The Coffin-2 of 2

Stephen ought to have retired a decade ago. It’s not as if he needed the money; Interworld had done very well for itself in Malta’s boom years, shipping not just art to and from the island’s museums but personal effects, pets, cars, even transplant organs, plus anything that the small island could not provide for itself, which come to think of it was most things.

His two daughters were well-established in lucrative careers, one as a commodity trader in New York, the other an estate agent in St Julian’s. Neither showed the slightest inclination to get into the freight business – and who could blame them?

But Stephen felt a responsibility for all these objects, sacred and profane, moving in and out of the island. If he and Interworld weren’t there, if the business was sold to some multinational, would those who followed him take as much care, be as conscientious as he was? Would precious artworks end up being roughly handled, pets left in carriers on baking tarmac, expatriates’ vinyl record collections routed to Bristol instead of Brisbane? Interworld was more than just a business, it was a vocation.

 

With a sigh, he settled into the chair in the office and took out his laptop. The office was almost a work of art in itself. Heaps upon heaps of documents in box files or neatly tied in manila folders – manifests, bills of lading, air waybills – the accumulation of half a century in the shipping business, stacked on shelves, on the floor. And then there were the leaflets of art exhibitions, the curling coloured pictures of the many, many artworks that Interworld had handled over the decades pinned to the walls, while on the far wall was a reproduction of a 17^th Century diorama of the Valletta waterfront in a wooden frame, a good six feet long.

When he did retire, perhaps he should donate the whole office to the Muza as an art installation. If that Tracey Emin woman could do it with her bedroom...

 

He flipped open the laptop and, after a few goes, found his way to Twitter, or X as its new owner apparently called it, though Twitter was perhaps the better name for it.

Ronny was right; mass hysteria seemed to have broken out about the Mystery Coffin. Actually, the evidence for a Curse was pretty sketchy. As far as Stephen could gather – he had a working knowledge of Portuguese - a couple of US university bods who had carried out research into it had come to untimely ends, one from a rare blood disorder, the other in a car crash. (Though conspiracy theorists said that these were just cover stories – both victims had in fact died of spontaneous combustion, they said.)

A couple of people who had spent time in the same room as the Coffin had complained of nausea and headaches. There’d been a fire – apparently, another instance of spontaneous combustion - in the wing of the university where it was stored, though the Coffin itself had apparently escaped unscathed.

But there was more. Ten years ago, theories had surfaced on the internet about The Coffin. That it had originally contained the remains of a Sixth Century Irish Saint, but had been ‘banished’ to Cyprus after it allegedly caused an outbreak of plague.

That it had containd the mortal remains of Judas Iscariot, or possibly Herod. (Though neither of these theories could explain the Celtic scrawlings.) And lots of stuff about the Da Vinci code, Knights Templars …

A couple of the posters on X also mentioned Varig flight 967. Now that really WAS a mystery, Stephen thought. The 707 freighter aircraft had been en route from Narita in Japan to Rio via Los Angeles on 30 January 1979. Only, the plane never made it to LAX; it simply disappeared. It took off from Narita International at 20.23 last radio contact was 20:45. The flight deck did not check in as scheduled at 21.23.

No wreckage, no sign of the crew, no sign of the 53 paintings by Japanese-Brazilian artist Manabu Mabe, returning from an exhibition in Tokyo. So perhaps the Mystery Coffin had touched a nerve in Brazil. There would be people who would remember the Varig crash. Still, no excuse for the current hysteria.

 

The Mediterranean night was still warm, but cooling fast. The wind was forecast to get up in the small hours of the morning. Stephen got up to make a cup of coffee from the small machine he kept in the back room.

 

The coffee machine reached a final crescendo of burps and splutters then tailed off into a long grumbling coda. Stephen removed the pot and carefully poured the liquid into a chipped yellow mug.

Then: A screech, like a door being unbolted. The sound, almost orchestral, resonated, for a split second, then died away as quickly as it had come.

Stephen dropped the yellow mug with a clatter and a splash on the worktop and threw open the door to the truck bay. He squeezed himself alongside the vehicle to the roller-shutter door that gave out onto the street. He seized it a couple of times and shook it; it was securely fastened, no sign of tampering.

Squeezing back down the side of the truck, he checked the vehicle’s rear door. Padlocked, perfectly tight.

He shrugged his shoulders and opened the door to the office again. Maybe a rogue gust of wind, rattling the shutter.

He retrieved the remains of his coffee; half a mug-full had survived the fall and took it back into the office.

It was past midnight. For want of anything better to do, he pulled a box file of month-old invoices off the shelf and started to leaf through them. Stephen was old-school; he still liked to print everything out, just in case, just in case. You never knew with these Cloud contraptions, systems, stuff. It could all go tits-up at any moment…

 

‘CRACK!’ Instinctively, Stephen ducked forward, a split second before the big picture of the harbour crashed down, clipping the desk, then hitting the floor behind it. Shards of glass skittered across the parquet; he could feel a couple of them nick his cheekbones: “JEEZUZ! Fuckin’ HELL!”

The picture had been on the wall for, what, 20 years? He’d never thought to check the cord in all that time; just a coincidence that it chose that moment to break. All the same, he could have done without that little shock to the system.

Sighing, he fetched the dustpan and brush and swept up the shattered pieces of glass, propping up the frame in a corner of the office. It sagged, seemingly having sustained mortal damage in its brief journey to the floor.

 

The storm was starting to get into its stride now. He could hear the wind howling in the rafters, rattling the metal sheets of the warehouse roof. Suddenly: BANG! He jumped out of his chair, then steadied himself on the desk. He must have left an upstairs window open in the room above the office.

 

It was then that he heard another sound, a sort of skittering, a swirling. A bit like dead leaves being blown by the wind on a pavement, but underlaid by an animalistic sort of squeaking, a bit like mice. There were no mice at Interworld Art Logistics, of that he was certain. The place was fumigated every week by a pest controller.

It then that he heard – or rather, felt – vibrations. A rumbling sort of buzz, as if someone was using a pneumatic drill in a far-off street. Perhaps someone WAS drilling, he told himself. You never knew these days what the utility firms were getting up to. The noise deepened, almost to a roar, the vibrations intensified. “This is not a drill,” he muttered, laughing mirthlessly. The noise, the vibration was coming from the truck bay, of that he was now certain. He grabbed his keys, flung open the door, unlocked the tailgate of the truck and threw up the roller-shutter.

“AAARGGH!” he yelled. The Coffin was enveloped in a blue glow that pulsated in time with a rippling of the shiny black wood, like the muscles of a thoroughbred horse. The spiral runes on its sides glowed, pulsating. The squeakings had become shrieks, repeated, as of a creature in pain: “EURK! EURK! EURK! EURK!” then merging into a single, deafening noise.

Stephen threw the shutter door down again, not bothering to lock it and threw himself through the door into the office, slamming the door behind him. He grabbed his phone and dialled.

 

 

In the dark of her St Julian’s condominium, Melissa was half-woken by the buzz of her phone. It rang for a minute, then silenced. She turned over; her overseas clients rang at all hours, not knowing, or not caring that it was the small hours of the morning in Malta. It had been a long evening in the Manoel theatre and the drive home in the storm had been a long one. Whatever it was could wait.

She came awake again, just as her phone finished vibrating for a second time. Cursing, she rolled over and picked it up. She jerked up right in bed – the sender was a single, three-letter word: ‘Dad.’ She pressed the button; after a couple of seconds of the message, she threw off the bedcovers and rushed out of the room, calling out to her dozing husband: ‘Gotta go! It’s Dad! Something’s wrong at the depot!’ She rushed downstairs, threw on a pair of clogs and clattered out to the underground car park.

 

‘Dad! Dad! DAD!’ Melissa hammered at the office door. ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ A shuffle of footsteps, then the sound of the door unbolting; it was thrown open.

‘Dad! What on earth’s the matter? I heard your message, it sounded like, like…’

‘Er, yeah, I’m fine Melissa. Nothing to worry about…’

‘But dad! You sounded like…like nothing I’ve ever heard from you before. Like you’d seen a GHOST! What happened? Did someone try to break in?’

‘Yeah – someone tried to break in. I scared them off.’

He seemed to acquiesce rather too readily with her suggestion, Melissa thought, but she let it pass.

‘Did you catch sight of them?’

‘Er, no. Probably just kids, or vandals, messing about. It’s all fine now. Absolutely fine. Like a cup of coffee, now you’re here?’

 

 

9am. An email from Ronny: Good news! Got a booking on Texas Air Cargo’s freighter out of Brussels to LAX, then RIO on Weds, TLX3457 ETA 18.10 Thurs. Connection from DHL should be fine. They’re cool about the coffin. Shall I proceed?

Stephen stared at the computer screen. Should he say nothing, let the shipment go ahead? Maybe nothing would happen; no one would be any the wiser. But what if something DID happen? It would be on his conscience for the rest of his life. Plus, he knew a couple of the Texas Air crew from the days when they were flying charters out of Malta to the Middle East.

Of course, if it got out that he’d managed to get the job postponed because of an alleged paranormal visitation, the rest of the guys in the Malta air cargo business would have a field day. At best, he’d be accused of mischievously adding fuel to the hysteria about the Coffin. At worst, they’d say: ‘Old Stevie’s finally losing it after all these years.’ It could well be the end of Interworld Art Shipping, once word had got out that its owner had lost his marbles. Still, everything had to come to an end, one day.

He sighed, picked up the phone and dialled a number, a long number.

 

 

As Stephen had expected, his warnings had been over-ruled. The guy on the end of the phone at US Customs and Border Protection had been clearly unconvinced by his description of his night, punctuating his account with ‘You don’t say?’ and ‘Really?’ several times. America was full of crazies, everyone knew that, and they probably got rung up by people with wild theories all the time, Stephen thought. Clearly the paranormal didn’t figure hugely in the CBD training manual.

So, the Coffin was finally on its way out of Malta. The CBP had finally and reluctantly accepted his suggestion that someone could conceivably have got at it while it had been in the depot and had stipulated, to everybody’s supreme annoyance, except Stephen’s, a 48-hour quarantine in a secure area after screening, just in case. It had been loaded onto the evening DHL freighter out of Malta which had landed in Brussels in the early morning, without incident.

The Texas Air Cargo flight had departed a few hours later, with the Coffin on board. Alone in his office, Stephen followed it on Flight Radar. He clicked on the yellow plane symbol, watching closely as the purple flight track unfurled behind it as it headed out across the Atlantic. He clicked on it again. The yellow plane was still there, LAX estimated arrival still 6.10pm, 3.10am in Malta.

It was going to be a long night.