13 Mink Street

Karon reached out and found the switch, flicking it on. A sharp snap cut through the air and the light sprang to life. He continued down, making his way to the basement.

Dread, as we know, rarely grows from what we see before us, but from what our minds create in the dark.

The Immers family would never be so foolish as to arrange their basement to have an oppressive appearance, yet those efforts made little difference. At night, even if the walls glowed a cheerful pink, the mere knowledge that two bodies occupied the room would erase any comfort that one might hope for.

The crying continued. It was coming from Aunt Mary’s workroom. Karon stepped to the door, which was unlocked. No one ever thought to secure it.

He paused before reaching for the handle, and turned to glance behind. While the corridor was not completely dark, the gentle slope to the first floor caused his vision to fade into a gloom that the lights struggled to reach.

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, hoping for the sweet scent of warm milk, though he knew he lacked a dog’s nose for such things. Remembering the dog, he looked down. The golden retriever, so eager earlier, had not followed him into the basement. It was hardly a companion worth loving.

He reached for the handle and wrapped his fingers around it. For a moment, it felt as if a channel in his mind switched. It was a brief and disorienting sensation, clear, though not overwhelming. The crying within the workroom stopped at once.

Karon turned back yet again. The lightbulb up in the hallway was still shining, steady and looking normal.

A faint creak broke the quiet. He twisted the handle and pushed the door open. Moving quickly, he flipped the light switch beside the door, flooding the room with blazing light. Generous light can bring rare comfort to the mind.

On twin gurneys in the studio lay Jeff and Mr. Mossan. Jeff’s face was painted with heavy makeup, giving a false radiance to his skin. Too much powder clung to him, and his hair, parted and slicked, granted him more spirit than he’d possessed in life.

In contrast, Mr. Mossan appeared far more natural. He wore almost no makeup, and certain small details had been tended to. He looked as if he was only drifting in a deep and peaceful sleep.

Aunt Mary’s preference was plain to see: charity cases and paying customers were kept separate even in death. Had she known Mr. Mossan’s children were sending him to the crematory, it was possible that the man might have received a similar transformation as young Jeff beside him.

Karon walked past Jeff. The weeping he’d heard earlier had sounded like it belonged to an old voice, nothing that a young man could muster. Elimination left only Mr. Mossan.

But standing over Mr. Mossan, there was nothing amiss to be seen. The man lay in silence.

Karon dragged a round stool over close to the gurney, sat down, and propped his feet up on the metal rails beneath.

He tilted his head to closely observe Mr. Mossan. From the corner of his eye, he monitored the open office door, especially the ramp at the far end of the hall.

A quarter hour passed. All remained still.

Human or ghost, will you not show yourself? Give me something. Karon sighed. Perhaps, given the hour, his warm bed was the smarter choice.

He stood. Passing by Mr. Mossan, Karon noticed the button at the man’s throat had slipped free. Without thinking, he reached over to fasten it.

His fingers brushed the cold skin of Mr. Mossan’s neck. At that same moment, a wave of dizziness swept over him, like a wisp of smoke entangling his thoughts. He steadied himself against the wall.

A choked, muffled sob was heard again.

Karon’s head jerked up. Mr. Mossan still lay in the same place, untouched, and yet, over in the corner, another form had appeared. It was a hunched shape, whose arms were pulled around their knees as they wept.

Karon did not scream. He had long since prepared himself for such sights. For him, the presence of a ghost was preferable to emptiness. If faced with nothing, he would be forced to question his own mind. Rather than doubt himself, Karon preferred to suspect that the world had gone mad.

He called softly to the shape in the shadowed corner. “Mr. Mossan?”

The figure gave no indication of hearing him. There was no answer, only more weeping. The figure seemed trapped within itself.

Karon took a step toward. “Mr. Mossan?”

As he moved, something split open between sight and presence. No matter how far he walked, the distance refused to shrink, and instead remained constant. Even when Karon’s face nearly touched the opposite wall, “Mr. Mossan” remained curled up in the distant corner.

Even at this moment, the ghostly scene didn’t manage to frighten Karon. Instead, the unnatural distance merely sharpened his curiosity.

“So what I’m seeing isn’t real?” he murmured.

Biting his lower lip, he then chided himself. That was a pointless thing to say.

He spread his hands and adjusted his position, slowly and carefully shifting his angle.

All at once, the huddled vision started to move as well. It did not walk, but slid, as if projected across the room. The image drifted with Karon’s line of sight. Is this... a soul?

He couldn’t be sure what the thing he saw was made of, especially given that he was unable to bridge the distance needed to touch it. Then, a thought stirred.

Karon kept shifting, moving to align his image of the weeping “Mr. Mossan” with the body that lay on the gurney. Moving forward and back, he kept careful watch while trying to align the two as precisely as possible.

He didn’t quite understand why he was doing it, only that it felt right. Of course a ghost should return to its own body, or at least he ought to try to make that happen.

As the figures finally overlapped, the huddled image of “Mr. Mossan” stopped crying and stood up, looking lost. Under Karon’s gaze, he laid down and then seeped into Mr. Mossan’s body.

The process was swift and seamless. The moment that the alignment completed, Karon felt as though a hand grabbed hold of something deep within his mind. It was damp and suffocating, and it yanked hard, as if to rip that thing out.

He let out a muffled groan as pain shot through him. He dropped to his knees, his hands bracing against the cold tile of the floor, just barely enough to keep him upright, unlike what had happened with Mr. Hoffen earlier in the day.

Even so, Karon watched as red blossoms appeared on the blue-and-white tiles below him. Blood, again from his nose.

He clamped a hand over his nose while shakily forcing himself upright. As he rose, Mr. Mossan, newly made whole, also started to sit up atop the gurney. Their movements mirrored each other, silent and almost perfectly synced.

Karon let out a slow breath. He understood that everything was a result of his own reckless interference, yet even so, seeing a corpse sit up in front of him sent a jolt through his spirit: chaos, curiosity, wonder, and above all else, exhilaration.

Mr. Mossan shifted from sitting on the gurney to a kneeling posture, bowing low. His eyes were open, but utterly drained of color. They had become a flat shade of gray-white.

“I beg you... please, do not burn me... do not burn me... Cremation of the flesh... cannot be forgiven... Cremation of the flesh... cannot be forgiven...”

Karon gulped as he watched Mr. Mossan plead in an anxious rite. Aunt Mary had mentioned that Mr. Mossan’s faith forbade cremation, and that for a devout believer, there were only two moments that truly mattered: being born into the church and dying within it. The ending gave way to covenant rebirth. The weeping Karon had heard earlier had been nothing more than the grief and resentment Mr. Mossan had left behind.

“Mr. Mossan? Mr. Mossan?” Karon called out softly.

“Please... do not burn me... Please... do not burn me...” The desperate plea went on, unbroken. It was all that remained. There could be no conversation, no equal exchange. There was only instinct, or, as Mr. Mossan himself might have referred to it while alive, obsession.

But how had it begun? Aunt Mary, Uncle Mason, Mina, not one of them had ever mentioned any corpses moving about in unnatural ways. To most, the world remained as it should be, with nothing out of place. Yet there had first been Jeff, and then Mr. Mossan. Twice Karon had seen strange disturbances, each of which had originated with the dead. He could not help but suspect, having become almost certain by now, that the cause lay within himself.

Was it something left over from the original Karon? Or could it be the reason he had awakened here in the first place?

“Please... do not burn me... do not burn me... do not burn me! Do not burn me! Do not burn me!!”

Karon noticed Mr. Mossan had started to speak faster. His shoulders were trembling, and the dull gray of his eyes had become streaked with scarlet veins. The air itself grew thick, soaked with a new and dangerous tension.

Cautiously, Karon tried again while inching back, “Mr. Mossan?”

Things had started strange, but what came next played out with a grim, almost logical inevitability. After all, how else would something newly wrenched from death behave?

Just as Karon started to move past Mr. Mossan, the man’s head snapped up. “You would actually burn me!”

Mr. Mossan’s eyes flushed completely red as his body jerked upright. The movement was nothing but awkward violence. No hint of the coordination of a living creature remained, only the wild thrashing of a fish thrown onto the shore.

A sudden blow slammed into Karon’s back. He collapsed forward, but caught himself on his hands and spun back around. Mr. Mossan lunged at him, hands clawing for Karon’s throat.

Karon drove a knee into Mr. Mossan, but he had never been strong. Mr. Mossan, possessing the unnatural weight of the dead, could not be dislodged. Instead, the force caused Karon’s knee to buckle.

“You dare... to burn me!”

Mr. Mossan’s mouth opened wide and then clamped down, hard, on Karon’s chest.

Karon braced himself for having his flesh torn, but instead felt only a blunt, jarring pain. It was as if a stone was pressing against his ribs. Mr. Mossan had lost most of his teeth while alive, and had relied on dentures. His bite was no real threat.

Still, Mr. Mossan’s fingers firmly clasped around Karon’s throat while his legs coiled around Karon’s torso. The young man was held fast in an inescapable grip, locked down in a manner similar to how an octopus might hold prey.

Karon clawed at the old man’s hand, fighting to break free, but all efforts proved useless. Pinned to the cold tile, and close to suffocation, Karon twisted his head to stare out the door.

“How dare you burn me!” Mr. Mossan’s voice was wild, almost rabid with fury.

A sharp metallic snap rang out. It was the sound of a filament breaking, a bulb shattering, or maybe just a finger snapping. Karon could not say. All he knew was that something inside of him flickered with hope. It might mean his rescue.

Instead, Mr. Mossan’s frenzy only grew stronger. He shrieked, “Burn me! Burn me! Burn me!”

His hands mercilessly tightened around Karon’s neck, as though twisting a link of sausage. The pressure rose as if something was about to rupture. The sensation of bursting spread everywhere; ears, eyes, and nose all swelled.

“How dare... burn me!

“How dare... me!

“Dare...

“Burn...”

Then, Mr. Mossan’s body seized and collapsed.

Freed, Karon gasped for air. The basement stank the same as before, but even that stench seemed sweet. His airway had been torn raw, and blood bubbled from his nose to his mouth.

He shoved Mr. Mossan’s weight aside, propped himself up, and then inched backwards until his spine met the wall. His gaze moved to the door. The corridor was an artificial yellow near the threshold, but beyond that was a thick, impenetrable darkness.

One blood-smeared hand pressed to his face. He tapped his brow a few times, a hoarse, ragged laugh shaking from him. After laughing, he drew in a wavering breath. In a language no one in this world could understand, he spat a string of curses, “Motherfucker. What kind of fucked-up world is this?”

...

On the slope leading up from the basement, Tiz stood waiting. On the landing beside him, the black cat, Poelle, crouched. Tiz turned and glanced down at the creature. “That last bit he said, was that demonkin speech?”

The black cat tipped its head so that golden eyes stared up at Tiz. In a woman’s voice, the cat answered, “I’ve lived for two hundred years, yet never heard of a demonkin inventing their own language.”

After a moment’s pause, she added, “Let alone one... so clearly not of this world.”