John Lindqvist - Handling The Undead

Easy?

Sometimes his brain still believed that it inhabited his thirty-yearold body. Back then it would have been easy. Not now. He looked around. A couple of windows in the tenements on Silversmedsgrand flickered TV-blue. There were no people outside. He licked his lips and peered up at the top of the ridge.

Three metres; maybe a forty-five degree angle.

He leaned over, gripped a couple of tufts of grass and started to heave himself up. The weakened roots of the grass gave way and he was forced to dig his toes into the earth so as not to fall back. He lay with his face pressed into the ground. His belly was in the way, braking him as he dragged himself, sloth-like, foot by foot up the slope and in the midst of his misery he started to laugh, then stopped abruptly as the movement threatened to throw him off balance.

What I must look like.

At the top, he collapsed panting for a while, staring out over the cemetery. Gravestones and crosses stood in neat rows, raised out of their moon-shadows.

Most of those at rest here were cremated, but Anna had wanted

Elias to be buried. Where Mahler had felt terror at the image of his little body in the cold earth, Anna had found comfort. She had not wanted to let him go from her at all, and this was as close as she had been able to get.

Mahler had thought then that it sounded like a bad reason, something that would lead to regrets later on, but perhaps he'd been wrong. Anna went to the grave every day and said that it felt good to know that Elias was actually down there. Not just ashes, but hands, feet, head. Mahler had still not grown accustomed to it and, beyond his grief, he felt a kind of unease every time he visited the grave.

The worms. Decomposition.

Yes. Now it struck him that this was a serious question, and he hesitated before making his way down the slope.

If… if this really was happening… what would Elias look like?

Mahler had attended countless crime scenes. He'd seen body parts dug out of plastic bags, corpses removed from apartments where they'd spent a couple of weeks alone with the dog, bodies mangled in canal locks, in trawler machinery. It was never pretty.

Elias' white coffin was burned on his retina. The final goodbye, an hour before the ceremony. Mahler had bought abox of Lego that morning and he and Anna had stood together next to the open casket, looking at Elias. He was dressed in his favourite pyjamas, the ones with penguins, his teddy bear was tucked under his arm and everything was so terribly unnecessary.

Anna had gone up to the coffin and said, 'Wake up, Elias. Come on, little one, that's enough,' and stroked his cheek. 'Wake up, honey. It's morning now, time to go to daycare… '

Mahler had held his daughter and there were no words to be said, for he felt the same thing. He put the box of Harry Potter Legos that Elias had been wanting next to the teddy bear, thought for a moment it would bring him round, make him stop lying there when he was so nice and whole and only had to get up in order for this nightmare to be over.

Mahler slip-slid down the slope, entering the cemetery warily, afraid of disturbing the peace. Elias' grave lay quite a distance away and en route he passed a gravestone at the head of a relatively fresh grave:

DAGNYBOMAN

14 September 1918 – 20 May 2002

He stopped. Listened. Heard nothing. Continued.

Elias' marker came into view, the very last on the right. The vase of white lilies that Anna had placed there gleamed faintly in the moonlight. A graveyard could be so densely populated and yet it was the loneliest place on earth.

Mahler's hands trembled and his mouth was dryas he sank to his knees at the grave. The turf squares laid on top of the exposed soil had not yet had time to grow in. The seams stood out like black shadows.

ELIAS MAHLER

19 April 1996 – 25 June 2002

In Our Hearts

Always

Nothing could be heard. There was nothing to be seen. Everything was normal. No bulging ground, no-

Yes, he had thought as much

– hand that reached up, seeking.

Mahler stretched out on the ground, embracing the earth where the coffin lay buried. Pressed his ear against the grass. This was insanity. He listened down, pressing his hand against the ear that was not on the ground.

And heard it.

Scraping.

He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, pressed his head down harder, felt the grass give way.

Yes, there was scraping down there.

Elias was moving, trying to… get out.

Mahler flinched, got to his feet. He stood at the foot of the grave and hugged himself, trying to keep from going to pieces. His mind was blank. Even though this was precisely why he'd come, he'd been unable, right till the last minute, to believe it could really be true. He had absolutely no plan of action, no tools, no way of…

'Elias!'

He dropped to his knees, ripping out the clumps of grass and started to scratch away at the ground with his bare hands. He dug like a man possessed, nails breaking, dirt in his mouth, dirt in his eyes. From time to time he laid his ear against the ground, hearing the scraping more and more clearly.

The soil was dry and porous, not yet reinforced by a net of roots.

The sweat that fell from Mahler's brow was the first moisture it had tasted in weeks. After twenty minutes he had gone so deep that his arms could no longer touch the bottom, and still there was no sign of the coffin.

He worked for a long time with his head lowered over the edge and his blood surging against his skull like the clapper of a bell. Everything went dark. He was forced to pause so he would not faint.

His back screamed as he heaved himself back, landing softly in the piled earth. The scraping continued, amplified in the open hole. He thought he heard a thin wail, almost a whistle, and held his breath. The whistling stopped. He took a breath. That wail again. He snorted: dirt and mucus flying from his nose. It was his airways that were wailing. He let them wheeze on.

Dry earth.

Thank you God: dry earth.

Mummifying. Not decomposing.

He lay for a while and breathed, trying not to think. His mouth was dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. This could not be happening. And yet it was. What do you do in this situation? Either you lie down and attempt not to exist. Or else you accept, and go on.

Mahler stood up. Tried to stand up, but his back said no. He lay like a beetle, arms flailing, trying to bend unbendable joints. It didn't work. Instead he rolled over on his stomach and dragged himself up to the opening in the ground.

He shouted, 'Elias!' and pain shot down his spine toward his tailbone.

No answer. Only scraping.

How much farther to reach the coffin? He did not know, and he couldn't move any more dirt without tools. His fingers closed around the beaded necklace and he lowered his head like a penitent, praying for forgiveness. He spoke down into the hole, 'I can't. I'm sorry, buddy. I can't. You're too far down. I have to get someone, I have to…'

Scrape, scrape.

Mahler shook his head. Started to weep quietly.

'Stop it, little buddy. Grandpa is on his way. I'm just going to… get someone…'

Scraping.

Mahler clenched his teeth to hold the tears and the back pain, forced himself to his knees. Turned, sobbing, and coaxed himself down backwards into the hole.

'I'm coming, buddy. Grandpa's coming.'

He barely fit. The walls of the hole rubbed against his belly, crumbling dirt fell as he ignored the howl from his back and bent down and resumed his digging.

After only a couple of minutes his fingers reached the smooth surface of the lid.

If it breaks…

There was no noise from inside the coffin while Mahler brushed it clean, revealing the white lid that shone like a pale moon under his feet. He had one foot on the bottom end and the other at the top.