Cassidy tried to sit down and relax until her husband got home. She grabbed a magazine and flipped through it restlessly. However, she knew that trying to relax and wait patiently was a lost cause. That morning, Albert was called into work early to work on a special project. Very little had been told to him about his task, or so Bert had said. Cassidy had a feeling that her husband knew more about the special project than he cared to tell, and that was immensely irritating to Cassidy. Not only was it irritating that her husband was keeping details from her, but it was strange that he would hide details about his work at all. Her husband was not a secret agent or a government official who would have to keep secrets about nearly everything he did. No, he was not nearly that important: her husband was a mortician. So, it was this mixture of irritatedness and curiosity that kept Cassidy pacing the living room back and forth. Then finally, at long last, her husband drove into their driveway. She raced to the door, opened it, and watched her husband park the car. The tall, dark, handsome young man opened the door of his car, got out, and started to walk to the front door. His usually erect shoulders hung limply, and his usually alert and smiling eyes were glued to the ground. His entire countenance was one of complete and utter dismalness. As you can imagine, this sparked Cassidy’s curiosity all the more.
The young mortician knew exactly what was awaiting him at the front door: a curious, blonde, talkative young lady with lots of questions. Albert didn’t feel like talking about his day at all. In fact, he didn’t feel like doing anything but going to bed. Unfortunately, he knew that he would not be able to rest until he spilled the whole story. His wife was the kind of person who liked to know everything about, well, everything. The obscurity of his mission that day must have driven his wife crazy all day long. He could just picture her pacing the living room back and forth, and the thought of it almost made him smile. But not quite.
Cassidy knew something was seriously wrong. Never before had she seen him so dejected and simply distressed in all their three years of marriage. He had a hard and, frankly, unsettling job, and so you would expect there would be some days where he would come home and just be a little depressed. After all, working with dead bodies every day would bring any normal person down. But Bert never came home bothered or depressed. It was like he was immune to it, like he took some sort of vaccine that kept him from being sickened by the multitude of dead bodies he saw daily. Now Cassidy’s curiosity was more replaced with worry. After taking his coat, she ran into the kitchen and put on the tea kettle.
“So, how was your day Bert?” Cassidy asked once Albert was seated comfortably on the couch. She set down a tray of tea on the coffee table, and waited expectantly for an answer. Her voice sounded calm and indifferent, but when Bert raised his eyes and saw the curiosity and worry written all over her face, he knew she wouldn’t settle for the typical “fine” or “same old, same old”. She wanted all the juicy details.
“It was…. interesting.” Cassidy took those three words as an invitation, and she sat down next to him, waiting eagerly as a little puppy does for a treat. He began slowly, while making himself a cup of tea.
“I got called to a site today. An old house in the Willard neighborhood.”
That information made Cassidy sit up straighter. Normally, Bert just went to his office and worked from there. Never had he actually been called to a site.
“The house had just been sold to a new family who were looking to fix it up and make it… you know, their own. They started in the kitchen, then they redid the living room, and worked their way down. Now, the house had this big cellar-“he stopped here and nervously gulped his tea. Cassidy was in shock. Could her husband really be… nervous?
He continued, “When they got to the cellar, the floor was starting to rot, so they decided to hire a crew to put down a new floor.” Bert was struggling to get the words out, and struggling even harder to seem calm and unaffected. “When the crew came down and started tearing up the floor…” he paused and swallowed hard, “They found bodies. Buried in the cellar floor.”
Cassidy’s mouth hung wide open. For once in her life, she was speechless.
Albert continued, “Twenty bodies, to be exact, and all of them were men.”
Cassidy was startled beyond words. She reached out to touch her husband to comfort him, but he shied away.
“How did they get there?” she asked. She realized after she said it that that was a foolish question to ask, as it was very unlikely that Bert knew. However, his answer surprised her greatly.
Bert groaned inwardly. He really didn’t feel like talking about it anymore. In fact, he would rather do anything than talk about it. Albert knew he owed it to his wife though, so reluctantly started to tell a story.
“There were these two orphans: boy about twelve, and his little sister about seven. Let’s just say that they had had a very hard life previously, moving from orphanage to orphanage, knowing that when the boy turned 13 in a couple months they would be forced apart. They decided together it would be better to live on the streets as long as they could be together. So, they escaped from the orphanage and ran away to the nearest big city. They barely survived for two weeks. Alicia, the little girl, was struggling greatly. She was broken, dirty, swollen and starving, and it pained the boy more than anything to see her like that. She meant everything to him.”
Bert stopped, wondering if he could continue. His throat was throbbing from holding back the sobs that were fighting to escape, and he nervously glanced at his wife to see if she noticed. She seemed so wrapped up in his story that she didn’t notice his almost-crying state. He took a deep breath and continued. “It was a rainy day. The two children were huddled against a damp wall trying to keep dry, when two ladies on their way back from the grocery stopped and gazed sympathetically at them. One of them was very wrinkled and stooped, and the other was middle-aged, probably forty. They both had pleasant faces, kind brown eyes, and curly grey hair. The younger one of the pair bent over and spoke kindly to the two children, asking them what they were doing out in the cold. One thing led to another, and the two old ladies brought the orphans in. Mrs. Bonnie was the mother of Ms. Carrie, and together they ran a boarding house. They made a deal with the children: if the children would help clean and cook and run various errands, the ladies would provide food and a place to sleep. The boy jumped on the offer. Their life became so much better in such a short time, and the young boy was very grateful to the old ladies. They had clean clothes and good food, they were treated as adoptive children, and they were adored by all the people coming and leaving the boarding house. Everything was perfect. But sadly, like summer and Christmas Day, it was too good to last. One day, while dusting in the ladies private office, little Alicia opened an old trunk to find a body. A dead human body.”
Despite herself, Cassidy squealed. This time, Albert hardly seemed to notice, his eyes were clouded, and he was staring into space.
“Poor Alicia, simply beside herself with horror, showed her older brother what she had found. For a week the boy gathered up the courage to confront the seemingly gentle old ladies. Then, one day while helping the two in the kitchen, he stammered,
‘Mrs. Bonnie, uh, Ms. Carrie?”
Mrs. Bonnie stopped her carrot-chopping and smiled sweetly at him through her wrinkles.
‘Yes?’
The boy gathered his courage and spilled out a slightly jumbled, barely comprehensible version of the story.
‘I, I mean Alicia, was dusting your office like last week or something, and she opened the old um…. The old… trunk and there was a p-p- person. A dead person in the trunk.’
The young, innocent boy expected them to faint or to be appalled. But to the boys utter horror, the ladies started to laugh.
‘It was bound to happen sometime,’ chirped Ms. Carrie, without even stopping her soup stirring. ‘I just feel bad for poor Alicia. Poor girl must be a little frightened!’
‘Ahh…Mr. Sweeny. He was a good looking fellow, even at his age.’ Chuckled Mrs. Bonnie. Ms. Connie nodded her head happily in agreement and the ladies kept on chopping and stirring.
The boy stood in disbelief. It took him a moment to process what had just been said.
‘You…you killed him?!? Mr. Sweeny? But you told us that he l-l-left in the middle of the night to go surprise his wife! He went to go surprise his wife!’
That set the ladies off laughing again.
‘Well, he did dear! We would never lie to you! His wife was dead, and so we felt all the more entitled to send him to her. My, we are regular match-makers!’ Mrs. Bonnie looked like she thought she deserved a pat on the back.
‘And also, we like to think of it as “relieving them of their earthy aches and pains”, not “killing them”. Killing is such a harsh word! It makes us seem like some heartless murderers, when really what we are is more like matchmakers, or… angels sending them on their way to eternity in a better place!’ explained Ms. Carrie. After seeing the look of confusion and revulsion on the boy’s face, she quickly said, ‘I see you are confused. Don’t worry, we will explain.’ She put down the spoon that she was stirring the soup with and, like a loving mother telling her child a bed time story, began to explain.
‘As you know, mother and I have run this place for a long time. It’s a good life, and we both enjoy running this boarding house, but and after a while, just a few months ago, life started to lose its excitement. It was the same thing day after day, doing the same old thing! Cook, clean, cook and clean some more. Well, one day this old fellow came who changed everything. He asked for a room, and that night when dinner came and he didn’t come down to eat, we started to wonder about him. Mother went up to fetch him, thinking he had simply forgotten, but when she opened the door, she found him dead in a chair. We think he had a heart attack.’ Both the women’s eyes were full of sweet remembrance. ‘He looked so peaceful, and… happy.’ They both brushed tears from their eyes. ‘From then on, we decided that every old man deserved the privilege of peace and happiness. Mr. Sweeny was one of those lucky fellows. He is now in a happy place with his wife, thanks to us.’ The women smiled at each other, still wiping away their tears with their aprons.
‘But, you can’t just, just, kill people!’ he exclaimed, slowly backing away.
‘Again sweet heart, it is not killing.’ Mrs. Bonnie looked annoyed. ‘I guess you can say it’s our hobby! You can’t just tell us to stop doing something we enjoy! That would hardly be fair.’
‘Yes,’ interjected Ms. Carrie, ‘there is nothing wrong with doing something you enjoy. Goodness child. And I though you would be more understanding being the good, smart, level-headed boy you are.’
The boy just wanted to get out of there and pretend this conversation had never happened. He wanted more than anything to never know about this, because he knew that his perfect life had just gone out the window.
‘How do you kill them?’ the boy finally asked after a few moments of silence.
The women looked annoyed at hearing the work “kill” again, but they didn’t reprimand him again.
‘That is a good question my boy! You see, that was a dilemma of ours for a long time. How do we… um…. dispose them of their earthly worries without getting our hands dirty and without attracting too much attention? (Because obviously, it would be very easy for someone to misinterpret our intentions, like you did.)’ Ms. Carrie informed as Mrs. Bonnie dumped her chopped carrots into the stew she was stirring. ‘Well, the most obvious answer to that question is poison! But then we ran into another problem: how do poison them, err, give them the taste of a better life, without them suspecting anything? And where do we find a poison that kills them- I mean, releases them from the pain and sufferings of old age- quickly, and of course, without pain? We searched and searched, and finally we came across the perfect poison: all… alchi…’”
Albert furrowed his eyebrows, trying to remember the name of the poison. “Oh no matter.” He sighed, and then he continued,
“Anyway, the poison they had found was perfect for what they wanted to do with it, and Ms. Connie explained in great detail how they found the poison and how exactly it worked. It turned out that they put the odorless poison in the gentlemen’s tea at night, and so when they would go to sleep, they would die peacefully in the night. After the little lecture, the little boy was horrified beyond words when the old ladies tried to enlist him to help them move the dead body of old Mr. Sweeny down to the cellar to be buried.
‘As you know dear, we are getting older, and Mr. Sweeny wasn’t the lightest man on earth. Oh Mother, remember how hard it was to get him into that trunk? We had to just stuff him in there; I was afraid he wouldn’t fit at all! And that was the biggest trunk we had!’ The ladies took a few minutes to giggle uncontrollably over the thought. When they were done giggling, Mrs. Bonnie said,
‘But, we really must bury him down there with the others, because I simply can’t stand the smell of rotting bodies. Yes, it is an unfortunate side-effect of the poison. The bodies just start to rot so quickly.’ Mrs. Bonnie shook her head sadly.
The thought of rotting bodies made the boy sick. One thing she had said really stuck in his head though: ‘The others?’ he asked weakly.
‘Oh yes… like Mr. Peabottom, Mr. Elvin, oh Mr. George, he was a funny fellow. He seemed to think he was George Washington. My yes, we were quite happy to put him out of his misery, weren’t we mother? And people like Mr. Smith and Mr. Watson…’ Ms. Connie counted them off on her long, bony fingers.
This was too much for the boy to handle. His courage failed him, and he turned and ran out the kitchen door, his head spinning. He found Alicia, and without even explaining to her what was going on, packed their bags and pulled her out the front door. The boy knew he should go straight to the police office. But he didn’t.” Bert had a sad look in his eyes. “I don’t know why he didn’t. I guess he was just scared. And he didn’t know what to do.”
Albert stood up abruptly, which knocked Cassidy out of her trance.
“The police gave you quite a back story, didn’t they? My, how did they know all that?” asked Cassidy with a sympathetic tone in her voice. She knew it was important to be very sensitive, because Bert was obviously very shaken, even more so now after telling the story than he was before.
Bert hesitated for a moment, and answered quietly, “They didn’t.”
Cassidy sat in utter bewilderment and confusion. “How?” she asked herself silently in her head over and over. How had he known that whole story, all the details, all the conversations, how had he knew them so exactly? Bert was not one to just make things up. No, he never lied. Maybe he was delirious? Maybe he was in shock from the awful things he had seen? She had heard awful stories about people hallucinating after being in a traumatic experience! With all of the thoughts running through her head, one stuck out to her.
“Alicia” she thought, “that name…” Then, something struck her that shook her to the bone. It sent shivers down her spine, and her eyes grew wide at the thought. It absolutely shocked her.
At that moment, Bert turned and started to walk toward the bedroom door. “I’m going to bed, Cassidy.”
“Bert, wait!” Cassidy whispered, and Bert stopped in his tracks without turning to face her. “The boy, you never told me his name. What is his name?”
Albert’s shoulders sagged. Then, he stood up straight, and answered,
“Albert. His name was Albert.” Then, without turning to face his wife, he walked to the bedroom door, went in, and closed it behind him.