The Boatman's Getting Restless

I lay in a coffin, but I was not dead. My best friend had buried me while I was still alive, because that is what I wanted him to do. This was the first time that we had done this, but it certainly would not be the last.

As I lay beneath the satin sheets, I wondered if Death would come. I didn't know if He would see that this was a trick or if He would think I was dead. But this was the only way to find out what, if anything, lay beyond.

I was dressed in my finest suit, stripped of all my possessions, made up to look embalmed, and drugged to appear dead until long after the ceremony. I had just now awakened. My friend, William, would dig me up 24 hours after my burial. If I had not been visited by that time, then this would have all been in vain.

If someone had told me a few days ago that I would be doing this, I would have called him a madman. But this insatiable curiosity had been gnawing at me, just as the worms gnawed at the bodies around me. I was compelled to do this.

The knowledge of what lies beyond is useless to one who lies beyond with it. Man should know, once and for all, what happens at death. So much of our lives are spent dealing with death, and for me it had become an obsession. I simply had to know what happened at death. We all need to know.

Family, friends, and loved ones spend their whole lives fleeing death. Then with illness, injury, or old age, they wonder. Should they embrace death, or should they endure pain and disability and the inability to live life to the fullest simply because death is so horrible?

Someone needed to venture to the other side and then return with the answer to this greatest of questions. Just think how much easier would life be if we knew how it ended.

I don't know how long I was in my cramped coffin, surrounded by stale air that I could barely breathe. My body began to tingle, like when an arm or a leg falls asleep, except that it was all throughout my body. I tried to shift in my coffin, but I was not able to move.

Is this how it feels to die? I wondered. The air might not just be stale. My fresh air may have been cut off. Perhaps a bit of dirt fell over the narrow hole to the surface. I may be breathing the waste of my own lungs, and I might actually be dying in here.

The pain grew worse. I tried to scream, but I could not feel my mouth moving. I could not feel my throat. I tried again to move my body, but nothing changed. Was the coffin so tight, or was something else wrong with me? Again, I wondered if I was dying. Perhaps I was already dead.

Suddenly the pain was gone and in its place was no sensation of feeling at all. The numbness moved up from my hands and feet through my arms and legs, then finally up my torso. I felt like a head with no body. And then something yanked at my head like plucking an apple from a tree. The blackness of my coffin was replaced by a hazy but intense light. I tried to close my eyes, and the light vanished. After a moment, I tried to open them again.

I was standing on the bank of a river. It extended as far as I could see in both directions, and I could not see across its width. There was no wind, and if there had been wind, there were no trees or grasses to wave in it. The sky above was a hazy grey. No clouds and no direct sunlight. Just a foggy haze. It could have been an overcast day, or I could have been in a cave. There was no sound here, and no smell. I had no idea where I was or if I was.

At least now, I knew that something existed beyond death. I still had to find out what that was, though, and get back. I wondered how far I would get before someone or something discovered that I was still very much alive. (I hoped that I was alive.)

A boat appeared at the edge of my vision and gradually drew closer. I was eventually able to distinguish it as a rowboat. As it neared, I was able to see that the oarsman wore a black cloak and hood. His tan flesh clung to his high-cheekboned face, giving him an eerie visage.

As the boat touched upon the shore, I noticed many people around me - enough to fill the boat, in fact. The oarsman extended a board from boat to shore, and the dead began walking across in a single file. No one rushed. I took my place in line. Each person handed the oarsman a coin as he boarded the boat. I suddenly realised that I had no money. I had left all my possessions behind. Unless -!

I clasped at my chest to find my good luck piece, a $20 gold coin that had been turned into a necklace. I took off the necklace, removed the chain, and gave the coin to the oarsman. Lucky thing I had it with me, I thought.

When I stepped onto the boat, I unconsciously tried to keep my balance as it sank. But it stayed at the same level, and I stumbled. I caught myself against the sides, righted myself, and quickly moved to sit on the boat.

Beside me was a ghostly old man. He was a translucent grey-brown, and his skin was horribly wrinkled. There was a hole in his cheek, as if some cancer had eaten through his face. I turned quickly away and fought my own revulsion. In the back of mind was a nagging disappointment. This was not at all what I expected to find. It looked more like something out of a bad movie.

I remembered Dante's Inferno, and it sent a shiver up my spine. When Dante's live self boarded Charon's boat, it almost sank. But when I stepped onto Charon's boat, it stayed at the same level. As if I had no longer had a body.

The river was murky. There really was no sky, just a grey haze that grew thicker as it rose, until finally one could not see through it. All was deathly silent. The air was cold. An even stronger chill came from the closeness of the dead old man to my side, and from the dead young man at my other side with a gaping hole in his chest. I squeezed my body in tightly, afraid to touch either of them.

I was genuinely terrified at the prospect that I had died in my coffin. I felt like I couldn't breathe in there, and I felt like I couldn't even breathe now. As the boat's keel touched upon the opposite shore, it thumped, breaking the deathly silence. The oarsman extended the plank to the shore, and we crossed it in a single file. Again, no one hurried, for they had all the time in the world. I waited until everyone else was gone before I left the boat.

I followed a dark, silent figure down a path. It was not the oarsman, though he wore a similar cloak and hood. I don't know what he looked like because I was afraid to look. The path led to a huge castle, an ugly, brown monstrosity made of ancient bricks that had long since lost their colour. Once we were across the moat, the drawbridge creaked shut. We walked down a long hall. At its end was a huge oaken door.

A river, a moat, a drawbridge, a long hall, and a huge oaken door. How many more boundaries? I wondered. How many more symbols, how many more things to cross? Was this a vision of death or a fantasy of wish fulfillment? At this point, I hoped it was fantasy. I hoped that death was not like this. But if this was death, and I returned to life, did it truly matter? I would only die again, and return here, and the time between would be like the blink of an eye.

The cloaked figure pulled the door open, and the light nearly blinded me. I took a step forward, straining to comprehend the being before me. It appeared to be shaped like a man. Surely the Creator needed no material body.

Jesus had said that "No man comes to the Father, but by me." But Lucifer was referred to as The Shining One. Which was this?

"Ernest," said a human-sounding voice. "Ernest, it's me, William. Your 24 hours are up. What happened?"