“I really must insist,” said Miss Alkemya. “I have a very important question to ask you.” Her voice carried a heavy accent. “Besides, if you do not climb up quickly, the priest will catch up to you.”
The mortician looked behind him. Father Delany was bearing down, his fat bearded cheeks puffing with the effort. With no more thought, the mortician clasped Miss Alkemya’s gloved hand and swung up into the carriage. The door slammed behind him, and the carriage wheels rattled away over the cobblestones.
“You won’t be able to escape the good father for long,” she remarked. She sounded amused.
“Could you take me to my home, please? It’s on Pie Street, just above the funeral parlor.” My funeral parlor, he usually said, but of course Miss Alkemya knew who he was. Which, again, raised the question of why she had invited him into her carriage.
“Father says they’re unhappy with your funeral practices. The priest was going to talk to you.”
“About?” The mortician’s fingers fretted at the brocaded cushion next to him.
“Burning coffins instead of burying them. Cutting bodies into four or five parts. Crosses nailed to the corpse’s eyes. Garlic. Roses. Midnight patrols.” Miss Alkemya wore a red dress, instead of the pastels more customary for a girl her age. Locks of hair escaped from the bun atop her head.
The mortician wasn’t quite sure what he ought to say in response—nor, for that matter, where his hands ought to be or where he should be looking. Hastily, he remembered he was still wearing his hat and took it off, clutching the soft felt brim with a fervor that surprised even him.
“It seems rather silly to me,” Miss Alkemya said, as if she didn’t notice his discomfiture at all. “After all, they’re not dangerous, are they?”
“Mrs. Beaumont was a fairly poisonous individual. I can’t imagine death has changed her much.”
Miss Alkemya laughed—a surprisingly low and musical sound. “For a quiet man, you are a wit.” He looked up, startled. Their eyes met briefly. “I’m glad of that,” she added.
“You don’t seem perturbed by the thought of the risen dead, Miss Alkemya.”
“Ah, but you seem perturbed by the thought of polite conversation with young ladies.”
The mortician snapped, “I find it much easier to be polite to young ladies when they’re cold and still. Alive, they chatter too much.”
She leaned forward; he pushed farther back into his own seat. “I wanted to ask you a question about embalming. It’s for a poem I’m writing.”
The mortician looked out the carriage window instead of responding.
“I want to know what kind of fluids you use,” Miss Alkemya persisted. “For preserving the corpse.”
“Formaldehyde, and methanol,” the mortician said. “Phenol. Formalin, if it’s an anatomical specimen.”
Miss Alkemya smiled, and the carriage rolled to a halt.
“I can’t imagine what kind of poem would involve embalming fluid,” he dared say as he descended from the carriage.
“I’ll send it to you when it’s done,” she said. “Good night, sir.”
***
The mortician lit his lamp and crept to his private office. He could have walked as loudly as he liked, but he preferred economy in movement and sound. He was most comfortable with himself when he barely existed as a physical thing. His work was the only essential part of him, and had it not required a material presence to dress the corpses and sew their mouths together, he would have laid himself down gladly and consigned himself to ashes and dust.
But there was the work. There was always the work.
The mortician set the lamp down on the little writing desk in the center of the room and looked over his shoulder, even though there were no windows, no way for a person to spy on him. When he knew he was alone, he made a slow circuit of the room and unlocked all the dark wood cabinets that hung at eye level.
Body parts lined the shelves within the cabinets—body parts made of glass, of turquoise, of porcelain, and above all, of gold. Even the meager light of the lamp glinted and glittered off the fingers, toes, eyes and intestines until the mortician couldn’t look at his specimens directly.
The sight did nothing but frustrate him. Once, long ago, the illustrious undertakers Whitby and Underdark had set down instructions for an embalming process that preserved a cadaver perfectly for eternity, a process that gradually changed each body into a substance more immutable than flesh and bone.
Five years ago the mortician had found those notes—more precisely, the fragments of those notes. He’d tried them on the most beautiful of his own cadavers, but at best only bits and pieces ever transformed. He’d go out at night six or seven months later and find a stinking, rotting mass shot through with maggots, and a pristine gold heart, its four chambers intact.
The mortician loved his work, but hated its impermanence.
***
The next morning, those unfortunate citizens who resided near the cemetery awoke to silver bells jangling fit to wake the dead. In fact, it was the dead who’d woken—Tom Welsh, who had died two weeks ago, and his sweetheart Kelly Pickford, dead just two days (one drowned, the other never quite recovered from the chill she caught when the boat capsized). Their families had thoughtfully installed bells above their graves with long thin cords reaching down into the coffin, wrapped around the corpses’ wrists.
When the lovers had been exhumed, they did not embrace or weep as some predicted they would. They stood close together, a fraction of air separating their bodies, and murmured in glassy, indistinguishable tones.
Father Delaney and the town mayor paid a visit to the mortician. They said nothing to the mutes who stood in the front of the funeral parlor, but invited themselves into the tiny office between the viewing room and the actual mortuary. The mortician didn’t offer either of them a chair.
“In times of crisis, the entire community must come together.” Father Delaney rocked on his heels as he spoke; he always sounded like he was delivering a sermon. “I’ve written the monsignor, and I’ve added a number of relevant prayers to the liturgy; however, these demons must be fought on the material as well as the spiritual plane.”
The mortician made a noncommittal noise deep in his throat and continued making tiny, careful notes in his ledger.
“What I mean to say is that certain changes must be made in the burial process. The coffins must be reinforced—holy water mixed into the embalming fluid—a few authorities suggest even that the body ought to be separated into six parts.”
The mayor frowned at Father Delaney and stepped forward. “I beg of you, Mister, ah—”
“Plumly,” the mortician said, still absorbed in his notes. No one ever called him Plumly. He was simply the mortician.
“This is the age of Reason, Mr. Plumly, and Science. If you have indeed discovered a way of cheating death, we must announce it. It would be the greatest scientific discovery of our age—just think of the honor it would bring you—and our town! A medal, no doubt, from the Queen, and doctors from all over the Empire coming to learn your secrets.”
The mortician shuddered and laid down his pen. “Honored Mr. Mayor,” he said, “if there is one thought that disgusts me more than a town of risen dead, it is that of a whole nation of risen dead. The dead are not meant to walk. They are cold and stiff and unchanging, and if that is their appeal. Even if I could raise them, I wouldn’t.”
“It must be you!” the mayor cried. “There are three other undertakers in this town, and it’s only your customers who are giving any trouble.”
“My embalming procedures are the same as any mortician’s,” he said, and felt the lie twist on his tongue.
The mayor stepped back, his mustache bristling with indignation. “Sir,” he said, and the word was a warning. “The citizens of this town are afraid of you. You have no family, no friends, no wife. You pay attention to no one until they have died. I’m giving you a chance to restore your reputation. Everyone forgives a genius his li
ttle eccentricities.”
The mortician privately disagreed, but didn’t say so.
Father Delaney began to speak again. He was a patient man, and rarely raised his voice. “If it’s not science, it must be witchcraft. If it’s witchcraft, you must help me stop it. Until we find the person doing this, you must destroy the bodies that you bury.”
“I will not change my embalming fluid, nor hack up the bodies of my clients.” His throat felt dry; the buttons on his waistcoat pressed against his body.
“You must.” Father Delaney’s eyes were narrow and intent—the mortician wondered if his face was composed, if he glanced once too often at the long row of cabinets lining the room.
“The funeral arts are delicate, Father. I have no good explanation for what has happened here,” he said, looking from one to the other, “but Plumly’s Funeral Parlor has had no part in this save mere happenstance.”
The priest’s mouth turned into a thin hard line, disappearing within his beard. He said nothing, merely bowed to the mortician, made the sign of the cross and turned to leave. The mortician did not rise from his seat. The mayor followed.
The door slammed behind them, the bell jangling as they left, and the mortician was alone again in his thrice-scrubbed, spotless office. It was no longer a peaceful silence.
***
Little Mary Bacon was pulled from her grave the next afternoon, just before tea. Although she’d been a crybaby all her six years, she made no sound as they hauled up the coffin on ropes, as they wrenched open the lid, as her tearful mother wrapped tightly in trembling arms. Her expression was stiff and thoughtless as a wax dolly’s, but her movements liquid and light as mist. She slipped from her mother’s grasp and stood at the edge of her own grave, looking down into it until her father carried her away.
The mortician was uneasy; Mary had been due to turn to porcelain soon (though he suspected he had not gotten the mixture quite even) and there would be too many awkward questions if there were indeed porcelain fingers or a porcelain gallbladder in the little girl.
He would have to discontinue his experiments, he decided. At least until this nonsense stopped. The thought of all his careful notes and solutions locked away pained him so much that he gasped aloud, and clutched at the edge of his desk. His mutes and Jones, who drove the hearse, were alarmed to see him in such a state. He sent them home rather than explain.
A letter from Laila Alkemya arrived in the post. It smelled faintly of cinnamon and a sour, more biting preservative. She’d written a sonnet.
Although the mortician did not like poetry, he folded up Miss Alkemya’s poem and reread it periodically throughout the day. He appreciated the measure and subtlety of the language, especially the line, “Formaldehyde, the best and bitt’rest kiss.”
He wondered if that lingering smell of preservative was, perhaps, her perfume.
***
Several days passed. The popular journal All The Year Round announced a new serialized story would run in its pages: “The Ferryman’s Cheat,” about an undertaker who traveled between Life and Death, retrieving worthy souls from untimely ends. The elderly and the terminally ill traveled to the city in great numbers, filling all the lodging houses and coaching inns.
Laila Alkemya sent the mortician a new poem every morning, and once in the afternoon as well. Each was sparse and elegant, referencing anatomy, embalming, and the processes of decomposition. He began writing back, laboring over each verse with the care and energy he once reserved for his work.
After breaking into the sanatorium and attempting to exorcise Mrs. Beaumont, Father Delany was sent to another parish. In his place the church sent a young Frenchman with carrotty hair, whose eyes glinted with hellfire. The mayor came periodically to inquire of the mortician’s health; it was a thin ploy, and the mortician passed those visits by imagining the mayor dead. He was not a violent man, but oh! The mayor would be so much more agreeable when he could no longer talk.
The dead—those who were not in asylums or sanatoriums—began to visit the mortician. They’d press against the outer wall, murmuring and opening and closing the door of his shop. They seemed to like the sound of the bell.
The mortician wondered what it would be like to move to some small seaside town and do nothing all day but write poetry and sketch pictures of the dead. He could live off his gold limbs and organs, maybe pick up taxidermy as a hobby.
If he married Miss Alkemya, she could come too.
***
A note arrived from Miss Alkemya. “Dear Sir,” it read, “although you never did tell me what you thought of my poems, I am concerned for your welfare. Rumor has it that you’ve given up your work. My father was once a doctor, and has much experience in stilling troubled minds. Perhaps, if you come to dinner at seven o’clock this evening, he can offer you assistance. Yours, L. Alkemya.”
A few minutes before seven, the mortician stood on the steps of the Alkemyas’ house. Miss Alkemya answered the door herself, and led him to the parlor. She wore a loose-fitting brown dress made of some rough material that swayed with her quick steps. The parlor had in it two comfortable armchairs, and hundreds and hundreds of paintings and heliographs of dead bodies. There was also an impressive collection of books on anatomy and funeral custom.
The mortician sat down in one of the chairs. Miss Alkemya sat in the other, curling her feet up beneath her like a cat. It was oddly endearing.
“Father never comes in this room,” she said. “It upsets him. But I thought you’d like it.”
“I do,” said the mortician, slightly surprised to discover this was true. He’d never seen so many pleasing objects in one room before, outside of his office.
She ducked her head, but he caught a glimpse of a smile. “I wanted so much for you to like it.”
A gong sounded. She led him into dinner.
At dinner, the doctor was friendly and hospitable, but didn’t speak of the risen dead or the mortician’s sudden idleness until his daughter had left the table. Then he sat back in his chair. “My daughter insists you’re in low spirits because you’ve given up your work. Is this so?”
“I loved my work,” the mortician answered. “And the idle time weighs heavy on me. But—the dead are walking again. My clients—only my clients. It’s some sort of insult, or game, and I won’t take part in it. Besides,” he added, “all the joy’s gone now.”
The doctor sighed. “I know what you feel. I used to be a doctor, but when my wife died I gave up the practice.” He gazed into the middle distance, looking at nothing. “All I saw was death. I couldn’t face it.”
The mortician found a strange irony in this: one retiring because he couldn’t stop death, and the other retiring because he couldn’t stop life. He sat for a few minutes more, but it was clear the doctor had slipped into a far-away gloom. The mortician murmured his good-byes, retrieved his hat and coat, and went home.
***
The mortician had resisted the lure of his work for almost a whole week, but one day he could no more. Mrs. Jamison’s youngest had succumbed to chills at the tender age of three. There had been five Jamison deaths in the past year, and the mortician had turned bits and pieces of each. He’d discovered on the fourth occasion (Mrs. Jamison’s younger brother, who’d been struck with loose shingles falling from the roof) that his solutions required less adjusting between family members. The commonality of the blood, it seemed, was crucial.
Perhaps this time, the mortician thought, I will be able to change him thoroughly. His mind hungered at the image of Oliver Jamison turning slowly from pale flesh and neatly combed fair hair into glass, clear throughout and a perfect replica, even down to the thin spun glass that would replace his eyelashes. Oh, it would be magnificent.
The mortician set to work.
***
They buried Oliver Jamison without incident, and two days later the mortician went to the graveyard to dig him up. He waited until the sun was setting—late in the day, but not unusual for a busy morticia
n who needed to inspect grave plots—and brought with him some lucifers and a lantern. He also had a long leather bag slung over his shoulder which contained a shovel and would soon, he hoped, contain the complete and perfect form of Oliver Jamison.
He sat at the back of the Izard mausoleum, where no one would see the glow of his lantern, and thought about nothing very much for awhile. The chill soaked into his overcoat as night drew on, and finally the church clock struck eleven. The mortician gathered his things and went to the Jamisons’ crowded plot. Mist hung heavy in the air tonight. His feet sank into the damp soil as he walked.
There was already someone at Oliver Jamison’s grave. The mortician didn’t see the figure at first; it had no lantern and was bent low over the grave. The sound of the mortician’s shovel clunking against his back startled it, and he saw the movement.
“Who’s there?” No answer. “I said, who’s there?” He raised the lantern higher and stepped forward.
The figure turned around and became a she. Miss Alkemya said, “Well, this is an unusual meeting. What brings you here so late?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” The mortician shuffled his feet, angling his body slightly so—he hoped—Miss Alkemya wouldn’t see his bag. “A graveyard’s a highly unsuitable place at night, especially for young ladies without chaperones.”
Miss Alkemya’s mouth twisted. “Father sees no need for a chaperone. He thinks I’ll never marry.”
This was, perhaps, a theme on which the mortician would have liked to expand—but at that moment, the bell attached to Oliver Jamison’s grave rang.
They both looked at the grave. It rang again. And again. And again, and again, until there was no silence in the graveyard.
“We’d better go and wake the caretaker,” Miss Alkemya said. “He has a shovel.”
The mortician placed his bag on the ground with a sigh of resignation. “No need.”
“Poor little mite,” she said as he began to dig. “He must be so frightened and confused.” The mortician glanced back at Miss Alkemya. Her cheeks were flushed, yes, and she twisted her hands feverishly, but it wasn’t distress in her eyes. It was excitement. Eagerness, even.
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