A Suffocating Fear

Glistening in the light of the street lamps, the snowflakes began their erratic descent to slowly smother the city streets in a white graveyard. As the icy hands of the winter wind reached out to strangle any warmth they could find, Charles Montgomery Hallowsworth IV buttoned his black topcoat and slipped on his black leather gloves.

He had spent another wretched evening with his high society friends – none of whom he particularly cared for – engaging in monotonous conversation and impatiently awaiting the moment when he could take his leave of them. As they had droned on about their prestigious blood lines and European vacation homes, Charles’s mind had wandered to the more pressing matters, which demanded his attention. Whilst he mechanically nodded at his friends’ prattling, he envisioned their faces becoming contorted, twisted with agony and terror, panic and hopelessness. At last, having politely offered his farewells, he could finally return to his work.

Consumed by the thoughts waltzing through his mind, Charles walked quickly towards his townhouse in Society Hill, stumbling on the slippery cobblestones in his haste. There had been a time when the 30-year-old multimillionaire would stroll through Philadelphia and think of all the great men who once walked upon the same streets, whose steps echoed through the catacombs of time: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams. But with each passing year, Charles’s macabre obsession had swelled, leaving little room for such pointless pondering.

Entering his historic townhouse and closing the door behind him, Charles removed his snow-covered coat and hung it on the cherry wood rack that stood nearby. While the Hallowsworth family estate on the Main Line offered ample rooms and attentive servants, Charles preferred his sanctuary in the city, where he could delve into his studies and plans without interruption. Decorated with the finest tapestries and artwork, the eighteenth-century townhouse featured corresponding eighteenth-century furniture, elegant parquet floors, and an immaculate appearance. Except for one room.

With an anticipation that caused his heart to pound and his breath to quicken, Charles rushed down the hall and descended the metal spiral staircase that led to his converted subterranean study. Having to leave the house, especially for mundane cocktail parties, had begun to aggravate him more and more. Evenings of such drivel interfered with his research and slowed his progress. Pulling the string on the desk lamp to provide a slight illumination to the room, Charles felt his heartbeat begin to slow and his body begin to relax. He pressed play on the stereo remote and sat motionless at his desk for a few moments. Closing his eyes, he let the sonorous notes of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 13 dance around him. Finally, he was once again nestled in the comfort of his study.

Books and journals teetered in numerous stacks on the floor, and blueprints and scraps of paper obscured the top of the desk. Charles’s always-present, unnerving fear of death had prompted one of his friends – merely as a joke for Charles’s twenty-seventh birthday – to purchase Jan Bondeson’s Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear. With widened eyes and unwavering astonishment, Charles read the text repeatedly, digesting every disturbing fact and facet and taking notes to aid his own survival. He had briefly considered that simply choosing cremation might relieve all worry and concern, until gruesome visions ravaged his mind: suddenly awakening to flames lapping at his skin; trapped in an oven as charred flesh melted away from crumbling bones; his screams of agony lost in the din of the crematorium… Quite sensibly, Charles had decided that the plans to which he had been diligently attending were, indeed, the solution. During the last several years, as the fear of being buried alive began to burrow into the darkest depths of his psyche, Charles had invested great time and expense to procure information about premature burial and how to evade such a horrific end: true accounts, medical studies, security coffins, philosophical analyses, translations, explanations, burial laws, and folklore.

To Charles, there seemed to be no time in history when the fear and reality of being buried alive did not plague the pitiful souls walking upon all stretches of the Earth. Pliny and Galen had written about the possibility of such horrors when doctors in antiquity could not discern actual death from a comatose state, and Christian Friedrich Garmann had compiled hundreds of cases of the supposed dead escaping from their coffins in his De miraculis mortuorum of 1670. But no accounts haunted Charles quite like those that Jean-Jacques Bruhier discussed in his 1749 two-volume work, Dissertation sur l’incertitude des signes de la mort. The more the fear-racked Charles read, the more obsessed he became, and his bizarre obsession had begun to worry and disturb his respectable friends.

*****

One gala evening two months prior, Charles’s friend, Andrew, had attempted to thwart the ridiculous premature burial notions, which had engulfed Charles’s rational sensibilities.

“With all due respect, my dear Charles, we’re no longer living in the 1700s, where medical science existed only in its infancy. The risk of your being buried alive in twenty-first century America is practically nonexistent. And I believe there are even burial laws, which dictate proper care of a corpse – embalming and such – making it nearly impossible to place you in the ground with breath still within your soul.”

Judging by the smirk adorning Andrew’s face, Charles knew that his friend believed that he had made a valiant point and awaited proper acknowledgement. While Charles seemed to be staring blankly, perhaps dumbfounded by his friend’s logic, he was actually envisioning Andrew trapped in a coffin and gnawing at the flesh of his arm in hunger and in desperation for a freedom from the suffocating blackness, which would never come. After sipping from his champagne flute, Charles managed a response.

“Ah, yes, burial laws. You are correct, Andrew. What is it that Chapter 13 of the Pennsylvania Code says, Section 13.201(6)(i), on the proper disposal of human remains? Oh, that ‘human remains held 24 hours beyond death shall be embalmed or sealed in a container that will not allow fumes or odors to escape or kept under refrigeration, if this does not conflict with a religious belief or medical examination.’ Religious practices may not be a concern for me, but a medical examination… well, one never truly knows, do they, my dear Andrew?”

As the once-proud smirk melted into a perturbed grimace on Andrew’s face, Charles patted his friend on the back and slowly walked away. Charles had memorized that law more than a year ago in an effort to calm his erratic mind, but to no avail. Needless to say, Andrew did not raise the topic again.

*****

Although Beethoven’s spirit continued to resonate in the study, with the sound of Daniel Barenboim’s fingers gliding along the piano keys, Charles only caught fragments of the music. Whenever he worked, his mind divided into two distinct parts: one that studied the calculated science of death signs, medical journals, and coffin architecture; the other that continually conjured images of victims lying alive in coffins, scratching at the lid until fingernails shredded and tore from the nail beds; or pulling at hair until clumps with bloody fleshy bases wrapped around strained fingers. The latter helped to focus and improve the former.

Poring over descriptions and drawings of centuries-old security coffins, Charles noted strengths and weaknesses of the designs, careful not to make similar mistakes. He scrutinized the blueprints sitting atop the desk, sketches of a carefully designed video surveillance system to be incorporated into his casket. Although he had already commissioned the designs and creation of the system from a private company, Charles needed to ensure that no mishaps ensued; hence, his very own version of a twenty-first century security coffin. He had also arranged for a team of “watchers” – those who would view and analyze the live video stream for the slightest movement and make the immediate, necessary arrangements to disinter the body should the need arise. Charles knew that in a sealed casket, a person could only be expected to live for 60 minutes at the most, due to the lack of oxygen; thus, quick removal would be imperative.

Charles had modeled his contingency on the Leichenhaus mortuaries of the late eighteenth century: large buildings that housed the recently deceased stretched out on slabs. Overlooking the several rows of corpses, the Leichenhaus guards watched 24 hours a day, waiting for any movement. If after three days a body showed no signs of life, the guards -- and Charles -- could be assured that death’s strangle had effectively squeezed out the last breaths.

Leaning back in his desk chair, Charles exhaled a contented sigh. While the design may not yet be complete, it was certainly progressing nicely. Arising from his desk and walking up the stairs from the study, Charles headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. There was still much to be accomplished this evening.

As the aromatic caffeine slowly dripped into existence, Charles returned to his study. He had suddenly remembered a critical thought he had jotted down in one of his journals with the intention of conducting further research on the matter. Scanning the various occupants of the mahogany bookshelf, he found the red leather-bound journal and quickly yanked it from its place. Charles eagerly flipped through the pages, scanning each line of scrawled black ink, until a slight wavering in his peripheral vision caused his gaze to shift.

When Charles noticed the large bookshelf begin to lunge at him, he scrambled forward in hopes of steadying his formidable opponent, but forgot about the piles of books lying at his feet. As he tripped amidst the literature, Charles’s contorted body was forced to the ground under the weight of the bookshelf. He shrieked in agony as he felt his wrist snap backwards and his hip dislocate, all the while gasping for the breaths to fill his constricted lungs. Charles had been meaning to fix that bookshelf for more than year, when he first noticed that it didn’t stand level on the floor, but so many more pressing matters had needed his attention.

Four hours later, as Charles struggled for his last breaths, nigh delirious from the excruciating pain, a familiar horror seized his soul. They’re not done yet! The plans aren’t complete! Over and over again, he screamed the sentences in his mind, aghast to think of the consequences. But as the hysteria claimed his thoughts, his lungs abandoned their fight against the weight thrust upon them.

*****

After a week of numerous phone calls, emails, and text messages going unanswered, Charles’s friends decided it might be best to pay their disturbed and estranged ami a visit. While Charles had been gradually gracing them with his presence less and less during the preceding few months, he would typically provide a nonsensical and ludicrous excuse for his absence, which his elegant friends knew was merely a ruse to obfuscate whatever demented burial research he would be undertaking that evening. In light of his complete silence, however, concern began to weave itself into the folds of their minds, and Andrew volunteered to visit the townhouse that afternoon.

When Charles didn’t respond to the repeated knocks, Andrew withdrew the spare key from his pocket, and unlocked the door. Upon entering, a noxious smell struck Andrew’s senses like a medieval mace to the head, making him wretch in disgust. He called out his friend’s name while simultaneously covering his mouth and nose and winding his way through the townhouse. Reaching the study, Andrew stopped abruptly, horrified at the repugnant scene stretched before him, and fell backwards against the wall.

Crushed beneath the fallen bookshelf lay the lifeless body of Charles Montgomery Hallowsworth IV. Andrew’s wide eyes uncontrollably surveyed his friend’s bloated and decaying corpse, knowing that Charles had to have been lying there for days, surrounded only by his scribbled journals, classic texts, and half-finished blueprints.

As he moved slowly out of the study and walked towards the front door to make all the necessary calls, Andrew’s mind began to race with haunting visions and chilling thoughts: imagining his friend desperately gasping his last breaths, writhing in torturous agony, pleading for someone to save him. And then the worst thought gripped Andrew’s selfish and stressed mind: the realization that Charles had only been one month older than he. A morbid panic suddenly seized Andrew like a frantic sickness raging through his body and devouring him from the inside. Contemplating the brevity of his own mortality and finally understanding Charles’s obsession, Andrew stepped onto the cobblestone streets outside, determined to triumph against death where his feeble friend had failed.