The Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®. Lawrence Watt-Evans
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though, I called Doc Everett, and he told me he’d sent the body to Tuchman’s Funeral Home, seeing as that’s the only one in town and he didn’t figure we’d be wanting to go to Lexington for it.
Allie wanted to see it, before she made any plans for the burying, so I called up Tuchman’s and asked if that’d be possible, and Henry Tuchman, on the other end of the line, sorta cleared his throat and said how it would be possible, all right, but he sure wouldn’t advise it, as the baby didn’t look too good, what with being strangled.
I’d gotten a look at it back at Doc Everett’s place, and I hadn’t thought it looked so bad as all that, but I told Allie what he’d said, and she broke out crying again, and I don’t know what I told Henry but I got off the phone and tried to comfort her, which didn’t do either of us a damn bit of good.
That afternoon Henry called back, and asked if we’d want to make the funeral arrangements or whether he should just take care of it, as he figured we were pretty broke up. Allie overheard, and she said we’d be right there to look at the baby and make the plans.
That didn’t sound good to me, but she wan’t taking any argument on it, so off we went.
At the funeral home, there was Henry Tuchman with his mournin’ face on, which made him look more like a pompous asshole of a salesman than like anything decent, and he showed us to a room where this little coffin was set up on a table that Henry called a bier, and there were a few flowers around it.
I asked Henry, “Who picked it?” ’Cause I’d always heard that funeral homes are practically like auto showrooms, with a dozen different models of coffins and all that shit.
“Doc Everett chose it; he’s volunteered to cover some of the costs for you, seein’ as he knows the two of you han’t got all that much set aside.”
Now, I knew I ought to be grateful at that, but I wan’t, as it seemed damn pushy to have put up that money and picked out that box without asking us first. I was trying to think of something to say about it that wouldn’t sound too bad when Allie said, “Open it.”
Henry blinked at us and said, like some goddamn Englishman on TV, “I beg your pardon?”
“Open the box, Henry,” I said. “We want to see our baby.”
Henry got all upset at that. “You really don’t want to, Bill,” he said.
“The hell we don’t.”
“The coffin has been sealed,” he said.
“That’s bullshit. Unseal it.”
“I can’t.”
I was beginning to lose my temper. I’d been standing around feeling helpless while other people did everything, at the doc’s house and the hospital and all, and it wan’t goin’ down well.
“Henry,” I said, “you told me on the phone this mornin’ that we could see our baby, and now we want to see our damn baby.”
“If you insist,” Henry said, “I can have the coffin unsealed for a private viewing. If you could come back in an hour?”
I’d had enough. “Open the damn thing now, Henry,” I said.
“I can’t, Bill,” he said. “Honest.”
I might’ve cooled down at that, ’cause he looked as if he meant it, but Allie wasn’t having it.
‘Bout two years back, after that idiot Jim Bryce raped the Miller girl down on Greenman’s Creek, Allie got worried about crazies, so she got herself a .38 revolver and I showed her how to use it, and after that she’d carry it in her purse as a regular thing. I hadn’t given it a thought in months—until she pulled it out and stuck the barrel under Henry Tuchman’s nose.
“I am not leaving this room,” she said, “until I see my baby. If you don’t open that coffin right now, Bill’s gonna get a wrecking bar from the truck and bust it to flinders.”
Henry just sort of stared, and wan’t saying anything sensible, and I figured maybe I could save us all some trouble. I didn’t know just what all this talk of “sealing” was, so I went and took a look and it looked to me like that coffin just would open right up if you pushed the latch.
So I did, and it did.
Son of a bitch was empty.
I sort of stared at it for a moment, trying to figure it out, and I was still doing that when Allie came up beside me and saw it was empty and pointed the gun at Henry again and shrieked, “Where is she?”
Henry threw his hands in the air like Allie was trying to rob him. “I don’t know,” he said, “I swear I don’t! Doc Everett never brought her, told me to fake it, same as he does any time a baby dies.”
I stared at him and said, “And you do it?”
“He pays me,” Henry said. “Pays good.”
“Jesus God, Henry,” I said, “you mean Doc Everett’s been stealing dead babies?”
Henry nodded. “Been doin’ it for years.”
“What for?” I asked.
Henry shrugged and started to say he didn’t know, but he didn’t have the words out when Allie asked, “Did he kill my baby? So he could take her?”
Henry blinked at her like a startled owl.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I never thought about it.”
I hadn’t thought about it either, never would have thought of it, but once Allie asked that I saw how it might be, the doc wanting dead babies for God knows what, and there’s our baby right in his own house, no one around to see if he just loops the cord over and tugs…
I felt sick.
“Come on,” I told Allie, “we’re gonna go see the sheriff.”
“No, we aren’t,” she said.
“Why the hell not?” I wanted to know. “Stealing dead babies is a crime!”
“Of course it is,” she said, “but who do you think the sheriff’s gonna believe, a nineteen-year-old farm kid and his hysterical wife, or the doctor who’s been lookin’ after this town for the past twenty years?”
I could see how she had a point, but I wan’t too sure it was that important—there’d be evidence, wouldn’t there?
“So what do you want to do about it?” I asked.
“We’re going to Doc Everett’s house, and we’re going to get our baby back,” she said. “And Henry, I swear to God, if you call to warn him we’re coming, I’m going to shoot you dead if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
I was beginning to regret ever teaching Allie how to shoot, about then, but it was done, and she was the one with the gun, and I hadn’t even left my .22 in the pick-up’s gun rack.
“Nobody’s gonna do any shooting,” I said. “We’ll get this straightened out. Come on.”
She headed for the door, and I paused just long enough to tell Henry, “All the same, don’t you call that son of a bitch.”
I drove, and Allie sat there with the .38 in her lap. I wished she’d put it away, but she didn’t and I wan’t about to argue with her. We’d been married long enough that I knew better than to mess with her when she was in a mood like that.
The whole way down Main Street I was thinking about what Doc Everett might want with dead babies. Did he do some sort of experiments on them? Did he sell ’em for parts? I’d heard there was cosmetics made out of unborn babies; maybe newborns were close enough.
It made me feel sick again, thinking about it.
It was getting on to five o’clock when we pulled up in front