It was a cemetery in a small but not so tiny New England town on the Maine coast. Well after dusk, the fishermen tied up their boats and sold their catches for nights of swearing, drinking and gambling. One of them did not join in that ritual and instead stole away to the oldest cemetery in town where the dark shadows and spindly trees reached out over acres of tombstones lit only by moonlight concealed by clouds. Careful not to rouse the caretaker, Willie Loomis looked across Eagle Hill Cemetary before he entered the Collins Mausoleum. He wanted money, and he wanted it fast! The Collins Family here were buried with all sorts of jewels. Joshua had been buried with a ceremonial sword. Naomi with family heirlooms. It was such a waste that they'd be sealed up with all those riches going to pot. They surely didn't need them where they was. It wasn't like they would mind if he took them.
Equipped with crowbar and a ship's pulley, he first tried breaking into the tomb of Joshua Collins who had died in 1812, but that was sealed tight. Ceremonial swords were too easily traced anyway, but jewelry was not and it was much easier to sell too. Pulling on the seals of Naomi's tomb, Willie hung a pulley on one of the rings in the tomb and attached a hook to the outer seal of the middle crypt. That in place, he grabbed the rope and gave it a yank. Pulling in yanking, he heard it creaking and moving, but it wasn't the crypt. That was still sealed tight, but pulling on the ring.... that opened something! He watched as the seal remained stuck, but the ring and its secret lock mechanism had been pulled down. Part of the wall ground had opened before him...........
A door ! He couldn't believe it! What incredible luck! Why else would anyone put a door in here if but to hide something ! He picked up his flashlight and shone it inside. The beam of light bounced around the vault a minute and then fell on a coffin. It was bound up in chains. Why would anyone put chains on a coffin unless they were trying to keep someone out ?! That proved their were riches in here ! Trading a casket for a chest wasn't good enough to scare him off. Grinning ear to ear, he grabbed his crowbar and put it into place. Carefully scraping and trying to snap but one link in the chain keeping the casket sealed. For a second he stopped, he thought he'd heard a woman's ghostly voice out in the cemetery, but it had to be an albatross, this lousy town on the Maine coast was covered with them. After that, screech, something else began creeping up on him.
Now, he didn't feel as if he was alone. He felt the universe opening up around him and the sensation of someone passing through him. His vision dimmed as somewhere in time and space he traded places with
someone else. Someone else not who had left his earthly remains in this cemetery, but someone else from another time and space now arriving to exchange plaes with him. He gripped the crowbar as someone took his place. he felt as if he did not know who he was. The new person in the tomb looked around the guano-covered mausoleum floor and up to the ceiling whose eaves served as home for the bats slipping in and out of the cracks in the rafters. His eyes noticed and scanned down to the crowbar under the link of the chain. Maybe he was an archaeologist... anything to convince him he wasn't a grave robber. He dropped the tool as he stepped back in shock at the casket he almost violated. He was just in the nick of time on this one...
"Oh boy."