The Undertaker's Cabinet

by David Haynes

  He heard the blow echo off his back before he felt the shock wave knock all the wind out of him. He crumpled to the grass clutching his stomach and groaning. So much for the element of surprise. He felt another wave of nausea wash over him and he was as powerless to stop it as he was to prevent this thug from kicking his head in. He retched again sending another plume of whiskey hurtling from his body. This time it didn't fall on the grass but hit the thug's trousers with impressive force.

  "You dirty bastard!"

  The thug bent down revealing his bald dome. Even in the miasma it looked too white, too clean, for a man like that. Bobby sat up and delivered what he hoped was a boxer's uppercut into the the other man's nose. He was surprised and a little revolted to feel bone cracking beneath his fist. For a moment both men stayed exactly where they were without saying a word. Bobby was in shock but the adrenaline had started to flow through his system. The fight or flight response had kicked in and he was pleased fight had decided to hang around.

  "You've broken my nose you little shit." He straightened and revealed a nose which sent another wave of nausea hurtling through Bobby.

  Bobby jumped up and took a step back. He wouldn't fare well in a straight out fight; the incident in the square had shown that all too clearly. He had to be clever; he had to use what little brain he had left to gain an advantage.

  The thug wiped a hand over his nose. Just watching him do it made Bobby wince but the other man showed no signs of pain.

  "I should've wiped the floor with you the other day, pal." He took a step forward.

  "Maybe you should have." Bobby stepped to the side and felt the grave stone he'd banged into a moment earlier scrape his knee. He needed something to even things up, even if it was just a stick. He kept his eyes on the thug but searched the ground with his foot for something to throw at him; something to distract him so he could launch an attack.

  "Well I can sort that little mistake out right now." The other man leapt across the space between them but the smoke had concealed the gravestone and his midriff collided with it. He let out a grunt and fell forward.

  Bobby seized the opportunity and raised his clenched fists high above his head and drove them onto the back of his shiny skull. He had no idea if it was a good move, or even an effective one, but it felt satisfying. He grabbed him by the ear and lifted his head. "This one's for Tom." He cocked his fist and piled it into the bloody mess which was the other man's nose. He let go of his ear and the bald head fell backward onto what was probably the grave.

  He bent down and flicked his ear. "And that one's from me." He stepped around him and wiped his hands down the back of his trousers. No doubt it was another suit ruined but he wouldn't need to worry about that where he was going. The smoke still clung to everything it touched and searched out things it had not yet defiled. It wouldn't be long before the whole town was lying beneath the murky shroud.

  The fire was the only beacon and it was that which he now walked slowly toward. The closer he walked, the more yellow and astringent the smoke became. He was a man used to the smell of human decay and possessed a strong constitution but the smell wasn't just bad, it was heavy, and it crept through his body like rigor mortis.

  Around the fire lay numerous brown sacks discarded like garden waste waiting to be burned. Bobby kicked one but instead of feeling the crunch of leaves and twigs beneath his shoe, his foot sank into the sack with a muffled squelch.

  "Get back!"

  Bobby turned just in time to take the full force of the thug's head in his stomach. All the air in his lungs disappeared in an instant and he felt himself driven backward. He knew what was behind him and it wasn't the welcoming arms of his wife. He raised his fists and drove them down into the thug's back but it made no difference, his feet barely touched the ground and there was only one place he was going. Into the fire.

  He circled his arms around the other's chest and linked his hands. If he was going in, so was the other man. He brought his knee up sharply and felt it connect with the thug's face. In the next instant he was lifted off his feet and dumped on his back at the base of the fire.

  Bright yellow light exploded around him and he felt the stinging bite of a hungry flame lick across the side of his face. He opened his mouth to scream but the flames devoured the sound before it became real and buried it beneath him. The thug had landed on top of him but he wasn't moving and his body was shielding the worst of the flames. Nevertheless he had to get out of there or he'd be burned like whatever else was burning beside and beneath him.

  He shoved the other man expecting a meaty fist in the face, or at the very least heavy resistance, but there was neither and he pushed him easily to the side. Immediately the flames pounced on both of them sending Bobby clambering to his feet. His hands screamed as he tried to gain purchase on something to pull himself free but the the hot ashes melted into his flesh and tried to eat him from inside. He looked down beneath his melting shoes and burning trousers and saw hell rise up to meet him. A pile of skulls and other bones rattled beneath his hands and feet as he scrambled free and collapsed on the warm grass. This was not a fire, it was a pyre.

  He looked on in horror as the man who had taken them both into the fire was consumed. The only sound he made was without his voice as his flesh popped and screamed as it was destroyed by the flames he had nurtured himself. Bobby vomited; all around him were the remains of human life and not just those who had been recently cremated. To his horror, it was not grass on which he sat but flesh in various stages of decomposition. Lumps of partially burned and rotting flesh were dotted amongst clumps of matted hair and teeth; there had to be more than a hundred bodies strewn around the graveyard. It was like a scene from Victorian London when King Cholera had paid one of his frequent and unwelcome visits to the poor souls of the slums. He jumped up quickly and stepped away from the fire. It wouldn't take long before the whole town was choking on the malodorous fetor of a hundred burning corpses but he had no wish to stay in it longer than was necessary. He had to find a way inside and he had to do it before Jacobs realised his pal was now nothing more than melting flesh.

  He stepped toward the church again, looking for a door or even a window through which he could enter. Where had all those bodies come from? None of them looked fresh, at least none he'd seen, and some of them looked like they had gone way past decomposition and were turning into something else. His foot connected with something soft and without looking down he knew immediately what it was. Sacks had been strewn all around the fire, some empty and some not yet so, but they all contained, at one time or another, the same thing.

  Despite himself, he knelt and touched the sack. His suit was ruined but he winced as his knee sank into the earth. He knew it was not just mud which seeped through the woollen fibres of his trousers. The coarse threads of the hessian sack were warm to the touch and he almost recoiled. Cadavers held no fear, he'd been handling them for as long as he could remember, but what was inside was not, he knew, likely to be like anything he'd seen, or touched before.

  He looked to the sky. If there was a God looking down on him then he was blind to what was happening. The creamy cloak of smog was as dense as it was forbidding and for that he was pleased. He had just killed a man and he intended to kill another before the day was out. There were some things you just didn't want God to see. First though, he had to open the sack and see what depraved horrors lay within.

  Even though it was late morning, the light was more akin to dusk and as he peered at the contents he couldn't bring himself to get too close. The smoke concealed most of the stench but he was under no illusion about what a rotting corpse smelled like; he'd been called out to a few ripe ones over the years. Judging by the feel of the sack, this one had been rotting for a good few years.

  "Get a grip dickhead," he whispered to himself and tipped the sack upside down. It wasn't a corpse which dropped like a sponge to the ground, at least not like any he'd seen before; it was mangled, twisted and somehow shrunken. Tin
y fingers wrapped in stained yellow skin clawed at thin air, appearing to plead with him somehow. Arms no wider than rotting twigs on a diseased sapling stretched to the neck which looked barely wide enough to support the hairless and eyeless skull. What was this wretched creature?

  He knelt and touched it. It didn't seem possible that it could remain intact after being dropped like that; it looked so fragile. Yet the skin felt like rubber under his fingers and clearly held whatever was left inside in place. He looked around and his heart sank at the number of sacks. He grabbed the nearest one and shook it until the body fell out. It was the same as the one he'd just emptied; warped, contorted and bald. These were no creatures, they were infants.

  He fell back and pushed the sacks away with his feet. These corpses could not have been more than a year old and they had all been partially embalmed. He could feel his breath coming fast and shallow. He was consuming the vile smoke again and his vision started to swim. What hellish landscape had he wandered into?

  "I'm on the highway to hell, on the highway to hell!" Bon Scott screamed from the inside of this jacket. Bobby reached into his pocket and looked at the screen. "Tom." He felt his chest expand with the surge of blood from his heart. Any moment now and it'll explode, he thought and dropped the phone.

  He'd been kidding himself, he wasn't ready for this. No-one was ever ready for this. He doubted whether his legs would work but he had to leave so he slid himself backward without taking his eyes away from Lucifer's playground. He needed a drink more than he'd ever needed a drink before. There was a bottle back in the office. He'd help himself to a big one and come back when his chest wasn't between a hyena's jaws.

  He was almost at the point where the sacks were nothing more than amorphous shadows when his back collided with something sharp and solid.

  "I see you've met my children, Mr Moreton. Perhaps it's time you met the rest of my family."

  Bobby turned just in time to see Jacobs smiling down at him with Tom's phone in one of his hands. He tried to scramble to his feet and opened his mouth to scream an obscenity but Jacobs was already reaching down with one of his great paw-like hands. It closed around Bobby's mouth and covered his face. His first thought was that he was being suffocated and he tried again to get up, but the liquid which dripped from Jacobs' hand and ran down his throat reminded him of something. What was it? What...?

  *

  Bobby opened his eyes quickly. "Embalming fluid!" The smell was usually so obvious, so why had he been momentarily confused? "Because it's not like the stuff you use, dickhead," he whispered a reply to his own question. The words echoed around the vaulted ceiling as if taunting him. Apart from a really bad headache and a terrible taste in his mouth he didn't feel too bad though and that had to count for something. His body caught up with his mind and told him he was lying down, but it wasn't on a mattress, it was on a cold hard board or table.

  "You and I are not so unalike, Mr Moreton." Jacobs' voice was unmistakable.

  "You're a sick bastard, Jacobs and I'm going to kill you." He tried to get up but although no he couldn't feel any restraints, his arms and legs were like lead. He flicked his head to the side to get a sight of the man. "I'm going to kill you!" he roared.

  "Not today, Mr Moreton, nor any day for that matter. And you'll be pleased to know I'm not going to kill you either, at least not yet and with any luck not for some time. I'm going to conduct an experiment you see, an experiment which might be of interest to you. I just hope your brother and lady friend can last a little longer. She at least might may still be in a position to plead for help. I do hope so. If you'll excuse me for one moment." Jacobs vanished into the shadows.

  What was the lunatic on about? Experiments? And he'd mentioned Tom as if he was still alive. This couldn't be happening. He was a drunkard and a little town undertaker working for a family business, not a character from a horror film. He shook his head. There was no use in thinking about that kind of thing at the moment, he had to be focused and he had to get his body moving.

  Jacobs must have had a rag soaked in some kind of embalming fluid when he covered his mouth. Although quite what combination of fluids was in it was anyone's guess because it certainly wasn't industry standard. He concentrated hard and managed to raise one hand to his face. It felt like it belonged to someone else. "Come on, get moving. You've had worse hangovers than this before." Whatever concoction he'd brewed up wasn't like anything he'd used before but his body and senses were used to the effects and there was clearly some resistance in his system.

  A door opened at the far end of the room and for a moment nothing followed; Bobby dropped his hand back down to his side. Then Tom came through. Not walking, not lying down but propped up like a mannequin on a high-backed luggage trolley.

  "Tom?" Bobby almost whispered the words. Tom's face was waxy with a ghostly lustre and although it looked like him, it wasn't. It couldn't be.

  Almost immediately behind him, propped up in the same way was Esther. Only this was definitely her because she mouth the word. "Help." Not in an overly emphasised way but as someone who was shouting as loud as they could. They were attached to each other by a network of pipes which trailed out behind and fed into the cabinet which rolled silently behind them.

  "What have you done to them?" He didn't know if he could manage it yet but he knew standing and attacking Jacobs would be a mistake right now. If his legs were as useless as his arms then it would be a quick fight.

  Jacobs nudged the cabinet and the two trolleys closer to Bobby and then turned them all around so they faced away from him. He was careful not to move any of them too far away from each other or to bend the pipes, lest its purpose be disturbed. It was a diabolical menagerie and Bobby didn't know which way to turn.

  "You recognise this don't you?" Jacobs patted the top of the cabinet. "This will surprise you Mr Moreton but long have I admired it, albeit from afar. Long have I yearned to feel the craftsmanship beneath my fingers. And although I knew where it lay and under whose protection it wallowed I could not bring myself to take it for my own; where it should rightfully be. It is too perfect for any man to touch and until now I had not the courage to use it. Until now."

  "You need help, Jacobs. You need serious help. I saw those children out there. I saw what you've done to them."

  "Ah yes, my children. And these are my parents and of course grandparents." He swept his arm theatrically about the room but Bobby could see nothing but shadows. "They are not themselves and they have not been so for a very long time. I shall make them come alive again. I shall bring them all back to me." He laughed but it was a cold sound. "Do not take me for a lunatic for I am no Frankenstein but with the help of Jerome Moreton's cabinet and your blood I shall make them what they once were."

  "Your brother lives on. Did you know that? Yes he lives and breathes like any man, yet he cannot and will not ever move again." Jacobs placed his hand on Tom's head. "This is important because it renders him an immortal, which is, after all, what this cabinet was designed to do by Jerome Moreton."

  "What? Jerome Moreton did not intend that cabinet to be used..."

  Jacobs raised a finger to his lips. "You are misguided." He patted Tom again.

  "Take your hand off him." Bobby snarled. A rage was burning just below the surface. Half paralysed body or not he couldn't lie here and listen to this for much longer. "You know nothing about that cabinet or any of the Moretons."

  "Do I not? I dare say I know a great deal more than you. You and your family chose to leave this beautiful cabinet locked away where the world could not appreciate its beauty. It is you who know nothing. You call yourself a Moreton yet it is a lie. You are no more a Moreton than your father and his father before him." He smiled again.

  "What are you on about you stupid, fucking, lunatic?"

  Jacobs laughed. He tapped the cabinet. "I know you have looked inside this box. I know you have seen the horrors within. You did not seriously think that a man with your genes could have used it did you
? A pathetic drunkard in a third rate town from the back of beyond? You have delusions Mr Moreton but even you could not have imagined your father or your grandfather using this." Jacobs caressed the cabinet as if it were a lover. "No this is for men such as me. Men who are willing to push the boundaries to make life better for the mice who follow. They are the ones who weep for the loss of the ones they love and who cling to their forlorn and desperate memories like children. They yearn to keep their most sacred memories fresh for all eternity and I shall give them just that. I will make statues of their husbands, marionettes of their wives and dolls of their children. What better way to torment someone than to have the corpse of their loved ones simply standing in the corner of their room?"

  "All this just so you can practise? No-one in their right mind would want that for Christ's sake! No-one!"

  "Ah but who is in their right mind when the person they hold dearest is taken from them? Were you when your wife passed? I think not Mr Moreton, I think not. Now then... your brother has had series eleven, your lady friend series eleven and twelve. What should we give your wife do you think?"

  Jacobs performed a theatrical twirl. "Ah yes, I have not yet had the opportunity to bring her to see you again. I shall correct that later do not fear and she will sit by my side as you gaze down helpless. Won't that be fun?"