Corpse Whisperer: Chapter 2.
All chapters here.
All chapters here.
He came out of his daydreaming as they came near the graveyard.
His heart was laced with the acid adrenalin spike caused by the morning events. Nothing could distract him long enough to dislodge that one fact from his thoughts: he'd lost it, again.
And the pickles were mad, to the boot…
Maybe the place, familiar and, in a very literal sense, prone to resting, would offer a more peaceful environment to help his mind focus on something else.
It was immense.
People who where new to the town would always wonder how such a huge necropolis could have formed. The truth was hidden in history: several small villages had held the terrain as a the "common boneyard" for centuries. It had not been a problem until the tenants started complaining of leaks, and men who could handle a growing population of complaining revenants were suddenly needed.
Men like Norman Tronton.
Norman was the local corpsekeeper. A tough job if there was one, which consisted not only in keeping the awakened deads steady, but also in preventing them from forming unions. If Necrologists were engineers, corpsekeepers were their much needed artisan counterpart.
Tronton was at the main gate as they arrived, warmly greeting them.
"Good morning Doctor!"
- "Good morning, Norman! So, how are they today?"
"Pretty quiet if you ask me, sir. I'm a bit surprised actually. 'tis the angry season alright but they're all euthanasic… aenestitic… asthenic, that's the word!"
"Do you think", he asked, "that there's a cause for it, or could it be some abnormal behavior?"
Norman's expression changed to a thoughtful frown.
- "What I think is that you're doing a mighty good job, sir. The more you come, the quieter they get. Honest, now I'm wondering if they could go dead a second time".
- "Only if you chop their head off. Plus, they are still picketing at sunset aren't they?"
- "This picket thing, that's their only past-time sir, they won't stop until they find something better to do. I reckon you won't be needing to chop, sir. And it's tougher than it looks, really."
- "I wouldn't doubt you opinion, Norman… Now, tell me, where's my 4 o'clock?"
- "Ah, yes. I wouldn't know sir."
He looked at Norman's complexion, going increasingly redder. Norman was a very tall man. The only feature equaling his height was his weight. Fat Norman, as the residents would creatively call him, was momentarily looking like a tomato about to burst out of shame.
That incident was a first. The misplacement of a tenant meant extraordinary circumstances; Norman liked could sometimes be a tad heavy on the bottle, but he was not the careless type.
- "It's not like you to lose track of a corpse. How comes?". - "Well… say… You know, she hadn't been dead for long when she awoke, say, ehr… maybe a day or two. Still looking pretty green if you allow me the expression."
- "She tried to seduce you?" he asked, slightly disturbed by the thought.
- "Why, no! They'd do that sometimes, but look at me! 'Been doing the job for 27 years and shan't fall for beginner's tricks." With indignation in his voice, he continued. "When I say green, I say spry. She ran, see. Very, very fast. Now she's hidden in some mausoleum, but I'd be damned if I knew which one."
Trying to visualize Fat Norman running after a lively she-corpse was a horse short of an epic. Norman knew his trade, but wasn't of age anymore and his knees would have given-up after a couple of steps.
"That's alright, that's alright. Don't bother yourself too much. She'll be out at dusk along with all the others and I'll have a little chat with her."
A runner. Of all the thing, he'd have to go after a runner. Had he brought it with him instead of losing it, the matter would have been completely different. Getting to convince a runner while empty handed was an agonizing task.
Henri proposed to get on with helping the regulars as a warm-up. Dusk was still a couple of hours away and, in any case, the only other choice was a round of Norman's home-made grass alcohol.
After venturing a "Liquor or succor, dear sir?" Henri recovered from a heavy duty scowl and proceeded to fetch the remaining remains for his employer.
Said employer had a hard time focusing. The usual babble occurring during his consultations, about the dead proletariat, peace for passed, and other gimmicks was getting under his skin. He found himself relieved when the sun ultimately set.
Nightfall woke the picketing corpses from their theoretically eternal rest (actually a 6 hours slack break) and, as usual, they gathered toward the graveyard's gate to continue with the protests.
-"How do we rest?"
-"In peace!"
-"When do we want it?"
-"Forever!"
The same slogan went on and on, with infinite patience, hoping to get what they wanted by wearing-out any available listener. The heavy iron barrier they were standing near to had actually started to rust out of boredom, proof of their marginal yet increasing success.
The running dead girl was there, shouting with the others.
He approached the mass of protesters with the intent to deliver his usual speech. It would send a third of them back to their grave, another third back to work and irritate the remaining ones enough to give them a migraine.
Everything happened exactly as planned, save for the runner, who came at him with a dull look in her eyes.
More about the Corpse Whisperer here.
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Corpse Whisperer: Chapter 2 by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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