Graveminder

for the myriad unanswered questions, a tunnel behind a cabinet in a storage room wasn’t anywhere on the list. “Where is here? Where does this go?”

William stepped into the tunnel and took a torch that looked like it belonged in a medieval dungeon—gray rags wrapped around a weathered bit of wood—from the wall. The torch flamed to life as if a switch had been thrown. Torches don’t do that. The touch of his father’s hand had caused flame to appear and cast some scant light into the tunnel. On the ground was what looked to be an abandoned stretch of railroad track, overgrown with mosses and covered in dirt. The walls of the tunnel looked like nothing so much as a rough- hewn access shaft into a cave. The abandoned coal mine tunnels Byron had once gone exploring with spelunker friends might’ve looked less safe, but not by much.

Byron stared at the tunnel and then at his father. “Is it a Prohibition tunnel? From a war? From ... I don’t know. What is this? What does it have do with your arm? Were you down here explor—”

“No. It’s the entrance to the land of the dead,” William told him.

“ What did you say?” Byron stared at his father. He must have slipped into some sort of grief-induced dementia or shock or something. “Let’s go upstairs. Maybe we can go for a drive and—”

“Come on.” William beckoned. “I’m not crazy. I know it seems ... I know exactly how odd it seems, but you need to come with me now. The dead don’t get any more patient for having forever at their disposal. Step into the tunnel.”

Byron hesitated. It was probably just an old, unused tunnel, an escape route or something. Tunnels to the dead didn’t exist.

It’s not real. It’s ... Faces appeared in the frosty air; hands stretched out toward his father; and Byron wasn’t sure if they were welcoming or threatening. Terror rose up in him as the ghostly figures hurtled toward his father. Byron stepped into the tunnel and in front of his father. “Dad?”

William leaned close to him and yelled in his ear, “Just stay with me. They aren’t always like this.”

They?

William strode off into the swirling darkness in front of them. Any words he might have said were lost in a gust of wind that came tearing at them. The sheer force of the wind was like teeth sinking into skin, like cold breath on Byron’s neck, like viscous wet things pressed on his lips.

The flickering light didn’t seem touched by the screaming wind, but the air was cold with it. Frost had started to creep over the walls, covering them with a growing white rime.

And then the shrieking wind died as suddenly as it had begun. The hands and voices dissipated, and Byron wondered if he’d imagined them.

Am I hallucinating?

“You wanted answers,” William said in a breath of white air. “You’re about to get a few of them.”

Byron jumped as he heard the slam of a door closing behind him. As it did so, the landscape around them seemed to shift. The already hazy tunnel grew dimmer and then flared with light. An opening, an end to the previously dark tunnel, appeared.

Beside him, his father said only, “Some days the way is long, and some days the way is brief. When it’s quick as today, it means they want to talk now .”

Byron turned quickly as something ran past him and into the shadows along the tunnel walls. “They?”

“The dead, son.” William started walking toward the vague shape of buildings that had become apparent at the end of the tunnel. As they walked, or maybe as time passed, the wooden storefronts became clearer. “This is their world. They’ve been waiting to meet you.”

“The dead?” Byron peered into the darkness of the tunnel to try to see whatever had hidden itself there, but the torch in his father’s hand only illuminated a small space around them. Even if the torch did cast light farther into the tunnel, Byron wasn’t sure that the light would help. Warily, he said, “We’re here to see the dead who want to meet me. ”

“Not all of them,” William murmured. “There are those we can’t meet here. You won’t see your mother. If you have children who die ... or close friends ... or other Undertakers.”

“You are saying that we’re in the land of the dead ... That hell is under our house.” Byron kept his voice low, but the absolute silence in the tunnel made it echo nonetheless.

“Not hell. Not heaven.” William mostly watched the ground in front of them, but he swept his gaze along the walls a few times as if he saw things at the edge of the light, too. “Those are other places maybe, but this is the place we can reach.”

“We?”

“You are the next Undertaker, Byron.” William paused for a moment. His hand tightened on the torch he clutched. Light flickered over his face. “I’d thought of revealing it some other way, but seeing is believing. You need to see, and after ... then we can talk.”

Then William increased his pace, and Byron was left with the choice to follow or to be left alone in the dark.

The dead.

Byron bit back a few words that he was pretty sure weren’t anywhere near the reverence his father had demanded while here. He wasn’t sure what was stranger—that his father was leading him to meet the dead or that he felt betrayed that this had been in his home all of these years. It was one thing to keep a bottle of booze tucked in a hidden nook or to hide a flirtation or a hobby. This was an entire world.

At the end of the tunnel, William stopped. He held his hand behind him, fingers outstretched and flat, in a stilling gesture, and said, “I want you to meet someone.”

He sounded nervous for the first time. A tremor threaded through his voice, and those outstretched fingers seemed poised to tremble. They didn’t, but Byron knew his father well enough to read the signs of worry.

William put the torch into a hole in the wall; it extinguished as soon as he released it. He stepped out of the tunnel and said, “Charlie.”

Standing in front of what looked to be a fully functioning mining town was a man who didn’t blend with the crude buildings around him. The man, Charlie presumably, wore a 1930s-style suit complete with silk pocket square, wide-brimmed fedora, and silk tie. Byron suspected that the tie and pocket square matched, but the world had taken on shades of gray: all color had vanished.

“It took you long enough. Shake a leg, son,” Charlie said. “We have places to go and people to see.”

William opened his mouth to reply, but Byron spoke first. “What? Why?”

Charlie stopped and grinned. “Because the alternative isn’t one you’ll like much. You might be set to be the new Undertaker, but he”—the man gestured at William with an unlit cigar—“hasn’t finished his living just yet, so there’s still time to fetch a new one if you are found lacking.”

William put a hand on Byron’s shoulder.

Byron glanced back and could see blood seeping through the sleeve of his father’s suit. The sight of that blood scared Byron more than anything else. “What happened?”

William ignored him. He looked past Byron and said, “I’m not long for the other side, Charlie. You and I both know that the time has come for change.”

Charlie nodded once. A flicker of regret seemed to cross his features, but before it was clearly there, it was gone. The dead man gestured widely with the hand still holding the unlit cigar. “I reserved a table.”

“Dad?” Byron pulled up his father’s sleeve. A blood-soaked bandage covered his wrist. “Shit. We need to get you to the hospital.”

Charlie looked at William’s arm, and then caught William’s gaze. “Do you need a medic?”

“No.” William gently loosened Byron’s grip. “This can wait.”

An inexplicable look passed between William and Charlie; then Charlie nodded. “As you will.”

He turned and walked away into the gray landscape. William motioned for Byron to follow. Byron wanted to take his father and leave this place, but he trusted William, so, reluctantly, he walked after Charlie.

Soot looked different when there were only shades of gray: that was the first realization Byron had as he walked through a city that had neither modernity nor antiquity to distinguish it. As they went farther into its precincts, wooden structures gave way to brick buildings and steel-and-glass structures. Horse-drawn curricles and barouches shared space with bicycles and Model Ts and 1950s Thunderbirds. The costumes varied as much as the conveyances: women in flapper dresses strolled past others who sported punk and belle époque attire. There was something unsettling about the unnatural beauty of these coexisting eras.