The Quiet Type

by Summer Prescott

  “Interesting,” Socks mused, moving closer.

  Tim heard Susannah’s breathing quicken and figured that she must be nervous because of the professor’s scrutiny.

  “What’s interesting?” Tim asked. Immediately curious, he craned his neck and moved closer, trying to get a better look.

  Timothy Eckels firmly believed that each inanimate body had a story to tell, and that it was just a matter of looking closely enough to find out what that story might be. He’d picked up on several things during the class that had impressed and astounded his teacher.

  “Look there,” Socks pointed with one gloved finger to a space that had been hidden by the man’s ear. There was a patch of skin which had been cleanly cut out, that resembled a capital D.

  Timothy frowned. “What would have caused that?” he murmured.

  “That is deliberate,” Socks replied. “It looks almost surgical.”

  “Is there a procedure that requires that kind of cut?” Tim’s typical reticence in speaking to people was overcome by his fascination with the body.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” the professor raised an eyebrow. “Even removal of a tumor would’ve gone much further below the surface.”

  “I did it,” Susannah whispered.

  Tim stared at her, befuddled. He’d been there with her the whole time and knew that she hadn’t made the cut.

  “The knife must’ve slipped when I was about to make an incision,” she continued, blushing furiously.

  “Nonsense, my dear,” Socks shook his head. “This incision is old. Can you explain to me how I know that it’s an old incision, Mr. Eckels?” he asked, as a couple of students at nearby tables watched, mildly interested.

  “Because there’s decomposition on the edges. It’s faint, but it’s there. The incision happened post mortem, but it happened before the body was discovered or processed,” Tim replied, leaning so close to the cut that if he’d have stumbled, his nose would have landed in the corpse’s filthy ear.

  “Very good, Mr. Eckels,” Socks nodded. “And don’t worry, Miss Guntzelman, it’s an easy mistake to make, but rest assured, you did not mutilate this corpse,” he chuckled.

  She stared at the professor for a moment until Tim subtly nudged her with his knee.

  “Okay,” she nodded, and went back to the task at hand.

  “Proceed,” Socks said, frowning at her odd behavior, but moving on.

  “Are you…okay?” Tim said in a low voice.

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” she replied, never looking up from her work.

  “Umm…okay. Good.” He was actually relieved that she seemed to be fine now, a nurturer he was not. He hated any sort of strong emotion and would have had no idea as to how to comfort her.

  The buzzing in Susannah’s brain grew louder and louder, so much so that she had to work hard to achieve perfection in her cuts on the corpse. Adrenalin surged through her and she concentrated hard on keeping her hands from shaking. She had made the cut behind the man’s ear, shortly after she had severed his carotid, just below his other ear, under a bridge in a bad part of town. After his lifeblood had stopped flowing, she had claimed her prize…another leaf of skin for the tree in her workshop. She’d taken his baby toe for good measure, just to use in a sculpture. It hadn’t been a particularly sweet death. Since it was in public, she hadn’t been able to savor his earthly departure for very long, but it had stilled the buzzing…for a while.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  New Beginnings

  “Do you really think we’re going to like it here?” Susannah Eckels asked her husband, timidly pushing her heavy glasses up with the back of her hand, after setting down the small moving box that she had brought into their new home.

  “I think we’ll be fine,” Tim, replied noncommittally, seemingly distracted by the task at hand. The plump, blond woman sighed and headed back out to the moving truck that they had rented after deciding to open a mortuary in the small town of Pellman, Minnesota.

  The house that they bought was literally right next door to the sprawling Victorian which served as mortuary and funeral home, so Tim’s commute consisted simply of walking from the kitchen door of his house, through a break in a hedge and onto the side porch of Eckels Funeral Home. There were a series of tile-lined rooms, along with cold-storage, in the basement, Tim’s most favorite part of the once-grand home. The main floor featured a small chapel, three separate viewing rooms, and a mortician’s office where family members of the deceased could meet with him to select caskets, floral arrangements and service plans. The reclusive mortician hoped to someday soon be able to hire someone to take care of the interactive end of his business, so that he could focus solely on the dead, a task with which he was supremely more comfortable.

  In the tiny town, where jobs were often hard to come by if one hadn’t been born and raised there, shy, secretive Susannah had been fortunate to land a job as a chef’s assistant in Pellman’s only fine dining establishment, Le Chateau. She’d accepted the job after an interview over the phone with the head chef, never having “met” the man himself. The quiet, unassuming woman was understandably nervous about her new job, but had complete confidence that her brave and focused husband would succeed as Pellman’s only local mortician and funeral director. Once he’d carved his niche in the town, he’d be able to hire someone to handle all of the things about the business that made him uncomfortable, and they’d be able to live their calm, sedate life without stress and distraction. Susannah had been able to keep her bloodlust down to an acceptable level by distracting herself with cooking, but days spent on the road to Pellman had taken their toll, and she was beginning to squirm with need, her fingers twitching for a polished blade.

  The couple unrolled a worn Persian rug which had been a keepsake from Gram’s house, put their nondescript taupe chenille sofa on top of it, arranged lamps, a coffee table and small dinette set in the living area of their newly purchased cottage, and called it a day. Exhausted from the move, they slept on a mattress in the Master bedroom because neither of them had the energy to set up the bed frame. There was none of the usual excitement of moving into a new community, or beginning a new life, just a pragmatic realization that there was much to be done and only the two of them to do it.

  Tim and Susannah’s relationship had morphed into a symbiotic organism, bringing with it the comfort of familiarity, yet each of them spent much of their existence puzzling through the mysteries of life within the confines of their own heads. Evenings together were often spent without a word being exchanged until it was time for a polite “good night.” Neither of them longed for an exciting, eventful, or passionate union, and found contentment in the predictability of their daily routine. Meal times were scheduled, household tasks divided, and free time was typically spent alone, even when in the same room.

  When they awoke that first morning in Pellman, they went about their individual tasks, much as they always had. Tim was next door in the mortuary, making certain that the tools of his trade were organized in an efficient manner, and Susannah, who didn’t have to report to work until the following day, spent her time organizing the house and breaking down boxes to leave out for recycling. She had brought her art with her, along with the instruments of her darker hobby, and set up an elaborate workshop in the basement of their new home. She kept her bloody passions to herself, liking Tim too much to have to kill him if he dared to share her secrets.

  Tim hadn’t been in the mortuary for more than an hour, fussing with his instruments, preparation agents and potions, when the phone in the office rang, shattering his peaceful process. He had mixed feelings about answering the call. On the one hand, picking up the receiver meant interacting with a human being, which was not high on his list of enjoyable practices. On the other hand, the call might also provide an opportunity to practice his craft, and that’s why he had come to Pellman.

  “Eckels Mortuary,” he answered, finally picking up the phone.

&
nbsp; Jackpot - he had a body. The mortician repressed a smile, knowing that excitement in such a situation was not societally acceptable, and he always tried to maintain some semblance of normalcy, even in private, it was simply good practice. Jotting down the details of how to get to the remote site, Tim snagged the keys to his classic black hearse, and headed out the back door of the forest-green fishscale Victorian with a renewed spring in his step.

  **

  Timothy Eckels wasn’t surprised to find that the house to which he’d been summoned was a giant, imposing brick mansion, nestled in the woods, behind iron gates and a brick wall that were at least ten feet high. Wealthy folks died just as often as poor ones did, and the financial status of the deceased didn’t interest him in the slightest, provided that they could pay his fees. When his hearse approached the gates, they swung open as though someone had been watching for his arrival. He looked up and saw cameras on both sides of the gate, wondering what lay beyond the thick mahogany doors of the mansion.

  Picking up a new corpse never failed to stimulate his creativity, although he preferred the challenges to his skill that were presented in the instances of violent death. He could patch, sew and glue a body back together more seamlessly than anyone else in his graduating class, and had been offered a position with the finest mortuary in town upon completion of his courses. He’d grown and thrived in his craft, and the decision to go out on his own had been an easy one.

  His pulse raced a bit as he grabbed his bag from the passenger seat and headed toward the mansion. The door opened just as he reached up to knock on it, and he stood face to face with Arlen Bemis, the local sheriff.

  “You Eckels?”

  “I am,” Tim nodded.

  “I need to speak with you right quick,” the sheriff announced, hitching up his gun belt with extreme self-importance, and stepping outside, closing the solid wood door behind him.

  He leaned in close, as though thinking he might be overheard, and tapped gently on Tim’s chest with two fingers.

  “Listen up Eckels,” Arlen ordered sternly. Tim just blinked at him, wishing he’d hurry up so that he could get inside and see the body. “What we got here is a bit of a situation,” the sheriff jerked a thumb back toward the house. “The deceased was a very prominent man here in town, and the way I see it, it ain’t nobody’s business how he died, you understand that, Eckels?”

  “Not really, Sheriff…no,” Tim admitted, thinking that he’d actually been asked a question.

  “Well ain’t you just a smarty pants,” Bemis grimaced. “Then let me break it down to you nice and easy. You get in there and you do whatever you gotta do to make him look like he’s in a deep sweet sleep, and keep your mouth shut about the way he died. You get it that time?” he growled.

  Tim was utterly baffled, never having encountered this type of situation before. “Okay,” he replied slowly, hoping that was the answer that the sheriff was looking for.

  Success. The sheriff clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger forward a bit.

  “Good, I just knew you’d be the understandin’ type,” he smiled nastily. “Now, get on in there and do what you gotta do.” The sheriff gestured toward the door, and, not knowing what else to do, Tim opened it and slipped inside.

  Arlen Bemis strode past him. “This way,” he said, moving toward a hall to the right of a massive marble foyer.

  A couple of turns and an elevator ride to the third floor later, the sheriff gravely led Tim into a master bedroom that was the size of most single family homes, and he finally caught a glimpse of the deceased, who was laying on his back on the bed. The reason that the sheriff had insisted upon the odd conversation was immediately clear. The man on the bed had hung himself.

  **

  Standing beside the stainless steel slab where most of the dirty work of preparing the dead was done, Tim crossed his arms and gazed at the body, frowning. He had heard of such things, but had never actually believed that people did them, and now, he was in a quandary as to what to do about what he had discovered. It was common practice for him to prevent leakage of bodily fluids after embalming by placing an absorbent powder-filled plug in the rectum of the deceased. When he had attempted to do so for this particular corpse, he had discovered the disturbing fact that the man had apparently been raped.

  Trying to be diligent, he photographed the evidence that he found – smears of dried blood, anal fissures, and an overly stretched rectum, and documented his discovery to report to the police later. When he did an internet search regarding the anal violation, he also discovered the source of the strange marks which had been present on the victim’s face. Apparently something called a ball-gag had been used. Timothy Eckels was fairly innocent when it came to matters of the heart and bedroom, and had never heard of the term “autoerotic asphyxiation,” but when he read the description of it, he was fairly certain that the deceased had succumbed while experiencing it.

  Tim filled out a form to turn into the sheriff’s office after he finished preparing the body. His phone had been ringing off the hook with concerned citizens asking about what time the services were, and where they should donate or send flowers. There were even calls from local news agencies wondering if Tim could add anything to the account that they’d been given by the family. He’d ignored the phone, doing what he needed to do for the deceased, and intended to go to the sheriff’s office after the preparation was complete.

  **

  Arlen Bemis stared across the desk at Tim, refusing to touch the report that the mortician was holding out to him.

  “I thought that I had made myself fairly clear in this matter, Mr. Eckels. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is to be said about this death. Now which part of that don’t you understand?” he hissed, squinting furiously at his closed office door.

  “But he was violated in what must have been an awful…” Timothy began, blinking rapidly in the face of such hostility.

  The sheriff held up a hand to interrupt. “I don’t care what he may have experienced in his personal life. None of this matters, got it?” He stood up and leaned into Tim’s face until they were nearly nose to nose. “This old boy was the governor’s brother, and if you even think about saying anything about his death to anyone, I’ll make sure you’re run outta this town, hell, this state, on a rail, are you hearing me, Eckels? You’ll wish you were never born,” he snarled.

  With that, Bemis snatched the report from Tim’s hand, tore it in half and in half again and tossed it in the waste basket. “Not another word about this, got it?”

  Tim nodded, mouth hanging slightly open in disbelief.

  “Good, now get the hell outta here and I better never hear from you on this again,” the sheriff sat back down, and as soon as Tim was out of the office, he picked up the phone.

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  Settling In

  Susannah glared at Jorge, the prep cook, the weight of a large silvery knife in her hand, tempting her with its delightfully sharp blade. She noted that the beautifully bronzed skin of the twenty-something Hispanic man would make a lovely rust-colored leaf for her trophy tree, and licked her lips, savoring the thought. He seemed to delight in frustrating her with uneven cuts, haphazard measures, and a generally lackadaisical approach to the art of creating the perfect dish. His latest offense had been cutting vegetables that were supposed to be perfectly julienned. In his haste to get out the door for a Friday night adventure, the handsome young buck had quickly sliced the veggies into strips of varying widths, lengths and thicknesses. This was NOT acceptable in Susannah’s world, and her hand tightened a fraction on the knife.

  “Just go,” she told the charming, grinning young man in a quiet voice.

  Go now…before I decide to show you how to julienne by using your own flesh as an example, her mind intoned darkly. She’d have to quickly julienne the vegetables herself. Fortunately, her knife skills would make that a relatively easy task. She watched Jorge dart gratefully out the back door towa
rd whatever inane activity awaited him, and threw his tray of vegetables down the garbage disposal. The urge to spill his blood rose up within her, filling her senses, and she literally had to bite the inside of her cheek, hard, to cause the feeling to ebb a bit. The coppery taste of her own blood in her mouth sent an electric thrill through her.

  It had been a long time since she’d taken a human life. She had to be very careful in their new home, it was a small town, where such things might be noticed, but the itch to control life and death was becoming harder and harder to resist. She envied her husband in that he delighted in processing bodies that were already dead, which was far more socially acceptable than her need to extinguish the human spark that animated even the most vile bags of flesh.

  Susannah always tried to wait until she happened upon someone who deserved to die…men who lived to control, men like her father, Todd. The profound relief that she’d felt after watching his organic-fed blood ooze from him in time with his sluggish heartbeat, clued her in to the idea that she should focus her hobby on those who tormented either her, or others, with their need for dominance and control. Jorge fit the bill somewhat nicely, because he used his bright white teeth and good looks in order to manipulate those around him, pretending to flirt, even with her. She’d give it more thought though, because he generally seemed rather nice. She sighed and turned her full attention to the vegetables – there was work to be done.

  **

  Timothy Eckels had enjoyed a steady flow of business after moving to Pellman, and aside from the strange initial encounter with the sheriff, his experiences with the locals had been unremarkable. He was in the basement working on the hair of a recently deceased matron when a buzzer alerted him to the fact that someone had come in. He sighed, not simply because he’d have to pull off his gloves, put the deceased back in her drawer, and come back later to finish up, but also because he now had to do the part of his job that he hated – he had to talk to someone.