by Lou Morgan
“Whyever not?” Adriel was a pace behind her. “You’ve been through hell. This should be easy.”
“‘Whyever not?’ How about we start with the bloody obvious? That you’re an undertaker?”
“People die, Alice.”
“I’m well aware of that, thank you.”
“...which means it’s good business. We don’t tend to experience much fluctuation in trade.”
“But an undertaker. Seriously?”
“I fail to see your point.”
“Of course you do.” Alice shook her head. She’d seen enough. “You don’t want me in there.”
“I thought I’d already made it clear that I do.”
“You don’t. Not me. Trust me on this. The... my ‘gift’ as you lot like to call it? It gets triggered. It gets triggered by fear and grief and pain and – to put it bluntly – all those bad things that people feel when somebody dies. All of which they’re going to be feeling when they walk through that door.” She jabbed her finger at the shop to make her point. “What happens when some dead kid’s mother comes in and I set fire to the curtains?”
“I don’t think we need quite that level of hyperbole, but I understand your concern. If I thought it was going to be a problem, I wouldn’t have made you this offer.” He rested a hand on her shoulder and she fought the urge to shrug it off.
She needed the job.
“I’ll need to think about it.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll see you here on Monday morning. Wear something...”
“Black?”
“Appropriate.” He blinked at her with his black eyes. “Monday, Alice,” he said as he moved towards the door. “I think you’re going to like it here.”
“Sure. Of course I will,” she muttered as the door closed behind him. “It’s not like I’ve got much of a choice.”
DESPITE HAVING SPENT most of the weekend trying to argue herself out of it, Monday morning found her standing on the doorstep of Adriel’s funeral parlour.
The door opened without a sound and as she stepped inside, her feet sank into thick, cream carpet. She hoped it wasn’t going to be her job to vacuum it. She was in a waiting area: three comfortable-looking sofas arranged around a low coffee table, complete with a vase of lilies and a box of tissues. Across the room stood a small, dark wooden desk with an old-fashioned blotter and a leather desk diary. And another vase of lilies. Feeling her eyes start to water, Alice wrinkled her nose.
Further back, there were several doors which might have been offices, and another – half-hidden by a curtain – which was almost certainly not.
Unable to hold it back any longer, Alice sneezed. Loudly, and repeatedly. Fumbling in her pockets for a tissue, she sank into one of the sofas as she tried to get a grip on herself... or at least stop her eyes from streaming. Lilies. Of all the possible flowers, it had to be lilies. Eventually, she forced her eyes open to find Adriel sitting on the sofa beside her, watching her with interest.
“Good morning.”
“Mordig,” Alice said thickly, taking the handkerchief he offered her. “Sorry. Pollen. Can’t...”
“I see.” He folded his hands in his lap and watched as Alice dabbed at her eyes. What she really wanted to do was blow her nose, but she got the feeling that doing that in someone else’s handkerchief was probably not a good idea. Maybe if you offered to wash it...?
“I’m pleased you came.”
“But not surprised,” she said with a sniff.
He smiled. “No. Not surprised.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Before we proceed, there are things you need to understand. Firstly, no-one here knows.”
“About you, you mean.” Alice sighed. Secrets were exhausting. She was learning this the hard way.
“About me. Or you.”
“What happened to the ‘sympathetic working environment’?”
“I think you’ll find I can be very sympathetic. But the staff... they don’t know, and that is how it must stay.” He leaned forward as he spoke, lowering his voice.
“Never know. Got it.” The handkerchief was still balled up in her hand. It felt decidedly soggy.
“Secondly, my name. My name, as far as everyone here is concerned, is Andrew. Andrew Langham. Mister Langham to you, especially in front of clients.”
“Clients. Yes.”
“Which brings me to my next point. You will sit there.” He nodded to the desk across the room. “Your job is simply to meet clients as they come in, see that they’re comfortable and then to inform either myself or my colleagues that they are here.”
“You mean I’m the receptionist.”
“If you like. Offer them tea, coffee...”
“I’m not being funny, Adr... Mister Langham, but a cup of tea? Really? Like that’s going to fix their problems?”
“Alice, don’t make the mistake of thinking yourself an expert on death simply because you have a little experience of it.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she wondered whether the sofa was big enough for her to hide under the cushions. But then he smiled, and continued. “You’ll settle in soon enough. The staff here are... very human. You’ll like them.” He stood, and offered her his hand, helping her to her feet. With her free hand, she scrunched the soggy handkerchief into her pocket.
“Let me show you around.”
And he led her towards the first of the doors.
TWO OF THE doors opening off the reception led to near-identical rooms furnished with yet more sofas and low tables, all tastefully decorated in varying shades of beige. The third opened onto Adriel’s office, with an enormous desk and shelves full of old ledgers. “Funeral records,” he said, seeing her eyes settle on them. “We have a responsibility to keep them.” He closed the door again before she could ask any more. The two chapels-of-rest, Alice decided to give as wide a berth as humanly – or inhumanly – possible, especially once he informed her that they were currently occupied. Instead, Adriel ushered her toward the curtain.
The door behind the curtain led to a gloomy corridor running out to the back of the building. There was a small staff kitchen, and a set of steel swing doors opening off the corridor to the left. Alice approached them, but Adriel placed a hand on her arm. “You don’t need to go back there,” was all he said, and she hoped the relief didn’t show on her face – although it would have vanished when he continued, “but I do need to show you the barn.” He opened another door.
Alice’s hand flew to her mouth before she could stop it. The ‘barn’ was at least three times the size of the other rooms combined, and full of coffins. Coffins: leaning on their ends against the wall, or stacked on shelves, all neatly labelled according to height. Or length, depending on how you looked at it. A rack of shelves on one side of the space held what looked like rolls of fabric, and plastic-wrapped pieces of brass in baskets. Adriel brushed past her and beckoned her to follow, lifting something from a basket and handing it to her. It was a handle. A coffin handle.
Alice swallowed hard.
Adriel didn’t seem to notice, and was instead pointing out the different items on the shelves. “Satin, for lining. And the staple-gun, for fixing it, as well as the staples. It jams sometimes: the screwdriver is kept over there.” He pointed to a lower shelf and she nodded, wondering how she’d ended up here and whether she hadn’t made a terrible mistake.
And then the door creaked open, and everything changed.
“ANDREW? IT’S MRS Jackson, I... Oh.” The man who had stuck his head into the room stopped short when he saw Alice. There was a moment of silence, and Adriel looked from one to the other before clearing his throat.
“Alice, this is Toby: one of my assistants. Toby? Alice. She’ll be joining us from today.”
“Alice. It’s nice to meet you,” said Toby with a broad smile. A scar curved around the edge of his cheek, making his grin slightly uneven. “I’d shake your hand, but...” He waved a rubber-gloved hand at her. Much to Alice’s surprise, she realised she couldn’t reply
. In fact, it was all she could do not to blush.
“Well,” said Adriel. “Toby, I’ll be with you momentarily.”
Toby nodded, and with another glance at Alice, withdrew his head from the doorway. The door swung closed behind him.
Adriel turned to Alice. “They can’t know, Alice. None of them.” He held the door for her and ushered her through, back out into the hallway. “You’ll meet the others later. If you’ll excuse me, I have some business to attend to in the... with Toby.” He nodded back towards the waiting area. “Perhaps you would like to familiarise yourself with the desk?”
“But what do I do? If someone comes...?”
“You’ll know what to do, Alice. It’s why you’re here.” And with a smile, he turned on his heel and walked towards the steel doors of the mortuary.
ALICE CONSIDERED THE sofas in the waiting room for a moment, then thought better of it and sank into the chair behind the desk. It wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it looked – which was more than she could say for her shoes. Bearing in mind Adriel’s comment to wear something ‘appropriate,’ she had forced herself to go and buy a pair of shoes Which Were Not Trainers, and as a result, she now felt as though a whole tribe of rats were gnawing at her toes – not to mention slightly resentful at having to chip into the last of her cash reserves. She told herself it was an investment. A back-aching, toe-killing investment. Groaning, she kicked them off under the desk and curled her sore toes into the thick carpet. A fly was making lazy circles over one of the flower arrangements – and although she couldn’t hear it, there was something about it that annoyed her. A fly in a funeral parlour just seemed... wrong, somehow. She watched the fly for a moment as it spiralled around the flowers, then nodded in satisfaction as it burst into flames and disappeared in a little cloud of ash.
“Alice, was it?” The voice came from behind her, and made her jump out of the chair.
“What? Yes. Alice. Me. Right.” She sounded flustered. She knew she sounded flustered. She tried not to.
“I just wanted to come and say hello properly,” Toby said, stepping away from the wall where he’d been leaning. Had he seen the fly, she wondered? If he had, he didn’t say anything. That would be a good start, wouldn’t it: not even been in the place five minutes and giving the game away? Alice made a mental note to be more careful. The ‘secret identity’ side of this was clearly going to be harder than she’d expected. Alice thought she should probably be grateful that Adriel hadn’t wanted her to be a spy.
Toby was holding out his hand to her – minus the glove, this time. He watched her staring at it. “I did wash them, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He was grinning again, teasing her. She smiled, and took his hand. It was warm and soft, and his grip felt strong.
“Nice to meet you. Sorry. It’s just that you startled me a bit. I was miles away.”
“Wondering how the hell you ended up here, right?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Don’t worry about it. It takes a bit of getting used to, you know? We’re just like any other office, really, when you get down to it.”
“Mmm. The difference being that here you’ve got dead people in the filing cabinets.”
“I never thought about it like that,” he laughed. Alice shrugged, and he continued. “We take care of people. That’s all it is. The dead, the living; we take care of them. I... are you alright?” he tailed off, a look of concern on his face.
“What? Oh, yes. Fine.” She wrinkled her nose and gestured to the floor beneath the desk. “My shoes. Now, those are going to take some getting used to.”
“At least you don’t have to wear the hat,” he said, and Alice had to remind herself that Toby was entirely himself – and entirely what he seemed to be. Toby was human. Toby was normal. A normal person who knew nothing about angels, nothing about the Fallen. Just a person; a person who spent his time with other Just People. And Alice needed to be around people; to get on with her life. Or start having one, at least.
And in the meantime, she’d just try to overlook the fact the Angel of Death was her boss.
THE MORNING HAD not gone well. So far, Alice had knocked over a vase of lilies, spilled tea on the appointment book (and, while trying to mop it up, managed to smear the ink across today’s page – which meant she would later have to tell Adriel that his three o’clock appointment was with a Mrs Hrrrdddddgz) and had set off the smoke alarm in the kitchen. With the kettle.
No. The morning had not gone well. And it was only eleven o’clock.
SHE WAS STILL frantically trying to yank the battery out of the smoke alarm when Toby strolled into the kitchen, took one look at her and shook his head. Without a word, he opened one of the drawers and pulled out a wooden spoon, then reached up and whacked the side of the alarm casing with the spoon. Hard. The siren faltered... then picked up again, even louder. Toby pulled a face, and hit it again. It let out a final strangled squawk and stopped. The silence made Alice’s ears ring.
“Thanks,” she said weakly.
He grinned at her. “No problem. It’s a bit touchy – next time, just give it a smack on the head.”
“Is that how you solve all your problems?”
“Only the ones that don’t shut up...”
Alice wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, and Toby seemed to realise he’d said something off. “It was a joke, Alice.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey... did I say something wrong?”
“No, nothing. It’s fine.” She rubbed her forehead. “It’s just... headache. Loud, you know?” He was watching her carefully, and he looked so serious that Alice felt suddenly awkward. He must have felt it too; he stepped back and started fiddling with the box of teabags on the counter.
“How’d you set it off, anyway?”
“I think the kettle... shorted. The fuse.” Alice pointed to the blackened switch on the base of the kettle. “There was a sort of bang, and this big puff of smoke, and...” She shrugged. She wasn’t about to tell him that she had managed to melt it, all because she wasn’t paying enough attention to what she was doing.
The job wasn’t exactly easy. Well. That wasn’t strictly true: the job itself was fine. It mostly consisted of answering the phone, making notes in the day book, refilling the tissue boxes and making tea. A lot of tea. There were six of them there, not including Adriel. Besides Toby and Alice, there were the embalmer, the driver and two pallbearers – although the latter seemed to spend most of their time sitting in the kitchen and playing cards, looking for all the world like a couple of gorillas who’d been forced into suits.
So there were six of them, and Adriel, and they all rubbed along reasonably well. Alice kept her distance as best she could but somehow Toby always seemed to be around, asking whether she wanted a cup of tea, whether she was making a cup of tea, how she was doing, whether she had seen this film or that film... it just went on. And while it was nice; while it made her feel like a normal, real human being again – something she’d not felt in far too long – it was strange. To feel normal was... strange.
He had no idea that when the first clients on her first day had walked in through the door, Alice felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Everything about them shouted their loss out loud for the world to hear... but the only one who heard it was Alice. Alice heard it, and she felt it, and her heart broke. And it kept on happening. Every time the door opened, she felt it again and again and again. Over and over, until she couldn’t take it any longer and she stumbled into Adriel’s office and told him she had to go. He looked up from his paperwork and nodded at her, and she found her way home without remembering a step of the way; she locked the door to the sacristy behind her and she sat on the floor and she burned and she burned and she burned – and when the tears came, as she knew they would, they left tracks of fire down her cheeks.
Compared with that first day, melting the kettle was a definite improvement.
As she settled back down at the desk, a poli
ce car raced by with its siren howling. There had been more of them over the last few days, and if the papers were anything to go by, it was only going to get worse. The city was on edge. The riots were spreading, and however much everyone tried to ignore them and carry on as normal, it was getting harder. It had begun a few weeks ago: a simple scuffle between some teenagers on the far side of town, and from there it had spread until, every night, the streets became a battleground. Broken glass sparkled on the pavements in the mornings, and every day it seemed that another shop or office had had its windows smashed or its door kicked in... Oddly, though, no-one ever seemed to touch Langham Funerals, which remained an island of calm in the chaos. The others all said that it was down to respect for the dead. Alice suspected otherwise.
“Alice?”
“Mmph?” She hadn’t realised Adriel had come out of his office.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes. Fine. I’m good. I’m fine.”
“Alice...”
“I’m knackered.” She slumped in her chair. “I’ll replace the kettle.”
“The kettle?” Adriel raised an eyebrow slightly, but otherwise his composure didn’t change one bit.
“It’s a thing. It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m just... tired.”
“You’re finding this more of a challenge than you expected.” It wasn’t a question, and Alice snorted.
“No. I’m finding it exactly as much of a challenge as I expected, which is what I tried to explain to you.”
“And yet, even though you’ve been here such a short time, I’m told what a difference you make.”
“I... oh?” She had been about to make an excuse for whatever it was she’d done wrong... and then realised it wasn’t a criticism. Not at all.
“I’m told you make the shop feel warmer.”
“Yes, well,” she muttered. “That’s hardly a surprise, is it?”
“More alive.” Adriel blinked at her. “I thought you should know. You’re good at this, Alice.”
And without another word, he turned and padded back to his office. Whether he would still think she was good at this (whatever this was) once she’d told him about Mrs Hrrrdddddgz was another matter.
