by Amy Cross
“I could show you a few impossible things too,” Sam mutters as she slips the ticket into her pocket. “I'll be here. In fact, I'm looking forward to it.”
“Your mind will be blown,” he adds with a smile, as he carries the basket into the tent.
“I'm sure it will be,” Sam mutters, looking down at the leaflet in her hand. “I can't wait to see a corpse being brought back to life.”
“You'll love it, Sam!” he shouts back at her. “Best show ever!”
Sighing, Sam looks up at the flag on top of the tent. The last thing she wants is to go to some big showbiz night, but at the same time she can't shake the feeling that the sudden arrival of Raven Revivals can't be a coincidence.
Three
“Hello?” Anna calls out, pushing the door open and peering into the dark interior of the Undertaker's office. “Anyone here?”
She waits, but all she hears is silence, and all she sees is dust drifting lazily through the gloom. There are a couple of desks in the office, and some filing cabinets, but for the most part the place seems dead.
“Hello? My name's Anna Marsh. I work at the cemetery, and I've come by to pick up some documents relating to Ruth Havershot. The paperwork you sent with her body was missing a couple of forms.”
Again, she waits.
Again, she hears nothing.
“Great,” she mutters, stepping inside and letting the creaky door swing shut. “Just what I need. No-one's -”
Before she can finish, she hears a distant coughing sound, coming from another part of the building. She pauses, and after a moment she realizes she can also hear a faint banging sound, as if metal is being struck against wood. Looking toward a door on the far side of the room, she spots a faded sign with just one word written in thick black letters: Workshop.
“Hello?” she calls out again. “I'm looking for the Undertaker!”
The distant coughing continues, but Anna's presence seems not to be drawing any attention.
“Fine,” she mutters, making her way unsteadily across the office until she reaches an open door that leads into the guts of the building. She looks along a dark corridor, and for a moment she can't help but wonder if somehow she's in the wrong place. After all, the office seems completely deserted, and she figures someone should have come to greet her by now.
She looks over her shoulder, just to make sure that there's no-one around, and then she limps along the corridor.
“Hey!” she calls out. “Is the Undertaker here?”
When she gets to the end of the corridor, she pushes open another door, to reveal a large workshop. The only light comes from the high wooden roof, which has enough gaps to let slivers of sun through. For the most part, however, the workshop seems completely dead, with half-built coffins on all the benches. There are power tools hanging on the walls, and bare gravestones waiting for names and dates to be engraved on their surfaces. It's like a kind of death factory, and Anna can't help but notice that bunches of dead flowers have been left on the floor.
After a moment, she hears someone coughing again at the far end of the room.
“Hello?” she calls out.
Limping carefully on her new legs, she makes her way between the benches until finally she spots a figure sitting hunched over a desk. The desk itself is up high on a wooden platform, and the figure has its back to the room as it works on something. Silhouetted against a large, dirty window, the figure seems preternaturally thin, and his bony fingers hint at advanced arthritis.
“Hey,” Anna says as she gets to the edge of the platform and looks up. “Are you the Undertaker?”
“Who wants to know?” asks an old, tired voice.
“Um...”
She pauses, watching the sliver of sunlight that picks out the side of the man's face, revealing him to be completely bald with thick wrinkles running through his flesh. He's also deathly pale, and the skin on the side of his head looks almost like bone.
“I don't mean to disturb you,” Anna says after a moment. “I just... There was no-one in the main office. I guess your receptionist must be on her break or something.”
The figure continues to work, without saying a word.
“My name's Anna,” she continues. “I work at the cemetery with Sam Marker -”
“You know Sam?” the voice asks, interrupting her.
“Yeah, we -”
“I really should go and meet her some time,” the voice continues. “I've been so busy lately, but that's really no excuse. I always go and greet the new gardeners personally, but this time I've somehow ended up staying away. She probably thinks that I'm so very rude, but that's not the case at all. This will never do.”
“I think it's cool,” Anna replies. “The thing is, you sent over a body yesterday, and -”
“Ruth Havershot,” the voice replies. “Yes, I know. She was so very young. I must admit, it's the young ones that still get to me. I do so hate to see youth being wasted. Sometimes I wish that I could return life to those who have been taken early. I shouldn't dream of playing God, but I do. I would even be willing to give up a little of my own strength if it meant that girls like Ruth Havershot could live again.”
“The thing is,” Anna continues, “the paperwork wasn't complete. You know those pink forms you always send with the bodies? They weren't attached to the rest of the papers, so I figured I'd come and ask if maybe you've got them lying around here somewhere? We kinda need them if we're going to get the funeral up and running. You know what things are like, right? All this bureaucracy...”
“Forms?” The figure pauses, before pulling a long line of thread up from whatever it's working with on the table. “Perhaps they're on the desk to my right. Take a look. But be careful not to disturb things too much. The place might look like a mess, but I can assure you that there's order in the middle so much chaos. Please, be careful.”
“Sure,” Anna replies, heading over to the desk. There are papers everywhere, and when she picks up the nearest she sees to her shock that it's dated 1972, making it more than forty years old; the next piece is even older, from 1960, and Anna has to wipe dust off her fingertips. Most of the other papers are similarly ancient, but finally she spots a pink sheet and when she holds it up, she finds that it's the form she needs for Ruth Havershot's burial.
“Found it?” the voice asks.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She pauses, wondering if the voice is going to say anything else. However, the old man merely shifts his position in the chair, and in doing so he causes his bones to creak.
“So... You are the Undertaker, aren't you?” Anna asks finally.
“That I am,” he replies. “For my very many sins.”
“Okay...” She pauses again. “Well, I guess I've got what I came for, so I'll be heading back to the cemetery now. We'll be in touch if we need anything else, but I figure it should all be cool, so...” She pauses again, trying to think of the perfect word. “Cool,” she adds finally.
“How are your legs?”
“My...”
She takes a deep breath, trying to stay calm.
“Why... Why do you want to know about my legs?”
“I just noticed that you seemed to be walking a little stiffly,” the Undertaker continues, still not looking down at her from his position high up on the platform. “I wondered if there was a problem. I know that from time to time we all face certain... difficulties.”
“No, I... My legs are totally fine.”
“And please tell Ms. Marker that I would very much like to meet her,” he adds. “As I get older, I find it more difficult to get up the hill that leads to the cemetery, so I would be very grateful if she could see her way to dropping by my office some time. I have something very important to tell her, and I'm already a little late. There's still time, but it would be in everyone's best interests if she comes as soon as possible. Apologize to her for the lateness of my request, but I was hoping that either she or you would come by my office eventually. In fact,
one might even speculate that the necessary paperwork for Ruth Havershot was forgotten on purpose, in order to engineer this precise situation.”
“Sure,” Anna replies. “I'll tell her.” She pauses, wondering whether she dares to ask the question that's on her mind. “So,” she adds finally, “um... About the cemetery... I was just wondering, if Sam's destined to... do all this stuff... what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Well... What am I?”
“Don't you know?”
“Yeah. I mean, no. Well, I mean... What's my role? Officially?”
“You have no role,” the Undertaker tells her calmly. “You are just... there. It matters not what you do.”
“Oh.”
She waits for a moment, before realizing that the old man seems to have returned to whatever work is keeping him busy at his desk. He's threading some kind of string through an object, and for a moment Anna is convinced that she can see blood caked all over his hands.
“Bye then,” Anna says, before turning and making her way back toward the door.
“Do you know how Ruth Havershot died?” the Undertaker asks suddenly.
Anna stops and looks back at him.
“She was killed in a car crash,” he continues. “The proper authorities are investigating the precise cause, but I have it on good authority that the accident occurred after a flock of ravens swarmed around the vehicle. It was because of the ravens that Ms. Havershot drove off the road. If they had been able to get the car door open after the crash, I am quite sure they would have left very little of her body behind. Please inform Ms. Marker of that fact, and tell her that I have more to say if she comes to visit me personally. Time is of the essence.”
“Totally,” Anna replies. “I'll do that.”
Clutching the pink sheet of paper, she hurries along the corridor and out the front of the building, until finally she stops to regain her balance. Looking up, she sees the Undertaker's sign hanging above her head, and she can't help not notice that one corner of the sign appears to have been damaged, almost as if something once took a bite out of it. Feeling a shiver pass through her body, Anna turns and heads back toward the cemetery.
Four
“You're the first person who's been in to use this thing all year,” explains the librarian, Mrs. Muirfield, as she moves a pile of books from the top of the computer monitor. “I hope it still works.”
“I just need to check something online,” Sam replies, reaching down and hitting the power button on the ancient machine. It splutters into life, and finally an ancient operating system from the late nineties starts loading. “I asked around,” she adds, “but it doesn't seem like many people in Rippon are very bothered about the internet.”
“I think this might be the only terminal in town,” Mrs. Muirfield replies. “It certainly was when we had it installed in 1998. We were hoping to turn the library into a kind of digital hub for the town, but we couldn't really raise much of a budget.” She sighs. “Sometimes I think we're losing touch with the modern world.”
“That's not necessarily a bad thing,” Sam mutters.
“We have some videos, though,” she continues. “If you've got a Betamax machine, you're welcome to borrow from the collection.”
“Betamax?” Sam turns to her. “Um, no, thanks. I mostly just read in the evenings.”
“Do you know how to use this thing?” Mrs. Muirfield replies, squinting as the computer finishes loading. “I think you have to click something, but I don't remember what.”
“I'll be fine, thanks,” Sam says, taking a seat. She opens an aged browser, but just as she's about to start searching for information about Raven Revivals, she realizes that the librarian is still standing right next to her, staring at the screen.
After waiting for a moment, Sam looks up at her.
“Oh,” the elderly woman replies, “of course. I'll leave you to it.”
As Mrs. Muirfield shuffles away, Sam brings up a search engine and looks for any information about Raven Revivals. At first she has no luck, and ends up merely scrolling through page after page about various other modern revival organizations. After refining her terms, however, she finds a brief mention of Raven Revivals on a website dedicated to the life of a small town in the American Deep South. The page takes forever to load, but Sam finally sees a grainy photo of the Raven Revivals tent, with a man standing at the entrance and smiling at the camera.
“Charles Raven?” Sam whispers, leaning closer to the screen.
Looking at the caption, she sees that the photo was taken in the 1930s. She reads on, discovering that Raven Revivals was a well-known traveling revival and spiritualist show during that period, with Charles Raven having attained a fair degree of fame for his theatrical performances. Eventually, however, he was exposed as a liar, and his show fell into ruin. According to the web-page, Raven Revivals ended up losing most of its staff, before finally disappearing for good during the Second World War. Although she clicks through to some other pages, Sam has no luck finding any more information about Charles Raven or his show, and nothing regarding the modern version.
“That's a pretty strong family resemblance,” she mutters, staring at the old photo of Charles Raven from the 1930s. “Either that, or he hasn't aged a day.”
“They have photographs on the internet now, do they?” Mrs. Muirfield asks, as she wanders over and starts stacking books on a nearby shelf. “I heard about that. Isn't modern technology wonderful? I can't even begin to imagine how they fit photographs into those tubes.”
“Tubes?”
“The internet tubes. The phone lines. Whatever you want to call them.”
Clicking through to a few more pages, Sam can't help but feel that the story of Charles Raven seems a little disconnected, as if the various elements don't quite add up. It's almost as if the entire organization vanished all those years ago and then suddenly sprang back into existence.
“I don't suppose there's a printer here, is there?” she asks.
“No, but I have a notepad and pen you can borrow.”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” Sam replies, staring at the screen. The faded face of Charles Raven stares back out at her with a faint, knowing grin.
“Is that the same circus that's come to town?” the librarian asks, making her way over and leaning down to get a better look. “I don't mind telling you, I don't like the idea of them setting up shop right here in Rippon. We're used to a slower way of life, you know. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so prejudiced. I remember an American coming to town about twenty years ago, and he seemed fairly agreeable. I think he arrived by accident, so he was only here for a few hours while he tried to find a way out.”
“I'm sure they're not monsters,” Sam points out.
“Oh, of course not. I imagine they're perfectly nice people, even if they make such a song and dance about things. I'm sure they're rather noisy, though, and disruptive.” She pauses for a moment. “Do you think there'll be music? I hope they won't cause a disturbance.”
“Are you going tonight?”
“Me? Oh, no, definitely not. I doubt many will. It's just not seemly to be mixing religion with show-business. We have our humble little church here in Rippon, and there's no need to go seeking out something flashy. I suppose you younger people might be interested, though. All that show and bluster can seem rather appealing to your generation.”
“I want to know about the ravens,” Sam replies. “I feel like something's going to happen.”
“Things do happen occasionally,” Mrs. Muirfield admits with a hint of sadness, “whether you want them to or not. Even in a place like Rippon.”
“I'm done,” Sam says, getting up. “Thanks for letting me use it.”
“Shall I shut it down, or do you think you might be back any time soon?”
Sam looks back at the computer, and for a moment she considers looking for information about Henry. She figures that there must be at least a newspaper report menti
oning the discovery of a newborn baby, and maybe even a photo. She could also get in touch with some people from her old life, and let Nadia know that she's okay. Finally, however, she forces herself to remember that she's better off keeping far away from the past.
“You can go ahead and shut it off,” she replies, turning to Mrs. Muirfield. “Like you said, we're losing touch with the modern world. There's no point trying to change anything.”
Five
“There,” Anna mutters, staring at herself in the mirror. “Not bad for someone who's been dead for a year.”
Having spent much of the afternoon trying on dresses in the local second-hand shop, she finally settled on a long-sleeved blue dress. Now, with a shawl over her shoulders and a pair of black tights to disguise her legs, she feels as if she looks good enough to go out and meet Scott. She knows there's a danger of deluding herself, but she can't help thinking that she looks okay. There's certainly no way anyone would guess that she's dead.
“Here goes nothing,” she tells herself, walking calmly and mostly steadily to the door. As soon as she leaves her room, however, she comes face to face with Sam.
“Where are you going?” Sam asks.
“Nowhere,” she replies, startled. “Where... Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
They eye each other suspiciously for a moment.
“Probably not the same nowhere,” Anna says eventually. “Not... You're not going to the cafe, are you?”
“No. Are you?”
“No. I mean, yes. I'm just meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“A guy.”
“You're going on a date?” Sam replies, clearly shocked.
“Just a quiet drink,” Anna tells her. “How do I look?”
“You look great. Very... alive.”
