Long slow creak of rusty hinges. The parlour door swung slowly open.
Blackest dark inside the parlour.
We see Clive’s distinctive silhouette, framed dramatically in the grey light of the doorframe, trowel in hand, before he steps across the threshold, closing the door behind him.
The light shrinks to a sliver.
Nothing moves.
Deserted.
Wise.
There are a number of collisions and muffled curses as Clive makes his way across the parlour floor. Nothing was as it had been. Everything had moved.
Strange.
And then... tap, tap, tap. A spark, a flame moving sideways...
Clive raised his trowel...
...only to face a hissing explosion of red light and sound, cartwheeling in fiery circles!150
Clive cowered back! That devil Anbury had known he would come, and had booby trapped the parlour with demonic summonations from the depths of hell itself!
And now, candles in lanterns were tapering to life all around him!
“Surprise!” shouted Jerry, Isabella and Anbury all at once!
Clive rose crookedly: heaving, wretched, soiled, torn, ruffled and bone-shakingly furious!
“Oh, my God!” breathed Isabella, covering her mouth in shock. “Clive, you’re...”
“A fully fledged Undertaker!” grinned Jerry, coming around to Clive’s side and gingerly throwing an arm about his shoulders. “Congratulations, mate! Knew you had it in ya!”
The Undertaker stepped forward. It was just possible he was smiling beneath his beard. His hands bore a wide-brimmed hat with a black ribbon trailing to the rear. “I believe you’ve earned this! I wanted to give you a biretta, like mine, but Jerry talked me out of it! Apparently, this is more the fashion now!”
Clive’s hand tightened around his trowel. “You buried me alive!” he said, dangerously quiet.
The spinning firework died with a fizzle.
“You did WHAT?” shrieked Isabella.
Jerry advanced on her with pacifying gestures.
“Yes... We did!” rumbled the Undertaker, in the uneven cadences that were his own personal take on amusement. “What of it?”
Clive did not shout, but, boy, did he enunciate. “You buried me. Alive!”
Jerry fidgeted and then took a step– “Clive, you need to know that–”
The Undertaker raised a hand to silence him. But his eyes never left Clive’s. “Clive wants to kill me, don’t you, Clive? Yet, he hesitates. Why, I wonder? I am clearly unarmed. Perhaps I do deserve to die? Sooner or later, everyone pays the ferryman! Today is as good a day as any other!”
Clive realised he was sweating profusely. The trowel felt slick in his paw.
The Undertaker continued, quiet and deadly serious. “You were given every opportunity, Clive! Every hint! The proper instruction! The proper tools! Nothing was left to chance. Nothing! You said you were ready, and here you are, proof that you were right!”
Clive’s hand loosened a fraction. “And had I not made it out in time?”
The Undertaker stepped aside. Behind him, on a coffin top, was a timeglass. The sand was still falling. “Then Jerry would have been there in good time to dig you up.”
Clive glanced at Jerry. “It’s true, Clive!” said Jerry. “I was ready to go as soon as Phil said! Really I was!”
Clive’s shoulders slumped. “But why?” he heaved.
“Because...” said the Undertaker, “now that you have experienced the horror of being buried alive, first hand, now that you know, I am quite sure that you will go to quite excruciatingly painstaking lengths to ensure that NONE under your charge will ever, ever, suffer a similar fate! That is the final lesson I have for you!”
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Clive gaped. “You mean the final test was... not a test? You mean I would have passed whether I had escaped the grave or not?”
The Undertaker nodded. “I do not train an apprentice just to see them fail! You have buried now the coffin of your past! You have lived and died, and died and lived! You are reborn, no longer an actor in waiting, but a true undertaker!”
Phil reached up, and placed the hat on Clive’s filthy pate. “Now, at last, you can rest in peace!”
The trowel fell to the floor. Clive placed his hands upon Phil’s outstretched arms. It was not a handshake, for such a thing was unthinkable, but it was damn close. “Thank you, Phil!”
Phil snorted. “Make sure I don’t regret it!” He stepped back, arms wide. “Now – it is time to celebrate!”
Clive glanced around. He suddenly realised they weren’t the only figures in the room (though they were the only breathing). A bevy of corpses, in varying stages of decay, had been arranged on chairs or in coffins around the room. Their postures, clothes and props (one held a mug of ale, another, more skeleton than flesh, appeared to be smoking a pipe...) were clearly intended to be... festive?
“Exhumation!” the Undertaker boomed, by way of explanation, eyebrows bristling proudly.
“Yeah,” elaborated Jerry, “we thought you deserved a proper crowd for your graduation party!”
The Undertaker nodded. “And why shouldn’t the dead bear witness, along with the living? You’ll be seeing more of both in equal measure!”
“We should be so lucky!” muttered Jerry sotto voce.
“Besides,” the Undertaker added, “this bunch were due for a reinterment.”
“Reinterment?”
“Oh, it’ll be all the rage in the future – you’ll see. Cemeteries have very limited real estate. Eventually, the city will be forced to pay us to relocate them beyond the city limits. Who said being dead doesn’t pay?”
Isabella was still recovering from the shock. She seemed to have been abstaining from air. She moved close and touched Clive’s cheek. “Clive, I’m so sorry, I had no idea!”
“I know,” mumbled Clive.
“I would NEVER have let them–”
“Issy, it’s ok. Really!”
She nodded, holding his face, muffled tears in her eyes.
“I know what you need!” said Jerry. “A drink! Look! There’s punch!”
“Punch?” Clive asked, as Jerry spooned some liquid from a large bowl of sliced limes into a tankard.
“Yeah, I had to punch an East Indiaman right on his private ear to get the rum!”
There came then a loud knock at the door. “I’ll get it!” said Jerry, handing Clive his drink.
The Undertaker waddled over with his own mug and clinked at Clive’s. “You know Clive, I have a really good feeling about you! I felt it from the very first time we met!”
“That makes two of us!” whispered Isabella at his side.152
“I feel like – with you on board – our luck is about to change!”
Jerry had returned, a letter in hand. “Look, Phil! You’ve got mail!”
“Thanks, Jerry.” Phil turned to open it.
Jerry beamed. “Wonderful invention, ol’ Charley’s postal service!”
Clive frowned. “I thought that was Cromwell’s doing – during the war?”
Jerry scowled, “Yeah, well that’s dangerous talk round here, Clive. It was Charles, one not two, gawd bless his soul, who gave the common folk like you and me access to the Royal Mail – and don’t you forget it!”
The Undertaker was still talking, back turned, largely to himself. “Yes! From now on, we’re on the up and up, and nothing, but nothing, is going to stand in our way!” He scanned the letter quickly. “Except this.”
The letter fell from his hand. Phil stumbled hard, landing against the coffin they were using for a table and knocking the punch bowl to the floor.
Isabella made a grab to steady him.
“Phil!” Jerry shouted with alarm, “Phil! What is it?”
Clive swooped and picked up the letter from the floor. He read:
‘To the most unwelcome tenant of 13 Old Swan Lane,
also known as Phillip B. Anbury,
also known as The Undertaker,
also known as nemesis mine.
You are now 7 months in arrears in payment of the rent, and are herewith, consequently, and, without further ado, served with this highly official notice of eviction. You are to vacate the premises, together with all your effects (be they personal, commercial or moribund), no later than TWO DAYS hence from the receipt of this letter.
Your most pernicious landlord,
The Alchemist
P.S – We do appreciate your payment of the postage fee!
P.P.S – This was all my idea, and totally NOT Isabella’s! She has NO idea I am writing this letter! Please be sure to tell Clive that! Laters!’
Clive couldn’t believe it: the Alchemist knew his name!
“Eviction papers!” cried Jerry. “Oh Phil!”
“I just...” the Undertaker tried to find the words. “I just... didn’t believe he’d really do it!”
Clive looked at Isabella. She had turned white as a sheet (and she’d been pretty white before).153 “Oh, Phil!” she tried to laugh, “I’m sure he doesn’t really mean it! You know dad, he’s always–”
Clive turned the letter over. There was more:
‘P.P.P.S – And I mean it this time Anbury, don’t think that I don’t! Begone in two days, or I’ll have the watch throw you out on your ear – and that goes doubly for that good-for-nothing assistant of yours!’
“No need to get personal!” sniffed Jerry.
“Oh yes...” murmured Isabella, looking guiltily at Jerry. “I forgot about that part...”
“Two days...” muttered Phil. “Just two days!”
“Phil...” Jerry stepped forward, cautiously, as one would approach a wounded bear. “I just thought... I’ve got these new coffin designs – ready to go really – just say the word, and I think that–”
Quietly. “Shut up, Jerry.”
“Phil, given the circumstances, I really think that–”
Louder now. “Shut up, Jerry! I’m trying to think!”
“PHIL!” With a wrench and a bang, Jerry threw the lid of the closest coffin closed, clipping off the hand of the unfortunate reveller within. “I told you long ago why the business was dying, but you never bloody listen! We need to modernise, bring the business into the 17th Century, add a bit of spice! We could be rolling in it by now! But all you know how to do is to tell me to shut up! Well, now time’s run out! Nice one Phillip!”
The Undertaker began to shake (though it was possible he was still, and it was the room that was moving). Either way, something was peaking. The rumble erupted swiftly to a roar: “Out! OUT! All of you! OUT! Never darken my trowels again! BEGONE!”
Clive and Isabella glanced at each other and rabbited for the door!
Had they turned at any point, they might have noticed that Jerry had only briefly followed, before screeching to a halt and, turning back with resolute slowness, was advancing upon Phil’s turned back, arms rising above his sides like the wings of some terrible avine predator...