A Penny Down the Well: A Short Story Collection of Horrifying Events (11 page)

“
Hello?” Clint
said.

“
Clint. It’s Marie. How
are you doing?”

Clint glanced back to
Kaylie who was now staring off into the distance, lost in
thought.

“
I’m doing alright.
Something I can help you with?” Again, he thought of Maggie’s
suggestion to watch over Marie.

“
There is something.
Tomorrow morning, I need you to swing by the coroner’s office off
8th Street. Larry and Morton will be there. We’ll be doing a
pick-up from that location.” Marie said, distractedly. The normal
shuffling of papers could be heard in the background.

Clint didn’t respond
immediately, a little caught off guard by the circumstances. He
spoke a bit more softly, as to ensure Kaylie couldn’t hear him. “Is
there any reason why we’re going directly to the coroner’s office?
There isn’t going to be a viewing in the parlor or anything like
that?”

Marie was silent for just
a moment and the sounds of paper being fumbled about ceased. “Not
everyone has someone that cares to see them, or is alive to, Clint.
Sometimes this business is more about the transaction and less
about the sentiment. This is just one of those cases. So, can I
count on you?” She asked again. Her insistence suggested an odd
urgency.

The corner of Clint’s lips
quirked nervously. He thought about it and about what Kaylie asked.
This would be the determining ride. “Sure. What time?” Clint’s
voice didn’t express the concern and burden elicited by Kaylie’s
warnings.

“
Seven a.m. sharp.” And
back to work she went.

“
Alright. I’ll be there.
Take care.” Clint said, lowering the phone from his ear.

Clint turned and stepped
back toward Kaylie. “How about we get out of here and we talk about
it a little more tomorrow?” Trying to avoid what the conversation
on the phone was about. He thought it was best to avoid bringing up
his commitment until after it was done the following
day.

Kaylie nodded and smiled a
bit. Still, there was concern about her, but she tried to have
faith that Clint would make the right decision and listen to her
worries. They’d been friends long enough, she thought, and that he
would consider her worries to be important. Clint walked Kaylie out
to her car, suit aside bed wear and they went on their separate
ways.

The world was shifted
horizontally to match Clint’s orientation as his morning alarm
began to sound. The incessant nagging tone was thwarted with an
aimless smack of his hand in its direction, most likely contacting
the large “snooze” button instead of the “off.” Never known to be a
morning person, still, on this day, Clint seemed to drag even more
heavily than most. He rose, making his way to the bathroom to stare
at himself in the mirror. The fascination common to most people, of
staring at themselves immediately after coming back to life took
him for a short while. He looked like he expected the dead would
look, which was surprisingly different from how they actually were.
He showered, readied himself and eventually made his way to the
coroner’s as he was instructed for the unorthodox (if he could
claim the job could be so) pick up of his newest
“client.”

Larry and Morton were
already waiting, as if Clint had arrived late. Perhaps more odd
about the strange rendezvous was that Larry didn’t have a tuna fish
sandwich hanging from his mouth. He seemed strangely normal, if not
a little anxious. Clint parked and opened the driver’s side door,
stepping out to meet the men in what he hoped would be a short
encounter.

“
Decided to make it, eh?”
Larry said, gesturing back toward the large door of the building
behind him.

Clint shrugged. “I’m here.
I was told to be here at seven. It’s...” Clint looked down to his
watch as the long hand hit twelve, denoting that it was exactly
that time. “...seven.” And he offered a passive smile.

Larry shook his head.
“Marie had us here an hour early, like this was gonna be some sort
o’ big job or something. She must think we like hangin’ around all
o’ these stiffs. Doesn’t she know we have better things we could be
doin’?” Larry said, irritated.

Clint thought for a moment
about what it was Larry could possibly have to do that was
important. Then, he didn’t think on it long. Morton brought out the
dolly with a casket atop it. The casket, however, was of a much
lower quality than those he’d seen in his past two jobs. It was
made mostly of wood, perhaps even some sort of composite by its
frail look. The inadequate container made Clint quirk a brow in
dissatisfaction. “Is that how they always come out of this place?”
Referring to the coroner’s.

Larry looked down to the
box, then back to Clint. “What do you expect? A chariot o’ gold?
This man ain’t got no family, no friends, no nothin’. And when you
don’t have anybody, kid... nobody cares what they cart you around
in after you’re dead. You’re just dead and that’s it. End of the
story.”

Larry and Morton, will
less delicacy than normal, lifted the box from the dolly and moved
around to the back of the hearse. They stood there for a minute
before Larry shouted, “Hey! You just gonna stand there all day and
play with yourself or are you gonna open the hatch?” His voice
struggled with the weight.

Clint moved hastily then,
opening the door for the two men, which quickly shoved the weak
wooden box into the back of the hearse, locked it down and closed
the door. Larry, breathing heavily now, walked past Clint and gave
him a slap on the shoulder. “Have fun, kid.” And they went on into
the building, closing the large door behind them.

Clint looked into the
shaded window of the hearse to observe the box. As he had felt
before that disturbing medal atop the military man’s casket was
disrespectful to the dead, the ushering of the person inside of a
casket of such poor quality seemed equally contemptible, if not
much worse. Clint hoped that should he have an experience with
whatever was in it, the entity wouldn’t be upset about the
conditions.

Clint reached into his
pocket, retrieved his phone and dialed Marie. When she answered
with a simple “hello” Clint began. “I’ve made the pickup.” It
sounded like a ridiculous espionage mission. “What now?” Marie
informed Clint that he would be taking the body to site 4742A. She
instructed that the funeral booth attendant would be able to get
him going in the right direction. The booth reminded Clint of the
short stops they made while entering the cemetery, where things
first went awry. After receiving the directions, Clint got in the
hearse, joined his passenger and drove to the cemetery with much
less majesty than was normal with the motorcade.

When Clint arrived at the
cemetery, a car sat in front of him at the booth causing him to
have to wait for a short time behind it. Clint looked over his
shoulder at the simple casket and spoke out in its direction,
“Probably not how you expected things to go, huh?” And he turned
away as the car in front of him pulled off. “Alone, with no one
that cares. No one to miss you.” It brought Clint to think about
how lonely his life was, short of Kaylie. He didn’t have much. He
pulled up to the booth. An old woman smiled, lips red and bright.
She reminded him of Maggie Wilcox.

“
Hey there, dear! What can
I do for you?” She asked.

Clint gestured back with a
thumb to the casket. “Delivering this fellow to 4742A. Mind telling
me how to get out that way?” And Clint said “fellow” unsure if it
was in fact a man or a woman. Sadly, at this point, it was simply a
box and nothing more. Clint thought maybe this was the beginning of
the detachment he’d seen in Larry and Morton.

The woman smiled and
offered him a map. She explained where he was, then circled the
location he was going to with a large red marker. Clint smiled and
accepted the map appreciatively, getting on his way. As he drove
through the cemetery, Clint’s anxiety kicked in. Nothing had
happened, but the memories of what had, regardless of the mostly
innocent encounters, incited fear which transpired in a nervous
sweat at his forehead. Clint went around each bend carefully,
keeping an eye on the map when he needed to, then to the road to be
aware of pedestrians or other vehicles. The cemetery was much more
quiet than normal, and that was probably because it was a weekday.
No one had to be at a funeral. No one had to worry about a
scheduling conflict with the burial of the deceased. Clint
estimated he was close to the burial site. It was off to his left
according to the map. His eyes narrowed a bit on the relative
location then back to the map. He, again, called Marie.

“
Marie.
I’m here. Is someone supposed to be here to take the casket? Seems
pretty qui
—
” And Clint looked back toward the gravesite, catching a
glimpse of something he hadn’t before. It brought him to push
closer to the driver’s side window while Marie spoke, saying
something about “Larry and Morton should be there” but they
weren’t. Instead, there were three people in the relative location
of the gravesite, a taller figure with two shorter ones; the two
Clint suspected were children.

“
Clint? Clint, are you
there?” Marie called, seemingly at a distance as the phone was held
away from Clint’s ear and near his lap.

Clint called out, trying
to get a better look. “Marie, I’ll call you right back!” And he
thumbed the screen of the phone until it hung up. Clint opened the
door of the hearse and stepped out of the vehicle, cautiously
stepping across the street in the direction of the three. He called
out, still a bit too far out of view to make a clear image of them.
“Hello? Are you here for someone?” They didn’t look to him. Clint
knew this was the right place, according to the map. He tried
again. “Are you here for a funeral?” Clint hoped he wouldn’t have
managed himself into a terribly awkward situation. Instead, Clint
managed himself into one that became suddenly and intensely
terrifying.

The three looked up,
simultaneously, as if a set of strings were attached to each of
their heads, but all controlled by the hand of a single puppeteer.
Clint eyes took a moment to take in their faces
—
or what was left of them. A woman,
with curly black hair stared with haunting white eyes while the
lower section of her face, where her mouth and nose would have
been, hung in a mangled mess of flesh and bloody tissue. The
children, each of them, bore crimson pits in their chests, one of
them able to be seen completely through to the dirt fields behind
them. Their eyes were dead and cold like the woman’s, so bleak and
torn that their innocence could not fight through their harrowing
observance. Clint yelled and ran back to his hearse, “Holy shit!
Holy shit!” He screamed, tugging rapidly on the door handle until
it opened. He sat into the driver’s seat and quickly reached for
the ignition and key. There was nothing. It was then that he felt
the cold metal press against the side of his head.

“
Hey,
sweetheart. Going somewhere?” The voice was not the gentle,
inviting tone he’d felt with the woman at the cemetery booth. It
was the blood-curdling, guttural male tone. Clint’s eyes shifted in
a panic to his right, toward the passenger’s seat, though he didn’t
dare move his body. In his peripheral, he followed the long barrel
of the device pressed against his head to the wooden stock of what
he recognized what a large shotgun. Immediately, Clint began to
cry. “No, no, no... No, please, this is a mistake! I’m just here to
bring this casket to the cemetery! I don’t know anything, I
promise, I don’t know anything! Don’t do this!” As he receded into
a babbling, begging mess unavoidable of most people ever put into a
position of helplessness with the added potential of losing one’s
life.

“
Shut your fucking mouth!”
The man screamed, pressing the gun toward him so fiercely that it
guided Clint’s head against the driver’s side window, slamming it
against the glass before the barrel dug into his temple. “Look out
there. It’s a pretty fucking picture, isn’t it?” The man said,
laughing. “Model family!” And his laughing erupted, causing the
cold metal to quiver in a counter to Clint’s uncontrollable
shaking.

Clint’s eyes drifted back
to the family that continued to watch as the event took place. The
woman huddled the two children protectively against her body and
shook her mangled head as chunks of shattered flesh swung where her
chin once sat, much like a grisly pendulum. Clint’s breath beat
against the window, fogging it, then clearing as he breathed it
back in, moving into a mild hyperventilation.

The familiar sound of
Clint’s ringer went off between his legs, where Clint had left his
phone upon exiting the car initially. The barrel was pulled from
Clint’s temple, and the gun was maneuvered in a way that the
buttstock sat at the floorboard, behind the pedals of the hearse,
with gun barrel pointed vertically in Clint’s direction. With a
quick grasp of Clint’s hair which drew a painful scream, the man
shoved the underside of Clint’s chin, the fleshy, pliable region at
the peak of the neck, against the barrel, holding him
there.

The man instructed.
“Answer the phone.”

Clint shook his head,
tears streaming down his face as he struggled to
breathe.

“
Answer the phone!” The
man repeated. The man held Clint against the barrel so firmly that
Clint could hardly move. Trying to take control of the gun may have
resulted in a terrible end. Clint did all he could. He lifted the
phone with one hand and answered it, sobbing. “H-Hello?” Clint
muttered brokenly into the phone.