Rain

Ed told us to wait at the abandoned hospital, at the old steps of the main entrance. It was October 30th and it had been raining for the last four days. The river and all the creeks were swollen and overflowing. The water was loud and peach-colored from all the mud it was carrying. Giant tree stumps and massive logs would shoot by, surfacing and rolling over to briefly show their shiny black bark before disappearing downstream. Lord knows where they ended up. And it was still raining. Hard. And we were sick of it. We knew Halloween was going to be a wet and ruined one. So when Ed had said that Halloween would be a day early this year, we would have waited anywhere he told us to wait.

And there we were - at the old hospital. Listening to the rain streaming down onto the marble steps, onto the leaves of overgrown weeds and trees, and gurgling down broken roof tiles and spraying out over missing gutters. We weren't waiting long when we spotted Ed approaching, walking down our old bike path through the property. He was carrying something in his arms. It looked like an oversized shoe box, rounded at the ends. As he got closer, we could tell it was a wooden box, very old and worn. He placed it on one of the steps and answered our unasked questions. "It's a baby coffin!"

Ed said that the river had swallowed up the oldest part of the town cemetery and had washed away the small hills and tombstones. Caskets were being torn from the ground and he said he found his when he was riding his bike the day before. The small box had been sitting half in the water and half on the yellow centerlines of a road which was currently under the swollen banks of the river. So he scooped it up and took it home. We never knew him to lie, so we circled around the object and listened to his story. He told us the police were aware of the damage and that local farmers had reported a few large caskets which had been floating above their drowned crops. He told us he was going to show his parents the coffin, but something had stopped him. A sound.

Ed told us he heard a scratching sound from inside the casket. And that at first he thought it was probably a rat which had climbed through a small hole in the old wood to get away from the rising water. But the surface was unbroken, and the two clasp locks were still tight, corroded and now one piece with the wood of the box. When we excitedly protested, he simply told us to listen for ourselves.

At that precise moment, the rain stopped.


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