He thought about it for a bit and then he said, ‘Okay, you’re right. We had better work something out.’
I snuck out of the window and met him outside. We walked all the way to the workshop in silence. I could tell he didn’t like me any more than I liked him.
I took the key out of the kettle and let us in. I noticed the Cloner was still switched on to copy. I went over and turned it on to REVERSE without saying anything. It would all be over quickly. He wouldn’t know what hit him. I would just push him straight into the Cloner and everything would be back to normal. He would be gone and there would be just me. It wouldn’t be murder. I mean, he had only been alive for a few hours and he wasn’t really a person. He was just a copy.
‘Look,’ I said, pointing to the floor of the Cloner. ‘Look at this.’ I got ready to push him straight in when he came over.
The Copy came over for a look. Suddenly he grabbed me and started to push me towards the machine. The Copy was trying to kill me. He was trying to push me into the Cloner and have Fiona for himself. We fell to the floor in a struggling heap. It was a terrible fight. We both had exactly the same strength and the same experience. As we fought I realised what had happened to Dr Woolley. He had made a copy of himself and they had both tried to push each other in. That’s why there were two letters. Probably they had both fallen in and killed each other.
The Copy and I fought for about ten minutes. Neither of us could get the upper hand and we were both growing tired. We rolled over near the bench and I noticed an iron bar on the floor. But The Copy had noticed it too. We both tried to reach it at the same time. But I won. I grabbed it and wrenched my arm free. With a great whack I crashed it down over The Copy’s head. He fell to the floor in a heap.
I dragged his lifeless body over to the Cloner and shoved him inside. He vanished without a trace. It was just as if he had never existed. A feeling of great relief spread over me but I was shaking at the narrow escape I had experienced. I turned and ran home without even locking up the workshop.
By the time I got home I felt a lot better. I walked into the lounge where Mum and Dad were sitting watching TV. Dad looked up at me. ‘Ah, there you are, Tim. Would you fill out this application for the school camp? You put in the details and I’ll sign the bottom.’
I took the form and started to fill it in. I was looking forward to the school camp. We were going skiing. After a while I looked up. Mum and Dad were both staring at me in a funny way.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘You’re writing with your left hand,’ said Dad.
‘So?’
‘You’ve been a right-hander all your life.’
‘And your hair is parted on the wrong side,’ said Mum. ‘And that little mole that used to be on your right cheek has moved to the left.’
My head started to swim. I ran over to the mirror on the wall. The face that stared back at me was not Tim’s. It was the face of The Copy.
The reporter looked at Tracy with a smile. ‘I’d like to talk to you about your job,’ he said. ‘It would make a good story for the paper. Not many teenagers go into this line of work. Just how did you get started in it in the first place?’
‘Well,’ answered Tracy, ‘it all began when Mum told me she was going to remarry.’
2
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mum, ‘but I’m getting married whether you like it or not.’
‘But Mum,’ I started off.
‘No buts,’ she cut in. ‘I’m lonely at night when you and Andy have gone to bed. And anyway, I love Ralph. He is a lovely man. I thought you liked him too.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘It’s not him I don’t like. It’s his job. He buries people in the cemetery.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ she asked hotly. ‘I’m not going to stop loving Ralph just because he is an undertaker. You don’t judge a person by their job.’
‘It’s embarrassing,’ I said. ‘Last night he took us down the street to the fish-and-chip shop in his funeral wagon. Do you realise that our tea was brought home in a hearse? The same car that is used to cart dead bodies around. All the kids were laughing. One idiot lay down on the footpath with a flower in his mouth as we went by and pretended he was dead. Old Mr Manor takes his hat off as we go past. It’s the absolute pits going around in a hearse. Why doesn’t he get a normal car like other people?’
‘Ralph can’t afford another car at the moment,’ said Mum sadly. ‘Business has been bad lately.’
‘I suppose he is waiting for an axe maniac to move into town, or perhaps things would pick up if we introduced the bubonic plague.’
‘That’s not funny, Tracy,’ Mum yelled. She was starting to get angry so I decided to give in.
Anyway, I had to agree with her. Ralph was a nice bloke. It was just bad luck that he made his living by burying dead people. And animals. That’s something else I should mention. He had a pet cemetery as well. He used to collect dead pets and bury them in a little plot just outside of town.
Well, Mum and Ralph got married and my little brother Andy and I had a new stepfather. We all went off to the snowfields together on the honeymoon. In the hearse, of course. I tried everything I could think of to talk Ralph out of taking the hearse but it was no use. ‘It’s just right for the snow,’ he said. ‘We can put the skis in the back and there’s plenty of room for the luggage.’
It was terrible. A real shame job. Every day we arrived at the bottom of the ski slopes in the grey hearse with:
R HENDERSON BUDGET FUNERALS
AND
PET INTERMENTS
written on the door. People came rushing over to see who had been killed.
At lunchtime we would get out our portable barbecue and set it up behind the wagon. Ralph would cook chops and steak. A man came over and said that he knew that beef was expensive at the moment but wasn’t this going a bit far? We were the laughing stock of the ski slopes. People called us ‘The Skiing Cannibals’.
I was sure glad when that honeymoon was over. It was a nightmare. Not that things improved when we got home. They didn’t. Ralph moved in with us and straightaway built a workshop at the bottom of the yard. ‘What’s it for?’ I asked. ‘And why hasn’t it got any windows?’
He looked around furtively. ‘Don’t tell Andy,’ he said. ‘Your little brother is too young to understand. It’s a workshop for making coffins.’
‘What?’ I screamed. ‘What will my girlfriends think if they know we have coffins at the bottom of the garden?’
‘Don’t tell them,’ said Ralph. ‘What they don’t know won’t hurt them.’
‘But I know,’ I retorted. ‘I’ll never get to sleep knowing there are coffins in our home.’
‘Don’t be so sensitive,’ said Ralph. ‘They are just empty coffins. I wouldn’t bring the corpses back here. They stay at the funeral parlour until the burial. You should try to get used to it. One day I am going to take you in as a partner in the business.’
‘Over my dead body,’ I said.
Ralph didn’t even crack a smile. He had his heart set on me joining the business. He looked so upset that I even felt a bit sorry for him.
Just then Andy came into the room. ‘What are those things that you are making?’ he asked, pointing at three half-finished coffins.
Ralph didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Boats,’ he lied. ‘I’m making some boats.’
Andy was only seven and he believed it. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Fantastic.’
It was a stupid thing to say and I knew it would cause trouble. I wasn’t wrong. Two days later, when I was at home on my own, the phone rang. It was the Portland Police. They asked me to come down to the main beach at once.
When I got there I saw the most humiliating thing of my life. The beach was lined with hundreds of people – all of them shrieking with laughter. Some of them were rolling around on the sand holding their sides. They were all laughing at the same thing. My brother Andy. He was paddling a coffin around in the water among the swimmer
s.
He had loaded a coffin up on my surfboard trailer and pulled it down to the beach behind his bike. Then he had launched it out onto the water. He really thought it was a boat. I couldn’t believe it.
Of course, the whole thing was in the paper and on the TV. The whole family was disgraced. Everyone knew that my little brother had been sailing around in a coffin. I couldn’t look the girls at school in the eye for months. And Ralph didn’t even care. ‘It was a good coffin,’ was all he said. ‘It didn’t even leak one drop.’
3
After that, things just went from bad to worse. Mum decided that I would have to help Ralph on weekends as he couldn’t afford to pay his helper overtime. ‘I’m not going near corpses,’ I said. ‘No way.’
Ralph looked hurt. He really hoped that I would become an undertaker like him. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You can help with the pet side of the business. I don’t expect you to go to the funerals of people just yet.’
This didn’t sound too bad but in fact it turned out to be another disaster. Ralph used to pick up people’s dead pets in the hearse and take them out to the pet cemetery.
It was amazing what some people would do. There were little graves for dogs, cats, canaries, mice and rabbits. There were big graves too. You name it and it was buried there.
A lot of people think that their pets are human. You take old Mrs Trapp, for example. She wanted a special funeral for her cat, Fibble. ‘Come round at four o’clock and fetch him,’ she said on the phone. ‘I want a proper burial with a priest, a hearse and flowers. Nothing is too good for my poor Fibble.’ I could hear her sniffing on the other end of the phone. I shook my head. I just couldn’t understand it. Fancy paying money to have a funeral for a cat.
‘Good,’ said Ralph. ‘Four o’clock will be fine. I have to do a pick-up at the zoo at three. We can call at Mrs Trapp’s house for Fibble on the way back.’
I groaned. ‘What died at the zoo? I hope it wasn’t the elephant.’
‘No,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s a baby giraffe.’
When we reached the zoo, Mr Proud, the director, was standing next to this poor dead giraffe. He was upset. ‘I want you to do a good job,’ he said. ‘Dig a nice deep hole. I want this giraffe to rest in peace. Be careful with him. His last journey should be slow, dignified and gentle. I am going to drive to the pet cemetery and make sure you do it properly.’
His eyes were red and swollen. I could see he loved this giraffe a lot. He drove off to the cemetery and left us to load up the giraffe.
It was only a baby one but it was heavy. And it was too big for the trailer. Its long neck and head hung over the back and touched the ground.
‘We can’t have that,’ said Ralph. He tied a rope around its little horns and pulled. The giraffe’s head lifted up off the ground. ‘There’s no way to tie it up and stop the head from drooping,’ Ralph told me. ‘You will have to stand in the trailer on top of the giraffe and pull on the rope to keep its head up in the air.’
‘You’re joking,’ I exclaimed.
‘No,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s the only way. I’ll drive slowly so you don’t fall off.’ Without another word he climbed into the hearse and started to drive away. I only just had time to scramble onto the dead giraffe and pull its head up.
We went out of the zoo and along the street. Did Ralph go around the back way so that no one would see us? No, he did not. He went straight through the middle of the town. You can imagine what we looked like. A hearse, followed by a trailer with a dead giraffe on it. And on top of the giraffe, a girl hanging onto a rope trying to keep its head from drooping onto the road.
It brought the traffic to a standstill. Everyone yelled and shouted. People rushed out of the shops to see the sight. It was worse than Andy and his coffin boat. We stopped at every traffic light, exposed for all to see. I have never been more ashamed in my life. But there was worse to come.
My arms started to get tired. A giraffe’s neck is heavy. The head drooped closer and closer to the road until at last it started to rub on the bitumen. I heaved it up but I couldn’t hold it for long. ‘Stop,’ I screamed to Ralph. ‘Stop. Its head is rubbing on the ground.’ Ralph kept going. He was listening to the grand final on the radio and couldn’t hear me. So we kept on in the same way all the way to the pet cemetery. The poor giraffe’s head must have banged on the road a hundred times.
When we finally arrived, Mr Proud was waiting for us and dabbing at his red eyes with a handkerchief. He walked over to his dead giraffe to inspect it. Suddenly he stopped. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘What’s this?’ he screamed. ‘My poor giraffe. Where is its nose? Its nose is gone. What have you done with its nose?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It got rubbed off on the road. Its head was too heavy for me.’
‘You stupid girl,’ he yelled. ‘You fiend.’ He came towards me with his hands held out like claws. He had murder in his eyes.
I turned and ran. I fled down the road with the enraged Mr Proud behind me. He chased me for miles but in the end he gave up and went back.
I walked home with tears streaming down my face. I was sick to death of Ralph and his funerals – animal and human. My life was turning into a complete mess. I made up my mind never to have anything to do with Budget Funerals. There was no way I would ever get involved again. And as for becoming a partner in the business, well Ralph could just jump in the lake. I was sick of him.
4
I went up to my bedroom and shut the door. I made up a big speech about how I was never, never going to be a partner in Ralph’s funeral business.
After about an hour there was a knock on the door. Ralph stuck his head in the room. He didn’t say anything about the giraffe. He shook an old jar at me. I could see a coin rattling around in the bottom. ‘Would you sell me one of the pennies from your coin collection?’ he asked. ‘I’ve only got one left.’
‘What do you want it for?’ I said suspiciously.
‘They are hard to get. This jar used to be full but now I only have one left. Ever since they changed to decimal currency it has got harder and harder to get pennies.’
A nasty thought came into my mind. ‘Has this got anything to do with the funeral business? Because if it has you are not getting any of my coins. I’m fed up with you and your dead bodies.’
‘I have a man waiting for burial. Every corpse has to have two pennies. One for each eye. The spirits of the dead have no rest if they are buried without their coins.’
I picked up a pillow and threw it at him. ‘Buzz off,’ I yelled. ‘I don’t ever want to hear anything about your rotten burials again. And get it into your skull, I am never going to work for you as an undertaker – never.’ Ralph’s sad face disappeared from the room.
A bit later I went downstairs. I could hear Ralph talking to Mum. I can’t remember exact words but he said something like this: ‘I’ll leave the body in the workshop for tonight. I’m too tired to move it at the moment.’
My head started to spin. This was just too much. It was the last straw. Now he had gone and brought a corpse to our home. He was leaving a dead body in the workshop for some reason or another. And he had promised that he never would. I grabbed the key and charged down the backyard to the workshop, I opened the door and rushed inside, leaving the key in the lock.
I looked around and sure enough, just as I suspected, there on the table was a new coffin. The lid was firmly closed. Ralph didn’t shut the coffin lids unless there was a body inside. Boy, was I mad. I turned around just in time to see the wind blow the door shut.
Immediately I found myself in the dark. It was pitch black. I stumbled over to the door and tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. Ralph had fitted a new deadlock after Andy had taken the coffin out for a sail. I was locked in. I couldn’t even turn the light on because the switch was outside.
I yelled at the top of my voice and banged on the door as hard as I could. It was no use. No one heard me. After a while I slumped on the floor. I wa
s exhausted. It was as quiet as a grave. I could hear my own heart thumping inside my chest. I was all alone in the darkness.
Or was I?
In the middle of the room was a coffin. With a corpse in it. I started to wonder who it was. Could it be the person who Ralph had wanted the extra penny for? Was there a body in there with one lonely penny on one of its eyes? What had Ralph said? The spirit would not rest without the pennies. And it was my fault. I wouldn’t give him one of mine because I was mad about the giraffe.
I sat there in the silence and the blackness. My breath sounded as loud as a windstorm. I tried to breathe quietly. I didn’t want to wake the dead.
I started to think about ghosts. I imagined a ghost with one eye leering at me. Coming to claim me. I told myself not to be silly. The dead didn’t come back to life, I knew that. The trouble was, that sort of advice is fine when it is daytime and all your friends are about. But when you are locked in a dark, silent room with a corpse it is quite another thing.
The silence deepened. It grew cold and I started to shiver. I was too terrified to move in case the corpse heard me. I could imagine the eye without the penny. Was it swivelling? Was it seeking me?
Then something happened which froze my blood. I heard, quite distinctly, a soft sneeze.
There was no doubt about it. A sneeze had come from inside the coffin. The corpse was alive.
I almost shrieked with fear, but somehow I managed to keep control of myself. I shoved my fist into my mouth and crouched lower in the corner. Had it been my imagination? Had I really heard a sneeze? I knew I had. I strained my ears in the silence. What was that? A scratching noise. Coming from the coffin. It was trying to get out.
‘Merciful heavens,’ I mumbled. ‘Don’t let it get me.’ The scratching grew louder.
What a fool I’d been. If only I’d given Ralph that penny when he wanted it. Then the body would have lain in peace.
Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories Page 15