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My Dad died nearly two years ago, and we just buried him today.

Dad was a writer, though you've probably never heard of him. He was known in small circles, celebrated by the community where he lived, but his books will likely never grace the shelves of Barnes and Noble. I say that like it's a fact, but that may not be the case anymore. Dad, like one of those old painters from the 1800s, became infinitely more famous in his death than he ever did in life. People who wouldn't return his calls and wouldn't even think of publishing his work now come to see him from miles away. This probably seems strange, given I just told you he's dead, so let me start at the beginning.

Dad died as he lived, at his keyboard.

He's been writing the same book for as long as I can remember. It's a massive seven or eight-volume series. In one of my earliest memories, I can remember tottling into his office and looking up at him as he smiled at me, his fingers never leaving the keyboard as he plinked away. Dad wrote other things for magazines or freelance work, but the books were his magnum opus. He would tell anyone who would listen, usually interested friends of mine who were aspiring writers themselves, how the book would be his greatest work once it was done. He had envisioned ten books and all, detailing the hero's journey of his main character as he attempted to find his father's murderer across several continents, meeting people and finding clues along the way. I've heard him talk about that book almost every day since I was old enough to understand what he was talking about, but I couldn't tell you much about it. He never let anybody read it, he was so protective of it, and I don't know if more than a dozen people were aware of its existence. That being said, he was always in his study when he had time, tapping away at the keys and refining his manuscript for the day it would be picked up by an editor.

I was the one who found him, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I was getting ready for college, packing up my things, and moving out, and I came to see if he would help me move some furniture onto the truck. He had been in his office all day, and I thought maybe he was mad at me. I knew he didn't want me to leave, he was sad to see me go, but he had to understand that I had to go to college. I had a full-ride scholarship I'd be a fool not to use, and living on campus would give me access to resources I wouldn't have at home. It seemed like the best choice to move out, and I couldn't believe he couldn't see that.

So when I stuck my head in and asked him, I was surprised when he didn't turn around. That only seemed to cement in my head the idea that he was mad at me. He had his back to the door as he always did, fingers tapping away, and when he didn't say anything, I just stood there and looked at the back of his head for a moment. He had a bald spot forming, the hair receding away from the center, and I thought it a little sad to watch my Dad aging in such an obvious way.

I asked him again, his fingers never slowing, but when he didn't say anything, I went downstairs and managed to manhandle the desk down into the u-haul. I decided I wouldn't bother him if he wanted to act like this. He would fold when it came time for me to leave, apologizing for acting like this, and we would have a hug before I drove off into the sunset.

Around lunchtime, I looked at my now-empty room and realized I was finished packing.

Mom was at work at the post office, and I had planned to swing in and say bye on my way out of town. We had said our goodbyes that morning, with lots of tears and hugs over breakfast, and Dad was the only one I felt I still needed to say goodbye to. So, I went upstairs again, saying I needed to leave and wondering if he'd come to give me a hug?

His fingers just kept tapping away uninterrupted.

"Come on, Dad," I said, stepping inside as he continued to ignore me, "I know you're bummed about this, but it's time for me to get out there and make it on my own. It's not like I'll never be back again. You'll see me on Thanksgiving. That's less than," but when I put my hand on his shoulder, I noticed how cold it was.

Dad had been up here for three days writing, and Mom said she didn't think he'd come to bed at all in that time. This wasn't uncommon for Dad. He would hyper-fixate on a project or revisions and lose days at a time. His office was towards the back of the house on the second floor, so without foot traffic or noise, he could lose himself for days as he worked. He usually came down for food after everyone was asleep, but I couldn't remember hearing him stumbling around lately.

I turned him towards me, his hands moving comically in front of him as he swung away from the desk, and as he came away, he began to scream as if someone were stabbing him.

I stumbled away, taking in his long face and sunken eyes, and found myself running from the room as I grabbed the phone out of my pocket.

Mom said she'd be home immediately, and as I waited downstairs, I could still hear him screaming from his office.

Mom came home in a rush, going up the stairs two at a time, and when the screaming finally stopped, I breathed a sigh of relief.

When she came downstairs, she asked me to come to his office.

"I need to talk to you about something, and I think this should be a family decision."

I came back up to see that Dad was still staring into the screen of his MacBook, tapping away like we weren't even there.

"I don't know how to explain this, but I think your father has died."

Looking at his fingers as they went about their tireless typing, I asked her if she was kidding? Dad was clearly alive. His hands were moving, and I could see words on the screen forming coherent sentences. Were they playing a joke or something? None of what she was saying made any sense.

"I checked his pulse. He has no pulse, no vitals, he's just gone, sweety. But, it appears that he's not quite gone."

She tried to move him, and as she turned him away, I could see his lifeless face as it turned to regard me. His jaw had been hanging slack, his eyes open and staring, and as his hands came away from the keyboard, he started screaming all over again. It was a deep and tortured noise, similar to the one he'd made before, and without even meaning to, I turned him back to the keyboard, where his hands started typing again.

I asked her what was going on, and Mom shrugged as she tried to come up with a reason for all this.

"His book was important to him, you know that. I think, maybe, once he finishes it, he might stop on his own. I can't explain what's happening here, but I don't want him to die with his work unfinished. Your father kept saying it wasn't ready, but I'm going to send the first manuscript to his editor. Maybe once he sees it and someone puts it in print, he'll finally be able to rest, but either way, let's keep this between us, okay? I want your father to pass on without regrets, don't you?"

I nodded, telling her that, of course, I wanted Dad to die at peace.

"Then do him this last favor, and don't tell anyone what you've seen here. Promise?"

I didn't know how to feel about this, but I told her I wouldn't tell anyone, and she thanked me as she hugged me goodbye.

I left in my Uhaul, unsure how to feel about the situation, but I kept the secret.

I didn't come home much for the next year.

I came home for Thanksgiving as promised, but the whole thing felt uncomfortable.

Mom and I sat downstairs eating, her curious about how school was going and me filling her in on my studies. As I ate turnkey and tried to have a normal conversation over stuffing, all I could focus on was the tapping from upstairs. Mom had closed the door to Dad's office, something that I could never remember happening at any time in my life, but despite her best efforts, the tapping was still audible. There was also a smell from the room at the end of the hall, and I was worried about her living in a house with a decomposing body. She said he hadn't decomposed much, but I think she might have been trying to spare my feelings. Worse than the smell, though, was the tapping. It never stopped and sounded too loud to be from whole fingers.

Despite this, Mom was in pretty good spirits. She said Dad's first book was being edited, and his publicist thought it would likely be ready for the shelves next year. He couldn't believe my Dad had been keeping this gem to himself for so long, and I think that was when I realized how few people Dad had shared his books with. She said the initial payment on the book had allowed her to pay some overdue bills, and she would send him the second book sometime next year.

"If I release them slowly, it won't seem so odd when he finishes, and I let them know he's passed."

I asked if his writing had slowed at all, and she said he was still typing night and day.

"He never rests, and I've had to start sleeping in my noise-canceling headphones. The sound takes some getting used to, but I think I can almost put it out of my mind."

I had meant to stay for the week, but I ended up making excuses and leaving the day after Thanksgiving.

The sound of the keys as they clicked away was becoming too much for me to handle.

After that, I made excuses to not come home. I told Mom I had a paper due during Christmas and stayed on campus over the holiday. I took extra classes, so I didn't have to come home on semesters I would have been able to take a break from. I still called her on the phone, but our conversations became shorter and shorter as time went on. The longer I was on the line with her, the more pervasive the clicking became, and it felt like I could hear it over the phone no matter where she was.

My mother's mental state began to deteriorate as well.

She had sent the second book to his publicist, and he had fast-tracked it after the first one had done so well. She deflected any sort of interviews or phone calls for Dad, telling them how shy and anxious he was, but people really seemed to want to pick his brain about the direction of the book, and they were becoming harder and harder to put off. She didn't sound like her usual self, either. It was clear that she wasn't sleeping, and she said the clicking was getting louder and louder the longer it went on.

"I tried to do some soundproofing in his office, but it never seems to help. I can't stand to be in there for very long. Even though he's looking at the screen, I can feel him watching me when I'm in there. I think," Mom took a breath, and I could almost see her looking in the direction of his office as she pitched her voice low, "I think I can hear something moving around at night."

I asked what she meant, afraid that maybe animals had gotten in to try and get at Dad's body, but she said it was just little sounds.

"You remember how he used to leave his office late at night to get food? Sometimes, I feel like I can hear someone coming down the stairs in the wee hours of the morning. While I was listening to it the other night, I realized that I couldn't hear the keyboard anymore, and that scared me even more."

She started crying then, and I think I had already decided to come home that weekend so we could sort this out.

I hadn't come home in a long time and found a very different woman than I had over Thanksgiving the year before.

And why not?

It had to be nerve-wracking knowing you were sharing a house with a corpse.

Mom looked like she had aged twenty years. Her hair, light blond the last time I'd been home, was threaded with gray and looked thinner than ever. Her skin sagged, and her eyes looked bruised from the bags under them. She was thin to the point of emaciation, and I wondered if she had been eating? When she hugged me, I could feel her ribs pressing against me, and I decided then that something had to be done before I lost both my parents.

I told her that we had to end this, I told her that we had to put him to rest, but she feebly resisted.

"He isn't done yet. He's still typing up there. I can't lay him to rest until he finishes."

I asked her how long that would be, but she didn't seem to have the answer.

I told her I was tired and wanted to rest, but after I heard her door close and the sound of her springs grumbling as she went to bed, I got up and went downstairs. I wanted to see what this thing was that was moving around after dark, and I knew just the place to hide. There was a small closet in the living room, a place for wrapping paper and old crafts Mom hadn't gotten around to yet, and after sliding some things around, I made myself comfortable and cracked the door. It took some time, and I wished I had some coffee to keep me from dozing in the small, warm space.

I was just starting to nod off, my phone showing half past three in the morning, when the landing at the top of the stairs creaked.

Something glided down almost soundlessly, its body light, and I pressed my eye to the slit in the door to see what it was. It was dark in the living room, the curtains drawn, but I didn't dare turn on a light. If it knew I was here, it might flee, and then I'd have nothing to report to Mom in the morning. Luckily for me, it jostled right by the closet door, and the creature was impossible to miss. It was thin, almost lacking dimension, creaking as it ambled into the kitchen. I held my breath as it disappeared into the dim space, but the pale head was hard to miss.

When it turned to look at the closet from the kitchen doorway, I feared I had made a noise.

When those empty sockets fixed on the door, I covered my mouth with my hand.

When the creature creaked its way into the kitchen and disappeared from sight, I tripped out of the closet and made my way less than gracefully back up the stairs and into my old room.

If it heard me, it didn't stop at the door to comment.

Only then did I come to the same conclusion that Mom had, realizing what was missing from the silent house.

The tapping had stopped.

We called the police the next day, me threatening to call them myself if mom didn't. I didn't know what the thing I'd seen was doing in the kitchen, but I couldn't very well leave her alone with it. She just nodded and picked up the phone, and I think she was ready to call them. She had lived with Dad's corpse for two years, and even she had to agree that it was time to end it.

The paramedics weren't sure what to make of him, but he was definitely what I had seen the night before as it went into the kitchen. He had mostly rotted, but his bones had moldering flesh still attached in places. His scalp had some hairs clinging to it, the bald spot I had noticed was still visible, but we had taken his hands off the keyboard before they got there.

When we had taken him from the computer, his scream was little more than a wheeze of protest.

He had no vocal cords to scream with, but still, he protested.

The police had questions, but I think my mother managed to convince them that it was harmless. She said that when he died, she had gone a little crazy. She couldn't cope with him being gone, so she had just pretended he was in his office, typing away on his novel. I told them that was what she had told me for months, and I think they believed me. Dad's remains were taken to the funeral home, and it goes without saying that his funeral was a closed-casket affair.

As we sat on the front row, though, I heard something that would haunt me until I went into the ground myself.

Dad may not have been able to scream, but it seemed his work went on regardless.

As I sat there with Mom, my mother sobbing as she heard the all too familiar sound, we both heard the low tapping as those bony fingers smacked against the lid of the coffin.

I can only assume that they still press against the lid even now, my father's last story worn into the wood of his coffin.