Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Muffled men in rubber boots are digging late at night.

They grunt with every pound of earth they shovel from the site.

In dark cloth coats and baseball caps, considerate of death,

Their flashlights cut the misty air and backlight puffs of breath.

The stillness of the early hour makes loud the sounds of men.

By shovelfuls the pile grows higher: “They buried deep back then.”

Now deeper dug and panting more, no one no longer talks

When flashlights freeze and breath is held as someone hits a box.

Renewed, they dig around the sides and bring the thing to view,

A fiberglass sarcophagus, the handles rusted through.

“A plastic job, the rage back then,” says one who seems to know.

“No dust leaks out, no worms get in; it makes the process slow.”

From far above a winch comes down to soiled sweating men

Who take the weight and slip the straps beneath the coffin’s ends.

Then out they climb, the webbing strains, the windlass motor hums.

A moment stopped: “It’s stuck,” says one, then up the long box comes.

Beside its pit the coffin sits, still stained from years below.

It seems, at misty thickened dawn, to cast a ghastly glow.

No one speaks but all move up, each elbowing for view.

A small man with a piece of steel busts out the rusted screws.

The flashlights pan the bones and dust, the tie clasp and the threads.

Unseen, unheard, a wraith escapes, and screams above their heads.