The Coffin (standard:mystery, 1342 words)
Author: Ian Hobson	Added: Sep 04 2006	Views/Reads: 5007/2509	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
I locked the door and turned around and there it was: a coffin!

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give him a proper burial.  My mum reckoned that my gran had never got 
over the loss.  She said it was like grieving twice.  And I know all 
about grieving, what with loosing my mother and my wife in the same 
year. 

But anyway, back to my granddad.  I'd forgotten all about the incident
with the missing coffin; though I still had all the family photographs 
and knew what he looked like. But of course, he'd died several years 
before I was born and, to me, the disappearance of his body and the 
coffin was just a story that my mum and my gran used to tell me.  
Though you'd think that finding a coffin on my doorstep would have 
jogged my memory a little; but it didn't. 

Anyway, as I stood beside the young police officer and looked into that
coffin there was no doubt in my mind about what I was seeing: it was my 
granddad, all dressed up in his Sunday best, and with his hair neatly 
trimmed and parted, looking just as he must have on the day of his 
disappearance, over sixty years ago. 

I passed out, or fainted, or whatever you want to call it.  And when I
came round I was lying on my back outside my front door with the Grays 
leaning over me and asking me if I was alright.  I asked what time it 
was and Joe told me it was ten to seven.  When I asked what had 
happened to the coffin and the policemen, Jo and his wife exchanged 
knowing looks and then sent for an ambulance. 

By the time I arrived at the hospital I felt fine, but I couldn't work
out why the day was getting brighter when it should have been getting 
darker, and why the sandwiches I'd eaten at lunchtime were still in my 
rucksack along with my still full-to-the-brim thermos flask.  The 
digital clock-cum-calendar on the waiting area wall read 07.58, 
Tuesday, 16 April, and as I looked at it, it dawned on me that it was 
still Tuesday morning. 

That afternoon and evening at home, I sat in a daze, unable to
comprehend what had happened.  I even searched the house and the 
dustbin, looking for empty bottles, but there were none.  And, anyway, 
if I'd been drinking, I'd have known about it.  But, physically, I felt 
fine.  So I watched some TV - just to confirm that it really was still 
Tuesday - and then, at half-ten, after I'd watched the news, I set my 
alarm and went to bed.  Then in the morning, when I got up, I looked 
out of the front window to make sure there were no coffins, and then 
went off to work. 

I was a little worried about explaining my day's absence; I could hardly
tell the truth, could I?   Fortunately my boss was on a 
management-training course, but he'd left instructions that if I was 
back at work I was to help Dave with some work in the boiler-house. 

“You missed a right day, yesterday,” Dave told me.  “A water-main burst
and flooded the boiler-house, and we had a hell of a job cleaning up 
the mess.” 


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