Mortuary Sal

Dispatch No. 3

Sal crouches, pinned to the inside of the culvert by the raven’s black eyes. Her breathing is ragged, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. She tries to bury her face in her knees but the raven won’t let her. It pulls her back to the horror that sent her here, to the Weighstation—the in-between world below.

“It was an accident,” she protests, repeating the police officer’s words. “A terrible tragedy.”

The raven’s black eyes erupt into two tiny flames and an image materializes before Sal. It’s just a bit of smoke at first, floating out the window of a house. But before long she sees the curtains inside are aflame. She hears yelling.

“Get out, Sally! Get out! I’ll get Sam!”

Sal sees a girl emerge from the front door, pale blue eyes wide with panic. And it’s over almost as soon as it begins. As the girl rushes out, the air rushes in. The house explodes. Glass shatters outward, bits of brick, wood, a flaming couch rain down. The force sends her flying across the street, and a blazing plank glances the side of her face. Eventually, she looks up. All that’s left of the house is a smoldering black hole.

The image evaporates and the raven flies away. Sal collapses back, shame flooding in. Her fingers fly to her face. She feels the puckers and ridges, but needs no confirmation. What she’s seen is no dream. There’s no dreams in the Weighstation, only memories brought luridly to life.

If she’s brave, she can make the memories go away—so she’s been told. She’s terrified by the prospect, but clings to the hope it offers.

Sal crawls out of the culvert to begin her day. As she climbs the stone steps of the midden, she passes bones and sheets of blistered skin, broken limbs and bloody clothes—rotting things, corporeal things, things not needed by newcomers to the Weighstation. The stench makes her gag, but few venture this far from the city making it a safe place to sleep. She pulls her charred red coat close—clothes a small comfort afforded to labourers like her. One would have thought it would be hot in the Weighstation but it’s soul-shattering cold.

At the top, she sets off along Nightshade Lane. Black brick buildings, twisted and distorted, loom menacingly above her but the light brightens as she enters the city center. Shops displaying morning coats and top hats, brocade jackets, and bright silk dresses cut through the eternal gloom. Labourers flit about in their daily pantomime, arms laden with trays of garish confections or wheel barrows of rotting vegetables along the cobblestone streets, trilling to each other in their sing-song way..

“Whotcha, Sal!” Jack Smithersins calls from the door of his shop, where he’s dragging on a fag, fastidious in his pin-striped suit, despite the putrefaction leaking behind his right ear. White linen shrouds, embroidered with intricate patterns of flowers and birds, hang in his window. The workmanship is stunning, for Jack Smithersins knows the Adjudicator of the Weighstation values beauty almost as much as he values sin.

Sal always has a smile for Smithy, who never looks away from her ruined face. It was Smithy who found her when she first opened her eyes in the alley behind his store. It was he, who explained the mind-bending horror of the place, and held her when reality sank in. It was he, who suggested she’d do no better than to train under Eccles, known once as the finest threader in the city. If she worked hard, she could secure her spot in the Weighstation just like him.

“How many left?” asks Smithy.

“Three.” She had only three more bodies to complete before the Adjudicator would decide whether she was skilled enough to stay in the Station or be transferred below. If she were allowed to stay, she’d become a fully certified mortuary seamstress, one of the legions who worked in the eerie in-between realm of the Station preparing others for their final judgement.

The upside was, she wouldn’t quite be dead, Smithy said.. Sal wasn’t sure that was an upside.

“You can do it, blue eyes!” says Smithy.

She smiles and picks up her pace. She’s arrangements to make.

She heads for Maisy the Diviner, who sits cross-legged outside her cardboard hovel in a splendid purple cape. The Adjudicator leaves Maisy alone in exchange for readings of happenings topside, which somehow he can never quite see. What the Adjudicator doesn’t know, is that Maisy can see ahead and behind as well. It’s this expertise she’s promised to Sal. Sal doesn’t know why Maisy has decided to favour her. Maisy says only that she sees a strength in her, a strength that will set her free. Topside, Sal had a strength. If she concentrated fiercely enough she could move things without touching them. Sometimes, if she was riled, which to be honest, was quite often, she’d send things flying without intending to. That’s what brought her here to the Weightstation.

“So?” says Maisy.

“It must be tonight. I only have three more bodies left and I’ll get a few today.”

“Are you ready?”

Doubt floods Sal. “You don’t think so?” “I know you can do it. The question is, are you brave enough?”

Not brave. Foolish—to believe she can deceive the deceiver. But she can’t risk being sent below before she tries to set things right.

“Yes,” she says firmly.

“Good. Payment?”

Sal opens her book of silks. There’s a hundred threads inside, some gossamer thin, others sturdy, all brightly colored. Eccles takes one-third of her wages for them, compared to the quarter he charges Tom for his black ones. But the colours, combined with her finesse with the needle, bring her clients uncannily to life. Her work is apparently getting noticed, even by the Adjudicator himself.

Maisy’s eyes light up as she reaches in and plucks out half of every color, immediately twirling one into her golden ringlets.

“Tonight,” says Maisy.

Sal hugs her, taking care not to squeeze the brittle bones that poke through her clothes under her cape, and hurries across the street. She opens the door and peers through, hoping to slip quietly inside. But a hand soon grabs her.

“Late!” yells Herrindore Eccles. The rancid tang of him wafts over her. He waves her into the room, retreats to his desk and bends back over his ledger. He wears a formal black frock coat, frilly cuffs at the wrists, trousers pressed sharp enough to cut paper.

“I apologize,” says Sal, hanging her coat. “It was slippery. I had to go slowly.”

Two empty eye sockets turn toward her from a face of festering sores. “How many?” he simply

“Three?” asks Tom, coming through the mortuary door. He smirks at Sal. Tom secured his spot in the Weighstation last month. He has sun-kissed skin, a square jaw, and a lithe physique that moves like mercury. The comeliness of his face can’t hide the evil in his soul.

“Correct, I have three,” she says.

“You might finish this week,” says Eccles, sopping at the wound on his brow with a handkerchief. “There’s one in the cold room, another expected soon. Now get to work. You’ve got to get your papers so I can make some coin!”

Sal dons an apron and pushes through the swinging doors, ignoring Tom’s wink.

Four trolleys stand in the cold, upon which four corpses lie. Three are covered with sheets, one is bare to the navel. Sal peeks under the closest one and curses. Tom’s done his usual shoddy job. The boy’s eyes are sewn shut with thick black thread, the needle holes huge, stitching rucked. He’s displayed the same carelessness for the other two bodies. She asked Eccles once why the Adjudicator accepts Tom’s slipshod work if splendor is so important to him. “Because Tom is beauty itself, and reason alone for the Adjudicator to want him at the Station,” said Eccles. Eccles apparently has never seen Tom’s marring—a bubbling rash beneath his shirt.

Sal knows *she’ s* as far from beautiful as a person can get, but like Eccles, her skill with the needle is evident. For the first time in centuries the old man’s standing is rising. Despite his gruffness, he’s been generous in teaching her basic stitches and ties, as well as more complicated techniques. Once, conjuring an image, he showed her a completed transformation. The woman had fine bones, rich chestnut hair, hazel eyes, and cupid-bow lips. She bore a countenance of absolute peace. Eccles had created that look from a thousand tiny stitches, Tom told her, an incredible feat, for his wife’s face had been all but blown away. The Adjudicator had been absolutely delighted, a fact which torments Eccles to this day.

The woman Sal is assigned looks in her mid-fifties. There’s no signs of trauma, even though it’s violence that brings someone to the Station. Sal will call her Jenny. “There we are, Jenny,” she says, pulling the sheet back up to her shoulders, returning the modesty Tom stole. She fills a bowl with sudsy water, and washes Jenny from head to toe.

Lifting an eyelid, she sees only a haunting blankness staring back. Sal’s stopped wondering what brings the fallen below; it’s too upsetting. In the Weighstation, no one ever asks and no one ever tells. Sal would die all over again if she had to reveal what brought her here, even though it was a mistake, a tragic mistake. She considers her work the last piece of kindness her clients get, even if they don’t deserve it.

Once the body is cleaned her real work begins. She sits on her stool, opens her book of threads and begins to sew. She chooses a green the color of the woman’s eyes, and sews the lids shut with precise, delicate stitches. She ties the thread in bows at the outside corners. Already, Jenny seems brighter. Sal uses pink, purple and black threads to sew butterfly wings along each temple, teasing the needle gently through the skin. Next, she uses navy blue to extend the antennae, joining them in elaborate curlicues across her forehead. She sews tiny stitches of red into her grey lips, making them pop and weaves pink into her hair. Finally, she dresses her in a matching pink dress. At last, Jenny seems at rest. Sal pulls the sheet over her face. She’s about to take a break when Eccles comes trundling in with the next body.

“This one’s a lovely, chovely mess,” he says, fairly dancing in delight. Blood seeps through the sheet and the smell overpowers even Eccles, who covers his nose with his hand. He wheels the trolley to a stop, then peeks under Jenny’s sheet. “Good,” he grunts. It’s the first time he’s praised her work.

“Thank you.”

“Get to it, then.”

Sal lifts the sheet on the new body and gasps. The head sits in the crook of the corpse’s arm. She’s never dealt with a total separation before. “Poor Jack,” she tells the man. He is about twenty-five and otherwise remarkably undamaged. In a way, it’s easier. She plunks the head in the sink, the ragged edges of his neck dragging over the side like turkey wattle, and washes it under the running water. The head slides around like a bumper car, escaping her grasp a few times. Leaving it to dry, she gets about washing his body. She replaces the head, tucking in the tendrils and sews him back together with sturdy red ribbon, making fanciful loops. They contrast nicely against the white shirt she’s chosen. She doesn’t embellish his face as he has fine features and a look of repose, despite the savagery that’s been done to him.

She tries not to think about what happens next to her clients. Their terror when body and soul reunite and they stand before the Adjudicator for their final reckoning. He’s not concerned in the slightest with their deeds apparently—just how beautifully they’ve been put back together. At least that’s what Tom’s gleefully told her. If Eccles and his team—and the other tailors in the city—have done their job properly the fallen will be quickly dispatched below. If not, they’ll become a labourer. It’s quite obvious Sal never had the good luck to get a makeover from Eccles.

“The last one was quite something,” she says to her boss as she emerges from the mortuary, attempting to keep their comradery going. He doesn’t look up. “I’ll be going then.” “Make sure you’re on standby,” he calls out. “I’ve received word we could get one overnight and I’ll expect you back lickety-split.”

“Yes, sir,” says Sal. On the way home, the reality of what she’s about to attempt sinks in, and she has to steady herself against a wall. Back in her culvert, she closes her eyes to sleep, hoping against hope, Maisy gets to her before Eccles.

The hoot of an owl wakes her, feathers fluttering luminous at the entrance to her bolthole. An image takes shape before her, and she knows Maisy has mastered a magical feat.

She sees a young woman sitting at the kitchen table. The woman—at fourteen, still a girl—is doing her homework. She nibbles the tip of her pencil. Sal can tell she’s fractious. She’s struggling with math, her mind drifting to the party. *What will she wear? How will she get there?*

She tries her luck.

“Mum, have you decided?”

Her mother is stirring stew on the stove, tea towel tucked into the belt of the green skirt she’s worn to work, cigarette dangling from her mouth. “About what?”

“The PARTY!”

Her mother takes a drag and turns around. “No, the answer’s no.” She continues fixing dinner.

“But Mum!”

“You’re too young.”

“But everyone’s going!”

“No! That’s the end of it.”

Sally sees the set to her mother’s shoulders and knows she won’t bend. Her disappointment turns to rage. The girl looks at the pencil and it snaps in half. She stares at the canister on the counter and it tips over, noodles spilling everywhere. She looks at the three glasses of milk by the fridge and the liquid spins in three tiny whirlpools.

Her mother whirls around. “Stop it! You must learn to control it.”

Sally doesn’t stop. Her lips curl into a smile and Sal sees she’s enjoying the power she’s unleashed. The paper towel, hanging under the cabinet, unspools and flows over the counter. In an instant, the edge catches fire on the stove, flames rippling back up to the dispenser. Now the curtains are alight.

Sal watches as panic replaces the glee in the girl’s eyes.

“Get out, Sally!” yells her mother, running to the kitchen door. “Get out! I’ll get Sam!”

The girl tries to flick on the tap with her mind but she can’t make it move. She tries to spray the fire extinguisher, but cannot focus. The young woman rushes to the door and Sal knows she must make her move.

She pictures herself coming back into the young woman’s body. At first nothing happens, but she tries harder and the culvert dissolves, the midden fades. Soon Sal is rising toward the light. It’s working!

Then, a hand snatches her foot, fingers cold as the Arctic Sea. It yanks her back to the dark and she comes face to face with a man. He has silky black hair, cut-glass cheekbones and eyes as hypnotic as a sunset. He steadies her on the floor of a cavernous black room. A moment later, he’s sitting on a silver chair, one long leg crossed languidly over the other.

“Ah, the young woman with the extraordinary needle skills,” he says. “Where were you off to?”

Sal cannot utter a word, not because she’s scared witless, for the malevolence rolling off him has her rigid with fear. But because something is preventing her from opening her mouth. She reaches up and runs her fingers along her lips. Her mouth is sewn shut with tiny, neat stitches.

“Do speak up,” says the man.

Sal tries to push her tongue through her lips to loosen the thread, but it’s too thick and wiry. She can only grunt helplessly. Rolling his eyes, the man gets up. He reaches out and tears the thread from her lips. The pain is blinding. “I said, where were you going?”

“I…I was going back,” she bubbles through the bloody pulp of her mouth.

The sunset of his eyes turns into two pits of writhing snakes. He wraps an icy hand around her neck. Talons emerge, pricking her as he lifts her off the ground. He opens his mouth and roars. The sound is as if a thousand tortured souls are trapped inside of him. She tries to turn away but he makes her look. She sees a ring of razor-sharp teeth, opening and closing like a camera aperture onto an ocean of terror-stricken eyes.

He drops her and paces, silver-tipped shoes clipping on black marble. “Did you think it was going to be that easy?”

She is a crumpled heap, becoming light-headed as her mind shuts down.

He stops and takes her chin in clawed hand. “Confess, and I will let you go,” he says.

“It was an accident,” she whispers.

He squeezes until her suddenly corporeal jaw crunches.

“No!” he yells.

“I didn’t mean to!” she wails.

He laughs maniacally and hauls her up by the collar.

“Try again.”

She tells him then, what she’s been unable to tell herself.

“I did it on purpose!”

“Better,” he says, eyes sunsets again. “More.”

“I wanted her to know how powerful I was!”

“At last. The truth. The truth, I find, is often more delicious than a lie.”

He walks away, then turns and says, “It’s quite exquisite you know, that scar.” And he vanishes.

Sal sits in a heap, weeping. Unburdening herself though, has given her strength. She must try again to set them free. She thinks of her mother’s soft hair, her brother’s giggle. Nothing happens. She whispers her regrets and repentance, over and over. Nothing happens. She begs for forgiveness and screams out her penitence but remains stuck on the cold black marble. If only she could hug them one more time, show them how much she loved them. And with that thought,

an image coalesces. As she watches herself reach for the front door, she forces herself to return. This time, she doesn’t open the door but lands upstairs and grabs her brother from the bathroom where he’s sailing a plastic boat in the sink and singing. She pulls him into the hall. “I have him, Mum!” she yells. Her mother rushes towards them from his bedroom and they run down the stairs. The carpet in the living room is blazing, though the stone entryway is safe.

“We’ll have to jump,” says her mum, taking Sam.

“No! Through the basement.”

Sally pushes them ahead of her down the stairs. Her mum and Sam scramble out the window, but as Sally follows, a flaming ceiling tile crashes down upon her. Instantly she is alight. The pain is searing, but for the first time in months, Sal is warm. Soon her shame eases to sorrow, and not long after that, everything fades to black.

***

Eccles is asleep at his desk when he hears pounding. “At last! My lovely, chovely body.”

He opens the door and sees Smithersins and Maisy with a trolley. “You’re not usually in the business of deliveries, Smithy.”

“I am tonight.” Smithersins rolls the trolley into the room.

“Must be someone important with a shroud that fine,” says Tom, rising from his cot by the fire. “Yes. You’ve outdone yourself, Smithy,” says Eccles, fingering the lace embroidery. He notices Maisy is weeping. He unties the flap, and a puff of cinders floats up. From the scorched blackness, two pale blue eyes stare up at them. He recognizes her immediately, as does Tom. “I’ll take care of this,” says Tom, a grin lighting his golden face.

“Like hell, you will,” says Eccles. He takes off his coat, rolls up his sleeves and rolls the trolley through the door to the mortuary. He gets out his finest book of silks and gets to work.

END

(First published in Polar Borealis, February 2023)

And if you've made it this far, here's your reward:

Unsnobby wine recommendation No. 2:

I know everyone's gearing up for sweater weather but I, for one, can't let summer go. So I'm having one more sip of Saffron Sparkling Rosé, from GreenLane Winery which happens to be close to where I grew up. Yep, that makes it an Ontario wine but I discovered it at the Ladybug Wine Bar in Toronto, so people with a more discernible palate than me are giving it the thumbs up. It's pleasantly smooth and bubbly at the same time, though only available online for $24.

Songs with stories recommendations No. 2:

Going a little more substantial with my song rec. Highwayman the Jimmy Web song immortalized by The Highwaymen: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. A story of history, perserverance, reincarnation? It has a starship in it, need I say more? The version linked is when they are "young." Legends all.

Got any wine and song recommendations for me?