My name is Barnaby Whistler and I was a professional mourner. Folks paid me about 120 bucks to attend funerals, not including tips. When I explain the gig to some people, they look at me like I’m a vulture, this immoral thing supping on the aftermath of loss. I should have just said that I’m an actor- most folks find that more palatable.

  The facts are that some people invest in the illusion that they will be mourned more than they actually will be. Others invest in a charade before the grave, the lie that their loved ones will be missed by more people. That’s some depressing stuff right there.

  Usually, I show up, take a spot, and listen. Sometimes I cry, not from a connection to the deceased- but for their lack of connections. I listen to those left behind. It’s emotionally hard, but it beats the hell out of my other options since my 9 to 5 let me go.

  I’ve got no savings, no apartment, and my relationship just exploded- he even took the cat. I’ve been living out of my car and this job was the last one I got before my phone was turned off.

  To be frank, I was utterly screwed. I may as well have been the one that died. Thankfully, I’m too stubborn to give up the ghost.

  The job was to attend the funeral of Eustice Brand in the town of Oakvane. It worked well enough for me, actually. I had enough gas to get to the funeral; then my pay could fill my tank and cover tolls to get to Dean’s apartment. He had offered me his couch until I could get back on my feet. That’s just who Dean is; the type of guy that would do anything for his friends. His memory may be spotty, but he’ll never forget you.

  It’s kind of funny, though. I could have sworn that Dean had talked about Oakvane before...I kind of think it’s his shitty hick hometown. Maybe we would have laughed about that, but I never got to tell him where I was heading: I just left him a message in the twilight of my phone’s service.

  My stomach was growling. If I was really lucky, I might even be able to snag a plate at the wake. I couldn’t remember the last meal I had that didn’t come straight out of a wrapper, a bag, or a can.

  The drive was long, two hours of highway until I took an exit and followed a curving roadway through a gorge. Those stone walls seemed too close and had such a menacing aura. Really, it felt like they could slam together and chew me up at any moment.

  I was so deep in the sticks that all the radio offered was static, so I turned it off and sat in silence. It was lonely in my trash filled car, the kind that makes your stomach sick enough to almost forget your hunger. The loneliness made my mind drift, made me think of everything I had lost. I was struggling to hold back my tears, desperate to think of anything else and unable to do so. It was distracting, but I couldn’t help it.

  It was an appropriate day for a funeral, the clouds choked the sky in a dismal pewter. It seemed like a storm was coming and I didn’t want to get stuck on this winding, barely two lane coffin when it hit. I pushed the accelerator harder when I heard the first boom of thunder and caught an impressive flash of lightning in my rearview mirror. That bolt was bright- like the flash of a camera coming from my backseat.

  I missed Chase so much. I missed us so much. I wanted a drink badly, just a little something to numb the sting. Fuck, I wanted anything to get me out of my own miserable head. If I was lucky, this wake would be Irish. Chase would have a field day with that, which unveiled a new level of hurt and broke the dam that held back my tears.

  What is the harm in having a drink here and there? Life is hard. Life is goddamn miserable and if a couple shots of amber makes it bearable, I should be afforded that luxury. One mistake made for a lifetime of meetings, complete with chips to mark your progress.

  The echoes of The Fight that Ended It made me take the curve sloppily. Rain was beginning to patter against my windshield and I winced as my tires squealed on the black top.

  That curve was blind, he never had a chance. My vision of him was fleeting, just a flash when I flicked on my headlights. He was standing in the middle of my lane, staring at me. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even catch the features of his face, just the dull green of his fatigues followed by a collision and a spray of red.

  Time stops working in that moment of impact, slowing down to torture the mind with every detail. I saw a crack in my windshield become a spiderweb as he hit and rolled off, raggedly falling behind me as I arced the wheel right. My own head was dashed against the window, filled with the sounds of screaming steel and shattering glass as I struck the guard rail. You fixate on strange things in these sorts of moments. For me, it was the clock changing over to 15:00.

  I don’t think I went unconscious there, but I must have. The clock said 15:15 next time I looked, switching over to 15:16 when I got out of the car and entered the driving rain. It stung my skin as it pelted me, like it was trying to push me back.

  I cursed as I approached where the man should be. My connection to 911 was terrible, the whispers of a frustrated dispatcher barely audible. I tried to tell them that I had hit someone, but they kept asking if I “had knocked.” There was this terrible, miserable bleating of inhuman pain that rose from behind my car. It never really sounded like words, but I swore I heard a human voice beneath it.

  That voice wailed and screamed that it was “almost out.” It came out of the mouth of a mangled buck, shuddering in its death throes until it finally rattled out its last breath. Something silver hung from the crux of one of its antlers in the rain polluted light.

  I pulled it off, it was one of those thin necklaces that looks like a bunch of silver balls, connected by thin pieces of cheap metal. There was a dog tag that hung from it, but it didn’t have a proper name.

  It was stamped with a single word, “Kingfisher.”

  Where in the hell was the guy I hit? I was fervent searching for him, the 911 operator remaining mostly silent- if they were actually there at all. I checked past the guard rail, even peered over it in case the guy had fallen into the creek on the side of the gorge. My head was pounding and my skin was going ice cold.

  I was getting increasingly irrational in my search. My clothes and hair stuck to my skin in the punishing downpour. I needed to find him. Maybe I could still help him, maybe he still had a chance.

  I had straddled the guardrail to climb down across the sharp scatterings of shale when the blue and red lights came upon me, followed in short order by a tow truck. The cop cast the illumination of his flashlight at me, right hand hovering over his weapon. He hollered at me to back away, to get back on the road.

  I told him what I saw, about the man in green. I tried to show him the dog tag. He told me to save it for the precinct and put me in the back of his cruiser. He hollered at the tow truck driver, called him “Hutch” and told him to get me towed to some place called Rudy’s. While the hefty Hutch was starting to get my wreck on the back of his truck, I noticed that the cop was ignobly dragging the buck out of the lane by one of the antlers. He only had one eye, I don't know why that stood out to me.

  Locked in the back of the cruiser, I waited. The cop finally returned, but he was silent as we pulled away. He didn’t give a damn about my encounter on the road and waved away my attempts to show him the dog tag or my pleas for us to get more people involved. As far as he was concerned, I had simply hit a deer. Nobody was hurt and nobody was dead. He just had a hysterical out of towner in the back of his cruiser. It made me feel crazy- maybe gaslit is a better word.

  I don’t know if it was the shock or just realizing that this guy didn’t care what I had to say, but I retreated inward. I stared out the window as the rain soaked trees and the walls of the gorge passed in the last moments of the storm. I guess the cop liked silence less from me, because now he wanted to talk.

  He started civilly enough, commenting about how I was far from the first to have this sort of luck in Cemetery Gorge. Apparently deer hits were pretty common in this area- which seemed weird. It didn’t really seem to be a place where deer would have much space to be.

  What a name for a local landmark, though; Cemetery Gorge. The words felt heavy when I mouthed them.

  The cop interrupted my ponderings as we finally exited, revealing a sprawl of woods flanking either side of the road. There were homes spotting either side, most deep in disrepair. All of them were small, some of the trailer variety. Common themes among them seemed to be shattered windows and tin roofs. It was depressing even being exposed to the sun.

  He asked about my business in Oakvane and I answered mostly honestly- I couldn’t imagine him having a high opinion of a person who makes money off of other people’s mourning. I told him I was heading to town for a funeral. He asked me if I was here to pay my respects to Eustice Brand with a smile in his dark eyes that I could see in his rearview mirror.

  I told him yes, before my car was wrecked.

  He told me that it was "important to remember Oakvane’s heroes." He offered to drop me at the funeral home. I attempted to decline, saying that I needed to get to a phone.

  He scoffed, telling me that my car was definitely totaled. It was too old to be worth the money to repair, that thought buried itself in my stomach. I hadn’t realized that I could get more screwed than I was at the start of my day; but here we were. My car was my home and it contained all of my earthly possessions. I had maybe ten dollars remaining in my wallet and no credit card after Chase cancelled the shared one. I was settling on an impossible situation. I couldn’t possibly ask Dean for help, I knew he had practically nothing already. I left all of my other friends behind when I moved in with Chase. I had no family left. I was completely and utterly screwed.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  I was alone, getting pulled into Oakvane’s orbit. I wondered if this is how people wound up living in these rural communities. If they just kind of crashed down and never left the crater.

  We crossed into the town proper, a literal single street. It was a stark contrast compared to the homes passed on our approach. These were not new buildings, but they did at least seem to be kept up. The cop turned off Main Street and weaved down a few side streets until we came to an ominous building, surrounded by a fence of stout black iron.

  It occurred to me as we parked that I didn’t see another person as we drove, but it certainly felt like I had been watched from every window we passed.

  “Wulf’s Funeral Home” was what the placard on the fence read, it had a backing of the same stern black as the fence with some cheap gold paint highlighting the indentations of the words. Some orbs of rain had collected on the sign and had begun a lazy descent, taking flecks of the paint with them as they travelled.

  The cop left me with two options: go to the funeral home or go to the precinct. I asked him why he would send me to the funeral home, since I definitely had further business with him, but he shrugged off the notion as he opened the door and pulled me out.

  He told me that he knew I wasn’t going anywhere; that he could find me if he needed me.

  Then he drove off.

  He disappeared down a side street. I was left there before I even could process the choice he left me with. I looked around, befuddled and scratching at my neck like that would alleviate the itch of some unseen observation.

  There was an apartment complex, maybe two stories tall, across from the funeral home. I saw no faces peering from windows there, but there was an intense sensation of dozens of eyes upon me. The only thing more oppressive than that was the burning scent of sulfur infesting my nostrils.

  My sigh seemed too loud as I trudged forward and into Wulf’s. It was exactly what you would expect from a small town funeral home, with a sweet and artificial floral smell that barely dispelled the sulfur from my nostrils.

  No one met me in the foyer. There was a curious amount of little tables and these white, fake leather chairs that failed at giving the impression of being expensive. I followed the sound of hymns to one of the viewing rooms. The singing was so faint and tinny that it reminded me of how the dispatcher sounded on the phone: distant, unfeeling, and callous. Quite the antithesis of the music I would want playing at my funeral.

  I was very aware of the dog tag against my skin. I didn’t even remember putting it on. I fought back a gag as I realized that I was standing in a funeral home while wearing evidence tied to a death. That chilling realization dug into my heart.

  I followed the sound of the music until I arrived in the viewing room. There was a cheap looking urn on a pedestal next to a doughy priest. The room had about a dozen chairs in it, those white wooden folding ones that look unfit to hold any weight . A woman about my age was sitting in the far rear of the room, hair so straight that it would cut your fingers. She wore a black pantsuit with a purple blouse and looked positively bored. Her spray tan was very deep and her hair a shade of unnatural platinum. She didn’t look real, but then none of this did; that made me wonder if I was in shock.

  I sat myself in a chair toward the rear, on the opposite side from that woman. I winced at the squelch I made sitting down, water pouring off of me to pool on the tan carpet.

  A false smile peaked out from its hiding place in the priest’s voluminous beard as he nodded at the woman, then at me. He cleared his throat twice, then he began to preach.

  You can usually tell how much the family of the departed actually cared by what the priest says. Most funerals have some sort of personalization to them- as they should. You’re ending someone’s story and we all deserve an epilogue. In all of my professional attendances, I had never witnessed such a generic finale.

  It was short, completely devoid of emotion. There were no pictures of Eustice; no words, musings, or articles. Just a stranger and a business woman.

  It was truly miserable.

  The service was over so quickly that I couldn’t reconcile it. The staff finally appeared and were quick to usher us out- refusing me access to a phone in the process. The woman approached me when the doors locked behind us. She introduced herself as Claudia and she told me that I looked like hell. She hissed at me that she had expected some sort of decorum for the price she paid.

  When she finally left an opening, I explained my situation.

  I had expected her to soften when my story came out, which did not happen. She refused me use of her cell phone and told me that “I could use the house phone.”

  “What house?” I asked.

  She asked me if I knew how to drive a boat, which I do. She told me to get in her car, that she would take me to this house.

  Have you ever been so overwhelmed by a day that you just go through the motions? You just follow and don’t think? Apparently I have, because I found myself in her car. It was a black and expensive thing, all muscle and aesthetics. It seemed incredibly out of place when compared to the old vehicles parked on the sides of the road.

  I didn’t see another person during that drive. I was beginning to wonder if anyone actually lived in Oakvane. We went to the outskirts of the town, past more houses that may as well be sheds, until we reached a lake. Against the waning rays of dusk, the lake looked like an animated painting. Claudia handed me a large manilla envelope, which was heavier than I expected. There was the familiar mass of my base pay in twenties, but also the weight of keys and paperwork.

  I had inherited Mr. Brand’s estate. She pointed to a small island in the middle of the lake, then at a little motorized boat at the shambles of a dock nearby. Claudia refused to let me use her phone again, told me to “man up” and that I should get to the house before dark. Abruptly, she left me- just got in her car and tore off.

  Not only had this been such a miserable day, it was the most confusing I’d had since Chase kicked me out. I was alone, I was cold, and I was tired. I had no way to get to a motel, even if there was one. My only way out was further in.

  In retrospection, this was the day that phrase became my mantra.

  The boat was a cheap metal one, kept together by patches, spot welds, and a prayer. The sun was getting lower, casting a gentle orange light across the pine trees. I was slow on my approach, worrying about my vessel’s durability. Cutting the sputtering engine early, I slowly drifted to landfall.

  Past the rock riddled shore, it was a creepy little island- no bigger than a football field and congested with pines, but at least it didn’t possess the same oppressive aura that the town did. There I felt like every window housed a set of eyes that stared at me. Here, I felt very alone- it was weird that I preferred that.

  It was not a far walk, I wove between pines and their hummingbird feeders filled with sugar cubes before I got to the house. It looked like a concrete shack, with a red metal door and bars over the windows. I fished the keys out from the manilla folder and began the process of figuring out which went to each of the three locks in the waning light.

  “What the fuck am I doing?” I whispered to myself at least twice.

  Being in an unfamiliar house with no light is a nuisance, so I was grateful for the little bit of light that was sneaking past the trees. It was surprisingly quaint- with one bedroom and one bath, and a light switch was easy to find. Most of the place was actually the living room, an impressive collection of books taking up every wall and a newish big screen that sat in front of one of those awful floral couches from the nineties. I tried the phone, of course it was disconnected- but at least there was still power. I sighed as I tossed the envelope down on the small kitchen table and checked the fridge for something to eat. There was no food in it, only drinks: mostly bottled water and occasional off brand sodas. The cabinets had food, but it was all canned goods, instant noodles, and dozens of bags of sugar cubes- there wasn’t a single fresh thing to be found. I chewed on some Wild Buck’s jerky as I wandered to the bedroom, which featured a mattress on the floor, a revolver next to that, and mounds of clothes that I hoped were clean. There was also a suitcase, the good metal kind, buried in the mess of clothes. I started to go through them, desperate to shed my soggy attire.

  I was interrupted by a sound, a sort of whooping caw. It sounded big; or at least bigger than me.

  Then there was the first knock. It was followed by a sharp, nerve grinding sound- like a blade dragging across a stone in a horror movie.

  I rushed to the front door, engaged all three of the locks, and stepped back. That was the first time I noticed the chalkboard on the door, and its three messages:

  “Do not look.”

  “Sugar cubes in feeders, every morning.”

  “Back before dark or not at all. They always come at night. Always.”

  So Eustice was a crazy person and I wasn’t alone on this island. Great.

  Something rapped on the window bars, then I could hear it trying to pull at them. My heart was hammering hard enough that I thought it would fail.

  “Kingfisher.” Something whispered as it began to knock more insistently. I could hear something sharp briefly graze against the bars before the rapping continued.

  Hell no, oh hell no. I grabbed the revolver from the bedside and verified it was loaded. The knocking followed me as I moved through the house. Someone clearly thought they were going to have some fun with me, and I was not going to stand for it. It already had been a long enough goddamn day.

  I made for the front door, the knocking still following me but it stopped suddenly as I passed the bathroom.

  I stopped in front of the entrance, staring at the door. The silence was getting heavy now.

  Until again it knocked, harder this time.

  “Kingfisher.” The whisper came again.

  “He’s dead!” I responded loudly.

  “We know. We want our sweets from the new Kingfisher.”

  It had to be some local troll. Some redneck trying to get a rise from the out of towner. I put my eye to the peephole, intending to get a view of the people harassing me.

  What I was met with was the image of teeth; yellow, stained, and ragged at the edges. The gums that held them in place were this alien blackish purple. Then the teeth blinked, revealing a bloodshot eye with rectangular pupils.

  I yelped and my finger tensed the trigger. The sound of a gunshot in such a small, enclosed space is so much louder than you expect it to be. My ears were ringing, but I still was able to make out the sound of about four of them fleeing.

  I was hyperventilating, shock coursing through my body. I lost time a-goddamn-gain- having no recollection of moving to the couch. The black of the revolver’s barrel looked up at me, the rim wet from leaving my mouth.

  They don’t stop knocking now, at weird intervals without a real tempo. Without a median volume or severity throughout all of the night. It’s so loud and it never stops.

  Eustice, wherever you are right now, I get it. This revolver is looking real tempting. Is this how you went?

  I feel like a deer in headlights.