The funeral parlour had seen considerable refurbishment in the last month. Gone were the dust and untidy piles of bric-a-brac. The floors were well-swept, there were real windows for light instead of merely holes, and the ranks of half-finished coffins were now arrayed in a regimented parade-ground griddle. One detail remained, however: the single solitary coffin lying on the floor, hidden entrance to Phil’s office, a subtle yellow gradient rising into the dark from its unseen bed.

And then there was the safe. They’d had to get a new one of course (something not made in China). And then another. And then another. The walls now were lined with solid iron. Right now, in the candle light reflected from the piles of coins on the table, they looked cast in gold. If they did have to buy a fourth safe, then casting it in pure gold might actually be a handy space-saver.

Clive sighed and added another coin to the stack next to his elbow. One hundred and twenty-six... One hundred and twenty-seven... Who knew that counting money could be so tedious? One hundred and twenty– Wait! Was that seven or nine? Dammit!

The figure opposite him looked like something you’d throw rotten veg at in a cage at a freak show. Goggle-eyed with a large sausage-like protuberance for a nose. Or possibly a mouth. It was hard to tell.

Clive gave the freakshow another look. “Jerry! Do you have to wear that thing at work? It’s putting me off!”

Jerry shrugged. “Doesn’t work unless you wear it all the time!”

Clive restarted the count. “You never wear it when we’re on stage!”208

“That’s different! I’ve got to show my boat race and pearly-whites for the fans! Otherwise they won’t believe it’s really me! I’m a celebrity now, don’t-ya-know?”

“I’m pretty sure you always were – half of the city either owes you or knows you! But aren’t you more likely to catch the plague when out there with all those sick people than in here with just... me?”

“You? You’re the biggest public health risk I know! Besides... I holds my breath during the shows, don’t I?”

“You hold your breath while singing?”

“I’m not saying it’s easy, but with practice–”

There came a sound from above. A knock.

Clive paused. “We expecting customers?”

“At this hour?”

“Rent?”

“We paid it! And some! We’re a year in advance!”

“Refunds?”

“Don’t make me laugh!”

Another knock – louder this time, more insistent.

“Well you’d better answer it!”

“Why’s it always me?”

“I went last time! Besides, I’m the undertaker now. You’re just the... coffin maker.”

“Senior associate!”

“Junior partner!”

“Flip you for it!”

“I’m not going to – dammit! I lost the count again!”

And with that, there was another blow, and an almighty crash as the door upstairs gave way!

“That does it!” said Clive, leaping to his feet and racing up the steps, a candle in hand, Jerry at his heels!

It was very dark upstairs. By day, the place was teaming with dancers running through rehearsals and workmen hammering nail into wood,209 but not now. There had been discussions about night shifts, but they had yet to strike a deal with the nightwatch. Speaking of whom, were never around when you–

A face loomed out of the gloom, white and hooded–

Clive mouthed to scream, and then stopped himself. “Milly! What on earth are you doing here?”

Jerry was right behind. “’Ello darling!”

“Blind me!” said Milly, seeing the strange mask. “Is the carnival in town?”

“No, that’s Jerry’s idea of a prophylactic,” gestured Clive.

Milly frowned in the candlelight. “Well I feels bad for poor Phil and his attic too, but that doesn’t explain why you’ve got a dildo strapped to your face...”

Jerry’s tones were muffled. “I’ll have you know, my dearest, that this dildo is actually a herbal cigar of my very own devising, guaranteed to ward off the very worst of humours!”

“Well, yes... you’d know all about that!”

“Allow me to demonstrate!” Grabbing the candle, Jerry lit the far end of his nose. It caught and began to burn with a strange purple light. The cloy of peppermint. “Voila!”

Milly observed the fire as it spread rapidly down the nose towards the mask. “Congratulations! Your face is on fire!”

Jerry seemed unperturbed. “It’s true, it’s not a look everyone can pull off. My butcher said he wouldn’t be caught dead in one of these!”

“And?”

“He was caught dead without one! Masks work.”

Clive sighed. “Is there a reason for you being here, Milly?”

Jerry grabbed her in a bear-hug (if you can imagine a bear wearing a burning sausage). “Aw, she missed me of course, didn’t ya, doll? I know how it is – never too soon to see a Muldoon!”

“Get your flaming pecker out of my face, Muldoon!”

“You never minded before! Ow!” The fire had reached Jerry’s face and was now spreading across the front plate. Milly grabbed the mask and tore it off him before it did some permanent damage. There was another mask underneath, equally ridiculous. The new nose sprang up into place. “I’ve been double-masking!” muffled Jerry. He lifted the second enough for a kiss and moved in on Milly, who turned the other cheek and managed to escape.

“For your information, I ain’t here to see you, Muldoon! I came to see Mr. Huckledish here!”

Clive sighed again. “Fish.”

“With your complexion?”

Resigned. “What can I do for you, Milly?”

“Look... I knows it’s none of my business, but what’s going on with you and Isabella?”

Jerry whistled ominously. “Uh-oh! She said the ‘I’ word!”

Clive was righteously irate. “This is the emergency that prompted you to break down our door in the middle of the night?”

“Well, I was passing...”

“You’re right, Milly! It is none of your business!” Clive walked towards the downed door.

Milly followed, “Oh come on Clive! You two were perfect together! The daughter of a substance-abusing megalomaniac and the apprentice of a maggot-feeding old sociopath–”

Jerry nodded. “Match made in heaven!”

“Speaking of which...” said Milly, casting about, “Where is Phil? I ain’t seen him in ages!”

“Sweden!” Clive said pointedly for Jerry’s sake.

Jerry sobbed quietly within the mask.

Milly nodded, trying to follow. “Oh… right… that’s nice! Anyway – as I was saying – can’t you two just sort it out? Issy wants you back, I knows she does, and I knows that you wants her back too! Just go round and speak to her! Say you’re sorry!”

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Clive had just been lifting the door back into its frame, but he dropped it now with an almighty crash as he rounded on her. “Sorry? Sorry for what!? Sorry because I don’t want to hear – day in and day out! – about how GREAT the Pied Piper is compared to me? Sorry because I’ve made something of my life? I’m rich, Milly! I don’t need Isabella anymore!”

Grabbing Milly by the arm, he manhandled her towards the door frame.

“You’re going to die a lonely man, Clive Huckledish!”

“Fish! Fish! For the love of Pete, it’s Fish!”

“Pete the Fish, you’re going to die–”

Clive spun Milly round... and then realised that the doorframe was no longer empty. Milly froze, her left eyeball a mere finger’s width from the tip of a wicked 50 inch curve of steel.

A scythe.

The room had been dark, but it was now black. Nothing was visible, only the three figures present, who were somehow remarkably clear all of sudden, as if each had their own spotlight upon them, a spotlight that did not touch the floor. The three of them. And It.

To call It tall was something of an understatement. The parlour entrances were all eight feet tall by necessity, but It was stooping all the same. Hooded and robed in a gown of sable darkness, face unseen, one might recall the crew of the plague cart of earlier... but to compare the undertakers’ mantles with This was like putting pale shadows at noon beside the deepest trenches of the ocean. Indeed, the comparison was apt, for this cloak was never still, but rippled gently, as if in a breeze or current. The scythe was immense, its wooden haft blackest oak, gnarled and crooked, the blade moon-silver and luminescent. But none of this could match the utter, mind-numbing horror of what was holding the scythe in place, for, protruding from the deep sleeves, was an appendage that seemed to consist entirely of bone!

Clive gasped! One does not receive a proper education as an undertaker without knowing when head office is in town. “Oh, my God. You!”

DEATH. The Ferryman. The Widowmaker. Ankou. Banshee. Dullahan. The Psychopomp. The End of Empires. THE original Undertaker. The Grim. He. Him. It. The Reaper stepped forward...

MR. HUCKLEFISH.

The voice was so bass as to be inaudible to hearing. The soul vibrated. You felt the words. You did not hear them.

Clive was startled. “You got my name right!”

OF COURSE. I AM DEATH, THE OMEGA, THE REAPER OF SOULS. I KNOW EVERYTHING, MR. HUCKLEFISH.

Clive’s lip trembled. “Is it time?”

IT IS TIME–

Clive, like every successful man before him, believed he had the perfect get-out clause: “I can’t die! I’m rich!”

MR. HUCKLEFISH, IT IS TIME–

Clive nobly moved to shield his friends. “You may take me and Jerry, but the woman stays!”

Jerry snorted. “Oh, thanks a bundle, Clive!”

I AM NOT INTERESTED IN THE WOMAN, MR. HUCKLEFISH! I AM INTERESTED ONLY IN YOU!

Clive gulped. “Me?”

YOU. IT IS TIME WE TALKED FACE TO FACE, CLIVE HUCKLEFISH.

Face to face? Did It even have one? Clive was curious despite the existential terror of the prospect. “Well, um! If You insist…”

The scythe was extended, but not to strike. Jerry took the hint and darted forward to be spear-carrier. The scythe towered well above even him. Death took hold of one of Its hands in the other, and pulled... the skeletal claw, wrist, forearm and all, separated... softened... flattened... a glove? The hand that lay beneath was white, smooth and elegantly tapered. The second glove followed. The hands gripped the hood by the hem, and threw it back! Straight black waist-length hair cascaded towards the floor as Death shook out Her mane, revealing a porcelain, square-jawed, but strikingly handsome woman. A shrug had the robes on the floor: the gown beneath was floor-length and impossibly skin-tight; the neckline very generous.

It was perhaps inevitable that Jerry recovered first. Flipping his second mask up fully in shock, “YOU are Death?”

Death spoke now, as humans do, Her accent... Nordic? “Ja! In ze flesh!” German. Definitely German. Of course.

Jerry rose to the occasion with an accent of his own, somehow far more refined than he had ever spoken before. “And what a flesh it is!” Clive had heard that voice before... but where–

It was Milly’s turn to question: “But... the cowl, the voice... we thought You was more... well, masculine!”

“Ja! Everybody does! And I do not like to disappoint – facing ze end is hard enough visout facing ze feminist as vell!”

“Death’s a feminist?” exclaimed Clive, without knowing what that was.

“And what a feminist she is!” smirked upper-class Jerry.

Milly gave him a choice stare. “If looks could kill, Muldoon...”

But Jerry had eyes only for one: “...then I’d gladly die right now!”

Death, however, had eyes only for Clive, and it was all business now. “Mr. Hucklefish. Since you started zis plague–”

That got Milly’s attention: “You started the plague?!?”

Clive was genuinely perplexed. “What are you talking about?”

But Death merely raised a hand for silence. “Since you started zis plague, my vorkload has increased a sousand fold! I am a busy voman, Mr.Hucklefish! Do you have any idea vot it is like to be in ultimate attendance to every single human being on ze ENTIRE planet?”

Clive nodded empathetically. “Well, actually, I have been feeling a bit like that myself recently–”

Big mistake.

CLIVE HUCKLEFISH! BY YOUR HAND THIS PLAGUE BEGAN, AND BY YOUR HAND WILL IT END!

The sudden return of the soulspeak, issuing from the mouth of a maid, albeit one as imposingly statuesque as she, was truly terrifying!

Clive cowered! But the wheels were turning now. “I started the plague???”

Death extended the nails on her left hand for inspection. “You vere ze final piece in ze puzzle. Visout you as zeir pawn, ze dark forces you served vould never have achieved zeir goal.”

“But–”

“You vill right zis wrong! I command it! Ve vill speak again, Clive Hucklefish. Of zat you can be certain!”

The imperious valkyrie turned and made to go. It was quite remarkable she could even move in that dress, much less walk. She seemed to float. Perhaps she did? She extended her arm for her scythe. Uber-Jerry dutifully hurried forward.

“Your scythe... Milady.”

She nodded. “Zank you.” And then realised that Jerry had not let go.

He leaned in close. “And I hope that We, also, will speak again soon?”

She paused. And then she looked at him. Like REALLY looked at him, as if her gaze could reduce him to his base elements (which it conceivably could). There was no feeling when she spoke. None. Flowers in the arctic. “You vill die in seven sousand vone hundred and forty five days, twelve hours and fifteen minutes. Guten abend!” A weather forecast. An observation.

And then, she was gone, and the light returned, leaving Jerry staring after. “What a fascinating woman!”

Milly was all reason. “Jerry! She just gave you the day, hour and minute of your own death!”

“But not the second. From someone like her, that almost counts as compassion!” Jerry seemed to have found his normal voice again. “Hey! Wait a minute! I know when I’m going to die! And it ain’t soon!” Tearing off the mask on his head, he stamped it into the dirt! “No more double-masking for me! Until my assigned time, I am now officially an immortal!”

“Ooh, goody!” said Milly darkly. “Shall we test that? Down at the Duck? In the yard?”

“Thought the pubs were closed?”

Clive sat down heavily. “She said I started the plague? But how? I couldn’t have! I...” Flash to the burial pit, the sealed angel of death, the rats surging forward... Burial pit. New burial pits were opening every day now – there were already five in Stepney alone. It was happening again – it had happened before! The body – Elman Squatcherd! It had something to do with the body!

Jerry was raising the door back into its frame. “Blind me, Milly, you don’t half knock hard!”

Not to be outdone by some cross-dressing boat wench from the beyond, Milly struck a suggestive pose and pouted. “I thought you liked mi knockers!”

Jerry tried to think of a comeback, stared at the goods, and just gave a concessionary shrug instead. Then he remembered something: “By the way Clive, who are these ‘dark forces’ you were allegedly serving prawns to?”

Clive chewed his lip. The pieces were falling into place in a vast and complicated jigsaw puzzle, and the cracked and toothless face forming in the middle looked suspiciously like his own. “Ah, well, Jerry, you see, you’re not going to like this but...”

Another loud knock at the door.

Clive was in no mood for more visitors. “Oh, what now?!”

Jerry grinned. “Maybe She’s come back?”

But the voice without was entirely human. “Clive! Clive! Please open the door! Clive!”

Clive’s heart skipped a beat. “Issy?”

“Isabella?” called Milly. “Is that you?”

“Milly?”

Jerry tutted. “Ah. Saved by the ‘bella!” Answers were going to have to wait, clearly. “Just give it a push, love!”

The door fell dramatically inwards again, leaving Isabella standing there alone and clearly shaken.

All malice suddenly forgotten, Clive grabbed her wrists and led her gently inside. He’d never seen her tremble. “Issy, what’s wrong?”

“Clive, I’m sorry, I didn’t know where else to go!”

“What happened?”

“My father! They took my father!”

“What?”

“They accused him of starting the plague!”

“That’s... impossible.”

A little of her old obstinacy returned. “Well, it’s not impossible, Clive! I mean I am sure he could have if he’d wanted to... but it wasn’t him, I’m sure it wasn’t! He was as perplexed by it as anyone else... kept babbling on about a cure!”

Jerry came over and put an arm on her shoulders. Milly kept an eye to make sure that was where it stayed. “We believe you Issy, don’t we Clive? After all, we already knows who started it, don’t we Clive?”

“You do?” exclaimed Issy. “Who?”

“It’s... not your father,” wafted Clive. “Never mind that now!”

“Ow!” Isbaella suddenly hopped and swatted at her leg.

“What happened?” asked Clive.

Isabella rubbed at her calf. “Nothing. Something bit me! Bloody fleas are everywhere these days!”

But Clive’s thoughts were now far beyond anything as trivial as a flea-bite. “Where have they taken him, Issy?”

“Oh Clive!” she wailed, “You have to get him out! It’s so draughty, and his sinuses, and his back, and you know he won’t play well with the other inmates... and... he’s all I have!”

Jerry waved a hand. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding! He’ll be out before the week. The New Lord Mayor just wants to make his mark.”

Isabella shook her locks. “You don’t know the worst of it! The King... the King has signed his death warrant! He’s to be executed tomorrow morning!”

“What?!” said Milly!

“He did??” said Jerry, more perplexed than alarmed.

Clive shook Issy hard by the shoulders. “Issy? We need a location, coordinates, a compass heading, strong scent or...?”

Issy’s eyes were saucers. “Clive! They’ve taken him to the Tower!”