qualities and telling him a rough price estimate for each. In the end, the man chooses maple. Cheap and sturdy, nothing fancy—just the style his mother would have appreciated, he says.
We settle on a price, and I feel bad for him on account of burying a parent, so I tell him I’ll upgrade the hardware to brass at no charge. He thanks me, and that’s that. He’ll come back tomorrow to retrieve the coffin and pay, and the burial is scheduled for the day after that.
My apprentice manages the front of the store, handling the few sales that come through and helping customers retrieve their pieces from the back room while I put together the strange man’s coffin. It doesn’t take long. There isn’t much process involved in making a coffin. A simple task, really, but I spend extra time making sure the joints are perfect and the wood doesn’t have any unseemly knots or ill-patterned grain.
By late afternoon, the piece is finished. I set the coffin upright near a bin I use for scraps of more exotic wood like purpleheart and mahogany, then lock the doors and head home. Dinner is on the table when I arrive, meatloaf from a butcher my wife likes and mashed potatoes from our garden. As usual, everything is excellent. We watch the news, tend to a few things around the house, and then I’m getting ready for bed once again. The routine is impenetrable.
I pull the covers up to my chest and reach to turn off the light. The books are still there, neatly stacked beneath the lampshade, and completely untouched. I grab the one on top. The Monk by some man named Lewis. I don’t know anything about it other than it looks old. Reading the first few pages confirms my suspicion. The book was probably written a few hundred years ago, and the translation has never been updated to modern English.
It holds my attention for the better part of half an hour. Finally, my wife speaks up. “How was work today?” she asks.
“Not bad.”
“Anything new?”
“Well, actually, there was a strange man who came in and ordered a coffin. Said his mother died. I felt bad for him, so I gave him brass hardware for free.” I put down the book and turn off the light.
“That’s nice of you.”
“It was a straightforward job, didn’t take me long at all.”
“You should attend the burial. If he bought a coffin from you, the cemetery must be in town. That would be a nice gesture, Herbie.” She pats my arm beneath the sheets.
“I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
I lie in bed, my eyes searching the dark ceiling, and realize that sleep is going to be elusive. I’m just working too much. That’s what she always says, but wouldn’t working too much make my mind and body tired? Shouldn’t I come home exhausted and fall asleep right away?
Minutes tick by. My wife is asleep before long—just like always—and I lie with my head on the pillow and nothing but dull boredom in my mind. When the lights are out, there’s nothing to do. Nothing to see. Nothing to think.
More time elapses. I wonder if I should set my alarm clock. If I don’t get to sleep soon, I may oversleep in the morning, and then I’d be late for work. But the shop will continue as usual if I’m an hour late. I glance toward the alarm clock, but I can barely see it in the darkness. Oh well.
I consider getting out of bed and going downstairs. I could sit on the couch and play music softly on the radio. Maybe that would lull me to sleep, but I don’t want to wake her. She’s already so peaceful. If I wait a little longer, until she’s deep asleep, perhaps I could turn on the light and keep reading. But truth be told, the book only held my interest because it was new. Something different. But that draw is already gone. And besides, I didn’t particularly enjoy it.
Another hour passes in silent contemplation, and I finally sneak out from under the sheets. My feet slide into my slippers, and I shuffle to the bathroom. I stop once as my wife stirs, her hand brushing the pillow where my head has left a warm dent, and I tell her softly that I’m only going to the bathroom. She mumbles, and then she’s out again.
In the pitch darkness, I can barely see the bathroom door. But that doesn’t matter. How many times have I walked from the side of the bed to the bathroom? Ten thousand? Twenty? How many days have I lived in my house?
I find the knob on the first try and turn it. There’s a small nightlight probably a decade old plugged into the wall next to the sink. It gives just enough light for my old eyes to see my reflection in the mirror.
Something is behind me. Something dark and vaguely humanoid. Leering over my shoulder.
I turn, my heart suddenly slamming against my ribs, but it is only the shadow made by a few errant creases in the dark shower curtain. Shit. I’m getting old. No, I am old.
I stand in front of the toilet and try to relieve myself in a vain effort to force my body to understand that it needs to sleep, but nothing happens. My eye catches the trash bin next to the toilet. The pills are probably still there. If I take two and then set the alarm clock, I’ll probably be fine.
After a few moments of contemplation I determine not to bother rooting through the trash like a racoon, and I turn back to the bed. My wife has since rolled back to her side, and she took most of the sheets with her. I don’t mind as the room is a little on the warm side. But we haven’t changed the thermostat in years, so I know it can’t be warmer than usual. Just a trick of the mind, then. A product of my imagination like the shadow in the shower curtain.
I slide once more under the sheets. I manage to find a cold spot a little to the left of where I was before, and I close my eyes to finally sleep.
More time elapses, but still my body refuses to obey. I sit up and pull the alarm clock close to read the faint, blurry letters. 4:32am. I sigh and set the clock on the top of the stack of books. With so little time before my usual awakening, it doesn’t make any sense to even bother. I rub my eyes, find my slippers once more, and stand up to stretch my back.
I spend the rest of the morning hours sitting on the couch with the radio tuned to an AM station that plays classical and old jazz. Smiling, I can’t remember the last time I actually had a moment to myself to simply do nothing. Perhaps my lack of sleep is a blessing in disguise.
My wife comes downstairs right on time at 6:30am. She’s surprised to see me sitting awake in my nightclothes, but she only gives me a gentle pat on the arm before retreating to the kitchen for our daily breakfast ritual.
“Darling, do you ever think that maybe we’re missing out?” I ask. I head for the stairs to get ready for the day, but I pause at the first step to hear her response.
“Something in that book keep you up last night, Herbie?”
“No, not that. I mean us. Our lives. Do you think we’re missing out by doing the same things over and over again?”
She turns, a pair of eggs in one hand and a tub of butter in the other. “If we’re missing out on something, I’m afraid we’ve already missed it. Our ship has sailed, so they say. I’m eighty-two years old.”
She doesn’t sound upset, merely content, so I leave it at that and ascend the steps to get ready for the day.
When I arrive at work, precisely on time, I find my apprentice has arrived before me and already unlocked the building. The lights are on inside, and there are three paper cups full of coffee sitting on the main desk.
“What’s all this?” I ask a little loudly. He hears me from the back room and comes out a moment later.
“Thought you might use some coffee today, that’s all,” he answers.
There’s a box of donuts as well. “Why three cups? How much do I need?”
He laughs. “Well, I don’t know what you like. So there’s a hazelnut latte, a regular black coffee, and a half-caff if you don’t want it too strong. Take whichever, and I’ll drink at least one of the others. I like coffee.”
“Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve tasted coffee in… well, since before you were born. We had it in the war, but after that I never had much of a taste for it. But thank you. I like hazelnut, so I’ll try it.” I lift the cup he identified as the latte in a mock toast, and he does the same with the black coffee.
“Hey…” His eyes shoot to the floor, and his sudden nervousness reminds me of the man from yesterday. “Anything you need to talk about? Something on your mind?”
His question catches me off guard. I don’t really know what to say. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a little trouble sleeping lately, I guess. What’s it to you?”
He shifts his weight and still refuses to look me in the eye. One of the things I liked about him when I interviewed him all those years ago was that he had a firm handshake and looked me in the eye when he spoke. “Just… I don’t know. Why… why’d you make it?” he finally asks.
Now I’m even more confused. Even though I ate only an hour ago, I take one of the donuts and have a bite while I try to figure out what he could mean. Finally, all I can do is shake my head. “I’m not sure I’m following,” I say.
“You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
He pushes open the door to the back room, and I follow behind him with my donut and latte, both of which taste better than I had expected. He gestures toward the coffin next to the scrap bin. “That.”
Again, I don’t really understand what he’s asking me. “Something wrong with it? Not exactly as I agreed on with the man, but I thought the brass hinges were a nice touch. Felt sorry for the man, you know?”
“What man?”
I sigh. “Listen, if you’re playing some kind of joke or trying to have a laugh at my expense, I’ll not stand for it. I never was one for pranks, especially not in a place of business. We’re serious men, and we do serious work.”
His eyes go wide. “I know, I’m sorry. I would never—”
“Now tell me what it is you’re on about!”
“No one came in yesterday! No one ordered anything, and we only got one call, but it was for a cabinet repair next week. You scared the shit out of me, talking to yourself and then just building a coffin without saying a word about it to me! What the hell! Who’s it for?”
“Now you listen here!” I try to keep my voice under control, but I hate being lied to and I’ll never be tricked. Not in my own shop. “You need to knock it off with this nonsense of yours! I won’t have it. Not now and not ever! You hear me?”
The man only looks scared. He doesn’t react like I would expect from someone kidding around. “Sir, Mr. Walker, I… I don’t know what to say. Why did you build it?”
Fine. If I have to, I’ll explain it to him. Maybe he is the one not getting any sleep. “You answered the door while we were staining the wardrobe, told me someone was here with a strange request, and I took the man’s order. His mother died, and he needed a coffin. A real quiet type man with a nice suit. He’s picking it up today, and the burial is set for tomorrow. Are you daft? Do you not remember him?”
“Did… did you take an order? Write it down?” His voice tells me he doesn’t believe a word I said.
I set down the rest of my donut and head back to the desk.
“Right here, an order in my own hand. Coffin for an average size woman made from maple…” But the note isn’t there. The yellow paper with my handwriting is gone. “I know I put it somewhere. Just look for it, will you?”
We rummage through all the orders and other pieces of paper scattered around the desk, but it doesn’t turn up.
“Just wait,” I tell him. “He’s coming back today to retrieve the coffin and pay for it. You’ll see him. Again.”
“Do you remember his name?”
I think on it, but I can’t remember. “Something foreign, maybe French, that’s all I remember. I’m sure I wrote it down. Just haven’t gotten much sleep, that’s all. It’ll come back to me.”
The man just nods his head. He tells me he’s going into the back to get the day’s orders ready for customer pick-up, and then he’s gone. I go through all the orders and other papers a second time, but I know it is no use. We have a system, and orders don’t go missing.
Finally, I decide to simply finish my coffee and wait. I’ll handle any walk-in customers while I wait for the man to come and get his coffin.
Hours tick by without any foot traffic through the door. A little after lunch time a family arrives to collect some furniture they ordered last week, but other than that, everything is quiet.
When closing time arrives, the coffin is still in the back room. There’s no sign of the man. No phone call, no note.
I head out the front door and walk around the building to my car. There are several funeral homes in town, and driving to each of them to ask about the man and his mother would not take much time. I arrive at the first, an old white building with a brick façade and a fountain in the yard that hasn’t worked in two decades, and walk up the stairs to ask the undertaker a few questions.
He doesn’t know anything. Nothing about a man coming into town to bury his mother in a wooden casket.
The second funeral home I go to offers more of the same. They’re booked for the next few days, and none of the burials are for older women.
The third funeral home is apparently abandoned with a realtor’s sign in the overgrown grass.
As I drive home, now late for my clockwork dinner, I wonder if perhaps my apprentice was right to be worried. I haven’t been sleeping, and maybe the pills fogged my mind. But the man was real—that much I know.
But if he was real, why didn’t he return for his coffin?
I arrive home with no answers. Only more questions. And an uneasy feeling clouding my mind.
Dinner is excellent, but I can barely focus on the meal. Half of it goes into the refrigerator under a thin layer of plastic wrap. When my wife asks me what’s wrong, I don’t know what to tell her. I can’t explain it.
We watch the news, and when it comes time to sleep, I decide to rummage through the bathroom trash in search of the pills. To my dismay, the can is empty. Of course it is empty, Thursday is trash day.
I get ready for bed, but nothing feels right. I know I won’t be able to sleep. I’m tired—extremely tired—but I know deep down that it won’t make any difference. My mind is too active, my thoughts racing. I’m going to lie in bed for hours with nothing but the darkness until I feel too bored to keep lying there, and then I’ll return to the couch and a little bit of music.
Still, the ritual must be completed.
I lie down and close my eyes. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I won’t be stuck in a repeating cycle of insomnia.
An hour passes, and I know that I am right. Another sleepless night. I contemplate calling my doctor, but he doesn’t work in an emergency room or all-hours clinic, so that wouldn’t do me any good. I have to solve my problems on my own. I sit up, and my wife doesn’t stir beside me.
Wondering what to do next, I simply sit and wait as my eyes adjust a little to the blanketing darkness.
And something moves. Something within the darkness darts across the room from right to left, heading for the closed door. No, no, just another trick of the mind. A shadow from the curtain over the window to the right. Nothing more.
I rub my eyes and find my slippers, then head into the bathroom. When I’m finished, I plod slowly down the stairs to the couch. The radio station is still playing classical and jazz, so I lie down with my head toward the music and try to get some sleep.
By the time my wife descends to the first floor to make breakfast, I cannot tell if I’ve slept or not. My body certainly feels like I never fell asleep, but I also can’t remember actually sleeping. Either way, I feel sick to my stomach.
Breakfast comes and goes in a bit of a blur. I can’t really focus on anything, though I manage to drive to work nonetheless, but muscle memory doesn’t seem to mind a bit of mental fatigue. I’ve driven the same route to the same store for decades. Ironically, I wonder if I actually could do it in my sleep. Probably.
My apprentice arrives a few minutes after I do, and he’s sadly bereft of coffee and donuts. The half-caff from yesterday is still in the break room refrigerator, so I take it, drop a few ice cubes into it, and drink it anyway.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” I wave.
“Feeling any better?”
I shake my head. “Haven’t really gotten any sleep in the past couple days. I, uh, accidentally lost some pills that help me fall asleep.”
He walks to the counter and puts his lunch in a cupboard for later. “Anything I can do to help?”
I’m not sure how to answer him. “No, I think I’ll be alright.”
He nods and heads back to the desk to check the day’s schedule.
It only takes a few minutes before the agony of not knowing a damned thing about the coffin has consumed my thoughts. I have to know what happened to the man. And today is the day of the burial. He’s going to need the coffin, and I don’t want to be the one to deprive him of it.
While my apprentice finishes a set of cabinets for a rich family’s new kitchen, I load the coffin into the back of a white pickup I bought a few years ago for deliveries. It hasn’t been run in a few months, and the tires are nearly flat, but it starts on the first try.
I try the nearest cemetery first. It’s behind a church, and there aren’t any cars either in the cemetery or the church parking lot, so I move on to the next.
Finally, something promising.
The second cemetery is a private one with lots of greenspace and tall trees older than anyone knows. It probably costs a hefty sum to be buried there, but everything is so beautiful that I wouldn’t blame someone for choosing it. In one of the plots near the front, I spot a gruffy man in coveralls working a small backhoe. It looks like he’s almost finished with a fresh grave.
I put the truck in park and approach the worker, offering him a friendly wave. I have to imagine people in his profession seldom entertain visitors.
He sees me and stops the backhoe, waiting for me to approach.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” I answer.
Then he spots the coffin in the back of my pickup and seems to recognize it. “Oh, you’re the guy who made the coffin! Excellent! I can help you bring it here.”
I laugh and tell him I’m not as old as I look, and I can carry the weight of a simple maple coffin all on my own. I might be tired, but I’m not weak. The day I can’t lift something so basic is the day I finally retire.
The gravedigger only laughs and waves me off, content to let an old man keep his pride.
I bring the coffin right next to the grave and set it down gently on part of the tarp where the digger is laying all the dirt. “You know, it doesn’t quite make sense,” I say when I have a moment to collect my thoughts and think about what I’m doing.
“How’s that?” the digger asks.
“The coffin’s empty. You need a body to bury before you get to the cemetery, right?”
The digger turns off his backhoe and climbs out of the cab, rubbing his dirty hands on his green uniform. Something about the uniform strikes me as a little familiar, but I can’t place it. I’ve probably just driven by the cemetery before and seen a few workers about their business.
The man reaches out a hand, and I grasp it. He has a firm handshake, something I’ve always appreciated. “Help me lower the coffin, will you?”
“Sure.” I grab the foot of the coffin and lift it over the edge while the digger does the same with the head. We lower it down together until we’re both on our knees. The coffin drops into place, and I finally realize where I remember the uniform. It looks a lot like the one I wore sixty years ago in a trench on the southern side of the Marne. “Hey, were you ever in the war?” I ask, but I know the answer as soon as I ask the question. The man is far too young to have fought.
“Sir, I—”
I lose my balance on the side of the grave. I’m too damn sleep deprived to keep my grip on the slick mud and the tarp, and I tumble head-first into the grave. My head hits the side of the wooden coffin and sends bright streaks of pain through my vision.
“You alright?” I hear, and suddenly there are more voices than just the gave digger. Hundreds more. Did the rest of the funeral guests arrive? Surely they didn’t reach the cemetery all at once.
I prop myself up on my elbows to get my bearings.
The man reaches a hand into the grave, and I take it quickly. There’s blood on the back of my hand. And… there’s blood on his hands as well. Lots of it.
“You took a hell of a hit there, Walker! You alright?”
For the first time, I notice that I’m wearing the same uniform that he is. A handful of other men peer over the side of the grave, and they’re all similarly clad.
“You alright?” the man yells for the third time. How did he know my name?
“I think so,” I answer, but there are so many other voices shouting and yelling nearby that he can’t hear me. I have to shout a little louder. “I think so! Just a little tired! Haven’t slept in a few days!” Automatic gunfire drowns out some of my words.
He laughs and pulls me out. “None of us have, Private Walker, none of us. And if we don’t take Hill 142, Captain’s gonna have our asses! Now pick up your rifle and fall in, soldier!”
So a while back I began writing short stories for Ral Partha's Chaos Wars miniatures game. You can check them out here. When I started writing the series of background stories (which has been a ton of fun), I agreed to do it for free. I would get some free publicity, and the minis game would get some cool lore to spice up their world. In my mind, that's a pretty fine deal.
But then I got a package in the mail yesterday.
The fine folks at Iron Wind Metals, the company who makes the Chaos Wars game, sent me an entire army of goblins (always my favorite!) and a couple special edition figures to go with them! That's awesome!
The full contents of the package.
This figure, the Vampire Queen, is an awesome one I had the honor of writing. She's a badass.
Back in the day, I used to play a decent amount of Warhammer 40,000. I also played a few other miniatures games, so I know how to paint models. I'm not incredibly good at it by any means, but I'm going to paint a couple of these guys and see what happens.
In the meantime, I plan on writing another short story for Ral Partha which uses the awesome spider figure they sent me. Look for that story to go up in a week or so!
I am currently in the process of getting audio books recorded for my novels. In the meantime, as a way to vet voice actors, I listen to their recordings of my short stories. Here is a really good one that I think will end up winning my vote and get the job. Let me know what you think.