Grave Signal
Clifford M. Paxton was a man who lived in fear of death. It was not that he was concerned with the possible pain involved during the actual moment of dying or with the possibility of there not being an afterlife. Clifford did not particularly care one way or the other if his soul went to heaven, was consigned to the fires of hell, was reincarnated or simply ceased to exist. What frightened him—terrified him, to be precise—was the thought of the interment, of being buried alive.
This fear was not completely unwarranted. During his early childhood, Clifford often suffered from strange fainting spells. Once, when he was thirteen years old, his heartbeat and respiration slowed so drastically that the family physician, after only a cursory examination, pronounced him dead. The grieving Paxton family gathered in the great room of the family estate to pay their last respects. The boy was dressed in his best suit of clothing, his body was laid in a fine casket, and silver candelabra were placed at his head and feet.
A painter had already sketched his deathly likeness on a canvas in preparation for creating an oilogram (a portrait of the dead) as a remembrance for the family. The gravediggers had commenced their arduous task, and the minister had begun delivering the eulogy when Clifford suddenly and spectacularly awoke from his spell. Although disoriented, the young man opened his eyes and raised his head out of the coffin.
A woman's shrill scream echoed through the room. A number of the mourners raced to the catafalque to witness the miracle, but most of them backed off with fear.
"Is it you, son?" Mr. Paxton asked with a shaky voice.
"Dad? What has happened? What am I doing here?"
Mrs. Paxton hugged her child, reassured that he wasn't a ghostly apparition but a living, breathing human being.
Having come so close to prematurely consigning their beloved son to his tomb, Clifford's parents took precautions to prevent the horrific experience from ever happening again. During the next several years, whenever the young man slipped into one of his deathlike states, a thorough medical examination was performed, one that invariably revealed he was still alive.
As the years passed and Clifford crossed the threshold of manhood, his spells became less frequent and eventually stopped altogether. At the age of twenty-four, he married Miss Darcy Coleman, an attractive, intelligent young woman from Greenwich, Connecticut, and the two newlyweds moved into a mansion in Manhattan.
Two years into their marriage, the wealthy and socially eminent Mr. and Mrs. Clifford H. Paxton traveled to Philadelphia to attend the 1876 Centennial Exposition. While Darcy enjoyed the Horticultural Hall and the Women's Building art exhibit, her husband was most eager to view the wonders in Machinery Hall: thirteen acres of new inventions and modern devices. It was there that people gazed in amazement at the first typewriter, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, the Corliss steam engine and the prototype of the cable to be used in construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Amazing! It makes me wonder what the next hundred years will bring," Clifford announced, examining the latest technology of his one-hundred-year-old nation.
As the Paxtons strolled through an exhibit of the latest advances in farm equipment, Darcy got a glimpse of the upcoming display and tugged at her husband's sleeve.
"Look, darling," she said. "What do you suppose that is?"
"It appears to be a coffin," Clifford replied, suppressing his instinctive revulsion for anything relating to death, funerals and burials.
"What's that thing on top of it, though?" she asked.
"That's a grave signal," the exhibitor replied, having overheard Darcy's question, "or, as some folks prefer to call it, a grave alarm."
"What's it do? Protect the coffin from grave robbers?"
"No. It's meant to save lives in cases of premature burial."
Despite his aversion to all things relating to death, Clifford drew nearer, eager to learn more about the wondrous invention.
"Have you ever seen horrors such as these?" the exhibitor asked, pointing to three photographs of exhumed corpses that, judging by the excessively long hair and fingernails, had been entombed before they were dead.
"Eeew!" Darcy squealed and buried her face in her husband's shoulder.
"And take a look at this one," the exhibitor continued, as he showed them a portion of the inside of a wooden coffin lid that had apparently been gouged by fingernails. "Just imagine that poor soul's final hours."
After a moment of strategic silence, the exhibitor continued his pitch.
"Now, had that poor unfortunate been interred in one of these"—he placed his hand on the coffin with the grave alarm—"he would only have had to pull the rope to ring the bell, and help would have been on the way."
Clifford examined the contraption on the coffin and nodded his head with approval.
"Have either of you seen the new coffins with the escape hatches built in?" the exhibitor asked.
The Paxtons shook their heads.
"No? Well, don't waste your time or your money, friends. I ask you, what good is an escape hatch if there are six feet of ground above you? How can you possibly dig yourself out of your grave even if by some miracle you did manage to escape from your coffin?"
* * *
When he returned home from Philadelphia, Clifford experienced an onslaught of nightmares. Three to four times a week he woke in the middle of the night with his body bathed in perspiration, his lungs laboring for breath and his heart pounding in his chest.
"What is it, darling?" Darcy asked with wifely concern.
Reluctantly, Clifford recounted the traumatic events that occurred when he was thirteen.
"How horrible!" his wife commiserated, putting her hand to her chest.
"And since we saw the coffin exhibit at the Centennial Exposition," her husband continued, "I've been having nightmares again."
"And have you had any of those terrible spells lately?"
"Heavens, no! I outgrew them years ago. But the fear ...." He hesitated and then continued, "never goes away."
"Let's remedy the situation," Darcy suggested, her Yankee practicality rising to the occasion. "We're going to contact that company and order a casket with a grave alarm."
"Order a casket? Now?" he asked with amused disbelief. "I'm not even sick, much less on death's doorstep."
"True. But don't you see the logic of the situation, darling? You'll be able to sleep peacefully at night knowing that there will be no chance of your ever being buried alive."
"What on earth will we do with the damned thing until I need it?"
"We'll store it out in the carriage house."
"Seems a bit morbid having a casket waiting around."
"I don't see that it's any more morbid than buying a family burial plot or mausoleum before one dies."
"I suppose you're right, dear. As usual," he laughed.
Darcy had been proved right in her prediction. With the purchase of the coffin equipped with a grave alarm and Clifford's fear of being trapped in a casket six feet underground assuaged, the nightmares soon stopped.
* * *
As his fiftieth birthday approached, Clifford Paxton, along with the rest of the world, stood on the precipice of a new century: 1900.
"I am going to throw the largest, most expensive New Year's Eve party New York has ever seen!" Darcy exclaimed.
"What could be grander than our daughter's coming out party?" Clifford asked.
"I don't know yet, but I'll think of something. Perhaps I'll hire Harry Macdonough to entertain the guests."
"Macdonough? I don't believe I've ever heard of him."
"He's a Canadian singer with a wonderful tenor voice."
"A singer, not an entire orchestra? I would have thought you'd want John Philip Sousa's entire marching band to perform!"
"Very funny! I didn't say he was going to be our only entertainment. Maybe I'll provide fireworks, too. After all, I've got to think of something spectacular to make this party memorable."
"I'm sure you will, dear."
Darcy planned her party for more than six months. Nearly all of New York society, in addition to friends and family members from Greenwich, was on her guest list. Food and beverages were being imported from three different continents, and renowned chefs were hired to prepare rare delicacies to please even the most discriminating gourmet.
"And have you decided to hire the Ringling Brothers to entertain us?" Clifford teased his wife affectionately.
"I'm keeping the entertainment a secret. You'll just have to wait until December 31 to find out, along with everyone else."
Sadly, Clifford never lived to see the New Year. Two days after Christmas, he collapsed at his parents' Hudson Valley country home. His wife, children and servants scrambled about the room in a panic.
"Someone go for Dr. Trent," Darcy cried. "He's not conscious."
"I'll go," her oldest daughter's fiancé quickly volunteered.
Several people began to call out advice.
"Try to stick your finger down his throat. He might have something caught there."
"Loosen his tie and the top button of his shirt."
"See if he can drink a little brandy."
"Let's carry him into the parlor and lay him down on the couch."
Darcy leaned forward and placed her head on her husband's chest. She listened carefully for several moments and then her face turned ashen.
"I can't hear a heartbeat."
"Get a mirror and hold it up to his mouth to see if he's breathing," the butler suggested.
He wasn't.
"Oh, Clifford!" Darcy wailed.
When her future son-in-law returned a half hour later with Dr. Trent, the family physician confirmed her worst suspicions.
"I'm afraid your husband's gone, Mrs. Paxton," he said consolingly.
Gone, Darcy thought. A strange word to use. It makes it sound as though Clifford is at his office or taking a stroll along the river.
The next day Clifford was again laid out in the great room of his father's stately house. Once more, the extended Paxton family gathered around the coffin as they had when he was thirteen years old. Only this time he did not interrupt the funeral service with a miraculous resurrection.
On the afternoon of December 30, 1899, the deceased was placed in the casket that he had purchased twenty-two years earlier. Then he was buried in the family cemetery immediately behind his father's house.
After her terrible loss, Darcy naturally canceled her plans for the lavish New Year's Eve party. Instead, the food was served to the mourners after the burial service. The widow couldn't bear returning to an empty house so soon after her husband's passing, so she accepted an invitation to temporarily stay with her in-laws.
On the evening of December 31, Darcy and the elderly Paxtons ate a quiet dinner, void of all holiday cheer. Understandably, none of them was in the mood for celebration. As midnight approached, Darcy began to shed silent tears. Her husband would never see the dawning of the new century and never reach his fiftieth birthday.
"I think I'll turn in now," she tearfully informed her in-laws.
"That's a good idea," Mr. Paxton replied, rising to his feet. "I think I'll head up to bed, too. Coming, my dear?"
His wife nodded and rose, making the decision unanimous.
As Darcy prepared for bed, she heard the church bells begin to chime the midnight hour.
"Happy New Year," she said sadly, desperately missing her husband.
She then crawled beneath the heirloom quilt atop the old four-poster. It seemed like such a large bed for only one person. Her tears fell again when the clock ceased to chime, its silence officially bringing the nineteenth century to a close.
The subsequent silence was broken only by the sound of Darcy's soft sobs. Then a new sound drifted into her room through the glass panes of her window. More bells. But there was no steady tempo to their ringing. Instead, it was an irregular pattern, a frantic clanging.
"Sounds like a school bell," Darcy thought as she closed her eyes.
Suddenly, the image of her old schoolmistress ringing a bell changed. She remembered a similar bell, the one she and Clifford had seen at the Centennial Exposition. It was the bell attached to the coffin: the grave alarm.
"Clifford!"
Darcy jumped from the bed, grabbed her robe and slippers and rushed out into the cold December night. She carefully made her way through the darkness to the family cemetery where her husband's newly dug grave had already been covered by a thin blanket of fresh snow. The monument had not yet been placed above the burial plot to mark its location, so had it not been for the bell's housing that extended above the ground, Darcy might not have found the grave in the dark.
As she neared the spot, she called her husband's name. Immediately the grave alarm began to ring again.
"Clifford. Just wait a minute. I'll go get help," she cried with joy.
Crying with joy, she raced back to the house, screaming the good news.
"Clifford is alive! Listen. You can hear the grave alarm ringing."
Within minutes, her father-in-law woke the servants and sent them scurrying for shovels and picks. Darcy put on a warm coat and boots and returned to the cemetery.
"Help is on the way, darling," she called down through the grave signal housing. "We'll have you out of there soon."
The bell rang twice in reply.
Mr. and Mrs. Paxton and three strong male servants emerged from the house and joined her at the gravesite. The men immediately went to work, digging into the six feet of ground that had been placed above the coffin the day before.
During the time that it took to clear the dirt away, the grave alarm sounded half a dozen times. Both Darcy and Clifford's mother spoke to the poor man frequently, giving him constant reassurance of his impending rescue.
"Hold on, dear. Only a little while longer," Darcy promised.
Finally, a loud thud announced that one of the shovels had struck the top of the wooden coffin. Mr. Paxton himself, though well past seventy years, jumped into the grave and helped shovel the remaining dirt off his son's casket. One of the servants then handed him a crowbar and he pried the lid off the coffin. The alarm rang out one last time.
"Oh, my God!" Mr. Paxton cried and scrambled up the side of the grave.
"What is it?" Mrs. Paxton called.
He grabbed his wife, trying to prevent her from looking down at their son's body.
"Clifford!" Darcy screamed when she leaned over and saw her husband.
Two servants caught her just before she tumbled into the grave.
Even in the fresh winter air, the smell of decay was overpowering. Clifford Paxton had been dead for three days, and despite the cold New England December temperature, the body was already in a state of decomposition.
"Take the women back to the house, please," Mr. Paxton instructed one of his servants.
When the grieving mother and inconsolable widow were safely inside the manor, Mr. Paxton took one final look at his son's body and saw the dead fingers clutched tightly around the rope of the grave alarm. The horrified father slammed the lid of the coffin closed, picked up a shovel and knocked the alarm assembly off the casket. It fell into the hole and thudded on top of the coffin. Then he ordered the servants to begin the arduous task of shoveling the dirt back into the grave.
* * *
Mr. Paxton returned to the house where his wife and daughter-in-law were sitting in the parlor, sobbing and sipping brandy. Both women's eyes were red and puffy, and wet tears clung to their cheeks. Mr. Paxton walked to the sideboard and poured himself a tall drink.
Darcy finally broke the uncomfortable silence.
"You heard the alarm, too, didn't you?" she asked, weeping.
"Yes," her father-in-law replied. "I heard it."
Mr. Paxton drained his glass.
"It's almost dawn," he observed, looking out the window at the eastern horizon. "I suggest we all try to get some sleep, difficult as that may be."
The two women stood and then headed up the main staircase. From outside came the faint sound of a ringing bell. Darcy turned quickly. Hope momentarily flickered in her eyes, but her father-in-law took her firmly by the elbow.
"It's nothing, my dear," he said gently. "Pay it no mind."
All her hope gone, Darcy continued on her way up the stairs, resigned to being a widow.
No, Salem, that wasn't your dinner bell.
