I'm standing watch over a man's dead daughter - the final night

The first night.
The second night.
And now let me tell you about the last night.
Christian was waiting for me at the church when I arrived a couple hours before sundown. He eyed me a moment and then suggested we just sit on the steps of the church instead of going anywhere there were people. I think he saw me grimace as I sat, for he then asked if I had any lumps on my body yet.
?I?m just tired,? I replied.
?Like hell you are,? he snapped. ?You?re pale, you?re sweating, and you generally look like ****. When are you going to the hospital? This can be fatal if you delay treatment too long.?
I told him this was the last night. I didn?t say how I knew, but I think he?d come to the same conclusion, for he just nodded and said that he expected to see me tomorrow morning, but in a different capacity. He?d be there doing his job, he explained, confirming yet another case and making sure I went into quarantine. I didn?t like the sound of that but I only grimaced and didn?t protest. In the morning, I said. I?d go to the ER.
Christian told me he?d been trying to find out where the father and daughter came from. He?d finally received their immigration records from some contacts he had. The father had come to America directly after the daughter was born. The ?recent immigrant? bit in the ad? Total bull****. He supposed the father was using whatever story he could to tug on people?s heartstrings. The girl, however, was a recent immigrant. The mother had died not long ago in a car accident. The relatives were quick to arrange for the girl - now seventeen - to join her father. They probably feared the immigration process would be far harder if she were no longer a minor.
So the father went to meet his daughter at the airport and brought her home.
She died the very next day.
And then the father started paying people to stand watch over her body.
He gave me instructions for how I would survive the third night. I laughed because I didn?t want to believe, but Christian remained stone-faced and repeated what I was to do. I would need to be quick, he said. I would only have a minute before it was too late.
And if I failed, if I was too slow, then the girl would seize me and her and tear me apart throughout the course of the night and the plague would continue to spread throughout the city, until someone else answered that damned ad and ended this curse.
I brought my cellphone only so I could watch the clock. Christian had instructed me to hide and so I would. No youtube videos. No lights that could give me away. I lay on my side, stomach against the side of the coffin, counting down the hours and then the minutes until midnight. My heart was pounding with terror and I kept thinking of all the ways this could go wrong and all the things that girl had promised to do to me. My body was drenched in sweat and I shivered with chills and I wasn?t entirely convinced that was the result of the plague that was sinking deeper into my blood. I felt paralyzed with my fear and I had to keep repeating Christian?s words in my head until that was all I could think of, all that filled my mind, in the hopes that when the time came I would do what he instructed and not lie there paralyzed, helpless and afraid.
Midnight came. The lid of the coffin fell open with a resounding bang and my body jerked reflexively from the noise. My heart felt like it was in my throat, it was pounding so hard. The girl leapt from the coffin, jumping over where I lay pressed against the side, and galloped down the aisle for the doors. I forced myself to move. Christian?s instructions were a mantra inside my head.
Lay next to the coffin. When she leaps out, climb inside, and lay motionless for the rest of the night.
Be quick. Don?t be seen.
What if she saw? What if she heard?
I pulled myself up over the edge and then I was falling in - and my back hit solid wood.
I sobbed with relief once - then I sucked in a deep lungful of air and held it, not daring to make a noise. The girl was pounding on the doors, howling her fury, and then she turned and ran back up the aisle, past the coffin, to the pulpit. To the altar. Searching for me. I stared at the arched ceiling of the church and listened to her screams, to her calling for me. Demanding to know where the sentry was. Threatening to flood this city - this world - with death and disease for the promise that had been broken.
There was a pressure against my chest. On my legs. Weighing me down. My breath came in short, shallow gasps and I recognized the feeling.
Like dirt. Like I was being covered with dirt.
It took all of my will to not leap from the coffin. I kept my eyes wide open, staring up, reminding myself that this wasn?t real, that it was an open coffin in a church and I wasn?t being buried alive. Still, the pressure mounted, and my breathing grew labored as my limbs grew leaden.
The night wore on. Her cries softened. I heard desperation in her voice. And it was only one voice now, sometimes calling for a sentry, sometimes calling for her father. Close to dawn it broke entirely and she wept openly. She cried for her mother. She cursed her father and screamed with grief, angry that he killed her and yet so, so desperate to see him, the last bit of family she had left.
By now, I could not move my body. The sensation of dirt continued to fall upon me, pushing me down, down further towards the base of the coffin and my sides ached simply from the tortuous act of trying to move my chest up and down. I wanted nothing more than to rip myself from that grave, to break the hold over me, before it was too late and the pressure took away all ability to breath.
And her weeping! I wanted to go to her. To tell her it was okay, that he was waiting, that we?d go together to see him. Anything to ease her suffering. I repeated Christian?s instructions in my head instead, over and over. Stay in the coffin until dawn. Stay until dawn.
I remember a pressure over my nose and mouth. Cold. Suffocating. Panic filled my mind as I held stale air inside my lungs and fought the primal, instinctive urge to fight my way out of the coffin and into the clean air beyond. Some distant part of my brain registered that the church had gone quiet and back of my neck prickled as something moved in the corner of my vision. Slowly, reluctantly, with stale oxygen burning in my lungs, I slipped my gaze off the ceiling and to the side of the coffin, where thin, white fingers with long, sharp nails had just curled over the top of the wood.
The girl stared down at me, silent and still, the spines of her hair framing her face like a halo.
She?d finally found me.
And then the light of dawn flooded the church.
The sensation of pressure on my body vanished. The girl slumped, like all her strings were cut, and then she vanished from my line of sight. I inhaled sharply, gasping and coughing, and when I was quiet again I found that the church had gone silent. The girl?s weeping had ceased. There were the distant voices of someone walking by on the sidewalk outside, but that was all.
Tentatively, I crawled from the coffin. The girl lay directly next to the coffin. She was pale, her skin luminescent, her hair spread about her in a fine haze. I hovered under her uncertainly, realizing that she was alive - that she was breathing - she stirred, eyes opening, staring up and about her in wild surprise.
I told her I was the sentry that her father had set. That I?d stayed the three nights and that I could take her to him now. If she wanted to go to him, of course. I?d heard her say he?d killed her.
I messaged her father on my phone and he gave me his address once I said his daughter was alive and I?d bring her to him. She sat in the passenger seat of my car and stared out the window, not speaking, and I didn?t know what to say to her to spark some sort of conversation. So? crazy last three days, huh? What was up with your hair?
The father met us at the door. No, it wasn?t Christian, as some of you have speculated. He quickly ushered us inside to where he?d made tea and had biscuits and jam waiting. The girl seemed unnerved. She acted awkwardly towards her father, not able to look at him, and finally busied herself with the food. I edged away and the father followed until we were in the hallway, well out of earshot. He pulled out his wallet and started counting out the rest of my payment. I didn?t take it right away.
?You have some explaining to do,? I said in a low voice.
My tone was meant to keep the girl from hearing, but it came out as menacing instead. He flinched.
Her mother had made a bargain, he said. With something. It gave her a child, but there were certain terms that had to be met. The girl wasn?t to see or speak to her father until her 18th birthday.
?Then her mother died,? I whispered, the pieces clicking into place.
He nodded miserably. He?d emigrated, thinking that if an ocean separated them it would be safer. Easier. They?d reunite after her birthday. Then there was the car accident and the relatives - not knowing of the bargain - had sent her to America.
?I thought it wouldn?t matter,? he sobbed softly. ?Her birthday was only a few days away. Besides, what choice did I have? I couldn?t leave her alone in a new country. I guess I thought now that my wife was dead that entity would consider our bargain concluded.?
I glanced into the other room, where the girl was shoving her third biscuit into her mouth. No wonder her interactions with her father seemed so stilted. She?d literally never met the man until the moment he showed up at the airport and doomed her to die.
There was a way out, her father continued. She told him before she died. She, despite never being told of the bargain, somehow knew what fate awaited her. Weeping, she?d told him what he must do. Set a sentry that would watch over the coffin. If the sentry failed or fled, then disease and death would cover the city and continue to spread the longer her coffin went untended. If a year passed by and still no sentry had succeeded in their task, then she would be lost to him forever.
I didn?t know what to say. Should I be angry? He?d risked the lives of others - gotten people killed. I wondered, if I knew the reason and the cost, would I have still stood watch?
I still think on this and I think of all the things the girl said on that second night. Of how I was selfish, how I would abandon others when they no longer pleased me, how someday that selfishness would consume me and I would hurt others to serve my own ends. I fear that she was right and that if there hadn?t been the promise of money? that I wouldn?t have risked my life.
I took the money from him and left without saying anything more. They could sort out their relationship on their own. I had to get myself to the hospital.
I went to the ER. The triage nurse didn?t seem excited as I described my symptoms, even when I mentioned the bulbos that had erupted on my legs overnight. Then I sat and had to wait for a bit and wound up vomiting blood onto the floor and things moved a little quicker after that. They got me into a room, the doctor took a look at my legs and then I was being whisked away to a room with a bag of IV antibiotics. Christian didn?t take long to appear.
?This is not first thing in the morning,? he hissed at me. ?Treatment needed to be started within twenty-four hours of the first symptoms. You could die from this.?
I told him I paid the father a visit. I relayed everything he?d told me, about the bargain and how we?d saved the girl and the city as well. Christian stared pensively out the window while I talked. He fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He stared at them sourly for a long moment and then with a long sigh, he threw them into the nearby trashcan.
?I guess I should stop smoking again,? he said dejectedly. ?Lung cancer is suddenly back on the table.?
And he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked out, presumably to report yet another case of plague in what was hopefully an abated epidemic.
I?m still at the hospital. The doctors are grim when they talk to me, but they?ve offered up some hope that I?ll pull through now that they?ve got me hooked up to antibiotics. I feel wretched. I?m going to finish up this post and then pass the **** out and sleep for as long as they?ll let me. It?s been a rough couple of days here. Keep an eye on the news. If you hear about a bubonic plague outbreak in the next few days you?ll know that we didn?t succeed and this isn?t over.
But I think it?ll be okay. I think this all turned out okay. I saved a girl and a bunch of others and got paid seventeen grand in the process.
I still think I?m just going to stick to gardening jobs in the future, though.


Source.