“You’re Griffin’s kid?”
“Yes sir”
“You heard the rumors right? How the dead in this place come back to life?”
I nodded in response as Rob, the funeral director, interviewed me in his office.
“Well they ain’t rumors, kid. They’re as real as you and me right now.”
I stayed unperturbed at the revelation while Rob waited for a reaction that would signify fright but it never came.
“The pay is high, in fact too high for our profession, you never found that strange?”
“Well as you’ve said, the dead come back to life.”
“And you’re not shocked at all?”
“No because I don’t believe in that.”
Rob stared at me in disbelief as he leaned back in his creaky chair.
“You’re such a young woman, why would you even make this your first choice?”
“Again, as you’ve said, the pay is high.”
The crow feet that occupied the side of his soft eyes told me that Rob was already in his fifties. He clapsed his hand together as he sighed deeply like he was disappointed with my response.
“If they move or speak despite being dead then that’s not them anymore.”
The rest of the interview was spent with Rob giving me the history of the place. Our environment was structured by logic and science but that man believed in what was beyond them.
He told me how the building had been blessed many times but evil still lurked in its crevices.
“It ain’t really the building, it’s the land it stands on.”
Stories of how the soil was cursed was relayed to me. The men of the settlers, upon returning from a hunting trip, found the massacered bodies of their families.
At first they suspected the tribes that lead them to retaliate with no remorse only to find out later on that the crime had been committed by a travelling band of criminals that bore the same skin as them.
One of the surviving elder of the tribe then placed a curse on the land where the settlers had made their home. It was said that a deceased body, upon entering the blood soaked soil, would return back to life but no longer carried its own soul.
“Something else came back then?”
Rob nodded as we toured the building, sporting coffee cups in our hands.
“You never wondered why this establishment is the only one that stands here despite the spacious land?”
I shook my head after taking another hot sip.
“It’s coz of the malediction. People have abandoned their homes here, generation after generation and this is the only one left.”
“And they still decided to continue the operation of this job despite that?”
“Well, coz just like you, our forefathers didn’t believe in the story at all. It was only when the hauntings started, when the staff went mad, did they reconsider.”
“So why not abandon this building? Surely they could’ve afforded to build a new one in another place.”
“They did at first. A new one was opened in the city but that was when the hauntings got worse.”
“How?”
“The bodies followed them home. That’s when the reality of the curse became even more terrifying coz it meant that not only had it stuck to the land but also in their blood”
I halted my steps and so did Rob, he knew that I still had many questions and he was preapred to answer them.
“So they returned to this one coz at least here the bodies never went beyond the door?”
“Mmhmm. And by my experience, after spending half my life here, I could attest to that.”
Samuel uttered those words like he was trying to convey that something evil possessed the elk that took Rob’s life.
“God doesn’t always listen, Mayi.”
He then proceeded to loosen up the watch on his wrist that revealed a deep scar that looked old.
“They almost got me once…most days I still feel like they’ll win in the end.”
I could only console Samuel by letting him know that I was glad that he was still around.
“Stick around alright?”
It was said in a way that carried more of a tone of command rather than a request. I knew what he was asking of me.
“Only if you do the same.”
Quitting wasn’t an option for us. The world demanded too much and money didn’t come easy there like it did here.
Rob gave me his rosary the day before he died. Maybe he knew his time was coming or maybe it was just pure coincidental. I wore that thing not because I suddenly had faith but because I wanted to respect a departed friend.
The first time I stepped into work with the rosary on my neck? That’s when they started to terrorize and made me question everything.
It started with the turning on the lights in the lab as I was assigned the nightshift duty. The bulb gave off a dim glow eversince I switched it on and a sight on the end of the room made me halt my movements.
There by the endless sea of trolleys stood a headless body of a man. Blood seeped from the wound as it took a step the same time as me.
I almost gave in to the feeling of dread but I remembered what Rob said and ignored the ghastly figure.
The glow on the computer screen was like a wave on my face. I typed away as the headless body stood inches away from my side. The smell of decay filled my lungs then as the corpse started to claw at his chest until it was able to disembowel itself.
Maggots and organs danced on the scarlet stained floor as a harrowing laughter echoed in the dim space.
“That’ll be you someday Mayi.”
It all felt too real but I refused to entertain it despite its continuous effort to plant a seed of terror in me. Hours passed and the voices boomed louder and deeper, each word carrying a tone of malice but I still didn’t budge.
The thing only disappeared when my co-workers pushed in a new corpse. I couldn’t say if it got tired or that maybe it went away to look for new ways to entice fear in me.
Samuel met my eyes before he exited the room and the way his face hardened told me that he knew that I had already started to taste the horror.
It took three nights before another encounter and it came in the form of a mutilated teenager. The girl had been a victim of kidnapping and was found in a creek a month later.
This one crouched on the trolley it was laid on while it beckoned to me to come closer, asking if she could peel away the lose skin on my finger.
Just like before I ignored it. It left its position then and crawled on the floor slowly, halting near where I stood as I worked on another corpse.
It stayed on all fours while turning its head back and forth in a manner that looked like it was trying to observe me. As I began to open the chest cavity of the dead, the thing stood up and walked close to my ear and whispered in a gurgly voice
“I can do that to you too.”
The words “Physically no, mentally yes” rang in my head then that made me discard one of my gloves so that I could take hold of the rosary on my neck.
I brought the holy item close to the thing and it hissed and screamed before distancing itself. The next hours were spent with it standing opposite of me, peeling the skin on its face in such a leisurely pace.
I tasted bile on my tongue the moment it started to consume the strips of skin from its own body.
As soon as another body entered the lab, the thing took its leave and I felt like breathing was the highest form of elation I could get.