Read Online More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse by Joel Arnold - Free Book Online Page B

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!”