Him being dead wasn't the problem... him sitting in the middle of the congregation like he had when he was alive was far more of a concern. If our dear preacher hadn't stuttered and clutched at his heart like he was having an attack then we might have sat for the whole sermon ignorant of the dead man in our midst.
We'd all seen him wandering about for the last couple of weeks, going about his normal routes like we hadn't given him a pauper's burial and left flowers over his simple gravestone. I know the lone relation of his wasn't nearly as concerned as he ought to have been and I know these are connected somehow.
If either of the buggers was easier to pin down I'd have my answers by now but instead I catch glimpses of them both wandering in their respective distances, going about their respective days like nobody'd died or returned. It's infuriating beyond belief at this point and the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was a dead man sitting on a pew he hadn't touched a day in his life.
He stood up when it became clear that the preacher was too shocked to continue and asked which of us had buried him. The few who'd done the kindness raised their hands and the dead man called them all his would-be murderers, his attempted killers who'd seen him asleep and thrown him in a grave without even trying to wake him first.
He'd woken up half-starved of air, clawed his way to the surface and set the ground back down before resuming his normal route, waiting for guilt to eat his killers alive and finding us uncaring as the dirt he'd nearly died in. He said he now found himself surrounded by all the devils hell seen fit to reject.
With that last damning sentence he walked out of the church, out of our town to never be seen again.
Whether he's dead or alive again, I do wish him well.
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