Taphophobia

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Horror Story Challenge from DC Creative Writing Read and Critique, Prompt: Taphophobia, the fear of being buried alive

Also posted in the DC Creative Writing Read and Critque’s Wattpad anthology; find it and others here.

Toby’s arms seized up, a jolt running his body and freezing every muscle in turn. The dark had fully enveloped him. He couldn’t find a single sliver of light to interrupt the blackness. Blood pounded through his head so fast it made the heat and pressure on his skin sky rocket. A few drops of sweat burst forth on his nose. The shaking started in his fingers, curling them up against the wood mere inches from his face. He couldn’t shift back more than a few inches, he ran into a wall, same to the sides.

Too tight! Too close!

He bit down on his lip to contain the keen that clawed and battered at his ribs for escape.

No, no, it’s not real. I’m not in danger. Look, you can breathe. He took a deep, slow breath, forcing his lungs as full as they would go, beating the terrified creature in his chest down as they took up all the space.

You can see. Not much, but his eyes had indeed adjusted enough that he could see the outline of the doorway before him and the closet bar above him.

You can move. He crouched, bending his knees fully to his chest and extending his arms full over his head, arching his back. He stood slowly. His pulse had reduced, but it still felt heavy, just under his throat. He wiped the sweat from his nose.

“There!” Iris called from the other side of the wood before his face. A screeching creak and light flooded the little coat closet in which she had unexpectedly trapped him. He just stood and breathed a moment as she hoisted the thick dining table onto the dolly she retrieved. The damn table must have weighed as much as an elephant! So when she had lost her grip on it and it had fallen toward him, it was all Toby could do to escape into the tiny space before being crushed.

“I’m so sorry, bae!” Iris’s voice fluttered around the giant table as Toby flattened his hands against the dark stained, oak surface. He helped her push it into the dining room.

“No worries,” he called, injecting as much mirth and forgiveness into his voice as he could. Hard to do as his hands still shook out the end of their tremors, but he’d had practice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

His blanket trailing behind him, his velvet otter clutched tight against his side, Toby followed daddy toward the backyard.

“Daddy, I’m tired. I wanna go back to bed,” he mewled, his head sinking even as he dragged himself after the lambent whiteness of his father’s work shirt in the dark.

“Daddy needed a big strong man’s help. I guess I thought that was you?” His father knew exactly how to trigger his six year old heart!

Toby set his otter carefully in the kitchen chair he was just starting to pass, wrapped his blanket around the fuzzy creature, then scampered after his father. “I am! I am!”

His dad held the back screen door open and Toby had charged half way down the stairs before he noticed daddy had stopped by something on the porch. Scooting back up to his dad’s side Toby found a long thing wrapped in a sheet. “Ok buddy, we just gotta carry this over to the bottom of the yard. You pick up that end, ok?”

Toby scooped his arms under the sheet as indicated while his dad lifted from the other end. The weight in the sheet pulled Toby forward abruptly and he bounced into it before straightening and following his father carefully down the stairs.

A soft whiff of rich garden earth and geraniums made the little boy look around for his mother. He expected to see her beaming proudly from the porch to see her little man helping his dad, but he didn’t find her. He screwed his mouth up in disappointment, but soldiered on. If she showed up later, that would still be ok.

They reached the bottom of the yard where the dirt grew mushy underfoot, indicating they neared the creek. “Right here, buddy,” Toby’s dad whispered, the thick summer air weighing down his words like a wet towel.

The little boy dropped the thing in the sheet, scraping the sweat from his bare, narrow chest with a sour expression. He rolled his fingers together, thinking over the feel of the thing he had carried. It felt like boots.

“All right, bud, here’s where you gotta be really strong. We’ve gotta dig super deep.” Toby’s father handed him the shovel from his mom’s garden shed, with the half shaft that made it better sized for the little boy. Toby watched his dad gouge his shovel deep into the ground, glanced back to the porch looking for his mother, then set to helping.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“No! No kisses for you!” Iris cried. Toby chased her around the table, ducking low under the throw pillow she aptly threw at him. He got his arms around her just as she spun with another soft missile. She crushed it into his face, flattening his nose. He caught sight of the couch in his peripheral and dragged her toward it. She spun him last minute and positioned herself on top. He hadn’t expected the movement and toppled onto the couch, pulling her with him. This pressed all of her weight into the pillow and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

His legs lay trapped under her weight, his right arm entombed between Iris’s body and the back of the couch. He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, couldn’t beg, couldn’t-

Toby tried to gasp, only sucked fabric, and suddenly all strength leached from his muscles. The shaking tore through his arms. It made his legs rigid and unresponsive. His chest buckled, trying to breathe but only getting the tiniest sips of air through the pillow.

Muffled laughter echoed from far away and Toby lost any sense of time.

She’s trying to suffocate me!

His head jerked side to side to try and break free of the pillow. Nothing! Nothing helped!

“I win!”

Air! Light!

Iris tore the pillow away triumphantly and before Toby could take more than a cursory suck of that blessed oxygen, she planted a hard kiss. She almost made him unable to breathe again, blocking one side of his nose with hers. He tried to back away, but the couch stopped him again.

Still trapped!

Iris sat up abruptly and he heaved a few hard breaths, his limbs still not responding.

“That’s right!” She plopped the pillow hard on his chest. “You insult my cooking again, maybe I won’t let you off so easily!” She giggled, set another small kiss on his cheek, and stood from the couch, sauntering off to the kitchen and her insulted casserole.

Toby remained on the couch a few minutes, counting, breathing, easing his arms and legs around the slowly receding adrenaline that had flooded his system.

He turned his head to find Iris pacing the kitchen, singing to the radio she had just turned up. How could he have thought she was trying to kill him? She was just being playful. She didn’t actually hold the pillow on him for very long. Right? He was fine. That had just been… just his claustrophobia. Right. That was all. Maybe he should mention it to her, then they could avoid these instances.

Yea, he should do that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The hole had become too deep for Toby to help his dad dig, so now he sat on the ground, taking aside the dirt his dad lifted up to him in the old, tin bucket. While waiting for his dad to gather another load, he stared at the sheet curiously.

Had something moved? He rubbed then narrowed his eyes, having some difficulty focusing around his exhaustion. He stared, blinking and shaking his head periodically. Everything around him wobbled and shifted under the heat waves and light summer breeze. Had the middle lifted a bit, or had the wind just shifted the sheet?

“There we go! Let’s get it in here, bud.” Toby’s head bobbed as he rolled onto his hands and knees to stand. Once fully upright he looked around for his father and found him dragging a long box toward him. It echoed hollow and wooden as it bounced on little rocks and sticks in the yard. Toby watched, confusion furrowing his young face.

His dad dragged the wooden thing up next to the sheet thing and dropped it heavily. A lid popped up with the impact and landed askew, allowing Toby to see into the dark interior. Toby took a hesitant step toward it, standing up on his toes and craning his neck forward as far as he could.

His dad hadn’t noticed Toby’s reluctant approach and threw the lid off with his boot. The little boy leapt back with a squeak. Daddy turned and raised a disdainful eyebrow at him and Toby rushed to the far end of the sheet-thing to escape that gaze. They lifted the sheet-thing into the wooden box.

Had it made a sound when it landed? Not just the thunk of a heavy thing landing on wood, but a… an oof.

Daddy set the lid atop the box and Toby helped him align it before Daddy smacked it down with his beefy fist. Toby couldn’t begin to help his dad lift the thing now, so he pushed the end as his dad hoisted the other and they dragged it toward the hole. They lined it up next to the hole, edged a couple of lean-step-lean-steps, and guided the weight to fall into the abyss.

Toby stood after, head and arms hanging. His eyes lurched from closed to half mast.

“Good job, buddy,” his dad lifted Toby in his big arms and the little boy stopped fighting the pull of sleep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“It’ll be fine, bae.”

“But missing that turn, we’ll have to circle back like three miles! We’ll be late!”

“Nonsense, we’ll just take the highway.”

“The highway… Wait, Iris, no, it’ll be so busy-”

“Look, Google says it’s totally the fastest way.” She shoved her phone into his pleading hands and took the exit fast enough to throw his weight into the passenger side door.

“But Iris, I can’t-” his words cut off as she punched the gas and her little blue Toyota surged forward. His vision filled with the back of a semi and Toby’s breath hitched in his chest. The air in his lungs expanded exponentially to the size of the semi-tailor, choking him.

The roar of an old muscle car came up on their left, the sound filling Toby’s body. His bones shook with the deep rumbling bass and he clenched his teeth.

A sharp shriek spiked behind them and circled faster than Toby could follow with his eyes, the tiny crotch-rocket shooting ahead of them before he could find it. Toby’s pulse leapt into his throat. Too fast! How could his heart possibly stay contained in his skin; it was so strong!

A grumbling, rattling, coursing came abreast of them and Toby shrank into his seat away from a green and purple fire painted dump truck that loomed over him, blocking out the sky. His hands clamped on the arm rest of the door to his right and the seat cushion next to his hip on the left. He scrunched his eyes closed.

I can’t breathe! My chest! I’m gonna have a heart attack!

He finally gasped around the bird fluttering in his chest, but that seemed to only allow it to spread its wings, and suddenly he was breathing like he had a marathon.

Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision. Weakness suffused his limbs. He sagged in the seat.

I’m dying! The fear and panic roiled, and yet his body couldn’t do anything with it.

“There, see, not so bad, eh?” Toby blinked slowly. The noise of the monstrous river of traffic receded. The pressure and closeness of the other cars had disappeared. Iris had pulled onto the exit ramp. Toby just sat and panted as quietly as he could, his face turned toward the window.

She really is trying to kill me…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Toby laid in bed, groggily drawing the constellations across the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling. He sat up on his elbow, reaching for the glass of water mommy left on his table for him. His hand swiped only air. He blinked blearily for a few seconds until the terrible day came back.

He had gone looking for mommy first thing that morning, only to find her and daddy’s bed un-slept in. He found daddy sitting on the back porch, still dirty from digging the hole. He held a large, empty bottle loosely in his hand and stared out over the yard.

“Where’s mommy?” Toby asked.

“She left us, buddy,” daddy said, his voice flat, his eyes not moving from staring out toward the creek.

“What? Did she go to the store without us?!” Toby demanded, instantly irate.

“No, bud. She’s gone-gone.”

Toby’s face fell in confusion and he went to sit next to his dad. “Will she be back in time to cut the crusts off my lunch sam’ich?”

“No, bud.”

“But… but… Will she be back in time for dinner? It’s spaghetti night! It’s her favorite!” A thickness rose in his chest, filling his throat. Fear quickly chased it up, pushing a sour taste into his mouth. His lower lip crawled up then curled over in defeat as it failed to reach his nose. His vision blurred. “Daddy, won’t she be back for dinner?!”

Daddy had never answered, and Toby ran back to his room. He had cried, and slept. He woke, and stared despondently around at his toys. He went to his parent’s room, looking for something of mommy’s. Maybe if she forgot something important enough, she would come back for it.

He knew his mother had a necklace with a pretty, round blue stone in it. She would never have left that! He searched for hours until he finally gave up and ran to his room again. Again he cried, and slept.

Now he had woken yet again and it was dark. A long, low sound pulled Toby’s eyes to his window. It stood thrown open to collect any breeze it could. The sound came again and Toby watched as the curtain bobbed with the breeze, but settled back to his wall well before the sound stopped. He tilted his head curiously and sat up, watching the window as if the source of the sound should appear on the other side of the torn screen any moment.

He listened to the sound come and go. It picked up sharply, then disappeared as abruptly. When the sound came again it dragged for long moments. Toby listened with a growing tightness in his chest. The sound scared him.

Sometime later a light rain started and he couldn’t hear the sound over the dripping from the gutter above his window.

~ ~ ~ ~

Toby had slept best when it rained since he could remember. Iris liked the rain too, so they sat on the couch next to the window, each with a glass of wine in hand. Toby took a deep, satisfied breath. It felt like it had been days since he felt so at peace.

“Toby, what’s been bothering you?” Toby turned at Iris’s serious tone. 

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve just been… on edge since we… you know, moved in together. Are you unhappy? Do you want to go back to your bachelor pad?”

“Ah, bae, no, I…” What could he say? He couldn’t possibly tell her he had started to fear she was trying to kill him. He couldn’t explain the depths of his panic at some of the simple, even sweet or considerate things she had tried to do.

“I realized later that I really scared you with the highway thing. I’m sorry. I was feeling really pressed for time and forgot how bad it was for you.” He opened his mouth to assure her he had forgiven her, but she continued. “I watched you after the little thing on the couch, too. I could tell something scared you about it. I didn’t understand what and wanted to let you come to me in your own time, but now I’m afraid I’ve scared you away from talking to me somehow. We can’t start on this path with you scared to talk to me. Even if it doesn’t make sense in your head, please tell me what you’re thinking. I love you. I’m here to support and help you, whatever that means.” She swallowed and her eyes swam a bit, but her voice remained level.

Toby’s throat locked up to see how hard she was trying to be strong and loving and emotionally aware of his feelings. He hopped forward on the couch and snagged his hands around behind her head, capturing her for a full kiss. He felt her smile into his pressing mouth and kissed her a little longer for it.

Once he released her, he leaned back and she wrapped a hand around his knee, her eyes still serious.

He told her about his claustrophobia, his fears that spiked at any sense of containment, even just in intense darkness. She asked how long he had suffered these fears and he struggled to remember.

“Maybe since dad and I moved into town.”

They talked about the place he lived before and he thought of his mother. This sent them on a whole other tangent. 

“You’ve never mentioned your mother!”

“No, she disappeared when I was so young… I think I was… Six?”

“She disappeared? Did she… die?” Iris’s excitement tempered immediately and she gripped his knee harder a moment. Toby set his free hand over hers, squeezing her back warmly.

“Well, I… I mean dad and I never knew. See….” Toby’s brow furrowed and his eyes dropped to his lap in thought. These were memories he hadn’t plumbed since he was in grade school. Memories his younger self had convinced him weren’t real.

He tried to describe them to her in slow, jerky images. Iris’s hand flew to her mouth early and stayed there for a long time.

“Toby, do you think some part of you has always feared your dad… buried your mom…alive?”

Toby lifted stricken, red rimmed eyes to her. He nodded slowly as the tears finally crested and fell.

The car crunched to the stop on the gravel and Iris leapt out, scanning around them. Toby just stared at the house before them. How could it look so unchanged? It had been twenty years. The house hadn’t been in great shape when he and his parents lived in it, but now it had a condemned sign that had sat in the window long enough half the letters had rotted off. And yet the door looked exactly the same. The weird dent in the gutter over the left window, that had randomly let pour buckets at a time and his dad had always cursed, looked like it had rusted a little more, but not nearly as much as Toby would have expected.

Toby swallowed. Could he really do this?

Iris circled the car and popped the trunk, pulling out the brand new shovels they had just bought at the Home Depot. She stepped around to him and curled a hand over the top of the passenger side door where he still sat with the window down.

“I’m not here to force you to do anything. We can turn around right now. We can go back to the hotel, order some Chinese-”

“No,” He whispered, and it was strong. “If you’re right Iris, I have to know.” She nodded, but her drawn brows and puckered lips said she didn’t fully believe him.

He got out of the car and they circled the house to the backyard together. The creek in the back looked to have shifted further away from the house by a few dozen feet, but the yard still only harbored the scruffiest, low tufts of grass. Without the creek’s proximity Toby might have lamented ever being able to pinpoint where he and his father had dug before, except for the big trees that used to mark the edge of the creek. One big sycamore had fallen sometime since the creek moved away, but the giant hickory still dominated the east corner.

Toby led Iris to where he thought he and his father had spent that dark night. He stared at the ground. Some part of him had somehow expected the dirt to still look disturbed. Mounded up. Some physical sign of the sickness underfoot. But no. A couple of struggling clumps of clover even grew a flower or two.

The mid-morning sun slanted rays down on them through the trees as Toby chipped a line in the dirt, outlining his best guess of where to dig. They set to it, Iris looking over to check on him often. But the work was the easy part. It was easy to lose himself in the exertion and not think. Just do.

They found the box. It took them almost ten hours, both of them working as hard as they could with only one stop to grab lunch and occasional pauses to drink a lot of water. The heat of the day had risen but thankfully they had gotten a cool breeze off the creek and stayed protected under the shade of the massive old trees. But summer was still the sticky, set-a-weight-on-your-chest-just-for-breathing beast it had always been.

Iris sat next to him at the edge of the hole they had dug. A big portion of the hole extended open and empty, but when they had found the corner of the box they made quick progress. Now Toby had to think again and he couldn’t. Couldn’t think of what might lay in that box. Couldn’t think of anything else that might lay behind the lid.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Iris opened her mouth, but she closed it again with a snap. He could feel the effort it took her to not say anything, to not do anything. Iris had always pursued things more actively than he had. She was likely the only thing that had given him the strength to do this. He tried to use that to motivate him to throw open the lid of the box, but the fear of a child, carried and evolved throughout his life, proved tenacious.

He tried another tack. Mom deserves it. If she really is down there, she deserves a proper burial, a proper headstone.

As he sat in tortured silence, Iris read his mind again. “You deserve to know, Toby,” she whispered gently. Her voice soothed his anxiety tenfold to anything he could tell himself.

“Help me?”

“Always.”

They dropped into the hole, each sliding their shovels into the groove between the body of the box and the lid and prizing it up. The screech of old nails resisting the pull made them both flinch back. But as Iris relented on the pressure on her shovel Toby threw all of his weight into it and his side of the lid jumped with such force it skidded off the box, twisting aside.

Iris leaned around, trying to see inside the darkness while still looking at Toby. She watched his face for any recognition.

Toby swallowed, his face blank as his mouth drifted open. Iris leaned her shovel to the ground and started in his direction. As if her movement broke the spell on him, Toby collapsed to his knees. Iris’s arms shot out to catch him, but he stayed upright.

“Iris, that’s a man’s body.”