The Undertaker

“But Ralph...”

“Do what you're told, Larry. Take our mouthy “friend” downstairs, then you and your people can go home. I'll handle the rest of it.”

“But Ralph...”

“Go home, Larry.”

I never heard them finish the argument, if they ever did. Tinkerton's voice faded away into the darkness, taking the sound of the ambulance along with it.

CHAPTER NINE

Keep out of reach of children…

The next thing I felt was a numbing, shivering cold. I opened my eyes and tried to focus, but the room wouldn't stop spinning. My head pounded like an angry bass drum. I relaxed and laid there for a few moments before I tried to raise my arms, but they wouldn't move. Slowly I realized I was lying flat on my back on something hard and cold, and my arms wouldn't move because they were strapped down to the table. My legs were strapped down too. That was when I felt panic grab me by the throat. I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax. Calm down. Forget the straps. Take a few deep breaths. Inventory the body parts, one at a time. See if anything's dented, broken, or missing. As I did, the room began to stop its spinning, the fog began to lift, and slowly I felt myself coming out of it.

My fingers and toes were all there. I could wiggle them and count them. I could feel my legs, my arms, my shoulders and my back. All of the moving parts seemed to be where they were supposed to be, so I opened my eyes again. This time they managed to focus. The floor was a clean, light-gray linoleum. The walls were white ceramic tile. And I found myself staring up at a stark white, acoustical-tile ceiling. I blinked and realized my head wasn't hurting as severely now. At least the back side where Dannmeyer had clubbed me wasn't. This time it was my forehead that hurt like hell. I frowned. My forehead? That was when I remembered George and Ernie, the two klutzes from the ambulance who dropped me on the concrete loading dock.

I raised my head a few inches and looked around. Whoa! No wonder I was cold. I was lying flat on my back, stark naked, on a long, stainless steel table, and it was ice cold on my bare butt. How odd. The table had a deep, rounded gutter and a raised lip that ran all the way around its outer edge. I looked around. The rest of the room was still fuzzy, probably from whatever was in the hypodermic needle Varner gave me. Varner! There was a hot corner of hell reserved for quacks like him.

I tried to get up, but there were three wide, leather straps holding me down to the table. One ran across my chest, one across my waist, and one across my knees. The one across my waist passed under my forearms and had two separate buckles that held my wrists down, rendering my arms immobile. The one across my knees held my legs down. I struggled with them for a few minutes and found I could raise my shoulders, but that was as far as I could get and I stopped. It was no use, anyway.

But where was I? I strained my ears, listening for any sound, but all I heard was the soft humming of the air conditioners. My nose twitched. What was that smell? Soap and disinfectants? Yes, but underneath I swore I smelled was the sugary-sweet aroma of flowers. My head dropped back on the stainless steel table with a painful “Clang.” I tried to think. As I did, I realized my head was slightly higher than the rest of me. No, that wasn't quite right. It was the table. The top was sloped. The far end where my feet were was three or four inches lower than my head.

Then it hit me. My head shot up and I looked around the room in stark terror. I knew exactly where I was. I was in the in the embalming room in the basement of Greene's funeral home, strapped to an embalming table. I strained at the straps in earnest, thrashing and flopping back and forth like a cod on the deck of a Gloucester fishing trawler. I tugged with all my might, but it was no use. A Clydesdale could pull a line of beer wagons with one of those leather straps and there was no way I was going to break free from them.

There was a large, round clock on the wall. It showed 9:20. But 9:20 when? Morning? Night? I had no idea how long I had been lying there unconscious and I found it strangely unnerving to have no idea whatsoever what time or even what day it was.

To my right were two other embalming tables. They were identical to the one I was strapped to, except the far table, where I saw my clothes, all neatly folded in a stack. On the far wall, beyond the other tables, was an elevator and a short flight of stairs that went up and turned to the right before it passed out of sight. To the right of the stairs stood a row of stainless steel refrigerator doors designed to hold a half-dozen bodies. No matter how cold I felt lying on that stainless steel table, I knew I'd be a whole lot colder if I ended up inside one of them.

Twisting around and looking back over my shoulder, I saw a row of tall, white enamel cabinets lining the wall. They had glass doors and glass shelves. In the first cabinet, I saw a gruesome array of brightly polished scalpels, scissors, saw-toothed knives, augers, forceps, and clamps of all sizes, lying neatly on clean, white towels. In the next cabinet, were large-bore needles, coils of rubber tubing, bowls, basins, sponges, jars, and tubes of makeup, combs, hairbrushes, and sprays. Well, you sure can't beat Larry Greene for a good time, can you?

I turned and looked the other way. High above my left shoulder, my eyes were drawn to two tall metal cylinders clamped to the wall. Clear, plastic tubes ran down from the top of the cylinders and plugged into a metal box that sat on a small stainless steel table below. The box had dials and switches and it plugged into an electric outlet. I figured it had to be a pump of some kind and there was a second yellow-rubber tube coming out the front, with a nasty looking, big-bore needle at its end. I tried to read the label on the cylinder closest to me. It was upside down, but it had a line of cute green and yellow daises running across the top, the name “Nature's Own,” and the word “Formaldehyde” in red. Below that was a black skull-and cross-bones emblem, the word “Poison” and the warning “Keep Out of Reach of Children.” Can't argue with that one, I thought. Too bad they didn't keep it out of the reach of me too, because I had a good idea what Greene had in mind for that tank of “Nature's Own” and for that big, ugly needle.

“Excellent! You finally woke up,” I jumped as I heard Tinkerton's loud, west Texas twang call to me from the bottom of the stairs. He wore the same dark business suit he had worn in his office. “For a moment there, I thought Varner gave you a bit too much of his “joy juice.” He's such a quack, you know. He doesn't appreciate you nearly as much as I do and it would have been so very unfortunate if you had left us prematurely, Pete.”

“I couldn't agree more, Ralph.”

“Ah, that's the ticket. You're regaining that irrepressible sense of humor of yours. And that's a good thing,” he said as he walked across the room toward me. “Bright-eyed. Bushy tailed. With all your faculties intact. That is marvelous, because I will have your undivided attention when we have our important, but somewhat brief conversation.”

I jerked at the straps again, wishing I could wrap my undivided attention around his throat. “Look, Ralph,” I forced a smile. “I can take a joke as well as the next guy...”

“A joke? Is that what you think this is?” he said as he circled the embalming table, looking down at me.

“You've made your point, okay?”

“And what would my point be, Peter?”

“That I should mind my own business and get the hell out of town.”

“Oh, you'll be doing that,” he chuckled. “You'll be getting out of town soon enough. I have no doubt about it. And you'll be happy to know that Larry Greene has picked out a lovely spot for you in the back row up at Oak Hill, right next to the other Talbotts and your old pals from New Jersey.”

He stopped at the far end of the table near to my feet as he looked down at my body from toe to head with a cold, professional eye. “You have my compliments. You are in excellent physical condition. Trim. No fat. Good muscle tone. Nice coloration.”

“Gee, thanks. You have no idea how good that makes me feel.”

“Well, the body is God's temple, you know.”

“And God doesn't think much of you tying his temple down to this table, Ralph.”

“Probably not, but most of Larry's customers don't try to get up and run away.”

He turned toward the intercom on the far wall and punched one of the buttons. The sparking notes of a Mozart Piano Concerto filled the room. “I hope you like that,” he said as he closed his eyes and drank it in. “You