Uncle Frank had a hobby. Day after day, ever since he came to live in my house, he'd go out into the workshop and bang away.

The workshop was really an old garage where the person that lived in my house before had tinkered away at neighborhood cars when they needed fixed. It was big and aged, but it had the kind of structure that suggested--to my eight-year-old mind anyways--that it would last forever. I had once heard that cockroaches could withstand nuclear bombs, and I thought probably the old garage could too, with it's brick walls, cracked and chipped and coated in fading blue paint. The floor was dirt, packed hard and solid, spattered with oil and other car liquids that I didn't really know the names of.

I had gone inside only once, when we first moved there. That was enough. Everything had been packed away by the people at the bank, who'd reclaimed the house and cleared it out before my dad had bought it in auction. The house wasn't so bad, but the garage-fifty feet away downhill-reeked of dismal emptiness, and something about the place always made me feel like it could suck me into that bleak place and make me one within the walls.

Put simply, I hated it. But the place didn't seem to bother Uncle Frank.

Frank was my dad's brother, and even though I didn't meet him until I was eight, dad had shown me photos. In the photos, he had always looked a lot like my dad: tall, tanned, smiling, clean shaven, with blue eyes--just like mine--that always seemed to have a light behind them. Starry eyed, my mom would say. Dad would explain how Uncle Frank was away, but would be back real soon.

When uncle Frank came to live with us, he had a big fluffy beard, like a pirate. His eyes were different from mine and dad's, like the light had gone out. He didn't smile. His skin had paled, as if he'd been hiding away from the sun. He was still tall, but he had grown slimmer. Almost a starved quality.

Dad said Uncle Frank needed space, so he moved a bunch of stuff in that creepy garage. Wood and tools mostly. A rocking chair, a cot. He started calling it the workshop. Dad had forbid me to go down there (as if I'd been going down there in my spare time anyway), which suddenly made me very curious about the place.

"It's Uncle Frank's personal space now, he was just busy with his hobby," dad told me, and I wasn't to invade.

I was convinced something exciting and top secret was going on there. Being an extremely curious kid, I had to know what was going on. But Uncle Frank seemed to always be down there, banging away. He knew the times my mother habitually served family meals and he would clamber up the hill, shovel food in his mouth without even seeming to taste it, and rush back down to his hobby.

I figured he was shy, like the girl in my class that always sat alone and colored during play time. I heard the teachers talking about her one day and they said somebody had been mean to her. I thought somebody had been mean to Uncle Frank too. Dad said that where he was before, it was hard on him and the workshop helped. I was told not to ask him questions or bother him at all. When I asked where he had been before, dad didn't say. He just went to the old fallback explanation, "Never you mind, it's no business of yours."

That settled it. If dad didn't want to tell me about it, it must be something bad, like what I heard the teachers whispering about the shy girl. And if whatever he did in the workshop was his way of feeling better, I got the weird idea that maybe it could help the shy girl too.

But I couldn't let Uncle Frank see me snooping around. He would tell dad and I'd get in trouble, even if my intentions were good. Since Uncle Frank stayed in the workshop other than during meals, the times when I also had to be present, I couldn't find any time to sneak off and spy on what he was doing.

After a few weeks, Uncle Frank stopped coming up to the house for meals.

"It's been two days, Ronnie," mom said. "He hasn't had a bite."

"We can't force him to eat, Emma," dad said.

"Can't you just take a plate down?"

I was sitting at the table, listening intently as my mom served dinner and complained about my absent uncle. I couldn't believe my luck. My excuse to go down to the workshop was right here in front of me. I jumped up and volunteered to run the food down.

"Okay, but don't stay down and wait on him to finish. He can bring the plate up when he's done."

Mom piled the plate full of ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a few rolls.  It looked like a lot, but after two days, he'd probably gobble it all up easily.

I walked carefully down our three wooden porch steps and down the hill. I could hear a creaking sound, like Uncle Frank was just rocking in his chair I had seen him take in there. I knocked with my foot and called out.

"Uncle Frank, food!"

The squeaking stopped and my big bearded uncle opened the door. For the first time, he was smiling. He smelled like the trees in the woods behind my house.

"Jenny! I was hoping you'd come down to see me," he said cheerfully.

"You were?" I asked.

"Yep. You're just the perfect size, I think. I need you to help me."

I was more curious than ever now. "How can I help?"

"Come on in."

He took the plate and I followed him inside. He sat it on a table and pointed to the far wall, across a big white sheet on the floor. As soon as I saw what he had made, my curiosity deflated like an untied balloon.

"Are those...coffins?" I asked.

"Yes, it's what I do, Jenny. People need them and I build them," he said.

There were three there. A tall one, a sort of tall one, and one short one.

"This one is for a little girl just about your size," he said.

My heart sank as I thought of the little shy girl in my class. Was it for her? Suddenly, I felt sick. I didn't want to be there. I started to turn away. I was going to run back up to the house and tell mom I didn't feel well, but Uncle Frank grabbed my hand.

"Don't go. You said you would help me," he said, his voice was tender and his touch was light, yet solid.

"I don't know if I can," I said.

"Sure you can. Just get inside and see if it fits," he said.

I did not want to get inside that thing. I shook my head and tried to retreat, pulling my arm. It seemed to stretch away and away, like flesh colored play dough, and then finally stretched its full length and would go no further. He was dragging me closer.

"Help me," he coaxed.

The short coffin's lid was open and it was dark inside. Dark as a grave.

"No!" I screamed finally. "I don't want to help!"

He yanked. My body lurched forward, almost flying off the ground, and a scream left my lips. He lifted me easily, and I kicked, hitting the rocking chair, then the table, knocking over the plate of food my mom had cooked. My back hit the back of the coffin and my uncle, my father's brother, slammed the lid shut. I kept screaming, so loud I felt as if my throat were ripping, but I still heard the pounding. He was nailing me inside. He was locking me in because I wouldn't help him.

"I'm sorry!" I cried. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it!"

But he just kept nailing. It was quick, probably four nails, and then I felt the coffin being lifted off the ground. I could picture him heaving the thing off the ground, throwing it over one shoulder and bouncing along...to where?

"Where are you taking me?" I shouted. "Please, I'm sorry, I'll be good, I'll help!"

"Hush up!" he said, and his voice was harsh now.

I jarred as the coffin hit the ground hard. He had only taken a few steps. Something hit the top. It was like hail hitting the roof of our house. It hit again and some dirt fell through the fine cracks in the wood, and I knew what that white sheet had been covering.

"Please! Nooooooo!"

The dirt kept coming. It came until I couldn't hear it hit the wood anymore. I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't scream anymore, because I was drowning in tears. I gagged, coughed.

I'm dying, I thought. This is it, this is how you die.

"M-ommy," I choked. The tears were warm and salty. "Dad-dy."

Electricity was zipping around in my veins, urging me to make an action. I pounded on the wood, clawed at it as my nails bent and broke and my fingertips bled. I knew I couldn't get the lid open, I was too little and it was nailed shut tight, but I didn't care. Facts made no sense to me then. The seconds were like hours as I panicked and drowned in my snot and tears.

Finally, I heard something scrape against the coffin lid.

"Jen!" my dad shouted.

I couldn't speak, I just sobbed.

"I'm getting you out honey!"

Uncle Frank left that day. He went back to Pineridge Assylum. Dad had signed him back in, once dad found me in the coffin and saw the other two that were waiting for mom and him. Uncle Frank would have to give up his hobby, building coffins.

I don't know what his hobby is now, and I'm not even a bit curious.