While my friends learned how to flip burgers and mow lawns at age fourteen, I vacuumed underneath caskets at Tannenbaum Funeral Home. No rotation of supervisors micromanaged my daily tasks. The dead offered quiet, solemn approval, which to the disbelief of my classmates, I preferred.
Vacuuming wasn’t my only responsibility. I dusted, refilled tissue boxes, cleaned the bathrooms and during visitations I attended to the basic needs of the weary and weeping. Throughout the warmer months the job entailed more outside work than inside, making for a welcome change of pace. Living next door meant my parents weren’t required to drive me — a benefit that played into their decision permitting me to work around the deceased.
It paid well, and to the surprise of everyone, Mr. Tannenbaum was as good a boss as any. He was quiet and unassuming, cared for grieving widows, and was fair with his demands. Given his choice of profession, he seemed perfectly normal. That was what I thought anyhow, until one frightful Saturday evening during my last summer working at the funeral home.
My parents were sure I experienced a mental breakdown of some sort, the subconscious reconciliation of a sad young man who lost his grandpa only a few months previous. I loved Grandpa Klein, this is true, but his passing had nothing to do with me watching the dead rise from their graves, or from finding out Mr. Tannenbaum practiced black magic.
As my experience grew, so did my responsibilities. I was asked to close and given a key to lock up after I left. I was most scared during those few seconds when I needed to march twelve feet down a dark hallway before reaching the rear exit. On those nights I believed a cold, dead hand would reach out and pull me back into the abyss.
When no visitation followed the next day, then I was required to carry folding chairs into the cellar for storage. On the evening in question, I carried chairs, two under each arm, anxious to finish up as a thunderstorm brewed.
The cellar felt cool and dank, but spacious, as it provided additional storage for new casket models. A dozen or more, some ornately decorated, lined the walls, their red and blue satin interiors gleaming. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling cast the only light, activated by a switch near the stairs. In the far corner stood a rickety wooden bookshelf, filled with a collection of dusty old books.
As I stacked the final round of chairs against the wall, a bright flash of lightning streaked through the glass cinder block windows, and the power went out in the building. There, breathing heavily in the pitch black, the hair on my neck stood straight up, and a cold sweat overtook my entire body. Even though I wanted to run at full speed, I knew it would be at the risk of falling on my face. A faint light flickered on the wall opposite the bookcase that pulled me from a trance.
I crept over to the wall and held my hand up to the light. It was clear that it came from behind the bookcase. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I walked over to find a single book missing. A crack had formed in the wood in that empty space, revealing what appeared to be another room behind it.
I pulled books off to get a better look. One of them would not budge, instead initiating a click that opened the bookcase like a door. It swung outward to reveal not a room, but a stone ceiling, walls and staircase spiraling downward.
All the way to the bottom were small torches on the wall, already lit, illuminating strange markings engraved on the stairs. Tannenbaum Funeral Home was one of the oldest buildings in the city, but I never thought it would contain an ancient undiscovered secret lair, long since forgotten. While I feared I had stumbled across something I should not have, a curiosity pulled at my insides, inviting me into the discovery.
When I reached the bottom, I expected nothing more than another cellar. Instead, I found an underground graveyard and crypt. The ground was soft dirt instead of stone. Rotting corpses, down to flesh and bone, were wrapped in linens, filling small spaces in the walls. There must have been twenty to thirty in various states of decomposition.
At the front of the room were a number of headstones and one giant sarcophagus that had ghastly decorations chiseled into it — distorted faces and bodies writhing in agony. It doubled as an altar, where a large book laid on top next to several candles, a chalice and dagger.
I walked over to get a better look at the thick book, its pages leathery tan and filled with writings and illustrations I could not comprehend. Flipping through them, my fingers trembled, and I began to shiver. I picked up the dagger and touched the tip. It was much sharper than expected and cut a hole in my finger. Several drops of blood fell to the surface of the sarcophagus.
Those drops of blood seeped into channels lining the stone lid, but instead of leaving a stain, they trickled into a river of blood, expanding outward, filling every last crack. As I backed away, I startled by the earth quaking beneath my feet. Several of the headstones cracked and fell to pieces, while the bones from the human remains buried in the walls rattled. When it all stopped, the lid from the sarcophagus inched open, just enough for a hand to slither out and attempt to remove the lid.
I scrambled to leave, tripping over the broken gravestones. Mounds of soil shifted, giving way to skeleton hands rising up to grab hold of my legs. They used me as leverage to pull themselves out from their resting places, heads and shoulders rising up, the dead coming to life.
I managed to kick myself free, while the lid fell away from the sarcophagus completely. What sat upright was not human. It was a foul beast with the head and face of a bat, the torso of a man, and the lower half of a canine. It had strong sinewy muscles with a hairy chest and forearms.
The monster screeched a terrible noise when it saw me, filling my ears with a dreadful noise no human could replicate.
I ran up the stairs two at a time, and when I reached the cellar, a flare of lightning showed me the way back up the stairs to the funeral parlor. I tumbled down the hallway, mad with excitement, knocking over an end table and several paintings off the walls. When I reached the back door, I flung it open to find Mr. Tannenbaum staring me in the face.
“I don’t want to die!” I screamed. “Please, help me.”
“Go home, boy,” Mr. Tannenbaum said. “Never look back.”
I scrambled across the parking lot, and over into our yard. It rained hard and I slid across the wet lawn and through several puddles. My hair and clothes were a muddy mess, but I didn’t care. Since nobody was home, I fumbled in my pocket for the house key, thinking the creature would take hold of my body at any moment. When I made it inside, I locked the door and ran to crawl into bed.
My bedroom window overlooked the parking lot of the funeral home. When my courage returned, I peered out into the storm. What I expected to see were the undead walking my way, led by that freak of nature, but I only spotted Mr. Tannenbaum. He stood in the middle of the lot, in the pouring rain, thunder and lightning directly overhead. He held the book, and he looked to be mouthing ancient words of a long-lost language.
Over the top of the funeral home a cloud emanating a sickly green light began to swirl. In the middle a hole opened up, and a cyclone formed upward. An evil I did not care to understand was being sucked up and out from the building. After several bright flashes and a final quake, the clouds dissipated, the lightning and thunder ceased, and Mr. Tannenbaum closed the book. He gave one final glance in my direction, then walked back into the funeral home.
On Sunday morning my father had a word with Mr. Tannenbaum about the crazy story I told through fits of tears. When he returned he gave me a hug, and informed me that he and Mr. Tannenbaum decided it would be best if I didn’t return to work at the funeral home. My father didn’t express anger. He looked at me with pity. My parents said nothing more of the matter.
Years later, the funeral home burned to the ground. Faulty wiring was the determination of the inspector. It was such an old building, the electrical never having been brought up to code. I suspect there is more to the story, but it doesn’t do any good to dwell on it. I already have enough trouble turning out the lights before bed.