Fifteen minutes later, I was still shaking as I drove my nondescript Camry out of the cemetery, and merged into traffic on Highway 134.
I needed a drink. Bad.
But I haven't touched the stuff since the accident two years earlier. Nor would I, but now, in this situation, I saw the benefit of having one or two drinks. Anything to help me come to terms what had happened back in the cemetery storage room.
Back in the casket.
Traffic picked up a little and I applied more gas. My arms were still shaking. I took a deep, shuddering breath. On me was a smell I couldn't shake. Soil and dirt and something else. Death.
I needed a drink.
The casket had been snug. Although it had clearly been built for a woman, it was surprisingly comfortable. The makers had not held back on the padding, either.
Prior to climbing in I had examined the lid's closing mechanism. There was nothing on it that would indicate it would lock from the inside. It seemed to swing open and shut readily enough.
Once inside the casket, I reached up and lowered the lid slowly.
Sealing myself in.
Traffic was backing up as the 134 East merged with the 5 South. Someone honked. Someone answered with another honk. A car nearby was thumping the bass. I ignored them all.
As I shut the lid, an overwhelming sense of panic overcame me and immediately pushed the lid back open, relieved beyond words that the lid had opened easily enough.
Thank God.
Lowering it again, I lay back on the slightly dirty pillow, my skin crawling, and certain that I was going to heave at any minute. But in the meantime, I went to work. I turned on my key chain light again, casting a powerful blue-white beam into the enclosed space.
I was all too aware that I was lying in something that was meant to be buried six feet deep. In something that was supposed to contain the corpse of a murdered young woman. I was all too aware that this disturbingly cozy box was supposed to have gone undisturbed for perhaps all eternity.
All of it added up to some serious goosebumps, shivers, and an inability to control my breathing.
I was on the 5 Freeway now, moving faster, but knowing the freeway could stop at any moment - as it suddenly did now. I drummed my fingers on my steering wheel as I relived those final moments in the casket.
With my key chain light casting an eerie blue light in a setting that didn't need to be any more eerie, I noted there was just enough space for me to raise my right arm. Which I did.
Aiming the small light with my left hand, I raised my right fist and placed it where it would have been most comfortable knocking on the inside of the casket.
It landed, of course, in the same area of the depressed cushion. The area of the slight discoloration. Someone, I was certain, had been knocking from the inside of the casket.
Breathing hard, I opened the blade to my small pocketknife. Hammer's evidence, be damned. I cut through the fabric of the cushion above my chest, and soon spread it open, revealing the unpolished wood beneath.
The wood behind the cushion was split and seriously damaged.
And when I raised the lid and sat up, gasping for fresh air, I was not too surprised to see Boyd the coffin-maker standing inside the storage room doorway, watching me.