The Pallbearer’s Cadence

The first time I noticed it, I was unpacking china in the kitchen of our ground-floor flat in the old Meridian House, a crumbling Victorian that had been converted into apartments for the elderly and infirm. My partner, Elias, had found the place through a housing program for seniors, and though I was barely thirty, they let me stay as his caregiver. The building smelled of mothballs and lemon polish, and the walls were thin enough to hear a pin drop through the floorboards above.

That first evening, as the sun bled orange through the lace curtains, I heard a steady thump-thump-thump from upstairs, like someone walking with a heavy wooden leg. Then a series of scrapes, as if furniture was being dragged across a bare floor. I assumed it was the new tenant, an old man named Mr. Grimshaw who had moved in the week before. But when I mentioned it to Elias, he frowned and said, ‘Mr. Grimshaw is bedridden. He can barely lift a glass of water.’

The sounds continued nightly: the cadence of a cane, the slide of heavy objects, and sometimes a low, guttural humming that made my teeth ache. I started to map the noise—always directly above our bedroom, which was the same layout as the unit upstairs. One night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wrapped my robe around me and crept up the creaking stairs to knock on Mr. Grimshaw’s door. No answer. I tried the knob, and it turned easily.

Inside, the apartment was empty save for a hospital bed, a nightstand, and a wheelchair folded in the corner. The floor was thick with dust, except for a clean circular path that wound around the room, as if someone had paced there for hours. On the nightstand, I found an old photograph of a man in a military uniform, his face half-obscured by shadow, and a brass handbell engraved with the words ‘Call for the Dead.’ I rang it, and the sound was so sharp and pure that it cut through the silence like a knife. That’s when I heard the footsteps start again—directly behind me.

I spun around, but there was no one. The footsteps were coming from inside the walls now, moving up, then down, then stopping right at the door. A cold draft swept through the room, and the door slammed shut. I rushed to open it, but the knob wouldn’t budge. Through the wood, I heard a voice, dry as autumn leaves, whisper, ‘They’re not all buried, child.’

I managed to escape by climbing out the window onto the fire escape, my hands shaking as I crawled back into our flat through the bathroom. Elias was asleep, and I didn’t wake him, but I couldn’t sleep either. I sat by the window, watching the graveyard across the street—a tangled mess of toppled headstones and overgrown weeds. I noticed a figure standing among the graves, tall and gaunt, holding a cane. It stood perfectly still, facing our building, and I could have sworn it raised the cane in a slow, deliberate salute.

The next morning, I questioned the building’s super, a morose man named Mr. Pelletier. He told me that the upstairs unit had been vacant for three years, ever since the previous tenant, a retired undertaker named Ambrose Croft, had died of a stroke. ‘He used to walk with a cane,’ Pelletier said, ‘and he’d pace all night, muttering about the ones he’d buried. They say he never got over the one that got away.’ When I asked what that meant, he just shrugged and said, ‘Look it up in the city records, if you dare.’

I spent the afternoon in the library, digging through old newspapers. I found an article from 1972 about a young woman named Eliza Hart, who had gone missing from a nearby hospital. She was a patient in a tuberculosis ward, and the last person seen with her was Ambrose Croft, who had volunteered to transport bodies to the morgue. Her body was never found, but her grave marker sits empty in the abandoned cemetery behind Meridian House. The article ended with a quote from Croft: ‘She was still breathing when I sealed the coffin. I thought I was doing right by her spirit, but it ain’t right to bury the living.’

That night, the haunting intensified. I heard not just footsteps but a rhythmic knock—three thumps, then a pause, then three more—as if something was trying to send a message. I tapped back on the ceiling, and the knocking stopped. Then the entire building shook with a heavy dragging sound, like a coffin being pulled across the floor above. I ran upstairs without thinking, throwing open the door to find the room transformed: the dust was gone, and in the center was a wooden coffin, its lid ajar. From inside, a voice, soft and pleading, said, ‘Don’t leave me here.’

I stumbled backward, and as I did, I saw the ghost of a young woman rise from the coffin—her face pale, her eyes hollow, her lips moving in silent words. Behind her stood the shadowy figure of the old undertaker, his cane raised. ‘I kept her safe,’ he said, his voice like grinding stone. ‘But she wants to go home. You can help her, if you have the nerve.’ He pointed toward a small door in the wall I hadn’t noticed before, half-hidden behind a tattered curtain. ‘The passage leads to the old cellar. That’s where I hid her—not in the ground, but in a vault. She’s been waiting for someone to give her a proper burial.’

The woman’s ghost turned to me, tears of shadow streaming down her cheeks. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘They never said goodbye.’

I did something I never thought I’d do: I opened the passage, climbed down into the dusty blackness, and found a rusted iron door fused shut with age. With a crowbar from my apartment, I pried it open, and inside was a small room lined with shelves of glass jars, each containing a scrap of fabric or a lock of hair. In the center was a simple pine coffin, slightly ajar, and inside lay a skeleton wearing a faded hospital gown. I knelt and said a prayer, then closed the coffin and carried it up through the passage, out into the moonlit graveyard. I buried her in the empty plot marked ‘Eliza Hart,’ and as I patted down the last shovelful of dirt, the air grew still. The cane-thump above ceased, and I felt a warmth spread through my chest, like being forgiven.

But as I turned to head back inside, I saw the old undertaker’s ghost standing at the edge of the graveyard, watching me. He tipped his hat and vanished, but from the direction of our building, I heard a new sound—soft at first, then growing: the sound of many footsteps, not one but dozens, all walking in unison, as if a procession were forming. I looked up to see the windows of Meridian House glowing with candlelight, and silhouettes of elderly residents I’d never seen before, staring down at me. One of them raised a hand and pointed at my feet. I looked down to see dirt scattered on my shoes, and from the dirt, tiny white worms were wriggling out, forming a pattern that spelled: ‘YOUR TURN.’

I haven’t been able to sleep since. The footsteps never stopped—they’ve just moved into our apartment, pacing circles in our bedroom at night. Elias thinks it’s my imagination, but I know better. The dead aren’t quiet. They’re just waiting for someone to carry them home, and once you’ve done it once, they never let you go.