by Melhoff, D.
Moira rolled the gurney into the middle of the embalming room and picked a scalpel off the floor, slicing through the cords that cinched the cardboard together with three fluid swipes, while Maddock rushed forward and started peeling the flaps apart to reveal a long rosewood casket resting inside. Camilla orbited, observing.
“I’m not familiar with your program,” Moira said over her shoulder, “but around here, everyone pitches in.”
Unsure if that was a cue to jump in or a segue to a job description, Camilla stepped up and started helping remove the cardboard strips.
“We each have our proclivities, of course. Maddock is our chief embalmer. Brutus and my sons do most of the removal calls; Jasper and Laura handle paperwork and bookkeeping. But we’re a busy funeral home. Everyone shares the work, so until we find the right fit for you, you’ll be used to fill the family gaps, so to speak.”
There was a loud click as Moira unclasped one of the casket’s latches.
Another click. Then another. And another.
With the four latches unlocked, Moira lifted the lid wide open.
Camilla looked inside and saw an old man in a gray cotton suit, his head tipped back a bit far on the pillow, the sleeves of his coat bunched around his lower arms. Moira adjusted the clothing carefully and repositioned the head to a more relaxed position while Maddock checked under the shoulders for signs of purging. Camilla stood by the foot of the coffin and watched the two of them comb over the body meticulously, entranced by the quiet, quick thoroughness of their fingers.
“What time is the wake?” Camilla asked, attempting to ease the tension with a harmless question.
“There isn’t one,” Moira replied. “He was flown back for a burial.”
“When’s the funeral, then? Should I set my alarm early?”
“No, no funeral. No wake. Hand me those nail clippers.”
Camilla frowned as she picked up a pair of clippers from the counter behind her and passed them over. As the old woman began trimming the nails of the corpse, Maddock went to a cupboard and came back with a spritzer bottle and a comb. He wetted what was left of the man’s hair and raked it neatly to one side. Why are they doing this?
“Stop looking surprised,” Moira said. “It’s unflattering on you.”
“Sorry,” Camilla said. “I’m just confused…”
“About?”
“The body was embalmed for the flight. If there’s no viewing, why are we doing this? The extra hassle, I mean?”
Moira finished clipping the corpse’s fingernails and gave the cadaver one final lookover, then placed a hand on the lid of the casket.
“You can’t tell now,” she said, “but this man spent the last year of his life losing most of himself to lung cancer. When he couldn’t get around in a wheelchair anymore, he was tucked into bed with a catheter and a remote control to some four-station TV set above his ratty hospital cot. No one else is any different. We cripple, we sag. And by the end, we can’t even clean ourselves. People get no dignity when they’re dying.” Moira dropped the lid of the coffin with a heavy thud. “The least we can do is give them some in death.”
The third floor of the Vincents’ house was smaller than the first and second. Camilla reached the top of the steps, coming to a narrow hallway with only two doors opposite each other.
She couldn’t remember which room Moira had said was hers—she’d been concentrating too hard on where Maddock was storing his trocars—so she ran a quick eenie-meenie-miney-mo test and chose the door on the left. When she peeked inside and saw one of her suitcases lying on the carpet, she let out an audible sigh.
Thank God I got something right.
She walked in and cranked a dimmer switch. The sconces burst to life, and instantly thirty faces were staring back at her.
Not faces, skulls.
Spaced evenly along a series of shelves that lined the walls of the room sat thirty authentic human skulls, their hollow eyes and toothy grins agog in the shadows. On top of each of them was an exquisitely decorated hat—everything from flamboyant plumes to Baroque veils to expensive beads—and each fascinator was carefully arranged to show off its best angle.
OK…And people think I’m strange.
Camilla stepped cautiously up to the shelves—admiring each headpiece—and glanced at a massive window at the far end of the room. The view was stunning: it faced Nolan’s chapel and graveyard from high above, and beyond, the street lanterns in town square could be seen glowing through breaks in the forest’s trees.
She reached up and carefully removed a large purple sun hat from the nearest skull, placing it on her head, and tried a couple of poses in the reflection of the window.
“Ow!”
Camilla spun around to see Peter stumbling through the doorway. His foot was crushed under her second suitcase.
“Sorry!” she called out, running to help him drag the suitcase inside. “I—I packed too much. I’m sorry, really—”
“No worries,” Peter said, flexing his hands. “I’ll call in a few pallbearers next time.” He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair and looked up, smirking. “Good look.”
Camilla cocked her head. “Umm, thanks?”
“I…uh, I mean the hat.”
Suddenly Camilla remembered that she was wearing the ridiculous purple hat and flushed. She reached up to take it off, but Peter stopped her arm. “Leave it. It suits you.”
She snickered, offended. “How so?”
“It’s…uh…It’s different,” he said, adding, “Goes with the shoes.”
Camilla considered the comment—nice save—and left the hat on.
“They used to be my dad’s. He enjoyed millinery in his spare time; worked on that old sewing machine in the corner.”
He pointed behind her, and Camilla turned and spotted a vintage sewing machine in the farthest corner of the room. “Neat.”
“Yeah.”
They both went silent again, despite the overwhelming wealth of topics surrounding them. Four or five questions bombarded Camilla’s brain at once—Which one’s your favorite? Can you sew? Are the skulls real? Do you have any hobbies?—but the only thing that came out of her mouth was another “Thanks,” followed by, “So I should probably get some sleep.”
“Right.” Peter nodded. He ducked for the door and gave a little wave. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the, uh, skulls bite.”
She forced a smile. “I won’t.”
“Good. And if you need anything, my room’s the one across the hall.”
“Oh. OK.”
“OK. Good night.”
“Good night.” Camilla waved back, her face half-hidden under the ridiculous purple hat.
And with that sufficiently awkward farewell, Peter left, closing the door with a small click behind him.
Camilla collapsed onto her bed and rubbed her heavy eyelids. When she opened them again, she looked around the room and allowed the whole day to sink in.
The plane ride, the hearse, the rotunda. The embalming room. The boy next door.
She couldn’t remember ever feeling so flustered and unprepared and exhausted in her entire life. But the last thing she felt before drifting off to sleep under the watchful eyes of the thirty skulls was a wave of happiness.
She had finally found a place where she belonged.
4
Midnight
Camilla was startled awake by a gripping howl.
She bolted up to ninety degrees—
And a skull stared straight at her from across the room. She flinched, banging her head on the headboard, and instantly the haze of sleep was clonked away as she remembered where she was.
The house was quiet, the door was latched.
Every corner of the room was completely still.
If something’s here, it’s under the bed.
Without hesitating, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and slid to the edge of the mattress. Lowering herself upside down, she lifted the bed skirt and peeked into the blackness.
The moonlight illuminated her pair of alligator sandals sprawled across the floorboards. A few of the scales had chipped away after taking the three-foot tumble off the bed, but nothing a little glue couldn’t fix. Cheap knockoffs.
As she reached for the sandals, another growl shook the silence.
She rolled back on the bed, sighing—the growl was nothing but her own stomach, yowling because it hadn’t been fed in almost thirty-six hours.
“You’re not going to let me sleep, are you?”
Her stomach gurgled again. “No.”
She got up and moved toward a vanity table, throwing her sandals into her open suitcase in exchange for a pair of extremely practical, incredibly ugly moccasins. As she slipped into the leathery soles and straightened up, she caught a glint of something near the top of the vanity mirror.
It was a silver hairclip pinned to the rococo frame.
She reached up and retrieved it, running the tarnished ornament through her fingertips. There was a flower—an orchid—etched in the metal with the initials “B + M” carved on the back. Camilla pinned the flower in her hair and turned for the mirror, admiring the accessory like a magpie.
Her stomach snarled again.
“All right, all right.”
Camilla crept down the second floor hallway, careful not to make a squeak. Each groan from the floorboards was like the crank of a jack-in-the-box handle; a bedroom door could pop open any second and that was it, game over. Don’t wake the sleeping giants, she told herself. Moira especially. The Margaret Thatcher-like funeral director struck her as the type of Iron Lady who wouldn’t appreciate someone traipsing around her house in the middle of the night, and despite their rough start, Camilla hoped it wasn’t too late to make a positive impression.
In the northwest corner on the second floor, a pair of glass doors were propped open to a large, moonlit room. Curiosity getting the best of her, she poked her investigative head inside.
The entire back wall was a series of full-length windows, and centered before them was a dais decorated with wrought iron candle stands and real staghorn ferns. A chain of couches and coffee tables lined the other three walls, and an upright piano was pushed inconspicuously into the far corner.
Camilla had stumbled on the Vincents’ viewing room.
She walked in—approaching the platform—and silently tried to guess how many bodies had lain there over the years. Hundreds? Thousands? The carpet in front was pressed to the wood, worn down by the footsteps of all the Nolaners who had come forward to bid their loved ones a last goodbye.
Camilla loomed over the windows behind the dais and touched the glass, taking in a sharp breath.
Spectacular.
Her eyes lit up at her first glimpse of the manor’s rear courtyard. It was an Eden full of flowerbeds and babbling water fountains, all of which were enclosed by the thick iron fence and the ten-foot hedges that ran the entire way around the Vincents’ plot. Aside from a string of lamps that lit up a long, curvy walking path, the space was illuminated solely by moonlight and fireflies. Near the back of the lawn, a massive tree dipped its roots in the surface of an ink-black pond, and closer to the manor was a shed with a shingled roof and bars on its windows.
Bars? She cocked her head. Why in the world…
Suddenly there was a loud hiss.
She spun around and saw—
Nothing.
She sunk to her knees behind the dais and peeked over the ledge, trying to spot whatever was hiding in the thick darkness. Nothing appeared.
She held her breath…
And then she saw them by the doorway. A pair of eyes, staring straight at her. The pupils were gaping open and they were surrounded by a bright-yellow tinge.
Some circuit in her brain tripped, and she saw Moira crouched in the shadows, eyes piercing her with a dark, unblinking bloodlust.
She shook her head—the vision disappeared, but the eyes didn’t. They continued stalking her across the room, floating midair, and she suddenly realized that she was being watched by one of the Vincents’ cats.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath; when she opened them again, the cat was right in front of her, perched on the dais. It let out a low growl and arched its back.
Camilla stiffened and sidestepped slowly off the platform (animals didn’t usually bother her, but this one was in an owly mood and she didn’t feel like testing it). When she got to the doorway, she turned and looked back at the dais one more time.
The cat hadn’t moved. It was frozen, looking out of the windows with its ears back and tail bushed up like a saxophone brush.
Are you always this strange? Growling and prowling around at night?
Camilla smirked, realizing the cat was probably thinking the same thing about her.
As she turned and walked away from the room, the cat didn’t move a muscle. It wasn’t until her footsteps were faint taps pattering down the second floor staircase that the feline’s eyes twitched almost imperceptibly, and when a dimple of water rippled in the pond outside, it let out another low growl.
A refrigerator bulb blinked on in the darkness. Camilla pilfered a jug of milk and poured a tall glass for herself. Tipping it back, she eyed the rest of the fridge’s contents.
Apparently the family was precise with their portioning—there wasn’t a crumb of leftovers from dinner. Hmm. She looked over her shoulder at the rack of pots and pans hanging above the island in the middle of the room, but decided she would rather starve to death than risk waking the family.
Camilla poured another glass of milk and put the jug back on the shelf. She took her drink and followed a wall of cupboards.
Spices behind door number one.
Mugs behind door two.
Bowls behind door three.
The cupboards led all the way to the kitchen sink, where she paused to finish her last swig of milk. As she lowered the glass under the faucet and tested the water on her fingertips, she looked up at the dark window in front of her.
The moon was behind a bank of clouds and it was pitch black outside—so black that it was impossible to see anything beyond the veranda.
Camilla grabbed a tea towel and dried her cup, randomly remembering how tea towels had made excellent capes when she was little.
Something moved in the darkness outside.
Camilla stopped drying. Jesus. Not the other cat?
She leaned forward, squinting through the window—
Nothing. Only black.
She leaned closer…
Closer…
Just as her nose touched the glass, there was a knock at the back door.
Camilla dropped her glass and it exploded on the tile. The crash echoed through the house like a hydrogen bomb, and she tripped against the counter, half falling, half crouching behind the granite island.
Aside from the ringing in her ears, everything was quiet again. She put her hands on the counter and pulled herself high enough to peek at the back door.
There was a figure standing outside, its silhouette distorted behind the door’s curtains.
The stranger knocked again.
A shiver rushed up the back of Camilla’s neck. Her eyes went straight to a set of knives on the counter in front of her—
No. Don’t be ridiculous.
Another knock tolled out.
Maybe it’s not an intruder? Maybe it’s another family member? Christ, in either case, why are they knocking?
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Screw it.
She reached up and grasped one of the meat cleavers in her shaky hand. Vickie had always teased her for being too jumpy, saying things like “how can you work with dead people when you can’t even take the bus at night?”, but to Camilla it was obvious. Dealing with dead people is easy: they’re dead. It’s dealing with the living that’s dangerous.
Camilla stood, the knife gripped behind her back, and crept to the door, hoping to God it was just another uncle or cousin or nephew who had forgotten
his key. She eyed the disfigured silhouette and reached out, clenching the dead bolt.
“Hello?” she asked, her voice cracking.
There was no answer.
“Can I help you?”
Still nothing.
She gripped the dead bolt and gave it a turn, pulling the door open on its old, rusty hinges.
Instantly a breeze rode through the kitchen, carrying in a damp stench of wet hair and mud.
Standing in the doorway was a young boy who couldn’t have been more than six-years-old. He was soaking wet from head to toe, pale skin and dark freckles, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer shorts that matched the black hair sticking to his skull in sopping wet strands. His eyes were blue, but distant, like a bright sky blocked by clouds or factory smog.
“Oh!” Camilla said, stunned. “Oh God, uh…Come—come here.”
The boy didn’t move.
She looked around, completely at a loss for what to do, when suddenly the kitchen lights flashed on.
“What in God’s name is happening down here? Something break, or—”
Camilla turned to see Moira billowing into the room, her black nightgown swirling like thunderclouds around her. The woman’s face cycled from confusion to frustration, and then to concern when she spotted the wet boy.
“Move,” Moira barked, rushing forward and pushing Camilla aside.
The old woman opened a cabinet near the back door and took a towel from a stack inside—wrapping it around the immobile child—and escorted him into the house. As they passed under the lights, Camilla went paler than she already was.
There was mud sandwiched between the boy’s toes and fingernails. His skin looked shrivelled, as if he had taken a bath for too long, and his lips were the faintest shade of indigo.
But that wasn’t all.
No, the most jarring aspect of the six-year-old’s appearance was the long scar that stretched from his sternum down to the bottom of his rib cage. It looked raw—so raw that it couldn’t have been more than a day or two old.
Camilla backed against the counter as Moira came by, kicking the broken glass out of the boy’s barefooted path. She stopped directly in front of her. Anything was possible, from a firing to a face slap.