Night falls... Only spheres of light bulbs give the earth any form of light. The boys tiptoe to the coffin shop, stilling their hearts not to pound noisily. Earlier in the day, they watched the coffin maker smoothen the wood of one those rectangular boxes. It looked grand in a way that seemed to call a man to lie in it forever. But death can wait. Money first. The box will cost a fortune especially with the right spray; the white one. The one the coffin maker keeps away from the rest. The one that makes a box shine like a huge stone of diamond.
They unlock the door to the shop and move with slow steps. The dark room looks like a crypt with coffins stacked at different corners and short planks propping their lids. A metal falls and its clang dilutes the midnight silence for a moment. At the sound, they stand transfixed as fear courses through them, making them shiver as if they haven't done this before. Silence returns. And they see the box they came for lying at the right corner of the room with a sliver of the moon revealing its dark brown sheen. They quicken their steps towards it and with pursed lips, they lift the wood and move towards the open door from where the night breeze—prickly as fur—creeps in.
Soon, a figure dressed in the darkness of the night rises from one of the open coffins. The coffin in their hands drops to the ground with a loud thud. Two other figures rise from other coffins in the room. The thieves scream and scamper through the door, hearing laughter in the shop which resonated in their ears as they ran far into the night.
A coffin maker and his two apprentices keep laughing. They know the boys will never come again because in the morning there will be a rumour of ghosts lurking in the coffin shop down the street. And with this rumour, the thieves will be caught......
