Erica Berquist

Coffin Bell

“So, you’re the new guy?” 

“Yes, sir,” I said, extending my hand to shake with the groundskeeper who would be training me. Something about him made me think of a sea captain, although he didn’t have a white beard and wasn’t smoking a pipe. His dark eyes assessed me severely. The hand clasping mine was calloused, his skin was tanned and leathery, and his face was weathered from a lifetime spent in the sun. He was a landed sea captain, and I wondered, if I stayed in this job for the next 50 years, would I look the same? 

After releasing my hand, he waved for me to follow him as he led me down a stone pathway behind the main building. “We’re very proud of our grass here,” he said, pointing to the thick sod lining the path. “We fertilize it and edge it where possible, to keep it neat.” 

“I can see that,” I said, nodding in appreciation though his back was still towards me. 

“And here’s the shed where we keep the mowers and tools of the trade,” the groundskeeper said. He started to unlock it but paused as he turned to face me with an appraising look once more. “They said you have experience.” 

Nodding, I said, “I’ve worked in landscaping for years. I can handle mowers, weedwhackers, blowers, all of it. I just haven’t… I’ve never worked around…” I gestured into the distance, where stones speckled the landscape.

“Never worked around graves before?” He asked as he raised an eyebrow, and a glint in his eye seemed to say he had finally taken my measure. “It’s not much different than mowing any other lawn. There are just more obstacles in the way. Very expensive obstacles that you’d better not run into and damage.” 

I swallowed heavily and said, “I won’t, sir.” 

The groundskeeper nodded and finished unlocking the shed. As he threw open the doors, he said, “Let’s get started.” 

Obstacles might have been an understatement. In my time as a landscaper, I’d worked on a golf course, a football stadium, but this work in a cemetery most reminded me of servicing residential areas, where the terrain was troubled by unpredictable tree roots that twisted the ground, and rocks that lurked at surface level, just below the turf waiting to wreck your equipment. The ground itself was the biggest challenge, lumpy in some places, and sunken in others… and then after a while, it became noticeable that most of the sunken patches were over the graves, and I tried not to think about that as I worked. 

As the motor on the mower cooled, I mopped the sweat off my brow with the tail of my shirt. When I lowered my t-shirt, I saw the groundskeeper approaching and hastily tucked it in again. 

“How’s it going?” he asked, waving a wilted bouquet as he approached. 

 ”Good, I think…” I answered hesitantly, as he was walking through the section I just mowed and was glancing around appraisingly. “No trouble with the equipment.” 

“Good to hear, good to hear.” The groundskeeper nodded, looking once more around at the grass before meeting my eyes. “Nice job so far. This was the only thing you missed,” he said, twitching his wrist to indicate the wilted flowers wrapped in plastic. Dried leaves and petals shook loose of the arrangement, scattering across the grass beside his feet. “I should have mentioned, we carry a trash bag to collect these at the same time as we mow.” 

“Isn’t that kind of…” I paused, but my supervisor arched his bushy eyebrows, prompting me to continue. “I mean, seems a bit disrespectful. Someone left those flowers for their loved one.” 

“And you think we should leave it lying there forever? Until the flowers rot and the plastic kills the grass beneath it by blocking the light? Until the dead bouquets pile higher than the headstone?” 

“No, sir,” I interjected quickly. “I was just trying to learn how we do things here. How do you determine when the flowers should be taken away? What if the flowers are in a pot and are still alive?” 

“Good questions, good questions,” he said, glancing at the bouquet in his hand. “These are finished. If the flowers are fresh, you can leave them until they’re wilted. If they’re bulbs in pots, we don’t leave those lying around either. A lot of the pots are wrapped in plastic that causes a mess – we get a lot of poinsettias around the holidays – but the exception is if the grave has an urn for flowers. If the family put flowers in a built-in urn, leave them. They won’t mess up the grass, which is our main concern. If they’re on the grass though, toss them. Or give them to your girlfriend if you like.” 

“I… don’t have a girlfriend,” I said, swallowing heavily at the thought of giving someone flowers that had been left on a grave. I wondered if the groundskeeper regularly brought flowers home to his wife. Trying to think of something else, I asked, “What about other things left on graves? Not flowers?” 

The groundskeeper shrugged at the question. “That’s not as big of a concern. Some people bring photos and coins or pebbles. We can just leave those. There’s a movie star somewhere in the back lot, who people leave lipstick tubes on. I just clear those up every once in a while, when it gets to be too much. But the worst ones are stuffed animals… some people leave those on kids’ graves. I don’t have the heart to touch those, not until the toys have been rained on a few times, and they get all muddy. I don’t want the families to see them like that, so I throw them then.”

I nodded, absorbing what he said, but not having anything to say in response. 

The groundskeeper nodded too, finally tossing the wilted flowers into a bag. After dusting his hands on his dirty jeans, he asked, “Well, you got any other questions?” 

“I do,” I said, pointing to a nearby grave that I’d had to carefully maneuver around as I mowed. “What’s that?”

“Oh,” the old man laughed as he looked. “That’ll be the coffin bell. This is one of our older plots from Victorian times.” 

“I don’t see a bell. Looks like a pipe.” 

He gestured to the mouth of the pipe near the crook of it that curved like a shepherd’s hook. “The bell is in there. The pipe shields the coffin bell from the breeze, so you know it’s a person ringing it.”

I blinked, stepping closer to the grave to look at it. “What’s a coffin bell?”

“It’s self-explanatory, isn’t it?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he continued, “There’s an old saying about coffin bells, let’s see if I can remember how it goes… Should thou pass by this earthen mound, and hear the peal of a ringer’s sound, summon a gravedigger that I may be found, before I perish beneath this ground.” 

Swallowing heavily, I asked, “This is for… this is for people who were buried alive?” 

“More like for those who were scared of being buried alive and wanted some assurance that they’d be dug up. I doubt these bells ever had to be rung, but it was a comfort to the living that they existed.” 

I nodded, and something loosened in my chest that allowed me to look away. I said with a shudder, “I can’t imagine anything worse than being buried alive.”  
The groundskeeper shrugged as he looked around the cemetery, intent on finding the next task that needed doing. He said, “After you’ve worked here for a while, I think you’ll find that being in a coffin isn’t as scary a prospect as it once was. Being here, working here every day… it shows you how peaceful death can be.” 

That tight feeling started to come back to my chest. I just nodded and revved the mower to get back to work. 

By late afternoon, the sun was beating down on me. My heart hammered heavily in my chest, sending my head to pounding as well. A ringing started softly in my ears, and continued even after I slipped off my protective earmuffs. I sat down on the cemetery wall to mop the sweat off my brow, under the shade of a tree that rustled softly in the breeze. I just breathed for a moment and closed my eyes, starting to feel the peace that the groundskeeper had described. This place wasn’t so bad. There were birds chirping in the branches above me, making sounds that I didn’t even know birds could make. They sounded almost like bells. 

Bells…

My eyes snapped open. Those weren’t birds. I did hear the faint chime of a bell. It was soft and tantalizing as the voice of a woman calling my name from across a crowded ballroom, somehow louder than the string quartet playing a waltz in the corner. I shook my head, uncertain of why I was picturing a ballroom when I’d never stepped foot in one in my entire life, but I could picture the woman calling me as clear as day, the way her rosy lips cupped my name as she said, “Jack… Jack.” 

The ringing of the bell was getting louder now. 

Abandoning my equipment by the wall, I followed the sound. I knew before I saw it which grave it would bring me to, and then I was there, standing respectfully at the side of the grave so that I wasn’t on top of her. I read the headstone beside the coffin bell, which said: Arabella Smith. Beloved Daughter. 1879-1900. 

She was 21 when she was buried… and beloved daughter, not wife. So she must have been unmarried at the time. 

The bell chimed again suddenly, startling me out of my thoughts. I looked around, trying to think of where to get a shovel – was there one in the shed where we got the mowers? – and then I noticed the groundskeeper watching me from a few feet away. 

He said, “This section is done, kid. What’re you doing back over here?” 

Pointing at the grave, I said, “Do you hear that? The bell…” 

“I don’t hear a thing… No, I don’t hear a thing.”

“The bell.” My hand shook. 

The groundskeeper approached me. I couldn’t understand why he was staring at my face rather than the bell. He asked, “Have you had anything to drink, boy? Your face is sunburned. You’ve got no hat. Your brains are scrambled by the sun.” 

“Don’t you hear it? The ringing? The bell?” I asked, but he just continued to stare at me. I couldn’t take it anymore. Heading in the direction of the shed with the shovel, I said, “I have to dig her up. I’m going to save her. The bell ringing means that she needs help. Summon a gravedigger that I may be found, before I perish beneath this ground.” 

“Stop it!” His hands grabbed my shirt, pulling me back before I could reach the shed. The groundskeeper turned me to face him and pointed at the path that led to the cemetery’s entrance. “Go home. Now. Cool off. You’re not thinking clearly.” 

“But… the bell.” I pleaded, still hearing the peal of it. 

“Now! Before I call someone to take you away.” 

“I’m coming, honey…” 

It was hours later, and the sun had set except for a faint glow of orange in the sky, but she was still there. Over the chirping of crickets, I still heard it, the chime of a bell calling me back to her side. Soon she would be safe in my arms. But first, I would have to dig her up… which was harder than I thought it’d be. 

The shovel stubbornly refused to split the sod that I’d tended to this afternoon, only breaking through the roots of the grass after forced with a boot to the spade for a several minutes. I was quickly learning why modern gravediggers used machinery for this work. As my shovel turned aside the first scoop of dirt after clearing the grass, I committed myself to the task. Arabella had been buried long ago, and it would be wrong to retrieve her with anything else. This was intimate. This was personal. It was work. And she was worth it. 

As the muscles of my back ached with each spade full of earth tossed over my shoulder, and my hands blistered while hacking at a tree root that grew in the way, the bell continued to ring. The sound was no longer pleading or insistent. She knew I was here. She was encouraging me to till the earth of her grave. I was coming. 

The job that I had started by moonlight ended at dawn, though I didn’t know my task was finished by sight. I heard it when the shovel hit the wood of her casket, and my breath came out in a relieved huff that was close to laughter. I rapped again with the shovel once more. Knock, knock. So close to her now…

“What the hell is going on here?” 

I looked up, seeing the groundskeeper standing on the edge of the freshly dug grave.  The horror on his face seemed so out of place in this moment. I held up a dirt-crusted hand to him and said, “Help me up, and I’ll explain.” 

The expression on his face hadn’t changed, and he seemed to take my offered hand more out of custom to clasp an extended hand, than a desire to touch me. Still, he pulled me from the grave. The groundskeeper said, “Start talking, kid. Start talking.” 

As I gestured to the hole, the words came out in a rush. “It’s mostly done, I reached her. But you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to help us. She’s down there, and she needs a gravedigger. She’s still calling out. You can hear her, right? You can hear the bells. It’s still ringing. It won’t stop, not until we dig her up.” 

He shook his head and took a step back from me. “You’re fucking nuts, man.” 

I grabbed his arm. “Wait, no, you can’t leave. She needs us.”

“Get the heck off me!” 

I felt his hands on me and then the breath being knocked out of me as I stared up at blue sky, but I didn’t realize until a minute later what had happened. He had shoved me back into the grave. I couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t hear the bells… Arabella called out only to me. 

As I put my hands down on the wood to roll over, I felt a split in the wood. Not surprising, given the ache in my back. The groundskeeper might have helped me after all… she was so close now. After brushing some dirt aside, I lifted the wooden lid that was damaged when I fell. I whispered under my breath, “You’re safe now, honey.” 

The bell continued to peal from the pipe above the grave. It sounded like laughter now.

As light streamed into the casket finally, after all this time, her mousy brown hair shifted in the breeze, cascading down her thin shoulders. Her sweet eyes, the same shade of brown as her hair, gazed up at me. Her skin was pale as a bone. She was smiling from ear to ear. 

I blinked. She blinked. And her eyes were gone. In their place, two brown mice raced out of the sockets. All that remained of her bony face was the smile, that wide eternal smile of the grave. What I had thought were curls shifting across her shoulders scurried away, skittering across her bare bones as the mice fled their home that had been Arabella’s tomb.

I stumbled backwards, falling, landing on the casket and further breaking it. One of my feet sunk through the rotten wood, and the mice started to race up my calf. I howled in terror as I tried to bat them away.    

Shaking his head, the groundskeeper started to walk away. He knew his new hire wasn’t going anywhere without assistance. Withdrawing his phone from his pocket, he started to dial the police. Over the shouts coming from the grave and the dial tone of his phone, he didn’t hear anything else. He didn’t hear the ringing of the bell, as the coffin bell started to peal once more. No one did. No one was listening, not anymore.

Unnoticed by all, the mice in the grave started to scamper up the pipe to escape their disturbed home. Each time a mouse landed in the grass beside Arabella’s headstone, the coffin bell chimed softly. 

Since graduating from Towson University in 2014 with a BS in English, Erica Berquist has worked as a freelance editor and also for Cloudmed Solutions LLC as a Recovery Analyst. Her poetry has been published by the WILDsound Writing Festival, Sheepshead Review, and a German poetry anthology by Poet’s Choice. Her short stories have been published by Grub Street Literary Magazine, Levitate Magazine, OFIC Magazine, Marathon Literary, OxMag, HOW Blog, LIGHT, Nat 1, also in several anthologies by Free Spirit.