The Coffin

He waits for me outside the storage unit. His presence makes me sick. I want nothing more than to turn around and forget all about him. It’d be easy to blame him for putting me on a collision course for this moment.

But the truth is, I agreed to all of it.

“Your money’s right here,” he says, and his coat pocket. He’s still wearing sunglasses. It’s midnight. In fact, he looks exactly like he did when we met last week.

The black maw of the storage unit is open. Headlights from both cars cast light over the two of us, though we are both shadows in each other’s presence. Misty rain soaks us.

“Care to take a look?” he asks. I wonder how long it’s been since he got here. “I need to make sure you grabbed the right one.”

“Where’s Mikey?” I ask without my voice trembling. It’s quite an accomplishment. The question has absorbed my mind all day, since I came here to drop it off.

I shiver in the rain, staring into the open storage unit. My brain makes the smell up, it has to, but it’s so familiar. The moisture hides the tears forming in my eyes. I blink the tears down my face.

He grins and the night grows darker. He points to the inside of the storage unit.

“Care to check it?” the Benefactor asks.

I don’t know his name, his real name. When we first arranged our partnership, our arrangement, the contact information he gave me was for The Benefactor. The meeting card is soaked in my hand.

My heart thunders. The need to run grows. It pulses. It aches.

I approach nonetheless, passing him.

He wears a pungent smell. I barely breathe and it fills my nostrils. It’s a horrible mix of spoiled earth, rot, and tea leaves. The motion light activates I step inside. I close my eyes.

“Thank you for retrieving it,” he says, foul breath roiling my nose. “I noticed you hadn’t opened it, so, I took the liberty of doing so.”

I keep my eyes closed. I will not look at it. I will not even acknowledge it, but its presence is oppressive. It’s captivating. It compels me to know it is there. It needs me to remember that I brought it out into the world again, that I let it rise from its slumber.

There is a voice in my head that is okay with this. The voice yearns to express thanks for what has happened. Justice, that voice says, prevails. Evil has been exposed, and defeated.

He stalks into the room. His footsteps don’t even echo as he strolls by. I hear him glide his hand over polished wood the way a young man touches his first car.

“Tell me about it,” he says. “Things, it seems, have become tumultuous for you. The town is in an uproar. An entire family was uprooted and missing. You wouldn’t deprive me of one last favor by not giving me a story, would you? You’ll get your money for this job, don’t worry. I just need to know. I’d like to hear about your experience.”

Tears slide down my face. He stops in front of me. His stench makes my stomach do summersaults. I sigh, and finally, open my eyes to face him. I couldn’t be happier he has his sunglasses up.

He knows everything that’s happened. The smile he shows me is of an intelligent being. He needs to hear me say it. I have to squirm in front of him. Everyone that those people harmed has been…well, they’ve been somewhat validated. And the people that enabled the family will soon get their retribution.

Starting with me.

“We found the grave after you and I met for the first time. It didn’t take long to convince Mikey to go in on this with me after I told him about the reward. Then, we got our equipment, dug it up, shit hit the fan, and…”

“Ah, ah, ah. We won’t be beating around the bush, my friend. Come. Tell me the finer details about this.”

He steps to the side. My chest seizes. The coffin is there. It’s open. Dear God.

After stuttering the start of the story a few times, I start.

“We got to digging that night, after you and I talked. It took us a while to find the grave. A lot of the graves were unmarked because of how long they’d been sitting there. Mikey found it, actually. He told me it was a thing he used to do back in high school—he and his friends would do those stupid dares where you run around the graveyard at Halloween. Just shit to get likes and follows, I guess.”

Asking the Benefactor about the grave, about this specific one, skirts over my mind. It was one among dozens. But he gave me a picture, made sure it was that one. I’ve come up with my own theories as to why that one, but, I have to wonder: would the others have had the same effect? Would everything have transpired as it did with any of the other unmarked graves?

I continue, “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it through the dig. I knew we would get to it eventually if we kept digging—security at the cemetery is dogshit. When I worked there, I didn’t care who came in and out. If someone came around with a shovel I usually didn’t give them a second look. Not that we were getting a ton of grave robbers.”

“Perhaps,” the Benefactor says. “This is why you were fired?”

“Maybe.”

The Benefactor’s sneer grows. “No wonder you were so willing to work for me. Strapped for cash, needing to live.”

I bite my lip, and don’t give him the satisfaction of an answer.

“We heaved the coffin out of there. Wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be, but damn it if it didn’t wreak. We had to knock a bunch of worms and shit off of it when we got it out. Mikey pulled his truck—his dad’s truck—around so we could haul it in there. Apparently, he was going to have it at his house for a bit until we could arrange for a storage unit, and that was fine by me.

“Having it at a storage unit would probably attract attention, if it were there for long, I figured. Plus, Mikey’s house, the Rivero family house? Come on, it’s practically famous for being such a warm, welcoming place. Not suspicious. A cop is only going to roll up there because he got invited to a family barbecue or something. Thing is, a cop could probably spend a fair amount of time in the house digging up everything Mikey and his brothers get up to, know what I mean?

“We dumped the thing in the unused office near the front of the house and shut the door. Mikey assured me that nobody was going to get in. Together, we tried opening it. We tried everything. But the door wouldn’t budge. Even YouTube failed us when we looked up how to open a locked coffin—probably not the smartest thing, but, again, the Rivero house wasn’t about to be pinged by the FBI for an errant Google search.

“We tried calling in his brother Pete, since he’s a big tough guy. Pete managed to crack the coffin but it didn’t do much.

“Mikey started to get anxious. He asked me if we were still going to get our money if we couldn’t open it to check what was inside. And, honestly, I didn’t remember you telling me anything about it, only that you wanted the coffin. Mikey figured that we could probably take the skeleton out so you would have a clean coffin.”

“Your instincts were correct,” the Benefactor interrupts. “I didn’t, and don’t, care about what’s in the coffins. To me, they’re secondary to what you’re really doing.”

“Wh—what’s that?”

“Go on with your story.”

He inspects the coffin again. I still won’t look at its contents. The head section is open, that’s it.

“He was serious about this, more serious than I normally saw him. He hoped to get this perfect for you, to drain you of every penny from the deal we made. When his brother got that crack in he was practically sticking his eye into the coffin to see what was in there. I hung back.

“I just…couldn’t. I just wanted to turn it in. I didn’t care that we grave robbed, I wanted the money. Needed the money. I didn’t get Mikey’s obsession with the coffin. Even his brother seemed a bit off because of it.

“Mikey practically woke the whole house up and got the rest of his family down there. His mom died a few years ago, so it was just two of his other brothers and his dad. He ripped into them, too, shouting and screaming at them to find anything they could to get the coffin open and not break it apart like his brother, Pete, tried to.

“They had an arsenal of tools that couldn’t open it much. Much. We did get to creak it open, enough for Pete to get a look inside. He threw up and his nose started bleeding shortly after. Mikey got a look inside, too, but didn’t react as violently. He called out his brother.

“‘You’re a fucking wimp, you know that? Stop being a bitch and pop this shit open.’”

“Mikey turned his attention my way.

“‘Come on. Be a man for once. Help me open it.’

“I didn’t say anything despite how badly I wanted to punch him in the face.

“Look, Mikey and I, we go back. We go way back, and I’ve always known him to be…well, not the smartest kid around, not even the most clever, but he was determined, and I liked it. I needed a determined friend to kick my butt sometimes to get things done. My first girlfriend? Mikey pushed me on it. Getting a job? Mikey pushed me on it, even though he didn’t have any money going for him, either. But, he figured if I had money, he could mooch a little off of me, and I felt I owed him some for how much he’d helped me.

“Seeing him like this wasn’t a surprise at all. Seeing his family like this, all ordering each other around and being generally bossy, also not surprising to someone on the inside.

“I stayed the night since Mikey was dedicated to opening the coffin. Nobody else was going to do it, so, I went to check on Pete in the morning. And I—found him. Or, what I think was him. He was there, in the bathroom, staring at himself, scratching at his face, his eyes, his mouth. I couldn’t look away. I thought about the little kids he’d beat up. I thought about the people he rolled down hills. And then I thought about myself. That I was near the coffin, too. I didn’t stop Pete. I worried when it would happen to me.

“I went out to get breakfast early in the morning. Pete’s moaning and Mikey scraping and pulling at the coffin all night kept me up. I felt like my nostrils were stained with an awful smell and there was this constant feeling on my shoulder I couldn’t shake. I couldn’t focus. Even when I sat in the car and tried to regulate my breathing I wouldn’t stop shaking. People offhandedly stared at the Rivero house as they passed by. One neighbor even glared at me when I pulled out of the driveway.

“That never happened. The Rivero house was more than the crown jewel of the neighborhood, it was the fucking White House. Everyone sought to get in there, everyone desired to be in on their sweet, sweet life that they fronted. That they were told to believe, because they needed so they’d remain on the Riveros’ good side.

“When I got back, shit was nuts. Nuts. I had to run inside while one of Mikey’s brothers was out front in a shouting match with a neighbor—a father and his daughter, who was holding her stomach. I heard the rumor about them, but nobody believed it. Nobody let it be true, and the girl stayed silent because she was afraid of the Rivero family's influence.

“Mikey was still in the room, drenched in sweat, his dirty clothes looking stained with shit. He worked a crowbar into the small gap in the coffin.

“His father paced up and down the house on the phone. First, it was his boss, then his lawyer. Something about money laundering, fraud, taxes…I don’t know, but it wasn’t good. I saw the fine wallpaper of a good, nice family peeling back. Not slowly, not like how you pull off a sticker. This was like yanking off duct tape.

“Everything was falling apart. And all I could think of was how the hell we were going to get the coffin out of the house without anyone noticing, given how much attention was on the house.

“‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Mikey shouted at me.

“I ran into the room and looked for something to use to open it up.

“‘Did you call him?’ Mikey asked. ‘The guy? Let him know we can’t get the thing open.’

“‘I don’t have his number,’ I said.

“‘Then how are you going to let him know we’re done?’

“‘He said he’d know, okay? Look, let’s get this out of here, there’s a bunch of people out front and if anyone sees this, then…’ I trailed off, hoping Mikey would catch on. He didn’t.

“‘What? What’ll they do? Come on, man, come on. It’s us. Maybe you’ll get in trouble, but, we’ll have gotten paid.’

“Mikey wasn’t necessarily someone who was sleazy with money. He paid back. He really, really liked to take money. But, again, he was confident about it. He made it so you didn’t realize what you were even, really, giving up.

“It’s just the way he said it to me right then. We’ll have gotten paid. It meant he would get paid my share. My cut, and he didn’t care if I got tossed into jail or whatever for doing this, because he’d have his money, and he wouldn’t be touched by the police, because he was part of the Rivero family.

“‘Yeah, we will,’ I said, to emphasize my point. ‘We need to move this thing, tonight.’

“‘We need to open it and get it ready, first, bro.’

“‘We can explain the situation. Leave it alone.’

“‘Stop being a bitch. Tsk, you know what, I should’ve seen this coming. I always had to step up for you, put myself out there for your ass. Had to fucking pay off the manager at that cemetery job that you botched because you’re a useless fucking loser. Your first girlfriend or whatever, that little bitch? Man, she only agreed to date you if I kept railing her.’ Mikey waved me off. ‘Everything you ever got was because of me, because you wanted to walk away, got scared. But I’m about to make serious money off of this, and you can, too. You can keep getting my sloppy seconds, or you can walk away.’”

“This time, I did punch him in the face. I almost knocked the coffin over, too, and Mikey cared more about that than him falling back and knocking over the stuff on the desk behind him.

“‘Fuck you,’ I said, and it was real good. It felt amazing to say it to his face like it’d been waiting at the back of my throat for so long, and I finally puked it out.

“‘Fuck you,’ he repeated, like the big smart guy he was.

“So many ideas ran through my head as I left. I couldn’t be there, I really couldn’t, but the shit that I’d heard and seen him do? None of it was my fault, not like I couldn’t stop it, but man, at that moment, I was so ready to run to the cops and simply lay it all flat. Would they believe me? Probably not, but if there was any day to do it, it was the day that his dad was on the hook to go to jail, the day his brother was being accosted for knocking up an underage girl, the day that Mikey finally showed his real colors.

“The day his brother went missing, which was…weird. Well, missing. I hadn’t seen him in the morning, after what he’d been up to in the morning.

“Did I go to the cops? No. They’d ask questions, they’d ask what I was doing there. And I wasn’t about to give up the coffin. Did I wait until the evening to go back? Yes. Why?

“Because I couldn’t let Mikey get all the money. I stewed on it all day, I sat on the accusations and everything I would do all day, and when the sun set, I went right back to the house to get the coffin. Maybe I could weasel a way for him to not get a cent of it.

“I drove my truck, which would be just big enough to carry the coffin, back to the Rivero family house, a remarkably quiet one given the days’ events. No neighbors, only the sound of crickets and little critters in the night making their usual noises. I strolled up to the door, and knocked, banging on it to wake those idiots up.

“The door opened on its own. The kitchen lights were on as if someone were there. I didn’t say anything as I stalked inside, creeping through the hallway.

“The little table in the dining room was set up like normal, even with a half-eaten plate of food there. But nothing else. Nobody else. Not a creak or even whisper coming from upstairs. Usually, at night, you’d hear some faint music coming from one of the brothers’ rooms, but there was nothing. For the first time, ever in my mind, the Rivero house was absolutely empty.

“The office was a different matter. The door was shut, and not opening. The handles were frozen they'd been sitting in a freezer. I rattled them, shaking the doors. My body jittered, and I tried again. A faint scratching, or scraping, came from the other side.

“After another try, the door groaned open. The cold kind of spilled out around me. I stepped inside the room. There were whispers everywhere. The boys and their dad whispered about everything they’d done. Their voices got louder as I approached the coffin. The creak was still open.

“I stooped down and looked away the moment something blinked at me from inside. My heart should’ve stopped, and, I should’ve run away. Instead, I did what I was there for, because…you promised to pay me.

“I dragged the coffin across their tile, scraping it up, and down the pavement to the driveway before heaving it into my truck.

“Still, Mikey was nowhere to be seen. Before, he was all over this thing, unable to take his eyes off of it. I didn’t make anything of it. I didn’t make anything of what was going on. Figured the cops were all over them, having brought them into the station. Made sense, given the half-eaten food and light being on.

“Then I drove over here, got the unit, dropped the coffin off, left, and now I’m here.” I cross my arms. The cold creeps up my body again. “Please, please…give me the money.”

“Did you go back to the house today?” the Benefactor asks, ignoring my request. I’m surprised he stayed as silent, or intrigued, as he did throughout the whole story. He was mostly amused by the part where the Riveros were accosted.

“I did,” I say. “Same thing. Some cops were around, asking for the dad, but I pretended not to know them. Some neighbors, I’m sure, recognized me, but I recognized them. I recognized the ones that let what the boys got up to happen as much as I did.”

“So, are you also guilty?” he asks.

I don’t answer. I know what that answer is. But I’m a fucking coward. I want to leave. I want to beg him.

He shrugs, then gestures at the coffin. “I managed to get it open so we can peek inside.”

No.

I can smell the awful aroma wafting out of it. It’s worse than rot or shit, or the two mixed together, it’s something entirely new. My body tries to reject the smell, the presence of the coffin, yet my feet move me toward it anyway.

The Benefactor opens the rest of the coffin. It is not a large coffin, but it is deeper, somehow, than I anticipated.

My stomach clenches. He approaches, running his hands over the spot that Pete had broken, now fixed. The tears continue to slide down my face, but there is no apology. No words, but whatever my body can spew out as my mind attempts to keep up with the sight my eyes are forced to brunt.

“Ah, there he is,” the Benefactor says.

If only he, because there they all are. The Rivero boys, stacked on top of one another, eyes peeled open, skin paled and thinned practically to the bone. Something wiry and scaly slithers through their skin from beneath them.

“Excellent job,” the Benefactor says as he reaches into his pocket for a thick wad of cash. “Looks like you were right. You can get all the money now. Congratulations on a job well done.”

He holds it out for me, over the coffin, but I’m too frozen to move from my spot. He smiles and replaces the money in his coat pocket.

“Now, I have another proposition for you,” he says. “One that may be of a bit more interest to you than mere money. There is room yet in this coffin for one more body, and I would so like it to be you, after all you’ve done…or, rather, haven’t done.”

My heart pounds in my chest. I want to run but can’t. I want to go back and stop my past self, but I can’t. Stop him from what? Agreeing to work with the Benefactor? Agreeing to work with Mikey, to listen to that guy? Agreeing to be Mikey’s friend in the first place?

No. To agreeing to just sit around and let Mikey and his family get away with being what they truly are: Monsters.

“Yet, I am a man of negotiation,” the Benefactor says, “So, I’ll make you this deal: You’ll continue to work for me, digging up graves, recovering coffins, getting to know some of the more savory families I meet, and ensuring that this little arrangement here continues. Think of yourself as my little errand boy, hmm?”

“And…you’ll pay me?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Well, you’re alive, aren’t you? That is sufficient enough payment.”

He grins. My legs give out and I pull my legs in, trying to hide in the shadows of the storage unit, trying to pull myself away from the coffin. He closes the coffin with ease, the doors shutting with a resounding CRACK.

I nod and agree to his request.

At least I’m still alive, right? Sure, the Riveros got what they deserved.

Yet here I remain, broken, a shambling mess on the floor. Because I am the one who watched. The one who knows, and did nothing but ask for money.