Necrotar

 

 

Blue and yellow whispers were rumoring swiftly about that that he might fill one of the Royal coffers.

 

Voices echoed throughout the cemetery walls, faces tapped, welled and wailed against the dripstone door of the crypt where the Coroner made his preparations. This particular body had died queerly at the end of yesterday’s light, and the Coroner called to perform the inquest was famous for his deciphering of unexplained deaths.

 

The body belonged to none other than Necrotar, the adored stonemason, who rightly lay in, and was named after the fine necropolis he had dedicate his life to building. His blood was righteous, not royal, but the Family loved him so, and he worked with such grace and care on their royal necropolis, that it was suggested he might be buried within their northern corner of eternal rest. The Family, being religious people, had called upon the Coroner to rule out murder and suicide before they could, of course, go forth with any decision.

 

The Coroner saw fit to do his inquest in the secluded stone and earthen room of the necropolis’s crypt, which provided the dampness needed to preserve the body (sometimes a complicated inquest would take days) and thick walls to secure his privacy. Grief and love, and the sight of a dead body made people inquisitive and meddling, or worse, they’d just stare, and stare, all of which broke the Coroner’s concentration. The ceilings were low, and had the Coroner not been rather short and round, he may have had trouble moving about. He had told the Family to leave him free of distraction until he was finished, and that he would deliver his report directly. A servant was placed outside the door of the room, should he need anything.

 

Cause, manner and mechanism of death are all in question, as Necrotar was found in his bed, and it seemed silly to Sister Mary, the poor girl who found him so, that he could have ever died, looking so peaceful, and being so strong and kind, and even came and went for some time until realizing he had slumbered quite longer than usual.

 

And so began the external examination. Inside, several hanging lanterns cast a jumpy dim light over the still body of Necrotar, whose feet extended over the sizeable examination table. The mason’s chest was still freckled with mineral dust, his pillar arm hung at his sides. His jaw was square and muscular. The man was made of stone, his skin tense and white like marble. As was stated before, there were no signs of struggle, nor marks of bodily harm.

 

The walls of the crypt showed a deposit of history; a sapling had sprouted daringly from the ceiling, hugging the delicate soil as it grew upside down, like nature had dared it to survive birth. The two men were shadowed on the dim stone walls like stretched characters as one lay still and the other moved about in a clean, white robe.

 

The Coroner pinched the man’s nose and kissed the man’s lip, exhaling deeply. The air filled Necrotar’s lungs and made his chest rise. The Coroner held a light to the man’s face and peered into his throat, looking for signs of redness or swelling, counting teeth. As a medical examiner of the utmost care, the Coroner stepped back and plucked a scroll and pen from his medical bag. His notes scratched loudly in the silence, staring at Necrotar all the while: clear airways, no signs of choking.

 

The Coroner was not a religious man, and had never left an undetermined death. He was a man of science, and fumed when commoners claimed a body was just taken by God because it was his time, or some other vague, nonsensical reason.  Pausing, the Coroner knocked three times on the door of the crypt and spoke loudly “Go and fetch the history of this man, and send me his two closest relatives.” The messenger boy made rounds to the congregation and town hall to ask if anyone knew of family members of the deceased, and would return some time later to report that none could found, or remembered of ever existing. “He had always been, alone.”

 

The Coroner prepared for the internal examination.  He drew a line and placed a scalpel on the skin, starting an incision down the abdomen. Then something strange happened. The body moved. Necrotar’s cold hand connected with the Coroner’s, squeezing lightly, two blue-gray eyes fluttered, stared into the Coroner’s, and then closed. The Coroner shouted and recoiled to the far wall. It was no spastic movement!

 

“Boy! Messenger boy!” The Coroner yelled. “You tell the people not to wait up tonight” he gasped “as, as the process is taking some time now. Do assure them that this death is a magnificent thing! Embrace Necrotar, hold on to his death and remember it, let it follow them but do not let them follow it. Listen to the heart beat, the one he wanted us to know!”  These words—this poetry! It was surging out of him uncontrollably! He could not stop. “Scribe!” he yelled. “Yes-Yes sir. Right now I will sir.”

 

The room had filled with cold air, as cold as a last breath. Pressing himself against the wall, the Coroner slumped in a daze. Necrotar lay motionless on the table, but a shadow was now moving about in the room. The shadow paced back and forth, casting the silhouette of a mammoth man, like a monster—a beautiful monstrous man. The shadow grew and grew, until the wall turned all black, and extinguished the lanterns, so that the Coroner could no longer see.

 

Nothing had happened. Nothing had happened. He stared in the vague direction of where the body was. He thought he could almost see the table. Nothing sounded. He had seen the darkness grow from the shape of a man, to something terrifying! The table disappeared. He could not see anything at all. It was an absolute darkness. He held his hand up to his face and it was not there.

 

Swearing by the name of science, the Coroner got to his feet, and slowly turned around. The Coroner opened the door—and two bodies rose into the darkness of the night, one lifeless and naked, and one alive and robed, both inexplicably resurrected, like Jesus from His tomb.