The rain had stopped drumming on the roof. Light was streaming through the windows. It was morning.
When I sat up, someone’s coat fell off of me. I blushed, realizing that I had fallen asleep in front of that man. It was lucky that he was a good person (and not taken advantage of me…). But now I had troubled him! I looked around the room for him but he was nowhere to be seen.
‘Oh no! Now he’s gone somewhere without his coat!’ I thought, guiltily. Maybe he was more used to the cold than I was? ‘But I should give it back anyway- I’ve bothered that guy enough,’ I slid the coat on and buttoned it up; it was so big on me that I would probably end up tripping on it. But at least it was warm.
I stepped out onto the cold, wet grass and closed the door behind me. The sun was shining brightly enough for me to see the village clearly now. At first I was more focused on the buildings; they consisted mainly of little stone cottages. The surrounding hills were lit up with green. It looked like a scene from a postcard.
‘How charming!’
Then I noticed the people. Not that they weren’t charming, but I became a tad alarmed when I saw all their old-fashioned clothing. Not to mention the fact that there were no cars or electricity lines.
What was this? No electricity? This had to be the most far-removed place I had ever been to! It made me think of those Amish communities I’d heard about; in fact, this could be one of them! Would they even have a phone in this village? (And do they even have Amish communities in England?)
‘Oh- that’s right! I’ve gotta find that guy!’ I remembered.
The previous night he’d said something about having to prepare the graveyard. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I had the feeling it should be around the church. I glanced around and caught sight of it immediately. It was a very typical old graveyard except that it was remarkably well kept considering the dates on the markers. There were no new graves to be seen. In fact the most recently buried corpses dated to the 1800s.
So no one had been buried here for over 100 years? Maybe I had the wrong graveyard. While pondering these things, I wasn’t looking where I was going (a bad habit of mine…). As I went to take another step I found that there was nothing to step on and suddenly I was falling. At the end of the fall I was crumpled at the bottom of some kind of hole.
I gasped when I realized what it was- a grave. There was just something kind of disturbing about being in someone else’s grave. I had to get out of here. NOW. But when I reached up to grab the edge and pull myself up, I wasn’t strong enough. I never had been good with pull-ups in gym class. Now I wished I had at least tried to become better at them. It wasn’t much help, either; that my hands were shaking from cold.
I leaned against the wall of the hole, depressed, wondering about my streak of bad luck. Before I could really do anything else I heard the grass beneath someone’s feet and looked up in time to see the undertaker lean over to peer into the hole.
“Eh?” He looked a bit surprised when he saw me there, but then it turned to amusement, “What are you doing, young lady? You should know better than to play down there,”
“I’m not playing, I fell!” I told him, and would have been a bit annoyed if I hadn’t been so relieved to see him, “Uh- can you help me out of here?”
“Of course,” He jumped down next to me and, before I could ask what he was doing, lifted me up high enough to scramble out of the hole before pulling himself out.
“Thank you,” I told him, and then let my face drop so that my hair could hide my blush. I was being nothing but trouble to this man, and he was so nice about it, too! It only increased my guilt about taking his jacket on such a cold day.
Speaking of cold, now that I thought of it, I couldn’t feel my feet.
Though the coat was warm, a wave of chills went through my body.
“Sick again, miss?”
I jumped at the exasperation in his voice and insisted, “Ah! No, I’m just not used to this cold weather,”
He only laughed. I realized he was teasing me.
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