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Authors: Brian McNaughton
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tiny lobby dominated by a figurine of my great grandfather, as some warped edge of my mind expected, but a parlor of cozy but normal proportions. Only the marble panels in the wall where windows might have been suggested that I was not intruding on a richly furnished home. In anyone else’s tomb I would have rejoiced in the dyed garments out of Lesdom, the ivory elbow-scrapers inlaid with lapis lazuli, but here I could only grumble at the extravagance. My grandparents watched me disapprovingly, two of those realistic funeral busts that follow you everywhere with their eyes of polished gemstone. Grandfather, with his thrusting chin and craggy brow, looked even odder than his own father in the statue at the Institute, but I had to admit that I shared his vaguely canine cast of features.
I looked handsome, however, in the portrait that Mother had put up for the edification of the stone heads: rather like a poet of the gloomy and self-indulgent sort with my pale skin, long black hair and the somber clothing I favored. Mother looked downright beautiful, and at least forty years younger; she might have been my little sister. The dual portrait had obviously been painted from earlier pictures; but with sardonic anachronism, she wore one of the antique necklaces I had stolen from a neighboring tomb. For all eternity, or until the painting rotted, my grandparents would be forced to gaze on evidence of my misconduct.
I was chuckling over this when I hoisted the panel that concealed Grandfather’s sarcophagus and rolled out the shelf that held it. Corpses that had met with violent ends intrigued me, and none more than his, a victim of the massacre in my own home. It wasn’t my intention to steal his skull, merely to have a look at it. Perhaps I meant to compare it with my own, to see if I was less handsome than I hoped.
When I had at last succeeded in pushing the ponderous lid aside, I stared for a minute into the black void, then went and got the lamp to confirm what I knew. I still couldn’t believe my eyes, and I reached inside for some evidence that the coffin wasn’t completely empty, but I found none. He was gone.
I’m sure this tomb had never heard such laughter, and I was grateful the walls were thick and solid, for I couldn’t restrain it. My laughter was often inappropriate by others’ lights, and now it had nothing to do with mirth. Another would have wept or roared with fury, but this was my only available response to the ironic perfection of the outrage. If I could have put my hands on him at that moment, I’m sure I would have kept laughing while I tore the malefactor limb from limb.
Poor, silly Mother, from reverence for her beloved parents, and perhaps from uneasiness at the good progress she herself was making toward the afterlife, had spent a few days out of every week making this little home comfortable for a tenant who was long gone and would never return. She didn’t know, certainly; she would never have committed the sacrilege of having the stone lid removed for a peek at the old corpse.
I knew whom to blame: henchmen of the hated Anatomical Institute, as a way of spitting on our family. Her father’s bones now decorated a classroom, if they hadn’t been jumbled into a bin or thrown out with the garbage. Perhaps the learned men still got a snigger out of their secret insult when Mother came to complain about the noises, sights and smells their students inflicted on us.
I put back the empty coffin with more reverence than I’d taken it out and opened the panel that held Grandmother. Here I made a stranger discovery. The lid appeared to have been undisturbed, it fit seamlessly; the sarcophagus had been carved from a single block of stone without fissures: yet Grandmother’s incomplete skeleton was disordered, the remaining bones had been gnawed and broken. No matter how badly her killer had used her, her remains wouldn’t have been dumped into the coffin any old way. Rats may be smart, but they
I looked handsome, however, in the portrait that Mother had put up for the edification of the stone heads: rather like a poet of the gloomy and self-indulgent sort with my pale skin, long black hair and the somber clothing I favored. Mother looked downright beautiful, and at least forty years younger; she might have been my little sister. The dual portrait had obviously been painted from earlier pictures; but with sardonic anachronism, she wore one of the antique necklaces I had stolen from a neighboring tomb. For all eternity, or until the painting rotted, my grandparents would be forced to gaze on evidence of my misconduct.
I was chuckling over this when I hoisted the panel that concealed Grandfather’s sarcophagus and rolled out the shelf that held it. Corpses that had met with violent ends intrigued me, and none more than his, a victim of the massacre in my own home. It wasn’t my intention to steal his skull, merely to have a look at it. Perhaps I meant to compare it with my own, to see if I was less handsome than I hoped.
When I had at last succeeded in pushing the ponderous lid aside, I stared for a minute into the black void, then went and got the lamp to confirm what I knew. I still couldn’t believe my eyes, and I reached inside for some evidence that the coffin wasn’t completely empty, but I found none. He was gone.
I’m sure this tomb had never heard such laughter, and I was grateful the walls were thick and solid, for I couldn’t restrain it. My laughter was often inappropriate by others’ lights, and now it had nothing to do with mirth. Another would have wept or roared with fury, but this was my only available response to the ironic perfection of the outrage. If I could have put my hands on him at that moment, I’m sure I would have kept laughing while I tore the malefactor limb from limb.
Poor, silly Mother, from reverence for her beloved parents, and perhaps from uneasiness at the good progress she herself was making toward the afterlife, had spent a few days out of every week making this little home comfortable for a tenant who was long gone and would never return. She didn’t know, certainly; she would never have committed the sacrilege of having the stone lid removed for a peek at the old corpse.
I knew whom to blame: henchmen of the hated Anatomical Institute, as a way of spitting on our family. Her father’s bones now decorated a classroom, if they hadn’t been jumbled into a bin or thrown out with the garbage. Perhaps the learned men still got a snigger out of their secret insult when Mother came to complain about the noises, sights and smells their students inflicted on us.
I put back the empty coffin with more reverence than I’d taken it out and opened the panel that held Grandmother. Here I made a stranger discovery. The lid appeared to have been undisturbed, it fit seamlessly; the sarcophagus had been carved from a single block of stone without fissures: yet Grandmother’s incomplete skeleton was disordered, the remaining bones had been gnawed and broken. No matter how badly her killer had used her, her remains wouldn’t have been dumped into the coffin any old way. Rats may be smart, but they
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