“The Lion Before the Funeral Home”

— a short story by E.M. Callen —

The small town of Ravenwood, Colorado, nestled among snow-capped mountains, was as quiet as a frozen lake, until the night when the unthinkable happened: an African lion appeared in the snow.

That night, the wind whistled through the windows, blowing the wreaths of mourning flowers that had been placed in front of the Whitmore Funeral Home. Inside, the body of Harlan Beckett, a legendary hunter in the area, was being prepared for cremation the next morning. Harlan died from a wild animal attack on a solitary hunting trip—the details were few, only that his body was torn open, with deep scratches as if from the claws of a big cat.

But Colorado had no such animals. No lions, no leopards, only bobcats and black bears.

Maybe bears, they said. Or… the price of karma.

Around midnight, the funeral director, an old man named Riley Moore, heard a strange noise in the yard.

A roar. Deep, resonant, powerful.

The old man opened the window and looked out, almost dropping the oil lamp in his hand: in the thick snow, a male African lion stood tall, with a golden mane and eyes like fire. It did not attack, but circled the building, walking slowly, and stopped in front of the main door.

“God bless…” Riley exclaimed, his heart pounding.

He called the police, and a few minutes later, the whole town woke up.

Sheriff Evelyn Carter was the first to arrive. She looked at the animal through the snow, incredulous.

“How… did it get here?”
No one knew. There was no circus in the area, no zoo, no film crew.

The lion roared loudly, rattling the windows. But strangely, it did not attack anyone. Instead, it approached the funeral home door, butting its head lightly, as if trying to get in.

A funeral worker said, trembling:

“It… it kept circling around Mr. Beckett’s coffin. I looked through the window of the cold room — every time it roared, the lights in the room flickered as if someone had touched a switch.”

Evelyn looked at Riley. “Where’s the key to the cold room?”

Inside, the room was as cold as a freezer. On the metal table was an ebony coffin, its lid closed, the name “HARLAN BECKETT” engraved in bronze.

The lion outside was still roaring, regularly, as if calling someone’s name.

Evelyn didn’t believe in superstition, but in the flickering light, she felt something was wrong.

“Let’s open it and see,” she ordered.

Riley hesitated: “But he’ll be cremated tomorrow morning…”

“That’s why. If there’s anything wrong in here, tomorrow there won’t be any evidence.”

The two men used wrenches to loosen the lock. When the lid popped open, a blast of cold air came out, a strange, pungent smell like rusted metal. Riley recoiled in surprise.

Harlan Beckett’s body lay still, his face pale, his mouth slightly open — but… there were fresh scratches on his neck.

“It can’t be…” Evelyn whispered. “The coroner’s report said he died three days ago. How could there be fresh wounds?”

Riley gagged. At that moment, the lion outside let out a long roar, then fell silent. When they ran outside, it was gone, leaving only paw prints the size of a human hand — and a series of claw marks that led straight to the Beckett house less than a mile away.

Evelyn immediately cordoned off the area. In the old wooden house where Harlan lived alone, they discovered a locked cellar.

Dozens of animal heads hung on the walls — lions, tigers, leopards, rhinos, even rare African species. But what made everyone freeze was the large photograph hanging in the middle of the room:

A group of three men standing next to a shot lion.

And below it were the words:

“Kenya, 1997 — My First Trophy.”

In the photo, Harlan Beckett was smiling, his hand on the lion’s head, and beside him was a thin, black man with an angry look in his eyes. The caption on the back of the photo read:

“My slave guide — Kofi. He threatened to make me pay.”

The next morning, the media was filled with the news of “African lion spotted in Colorado.” Biologists were baffled. There was no sign of where it had escaped from, no one had reported it missing. The footprints stopped right in the cemetery — then vanished as if they had never existed.

But what was even more terrifying was Harlan Beckett’s body.

When the forensic team re-examined him, they found a piece of animal skin in his mouth, a lion skin to be exact. There were traces of animal DNA under the cuticles of his hands—something impossible if he had just been attacked.

Evelyn suppressed a shudder: “Could it be… that the animal didn’t kill him, that he… became part of it?”

Three days later, after the snowstorm had passed, an abandoned shack five miles from town was discovered, with bloodstains and a half-peeled lion skin inside.
On the table was Harlan’s notebook, scrawled in the words:

“It didn’t die.
Kofi cursed me—the blood of the beast will be in me forever.
Every night, I hear it roar in my head.
Maybe I killed the wrong thing.
Maybe… I killed my own soul.”

Evelyn was stunned when she read that. On the last page, there was a line:

“If I die, it will come for me. Not to take revenge… but to watch over me.”

That evening, the funeral home

reopened for a second cremation — this time, with police supervision. No one said anything, but everyone was nervous.

The fire started in the cremation chamber.

Suddenly, the electricity went out. In the darkness, a roar rang out — right inside the room. A blast of hot air blew the furnace door open, sending ashes flying.

When the lights came back on, the entire cremation chamber was empty. Harlan’s body was gone, only the claw marks on the molten metal remained.

No one could believe it. Security cameras captured a blurry image: a human-sized lion figure, half beast, half man, stepped out of the furnace, looked straight into the lens… and then vanished into thin air.

From that day on, the town of Ravenwood was never again peaceful. Every moonlit night, people heard a roar from the forest, though no one saw any animal. Huge footprints still occasionally appeared in the snow, surrounding the cemetery, then disappeared as before.

Evelyn left the industry after that incident, but she still carried something with her—the 1997 photo of the lion. Every time she looked into the eyes of the black man in the photo, she felt something familiar, a nameless pang.

A few months later, she checked the Kenyan files. The guide, Kofi N’Duma, had actually died shortly after that hunt—shot by Harlan himself when he tried to stop him from killing the pregnant lioness.

She set the photo down on the table, her hands shaking.

Just below, a faded caption emerged:

“That lion—Kofi’s mate. He called her Nala.”

Evelyn looked out the window. In the snow, a lioness stood, her eyes glowing like embers, silently watching her. Then she turned and disappeared into the forest.

At that moment, she understood:

The male lion had not come that night to seek revenge.
It came to guard the man who had killed his wife — until their souls were reunited in the flames.

A few years later, Ravenwood became a place where tourists avoided. They called it “The Town of the Lion Curse.”
No one knew if it was true, only that on snowy nights, if anyone set foot in the old funeral home, they would see two golden figures — one large, one small — circling each other, not roaring, not afraid, just silently watching… like the way love and sin always coexist in the darkness.