Hello, everybody, my name is Charles and I run the funeral home outside of a small town called Copperhill. It’s a small, quaint town filled with interesting people. But the story isn’t really about them, it’s more about the strange things that have happened around the funeral home
Like the time a worker named Jeb buried Mrs. Periwinkle at the cemetery that was closest to us. When Jeb was almost done digging up the grave with a backhoe, he left it alone for a few minutes to get his lunch out of his car. But when he came back, the backhoe was gone.
No one can explain it, not even the Jeb himself. He didn’t even hear the engine rev up and he wasn’t gone that long. It just appeared to have vanished or something. But Jeb was pissed off because he wasn’t going to get his deposit back for losing such a big vehicle.
So Jeb’s first instinct was to come to me, the one who was doing all the arrangements, and blame me. Jeb was always like this always, blaming others than himself. He wasn’t the type to be joked with since he takes his work very seriously. Even though he was a b***h to work with, he was the only person that we could get for cheap.
“Damn it Charles, do you know how much that f*****g thing cost? Just for it to disappear like that? This is all your f*****g fault,” Jeb said to me.
“Wait, what?” I asked. “How the hell is it my fault that you lost a big machine like that?”
“Because it’s your f*****g land you moron. If something goes missing or gets damaged, it all falls on the owner.”
“Oh don’t give me that b******t,” I replied. “Yes it’s my responsibility to look after things and keep up with property damage, but it’s not my responsibility if a person loses something of theirs. It would’ve been different if it was my machine, but it wasn’t. So if that’s all, get your petty a*s out of my funeral home.”
I angrily pointed to the door and a cloud of dust illuminated off of him as he walked out the door slamming it behind him.
After that conflict was over, I went down to the basement to visit Annie. Annie was one of my students that I was teaching to be a mortician. She was a smart young girl, even though she didn’t quite dress like one. You see, Annie likes to dress in black and Gothic L****a outfits. Inappropriate for a funeral home and unprofessional for a mortician, but whatever makes her comfortable I guess.
“Hey Annie, are you done stitching up old Mr. Wilkins?” I asked.
I didn’t get a response from her. Maybe she didn’t hear me. Annie probably had her headphones on since she seems to work better with music. So I went all the way down the stairs, and what I saw there was shocking. Annie was in the corner, scared out of her mind. She was crying with her head in her knees. So I walked towards her and gently reached out my hand to touch her shoulder. But once I did, she shot up and let out a blood curdling scream.
“Annie, it’s just me,” I assured her. “Calm down, are you alright?”
Once she saw who it was, she breathed a sigh of relief and then hugged me tightly with her tears lightly smudging her makeup.
“Mr. Waters! I’m so glad to see you,” she said relieved to know it was only me.
“You’re not going to believe this! When I was working on old man Wilkins, his eyes shot open,” she explained. “He then sat up and looked at me Mr. Waters. I swear he was dead when I validated him, but he was sitting on the edge of the table looking right at me. Then he smiled and started to lick his lips in a perverted manner. I was terrified.”
After hearing her explain what happened, I looked over at the table and there was old man Wilkins laying there dead as a doornail. But there was one thing that was odd about his corpse when I looked at it. He appeared to be smiling, but I shrugged it off and scolded Annie for acting like a child and making up ridiculous stories.
“Annie look,” I said while showing her the dead body. “Does that look like a living person to you? How many times do I have to tell you to quit eating those damn pot brownies that you bring to work? It’s unprofessional. If you’re going to do that s**t, do it at home not here. Now get back to work.”
“B-b-but Mr. Waters, I swear…”
“No more excuses Annie. You are a smart young woman, now use that intelligence and get back to work!”
“Yes sir,” she said sadly.
Oh god, these kids and their substances. I would get rid of her for using illegal drugs at work, but I could use all the help I can get. I am short-handed after all because of all the “weird” things that have supposedly happened here. So I can’t really get rid of anybody at the moment, even though strange things tend to happen from time to time here. But who cares, I got a funeral home to run. I don’t have time to babysit my workers every time a door squeaks or they get a hold of some bad shrooms or s**t like that.
I went back to my office to finish some paperwork and eat my lunch, which has gotten cold after the whole Annie incident. As I sat there finishing up my work, I heard the bell at the door ring. That tells me that someone is coming in to either pay for a funeral or pay their last respects. I wiped my face off since I just finished lunch, straightened up my tie and walk to the door to greet whoever was there with a smile. But when I came to the door, there was no one there. That was very peculiar, but they couldn’t have gotten far. So I went to look for them.
I looked everywhere for this supposed customer or mourner, I even looked in our viewing rooms. I went as far as to look inside our coffin display room.
And if some of you haven’t been to a funeral home, a coffin display room is exactly what it sounds like. It’s like a used car lot where they have floor models. But instead of cars, we display coffins and urns to store your loved one’s bodies and ashes in.
After looking for this person, I figured I would just give up and go back to my office. As I get to the door to my office, I heard screaming coming from the basement. Then I saw Annie running from downstairs, freaking out YET AGAIN.
“What is it this time Annie? Did the corpse move again or did you have another pot brownie?” I teased.
“No, and you know I don’t eat those during work hours,” she snapped back.
“Yeah, sure you don’t,” I replied sarcastically.
“Mr. Waters, I’m being serious,” she said sternly.
“Alright alright, what is it Annie?”
“Come down to the basement and I’ll show you,” she insisted.
Humoring her, I followed her downstairs to the basement. As we approached the body, I started to notice something weird. As I put on some gloves to spread the chest cavity apart to get a closer look, there in his chest was a block of wood where his heart should have been. In all my years of working here, I have never really seen anything like that before. No one has tampered with the body and I know Annie. She’s very professional, even though she dresses like a punk rocker l****a. She would never play pranks, especially pranks like this.
“Well at least we know how he died, the old b*****d didn’t have a heart,” I said jokingly.
I looked around more to see if I can find anything else out of place from the body and boy did I. There was nothing but a pile of goo where his stomach should’ve been. It kind of looked like his stomach ate itself and dissolved into a pile of glop. I was a little shocked by this, but I told Annie to sew him up and prepare him for tomorrow.
“If you need me, I’ll be in my office,” I told her as I headed up the stairs.
As I walked back to my office, I was greeted by Jeb who was waiting for me by my office door.
“What do you want Jeb?” I asked irritably. “I thought I told you your backhoe was not my responsibility.”
“I know that dumbass,” he snapped. “I’m here for a different reason. So I apparently found my backhoe. Somehow my backhoe found its way on top of the courthouse.”
“Wait, what? Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yes I’m serious, numbnuts. The judge gave me a call on my cell phone a little while ago and said my backhoe was on top of the courthouse. Now they’re trying to find a way to get it down. Hell, they’re trying to figure out how it even got up there to begin with.”
“Well at least you’ll get your deposit back,” I joked.
“It’s not funny you a*****e,” he snapped.
“Of course it is. It’s very funny to know that someone pulled such an elaborate prank on you,” I said with a laugh.
“Whatever! I got other things to worry about than dealing with you, like paying money I don’t have to get that damn backhoe off the roof of the courthouse.” Then with a snarl, Jeb walked out the door slamming it behind him.
Once he left, I sat down in my chair, leaned back, and closed my eyes to relax for a bit before getting back to work. It was nice, until the phone started ringing.
“Hello, Waters Family Funeral Home. How can we help you?” I answered.
The other end was quiet for a bit, but then someone on the other end finally started to speak. It was Mrs. Wilkins, Mr. Wilkins’s wife.
“Yes, hello? Mr. Waters?” she asked.
“Yes, this is him speaking.”
“Yes, I was wondering if you had done all the preparations for my husband’s funeral? I would like to come and view him, and see how good of a job you did.”
“Yes Mrs. Wilkins, he is just about ready. Just a few more preparations and he would be ready for viewing. Say around an hour or so.”
“Oh good, thank you so much dear. I’ll be coming over with a few friends of ours. See you soon.”
“Okay Mrs. Wilkins, see you soon.”
I hung up the phone and made sure there were no more interruptions before I relaxed in my chair. And as I started to shut my eyes, I heard a loud bang. I shot up like a bolt of lightning had hit me.
“What in the name of Jesus Christ was that?” I thought. So I got up from my chair to find out where that noise came from. But when I got out to the lobby, there was nothing there. So I thought that maybe the noise came from Annie in the basement. So I headed towards the basement to check.
“I swear Annie, if that was you…” I muttered to myself. As soon as I was about to turn the doorknob, the door swung open with Annie running into me screaming her head off. Then she started squeezing me tightly, suffocating me between her bosom buddies.
“Mr. Waters! Mr. Waters, help me! Wilkins got up again and his manhood was…”
“Annie, I… I can’t breathe,” I wheezed.
“Oh Mr. Waters, I’m so sorry,” she said while letting me go. As soon as I catched my breath, I quickly fixed myself up and asked Annie what had happen.
“The body got up again! It was up and it had an erection,” she explained with a worried tone. “It was looking at me with that perverted face again. Can you please come downstairs and help me finish up? I’m too afraid to go back down there by myself.”
I agreed to go down there with her and help her finish up.
“Alright Annie, I’ll go downstairs and help you,” I told her. “But next time when we have a body, for the love of God don’t take drugs while you’re fixing it.”
“I swear Mr. Waters, I haven’t been doing any drugs today. I know what I saw really happened.”
“Whatever you say Annie, now let’s get down into the basement and finish up.”
As we went downstairs, she grabbed hold of my arm and started to grip it tightly. When we got to the table, there layed Mr. Wilkins. But this time, his manhood was standing there fully erect. And when I saw this, I looked directly at Annie.
“Oh no, don’t you look at me. I didn’t do this,” she argued.
“The guy is dead, how the hell is he going to get an erection? You probably accidentally pumped too much embalming fluid in his body,” I explained to her. ”Well that can’t be helped now. Here, let me help you fix this and get him dressed.”
As we struggled to get the erection down, we ended up just tying it to his leg. So that way while he’s being viewed in the viewing room, mourners will get a surprise while they’re crying over his deceased body. An hour had went by and we were just about finished with Mr. Wilkins. We tried like hell to tie his manhood to his leg, force his pants on, and then put a shirt and jacket on him. After he was placed properly inside the coffin, we hoisted the coffin upstairs to the viewing room. Right on time too because Mrs. Wilkins had just pulled up in the parking lot with her children to say goodbye to Mr. Wilkins. And like a professional, I greeted them at the door.
“Mrs. Wilkins, it’s good to see you,” I said. “Your husband is ready, he’s in viewing room A.”
“Thank you Mr. Waters,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I really appreciate you making the arrangements for us. I couldn’t have done this without your help. You’re an angel.”
I kind of snickered at that comment a little bit before I responded back.
“Think nothing of it Mrs. Wilkins. You’re always welcome here, as long as you bring us more customers,” I joked.
“Oh Mr. Waters, you’re such a clown. Always joking. Now let me go see my husband.”
I gestured her towards viewing room A. She smiled at me and proceeded into the viewing room. Everything was going fine, but that’s when I heard Mrs. Wilkins scream. Her scream was followed by the screams of her children soon after. I ran into the room as fast as I could, and right there on the floor laid Mrs. Wilkins. She looked like she wasn’t breathing. So I ran to her to check her pulse, but sadly she didn’t have one. She had died.
“What happened?” I asked the kids in shock tone.
Bobby, Mrs. Wilkins’s youngest child, slowly walked up to me with a look of sheer fear on his face.
“It was my father’s hand,” he said while pointing at the coffin. “It raised up out of the coffin and touched my mother’s hand. She started to scream and next thing I knew, she was on the ground clutching her chest.”
As soon as Bobby explained what happened, he started to cry. So I gave him a tissue and escorted him out of the viewing room so we could call the authorities. When the cops came by to question me and the Wilkins kids, they wrote down in their report that Mrs. Wilkins died of shock and grief of losing her husband. God knows they sure as hell wouldn’t believe that a dead man’s hand popped out of his own coffin just to touch his living wife’s hand. After they had packed up and left, I started talking to the oldest Wilkins kid to make sure I got the okay to do as his mother instructed me to do whenever she had passed away. He agreed, we shook hands, and then he left with the rest of the Wilkins family.
I slowly dragged myself into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee because I knew it was going to be a long night. As the coffee was boiling, I sat there staring up at the lights waiting. As I stared at the lights, I noticed something in the corner of my eye. As I turned my head to get a better look, right there standing in front of me was a small child. Couldn’t have been no more than four or five years old. I wondered where this child came from.
To answer my question, I got up from the chair and crouched down next to him.
“Hey there little fella, where did you come from? Are you lost?” I asked.
The boy just stood there, staring at me like a deer in the headlights. So I tried asking him again.
“If you’re lost, just tell me where your mommy is. I’m sure she’s worried about you.”
But still, I got nothing out of him. The only thing this kid did was smile. Normally, a child smiling doesn’t bother me. But the way this kid was smiling was very unnerving. But I shrugged it off and tried to get him to tell me where he came from.
“Look buddy, you need to tell me where your parents are because you cannot be here by yourself.”
He kept giving me this creepy a*s smile and then started to point down the hall to a door. He was pointing to the door to the incinerator.
“You don’t want to go there,” I assured him.
But he kept pointing at the door.
“I don’t know what you want, there’s nothing there the incinerator. Here, I’ll show you.”
I gently took his hand and walked down the hall with him to the incinerator room. When we got there, I opened the door and turned on the light.
“See, there’s nothing,” I told him.
As I turned off the light and shut the door, I heard the doorbell ring. So we walked back to the front to greet whoever was there. It was Mrs. Jenkins, her child had recently died in a car accident so she came by to pick up her child’s ashes. I greeted the grieving mother while still tending to this child.
“Good evening ma’am, I will be right with you. I just got to tend to this Lost Child,” I explained to her.
She looked at me with confusion, that’s when I noticed the little boy was gone. I swear the boy was next to me just a second ago.
“Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Jenkins. There was a little boy right there. I’ll be right back, I got to make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble. Do you mind waiting in my office until I find him?” I asked.
I searched for this child all around my funeral home, but couldn’t find him anywhere. So I gave up and went to retrieve the urn for Mrs. Jenkins. As I went into the room where we kept all the people’s ashes, I found the young boys urn. I picked it up and looked at the boy’s file one last time. But when I opened it, my blood ran ice cold. Inside the file next to the coroner report was the picture of the child, the same child that I had found in the kitchen earlier. I quickly shut the file, grabbed the ashes, gave them to Mrs. Jenkins, and quickly rushed her out the door. She was confused on why I was rushing her out, so I had to come up with some b******t excuse.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Jenkins, but an emergency just came up so you have to leave right now. We can discuss the rest of the payment later. Have a nice day and sorry about your loss bye,” I told her while rushing her out of the building.
After I rushed her out, I locked the door behind me, turned around the closed sign on the door, and ran into my office. Then I went and grabbed a bottle of scotch from my alcohol stash and just chugged it straight from the bottle. I thought I was going crazy. Did I just imagine the little boy? Was he real? After a while, I started to question my sanity and question my career choices. But after drinking half the bottle, I finally calmed down enough to go downstairs and help out Annie with Mrs. Wilkins. Maybe helping her will settle my nerves a little more.
