The Casket Maker’s Apprentice

I’ve spent my life in houses with dead people’s leftover habits. The first was a narrow Victorian with a basement where a man named Ezra had chopped kindling for thirty years. I’d hear the rhythmic thunk of his axe at 4 a.m., a sound as regular as a heartbeat, and it never woke me from a deep sleep. Then came the Craftsman with the crooked staircase. The prior owner, a woman named Margaret, had taken a tumble down those stairs at 2:15 a.m. every night, I’d hear her hesitant footfalls ascending, a soft sigh at the top, then silence. I’d learned to sleep through those too.

For a decade after, I moved through clean, silent apartments, and I thought I’d left the company behind. Then I bought a place that had once been a general store in the 1920s. The prior owners had run it until their deaths—a heart attack behind the counter for him, a stroke in the back room for her. I didn’t mind. The floorboards creaked in familiar ways, and the old cash register would occasionally ring on its own, a ghost of commerce. But a week after I moved in, the bed began to shake. Not a violent tremor, just a steady, rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat felt through a mattress. It happened most nights, always around 11:30 p.m. I chalked it up to old pipes or the train a mile away. But I knew better.

When I moved to a suburban duplex, the shaking followed. It would rouse me from sleep, and I’d lie still, feeling the vibrations through my spine. It was almost comforting, a familiar presence. But then I moved again, into a quiet cul-de-sac, and that’s when things changed. About two months ago, the shaking became more insistent, and I began to feel a weight on the bed beside me. Not the dip of a cat, but a heavy, warm presence, like a large man lying down. I could feel the heat of him, and the faint smell of cedar and sawdust. I’d open my eyes, but there was nothing to see. Just the dark shape of the room, and the weight pressing the mattress down.

Last night, I woke to the sensation of fingers tracing the curve of my spine. I gasped, and the weight shifted. I could feel breath on the back of my neck, cold and dry. I whispered, ‘Who are you?’ But there was no answer. Instead, the bed began to tremble, and I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in years: the steady thunk of an axe striking wood, from somewhere deep beneath the house. I threw off the covers and stumbled to the window. The street was empty, bathed in blue streetlight. But in the reflection of the glass, I saw a tall man standing behind me, his face in shadow, a long wooden staff in his hand. He was wearing an apron, and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms corded with muscle. He raised a hand, and I saw it was missing two fingers, the stumps healed over. ‘You’ve been carrying me,’ he said, his voice like gravel. ‘I’m the casket maker’s apprentice. I died before I finished my final box. You have to help me finish it.’ I turned, but he was gone. The weight on the bed returned, and the shaking began anew, but this time, it was accompanied by a scratching sound, like nails on wood, coming from under the floorboards. I knew then that I wasn’t just living with a ghost. I was the one who had to lay him to rest, or he would follow me until the end of my days.