He'd been so prepared for his death that he'd had a spot in the churchyard saved since he was eight years old. He'd paid for it by working in the vicar's house doing odds and ends, fixing this and that until the old man finally said he could have that corner for himself, never asking why.
He never told his family about this, never made any notes until he wrote his will. The only sign that the space was already designated was the dirty hessian sheet that covered it up and remained roughly in place for the next ninety-one years.
Grandma always did wonder where he'd wander off to every night. Even before they got married he'd go for an "evening walk" that she'd never been able to follow him on but assumed he went through the woods by the church as he usually came out that end.
When it came to his passing, something didn't seem right. The nurses in his retirement home had called us to say he fell out of bed late at night and broken his neck but refused to let anyone see his body, saying it had to be autopsied and then they made excuse after excuse until we gave up and just asked for them to put his body into a coffin so he could be laid to rest.
It wasn't until a year after this, when we had the worst storms seen since the early 1900's that we found out why his death had seemed so sudden and so odd. The grounds around his grave had sagged and collapsed revealing the remains of a metal ladder and a trap door at the base of his coffin.
Seems that more than just the nurses were in on this, the gravediggers would have had to bury him with such precision so that the trapdoor would open up right onto the ladder and the reinforced tunnel that lead down to a large metal container.
We opened it to find his body sitting on an old armchair, a can of beans in one hand and a fork loosely clutched in the other. By the looks of it the way that the ground had collapsed must have blocked up whatever air ventilation he'd set up and he died properly by suffocating in his sleep.
The rest of the container was full of books, cane of food, a radio and countless batteries. for some reason he'd decided to spend his final years in isolation under the ground, listening to the world above and reading himself to sleep every night.
He never told his family about this, never made any notes until he wrote his will. The only sign that the space was already designated was the dirty hessian sheet that covered it up and remained roughly in place for the next ninety-one years.
Grandma always did wonder where he'd wander off to every night. Even before they got married he'd go for an "evening walk" that she'd never been able to follow him on but assumed he went through the woods by the church as he usually came out that end.
When it came to his passing, something didn't seem right. The nurses in his retirement home had called us to say he fell out of bed late at night and broken his neck but refused to let anyone see his body, saying it had to be autopsied and then they made excuse after excuse until we gave up and just asked for them to put his body into a coffin so he could be laid to rest.
It wasn't until a year after this, when we had the worst storms seen since the early 1900's that we found out why his death had seemed so sudden and so odd. The grounds around his grave had sagged and collapsed revealing the remains of a metal ladder and a trap door at the base of his coffin.
Seems that more than just the nurses were in on this, the gravediggers would have had to bury him with such precision so that the trapdoor would open up right onto the ladder and the reinforced tunnel that lead down to a large metal container.
We opened it to find his body sitting on an old armchair, a can of beans in one hand and a fork loosely clutched in the other. By the looks of it the way that the ground had collapsed must have blocked up whatever air ventilation he'd set up and he died properly by suffocating in his sleep.
The rest of the container was full of books, cane of food, a radio and countless batteries. for some reason he'd decided to spend his final years in isolation under the ground, listening to the world above and reading himself to sleep every night.
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