The Sound Under the Flowers

The first thump came from beneath the white flowers while fourteen mourners watched Maya Whitmore's mother being remembered as dead.

Maya froze beside the closed dark-mahogany coffin and waited for the sound to come again.

Grandma Rose Whitmore cried in the front row, two funeral attendants stood near the coffin, and Victor Harlan received condolences with the solemn patience of a respectable widower.

A black leather guest register rested on a lectern within Victor's reach, and its pages were crowded with signatures because he had paused each arrival until the mourner wrote a name.

Even now, his attention returned to those dense lines whenever the chapel doors opened.

The polished lid looked perfectly still.

Maya stared at the coffin, seized the upright brass floor candlestick with both hands, and swung its heavy weighted base down before fear could stop her.

The impact struck like a bell through the chapel and left only a dent, a hairline crack, and a few pale splinters in the lid.

Several mourners rose halfway from their seats while others gasped behind lifted hands.

“Maya!” Grandma Rose cried.

Victor rushed from the lectern as Maya raised the candlestick for another blow.

He reached her before she completed the swing and caught the brass shaft in both hands.

“Give me that!”

“Mom moved!”

They pulled against each other until the weighted base scraped across the cracked wood and lengthened the fracture without opening it.

Victor tore the candlestick from Maya's hands and threw it across the carpet.

She lunged toward the coffin anyway, but he caught her around the waist from behind and dragged her several feet away.

Her shoes scraped over the carpet as she reached toward the lid with both hands.

“LET ME GO!”

“She is dead!”

Maya kept stretching toward the coffin while Victor tightened his hold and turned to the attendants.

“Move it. Now!”

Neither attendant obeyed, because Victor's urgency had reached them before his authority did.

Maya twisted hard enough to loosen one of his arms, but Victor caught her wrist before she could run.

Two distinct knocks sounded from inside the coffin.

The chapel went still around them.

Both attendants stared at the lid, Grandma Rose rose slowly from the front row, and Victor showed less surprise than anyone else in the room.

“What was that?” Grandma Rose asked.

Victor snapped his attention toward the attendants instead of the coffin.

“Take it out!”

Grandma Rose's confusion sharpened into suspicion, and Maya knew the sound had been real.

She fought toward the coffin, but Victor locked both arms around her torso and lifted her backward in his strongest attempt to stop her.

“MOM!”

A desperate thump answered from under the flowers.

Mourners left their rows and moved closer, forcing Victor to glance at the audience whose signatures he had so carefully collected.

Maya dropped her weight, slipped beneath his arm, and sprinted toward the candlestick on the carpet.

Victor followed close enough for her to hear his shoes strike the floor behind her.

She snatched up the candlestick as he lunged.

“MAYA, NO!”

Maya drove the weighted base into the already splintered point, deepening the fracture and bending the wood inward without exposing the coffin's interior.

Victor grabbed her shoulder, but she twisted away and raised the candlestick one final time.

The last heavy strike landed on the exact weakened spot with a crack that silenced every voice in the chapel.

A jagged opening about five inches across appeared in the mahogany, and a weak muffled cry escaped through it.

Victor reached desperately toward the hole, but Grandma Rose seized his arm and held him back.

Maya dropped the candlestick and bent over the damaged lid from above.

Through the same small opening, framed on every side by broken mahogany, she saw a narrow cream-satin interior directly below her.

Claire Harlan lay flat on the pillow with tape across her mouth and her restrained wrists resting over her abdomen.

Only part of her face, one shoulder, and the rise of her upper chest were visible through the hole, but the movement proved she was alive.

“Mom?!”

Claire made a weak sound behind the tape, looked at Maya with relief, and then shifted her frightened eyes past her toward Victor.

Grandma Rose followed her daughter's gaze, and the mourners gradually turned from the broken coffin to the man she still held.

Victor took one small step backward as the crowded chapel understood why he had fought so hard to keep the lid closed.