Finally, I can reveal to you my brand new short story. It is a chilling tale of a coffin-maker who finds a mysterious ring in a strange way. I hope you enjoy.

The Bone Ring

Harrus Cartwright scraped his pumice stone across the edge of the wood. He blew the dust onto the floor, examining his work.
Never has a smoother line been seen, he thought.
Harrus straightened then leaned this way and that, working out the sore, tired muscles in his back. Work was not as easy as it had once been. Forty-five winters had passed since he began his trade, learning the work from his father who had learned from his own, as far back as far as any Cartwright could remember.
“It’s a bleak work,” his father would say, “but as long as death keeps happenin’ to the living, we’ll keep food on our table.”
Death came for every man, Harrus knew; every dead man needed a bed in which to pass eternity.

The western sky grew dark as Harrus sat by his modest fire, settling himself into his chair, the crimson fabric worn thin from many nights of use. From his side table he pulled a long-stemmed pipe and, after packing and lighting it, closed his eyes as a plume of smoke escaped his lips.
Eastern bacc, he thought. The finest pipe weed there ever was.
Gazing around his modest cottage, Harrus gazed upon all that his sixty-one years had brought him: dining table and a single chair, bed with tattered blankets, scattered tools and scraps of wood. Coffin maker was not an illustrious profession, but it allowed him an income and was, in Harrus’s opinion, vital to his home of Morgon Landing and the surrounding towns. Bleak work, yes, but vital all the same.
After several minutes of drawing from his pipe, Harrus began to feel the weariness of the day weigh upon him. Tamping out the embers, he replaced his pipe on the table and made his way to the wash basin by the fireplace. He splashed the water, warm from the fire, on his face, neck, and arms, washing away the grime of the day’s work.
As he reached his bed, he removed his shirt, exposing his bony, lean torso. A meager salary and hard, physical labor led to his spare build. He was thankful to have work, even it was physically demanding.
Curling up beneath his ragged blanket, Harrus closed his eyes and drifted into a sound sleep…

A dark hallway that smells of earth and decay stretches before me. As I walk along, I hear a muffled beating, as of someone pounding on a distant wall. There is the end, just ahead. A wall marks the end of the hall; not a wall of wood or stone, but of packed dirt and mud. The pounding grows louder in my ears, more urgent.
I tear at the earth, pulling clumps away and throwing them behind me. Faster and faster, with a blind rapidity, my hands and fingernails beginning to hurt and bleed.
My hands slam into something solid, something made of wood. As I clear the last bits of dirt from my path, I find an oaken door bearing ornate designs. Across the top of the door are hourglasses of different sizes and designs. And in the center of the door are a scythe and a sword.
The pounding resumes, growing in intensity and speed. I throw open the door and run into the room. All is dark, save for a spot at the center of the room, lit by a tall torch. Something is there, silent in the glow of the fire.
I approach cautiously, wishing to speak but finding no words. My eyes, finally adjusting to the light, behold the back of tall chair. Not a chair. A throne.
I creep around the side of the throne and stumble back in terror. A skeleton sits upon the throne, naked except for a diadem resting crooked upon its brow. The crown, which appears to be made of silver, seems to writhe upon the ghastly thing’s head.
Upon seeing me, the creature rises and, pointing its bony finger, opens its jaw wide, impossibly wide. And from that chasm spews forth a shadow, blacker than the shadows that surround us.
As the ghostly shade draws near, I attempt to flee; in my panic, I trip and begin to fall. The chill of the skeleton’s shadow wraps around me and I know no more…

Harrus fell to the floor, thrashing at the blanket that ensnared him. Stinging sweat dripped into his eyes and his body felt on fire. As wakefulness crept into him, he threw his covers onto the bed and sat up straight, panting.
Despite the sweat that poured down his brow, the fire was little more than embers. Unsteadily, he pulled himself to his feet and stumbled to the front door. Opening it, he stepped into the crisp, cold air. The full moon cast its glow across the forest at the bottom of the hill. A breeze drifted through the trees, stinging the sweat on Harrus’s face.
He closed his eyes and breathed in the winter air; he loved the cold, cherished the bitter winds and dreary days. Yet even his love of the weather could not overtake the unrest in his chest. His dream plagued him, left him feeling nervous.
It was only a dream, he thought. Only a dream.
Closing the door behind him, he walked to the fireplace and replenished the firewood. He used a flint to spark a fresh flame, and he then blew on it until it caught. The flame overtook the log and burned brightly.
Harrus used a cloth by the wash basin to dry the sweat from his face and neck and climbed into bed. Forgoing his blanket, he rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. Breathing deeply, he tried to push the disturbing dream from his mind.
He needed rest. Tomorrow was the day of burial.

Dawn found the village of Morgon Landing alive and active, despite the chill that clung to the air. Shopkeepers, with breath pluming around their heads, opened doors and prepared their wares. Children, bundled in scarves and woolen hats, played on porches. Farmers, having loaded their wagons, made their way to Naronville or Seeley’s Bridge to sell the remainder of their harvest.
Harrus grunted as he loaded the new coffin onto the cart. It was heavy but not beyond his strength. He straightened and looked around him; the city was awake and moving, all except for Timothy Trune. He would never awaken again.
Harrus mounted his horse and began the trek through the center of Morgon Landing as dawn’s light began to warm the town. Townspeople, as usual, glanced at him and immediately looked away. Children either stared or ran; such was the life of a coffin maker.
“Where are you headed, Cartwright?” asked the burly man as Harrus passed the tavern.
“G’morning, Clive. I’m bound for Barlington to deliver a coffin.”
“Be ye careful,” Clive responded, tilting his wide-brimmed hat.
With a nod, Harrus continued out of the city. The well-trod path was lined with barren trees and bushes. Melting frost glinted in the light of the rising sun, transforming the landscape into a shining sea of pale grass and skeletal boughs.
It was a mere half hour ride to Barlington and the trip was uneventful, though Harrus could not escape the memory of his dream from the previous night: the door, the skeleton, the shadow spewing from its gaping mouth. He shook his head, trying to focus on the journey.
As the road curved around a tall hill, Barlington came into view. Harrus was ever impressed anew by the imposing city, as it was nearly twice the size of Morgon Landing. Though the city had everything he thought a person could need, many people still came to him for coffin-making. Some said his work was the finest in the land. He took such compliments with great pride.
Through the main thoroughfare and toward the rear of the city sat a modest building used primarily for funerals; the exterior was meticulously taken care of, the wood stained and cleaned. Harrus thought it odd that such care was given to a place of mourning, yet he also understood the depth of the sorrow in the loss of a loved one.
Harrus pulled up in front of the building and tied the reins to a hitching post. He entered and let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the room. Ten rows of sturdy wooden pews, five on each side, occupied the main space of the room. Three women, tired and bleary-eyed, were arranging bouquets of flowers around a dais at the front of the room. They looked up at him but quickly turned away, returning to their duties.
“Ah, Harrus, thank ye for arriving so promptly,” said a graying man.
Preacher Thomas Haim was half a foot shorter than Harrus, but he was muscular. No one could say that Haim did not do his fair share of the work; any man who made such a claim would likely be knocked to the floor.
“Aye, glad to be of service. Shall we?”
Harrus and Haim carried the coffin to a back room and set it on the floor. On an old wooden table lay a man in simple clothes, all dark green and grey. Though the man had been dead for a day, Harrus noticed, his skin retained some color. He thought it odd but said nothing of it.
Upon the dead man’s wrist was a silver bangle, twisted into an intertwined pattern; it was the mark of an important man of the community, a man of great esteem.
Death comes even to the important, Harrus thought.
The two men carefully eased the man into the coffin, ensuring that no harm came to his body. Once he was safely inside, they crossed his hands across his chest and, with a grunt, lifted the coffin and moved it to the dais in the main room.
The women collectively gasped and wiped fresh tears from their eyes. Harrus hated seeing the grief on the faces of the survivors; he liked making things, building things, not watching them fall apart.
Thomas Haim produced a single coin from his belt pouch and placed it in Harrus’s hand. “One gold piece, as discussed.”
Harrus quickly placed the coin in his own pouch and said, “Many thanks, Haim. It is always an honor to be of service.”
Without looking back, Harrus left the room of the dead and entered the living world.

The sun disappeared beneath the horizon as Harrus Cartwright again settled into his crimson chair. For what seemed like the hundredth time within an hour, he coughed. He found it odd because he was rarely sick and did not now feel particularly ill. With a shake of his head, he lit his pipe, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.
Another fit of coughing sent him upright and sent his pipe clattering across the floor. This time, the hacking did not stop. He bounded to his water basin and scooped water into his mouth, but he was unable to swallow it. Sputtering, he fell to his knees on the hard wooden floor.
An odd sensation began to grow, like something moving up through his chest. At that moment, a wildly painful cough racked his body, sending him into a fit of convulsions; he spit something out onto the floor. It hit the wood and rolled a short distance away.
Immediately, the coughing ceased. Panting, Harrus stood. He saw the object lying just outside the firelight’s radius. Picking it up, he walked to the fireplace and examined it. It was a ring. A quick rinse in the wash basin revealed that it was made of bone, smooth, polished, and shining in the firelight.
Harrus marveled that such a thing could come from inside him. He felt that he should somehow feel more startled or frightened, but he was simply awestruck. A chill ran throughout his body, and he felt a deep sense of foreboding.
He tried the ring on his ring finger, but it was too big; he quickly found that it comfortably fit only on his index finger. It felt odd to wear a ring made of bone, but he shrugged and moved toward his bed. Exhausted from the coughing, he did not have the energy to worry about where the ring could have come from.
Thinking nothing more of it, Harrus climbed into bed and quickly fell asleep.

I awaken in pure darkness, black as pitch. I can see nothing, and the darkness is so thick that I think I might choke on it.
In a panic, I thrash about, only to discover the walls that box me in on every side. I lay on my back, panting and terrified.
Finding nothing more than the wooden walls that surround me, I decide to check myself and my clothing. In my breast pocket, I find a single match and breathe a sigh of relief. Striking it against the wood, I am elated to have vision, even if only for a brief time. However, my joy is quickly destroyed as I see that my prison is, in fact, a coffin. I choke down my terror and search with my free hand for any sign of a way out.
I catch sight of a chilling detail: upon my wrist is a silver bangle, an intertwined pattern running across its length.
As my light is snuffed out, I wail in despair…

Harrus awoke to the sound of his own raspy screaming. He threw away his blanket and leapt to the door; throwing it open, he fell to his knees and retched in the grass. Steam rose from the vomit as it hit the ground, the chill air forcing his body into uncontrollable shudders. He sat back and closed his eyes. The terror of the interior of the coffin seized him again, and he felt bile begin to rise in his throat. Yet something else lingered in his mind, something that he felt was important.
The bangle! He remembered the silver bangle and where he had seen it before: on the man that had been buried in Barlington that very day. He scrambled to his feet and ran inside, roughly pulling on his clothes and grabbing his coat. Without hesitation, he darted to his horse, saddled her, and set off for Barlington, all the while mumbling, “They’ve buried him alive…”
The cold night air tore at his face as he sped along the moonlit path. He seemed not to notice, however, as he leaned forward and spurred his horse onward.
Harrus’s mind raced. He was not prone to such vivid dreams, which made his visions of the past two nights particularly haunting. The images of the skeleton and the bangle clawed at his mind, threatening to send him into madness.
Too late, Harrus noticed a family of rabbits amassed in the road before him. He pulled on the reigns just as the horse noticed. His horse whinnied and reared, throwing Harrus from the saddle. He landed with a grunt on the cold dirt.
Dusting himself off, he checked to make sure the rabbits were unharmed. He stopped and gasped as he noticed that the creatures were standing in a circle. A ring.
With a yelp, he spun and jumped into the saddle, spurring his horse faster than ever toward Barlington.

Preacher Thomas Haim swept a pile of dirt into a bigger pile in the corner of the room. The funeral building was quiet, all except for the swish of the broom and the creak of the foundation. Candles were lit since dawn had not quite appeared, and the small flames cast jumping shadows upon the walls. Haim sighed and straightened, stretching to relieve tension in his back.
The calm, however, was cut short as Harrus burst through the door, stumbling and gasping in his excitement.
“Harrus, what’s got ye so flustered?” Haim asked, helping Harrus to a seat in the nearest pew.
“The… the man… yesterday…” Harrus wheezed.
“Calm yeself, Harrus. I can’t understand ye.”
Harrus closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and said, “The man you buried yesterday.”
“Yes? What of him?”
“He’s alive, Haim! He’s still alive!”
A look of perplexity obvious on his face, Haim replied, “I believe ye are mistaken. Ye saw him yeself. He’s no more alive than the seat ye sit upon.”
“I cannot explain it,” Harrus rasped, “but I know he is alive! We must dig him up! We must!”
“Now ye sound insane, my friend! We cannot dig a man up! Such action would be accursed!”
His nerves finally calming, Harrus leaned back and closed his eyes. The world felt like it was spinning around him.
After a moment, he opened his eyes and said, “Please, Thomas. I know we’ve done something terrible.”
Haim sighed and said, “Go home, Harrus. Ye need sleep. Ye face is pale as snow. I will be doing no digging today.”
Defeated, Harrus rose, nodded at Haim, and exited the building. He grabbed the reigns and made to mount his horse, but stopped and gazed at the field behind the funeral building. He could just see the tops of the tombstones in the distance. Making up his mind, he stole silently to the rear of the building.
A small shed was nestled there under two trees. Easing open the door, Harrus quickly grabbed a shovel from inside. After swinging the door back in place and keeping hidden behind homes and businesses, he stayed low as he made his way to the cemetery.
As dawn’s light cast a peaceful glow over the cemetery, a final stab of the shovel revealed something hard beneath the newly unpacked earth. Harrus redoubled his excavation, working hard to remove all the soil from on top of and around the coffin. His pace quickened as he noticed the edges of the coffin he built come into view. With an exasperated grunt, he threw away the shovel and began working his fingers into the edges of the wooden lid until his fingers hurt and bled.
When he finally had a good grasp, he tore the lid away and peered inside. The man lay motionless, his eyes closed. His body had been moved some from its intended position; likely, Harrus thought, from the motion of burial. Harrus fell onto his bottom and sighed.
All this work for…
His thought was cut short as the man gasped and coughed, his eyes opening and searching wildly. Harrus leapt to his feet and knelt next to the coffin.
“Are ye ok, sir?” he asked.
“What happened?” the man inquired, obviously bewildered. “Why am I here… in the ground? Lord Almighty, am I in a coffin?”
“Aye, ye are, sir. And I cannot explain this to ye. But come, let’s get ye out of this box.”
Preacher Thomas Haim stood sweeping the floor, still working to get the main room in order. When he heard the door open, he sighed and, turning, said, “Harrus, I told ye that we cannot…”
Silence took him as he saw Harrus helping the man through the door, one of the man’s arms over his shoulder. Haim dropped his broom and hurried over to help Harrus seat the man in a pew.
“He’s alive, Haim! I told ye, but ye would not listen! He lives!”
Haim stood motionless, mouth agape. Taking a tentative step forward, he extended his hand, trying to touch the man to see if he was truly corporeal or some apparition.
“It’s me, Preacher Haim,” the man croaked, his throat dry and creaky.
Haim stepped back. “Good Lord, Timothy! How can this be?”
“I know not, Preacher. Yet here I am.”
Knowing of nothing else that could be done, Haim said, “Well, come! Let’s get ye cleaned up!”
“He was poisoned,” growled Matthias Gold, chief guard of Barlington, later that day. “Lucky for Timothy, it didn’t go as planned.”
“And lucky for Timothy that old Cartwright knew to dig him up,” said Haim, smiling at the coffin maker. “We should have a party in his honor, really celebrate this!”
Harrus shook his head and looked at the floor. “No, gentlemen, I’ll not need such treatment. I just want to go home and sleep. I am bone-weary.”
Without another word, Harrus took his leave.

The cool water felt good on Harrus’s face, refreshing him and washing away the stain of the day’s events; he was thrilled to be rid of the dirt that caked his hands and face. After drying himself, he dropped his towel on the floor and searched for his pipe; thinking better of it, he shuffled toward his bed.
An odd day, to be sure, he thought. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he peered at the ring on his finger. In the furor of the day, he had forgotten about it entirely. His eyelids began to grow heavy, and further thoughts of the ring were pushed aside by thoughts of sleep.
By the glow of firelight, Harrus closed his eyes and let sleep overtake him.

I awake in pure darkness, black as pitch. Walls surround me, of this I’m sure. I feel above me and find the wooden lid. I am blind and terrified.
Searching my pockets, I find a single match. I strike it on the wood, and the light stings my eyes. The familiar stenches of earth and wood and sulfur fill my nostrils, and I look around me, exploring my prison. I notice as I feel about me that I am wearing a smooth, pale ring. A ring made of bone.
The bottom falls away under me, and I plummet into an unknown blackness, a pit of eternal night. Just as I think that I will fall forever into nothingness, I hit the ground, yet it does not hurt; the surface is soft, like a pile of feathers.
I sit up and see a torch a short distance ahead, so I rise and step toward it. Everything seems so familiar yet foreign. I am bewildered but somehow content.
The glow of the torch reveals a figure facing away from me, hooded and cloaked. Fear seizes me again as it slowly turns towards me; a skull sits inside the hood, its eyes glowing pale green. As it lowers its hood, I see a diadem of silver resting upon its brow, crooked and bent and writhing.
“You’ve stolen death,” it groans. “Death will be repaid.”
As I recoil in terror, the skeleton screeches, “Death will be repaid!”

Harrus Cartwright opened his eyes as pain surged through his breast. He cried out and clutched his chest, convulsing upon his bed. He fell to the floor and vomited, racked with pain and spasms. The pain grew sharper, building in his chest and spreading throughout his body.
Flipping onto his back, he clutched at the bed, attempting to pull himself up. A fresh wave of pain washed through his head, and he fell again to the floor, screaming in agony.
As darkness surrounded him and he slipped away from his life, he saw the bone ring on his finger, glistening in the firelight.

The End