Death and Douglas Read online

  It was his family. And his home.

  Home sweet funeral home.

  SEPTEMBER 11

  SUNDAY

  Douglas Mortimer had come to grips with death at an early age: birth.

  It’s bound to happen when one’s parents run a funeral home, and it’s bound and gagged to happen when one’s parents are the third generation to do so. Douglas’s first memory was of the dead. He recalled his father lifting him up over the lip of a coffin so that he could touch the body inside. He couldn’t have been more than three at the time, and the only impression that stuck with him from the experience was the heat of his father’s hands beneath his armpits.

  That was why Douglas felt right at home beneath the gigantic dying Jesus at the back of the auditorium of Cowlmouth Center Church, handing out funeral programs to mourners lining up in the foyer for the Stauffer funeral. Up front, the organ groaned out a dirge that he had heard enough times that he almost found it catchy.

  Cowlmouth Center Church was a vast establishment. Dark rib-like beams buttressed a sweeping white ceiling over soft red carpeting that matched the upholstered wooden pews. The pulpit on the dais at the front was a massive piece of dark furniture that almost eclipsed the tiered choir loft behind it. Backdropping both the pulpit and the choir loft was an enormous round stained glass window with an abstract pattern of mostly blue, red, and white panels that made whoever stood at the pulpit look like the pupil in a giant eye. At the back of the church, on both sides of the oversized dying Jesus, was a pair of balconies that almost doubled the seating capacity of the place of worship.

  That was how the church always looked, but today, at the foot of the pulpit, another massive piece of wooden furniture dominated the holy place—the coffin of Irwin Stauffer. Leaning in apparent inconsolable grief against the side of the coffin was a large, white sign with red lettering that proclaimed: HOT DOGS: $2.50. Below the price was a cartoon drawing of a tube of meat with wide eyes and an outstretched tongue.

  Irwin Stauffer had been a popular man in Cowlmouth, which was why his funeral had to be held at the largest church in town. All it took to secure that pre-death fame and post-death regard was a small red-and-white-striped cart laden with hot dogs, near the town square. Mr. Stauffer had parked his little cart there every summer for sixty years and was as much a fixture of the town as the old library or the massive bronze statue of its colonial founder that stood guard in front of the town hall. He always boasted that he had sold a hot dog to “darn near everybody in this town at one time or another, even the vegetarians.” It was rumored that plans were now in the works to name the square after him.

  “Your dad wanted me to find out if you were all set for programs.” Christopher Shin was a tall Korean man in his early twenties. The individual hairs of his thin moustache seemed to each be separated by half an inch of bald skin, and his blue-striped tie was held in place by a gold-plated bar that matched a pair of cuff links holding his sleeve-ends together. On his suit lapel was a green and gold Mortimer Family Funeral Home name tag that matched the one on Douglas’s own lapel.

  Christopher was the Mortimer Family Funeral Home apprentice, which meant he was learning the trade the hard way, answering midnight calls for corpse removals, picking up flowers, and doing all the little jobs that it takes to eventually get a body six feet under the ground. Like Douglas, he lived at the funeral home, but unlike Douglas, he had chosen this lifestyle. Douglas never could figure out why. Christopher often acted as if the people who died in this town did so simply to overload him with work.

  “I got plenty.” He motioned at the four boxes on the table behind him.

  “Good. You’ll need them. A lot of people are coming. It’s going to be a real hassle.” Christopher moved off to tackle whatever next duty was going to decrease the quality of his life.

  “Hi, Douglas. That’s a nice tie.” It was Chief Pumphrey, Lowell’s father. Lowell and his kid brother, Josh, were behind him. Douglas’s tie was dark green with scallop shapes that made it look like a scaly lizard seeking shelter in his dark blue blazer.

  “Thanks.” Douglas handed Lowell’s father a funeral program. On the front was a painting of Mr. Stauffer in his trademark straw boater hat and red suspenders, beaming from behind his hot dog cart, a mustard-smeared hot dog in one hand and a ketchup-smeared one in the other. The original painting had hung in a corridor at the town hall for at least a decade.

  Lowell passed Douglas, turned down a program, gave him a bump on the shoulder with a sideways fist, and tapped two fingers on the side of his nose before passing him wordlessly to find a place to sit. Douglas heard the message like it had been shouted: “Don’t forget about the cemetery afterwards … a real-life monster … and your tie isn’t that nice.”

  Before Douglas had too much time to wonder again about the monster, a small hand missing one of its fingers eagerly thrust itself forward for a program. The man with only nine fingers was short. Like almost Douglas’s height. He was also rather meaty for his size, which explained the slight skim of sweat that formed on the bridge of his nose and made his thick curly brown hair droop in damp bunches like Spanish moss around his head. The bottom half of his face had a perpetual fuzz of stubble, and the top half was punctured with two deep-set, dark brown eyes. One of them winked at Douglas.

  “How do I smell, Douglas?”

  Douglas took a whiff. “You smell like leather. And formaldehyde.”

  “New cologne.” Eddie Brunswick worked for the Mortimer family as an embalmer, and he was on an ongoing quest to cover up what he did for a living. That meant the smell and the stains. As a result, Eddie was an expert on colognes and detergents. He hadn’t yet succeeded in his mission, but he could name just about any scent at twenty paces and could work wizardry with a washing machine. After receiving his program, Eddie took a step inside and spent a few seconds of intense deliberation as he scoped out the attendees. He chose an open seat on the pew beside the nearest pretty girl he could find. The girl scooted away, closer to her boyfriend, who sat on her other side.

  The line to get into the auditorium was starting to back up, so Douglas began handing out programs as fast as he could, regularly diving into the cardboard boxes on the table to get more when he ran out. Fortunately, he had already claimed one of the programs for his own personal collection. It rested in his inside jacket pocket, beside his scaly tie.

  Soon his rhythm of handing out programs grew so flawless that he hardly stopped to acknowledge the people he knew or to ineffectually brush the stiff, shiny strands of black hair on his forehead back into place. He was halfway through a second box of programs when the girl happened.

  He didn’t have much time to observe her, as she was gone before he’d realized he’d handed her a program. All he retained was a vague afterimage of long, black hair and a flash of purple. But it had been enough time to interrupt his pace. The pause must have dragged on a bit too long; an ugly snort startled his attention back to the line of mourners.

  “Hrmph.”

  A tall woman wearing thick-framed glasses and a dark dress dotted with flowers so small they appeared as though they were being sucked into a void towered over him. Douglas’s face turned the color of the church carpet, and he quickly handed her a program.

  As soon as the stream of funeral attendees ended, Douglas put the box of remaining programs under the table and made his way deeper into the church. Normally, he would sit in the back so he could hold the door for the pallbearers at the end of the service. His place was always saved at Mortimer Family funerals. The only other person who could say that was the deceased, and they couldn’t actually say that. His parents, on the other hand, rarely could be found in one place, much less sitting during the funerals they arranged. Instead they hovered on the edges, ready to make sure that everything went smoothly for the bereaved.

  Douglas saw his father in a side aisle moving a large arrangement of flowers out of the way to allow a group easier access to a pew. He nodded solemnly at Do
uglas across the crowd before focusing his attention back on the funeral. Mr. Mortimer was of medium height, with fine black hair, pale skin, and a general tautness to his features. Douglas had inherited most of his own physical characteristics from him. Douglas couldn’t see his mother, but was sure she was attending to the less visible parts of the funeral—calling the cemetery to ensure that everything was prepared, planning cleanup, or checking with the police assigned to direct the long procession that would be slithering its way across town in the next hour.

  Instead of taking his place near the doors, Douglas walked along the back wall of the auditorium to the stairs that led to the left-hand balcony. On his way, he passed Lowell’s father talking quietly to Dr. Coffman.

  “I feel terrible for thinking it, especially at his funeral, but Irwin’s death couldn’t have been better timed.” That was Chief Pumphrey.

  “I assume you mean because it’s distracting everyone from the … untimely death of Mrs. Laurent?” returned Dr. Coffman.

  “Exactly.”

  “Man always did put the town first.”

  Douglas barely registered the name of the woman Moss and Feaster had called a “gorgon.” He ascended the stairs, and without even looking around, walked to the very last row of the large gallery and took an empty seat in the back corner. His nearest neighbor was the giant head of Jesus rearing up beside him like a Titan rising from the sea. He scanned the crowd in the balcony, searching for the dark-haired girl. She was five rows in front of him. All he could see of her was the back of her head, but he scrutinized that sleek veil of black hair like someone peering into a fresh night sky waiting for the stars to come out.

  The organ abruptly cut off in the middle of one of its sadder chords and a man in black religious attire walked to the pulpit above the prone Mr. Stauffer. Like the coffin and the pulpit, Revered Ahlgrim and Mr. Stauffer now formed a set of perpendicular lines. Douglas knew the reverend well, as his family had worked with him longer than Douglas had been alive. He was a very round man. His stomach was round. The lenses of his spectacles were round. His bald head was round. Even the way he formed his words was round. He was like a snowman. In fact, the only angles on him were the four that formed the golden crucifix around his neck.

  From this angle and at this distance, Douglas saw Mr. Stauffer’s still face as an indistinct flesh-colored oval against the light satin of the coffin interior. Douglas had seen him back at the funeral home. Mr. Stauffer had fewer wrinkles than he should have for his age, and a loose head of hair that had wilted to gray. His final expression was as though he were listening to his favorite music on headphones. As usual, Eddie had done good work.

  Reverend Ahlgrim began the service. “Good morning, fellow mourners.” Douglas could hear every “o” in that opening address. “Irwin Stauffer was a man made of summer. The season didn’t officially start here in Cowlmouth until Irwin sold his first hot dog. Unfortunately, as we leave this last summer and pass into fall, Irwin passes, too …”

  So far, the service was an excellent one in Douglas’s opinion. And his opinion mattered because he’d been to many funerals. Mr. Stauffer looked great, the flowers looked great, the turnout was great, and even Reverend Ahlgrim’s eulogy was great, full of comforting words.

  However, even at their best, Douglas had always been slightly dissatisfied with funerals. For him, death was a regular event. It was a time for people to gather together, just the same as Christmas, a birthday, or the Fourth of July, as inevitable as Wednesday following Tuesday, March following February. Every sentence has a punctuation mark. Everybody gets a year older until they don’t. Everybody dies.

  He thought that funerals should be merrier. Instead of blowing into tissues, attendees should be blowing into party favors. Eulogies should be accompanied by toasts. Mourners should wear party hats instead of veils. The silk-lined boxes should be treated with the same anticipation as paper-wrapped ones.

  Eventually, the funeral ended, and the organ below resurrected itself with a moan like the grim realization of a school morning. Seven pallbearers, including the mayor and Chief Pumphrey, approached the coffin. Douglas’s father closed the lid with a gentle and practiced motion, and six of them reverently picked up Mr. Stauffer and walked down the aisle. The seventh grabbed the hot dog sign and held it in front of him like a flag at a state procession. After a few moments in which the remaining members of the Stauffer family left the front rows and followed the pallbearers out to the awaiting hearse, the rest of the attendees began to shuffle out of their rows to leave the church.

  Douglas stayed glued in place, secretly investigating the profile of the dark-haired girl as she walked toward the aisle. She was as pale as birch bark, with delicate features and a slight awkwardness to her walk. On her hand—the hand that held the very program he had given her—was a large, purple stone set in silver. Her black dress had bits of red lint on it from the pew.

  She looked back in his direction.

  It was just a glance, one that might have been random or intended for the giant Christ head that peeked over Douglas’s shoulder, but it gave him a sense of vertigo, like he was on an elevator descending too fast.

  Before he knew it, she’d disappeared down the stairs.

  Outside, Mr. Stauffer was being loaded into the Mortimer Family Funeral Home hearse, which would take him to a cemetery in nearby Osshua, the town where he was born. Moss and Feaster wouldn’t get the honor of planting this man.

  And while Mr. Stauffer might not be going to Cowlmouth Cemetery that afternoon, Douglas certainly was. He had to find out about Lowell’s monster.

  Preoccupied with that big news and the girl with the purple ring (but mostly the girl with the purple ring) Douglas leaped down the balcony steps three at a time, only to run right into a stare hard enough to almost knock the wind out him. Standing at the opposite side of the church was that same tall woman he’d handed a program to, boring holes into his skull through the magnifying lenses of her glasses. Her expression didn’t seem to have changed at all in the past hour. Douglas headed toward the exit with a little more purpose, but turned his head one last time to look back at her. She was still glowering at him through those narrowed eyes, the tiny flowers on her dress still being eaten by the void.

  Douglas loved Cowlmouth Cemetery. It was his park, his backyard, his playground. It was a foundation for his imagination and a forum for all his big questions. His parents were okay with that. They didn’t find it morbid. Or, more accurately, they found it morbid, but morbid means something totally different to morticians. Lowell and Douglas had passed many a day here in the old rot garden, as Feaster called it.

  Today, the sky was clear, the sun bright, and the temperature comfortable. It was beautiful … which meant that it was a less-than-ideal day to visit a cemetery. Cemetery visits, Douglas believed, were best enjoyed when the weather was chilly, the sky was overcast, and nature itself seemed to be in mourning.

  The gravestones Douglas and Lowell passed as they walked deeper into the graveyard seemed different, as if they sensed the approaching Halloween, that time of year when they would be most in season.

  They eventually found themselves near a grave with a window. It marked the final earthly resting place of Harold Dumont, MD. The doctor had apparently been so afraid of being buried alive that he had designed his grave to ensure that it didn’t happen. A horizontal stone was inset into the top of a knoll, with a small, thick pane of glass centered in the stone six feet above and directly over where Dr. Dumont’s face was. Another capstone supposedly hid a stairwell that led directly into the grave. The story went that Dr. Dumont was buried with a bell in his hand and a breathing tube connecting his mouth to the surface, although Douglas had never been able to find any evidence of it around the grave. In addition, decades of moisture and mold had made the window all but opaque and impenetrable by even the brightest police-issue flashlight, which the boys had, of course, borrowed from Lowell’s father. They found it much creepier not seeing D
r. Dumont, knowing that as they stared down into the glass-topped hole, an unseen skull grinned back at them from six feet below.

  Lowell dropped himself heavily onto the flat stone, rapped on the window, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Helloooooo, Dr. Dumont.” He placed an apple on top of the window.

  They could thank Moss and Feaster for this little tradition. The gravediggers wove quite a different tale about the grave of Dr. Dumont. According to them, Dr. Dumont was insane and could reanimate monsters from sewed-together corpse parts that he had robbed from the town cemetery—this town cemetery. He was eventually caught and hanged for his crimes, but the people of Cowlmouth were so terrified that he had unlocked the secrets of resurrection that they installed the window so that they could check on his corpse to ensure he was politely moldering the way God intended, instead of rising again to terrorize the town. Moss and Feaster advised Douglas that an apple a visit would help keep this mad doctor away. Lowell and Douglas found the idea funny enough to oblige it more often than not.

  “That was a big funeral,” said Douglas.

  “Probably the biggest one Cowlmouth has seen in a long time.” Lowell mispronounced the town’s name on purpose, “Cowl-mouth” the way it looked, instead of “Cowl-muth,” the way the founders had intended. Lowell wasn’t from New England; he’d moved there from Maryland. Lowell had once told Douglas that the place where he was born crawled with water-blue crabs that turned bright red when you cooked them. You had to be careful where you stepped, or your toes would get scissored by the crab’s giant, toothy claws. He had whipped off a shoe and shown Douglas scars on his foot as proof. Lowell moved to Cowlmouth with his father and younger brother sometime around the fourth grade, shortly after his mother’s death. It took him a while to get into the habit of pronouncing the town name correctly. New England town names often follow their own rules of pronunciation. Then again, so did the entire state of Maryland.