The Glass Coffin

I spent a sweltering week in the capital, trying to soak up the history and the air conditioning. My last day, I visited the National Museum of Flight and Space, mainly to escape the heat. The ‘Spirit of Dallas’ hung from the ceiling, all gleaming metal and patriotic pride. I snapped a photo with my phone, not really thinking about it. Later, staring at the screen, I felt a cold jolt. In the cockpit window, there was a face. A man with sandy hair, his features raw and scratched, like he’d been clawing at glass. His eyes were wide, but not with fear – with desperation. I blinked, and the image shifted, the face gone, just a smudge of light. I told myself it was a reflection, a trick of the sun through the smog.

I needed to clear my head, so I took the metro to the Arlington National Cemetery, hoping the trees and quiet might settle me. I stood at the Tomb of the Unknowns, watching the guards change with their precise, haunting movements. I took a few photos, mostly to have something to look at later. When I reviewed them, there it was again – a black mass, not a shadow, but a dense, oily void hovering in front of the marble. It was like the darkness had weight, pressing down on the tomb. I shoved the phone in my pocket and walked into the cemetery, trying to escape the image. But the place felt heavy, the rows of white stones stretching like teeth.

I heard it then – a low, ragged sobbing, intertwined with a furious, desperate yelling. The sounds seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. I spun around, heart hammering. There, hunched over a grave a few hundred feet away, was the black mass, its edges undulating like it was breathing. I froze. The sobbing grew louder, and I felt a pull, a compulsion to approach. I took a step, then another. The mass didn’t move, but as I got closer, it began to dissolve like smoke in a breeze. By the time I reached the grave, it was gone. I looked down at the headstone. It read: ‘Samuel Whitmore, 1985-2025.’ A single yellow rose lay on the ground, its petals wilted.

I bent down to touch the rose, and the sobbing started again, right in my ear. I stumbled back, looking around. No one. The sun was starting to set, casting long shadows. I ran out of the cemetery, not stopping until I reached the hotel. I collapsed on the bed, checking my photos again. The face in the plane was clearer now, the scratches more defined. And in the cemetery photo, the black mass had a shape – it looked like a man, hands pressed against an invisible barrier. I zoomed in on the headstone behind the mass. It was the same name: Samuel Whitmore.

I started digging. In the hotel’s business center, I searched online. Samuel Whitmore had been a test pilot, known for his daring, and his obsession with a prototype aircraft called the ‘Vulture.’ It had crashed in the desert in 2023, and Whitmore had disappeared, presumed dead. His body was never found. The crash was ruled an accident, but there were rumors of sabotage, of a rival company wanting the project. I found a grainy photo of Whitmore – sandy hair, sharp features. It was the face in the window.

I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the sobbing and the yelling. I went back to the cemetery the next morning, my phone ready. The grave was undisturbed, but the rose had been replaced with a fresh one. I knelt and whispered, ‘Samuel, what happened?’ The air grew cold. A whisper, like a scratch, answered: ‘They locked me in the glass coffin. I’m still flying.’ I looked at the tomb in the distance, the one for the unknowns. A black shape was now lingering there, too.

I realized then – I hadn’t taken a picture of the tomb that day; the black mass in my photo was not a photo error. It was a projection, his containment. He was trapped between worlds, his soul bound to that relic, a ghost in a machine. And my camera, my eye, had become a window. I felt a hand on my shoulder – cold, faint, but unmistakable. I turned, and for a second, I saw him, his face still scratched, his eyes pleading. ‘Help me out,’ he said. ‘The other one – he’s not unknown.’

I walk by the cemetery every day now, my phone always charged, my camera roll filling with photos of the same black mass, the same face, the same rose. I’ve become his keeper, his documentarian. But sometimes, late at night, I hear that sobbing from inside my own walls, and I see his face in my bathroom mirror, the scratches bleeding light. He wants me to find the other soul, the one inside the Tomb of the Unknowns. And I’m afraid that when I do, the glass coffin will open, and I’ll be the one trapped inside.