“Alec’s,” he said, without a trace of betrayal.
The mortician gave Moker a withering look and pushed the offending garment towards him.
“I’ve told you before,” the mortician reprimanded as Moker took the grubby apron, “don’t leave soiled aprons lying in the cabinet room. This looks as if it should have been laundered weeks ago.”
He wheeled away without another word and Tubby Guy followed him from the room, leaving Moker alone.
I watched as he threw the apron in the bottom of the locker and took out green overalls, a long linen coat of the type worn by the mortician himself. He laid it over the back of a hard chair then unwound the choker from his neck. I flinched again at the sight of his poor ravaged face, but he quickly reached inside the locker again and took out a surgical mask, this one white, which he pulled over most of his face, hiding the hole beneath. Even so, with no shape of a nose and mouth, the cloth mask looked odd. It puffed out as he breathed, shrinking concavely as he took a breath.
Donning the overalls, he put his own coat, scarf and hat inside the locker and closed the door. Picking up a dry sponge and cloth he returned to the main room which, apart from the body on the metal table, was now empty. Moker approached the corpse, considered it for a minute or two, examining the plain stitching on its chest and groin where the mortician had removed organs for inspection. I noticed there were labelled jars on a shelf nearby, each one containing interior body parts. A brown clipboard filled with handwritten details hung from the side of the stainless-steel table. The corpse itself had a label with more details attached to the big toe of the right foot. I heard a muted cough and glanced over to a doorway leading to a small and, from what I could see, cramped office where the person who had greeted Moker sat bent over a desk. He still wore his green overalls and was busy with more paperwork, no doubt filling out forms appertaining to the deceased. At the sound, Moker busied himself swabbing down the body and I drifted away. The dead man was pallid beyond belief, with blue stains around his eyes and lips, similar stains blemishing his skin in other places. It was an awful sight, particularly with the stitched Y-shaped wound running down his chest and stomach, and I had no morbid interest in watching Moker at work. I drifted around, peering into glass cabinets containing all kinds of liquids, powders and creams, even body deodorants, wound fillers and body plugs. There was an embalming machine nearby with dials and tubes attached, its large glass container filled with pinkish fluid mounted on top. In the small office next door where the mortician continued his form filling, there was a desk crammed with upright files, a computer keyboard and screen, two lamps, a telephone, and various pieces of paperwork and folders. The mortician barely had room to write. Around the walls were more clipboards bearing various other forms, framed morticians’ licences, a calendar and some kind of printed schedule with days of the week and allotted work times inked in. I saw Moker’s name entered for all that week’s evening shifts.
The mortician finally laid down his pen with a grumble of relief and pushed back his chair, which was on castors. I stepped away as if the chair might knock into me (instinctive reactions were still hard to overcome), retreating into the mortuary itself, and the mortician followed me through. He didn’t bother to bid Moker goodnight as he made his way to the plastic doors, and Moker, who was busy swabbing down the corpse, didn’t look up from his work.
I still felt very uneasy in Moker’s presence, even though I could not be seen (although it chilled me whenever Moker seemed to sense that something was with him and he peered around the room, seeking out whatever it was that disturbed him), and I would have loved to have left that place. I couldn’t go though—the spirit’s words at the séance had had too much of an effect on me. Maybe I was on some path towards redemption, a path that would take me from this purgatory I was in. After all, I was a Catholic, even if a lapsed one, and I was supposed to believe in that kind of thing. Besides, incorporeality had to have some effect, didn’t it?
So I stuck with the situation, not having a clue as to the purpose of my vigil, but trusting that something important might come of it. The evening drew on and the later it got, the more the mortuary seemed isolated from the rest of the world. Footsteps, a cough from Moker, the dribble as he squeezed out the sponge—all sounded hollow, echoey, and louder than they should have been. I knew it was the acoustics created by the tiled walls and metal cabinets, but nevertheless, it was kind of ghostly. I suppose the hidden rows of dead bodies and the sight of the corpse that Moker worked on added to the creepiness, but I had to remind myself that I was the one doing the haunting. No one disturbed Moker in his work, nobody at all entered the mortuary that night; the telephone didn’t ring, there were no extraneous noises from beyond the four walls. The silence was relieved only by his grunts and occasional harsh breathing. It was both depressing and nerve-wracking.
At last he finished his labours and threw the sodden sponge and cloth into a plastic water bucket at the foot of the metal table. He gazed at his handiwork for a few moments, then traced with his thick fingers the stitched scar that ran from chest to groin. It was a sickening thing to do and I could only wonder at the man’s mentality and motive. Finally, he shuffled away, left shoulder higher than the right and went over to a tall freestanding cupboard, from which he took a large folded white sheet. This he spread over the body, covering it from head to ankles, allowing only the feet to show. After this, he wheeled over a gurney and effortlessly, it seemed to me, transferred the corpse onto it. He pushed it to the end of the row of closed cabinets, read the card on one, before pulling the cabinet all the way out. Naturally, it was empty and he came back to the body on the gurney and pushed it towards the exposed shelf of the cabinet. Again, effortlessly, it seemed, he lifted the corpse and laid it out on the shelf, tidily tucking the sheet around its outline so that he could close the cabinet once more. This he did, and when the shrouded body was out of sight, he tapped the cabinet front twice with the flat of his hand as if bidding the dead man goodnight.
This was cavalier at best, but what followed was far worse. My God, it was far, far worse; disgustingly so. First, he went to the plastic double door, pushing it open a fraction and peering out as if to see if the coast was clear. Then he came back to the closed cabinets and walked along them, tapping each door that was at chest level. He stopped, took another swift look at the plastic doors, then pulled open one cabinet. It slid out easily, only the low rumble of its runners breaking the silence, and I could see that the figure it held was smallish. Although the head was fully covered, I could tell by the dainty, colourless feet and the two slight chest bumps that a woman or girl lay beneath the shroud.
Moker pulled back the white sheet, slowly, as if relishing every stage of exposure, pausing as the breasts were uncovered. The surgical mask he wore puffed in and out with increased labour and I saw a dark saliva stain spread across it. The unveiling continued and I wanted to turn away from the obvious necrophilia. Instead, as if mesmerized again, I continued to stare in horror.
When, at last, the folds of sheet lay around the girl’s feet—I saw she could only be in her early twenties—Moker raised his thick, and now trembling hands and ran them over her chalky-white figure. Apart from her deathly whiteness and the blueness of her lips, she looked unharmed, as though whatever had ended her young life remained hidden within the vessel that was her body; her hair was golden blonde and it lay in matted ringlets around her head and neck.
I yelled a high-pitched protest when I saw what Moker was doing and tried to grab his arms, wanting to pull him away, wanting to prevent his desecrating this beautiful but lifeless girl. Nothing I could do would stop him though and, although I was aware of my inadequacy, I could not still my arms and I beat at him, tore at him, desperately tried to force him away. His big hand delved between her thighs, which were now spread in a revealing pose, and I screamed again and again.