Till Death Do Us Part

Summary: A man kills and buries his wife, only to find she has returned as a ghost.

So he must dig up her grave to confirm if she’s really dead….

Genre: Ghost, horror

Type: Short story

---

It was time. Time to dig up a corpse.

The thunder flashed as soon as I opened my door. At the same time, a black dog barked. If I had been superstitious, I would have paused.

I wasn’t.

Besides, what I was doing was important, and I couldn’t let silly superstition stop me.

I had to dig up my wife’s dead body from the cold hard ground.

I put the shovel and torch in a black bag and flung it over my shoulder. All I needed now was a black face mask to complete the effect of a thief.

But I wasn’t a thief. I was an honest man. Who just had to do what he had to do.

The weather station had given out a yellow warning: High winds, possible flooding, stay indoors.

It was already getting dark and people were starting to move their stuff indoors. Nobody was foolish enough to leave the house at this time.

Except me.

The wife wouldn’t dig herself out of her grave now, would she?

Unless she was a ghost or a zombie; which was looking to be more and more likely.

My neighbour saw me going out. The idiot was putting away his prized yellow roses. In case the storm destroyed them. The poor flowers were going into his shed.

He saw me and raised an eyebrow. “Okay, Pat? Dangerous night to go out.”

Mind your own business, I thought and smiled.

“Yeah, well. Friend needs help. Car trouble.”

“Can’t he call the AA?”

Cheeky bastard. What business of this was his? I smiled even wider.

“He doesn’t have AA. Besides, he’s just ‘round the corner. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

“I see. Well, take care. They are saying the winds could be up to thirty miles an hour. You need to be inside as soon as I can.”

“And I will be.” As soon as I dig that bitch out of her grave. “Cheerio.”

“See you.”

He wasn’t kidding about the strong winds. As soon as I reached the main street, the wind almost blew me off the footpath and onto the road. I was lucky the road was empty at this time of the night or I would have gotten squashed for sure.

And it started to rain.

Slowly at first, but each drop was as thick as a bug. And they hit me hard on my skin. The harsh yellow streetlight flickered in the storm. It was going to be a hard night. It was going to be a long night.

But a man had to do what a man had to do.

I had to confirm the bitch was dead.

#

We had been married for ten years. After a year, I knew she wasn’t the one for me. She knew the same.

And yet, we stuck together. Why? Who the fuck knows? Both of us were too cowardly to move on.

And so we lived together, hating each other.

I often said to her, Woman, you will be the death of me.

She wasn’t.

I was the death of her. You see, I killed her.

Before you judge me, hear me out. I’d finally had enough of her nagging and bitching. Stop drinking, and stop taking the chemicals. Didn’t she know the chemicals were the only thing that kept me sane?  A loving wife would know that.

One day, her nagging grew out of control. She just wouldn’t shut up. Blah blah blah, God, morals, religion. She was beginning to sound like a real Sunday preacher. Someone had given her this book by the Dalai Lama, and she kept quoting it to me. And I was like, what does the Dalai Lama know? He isn’t even married, lucky bastard.

And she threatened to leave me. Again.

If only I was so lucky. If she wanted to leave me, she would have done so years ago.

So I did what any normal and loving husband would do. I took her to the top of a local mountain and pushed her off.

Finally got rid of her nagging.

#

Killing her was the easy part. The hard part was convincing the police it was an accident.

I had to use all my years of theatre training. Crying buckets of tears. Passing out (falsely) during the funeral. You wouldn’t believe how good I was. Oscar worthy.

The police didn’t believe a word of it.

But they needed evidence. And they had none. And so, I was free.

Free of my nagging and bitching wife.

Or so I thought.

The woman came back from the dead. In, like a week.

I came home one day to find her lying on the couch.

She looked just like the day she had died. Her flowery white dress torn at the hips, her face smashed and blue, her eyes black.

And staring at me.

She just lay there, looking at me without blinking.

She didn’t move. Just kept looking.

With those dead eyes.

As slowly as I could, I moved out of the house. Spent the next four hours walking the streets.

Until my bladder was exploding. Even thought about just peeing on the street, but there were too many people about. I was still playing the grieving husband and urinating in public would ruin that effect.

So I ran home.

I would quickly use the toilet, then run out.

Luckily, the toilet was right near the main door.

I unzipped myself and started peeing. Hurry up! I screamed to the body, finish this. I don’t have time.

But the body would take its own time.

Hurry up!

But the piss came out slowly. As if to show its anger at me.

I was getting frustrated.

And that’s when I heard the breathing.

Right behind my right ear.

My whole body tensed. All my hair stood on end.

Hi Honey.

I screamed and turned.

There was no one there.

I looked down and saw I had peed all over my jeans and on the floor. Fuck.

There was a crowbar lying in the toilet. Picked it up and went to the drawing room. If she was back, I would kill her again.

Kicked open the door to the drawing room…

…it was empty.

There was no one on the sofa.

And I stood there, in the drawing room, smelling of fear, sweat and piss.

#

If that had been the only incident, I could have put it down to my nerves. But then I started getting letters.

From my dead wife.

Dear husband, do you mind not leaving the gas on when you leave for work? It is a fire risk.

And I had left the gas on that day. I came home eight hours later to find it on. Luckily, there was nothing on the stove, so all I got was a high gas bill, but how did she know?

Was she wandering around the house like a ghost?

I started getting more letters. Full of things only she would know. Telling me off, asking me to clean the house, remove the cobwebs from the bedroom, to wash my bedsheets.

I wasn’t free from her nagging even after her death!

Dave helped me out a lot. He was her childhood friend and was very affected by her death. He came by a few times and helped me drown out the sorrow with whiskey. I told him I believed my wife was coming back, but he just laughed it off. Must be my delusions, he said.

And then, my wife tried to kill me when I was sleeping. That was when she crossed the line.

#

It happened one night. It was warm so I opened the windows. The air was cool and refreshing but I still couldn’t sleep. So I took some of the good stuff.

I don’t know what was in it. Bunch of chemicals and stuff. But it always made me feel relaxed. Better than sex it was, any day of the week.

The good stuff helped me relax and I started drifting off to sleep.

When I felt someone come and sit by me on the bed.

The mattress pressed down a little and I heard the bed creak.

Was it only a dream? Must be.

But then someone lay next to me.

It’s a dream, I thought.

Then that someone turned over. I could smell my wife’s jasmine perfume.

Terrified, I turned my back on her. This was a dream. It would end soon.

My wife started stroking my back. With sharp, razor like claws.

My back hurt as the talons scratched me. I wanted to move, but couldn’t.

It was not a dream!

HELP! I screamed, but no words came out.

I tried to move but the body was paralysed.

I kicked. I punched. I struggled. But I couldn’t move.

The body was paralysed.

And she kept stroking my back.

I screamed and screamed, till I fell off the bed.

I know what you’re thinking. It was a dream, or a drug induced hallucination. That’s what Dave said.

But here’s the thing. I woke up and found the back of my shirt covered in blood. And tear marks, like a wild animal had clawed through it.

No matter how drugged I was, I couldn’t have cut my own back like that. My body just wasn’t that flexible.

And then there was the fact I found all the pillows moved to her side of the bed. Like she used to do when she was alive. And a message written in blood.

Hi Honey.

The message vanished even as I saw it.

That was the last straw. I had to dig up my wife.

#

I walked to the graveyard. It was locked but that didn’t stop me. I jumped over the fence and was in.

It was pitch dark now. The wind was howling like mad and the rain had started.

Good. The place would be empty.

Found her grave and started digging. It was hard work, but I didn’t shy from hard work. Took me a whole two hours to dig the bitch out. She would have been proud of me. Always moaned I didn’t work hard enough. That I didn’t give it my hundred percent. Well, I had given it my hundred percent today.

The shovel hit the coffin with a bang. I jumped in and opened it.

Damn. She was in there.

Still wearing the blue dress I had buried her in. And she looked worse now. Her face had gone all green, and her mouth was as black as volcanic ash.

And she smelt. Like dead rats.

“What are you doing?”

I looked up, and standing outside the grave was Dave.

“Dave, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I could ask you the same.”

I pulled myself up. “Dave, I’m not fucking around. Why are you here?”

He crossed his arms. “I followed you.”

“Okay. It’s not what it looks like. I suspect she may be a zombie.”

“You’re delusional, buddy.”

“I showed you the letters! She’s been harassing me as a ghost.”

He stared at me. “I wrote those letters. Because I was angry. You mistreated her, and she was so nice to you. I just wanted to scare you, I didn’t think you would dig up her body.”

Fucker. I wanted to hit him.

“And how did you sneak into my bedroom and cut my back? Also, how did you make my wife’s corpse lie on the sofa and stare at me with wicked eyes?”

“That was your delusion, man. I’m going to call the police on you. Even they never believed your wife had an accident.”

I hit him with the shovel. Dave had never been a strong one and he went down like a sack.

“Fucker, I don’t have delusions.”

I had to kill him. Luckily, there was an open grave right next to me. The police would never suspect a thing.

The thunder flashed and the rain stopped for a moment. It became deathly quiet.

I heard wheezing behind me.

Turned around and saw the wife climbing out of the grave.

She was crawling like an animal.

She looked at me, her mouth and eyes as black as death.

“I knew it wasn’t a delusion. Bitch, I’ll kill you a second time.”

I moved forward to hit her with the shovel.

She smiled and grabbed me by the leg.

We went tumbling into the grave.

I tried to get up but she grabbed me in a bear hug.

The dirt outside started falling in over us. I was being buried alive.

The wife looked at me and smiled.

“Hello, husband. Till death do us part.”

I screamed, but my screams were drowned by the thunder and the rain.

The End

PS: If you enjoyed this story, I wrote a follow up, but this time a comedy!! Check it out here:

Subscribe to get 2 free stories