Everything else is the same.
The crescent-moon wallpaper is still on the walls, the water stain still spreading through it under
the skylight in the sloped ceiling. He thinks he can even see the face patterned there that he always
used to scare Owen with, telling him that if he didn't fall asleep in the next one minute, the face
would eat him alive.
Their beds are there, too, unbelievably small against two corners, Owen's little more than a cot,
really. There's the shelf with all their books, very roughly used but still favorites. Below it is their
box of toys, piled with plastic action figures and cars and ray guns that shot out little more than
loudness, and on Owen's bed is a whole array of stuffed toys – elephants, mostly, they were his
favorite – every single one of which Seth knows is across the ocean in his brother's bedroom.
And taking up the middle of the room, on the floor in the space between the beds, sits the long black
coffin, the lid opened like a giant clam.
The blind is down over the skylight, making the light vague in here, but Seth doesn't want to step past
the coffin to raise it.
It takes him a moment to remember that the torch has other uses than as a weapon. He shines it on
the coffin. He tries to remember if he's ever actually seen one in real life. He's never been to a
funeral, not even in ninth grade when Tammy Fernandez had a seizure on school grounds. Nearly
everyone went to that one, but Seth's parents weren't going to be swayed from an overnight trip to
Seattle. "You didn't even know her," his mother had said, and that was that.
This coffin, though, is definitely shining back at him, and not like polished wood might. It shines
back almost like the hood of a really expensive car. In fact, exactly like the hood of a really
expensive car. It even seems to be made of a kind of black metal. The corners of it are rounded, too.
Seth's curiosity gets the better of him, and he moves closer. It's strange, stranger than even at first
glance. Sleek and expensive looking, almost futuristic, like something out of a movie.
Definitely a coffin, though, as the inside is all white cushions and pillows and –
"Holy shit," Seth says, under his breath.
Crisscrossing the bedding are streamers of metallic-sided tape.
They look as if they've been torn and pulled against, as if someone was tied down by them and that
person struggled and pulled with all their might until they were free.
Free to stumble blindly down the stairs before collapsing on the path outside.
Seth stands there for a long, long time, not knowing what to think.
An ultra-modern coffin, big enough to hold the nearly fully-grown version of him, yet here in the
room he left as a child.
But no coffin for Owen. And nothing for his parents.
Just him.
"Because I'm the only one who died," he whispers.
He puts his hand on the open lid. It's cool, just how he'd expect the metal to feel, but he's surprised
to find a thin layer of dust on his hand when he takes it away. The inside, though, is almost a blazing
white, even in the low light from the blind-covered window. It's cushioned with contoured pillows
on all sides, vaguely in the shape of a person.
There are torn metallic bandages –"conductive tape" – all the way down the length of it. And tubes,
too, big and small, some disappearing into the sides of the coffin, their stray ends having left stains
here and there against the whiteness of the pillows.
He thinks of the abrasions along his body and how it hurt to pee.
Had the tubes been connected to him?
Why?
He crouches down, shining the torch underneath. The coffin sits on four short rounded legs, and
from the very middle of the bottom of it, a small pipe goes straight down into the floor. Seth touches
it. It seems slightly warmer than the rest of the coffin, like there might even be power running into it
somehow, but he can't be sure.
He stands up again, hands on his hips.
"Seriously," he says loudly. "What the hell?"
He angrily flips up the blind on the skylight. Annoyed, he looks down again to the street below.
To all the houses that line it.
All the houses that look as closed up as this one.
"No," he whispers. "There can't be."
The next instant, he's running back down his stairs as fast as his exhaustion will let him.