Scary story
Billy was hiding in a cave near the Indian Ocean when the cops closed in. There were still bits of human flesh under his fingernails when the serial killer surrendered to the inevitable capture. They could put him behind bars, he vowed as they dragged him down the narrow path toward the bulletproof cars, but he would escape. And then they would be sorry. He punched the nearest officer, landing a powerful blow on his face. The remaining men knocked him to the ground and tied up his feet and hands with rope to ensure his cooperation.
He was sentenced to a lonely prison for the criminally insane; his only companions the wardens and fellow madmen. Over the next seventeen years, Billy spent every spare second planning his escape. He studied every weakness in the prison system. He knew every guards’ movements. He spent several years begging to get a ground-floor cell so he could dig his way out. That plan nearly succeeded, until he reached bedrock a few feet below the cell floor. With every failed plan, his anger grew. He would escape this wretched cell if it killed him.
As the years passed, Billy noticed that one elderly prisoner – Danny – had become the general repair person and undertaker around the remote prison. It was Danny’s job to put dead prisoners into a coffin where they lay in state overnight in the prison chapel. The next morning, Danny and the warden would ride out to the cemetery a mile or so outside the prison gates and bury the deceased prisoner. Then the warden left Danny behind to fill in the hole while he drove back to the prison for his morning coffee.
With this knowledge, it did not take Billy long to produce a new escape plan. It was simple. The next time a prisoner passed away, he would creep into the chapel after dark and slip into the coffin with the dead body. In the morning, the warder and Danny would take the coffin out of the prison to the cemetery to bury the deceased. As soon as the warden left, Danny would open the coffin and let Billy out, with no one the wiser. It did not take the serial killer long to befriend Danny and get the undertaker to agree to help Billy gain his freedom.
Unfortunately, the prisoners were all healthy that summer and through the long, colorful autumn that followed. No one caught so much as the flu. When the New Year came, no prisoner fatalities had happened in nine months. Day after day, he listened for the bell that tolled whenever a prisoner died, but it did not ring. Billy was tempted to speed up the process by killing someone with his bare hands, but such an action – if discovered – would mean solitary confinement for the serial killer, and he would be unable to put his brilliant plan into action. So he waited. And waited.
It was late February when the expected bell tolled loudly through the prison. Snow was falling in the yard where Billy marched with his fellow prisoners during their daily exercise routine when the bell tolled. “Wonder who it is this time?” muttered a fat and ugly man just ahead of Billy. The serial killer, jumping with joy, did not care who it was. The time had come! Tomorrow, he would be free.
That night, Billy entered the dark chapel and felt his way to the front. Yes, there was a coffin standing on top of two pine benches. He lifted the lid and the smell of embalming chemicals filled his nostrils. He jerked back a little. Danny had done his job well. Billy groped his way inside the coffin and lay down on top of the dead body inside. Then he closed the lid.
As he lay in the coffin waiting for morning, the serial killer felt his skin begin to crawl. He had killed more than twenty-five people in his life without a care, but this plan made him itch all over. The chemical smell of the corpse below him made his stomach do backflips. Only the determination of seventeen years of planning kept him in the coffin. It would soon be over. In the morning, he would be free of this foul air and of his rotting companion. Danny would free him as soon as the warden was gone.
Billy dozed off and when it was morning, he woke up to feel the coffin shaking as it was lifted of the wooden benches. He heard mumbled voices overhead. Danny and the warden must be moving the coffin into the waiting car. Billy shivered as the chilly air penetrated the coffin. The constant shaking of the coffin increased his nausea, but Billy forced down the atrocious feeling in his throat. Almost free. Almost free. He chanted the words silently in his mind; ignoring the foul smell coming from his dead companion.
Finally, the car stopped, and the coffin was lifted down. Billy felt a thump as it landed in the bottom of the grave. His heart beated loudly with joy. Now was his moment. Now the warden would leave Danny to fill in the grave while he went back to the prison to have his morning coffee. Instead, something thudded onto the lid of the coffin just above over Billy’s head. He strained his eyes against the pitch-darkness of the coffin. It must be the warden, throwing a bit of symbolic dirt onto the coffin at the end of the ceremony. But the thudding continued, and Billy’s heart pounded in sudden fear. They were burying the coffin with him in it! How could that be? After all these years, had the warden chosen this of all days to help frail Danny?
The thudding grew fainter as the grave was filled in above Billy. After a few minutes, the foul air inside the coffin grew thin and hot and the chemical smell was almost overwhelming. Billy vomited all over his clothes before he could stop himself. He pounded the lid of the coffin in the darkness and shouted: “Come on, Danny! Kill the warden if you must! Hurry up….”
Then a terrible thought struck him, making his heart pound in sudden horror. Oh God… what if…what if… Billy fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a match. He struck it and in the sudden flash of brightness he turned his head and looked below him. Into the pale dead face of Danny.