Storyline for Halloween 2000

 The Mortuary of Madness
 by Mortimer Grimm

Our story begins in a quaint little southern town, Gallatin, Tennessee. The time about ninety years ago. Our characters, two young lovers, torn apart by greed. Join me, kiddies, for this terrifying trip in my cold and cozy hearse, to the Mortuary of Madness.

Young Warren Ackerman, second generation mortician and director of Evergreen Funeral Home, approached the front porch steps of local horse trader, Ray "Real Deal" Harris. Warren had courted young Melanie Harris since elementary school, childhood sweethearts! Now six years after graduation, having taken over his father's business, Warren was ready to ask for his sweetheart's hand in marriage. Tonight would be the night. Melanie met Warren at the door with tears in her eyes. Inside, Mr. Harris sat with town millionaire, Eugene Ferry III. Both were drinking and smoking cigars. Mrs. Harris sat flirtatiously by Ferry's side. As Warren entered the parlor, he caught the eye of Mr. Harris, who boisterously hollered out to the young Ackerman to join in the celebration. When Warren inquired as to the reason for revelry, Ferry braggingly offered that he had asked the Harris's for Melanie's hand. The wedding would be in two short weeks. Shocked, Warren turned to Melanie, who burst into tears, asking him to forgive her. She ran up the tall stairs to her room. After a moment of staring at his beloved as she fled, Warren turned back to face Mr. Harris. "But she loves me. I want to make her happy." At this, both Mr. and Mrs. Harris, accompanied by Ferry, burst out laughing.
"Our daughter, marry a mortician? Heaven's no!" exclaimed Mrs. Harris. "You couldn't give us, um, Melanie, all the things she deserves, Ackerman," added Mr. Harris. Ferry threw out, "I guess the better man won, eh, Ackerman?" The three howled with laughter as Warren left the home and walked back to his own home, above the Evergreen Funeral Home, devastated. Warren did not see Melanie again. The following Saturday's paper announced the planned wedding. Warren was quoted in the story as offering his very best to the young couple. But while Warren was saddened, Melanie had no intention of being the pawn in her greedy parents' scheme to marry their daughter off to money. The wedding day came too soon for Warren. He watched from a distance as Melanie was escorted up the steps to the church an hour before the ceremony. 

He lowered his head and turned back to his funeral parlor. In the church loft where brides prepare for their grand entrance, Melanie asked her attendants to leave her for a few minutes. After they left, Melanie removed a note from her bag and set it upon a small table. She then took a heavy rope from her bag and threw it expertly over a ceiling rafter and back down to her waiting neck. She stepped up onto a four step stool and drew the noose around her neck. She could see the crowd of guests below her at the base of the stairs. Her father looked up drunkenly toward his daughter at the top landing. She pointed to him, screamed out "You can't make me marry that foul devil." With that, she stepped off the stool. Her body flailed as she strangled. It took almost a full minute of her flapping before she ceased movement. Her father ran to pull her down, but in his panic, merely pulled at her legs enough to help her neck break. Young Ackerman sat at his desk in the front office of his funeral home. As he gazed at the front window, he saw a vision of his beloved Melanie in her wedding gown, her face lifeless and blue. He rubbed his eyes and she was gone. There was a knock at the door. Warren gathered himself and made his way to the rear entrance of the building. Opening the door, he was politely greeted by an ambulance driver. "Please sign here. The family has just left the Church." Warren gazed down at the gurney. It was the shape of a woman. Warren pulled slowly on the sheet to remove it.

As the sheet slid down the woman's face to unveil his beloved Melanie, Warren's eyes widened in horror. Earlier in the day, he knew he was losing her, but this was permanent. What had happened, he thought. "Oh, Melanie, what did they do to you?" he cried to the corpse. Warren carefully transferred Melanie's body onto a dolly cart, shrouded her meticulously, and rolled it into the embalming room. Pulling up a stool, young Ackerman sat close to the body holding her hand. He could not contain his grief. Tears flowed from his eyes like streams. Until. Melanie's hand suddenly came to life and coldly gripped Warren's own hand. He looked up in horror to see Melanie's eyes open. Even with its bluish gray color, her face was still beautiful. Still lying flat, she turned her head toward Warren and smiled sweetly. "Warren, I could never marry anyone but you. I'm sorry. I love you so much." Rejoicing, Warren responded, "I love you Melanie. I love you so much." After a brief second, Melanie commanded, "if you love me Warren, then take revenge on Eugene and my greedy parents. Make them pay for keeping us apart." She closed her eyes, and turned her head back. Warren was jossled awake by the ringing of his customer entrance bell. Someone was here to see him. His quickly jumped to the sink to splash his face, then hurried to the front door. To add shock to his already surprising day, Warren opened the door to be confronted by Ferry, and Mr. and Mrs. Harris, who pushed their way in. "Look what you drove our daughter to, you devil," shouted Mrs. Harris accusingly. "You made her do this, so don't you even think of charging us for the funeral, you monster!" Mr. Harris retorted. Ferry stood back, acting nervously. "I want the best that money can buy, Ackerman, for my bride. "Warren stood in shock, appalled by what these viscous people were saying. All he could think was that he had the love of his life taken away from him, and these fools were blaming him. The anger boiled in his veins until he exploded, physically shoving the trio out of his door into the street. "You monsters, you destroyed your daughter's life, all so you could get your hands on Ferry's money. 
Well, I guess you lose. You lose your precious money. Ferry loses his trophy. See Ferry, money can't buy everything. But you've killed Melanie and ruined my life, and you'll all pay. Now get out, devils, and may God have mercy on your sick, twisted souls!" With that, Warren jumped back into his parlor and closed the door. He went back to the embalming room where he sat with Melanie's remains all evening. The next day, following a brief visitation where Mr. and Mrs. Harris, and Eugene Ferry all accepted the condolences of local townsfolk, Melanie's body was interred at a nearby cemetery. Warren didn't submit a bill. He sat numbly in his office and let his employees handle the details. Late one night, just a week later, As Eugene Ferry III walked passed the funeral home on his way to his large home following a night of drinking and cards at the local gentleman's club, he noticed the silhouette of a man and woman dancing in the upper window of Evergreen Funeral home. For a moment, he suspected Melanie had spoofed her death in order to avoid marrying him. His pride immediately took over and he stormed to the entrance of the mortuary and pounded the door. "Ackerman, you let me in you little creep. I know she's in there." Sweating with a mixture of fear and anger, Ferry waited for Warren to come to the door. As Warren peered out, Ferry pushed his way in. "What do you want Ferry?" asked Ackerman boldly. "I saw you and Melanie dancing upstairs. She's alive and I want to see her," Ferry responded. For a moment, Warren's growingly confused mind pondered, before changing his demeanor and offering, "you're right Ferry. It was a trick. I can't live with myself. Why don't you use my telephone. Call the Harris's and ask them to come over in an hour. That'll give you and Melanie some time to talk before her parents arrive." Surprised, Ferry looked at him with a cocky smile. "You always were a spineless jellyfish. Can't even follow through on this, can you little man?" Warren merely pointed to the phone.
As Ferry dialed the telephone, Warren secretly took a large pipe from behind a door. "Harris, this is Eugene. Warren Ackerman has a little something to share with us. Be here at the Funeral Home in one hour." Before he could take the phone away from his ear, however, he was out cold. Knocked in the head by the lead pipe. Warren took the receiver and placed it back on the telephone. He quickly retrieved a gurney from the back of the mortuary, and will all his might, rolled Ferry onto the slab and strapped him down. "I'll show you who the jellyfish is, tubby," replied Warren to Ferry's deaf ears. Ferry came to on the cold table. He was strapped down to the table, his mouth sewn shut!, but he could move his head enough to see the sleeves of his sport coat and shirt had been cut off. In one arm, a needle attached to a hose revealed blood. The other arm's hose revealed an empty hose connected to a tank above the cabinets labeled "embalming fluid." His eyes widened. Warren watched him in the first stages of panic. Almost in a reassuring voice, Warren volunteered, "Oh, don't worry Eugene, I changed my mind. I was going to pump it into your veins, but then I thought, am I crazy? that would take so long. So here's what I've got for you instead. "He pointed up to the ceiling to reveal and homemade panel of large hypodermic needles filled with green liquid.

The needles, sized like large nails and sharp as tacks, gleamed brightly in the low light. As Eugene tried to scream through his crudely stitched mouth, Warren shouted, "Good-bye Ferry. See you in Hell!" With that he released the panel of needles which crashed into Ferry's chest, the needles penetrating his body. He watched in horror as the hypodermics drained into his chest. He died slowly, a glutton for formaldehyde as he was for wine, women and food in life. Warren smiled wickedly as he turned to the body of his beloved Melanie, whom he had propped up as if to view the execution. "Well, my love, one down, two to go!" Suddenly, Melanie spoke. "He got what he deserved, darling, now finish my parents so you and I can be together forever." Warren turned, surprised, to face Melanie. Her face was still, but a ghostly apparition of her floated in front of her corpse. Warren's mind slipped a bit further away from sanity that moment. Melanie continued. "My mother suffocated me, Warren. Remember how she would always make me stay at home when you and I had big plans. And my father. He should have known how I felt. He had to live with her too. Make them suffer Warren, for me." As Warren was about to respond, he heard pounding at the door. It was Melanie's parents. He opened the door with a wild grin on his face. Mr. and Mrs. Harris looked shocked to see him so happy. "Come in, come in! we have such joy in store for you both." Baffled, Mr. Harris looked at Warren and started his typical banter. "What the hell are you up to, little man? Melanie's alive, isn't she. I want to see her this minute. She's going to pay for this." As Warren ushered them in and closed the door behind them, he said under his breathe, "funny, that's just what she said." The door slammed. Warren ran in front of the couple to open the door to the embalming rooms. They entered to see a body on a gurney covered in a sheet stained green and red. "Christmassy, don't you think?" Warren joked. As they made their way further in, he closed and locked the door behind them. The looked around, and as they turned to the back wall, they saw Melanie's body, propped up but with her head bent down in a nauseating position. Mrs. Harris fainted and fell to the ground. "Oh, darn, that takes the fun out of this, but we'll start without her. Have I got a deal for you, Real Deal!" Warren finished speaking as he shoved Harris into a chair and strapped his arms and legs to it. He then pulled up Mrs. Harris and positioned her in another chair. He hurried in front of them, grabbing a glass of water from the sink, and splashed it in the face of Mrs. Harris, who regained consciousness immediately. She quickly realized her predicament and squirmed in her restraints. "Now that I have your undivided attention, you see before you, on the table, a body. A man, if you could really call him that." He grabbed the sheet and quickly tore it from the body as a magician would a tablecloth from a fully set table. Eugene Ferry III was now a bloated glob of human waste. Warren had deliberately allowed the blood to drain slowly from the body while the embalming fluid had rushed in, creating a balloon effect of iridescent human flesh. "A man who in life was going to be your meal ticket, without the least bit of consideration for your daughter, who hated him, and loved me!"
Mr. Harris looked angry. His face was turning beat red. "Ackerman, you pip-squeak, you untie us now, or you'll be sorry. You are in serious trouble," he shouted. "Nobody asked you to speak, did they?" Warren replied as he went to a cabinet and opened it to reveal a series of viscous looking tools. Saws. knives. He grabbed a large mallet and returned to the Harris's, pausing in front of them. He raised the mallet and popped Mr. Harris on the head. Blood splattered over Warren and in the face of Mrs. Harris as the mallet knocked Harris into unconsciousness. He then turned to the horrified Mrs. Harris, who shook her head in a steady motion side to side. "Please, no. Please," she cried. "Don't worry. I wanted to give you a little time to ponder on your empty, selfish life." He pointed her in the direction of her daughter's corpse. "You see that? Your daughter. Your flesh and blood. You sold her out to the town millionaire. You sold her like a slave. Think about that for a little while." Warren moved to the other side of the room where he retrieved Melanie's body and brought it to rest in front of Mrs. Harris. "I'll be right back. In the meantime, I think you girls should have a heart-to-heart chat, don't you?" Mrs. Harris screamed at the site of her lifeless daughter's body flailing in front of her like a broken rag doll. a sobbing She turned away from her daughter. "What? Can't look at her? Why not, you created this. Look at her," he shouted. Mrs. Harris raised her head to look at her daughter as Warren supported the broken head of his Melanie and mimicked a girl's voice. "Hi, mommy, you ruined my life, and now you've killed me!" Warren took Mr. Harris's body with him and was gone for over an hour. He returned covered in dirt and clay. As he popped in to the room, he announced "Ready? Ready! Let's go have some fun!" He rolled in a hand cart onto which he propped his beloved Melanie. He then removed Mrs. Harris from the chair, placing old iron slave shackles at her wrists, connected to a chain. "Let's go!" he laughed, and off they went, Warren pushing the cart and dragging a numb Mrs. Harris behind him. They entered an old elevator and Warren closed the doors. He pushed one of only two buttons. They descended for what Mrs. Harris felt was hours before stopping with a jolt. "All out for wedding party," Warren joked. The doors of the elevator opened upon an eerie room. On one side, a doorway led to the basement rooms of the building. But on the other, a hole had been knocked through, revealing a subterranean cavern. Legions of rats could be heard scurrying about, feeding. As the party made their way into the cave, Mrs. Harris looked around. "What is this place?" Warren, amused at her interest, again grabbed Melanie's head from behind and mimicked in a feminine voice, "It's Lackey Cave, mommy. But let's stop here and look at the big hole in the ground." They stopped and Mrs. Harris looked frightenedly down to see her husband tied with rope and gagged staring up at her pleadingly. Warren handed a shovel to Mrs. Harris and pointed at the large mound of wet soil. "You may do the honors, Mrs. Harris, or should I call you Mom?" She looked horrified. Warren then peered over the edge holding Melanie's left hand. "Sorry you won't be able to see our wedding, Dad!" He turned to Mrs. Harris and yelled at her to fill the hole. She cried. He raised the mallet in a threatening motion. "Do it, or join him!" She quickly took up the shovel and began to fill the hole, careful not to get dirt on her husband's face. Warren took Melanie's limp body and waltzed around the hole while it was being filled. Before long, Mr. Harris's muffled cries for help could no longer be heard.

"Job well done, Mrs. Harris. For your hard work and dedication, Melanie and I want to invite you to view our wedding from the best seat in the house." He placed Melanie carefully back onto the cart, and took the chain connected to Mrs. Harris' shackles, proceeding down the tunnel. They passed through an area of cave where Warren had placed lighted torches. It appeared to be the underside of old Gallatin graveyard. Over the years, crypts had settled. Caskets had burrowed their way down to where the bottoms of some of them formed eerie ceiling fixtures in the cave. Several caskets lay in ruin along the cave floor. Some with parts of bodies still inside, others empty. Empty? As the eerie party turned a bend in the cavern, they stopped at an unsettling scene. Before her startled eyes, Mrs. Harris saw a makeshift chapel. Pews from an old church, filled with corpses dressed in burial suits and shrouds. A remnant of a stained glass window. A pulpit made from an upright casket held up a rotted corpse of a man dressed in clerical robes. Against the back wall was a small inlet with chains driven into the rock. "Look, Mrs. Harris, old slave owners kept their possessions down here during the war of northern aggression, so they wouldn't be taken away. When the south fell, these old coots abandoned their slaves to starve to death down here." Warren walked Mrs. Harris to the back wall facing the alter and threaded her chain though an iron ring in the cave wall. As he pulled on the chain, it drew Mrs. Harris closer to the wall and forced her arms to be raised up. It didn't take her to long to realize what was happening, but now she stood secure against the back wall, suspended by the chains bound to her wrists. She pleaded for pardon, But Warren would hear none of it. 
He propped Melanie's body in a pew and twisted her head as if she were watching what was to transpire. He then mixed up a muddy cement and began the process of walling Mrs. Harris into the cave. Within an hour, it was complete, save for a small opening for Mrs. Harris to see out of. Warren didn't want her to miss the wedding. As Mrs. Harris' mind began to go, she saw Melanie, being helped up from her seat, but of her own will, twist her head into position, and smile at Warren. Mrs. Harris screamed, "Melanie, help me!" to which her daughter, in her bride's gown, turned, waved to her mother, and blew her a kiss. The couple marched confidently up to the alter where Ackerman placed a band on his beautiful blue bride's finger. They embraced in a passionate kiss, turned to face their spectators, who all applauded as the couple left the chapel, never to be seen again. 

In years since, on the cool fall nights, it has been told that music can be heard coming from the old abandoned caverns beneath the city of Gallatin and the laughter of the two tragic lovers echo into the darkness as their wedding dance eternally plays.