Trollheart

I feel sorry for him, and almost go to move up the aisle, to place a hand on his bony shoulder, comfort him, let him know he is not alone. But what would I say? The ultimate hypocrisy: I understand. How can I, one of the living, understand what it is like when you die? How can any of us? Nobody can know what Josiah Bennett has gone through other than those who have also died, and none of them are here to offer comfort. Perhaps I should try though, poor and probably useless though my attempt would be. It would be something, and something is always better than nothing.

But then he raises his head, and though I can't see his eyes I know they are blazing with renewed anger. His voice is stronger, yet for all that, flatter, more emotionless.

Deader.

“Seven months I lay in the dark,” he tells the crucified Jesus. “Seven long months, listening to the sound of the soil settling around and above my coffin, the sounds of things crawling outside, the sound of my own fear. Why didn't you let me die?” There is a plaintive, wailing quality to the question. “Why? If you weren't going to take me to Heaven, send me to Hell. I tried to be a good man in life.”

His voice is dropping now, quieter, more reflective. Sadder.

“I fought for my country. Yes, I killed, but only in war, and I never enjoyed it, or killed a man when I could wound him. I was faithful to my wife, I loved my children. I thought I had probably earned my place in Heaven, but if you didn't agree, then you could have abandoned my soul to the flames. But neither happened, did it? You left me there. My body rotted, and my mind, my very – HAH!” He lets out a short, unpleasant bark, “My very soul began to rot, and nothing. No beam of light to lift me into your presence. No angels. No choirs of heavenly hosts. Not even a demon to torment me. Nothing.” He sighs, shakes his head. “Nothing.”

He falls silent then, and I am reluctant to move, for fear of alerting him to my presence. I feel that whatever strange force has motivated him and brought him back to life, perhaps it is spent now. Perhaps this was his intended destiny, to die on the church flagstones, railing at a god who did not exist. In the morning, the priest would find him there (not Father Liam, of course: he was a charred cinder in the hospital morgue by now, but another of his staff) and wonder what sort of vagrant would allow himself to reach that state of decrepitude, shake his head and wish that the man had come seeking help sooner, so that he could have been helped. The chances were he would not even be recognised as Josiah Bennett, late of this parish.

It therefore startles me when he speaks again, though it is little more than a murmur and I have to strain to catch the words.

“I was afraid,” he confesses, watching the impassive face of the pinioned saviour. “I believed, while I lay there in the darkness, that the worst part of it was the sounds I was hearing outside, the things I imagined. I was wrong. When the worms finally came, when they managed to eat through the wood of my coffin, the only barrier between me and their hunger, I went into a fit of panic. I tried to lift the lid but of course it would not move; I was pushing against six feet of solid-packed earth, to say nothing of the screws that held the lid closed. And so I was helpless as the worms entered my coffin, and then my body.” What seems to be a shudder passes through him at the recollection of the horror he has experienced. I find myself shuddering too. Who would not, hearing this tale of horror?

“They crawled into my ears,” he says, his voice low. “They squirmed over my hair, they devoured my best tie, the one I had asked to be set aside for my burial when I went. They travelled up my nose and when I tried to scream they invaded my mouth. I can still feel them, wriggling, twisting, sliming their way down my throat. When they poked into my eyes I think my mind snapped, and for a long time I didn't remember anything, until I was called forth.”

Struggling to his feet, seeming to marshall his strength, Bennett raises a fist again towards the cross. “You did this to me!” he spits. “You promised – your priests promised – the Bible promised there would be life after death. I would see all those I had lost – my Bella, my niece Julie, my mother and my father. We would all live together in Paradise. But it was all a lie. Like me, they had nothing to look forward to after death but slow, creeping, silent horror. This is what you get, for a life well lived or a life spent pursuing evil. It doesn't matter how you live; we are all, in the end, literally, food for the worms. And that's all.”

There is a soft rustling, and I realise with horror I can now see Mr. Bennett's bony, spindly legs, the flesh on them hanging loose, his bony backside all but sunken in, a few tufts of grey hair still adhering to its mostly shiny, bone-smooth surface. The man has dropped his trousers, or what remains of them anyway. His growl is more an animalistic snarl now as he sneers “This is what I think of you and your priests and your masses and your churches and your pope and your ...” There is the sound of a grunt, and with again a cracking of dusty bones Bennett drops into a sort of squat, and I realise with mounting revulsion (and some sort of sick understanding, surprising myself) what he is doing, or trying to do. The ultimate insult to a God he had revered, and found himself abandoned by.

But nature herself is against Josiah Bennett, and if God does exist, maybe up there He's laughing at the old man's vain attempts. Josiah has forgotten, perhaps, that he is dead, and there are no more waste products to be squeezed from a body which has not ingested food for over half a year.
Try as he might, Mr. Bennett literally cannot give a shit.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018