London, where it really wasn’t safe for me to be.
DISCUSSING THE
MEANING OF LIFE IN THE
CREMATORIUM
Now that I was dry and fed well enough for the moment, it was time to take care of a pressing piece of business. I needed to get Morgana’s ring off my finger so I could stop dreaming about her and focus on other things. Like saving Amelia. There was only one person I could think of to help me with that.
Scratch that. There was only one
being
I could think of to help me with that.
I went down into the Underground—the transit Underground, that is, not one of London’s other undergrounds—and took a train east for a time. Eventually I got off and walked the rest of the way to my destination from the station, enjoying the blue sky and the birds calling to each other and the wind in my hair. It was a good day to be alive. A shame it wouldn’t last. It never did.
I made a brief stop to buy a bottle of scotch, then carried on until I reached the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium. I went in through the front gate, no doubt looking like just another mourner on his way to visit a lost wife or child. It was a look I didn’t really have to fake. But that’s not why I was here, of course.
Once on the grounds I made my way to the crematorium building where all the hard work of getting rid of bodies is done. The first door I tried was unlocked. After all, who’s going to break into a crematorium?
It’s probably best not to think about that question too much.
Inside the building, I picked up my pace. I’d definitely get noticed as someone who didn’t belong if I crossed paths with anyone in here. And I was trying to get rid of a problem with this little trip, not add a new one.
I took the first stairway I found and went down, into the building’s basement. It wasn’t anything like the pastoral grounds outside now. Down here it was all stone walls and flickering lights overhead. And the sound of a power saw cutting something down the hall, and through that, the sound of someone singing.
“I remember, I remember, the house where I was born,” he sang in a deep, rasping voice I recognized. “The little window where the sun came peeping in at morn.”
I followed the voice, past doors marked Caskets and Holding Area 1 and Holding Area 2 and Embalming Supplies and Lost and Found. I tried not to let my mind wander into that last one.
“He never came a wink too soon, nor brought too long a day, but now I often wish that night had borne my breath away.”
The door at the end of the hall was open, so I went inside. It was a large chamber with a conveyer belt running through most of the middle of it. The conveyer belt went into the incinerator, where the crematorium went about the business of turning the people back into the dust from whence they’d come. A good method of getting rid of bodies, by the way, if you should ever need to dispose of troublesome evidence. A lot easier than leaving them bundled in blankets in the basement of the Tower. The incinerator wasn’t lit right now, which made the room bearable. It could get hellishly hot in here when business was good.
The rest of the room was a jumble of things: wooden caskets piled haphazardly in one corner, a metal table covered in coroner’s tools in another—saws and hammers and that sort of thing. An easy chair and a cot near the incinerator, and a small bookshelf jammed with paperbacks. An empty bottle of scotch and a lone glass sat on one of the shelves. It was very homey.
There was a body in a cardboard coffin on the conveyer belt, and another body standing beside it. Except the second one wasn’t a body—he just resembled one. His skin bore the pallor of death, as well as more stitches than most autopsy victims. He looked up from the dead man when I entered the room. He held a saw in one hand and the left arm of the corpse, which he’d just torn free, in the other.
“But now, I often wish that night had borne my breath away. . . .” he
DISCUSSING THE
MEANING OF LIFE IN THE
CREMATORIUM
Now that I was dry and fed well enough for the moment, it was time to take care of a pressing piece of business. I needed to get Morgana’s ring off my finger so I could stop dreaming about her and focus on other things. Like saving Amelia. There was only one person I could think of to help me with that.
Scratch that. There was only one
being
I could think of to help me with that.
I went down into the Underground—the transit Underground, that is, not one of London’s other undergrounds—and took a train east for a time. Eventually I got off and walked the rest of the way to my destination from the station, enjoying the blue sky and the birds calling to each other and the wind in my hair. It was a good day to be alive. A shame it wouldn’t last. It never did.
I made a brief stop to buy a bottle of scotch, then carried on until I reached the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium. I went in through the front gate, no doubt looking like just another mourner on his way to visit a lost wife or child. It was a look I didn’t really have to fake. But that’s not why I was here, of course.
Once on the grounds I made my way to the crematorium building where all the hard work of getting rid of bodies is done. The first door I tried was unlocked. After all, who’s going to break into a crematorium?
It’s probably best not to think about that question too much.
Inside the building, I picked up my pace. I’d definitely get noticed as someone who didn’t belong if I crossed paths with anyone in here. And I was trying to get rid of a problem with this little trip, not add a new one.
I took the first stairway I found and went down, into the building’s basement. It wasn’t anything like the pastoral grounds outside now. Down here it was all stone walls and flickering lights overhead. And the sound of a power saw cutting something down the hall, and through that, the sound of someone singing.
“I remember, I remember, the house where I was born,” he sang in a deep, rasping voice I recognized. “The little window where the sun came peeping in at morn.”
I followed the voice, past doors marked Caskets and Holding Area 1 and Holding Area 2 and Embalming Supplies and Lost and Found. I tried not to let my mind wander into that last one.
“He never came a wink too soon, nor brought too long a day, but now I often wish that night had borne my breath away.”
The door at the end of the hall was open, so I went inside. It was a large chamber with a conveyer belt running through most of the middle of it. The conveyer belt went into the incinerator, where the crematorium went about the business of turning the people back into the dust from whence they’d come. A good method of getting rid of bodies, by the way, if you should ever need to dispose of troublesome evidence. A lot easier than leaving them bundled in blankets in the basement of the Tower. The incinerator wasn’t lit right now, which made the room bearable. It could get hellishly hot in here when business was good.
The rest of the room was a jumble of things: wooden caskets piled haphazardly in one corner, a metal table covered in coroner’s tools in another—saws and hammers and that sort of thing. An easy chair and a cot near the incinerator, and a small bookshelf jammed with paperbacks. An empty bottle of scotch and a lone glass sat on one of the shelves. It was very homey.
There was a body in a cardboard coffin on the conveyer belt, and another body standing beside it. Except the second one wasn’t a body—he just resembled one. His skin bore the pallor of death, as well as more stitches than most autopsy victims. He looked up from the dead man when I entered the room. He held a saw in one hand and the left arm of the corpse, which he’d just torn free, in the other.
“But now, I often wish that night had borne my breath away. . . .” he
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