It was late Christmas Eve when Richard Creepley got the call from his boss, Mr. Boothroyd, about a disturbance at the funeral parlour. An old friend of Boothroyd’s and long-time neighbour of the home, Elsie Sanders, had spotted coloured lights, flashing on and off, and heard loud music playing. ‘Did you lock up properly, man? Did you turn the Christmas tree lights off?’ Boothroyd said to Creepley.
Creepley had to think for a second, questioning himself. Boothroyd – Bingham’s one and only funeral director – had a crotchety, impatient manner that always made Creepley feel under pressure. It didn’t help that he had stopped at the Horse and Plough for more than a few lonely pints of ale on the way home, watching from a corner the post-work crowd in festive spirits, and had since hit the whiskey. But he knew he had locked up properly; he went through it in his head. His thoughts slurring and churning over slowly, just like his words: ‘Yess, I turned the Christmas tree lights off… sset the alarm… turned the main lights off, locked the door and left… All’s normal.’
‘And the music? You turned the music off?’
‘There wasn’t any music on. Not that I can remember. It was quiet as a mouse.’
‘Hmm… well, at least the alarm hasn’t gone off. That’s something at least. But you’re going to have to go over there, I’m afraid. See what’s going on. Turn anything on, off. The last thing we need is the old bill getting involved.’
‘But it’s Christmas Eve.’
‘I know it’s Christmas Eve, you nitwit. Hence the reason I need you to go over there. We can’t have the home causing a disturbance on Christmas Eve of all nights, it’s bad for business. We’ve got a reputation to uphold.’
Creepley held the phone away from his ear and groaned. This meant a trek from his house, right across town, to the other side. A fifteen-minute walk. It had already been bitter on the way home from the pub earlier, a biting, swirling wind and heavy purple sky, threatening snow. ‘Could be a white Christmas,’ someone at the pub had said.
‘Nah, it’s too cold to snow,’ someone replied.
It’s alright for some, Creepley thought, how the other half live. Boothroyd had a huge swish house in Saxondale, radiators and lights on all over the place, no doubt. A considerably younger wife and posh jag on the drive. There was money to be had in the ‘Death Business’, especially during the colder months, that was for sure. Creepley didn’t even currently have a car. Or a partner. Lost his licence, drink driving, sold the car for more booze and had never been able to replace it, or pay for the insurance. He lived and worked in the same town anyway – had done ten years – so what was the point in a car? He became aware of his boss’s voice, coming out of the phone still: ‘I’m sorry, have you got something better to do? Hello? Creepley! Are you still there?’
Creepley wrapped his coat about him and set off down the maze of alleyways and jitties that led into Bingham town. The wind howling and biting at his exposed face and ears. There was definitely moisture in the air, the swirling sting of fine, icy sleet, like shifting swarms of winter bees. At least his woollen hat was covering his semi-bald head. He wore it whilst in the mortuary at work too, it could get mighty cold in there. Head down, Creepley trudged on. Save for the rattling of the large bunch of keys in his coat pocket, the streets were silent. There wasn’t a soul about. Only him. Muggins. He cursed his boss and he cursed his life, intermittently braving the cold on his bare hands to swig from a hip flask. The burning liquid a familiar if small comfort.
As Creepley neared the market square, the silence was disturbed by the sound of music and singing, carried on the night air. He looked up. The Poe-like edifice of the church was nearing. Yellow lights from within spilled across the skirt of its churchyard, the gravestones casting long shadows. As he entered the graveyard, negotiating the cobbled aisle that split it, the music and singing got louder, more joyous. Carol singing. Emanating from the open front door of the church. Midnight Mass of course. He hated the people within. Hated their sense of joy and togetherness, their sense of family and community. Their Christianity. That they had other people to share and spend Christmas with. Worse, it was now officially Christmas Day.
He shuddered and hurried on past. Stumbling slightly and cursing again. He had a headache coming on. He’d drunk too much. Again. Wanting to avoid any more revellers, Creepley skirted round the market square and came out on the top road out of Bingham, the road the funeral parlour was on. Nearly there now. With the do-gooding carol singing long-faded, a new, distant source of music became noticeable. Creepley pricked up his ears and lifted his head as he walked. It was hard to make out what type of music it was, maybe Christmas pop music, maybe rock ‘n’ roll. One thing that was for sure was where it was coming from. The vicinity of the funeral parlour.
The funeral home itself was a substantial, white building – a former residential property – set back from the road, with a curving driveway. A prominent, swinging sign on a post at its entrance alerted it to passers-by. ‘H.M. BOOTHROYD. INDEPENDENT FAMILY FUNERAL DIRECTORS’. Creepley reached for the bunch of keys in his coat pocket and entered the grounds, passing an oval patch of lawn, centred with a tree, currently leafless, yet twinkling with white fairy lights. The music was louder now; and then, for the first time, he noticed the flashing, coloured lights through the frosted windows too. Not just the lights of the Christmas tree, but the strings of them that decorated the foyer as well. It was Sandra, the secretary, that pushed for all the festive adornments and put them up every year. ’Just because it’s a funeral home, it doesn’t mean it’s not Christmas. People still want to feel festive, to see some colour and joy at a sad time,’ she said.
Creepley sped up, making a beeline for the front door with his keys. Fortunately, there was no sign of the rozzers yet. He stuck the front door key in, turned it and opened the heavy door into the porch. Instinctively, he braced himself for the alarm going off, but to his surprise, this didn’t happen. That was odd. He knew he’d set it… Perhaps he hadn’t? Perhaps this was his fault? Now the home had been broken into and taken over by a group of pissed idiots. Fearing the worst, tentatively, he pushed open the inner door, all the while, the music from within, increasing in volume.
The scene that greeted Richard Creepley that Christmas night was one that could lead a person to think they had gone mad. Or were dreaming, drunk, or tripping on hallucinogenic drugs. Or all of the above. There before him, filling the foyer, were the current residents of Bingham funeral parlour. About a dozen of them in total. But they were no longer deceased. No longer eternally asleep in their respective coffins or shut away, stiff on their slabs. They were alive. And they were dancing. And drinking. And partying. The current tune on, aptly, was ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’. The Eartha Kitt version.
There was old Mr. Baines, who’d died of natural causes, eighty if he was a day, Christmas party hat, skewiff on his head, jigging and gyrating as if he was a teenager again. There was the young man that had recently been brought in, mangled in a motorbike accident. Face still bashed in, yet upright and dancing… Vera Haggerty, who had been flung from her mobility scooter when a wheel of it got caught in a pothole… Maggie Hepplethwaite, whose surprise 90th birthday party turned out to be too much of a ‘surprise’. Cancer victims, stroke victims, old-aged pensioners, all in various states of decay – and all bopping away.
It was Mr. Symes – maybe Simms – Creepley couldn’t remember – that was first to spot him, over his wife’s shoulder as they danced. The pair of them, a good-looking, young couple that had recently, tragically, passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning; therefore, out of the whole bunch of them, the most-perfectly preserved.
Mr Symes nodded his head at Creepley in an all-too-familiar, spine-chilling way; as if he’d been expecting him. And then the song changed, and the opening bars of a new one started playing that Creepley didn’t recognise. But the dancing corpses certainly did. A pleased cheer went up in unison and they formed into two rows, the taller at the back, the smaller at the front. Then, incredibly, they started performing a seemingly well-rehearsed dance routine to the song. The song itself was in the style of a bygone era – the 50’s or 60’s. A sort of cross between ‘The Twist’ and ‘Monster Mash’, with its own signature dance moves, but instead of the Twist, it was called ‘The Dead’. ‘Do the Dead!’ the singer crooned out for the chorus, as the corpses performed the moves. This involved them crossing one hand, then the other, over their chest and shoulders, to represent a figure in repose in a coffin. Then, again in turn, placing each arm straight out in front of them. A vigorous shake of the hips followed, then two steps were taken forwards, one foot, then the other, almost like a zombie-walk. The whole thing was then performed in reverse.
And all the while, Creepley stood there agog. Mouth open, frozen to the spot in fear and shock. It was if he’d stumbled onto some twisted, real-life set of the Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ video. But a rock ‘n’ roll version. ‘Do the Dead!’ The song was infectious, and here they came again, lurching forwards. And the problem was, every time they did their forward steps, they seemed to be gaining ground, closing the gap between him and them. Despite this, almost involuntarily, Creepley’s eyes were drawn to the lithesome figure of Mrs. Symes, dancing. Shaking her hips. Her long, lustrous black hair, resting over her chest in the thin gown she was wearing. Sensing he’d been caught looking, Creepley shamefully stole a quick, furtive glance at her face to check. Her eyes were narrowed, piercing; she had seen him. Creepley’s guilty gaze shifted to her husband next to her instead; his eyes were narrowed too, homed in on him, accompanied by a sneer and a snarl.
And then it dawned on Creepley, and his blood ran cold.
You see, every man has his secrets… Every woman and child too. Creepley had been a bad man. A very bad man. On her ill-fated arrival at the funeral home, Creepley had been drawn to Mrs Symes, just as he had been drawn to the job there at the funeral parlour. Both things seemingly wrapped up with the death of his own mother. Mrs Symes looked like her; or looked like her when she had died when he was a young boy. Suicide. After drinking a half-bottle of gin, she had drowned herself in the bath. It was the young Richard Creepley – or Dickie as he was called as a boy – who had found her. The image of it forever burned into his brain. Her raven hair, wispy, billowing and floating around her face. Lips blue, and two rosy patches of colour on her ivory cheeks. Her naked body, again, perfectly preserved – as if in a formaldehyde aqueous solution – under the clear, green-blue water. Seeing the parts of her he knew he shouldn’t see. The parts that no young boy should ever see of his mother.
It was an understatement to say that that incident had seriously affected the young Richard Creepley. An only child, an unfortunate-looking boy and a bit of a loner, anyway, he became further withdrawn. Dickie the Creep. Dick the Creep. Or just plain ‘Creep’, they used to call him at school. He started drinking and smoking before he had even hit his teens. Stealing both cigarettes and alcohol from his uncaring, widowed father who left him entirely to his own devices. Eschewing any form of personal hygiene, he developed body odour, halitosis and bad, brown teeth. A small boy then morphed into a small man with a patchy beard and a prematurely balding head. In contrast, excessive dark hairs sprung up on the back of his hands and neck, as if he was cursed. The alcohol and tobacco continued to consume and age him. Both things emanating from him, as if seeped into his pores. Unsurprisingly, he never had a girlfriend. Never even had a kiss. His mother’s was the only real-life naked body he had ever seen. Until he started working at the funeral parlour that was…
Mr. Boothroyd ran an old-fashioned funeral home with old-fashioned values, antiquated systems and equipment. He didn’t have CCTV for example, and the troubled, damaged Creepley had taken advantage of this. A morbid curiosity and perversion had turned into an addiction. And when the Symes couple were brought in, Creepley thought he had hit the jackpot – the woman bearing an uncannily striking resemblance to his mother. Practically twitching and salivating, looking soon turned into touching – something he had never done before. But you don’t need CCTV to see. The dead can see. Something Creepley was about to find out.
The motley group of dancing corpses were even closer now; and all the while, the Symes couple never took their eyes off him. Creepley backed away in fear, in growing terror, reaching behind him for the door. But then he felt a sudden shove in the back from ice-cold hands and was thrust forwards. Straight into the outstretched arms of Mr. Symes, who received him in a deathly embrace. Creepley tried to pull himself away, tried to fight. But it was no good. Symes’s grip was as strong and cold as that of an automaton, made of steel. And by him, Creepley was dragged, kicking and screaming, through the foyer, towards the cold room. Meanwhile, the other dancing corpses had shifted to form two lines, an aisle for him to be dragged through. They stood in rows, clapping in time to the music – which someone had purposely turned up louder to drown out Creepley’s screams.
Squeak, squeak, went Creepley’s boots on the cold tiled floor of the morgue, as he was dragged limply through it. An unfit man, he was mostly inert now, his energy sapped and losing the fight. As if his body had shut down in resignation. Or maybe protection. Behind him, Mrs Symes stood waiting by an open body-drawer, a pullout slab in a wall of many. Creepley was bundled unceremoniously onto it and pushed down onto his back, held down with strong hands. Mrs Symes pressed a button and Creepley began to disappear into the wall, as if he were having an MRI scan. The sudden movement and reality of what was happening to him triggered a fresh, futile round of screams and a spasm of resistance from Creepley. Then it was quickly cold. Fridge cold. And as all around him went dark, his terrified mind pondered if it was fate that had brought him there that night. Or had the whole thing been orchestrated from start to finish, the exacting of a macabre revenge?
His screams became muffled, and then were silenced entirely by the clunk, click of the drawer closing and being locked. A cheer from the open door to the foyer went up, where silhouettes of corpses stood. Then the music was turned off, and the morgue became silent once more. Not to be disturbed again till the new year.
Outside on the street, a man stopped to let his dog pee up against the exterior wall of the grounds to the funeral parlour. Waiting and looking up, he just caught the last of the flashing, coloured Christmas lights inside being extinguished. He wasn’t sure if he had imagined it. A few too many eggnogs. ‘Hmph,’ he said. ‘Come on, Sadie.’ He pulled the dog away. Wrapping his coat around him, their shapes disappeared into the murky Christmas night. Whilst behind him, the home fell into total darkness. The only source of life left being the wind as it whistled through the empty street, rattling the Christmas wreath on the door of the funeral parlour and making its swinging sign creak and knock.
The End
Copyright © Adam Longden 2024
The moral right of Adam Longden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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This book is a work of fiction. All characters and events are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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