The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by Michael McDowell

  Greg, the crematorium guy, was not reserved at all. He was the opposite, chatty and matter-­of-­fact. Fat burned slower, he explained, because it had more calories than muscle. You could get it to burn faster by raising the temperature in the oven, but then you ran the risk of blackening the air with smoke and pollution, which were no-­no’s these days. They had a camera trained on the rooftop chimney that was hooked to a monitor to check what was coming out, which at the moment was nothing. Or rather, nothing worse than the air itself, which was hazy from a nearby fire. It was summer, and where I live, summer meant fires. ‘Good day to be inside,’ he said.

  There was a box in the room. The box, I should say. Six feet long, one foot high, it sat on a gurney, and without so much as a word of explanation or warning, Greg lifted the lid.

  I was determined to be cool. But it didn’t turn out that way. My stomach lurched, and I choked back emotion.

  The box was plain and anonymous, but the bag inside was body shaped. My father’s name was printed in large letters, once at the foot of the bag and once at the head. There was a tag with a number that Greg removed for me to check against the number on a form I had. I was shaken by the sight of the bag and so relieved that he hadn’t opened it and asked me to identify the body that I barely gave the number a glance. Dad’s name was on the bag, not once but twice, and that was good enough for me. And even if by some fluke it was someone else, who would ever know? Ashes were ashes. A little more, weight-­wise, if you were big, a little less if you were small. But quality-­wise the same: a kind of gritty mixture of the soft ash of fully-­combusted flesh and organs combined with the coarse ash of bone. This, according to Greg, who was free with the info. Gold and silver fillings that might identify a person vaporized, and personal prosthetic devices like knees and hips and artificial heart valves were confiscated as potentially bio­hazardous and not included in the remains. There was a stainless steel tray where the bones that hadn’t crumbled completely in the heat were pulverized by hand, then fed, along with the rest, through a funnel-­shaped sieve, rather like sifting flour to get a more homogeneous blend. Attached to the tray was a container half-­filled with blackened metal prosthetic parts. Like jewelry, but scorched. Of everything I had seen so far, this was the most disturbing. Strange how the mind works.

  I didn’t flinch, for example, when he raised the door of the brick-­lined oven and, again without a word, pushed my father in. I didn’t flinch when the door snapped closed. And as the gas ignited with a soft hiss, I watched the temperature needle slowly rise without emotion. Perhaps it was this composure of mine that made Greg veer from normal procedure. Perhaps he admired me for it. Or maybe he thought that something was subtly wrong. At any rate, after the body was in the oven for a while, he opened the door. The cardboard coffin was on fire, somber red flames punctuated by bright curlicues of yellow. Centered almost exactly in the middle was the dark globe of my father’s skull. He’d been bald in life, and I recognized the shape. It was him, and not only that, he seemed at peace. By which I mean it comforted me to think that. The flames appeared to be cradling him. They licked at his head but had not yet set it on fire, as though to honor him – ­ his life, his achievements, his spirit – ­ by not consuming him too fast.

  I left the crematorium at 8 a.m., called at one (allowing time for the ashes to cool) to pick up the remains. I was told to call back later. I called again at two, and then at three, and then four. Greg said it was taking longer than expected. I asked if there was a problem.

  ‘Sometimes the ovens act up. Don’t heat like they’re supposed to.’

  ‘Which means what? That he can’t be cremated?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be cremated all right. It just takes longer.’

  ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Why don’t you call back in a few hours.’

  ‘Like when? Tonight?’

  ‘No problem. We operate around the clock. Twenty-­four, seven.’

  ‘You don’t sleep?’

  ‘Can’t afford to. They don’t.’

  In my mind’s eye I saw a line of gray and expressionless men and women, waiting impassively to be slid in the oven and baked. It was a dreadful image. I wanted this to be done.

  ‘Are you busy?’ I asked.

  ‘Most of the time we are. It’s steady.’

  ‘I mean now.’

  ‘Now? Not too busy.’

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  ‘Fix it?’

  ‘The oven.’

  There was a pause, as if this was not exactly the right question. ‘Sure. We fix them all the time.’

  ‘So tonight then? I can pick them up tonight?’

  ‘Right. Tonight. Call back. Everything’ll be fine.’

  As it turned out, everything wasn’t fine, not by nine that night, when the swing shift guy suggested I call back in the morning. And not by the morning.

  I got Greg again, a guy whom, in the short time I’d known him, I’d come to more or less trust. He was straight with me, and not unfeeling.

  ‘It’s not the oven. Sorry, man.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My boss wants to talk to you.’

  ‘You talk to me. What do you mean, it’s not the oven?’

  ‘He’ll explain.’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Please.’

  He was a decent guy. He cared about his job, and in this case his job meant caring for me.

  My father, it seemed, did not want to burn. His skin and nails and organs, yes. They were gone. But his bones, no. Somehow they had resisted twenty-­four hours of thirteen hundred degree heat and flame. Greg had never seen anything like it.

  His boss, however, had. He’d been in the business almost thirty years and had seen, in his words, ‘a little bit of everything.’ We met in his office, which adjoined the crematorium. There was an old-­fashioned oak desk piled with papers, a chair behind it and one in front of it, a dirty window, a concrete floor. By the look of things he wasn’t used to visitors.

  At another time I might have been interested in what he meant by ‘a little bit of everything’. He was certainly interested in telling me, as though the existence of other unusual happenings and odd occurrences would be a comfort. Rather like expecting someone with a broken bone to be comforted by the news that other people were in pain.

  I didn’t want to hear about it. ‘What’s the problem with my father’s bones?’

  He was leaning against the front edge of his desk, his shirt collar open, his thick, calloused hands on his thighs. He looked like he could have been a fighter at one time. His face was carefully composed.

  ‘They don’t want to burn,’ he said.

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘I wish I had an answer. We gave it all we got.’

  ‘Greg mentioned something about the oven. Thought maybe it was acting up.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with the oven. We just had it serviced. It’s working fine.’

  ‘But this is what you do, right? You cremate bodies.’

  ‘Twenty-­nine years,’ he said.

  ‘But not mine.’ I meant my father’s, of course.

  He rubbed his thighs, as if to clean his hands, or expel something. It reminded me of my father in his hospital bed, just a few days before he died. Picking at his gown over and over, at a thread or piece of lint or something that no one else could see, something that simply wasn’t there, then tossing it over the side of the bed. I would take his hand and hold it, but he would pull it away, again and again, so in the end I stopped trying and instead just sat beside him and watched, transfixed and disturbed by what he was doing. There was no purpose to it. He wasn’t himself. Or else he was (who else could he be?), and the purpose of this repetitive and disconcerting activity was hidden to me.

  ‘I’m fully prepared to give you your money back,’ the man said.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘You can use it to bury him.’

  �
��We don’t want to bury him.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘No offense, but maybe we should try someone else.’

  ‘Sure. By all means. Do that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I told you what I’d do,’ he said.

  My father actually had suggested that when the time came, he be buried, but my mother was opposed. Her mind was set on cremation. She wanted to scatter his ashes and be done. She didn’t want a grave to have to visit. Her mother and father, whom she adored, were buried in graves, and she didn’t enjoy the feelings that visiting them stirred up in her. She didn’t like being tied to her loved ones in that particular way. Ever the gentleman, my father had agreed.

  ‘You said you’d seen this before.’

  He nodded. ‘One time. Six, seven years ago. We were using higher temperatures then. Didn’t matter. Same thing.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Man.’

  ‘What did he die of?’

  He didn’t even have to think. ‘Heart attack. What did your dad die of?’

  The strange thing was, no one knew. He went into the hospital complaining of shortness of breath and twelve days later he was dead. Having lost his mind completely – ­ also for unknown reasons – ­ in the process.

  ‘Not his heart. His heart was fine. What did you do? The other time?’

  ‘I called around. Talked to some guys in the business. Everyone had had a case or two. Or if they didn’t, they knew of one.’

  ‘So this is not unheard of.’

  ‘No. It’s not.’

  ‘It happens a lot?’

  He shrugged. ‘It happens.’

  Knowing this, that we weren’t alone, did, in fact, help. But only a little.

  ‘So with the other one. The other body. What did you end up doing?’

  ‘Same thing I’m doing now. I talked to the involved parties. I let them know this was not the outcome we planned. Not the one we wanted. I tried to help, just like I’m trying to help you.’

  ‘Did they have a burial? The other time?’

  ‘Don’t know. They didn’t say what they were going to do. Like you, they were upset.’

  If my dad were alive, he would have been embarrassed at having caused a problem, embarrassed at being the center of attention, embarrassed at the fuss. If you told him he wasn’t crematable, he wouldn’t have asked why. He’d have said fine, do what you have to. Or rather, he would have said, don’t upset your mother. Make it easy on her. Do whatever she wants.

  ‘I’ll have to talk to my mother.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I stood.

  He said, ‘Can I get you to sign some papers before you go?’

  He produced them, I signed them, he punched a number into his phone. He lifted the receiver and spoke into it briefly, and a minute later, Greg came through the door. He was carrying a plain cardboard box about the size of a crate of oranges. It had a fitted top and cut-­outs for handles at either end. He placed it on the desk.

  It took me a moment to understand what it contained.

  ‘I packed them real good. Nice and snug. There shouldn’t be any problem with shifting or rubbing or slippage.’ He stared at his feet, hesitating. ‘The top I wrapped separate. And I put it in a bag. Just in case, you know, you don’t want to look at it.’

  ‘The top?’

  His hand drifted up to his head.

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so well. Weak in the knees, unsteady upstairs. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I wanted to throw up. Or cry. Or both (can a person do that?).

  ‘I made an inventory, just so you know. It’s on a piece of paper. In an envelope.’

  I was afraid to ask what he meant by ‘inventory’.

  His boss, however, felt obliged to explain. There were a lot of bones in the body. He didn’t know how many, but a lot. And they weren’t held together anymore, because whatever it was that held them was all burned up. The ashes – ­ what there were of them, which wasn’t much – ­ were in a small plastic bag. The bones, none of them touching, were packed separately, according to shape and size, not to how they fit together naturally. So I might not recognize which was which, and unless I happened to know anatomy, which I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t be able to say that all the bones were there, that the body was complete.

  ‘Which is why we made the list.’

  I nodded, but I barely heard a word he said. I was thinking of my poor mother. I was thinking of my father’s skull. I was also trembling. I felt like a little boy, being asked to be brave. My father, I sensed, was watching, not unsympathetically. He more than anyone would have understood. Inventory? You’ve got to be kidding. There was no way I was opening that box.

  But I did have to take it. At first I put it beside me in the passenger seat, but after a block or two I moved it to the back. That was still too close, and a few blocks later, I put it in the trunk.

  When it comes to disposing of a person’s ashes, it seems that it’s hard to go wrong. You can toss them to the wind, spread them around and dig them into the ground, charter a boat and scatter them at sea. You can do it as soon as you get them from the crematorium. You can wait a month, or a year, keeping them in an urn or a box, in private or in plain view on a shelf. You can keep them forever and never dispose of them at all. By some common decree, ashes are immune to misuse. Just about anything you do is acceptable.

  But, aside from burying them or bequeathing them to science, what are you supposed to do with bones?

  I put them in the living room, on a side table. My cat Chester made an exhaustive study of the box, seeing and smelling things, no doubt, far beyond my pale human senses. To me it looked gray and smelled like cardboard. The more I studied it, the more I should have stopped. For where Chester excelled in senses that were grounded in reality, I excelled in ones that were not. I fantasized, for example, that my father was alive and trapped inside. I fantasized he was a ghost. I fantasized he was troubled, restless, and was going to haunt me . . . not necessarily because he wanted to but because that’s what people with unfinished business did.

  This was not good. Not good at all. What was I going to tell my mother?

  That was a Monday. The nearby fire, which was mostly brush, had been contained, but now there were other fires, and on Tuesday, the forest to the north of us went up in flame, filling the sky with billows of black smoke. It was the driest summer on record, and by Wednesday there were a hundred fires, and more igniting every hour. For mile after mile in every direction the air was thick and gray and nasty. People with respiratory conditions were advised to stay indoors, then that was amended to include everybody. I watched TV, transfixed by news of the fires, witness to something that seemed both terri­fying and monumental, historic, apocalyptic, a turning point of some sort. Four hundred fires, eight hundred, a thousand, all up and down the state. ‘California Burning’, the headlines read. My father’s resistance to flame – his unburnability – seemed somehow part and parcel of this. Sphinx-­like, inscrutable, the box sat on the side table as if daring me to understand. What was I to do?

  The doorbell rang, and I nearly jumped. Two men were at the door. For an instant I feared that I was being evacuated. Like most people, I didn’t want to go.

  One was tall, the other stocky and broad. The tall one looked to be in his sixties; the stocky one, in his late thirties or so, a good ten years older than me. They were dressed conservatively in suits and ties.

  They introduced themselves and said how sorry they were to hear of my father’s death. I thanked them and asked how they knew him.

  ‘We didn’t know him personally,’ the older one, Michaels, said.

  ‘Felt like we did,’ said the other one, whose name was Neal. ‘It was nice what they said in the paper. Good man.’

  ‘Exceptional,’ said Michaels. ‘Outstanding. I wish I had known him. A fine man all around.’

  The younger one, Neal, handed me a card. ‘We were wondering if we could have a m
inute of your time.’

  I looked at it, then him. ‘Bereavement counselor?’

  He frowned. His buddy Michaels snatched the card out of my hand, read it, then narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Wrong card,’ he told Neal, who stammered something and blushed. ‘He’s only been doing this a little while,’ he explained to me, returning the card to Neal, who pocketed it, fished out his wallet and withdrew another one. After a moment’s hesitation he offered it to me, but Michaels took it first. He examined it, gave a little nod, looked me in the eye in a friendly sort of way, and passed it on. This one read ‘Department of Public Health.’

  ‘Which one are you?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re health officers,’ said Michaels. ‘We received a notice of an irregularity. We’re following up.’

  ‘Strictly routine,’ said Neal. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  Michaels seemed to tense slightly. ‘Larry. Why would he worry?’

  ‘He wouldn’t. Like I said . . .’

  ‘We know it’s a difficult time,’ said Michaels, cutting him off, ‘but we’d like to ask you a few questions. Do you have a minute? It won’t take long.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘None at all,’ added Neal. ‘Routine visit. We’ll be gone before you know it.’

  The two of them stood there for a while, not looming exactly, but not going away. At length Michaels said, ‘May we come in?’

  There is something gravitational about authority, compelling in an almost physical way. Without thinking, you find yourself drawn to it. And you want to be, that’s the thing. You like the feeling. You want a piece of the action, whether or not you believe in it or plan to obey.