VOL 1. A collection of bizarre stories

The Morgue

“Sir, do you know the way to Morgan’s place?” I asked him. 
     “That old house of satanists who run that old mortuary? She has cursed it. Condemned and cursed it. Why are you going up there?” 
     “My ex-girlfriend’s friend lives there, and I've come to see her.” 
     “What’s your name, son?” the man asked. 
     “Mohawk Tim.” 
     “You'll be doomed if you go there.” 
     “Why do you say that, old man?” 
     “Dorothy Ruth is in charge now; she manages the morgue. She tried to kill me,” he says. “I was cleaning out their gutters one year, about twenty years ago. I was up on the ladder when she shook it and just stared up at me, laughing.” 
     “That is awful.” 
     “I held on for dear life. Ruth is as vicious as a pit bull," he said. If you see her, stay away from her.” 
     “Were you very high up when she did this?” I asked him. 
     “You mean when she shook the ladder? Yes," he says, “I was almost to the third floor. You will see it if you go there. The house is a mansion, looks like the house in Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews, if you have ever read that book.” 
     “No, can’t say that I have.” 
     I left the train station and never saw that old man again. It was a quiet day, a little rainy, but that was normal for early June. 
     While I was walking up a small road somewhere in South Carolina, I saw skulls tied to trees and bones strung and dangling from branches. 
     When I arrived at the Morgans, I rang the button at the gate. Ruth heard my call and answered it. 
     When I first saw her, I could easily detect what the old man might have been talking about. 
     Her face was indented, and she resembled a pit bull. 
     The house sat on an acre of land, had a swimming pond, spruces bordering the outskirts, and a high black gated fence secured the entire property. 
     “You must be the new cleaner,” she said.
     “Cleaner? No,” I said, “I’m here to see Vilma.” 
     “Oh, sweetie, Vilma ain’t here, but come on in, I’ll fix you some tea.” 
     I got in her car, and we drove to the mansion, just a few hundred feet away, in a rusty old vehicle that must have been from the psychedelic era of rock. 
     In the distance I could see there was a three-story mortuary amid vacant lots of land. “What year is this?” I asked. 
     “Oh sweetie, you must be talking about Mach Speed, my 1969 Dodge Charger. She doesn’t go too fast anymore, but she still serves a purpose.” Ruth had been wearing her favorite striped dress. 
     Her black sandal shoes were dirty and looked as if she had worn them all her life.
     She had only one eye, but it seemed not to bother her none and she didn't try to conceal it with a patch. 
     I ended up meeting a friend of Vilma's, McCoy Jackson, a huge bald man from New Guinea that looked to be so ripped you would think he was blood doping. 
     McCoy was very polite, in fact, and joined us for tea. Afterwards, he allowed me to stay the night. 
     I wanted to see Vilma, so I accepted the conditions of sleeping in the old guards' quarters of the morgue, just a dinky room that had been obsolete for many years. 
     It turns out the morgue had been here long before the Morgan’s place. McCoy told me it was built sometime before the rise of Hitler. 
     That night, I heard strange sounds and my mind drifted in and out of sanity. 
     Around two in the morning, as I recall, I began seeing blood everywhere. 
     It started when I turned the water on to take a bath. I turned my back and the tub started to fill with blood. As the tub was filling, I tried to turn the lever to the off position, but to no avail. It was jammed somehow. Now I was starting to find myself in a panic and standing in a deluge of blood. 
     I left to wander the halls of the morgue. 
     Miraculously all of the lights still functioned. There were five of them that hung from a chord on each of the three floors in the halls.
     I could see that blood was starting to drip from them, as well as from the interior cuts between the walls and the ceiling. 
     The walls themselves were painted custard yellow, and the smell was so acrid; it was the scent of decomposition peeling off the walls, and it made me want to vomit. 
     I made it through the night but never once did I see Vilma. 
     As I was leaving, a short Mexican man by the name of Chavez passed me on the cobblestone steps. “Were you the guy who slept here last night?” he asked. 
     “Yeah, why?”  
     “No reason,” he answered.
     “What’s that?” 
     “A painting by Caravaggio of David with the head of Goliath. I’m going to put it up in the guards' room facing the south wall so the sunlight hits it.” 
     “Won’t that ruin the picture?” I asked. 
     “No, it’s just a print, amigo.” 
     I assumed he was the person looking after the morgue, but I didn’t wish to talk to him further and left. 
     I walked for five or so miles before McCoy picked me up and drove me back to the train station, where I bought a ticket and returned to Montgomery.