EC Comics: Ray Bradbury Three-Pack 1/3 (The Coffin)

Richard Braling had listened with increasing difficulty and much curiosity for a number of days to the banging and rattling about in his elder brother's workshop. Finally, he could stand it no longer.

RICHARD: "What are you doing, Charles?"

CHARLES: "Go away and let me alone! Can't you see I'm busy?"

Charles Braling was a dying man. A badly dying man. He seemed to be in a great hurry, between racking coughs and spittlings, to piece together one last invention.

RICHARD: "Please, Charles. Tell me."

CHARLES: "If you must know, I'll be dead in another week and I'm...I'm building a coffin."

RICHARD: "A coffin, my dear Charlie? That doesn't look like a coffin. A coffin isn't that complex. Come on, now. What are you up to?"

CHARLES: "I tell you, it's a coffin. An odd coffin, yes, but nevertheless, a coffin."

RICHARD: "But it would be easier to buy one!"

CHARLES: "Not one like this. You couldn't buy one like this any place, ever. Oh, it'll be a real fine coffin all right."

Charles fitted an odd thingumabob on the box before him. Richard moved forward.

RICHARD: "You're obviously lying. Why, that coffin is a good twelve feet long. Six feet longer than normal size."

CHARLES: "Yep."

RICHARD: "And the transparent top. Who ever heard of a coffin lid you can see through? What good is a transparent lid to a corpse?"

CHARLES: "Oh, just never you mind at all. Tum-ta-tum...da-dee."

The old man went humming and hammering about the shop. Richard had to shout above the din.

RICHARD: "This coffin is terrible thick! Why, it must be five feet thick! How utterly unnecessary!"

CHARLES: "I only wish I might live to patent this amazing coffin! It would be a god-send to all the poor peoples of the world. Think how it would eliminate the expenses of funerals. Oh, but of course, you don't know how it would do that, do you? How silly of me. Well, I shan't tell you! If this coffin could be mass-produced, gad, what money people would save!"

RICHARD: "Oh, go to blazes!"

Richard stormed out of his elder brother's shop. Poor Richard. Yes, it had been an unpleasant life. Young Richard had always been such a bounder, he had never had two coins to clink together at one time. All of his money had come from old brother Charlie, who had the indecency to remind him of it all the time.

RICHARD: "Selfish old tightwad! Well, that's what I've been waiting for, Charles. For you to die! Go ahead, you old fool! Hammer your life away!"

Richard spent many hours with his hobby. He dearly loved piling up empty bottles with French wine labels in the garden. As Richard often said while sitting and sipping, sipping and sitting...

RICHARD: "I like th' way they glint-*hic*!"

One morning, the old brother toddled upstairs and stole the insides out of the electric phonograph. Another morning, he raided the gardener's greenhouse. Yet another time, Charles received a delivery from a medical company.

DELIVERY MAN: "Sign here, please."

CHARLES: "Yes,...*cough*..thank you."

Richard was never allowed to buy anything for himself. It was always bought for him, given to him. He had to ask for everything, even writing paper. Richard considered himself quite a martyr to have put up with taking things from that rickety old brother for so long. So now, while the hammering and the murmuring excursions went on, Richard just sat and waited. Finally, on the fourteenth morning, old Charlie announced...

CHARLES: "I'M FINISHED!"

...and dropped dead.

Richard, without showing his inner excitement, arose, went to the window, watched the sunlight playfully flittering among the empty, fat, beetle-like champagne bottles, then picked up the phone and perfunctorily dialed a number.

RICHARD: "Hello. Green Lawn Mortuary?"

He looked to the stairs where dear old brother Charlie lay peacefully sprawled against the bannister.

RICHARD: "This is the Braling residence. Will you send around a wicker, please. Yes. For brother Charlie. Yes. Thank you."

Later, as the mortuary people were taking brother Charlies out in their wicker, they received instructions.

RICHARD: "An ordinary casket. No funeral service. Put him in a pine coffin. He would have preferred it that way. Simple. Goodbye."

After they left, Richard rubbed his hands together.

RICHARD: "Now we shall see about this 'coffin' built by dear Charlie! I do not suppose he will realize he is not being buried in his 'special' box! Hah!

Richard darted into the shop. The coffin sat before the wide-flung French windows, the life shut, complete and neat, all put together like the fine innards of a Swiss watch. It was vast and rested upon a long table with rollers beneath for easy maneuvering.

RICHARD: "Hmmph!"

The coffin interior, as Richard peered through the transparent lid, was six feet long.

RICHARD: "There must be a good three feet of false body at both head and foot of the coffin, then. Three feet at each end covered by secret panels which, when I find the way of opening them, will reveal...Of course! Money! It would be just like old Charlie to suck his riches into his grave with himself, leaving me with not a cent to buy a bottle with! The old ****!"

Richard raised the transparent lid and felt about, but found no hidden buttons. There was a small sign, studiously inked on white paper, thumbtacked to the side of the satin-lined box.

RICHARD: "What's this? 'The Braling Economy Casket! Copyright, April, 1952. Simple to Operate'. Hmmph!"

Richard snorted thinly. Who did Charlie think he was fooling? There was more writing. He read on.

RICHARD: "'Directions: Simply place body in coffin'. What a fool thing to say! Put body in coffin. Naturally! How else would one go about it?"

Richard peered intently, finishing out the directions.

RICHARD: "'Simply place body in coffin...and music will start'! What? It can't be. Don't tell me all this work has been for a...! We'll find out."

There would be no harm in lying in the box, testing it. Richard noticed small ventilating holes in the sides. Even if the lid were closed down, there would be air. Richard hoisted himself up.

RICHARD: "Hmmph! Simply place body in coffin and music will start. Really. How naive of old Charlie!"

He was like a man getting into a bathtub. He felt necked and watched over. He put one shiny shoe into the coffin, crooked his knees and eased himself in. He crouched there, as if undecided about the temperature of the bath water.

RICHARD: "Heh, heh!"

Chuckling softly, Richard lay down, pretending to himself that he was dead, that people were dropping tears on him, that candles were fuming and illuminating and that the world was stopped in mid-stride because of his passing. He put on a long, pale expression and shut his eyes, holding back the laughter in himself behind the pressed, quivering lips.

WHRRRRR-SPUNG!

The lid slammed down on him! From outside, if one had just come into the room, one would have imagined a wild man was kicking, pounding, blathering and shrieking inside a closet. Then silence. Richard relaxed. The life was locked. There was nothing to do, but wait for someone to come and let him out.

The music began to play. It seemed to come from somewhere within the coffin. It was green music. Organ music, very slow and melancholy, typical of gothic arches and long black tapers. It smelled of earth and whispers. It echoed between stone walls. It was so sad that one almost cried listening to it. It was was music of potted plants and crimson and blue stained-glass windows. It was late sun at twilight and a cold wind blowing. It was a dawn with only fog and a far away fog-horn moaning.

RICHARD: "Charlie, you old fool."

Tears of laughter welled up in Richard's eyes.

RICHARD: "You old fool, you. So this is your odd coffin. Nothing more than a coffin which plays its own dirge. Oh, my sainted grandmother!"

Richard's eyes moved aimlessly about. His fingers tapped soft little rhythms on the satin cushions. Through the transparent lid, he saw sunlight shooting through the open French windows, dust particles dancing on it. It was a lovely day. The organ music suited. The sermon began.

CHARLES'S VOICE: "We are gathered together, those who loved and those who knew the deceased to give him out homage and our due..."

RICHARD: "Charlie, bless you! That's your voice! A mechanical funeral, by heavens! Organ music and lecture. And Charlie giving his own oration for himself!"

The soft voice continued.

CHARLES'S VOICE: "We who knew and loved him are grieved at the passing of Richard Braling."

RICHARD: "Richard? Why, I'm Richard!"

A slip of the tongue, naturally. Merely a slip. Charlie had meant to say 'Charles' Braling. Certainly. Yes. Of course. Yes. Certainly. Yes! Naturally! Yes!

CHARLE'S VOICE: "Richard was a fine man. We shall see no finer in our time."

RICHARD: "My...my name again!"

It was hardly a mistake, using that name twice. Richard Braling. Richard Braling! Whirrr! Spung! Flowers. Six dozen bright blue, red, yellow, sun-brilliant flowers leaped up from behind the coffin on concealed springs.

RICHARD: "HELP!"

CHARLE'S VOICE: "In life, Richard Braling was a connoisseur of great and good things. He savored life, as one savors of a rare wine, holding it upon the lips."

A small panel inside the box flipped open. A bright metal arm snatched out. A needle stabbed Richard in the thorax, shooting him full of colored liquid before he could seize it. A growing numbness. Suddenly, Richard could not move his fingers or his arms or turn his head. His legs were cold and limp. Another panel opened. Metal forceps issued forth on steel arms. His left wrist was pierced by a huge sucking needle.

RICHARD: "Mmmph-h-h-h!"

This time, he did not scream. His tongue was motionless in his anesthetized mouth. A pump started to work. While his blood drained out one side of his body, his right wrist was punctured, held, a needle shove into it and the second pump began to force formaldehyde into him. A motor popped and chugged. The room drifted by on either side of him. Little wheels revolved. No pallbearers were necessary. The flowers swayed as the casket rolled through the French windows, into the garden.

CHARLE'S VOICE: "Now it is the time when we must consign this part of this man to the earth."

Little shining spaces leaped out of the sides of the casket. They began to dig. Richard saw the spades toss up dirt. The coffin settled, bumped, settled, dug, bumped and settled, dug, bumped and settled.

CHARLE'S VOICE: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

The coffin was deep. The music played. The last thing Richard Braling saw was the spading arms of the Braling Economy Casket reaching up and pulling the hole in after it.

CHARLE'S VOICE: "Richard Braling...Richard Braling...Richard Braling..."

The record was stuck. Nobody minded. Nobody was listening.