John and Mary and I looked at each other helplessly, out of ideas. I put a hand on the shoulder of a wailing mourner in bright skull make-up. "Feel free to ease up on the lamentations of the damned."
The woman protested, nodding at Mary. "She promised me a farthing if I made either of them scream."
"I'll give you a farthing if either man flinches," I said. She renewed her caterwauling, and I looked at John. "This particular blend of nothingness and chaos is an eventuality we didn't really plan for."
"No one does," said John, "and yet it's truly all that awaits us on the other side."
"What?"
"Nothing," said John. "Just feeling out a new style of narrative I've been working on. Nihilistic science horror."
"Is this really the time?"
"Ooh, that's a good one," said John, pulling out a charcoal pencil and a piece of note-covered paper. "What we think of as time isn't." He scribbled it down. "Now I just need a really unpronounceable name for the deathless being at the center of—"
"Can you please pay attention to the task at hand?" I cried. "For the love of all that's—"
"Door," said Mary.
"For the love of all that's door?" asked John. "No, I don't think that works at all."
"There was a knock on the door," said Mary. "I barely heard it over the various screams of the admittedly unconvincing damned."
"Fine, then," I said. "I'll go and see who it is. But unless it's another wizard or necromancer, I'm not going to let them in. Or possibly a sorceress—we don't have one of those yet. Maybe a warlock?" I walked down the short hallway, talking mostly to myself. "Though I suppose I'd make an exception for a better class of damned. These ones are abysmal, and not in the way you want a damned to be abysmal." I opened the door, a polite refusal already on my lips, when I shocked into a sudden silence by the appearance of three constables on the front step. I blinked, too surprised to think about hiding my face, and all I could manage to say was "You're not damned."
"Damned what?" asked the first constable.
"Damned cheerful," said the second, "because that's one I think I guarantee I'm not."
"Damned to hell," I said, immediately wincing, but too nervous to stop talking. "I don't know why I clarified that for you, as I doubt it explained anything helpful. Why am I still talking?" If they knew who I really was, and how I'd come into possession of the mortuary, they'd cart me straight off to prison.
"We've had complaints," said the third constable.
"About my talking?" I asked. "I'm trying to stop, I'm just too distracted to think of how." I tried to give a comforting smile, but went far too broad and attempted, halfway through, to tone it down, eventually abandoning what must have been downright terrifying and settling for fumbled question instead. "What—what—what—what exactly have you complained about?"
"Are you okay?" asked the first constable.
"Not you," I said, "but the others. What have they complained about? Not the other constable others, but the other others."
"Which others?" asked the second constable.
"Whoever it was that complained."
"Do you have any dead men inside?" asked the third constable.
"Several," I said, nodding toward the sign that said 'Mortuary,' "though the exact number is a matter of some discussion."
"The one we're looking for is about your height," said the first constable, "approximately your age, and, come to think of it, matches your description to a fair degree as well. Maybe a brother?"
"I have a dead brother?" I asked.
"You do?" asked the second.
"Not to my knowledge," I said quickly. "I'm sorry—are you looking for the dead men who might be alive but look dead, or the man who shouldn't be alive because he smells dead, or maybe the man who seems perfectly alive but claims to be dead? Because, frankly at the moment I'm ready to be rid of any of them."
"We're looking for a dead man named Frederick Whithers," said the third constable. He might have also said something else, but I didn't hear because I closed the door on them and walked back into the funeral chapel, my feet seeming to move almost entirely on their own. My head buzzed with a mixture of fear and anticipation and several other things that I couldn't identify, and grouped back in the first column with fear. The room was full of smoke green light and a maelstrom of wailing, black-clad figures.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," said Mary.
"Or become one," said John. "You're pale as a sheet."
"In approximately ten seconds, three constables are going to break down our front door," I said, my voice sounding surprisingly calm in my ears. "In approximately seven seconds, I'm going to start running."
"I take it both events are related," said Mary.
"Five seconds left," I said. "Visit me in prison, I'm rather curious to know how this whole . . ." I gestured at the staring men. " . . . thing . . . shakes out."
"You could hide as a mourner," said Mary.
"Or in the coffin," said John, "no one else is using it."
"Two seconds left," I said. "It's been .
