More Than a Corpse

     I figured it was best to not take any chances, so I put on a pair of gloves before picking up the shovel. I knew what was expected of me, and although I didn't like it, I began to dig. It was a pretty big hole, took me about two hours, the Clay was hard and dry, like the stuff you see in commercials for skin products. Four feet down, I finally found what I was there for: a wooden box, made out of OSB, and held shut with sheetrock screws. It was a piece of junk, but it was also the size of a coffin. I was scared, I didn't know what I was going to find. No, I did, I just wasn't ready for it. I lifted the box up, and tucked some dirt under it, so the whole thing was laying flat, and cleared the dirt from the top of it. It took me awhile to get all of the screws undone, since I hadn't brought a power drill, but I finally got them all out, and pushed the plywood lid off of the box.

     It was exactly what I was expecting, and exactly what I was afraid of: a corpse. I slid the lid back onto the box and sat back, frantic. I used to talk a big game, but I was damn certainly not the tough guy I pretended to be. I was much more nervous back then. I used to spend all of my time talking about how I was a natural survivor, and my plans for the apocalypse, but when shit hit the fan, I was completely unprepared. Here I was, sitting in a hole in the middle of a dried up lake, with a corpse in a cheap wooden box, and the sun was going down.

     I pulled out my flashlight and moved back to the box, determined not to panic. I slid the lid off of the box, and looked inside. The man seemed a bit too young to be dead naturally, which was a stupid thought. Of course he didn't die naturally, the hole in his head was pretty solid evidence of that. Anyway, the guy was maybe thirty-five or forty, brown hair, closed eyes, and lots of blood dried on him. It was hard not to focus on all the blood. So, in an effort to keep from focusing on the blood, I actively averted my eyes. You know, the way you do when there is obvious cleavage in a civilized setting. While I was averting my eyes, I noticed the underside of the lid of the "coffin", and noticed something painted on there. I flipped the lid over and looked at the words hastily spray-painted there: INSTALL IT.

     I looked at the body, my eyes locked on his chest, and knew what was going to happen. I was about to put a heart into a corpse. I pulled open the man's shirt, and saw a hastily stitched and stapled wound down his sternum. Dear god, I was about to do it, I was going to open up a corpse. I Grabbed out my multitool and started pulling staples. They were huge things, wide and made of thick wire, with the flesh discolored where they had entered. I pulled out all of the staples except the middle-most one, which strained against the ribs. I built up my courage and yanked the last one- then, as the ribs sprang open, I was overwhelmed by stench.

     Clearly this man had not been preserved very well. Jumping back from the smell, I grabbed a handkerchief, and tied it over my mouth, then moved back to the corpse and shone my flashlight inside. Of course there were all of the giblets and other bits in there, but there were also a few shining bits of stainless steel, and a box near the back attached to them with little wires. So, I did what any normal human being would do: I vomited. Then I opened up the package I had brought with me, and brought out the heart, beating still. I lowered it into the cavity, and lined up the connectors, and after a few beats from the now-installed heart, something terrible happened. The body began to talk to me.

     "Hello, and I'm sorry"
Okay, the body wasn't talking, but a recording was playing from inside the box inside of it. Absolutely horrible.
     "I don't know what your name is, but mine is Gregory Faulkner. I know that at this point, none of this makes sense to you, and you must be scared. I am so sorry that this has fallen to you, but I couldn't trust the tasks ahead of you with anyone related to me. Now that I am dead, they will all be watched, so there is nothing they can do. Only a stranger would be safe. Please forgive me. There are several items that have been hidden by other strangers, who also didn't ask for what they have gotten. If I have built my web correctly, my death will prevent all of the work I have done from falling to shambles. I stumbled into something big. There are incredible powers at work trying to keep things progressing down the path they are on, and if things continue this way, horrible things are going to happen. I can't tell you more on this recording, it's not safe. However, I can point you to the first location, the first piece of this puzzle. There are several people involved in this, several strangers who have been pulled into this, and I can only pray for forgiveness for that. But you, whom I have never met, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. I can never repay you enough for it. The first clue is this: "4844 NVJK AVWWVIJFE SFLCVMRIU, CFJ REXVCVJ" Obviously, for safety's sake, this message had to be encoded, but you have the key if you have my heart. Thank you, and please forgive me.

I still have the key, here's a picture.

     That was it. the last wishes of a dead man, and with them, the greatest responsibility ever placed on one man. I took the heart out, and re-inserted it, recording the message on my phone. I removed it again, and this time, I cut it open, trying to sever whatever wires were inside, and when I did, I caught a small beaded chain. The chain had a small key on it. I put the key around my neck, and pulled the box out of Gregory's chest, and stomped on it, again and again, screaming, crying, and angry. It took me probably an hour to compose myself, then all I could do was put him back. I closed the box, and shoveled all the dirt back onto his shitty unmarked grave.
I still haven't forgiven him.

The Detective and The Lake

     After a fair bit of deliberating, and a long stare at the now-beating heart, I decided that I should probably call the police. It was clear to me that this was way out of my league, and "tell no one" was going to get me into trouble. I called 911, and the receptionist spent a lot of time coming to grips with what I was telling her. I didn't blame her, but I was getting panicky. Finally, she told me that there was someone on the way, and to stay inside my house. The only person I should talk to was a detective Ingram.

     I sat and worried for awhile, thinking about the morning's events, the heart throbbing on my dining room table. Then, about twenty minutes after the 911 operator hung up, there was a knock on my door. I looked through my peephole and saw a smallish black-haired man looking up at me, waving an ID. I opened the door, and he identified himself as Wilson Ingram, we shook hands and he began to question me about the heart. Where had it come from, what was my involvement, who did I know who might know anything about it, then he got a little... off track.

      He began sifting through some of the papers on the table, my bills, magazine subscriptions. I asked him what he was doing, but he didn't seem to notice. After a moment of looking at a bank statement from may, he looked over the top of the page and asked, very calmly, "who else have you told about this?". I told him that he was the first person I had called, and he said, "good."

     The next few seconds took place in an adrenaline blur.

He dropped the paper and drew a pistol from inside his coat.

I Leapt at him, pinning the gun to his chest before he could get it pointed at me.

We Struggled on the ground, an old-fashioned rumble. Eventually, I managed to knock the gun away, and pin him by the throat with my forearm. I was in a fury, not thinking straight, so rather than ask him the questions I now know I should have asked, I kept pushing down, hard. After a moment, he passed out, and i got up. I grabbed some rope from the garage, and tied him to a chair. I knew it wouldn't hold him long after he woke up, but it would have to do. Then I Packed as quickly as I could. I shoved a few days worth of clothes, and most of my hiking gear into my backpack. I used to do a lot of ultralight backpacking, so I was pretty well equipped. Then, I grabbed the heart, jumped in my car, and drove.

GFiSaT.35.140647-117.128071

I turned it over in my head. It didn't take long to figure out that it was a GPS coordinate, so I plugged it into my phone, and got underway.

    Three hours later, I pulled my car off of the County Road. I misread it at first, and thought it was called "country road", which would have been funny, if my only company hadn't been a disembodied beating heart. I drove for awhile across a bunch of dirt, into a ravine, and toward a patch of pale clay in the middle of a small valley, a dried out lake. I parked my car at the edge of the clay, and hoofed it the rest of the way, carrying my backpack. I could see something in the middle of the lake, but it was hard to make out at a distance. When I finally made it to the object, I realized nervously that it was a shovel standing in the dirt.

The Package

June 24th, I received a package on my front porch. It was a small box, wrapped in butcher paper and twine, I remember making a stupid joke about “my favorite things”. The laugh wore off pretty quickly. I scoured the box for a return address, but the only identifier I could find was a small tag with my name, and the words “tell no one” on it. A chill ran up my spine with those words, and I knew something weird was going on. I started tugging on the twine, but my hands were shaking, and I ended up dropping the box. It thudded to the ground, and there was a small cracking sound. I picked it up, and tried again, but the damn knot was too tight, so I whipped out my leatherman, and cut the twine. I opened the box, and couldn’t believe what was inside- a heart. Mostly it was a heart, there were some strange bits of electronics on it, wires poking out from one side, leading to a small circuit board on the other side.Of course, when I first saw it, I didn’t notice the details, just the fact that I was facing a heart in a box. I think I screamed, but I can’t be sure. I was in a daze, and when I snapped out of it, my mouth was open, so I was probably screaming. Then I realized I was standing in the front door of my house, holding a goddamn heart in a box. I slammed the door, and tried to get my bearings. was it human? was it a pig heart, and somebody was pulling a prank? what the hell is going on with all those wires? I was absolutely freaking out.

It took me probably twenty minutes to calm down, but when I did, I gathered my thoughts, and closed the blinds to every window. Then I turned on the light over the dining room table, sat down, and opened the box again. son of a bitch, there was a heart in a box, sitting in my dining room. I calmed down again and started to think. obviously, the note said to tell no one, and for the moment, I had to assume that meant cops. I wondered at first if the heart was some sort of warning, or a threat, but there was nothing to indicate that. well, nothing except a heart in a box. As you can imagine, all sorts of thoughts like that popped into my head, but for the purposes of this telling, i’ll try to keep those down. Anyway, I tried to focus as much as I could on the details: who sent this to me, WHY ME, what it’s for, what I am supposed to do, just trying to make sense of it all. I started to study the heart itself. the veins, or the arteries, whatever they are on an actual heart, had some sort of stainless steel caps on them, and the heart seemed pretty full, probably with blood, I wasn’t going to probe it. I noticed some writing on the circuit board, but it was too small to make out, so I went to grab a magnifying glass. The writing turned out to just be a series of digits, reading:

GFiSaT.35.140647-117.128071

Then, I flipped the chip over, and on the back, I noticed what had made the cracking sound: a wire from one of the components, a capacitor, had broken loose when I dropped it. I decided the best thing to do was to re-connect the wire and see what happened. I pushed the wire beck into contact, and immediately jumped back. The heart had begun to beat. Son of a bitch, I will never forget that second- it was beating, just like it was still in a chest. it was a slow pulse, but it was still beating, every few seconds, thud- thud- thud. it was terrifying to see, but I couldn't look away. Call it morbid curiosity.