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It was only because of Tim that Martin remembered Eric Chapman’s visit to the archive. It was an early Monday morning in February, and Martin was surfing the internet for information about Carlos Vittery when Tim careened through the door.
“Martin,” Tim said intensely, practically bouncing in place. “You need to come get a look at this guy.” Tim’s tone signaled that the guy in question wasn’t alarming or spooky, just hot. Tim had fallen into the habit of pointing out good-looking men to Martin, probably in hopes that Martin would find himself attracted to literally anyone who wasn’t Jon.
Eric Chapman was indeed attractive; he was a tall, blonde guy with a dazzling smile, which he was currently using on Sasha as he sat in the waiting room. More than that, he radiated a kind of allure, a magnetic pull. Martin hadn’t encountered Jane Prentiss yet, but he was still wary enough of the paranormal to feel unease about this man, to fight his instinctual response to turn towards Eric Chapman like a flower turning towards the sun.
“Sure, Tim,” he said, turning to go back to his desk. “He’s very good-looking.”
Tim rolled his eyes and muttered something about tunnel vision and Martin’s horrible taste in men, which Martin ignored.
Eric Chapmen recorded his statement and left the Institute, looking slightly rattled and uncomfortable but miles better than people usually looked when they recorded live statements with Jon. He was neither crying nor threatening the head archivist with violence, which was a novelty. He also didn’t submit a complaint to Elias, which made Martin’s life easier.
There was one weird thing, though. As Eric Chapman was leaving, Martin heard him speaking softly to himself. That was fine, Martin didn’t judge anyone for their self-soothing methods, but at that moment, something moved under Eric Chapman’s collar. Martin had heard enough statements about worms and other eldritch creatures who had, like, spiders or raw meat instead of physical bodies that his stomach lurched. Then Chapman’s collar moved further and Martin saw a small grey mouse emerging from under it, squeaking quietly.
“Yeah, I think so too,” Chapman replied softly, and walked toward the exit.
Oh thank god, it’s not a worm monster, Martin thought, and found that he didn’t particularly care why a grown man was walking around with a mouse hiding in his collar.
Jon, however, was clearly thrown. When Martin went into the room to bring him tea, Jon was still sitting, stunned and a little grey.
“You alright, Jon?” Martin asked tentatively.
Jon continued staring at the open door, seemingly not hearing him. “I’m fine, Martin,” he said almost a full minute later. “That just . . . . did not go as I expected.”
“Did you see his mouse?” Martin asked.
Jon coughed. A faint cloud of dust emerged from his mouth, as if he had accidentally inhaled dirt. “Martin— I mean— I’m not sure— that mouse was not the weirdest thing about him,” he said hoarsely. At the time, this was the longest conversation Martin had ever had with Jon that didn’t include Jon insulting his job performance.
Of course, several days later, Martin experienced his two-week personal tango with eldritch horrors, and all thoughts of mice and men had been supplanted by existential terror. By the time Martin started living in the archives in late March, he had mostly forgotten about Eric Chapman and his effect on Jon. He picked up the tape at random one night with the intent to take notes and add archival tags.
“Statement of Eric Chapman regarding his time as an undertaker on the island of Piffling Vale,” Jon’s voice said brusquely. “Statement begins.”
“Right. Okay. This is when I go?”
“Yes, whenever you want to begin,” Jon replied.
“Great. So about a year ago, I moved to the village of Piffling Vale, which is on an island right off Weymouth. Tiny place, easy to miss. I had decided to set up a funeral home there, put my old ways behind me, really settle into the small-town life. I was trained as a mortician, of course, but I had never expected to actually rely on it as a profession. Funeral directing was just something I picked up, you know, like chess or electrical engineering. It was all a long time ago.”
There was a brief silence where Eric Chapman seemed to be waiting for Jon to ask a follow-up question.
“Is there something over my shoulder?” Jon asked.
This was clearly not the follow-up that Eric had expected. “Sorry, what?”
“You were looking at something over my shoulder. You didn’t see any worms, did you?”
“Did I see any worms?”
“Obviously you didn’t. Please continue.”
Eric took a few moments before starting again. “Right. Well, I moved to Piffling Vale, and it was initially exactly what I expected. Small community, everyone knows everyone, outsiders are new and exciting. Except that there’s this other funeral home across the square, Funn Funerals. I ask around, and apparently its a family business, open for centuries, if you can believe that. Well, you know what they say about undertakers.”
There’s another pause where Eric waited to hear whether Jon had indeed heard what they say about undertakers. Jon evidently wasn’t interested in letting him know either way, so Eric struggled on alone. “Well . . . we may not be the oldest profession, but we’ll certainly be the last profession standing!”
Eric chuckled a bit and Jon’s silence, if possible, grew even frostier. “Please continue on about your experience, Mr. Chapman,” he said.
“Sure thing. So I’m not afraid of some friendly competition. In fact, I was excited to have some fellow undertakers on the island with me. People really misjudge funeral parlors, you know. Of course, you rarely visit on a fun occasion, but I believe that funerals are opportunities for much-needed reflection and celebration. We memorialize our dead clients, of course, but we also help bring families closer together, remind them of what’s important. That’s why my slogan at Chapman’s was ‘a good funeral is for life!’”
Eric paused. “I realize that statement is a bit ironic now.” This was the first time that Eric had referred to anything vaguely paranormal about his experience, and the silence on the tape seemed to grow more intense, almost buzzing. Martin leaned closer to the cassette player.
“Anyway, I was excited about having colleagues so close by. I went over to meet the Funns of Funn Funerals, and they’re these two twin siblings, Antigone and Rudyard. It’s difficult to describe them now that I know them so well, but the Funns . . . have you ever seen the Addams Family? The original series.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“Right. Okay, so the Funns— they were different. They were tired, and pale and mostly friendless. There was Madeline, Rudyard’s mouse—”
At this, a series of high squeaks registers on the tape, as well as a clattering that Martin guessed was Jon reacting badly to unexpected mice. “Shit,” he said quietly, his voice muffled by the scraping of chairs.
“Oh, my apologies, I should have said something,” Eric said, not sounding remotely apologetic. “I’m just used to people who know that Madeline’s around, I’m afraid I haven’t spent a lot of time lately with the general public. Anyway, Madeline wanted to clarify that she’s not Rudyard’s mouse, she’s not a pet. She accompanies the Funns and has— how would you phrase it, Madeline? Ah, she has— had a professional relationship with Funn Funerals.”
“Oh, for god’s sake” Jon said exasperatedly.
“I know it sounds odd, I thought the same thing. Just hear me out. The Funns, they really didn’t like me.” Chapman seemed to catch himself and chuckle here. “That in itself isn’t weird, it’s not like I think I’m irresistible, but . . . people usually do like me.”
“Really,” Jon said, sounding unimpressed.
“I was actually elected as Mr. Sunshine in Denmark, it was this competition—”
“Mr. Chapman, this process will be much more painless for everyone involved if you focus on your encounter with the paranormal on Piffling Vale and not your European popularity contests.”
Eric laughed, almost eerily undeterred by Jon’s hostility. “Right, sure. Sorry, you just remind me of someone. Anyway, the Funns. They weren’t like anyone else I’d ever met. At first I thought that the stories that the other villagers told me were exaggerations, you know the kind of local lore that happens in small communities. That their parents were . . . . well. That Antigone Funn hadn’t been outside in ten years and was really just a shadow. That Rudyard was a scourge on the town. Those things were true, of course. But, it's just, they were saying them wrong.”
“It didn’t take me long to realize that the Funns were poor. Like, crushingly poor. That might not seem like a relevant detail, but it was part of a sense of embattledness around them.They had this energy— I once did a brief stint at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and I still have difficulty putting this into words. It was like they were enduring longer than they were expected to, if that makes any sense. That they weren’t supposed to hold out for quite this long. I suspect that whatever they were battling would have won out if it weren’t for Georgie and Madeline. I have a personal theory that because Madeline was a mouse, she didn’t really count. But she humanized Rudyard. I mean, she made him a kinder person, but I think she also literally kept him human. And look, you’ll probably never meet Georgie Crusoe, but she’s the kind of person who just decides that she’s great at avoiding the wrath of an eldritch horror. But then I came around, and for some reason whatever thing had its claws in them decided that I was a threat. Well, good.” Eric’s voice tightened with angry satisfaction. “As it turns out I was a threat.”
“The dreams started after my first week there. I awoke in the middle of the night to find myself within one of my coffins. It was locked, of course. At first I was like ‘no problem, I didn’t spend that summer training with David Blane for nothing.’ But all of the tricks I tried didn’t work. I didn’t even have my emergency lock-picking set in my back pajama pocket, which is when I started to suspect I was dreaming. Then I realized that I wasn’t in my funeral parlor. I was under the ground. When I woke up the next morning, I wrote is off as a bad nightmare. Sure, I’d never been afraid of coffins or suffered from claustrophobia, but I was opening a business in a new place. I was probably just stressed. But then it happened the next night. And the next. Eventually, I got a little frustrated. I tried getting some melatonin, or NyQuil, but they just made me nauseous or hysterical while I was already inside the coffin. One night, I started clawing at the top of the coffin; trying to burst my way through sheer force. Suddenly, I could feel moving around me, pressing down and around the coffin, like the dirt itself was fighting me back. When I woke up, my nails were torn and ragged. I didn’t tell anyone; it would sound like I was going crazy. I also . . . I mean, everyone in Piffling Vale liked me, but I didn’t really feel like I had any friends. I’d never really had anyone close, certainly not anyone I could confide in about this. I spent most of my time with Georgie and the Funns, but that was because they were trying to sabotage my business. I couldn’t really figure out a way to ask them if they ever were buried alive in the middle of the night. As it turns out, I didn’t have to. “
“One night, I woke up in the coffin and I wasn’t alone. I was actually pretty excited about this, but Rudyard was furious. He does this thing—- its actually pretty endearing— where he yells my last name with this particular tone of voice, hold on, let me see if I can do it—“
“—that’s not necessary” Jon broke in.
“Fine, okay. Anyway, I was genuinely happy to see Rudyard, if only because it confirmed that I wasn’t going completely mental. I think I actually said something like ‘come here often?’ and that set him on a rant. I didn’t actually get any contextual questions in that night, but I felt a lot better. Eventually, after a few nights, Rudyard stopped shouting at me and started answering a few of my questions. Apparently, this coffin thing happened to them regularly enough that they just kind of . . . accepted it. It certainly explained why they looked so tired and wan all the time. Rudyard never acknowledged that it was happening during the day, and I couldn’t find a way to phrase it in public that didn’t heavily imply that we were— you know— sleeping together. Which we were, but I man— well, you get my drift. I was still half-convinced that it was some elaborate hallucination. For some reason, it never occurred to me to leave Piffling Vale. It would have been the natural thing to do, but I genuinely never considered it.”
“It was just when I started getting used to sharing a coffin with Rudyard most nights that the dreams stopped. I guess whatever was causing them realized that it wasn’t having the effect on me that it intended. But then . . . other things started. As a mortician, I spend a lot of time in basements. Most mortuaries are in basements. It makes sense logistically— you want a different entrance for bodies than for your live customers. The smells can also travel, and while I have a high tolerance for formaldehyde at this point, not everyone does. I was working in my mortuary a few days after the dreams stopped when I realized that no light was coming in from the basement windows. I have overhead lighting, of course, but I had also dug a few small trenches in the outside of the building so that I could install windows and get some natural light in. Except the windows were now totally black— like it was night, but it was ten o’clock in the morning. As I went closer, I realized that the windows were totally covered over with dirt. And — I know this sounds odd— I could feel it, pressing against the windows. Like it was trying to get in. It wasn’t just my mortuary. Every time I was in a basement room, I could suddenly sense the ground pressing in on me, trying to find a way in.”
Jon started coughing, a parched, horrible hack that sounded more like someone dry heaving.
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry,” Eric said sincerely. “Sometimes I have that effect on people now, especially if I’m talking about . . . you know, everything that happened. Are you okay? Can I get you some water or something?”
“Keep going,” Jon said hoarsely.
Eric sounded hesitant but continued. “Anyway, this continued for a while. I spent as little time in my own mortuary as possible, but I run a funeral home. I thought about hiring a professional mortician, but I couldn’t in good conscience drag another person into this situation. When I went to talk to Antigone, I couldn’t even get down the first stair of her mortuary without fleeing. It was horrible down there, like my basement but times ten. I don’t know how she endured it, but she just gave me this look, like she understood what I was feeling but had learned to tune it out.”
“It all came to a head one morning when I was visiting the village bakery, getting a new batch of croissants for a service I had later that afternoon. The baker, Jerry, asked me to come down to the basement and take a look at some of the savory bread he was working on as a possibility instead. I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t feel like I had an excuse for not following him. So I went down, and I could feel the dirt immediately. It was like being in a pressurized tube, but if the pressure, like hated you. Jerry clearly couldn’t feel anything, but did remark that it was oddly dark down there. There were windows, I think they must have had panels that you could open for ventilation when the oven was on. They don’t have those in mortuaries. Anyway, Jerry walked toward one of the windows to see what was blocking and the windows . . . . well, they just burst.”
Eric paused for a moment, for the first time sounding genuinely distressed. “It’s still hard to talk about. Dirt just came pouring in, I watched it knock Jerry over like a tidal wave. It started to fill the basement floor, and the whole room just became clouded with dust. I couldn’t breathe. The last thing I remember was Jerry saying something to me. It seems impossible, he was already under the dirt and was probably already dead, at that point. Dr. Edgeware said that he asphyxiated pretty quickly. But I heard him say something about the ‘forever buried’ and the sky. Then, incredibly clearly, he said ‘a funeral is for life.’ That’s the last thing I remember before I passed out. I woke up in the hospital. I had a burn on my hand, from when I tried to anchor myself against the pastry ovens, but other than that, I was totally unharmed. Dr. Edgeware broke the news to me about Jerry and told me that there was some sort of structural collapse at the bakery. All in all, the dirt that flooded the basement had only come up to my knees. When they found me, they had assumed that I had some sort of panic attack.”
“The Funns conducted Jerry’s funeral, I couldn’t even look at my own mortuary. They came to see me afterward. They told me to leave the island. Even then, when I was lying in the hospital, it hadn’t occurred to me to leave until they told me to. They looked horribly guilty, even though it wasn’t their fault. And so I did, I left. I closed down the business, packed up my things, and caught the first ferry back to the mainland. I’m pretty sure that Rudyard publicly proclaimed it the best day of his life, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Funn’s mortuary; the way it was almost totally black, and the fact that the three of them were now facing whatever it was totally alone. I was in London, and everything was fine; I didn’t dream about coffins, and I had an apartment that was as far from the ground as I could manage. But I couldn’t stop feeling like I had betrayed the Funns and Georgie by abandoning them there. I kept on looking at newspapers, dreading a story that mentioned a collapsing funeral parlor on the Channel Islands. So, I went back to Piffling Vale with a helicopter and as much C4 as I could buy.”
Jon coughed again, this time seemingly more out of surprise than as a reaction to malevolent dust.
“Antigone called it ‘needlessly dramatic,’ but Georgie was ecstatic, and my helicopter pilot’s license was just gathering dust anyway. It took some convincing, and quite a lot of shouting, but in the end Georgie shoved as much of the C4 as he could into the basement mortuary and I set up a remote detonator. Antigone got everyone who could conceivably be around the funeral home elsewhere for a few hours— I still have no idea what she told them. The newspapers reported it as a sinkhole, and no one has come around to arrest me for arson or, I don’t know, domestic terrorism, so I guess no one really cared. I was the one who insisted that we get on the helicopter as soon as we detonated the C4. We were almost directly overhead when I watched Funn Funerals sink into the ground. I’ve seen a lot of C4 explosions in my time— most of them were a long time ago, but you don’t forget those easily. The way that that building collapsed wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. It looked like the whole building was just— swallowed, like it was sucked down through a straw. There was barely any debris, just an enormous black hole that we couldn’t see the bottom of. And then we were over the Channel, and it didn’t matter anymore. ”
“When I look back. I honestly don’t know if I’d do anything differently. The residual nightmares obviously aren’t great, and I don’t love making people cough up dirt, but its a small price to pay for getting Rudyard and Antigone out of there. The four of us spend most of the time on my yacht, actually, traveling around the Channel and making port when we run out of supplies, or when Georgie is about to murder us and needs some other company. Being on open water is— I don’t know if it makes a difference to the others, but it helps me relax. Antigone’s writing a romance novel now, and Rudyard is trying to get in touch with some people who have experienced the same thing and didn’t have an ‘interfering narcissist to stick his nose into their business.’ There’s a healthy chance than he’s going to accidentally trigger the apocalypse.” Eric’s voice sounded hopelessly fond.
“Rudyard didn’t want me to come here. None of them did. It’s just, if there’s someone else who encounters the same thing, I want to make sure that there’s, I don’t know, some tools? A precedent? I don’t want people to have to face this alone. Madeline agrees, which is why she’s here. Moral support! They also get worried if I go off alone for too long. Well, Georgie still claims that she’s waiting for me to trip and fall back into an empty coffin so that she can steal my helicopter, but she worries most of all.”
“Can we talk to either of the Funns?” Jon pressed. “If they came here to corroborate—”
“Absolutely not,” Eric said easily.
“I can’t stress how important it would be to get their perspective, if they remember anything from before—”
“I’m sure that their perspective would be really helpful, but you’re not getting anywhere near them,” Eric said, his tone still amiable. “They’ve been through enough.”
“You don’t understand—”
“No, I understand,” Eric interrupted tersely. “I want to help, really, but if you don’t leave them alone I also have no problem causing you trouble.”
There was a hint of iron in his voice, and Martin believed for the first time that this was someone who would respond to being buried alive by blowing up a building and dragging his friends out of the grasp of some sort of eldritch monster.
After a moment, Eric sighed. “I actually feel really guilty about threatening you, are you okay? You look awful. Like, seriously unhealthy. The coughing dirt thing can’t be helping. Is there someone I can call for you?”
“My health is none of your business, Mr. Chapman. Statement ends.”
There was a longer pause than usual after the end of the recording before Jon’s voice returned alone, sharper and clearer. “I followed up on Eric Chapman’s statement myself. God knows if we sent Martin across the Channel he’d probably drown, and I live in fear of Tim meeting this Georgie Crusoe person.”
Martin frowned in the general direction of Jon’s office.
“I was tempted to write off his statement entirely— a talking mouse, for God’s sake— but I can’t deny that there was something about his story that sat oddly with me. There was also, of course, the several ounces of dust that I coughed up over the course of my interaction with Mr. Chapman which I can’t blame on the poor ventilation of the Institute. There was indeed a business known as Funn Funerals registered on Piffling Vale, but that’s all I can confirm. They have no website or other social media presence, and no functioning phone number. There is also a news report of a sinkhole opening in Piffling Vale several months ago. I didn’t even try to corroborate any of Eric Chapman’s clearly fabricated biographical details, ludicrous as they were. I did phone the mayor of Piffling Vale and established that Mr. Chapman did briefly live there last year, and that Antigone Funn, Rudyard Funn, and Georgie Crusoe were all former inhabitants of the village who have since left. It seems most likely that Mr. Chapman has acute trauma caused by a basement collapse, a group of profoundly enabling friends, and a disturbingly easy hand with explosives.”
Jon paused for a moment, shuffling papers. “Three days ago a courthouse in Bournemouth faxed me a photocopy of a marriage license for Eric Chapman and Rudyard Funn. Antigone Funn and Georgie Crusoe are listed as witnesses, and there’s a handwritten note right below the witness list that says, ahem, ‘fuck off Jon Simms’ with the initials G. C. This, of course, answers some of my questions, though perhaps not the ones most relevant to this case. It certainly answers the question of whether or not Georgie Crusoe would be willing to come on and give a supplementary statement. I haven’t been able to find any record of where the four have gone since, which makes me suspect that they may have left the country.”
“This is not the first time that I’ve come across statement involving a coffin— this case does bear some resemblance to case 998211 and Joshua Gillespie’s involvement with a seemingly occupied coffin. Case 014911 also details feelings of intense claustrophobia while underground, though Laura Popham also experienced a flickering light and a sense of time warp while cave-diving. Of course, claustrophobia and coffins are common fears; it may simply be that the only things that connect these cases are their subject’s own delusions. Either way, I think we’re well rid of Eric Chapman and his retinue. End recording.”
Martin finished a few residual notes and paused, the cassette in his hand. What Jon hadn’t mentioned was that this was one of the few statements with a sense of victory, however violently earned. After re-boxing the tape, he opened his own laptop and made a few personal notes; Eric Chapman, Rudyard Funn, Antigone Funn and Georgie Crusoe’s names, their last known location, and Eric Chapman’s boat registration number, which was publicly available, something Jon had totally looked over. It couldn’t hurt to have some allies, however odd.