The Haunted Funeral Parlor

A Short Story

I.

It was located southwest of the city’s business district, its rear entrance facing the shell of an old factory, a motor works plant so old that Henry Ford himself might once have graced the premises. Built at the end of the Great War, the funeral parlor serviced the city residents for the better part of six decades, prospering with the optimism that followed the Second War, then slowly declining as the city yielded to the pessimism wrought by Vietnam, racial strife, and urban decay. To Henry, the broken windows and weed-choked lawn were a fixture of his childhood, and it never occurred to him to imagine that things had been otherwise.

“You really think he came here?” he asked.

“Winkie?” Peyton Brown threw a stone, which flew wide of the window and struck the brick casement. “Not my day to keep up with him.”

“Yeah, but the cops asked you what you knew.” They had interviewed Henry for an hour, and though he had told no overt lie, a few things were left unsaid, and only the presence of his mother had kept him from crying or blurting out the truth in a desperate scream.

“And I told them the truth – Winkie a loser who hung around our crew, and I had as little to do with him as possible. Most likely, he hitched a ride with some guy in a creeper van, maybe they’ll find him next year at the bottom of a lake – or maybe they won’t. Either way, it’s not my problem.”

He kicked an empty can, and a spider scuttled away, startled by the sudden light. Henry crushed it under his shoe without thinking.

II.

“We need to talk to you.”

 Henry’s circle of friends, a half-dozen or so boys of the same approximate age, were kids of working parents and broken families, indifferent students whose hours were largely unsupervised outside of the drudgery of the classroom. Their territory ran for about ten blocks along the street (once a major artery, long ago bisected by the interstate) past the school, the park, the old motor works, and the funeral home. His own parents had divorced two years prior, and he rarely saw his father, an engineer who lived with a young girlfriend on the far side of the river. Henry spent most of his time with Peyton, who lived with his grandmother – his parents had earned a small fortune through the ownership and sale of several downtown clubs, and they spent their time enjoying the nightlife of both coasts as they plotted the path to their next big fortune.

Bill Winkler was a hanger-on, a gangly, stammering kid that they largely tolerated for comic relief. They dubbed him Wee Willie Winkie and crafted obscene variations of the old nursery rhyme at his expense, and though Henry did not participate in the cruelest taunts (for he was adept at eliding his culpability from conscious thought), he accepted that Winkie was the lowest man on the totem pole, a scapegoat for the gang’s ire. Winkie’s clothes were infrequently washed, his feet were shod in thirdhand Chuck Taylors, and he was deathly afraid of bugs and spiders. That Winkie should come to a bad end surprised Henry not at all, but he was rattled by the police interview, and the sight of a passing black-and-white was enough to break him into a cold sweat.

“We need to talk to you Henry. We need to know what happened in the days before Bill went missing.”

III.

The front entrance faced the street, so they went around back, where the rear entrance faced an open field. The door was posted with a faded NO TRESPASSING sign, and a broken surveillance camera stared from one corner, its electric eye blinded by time and the elements. Heavy plastic covered the windows, and he peered through the translucent covering but could see nothing but cobwebs. The usual detritus of urban life – discarded liquor bottles, old condoms, rusty needles – was largely absent and Henry noted aloud the cleanliness of the site. 

“Of course it’s clean,” Peyton snorted. “The bums and junkies are afraid of this place.”

“What do you make of this?” Henry plucked an old sign from the dirt, its lettering barely visible.

“You’re the science geek. Ask your dad.”

“That’s a good idea.” He had little desire to speak with his father, but doubt nagged at the back of his mind. “Let’s come back tomorrow.”

“Suit yourself,” Peyton grinned. “Chickenshit.”

They retreated, leaving the faded sign behind.

DANGER – CHLORINE DIOXIDE

IV.

The E. Thorpe and Sons Funeral Parlor was operated by Ebenezer Thorpe from its genesis in 1921 until his death some fifty years later, and if its founder’s reputed germophobia raised eyebrows (the premises were fumigated with surprising regularity), everyone agreed that Mister Thorpe was an honest man who treated his clientele with quiet dignity and respect. His son Robert continued operations at the site for another decade before opening a series of new locations, suburban outposts that prospered as the original location withered away. When the old building closed for good in 1987, Robert Thorpe ceded the business to his son Eric, and things continued on as they always had until 1992, when the family was struck by tragedy – Eric Thorpe vanished, and his father was discovered in the parking lot of the empty building, dead of a sudden heart attack.

There were quiet rumors that Eric Thorpe had absconded with a sizeable part of the family fortune, but a police investigation revealed the mortuary’s finances to be scrupulously in order – not a penny was out of place. The following year, the chain of funeral homes was sold to a franchise out of Indiana, and the remnants of the Thorpe family decamped for the west coast.

The old building was left empty and decaying.

V.

“Hi Dad.” 

“Hello.” His father’s voice sounded vaguely impatient – make it quick, I have a hot date tonight – and he decided to get to the point.

“What’s chlorine dioxide?”

“That’s an interesting question for a kid,” his father replied, taking the bait. “Why do you want to know?”

“I saw it on a sign outside an old building.”

“It’s a kind of bleach.” There was a pause as his father muffled the phone, talking to someone else in the room. “It’s mostly used for making paper or for water treatment, but you can use it to decontaminate a building – seal up the windows and cook off a mix of sodium chlorate, peroxide, and sulfuric acid. The fog penetrates every nook and cranny and kills off everything – stuff like mold spores or anthrax. Listen, I have to go in a minute, but where did you see this sign?”

“At the old funeral home near the school.” Henry was wary of giving too much information, but in five minutes, his father would forget their conversation.

“Sounds nasty – anyhow, you should come over sometime, and I’ll introduce you to Clarissa.” Clarissa was his father’s girlfriend, a sullen brunette closer to Henry’s age than his father’s. “Love you kid.”

“Sure. Talk to you soon.” He hung up and dialed Peyton’s number.

“We need to go back.”

“Conscience bothering you, Henry?” Peyton said after a long pause. “If you’re scared, go ahead and tell the cops how I dared Winkie to sneak inside. If they charge me with murder, I’ll just tell them you were my accomplice and take you with me.”

“I just need to know,” Henry said quietly. “If Winkie fell and broke his neck, nobody has to know that we were involved.”  

“All right.” There was a long pause at the end of the line, and he imagined Peyton bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet, shadowboxing at the empty air. “My grandma leaves the house at nine, and we’ve got all day after that.”

VI.

The city fumigated the property in 1998, for abandoned buildings were breeding grounds for vermin, though a municipal health inspector found the surrounding area surprisingly free of rats. Left unmentioned was the disappearance of a pair of vagrants and the sudden resignation of the health inspector, who subsequently checked himself into an inpatient facility for abuse of alcohol and other substances. The former health inspector, perhaps the first person to cross the threshold of the abandoned building since the disappearance of Eric Thorpe, underwent extensive counseling while hospitalized, but his case files are not open for public review.

VII.

They stole a crowbar from a nearby hardware store and pried off the padlock, and the musky smell of old decay wafted from the interior. A lone spider fled the light of the open doorway as they stepped over the threshold. Henry’s feet crunched on the husk of an old pod, and he peeled away the layers with his fingers. The mouse was little more than a mummified husk, and he scattered the bones with a startled cry.  

“Jesus.” Peyton covered his nose with one arm. “Smells like left a few customers unburied when they closed up shop.”

Sunlight, its beams weakened by the screen of cobwebs, filtered through the windows as Henry paused to read the inscription on a tarnished brass plate – OFFICE. The floor was soft and yielding, and a single misstep, Henry thought, would be enough to plunge them through the rotten boards. He paused to listen and heard no birds singing through the open doorway, no traffic passing on the street outside – the only noise was a quiet hum that reminded him distantly of crickets. Peyton switched on a flashlight and panned the beam around the empty room.

“Hey!” Peyton nearly dropped the flashlight as Henry jabbed him with an elbow. “Look at that.”

The footprints led across the floor in a meandering path before vanishing around a corner, and Henry tried to remember the pattern of Winkie’s old shoes. He kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the light as they crept past the empty viewing rooms, fearful of what might lurk in the spaces beyond the hallway. Their path ended at the top of a staircase, and he paused to listen – the whispering hum was noticeably louder. A spider crawled up his arm, and he brushed it away quickly.

“What’s down there?” he asked.

“That’s where the sausage is made – the place where they embalm the bodies, drain the blood, and sell the organs to multinational conglomerates. As God is my witness, I never thought Winkie had the guts to go through with it.” Peyton handed him the flashlight. “You go first.”

They descended, and though the concrete felt slick beneath his feet, Henry was reluctant to use the handrail We should go back, he thought as Peyton lagged a step behind, his breathing the rapid pant of barely suppressed panic. If I give in first, he’ll never let me hear the end of it. The basement was an open room with a tiled floor and a large metal table in the center. Its floor was draped with a carpet of webbing, and the walls were oddly dark, out of place with the white tile at their feet. Those walls seemed to move in the beam of Henry’s flashlight, and the humming grew to an angry buzz as grabbed Henry’s arm. He tried to speak, but no sound escaped his lips as he pointed to the bundle in the corner. It was huge, much larger A pair of shoes – worn out Chuck Taylors that appeared at least third-hand – protruded from one end, and Henry felt sick as he remembered the dead mouse upstairs.  The walls rippled downward and outward, spreading across the floor as the buzzing hum, the movement of thousands of tiny feet, grew darkly insistent.

The basement was full of spiders.

They turned to run, and as the black tide cut off their retreat, Henry’s final, horrified realization was that the bundle on the floor was moving. It ballooned outward, and the silk began to split, but he closed his eyes, not daring to see what might emerge.