Supernatural: Carved in Flesh (14 page)

“Resembles?” Sam said.

Martinez continued poking at Frankenmutt with his pen. “The color and texture are both somewhat different. It’s more pliable than NuFlesh, more like the actual skin.”

“But it
is
artificial,” Sam pressed.

“Undoubtedly.” Martinez gave him a quick lopsided smile. “Whatever this thing is, I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t born this way.”

Dean gave Sam an exasperated look.

Undaunted, Sam continued. “Assuming that this... animal is what it appears to be, could NuFlesh—or something like it—be used to join the separate parts together?”

“Like some kind of meat glue,” Dean added.

Martinez straightened and stepped back away from the trunk. Sam noticed he didn’t return his pen to his pocket. Sam didn’t blame him.

“Are you serious?”

“Humor those of us without PhDs in biochemistry,” Dean said.

Martinez thought for a moment. As he did, he scratched at his face again. The scar tissue broke and oozed more fluid, and sagged another fraction of an inch.

“I designed NuFlesh as an artificial substance for use in skin grafts, though I’ve always thought it could one day be employed in transplants. But that’s only in theory. Such applications are years, maybe even decades, away.” He looked at Frankenmutt again. “Even if someone has managed to develop their own NuFlesh formula that’s more advanced than mine, the hurdles they’d have to overcome to create a thing like this are staggering. Fusing bone, connecting muscles and nerves... Why the problems with tissue rejection alone—”

“We get the picture,” Dean interrupted. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you can do with a junior mad scientist kit and a little old-fashioned elbow grease.”

“Hardly,” Martinez agreed. “I’m confident in saying that no one on Earth has the capability to make an abomination like this. Although why anyone would want to is beyond me. You believe it has some connection to the recent spate of mysterious deaths?”

“Yeah.” Dean drew the blanket back over Frankenmutt’s corpse and closed the trunk. “We figured people took one look at it, and died from an overdose of ugly.”

Sam gave Dean a warning look, then turned to Martinez. “There’s no risk of contagion.”

“I assumed that was the case,” Martinez said, “or else you would’ve observed stricter containment protocols.” He glanced at the closed trunk. “Or any, for that matter. I mean, not even the federal government could be that stupid, right?”

Sam glanced at Dean, but neither of them said anything.

“When you find out where that thing came from, please let me know,” Martinez said. “Professional curiosity, you understand. Now, if there’s nothing further, I do have work I should get back to.”

“One last question,” Dean said. “Could this artificial flesh stuff be used to make a guy with two heads and four arms?”

* * *

Peter stood on the sidewalk outside his business and watched the agents drive away in their ancient wreck of a car, taking the corpse of the misbegotten creature—and its horrendous stink—with them. After they had gone, he took his phone from his pocket and keyed in Conrad’s number. While he waited for him to answer, he idly scratched his face. The Itch was mild, far better than it had been, but it still bothered him. When he was done speaking with Conrad, he’d go back inside and apply more of the man’s special unguent. True, Conrad had cautioned him against using too much, but it was the only thing that gave Peter any relief. Really, what was the worst that could happen?

He didn’t feel the viscous fluid that oozed from the furrows he gouged in his scarred flesh, and even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have cared.

* * *

The embalming room in the basement of Harrison Brauer’s Legacy Center—in plainer language, a funeral parlor—was cramped and clammy, although he preferred to think of it as cozy and cool. The colorless walls and tiled floor seemed to glow in the stark fluorescent light, and if he spent too much time working down here, his eyes would start to water. If it got really bad, he’d don a pair of sunglasses, making him, at least in his own mind, the hippest mortician in town. The air held an iron tang that he’d long ago gotten used to, and which, truth to tell, he’d come to find rather pleasant. A pair of white marble tables occupied the center of the chamber, and above them a metal showerhead hung from the ceiling, just in case Harrison needed to wash away a particularly nasty spill. Set into the floor between the tables was a large grated drain, which he often thought of as a perfect metaphor for the end of life. Ultimately, everything that lived ended up washed down the Great Drain of the Universe.

Next to one of the tables was a gurney, and lying face up on it, naked, was Mason McKelvey, owner of McKelvey’s Motorama, Brennan’s most successful used car dealership. He’d been brought in less than an hour before, after spending the last nine days of his life in a hospital bed as his kidneys slowly ceased functioning. A shame, really, as he’d only been in his early sixties; not young, but then again, not all that old, either. Harrison had never bought a car from Mason—the funeral business had treated him well, and he could afford to purchase his vehicles new—but he knew the man from both the rotary club and the town’s merchants’ association. A nice enough fellow, if a bit loud and self-serving. Though as he’d been a salesman, and by all accounts, cold-blooded and ruthless when it came to forging a deal, Harrison figured the man’s jovial obnoxiousness was par for the course. When most people came to him, lying naked and statue-still, they seemed diminished somehow; smaller, sunken in on themselves, skin sallow and hard like wax figures. Mason was no exception. A thin man with a surprisingly thick shock of wild white hair, a sharp nose, and oversized ears, he appeared almost comical despite his current surroundings. Down here in the embalming room, there was nothing about Mason McKelvey to indicate the position of power and respect he’d held in life. Not for the first time, Mason thought that death truly was the great equalizer.

Harrison certainly understood how surface appearances didn’t always show the person within, for he himself defied the stereotype that most people had of morticians. Instead of looking like Gomez Addams—grim black suit, corpse-white complexion, mad gleam in his eyes—he was tall, ruddy-faced, and rotund, like a clean-shaven Santa Claus. His demeanor matched his appearance. He had a constant smile on his face, and he laughed often and easily, a loud infectious sound that came from deep in his chest, inviting everyone who heard it to join in.

Harrison shifted Mason from the gurney onto one of the marble tables with an ease born of equal parts strength and long practice. He wheeled the gurney into a corner of the room to get it out of the way, and then returned to consider Mason. The first steps in preparing a client for embalming are simple: scrub the skin, clean the nails, shampoo the hair, and then massage the limbs to break up rigor mortis. Then the mouth is sewn shut and the facial features carefully posed before the body stiffens. After that, the process becomes more involved. The blood is drawn, the stomach emptied, and the body filled with arterial firming fluid, which also gives the skin color. Harrison preferred using Index 32 lithol, which he purchased from a specialist supply company.

The tools of Harrison’s trade surrounded him: the trocar that emptied out his clients’ stomachs, the scalpels he used to dig into their arteries, the Duotronic pump that injected chemicals into their bodies, causing them to give off a vinegar-like scent. But he didn’t reach for any of these. Instead, he pulled open a drawer and removed a makeup kit. He placed it on the table next to Mason’s head, opened it, and went to work.

Half an hour later, he was finished. Harrison stepped back to admire the results.

He had covered Mason’s face, ears, and neck with white, outlined his lips with bright red to create a garish smile, and painted a large black dollar sign over each eye. On the left cheek he’d written the word “Buy” in black, and on the right he’d written “Sell.” He’d combed Mason’s hair up and back, sprayed it so it would remain in place, and then colored it green to represent money.

He removed a hand mirror from the makeup kit and held it in front of Mason’s new face. “What do you think? You’ve heard of a clown car, right? Well, now you’re a car clown!”

Harrison laughed, but evidently Mason didn’t get the joke, for he remained silent.
Screw him.
Harrison thought it was funny.

He returned the mirror to the kit, walked over to the counter, and picked up his camera. He then spent the next several minutes taking pictures of Mason from different angles.

“You know you’re just going to have to clean all that off.”

The voice startled Harrison, but he recognized it almost immediately. Instead of turning to look at the speaker, he continued shooting photos as he answered.

“I’ll admit that mine is a transitory art, but that’s what makes it so special. I reveal my clients’ inner nature, bring it to the surface for perhaps the first and only time since the day they were born, and then I restore the more familiar appearance their family and friends expect. But for a short interval at least, if only down here with me, they become their truest, most profound selves.”

Satisfied he’d gotten some good shots for his latest scrapbook—he’d already filled seven others—he lowered his camera and finally turned to face Conrad.

Conrad stepped forward from the shadowy corner where he’d been standing and approached the table where Mason lay. Harrison didn’t question how Conrad had managed to enter the embalming room without his hearing him. He knew that he became so focused when practicing his art—which he considered his true vocation—that a bomb could go off behind him and he’d barely notice. Besides, Conrad had a way of moving snake-silent when he wanted to.

Conrad glanced at Mason’s altered face. “I suppose it was his ears and nose that gave you the idea to make him up as a clown.”

“That, and the awful TV commercials he made for his dealership. He was one of those car salesmen who always talk too loud and fast when they’re on camera, you know?”

“Death shouldn’t be mocked like this,” Conrad said. “It is sacred.”

Harrison didn’t attach any mystic or religious significance to death. As far as he was concerned, it was only a biological process, no more important or meaningful than flipping off a light switch when you left a room.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asked to change the subject. “Should I assume that you’re in need of the kind of materials that only I can supply?”

“Thank you, but no. At the moment, I happen to be well stocked.”

Harrison frowned. “Nothing personal, but I didn’t take you to be the type to make social calls.”

“I’m not.” Mason’s body lay between them, but now Conrad began slowly walking around the table, approaching Harrison. “Do you remember when I first came to you?”

“Of course.” How could he forget the day a well-dressed, overly formal man entered his parlor and introduced himself as Conrad Dippel? Conrad—who looked far more like an archetypal mortician than Harrison ever would—had brought with him several containers of a material called NuFlesh and a business proposition.

“I sought you out for several reasons. One was your profession. It is an ancient and noble one which my lady well regards. Another was your surname: Bauer. It means
brewer
in German. My lady has always held a fondness for the Germanic people, and I myself am honored to claim that heritage as well.”

Harrison had heard Conrad speak of his
lady
before, but he had no idea who he was referring to. Some sort of supervisor, he supposed.

Conrad continued. “Not to mention the fact that you have access to certain ‘materials,’ as you call them, along with facilities suitable for working with them. Also, I asked around town about you and discovered you had a reputation for somewhat eccentric behavior. Not an uncommon prejudice when it comes to those who devote themselves to the funereal arts, I admit, but I found the rumors intriguing.”

Conrad had reached Harrison’s side of the table and now stood only inches from him. Given his height and girth, Harrison rarely felt physically threatened, but even though he outweighed Conrad by a good margin, he felt intimidated by the man, and it was all he could do to keep from shrinking back in his presence.

“However, after working together for several weeks, it became apparent to me that while you have sufficient...” He glanced at Mason’s clown face. “...imagination, you lack another quality vital to the success of my project.” He reached toward Mason’s face, and with his index finger wiped away a portion of white. He then slowly rubbed the makeup between thumb and forefinger, as if taking his time to get a feel for it. “Do you know what that quality is?”

Harrison sensed that something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. The emotional atmosphere in the room was like the building electrical charge in the moments before a thunderstorm broke loose, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

He shook his head.

“Medical training. It’s my own fault, of course. In my day, professions were less specialized than they are now, and scientific advances in biology, anatomy, and medicine, meager as they might have been, were often made by those who worked with the dead. I believed that my experience could make up for what you lacked, but I soon saw that this was hubris on my part. I could not fault your enthusiasm for the work, but our progress was slow, and my lady grows impatient. So when another candidate presented herself, one who had the medical training you lack, I decided to change horses in midstream, as I believe the saying goes.”

Harrison wondered where Conrad was going with all this. Wherever it was, he doubted it was anywhere good.

“I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Besides, you continued to pay me for services rendered, so I figured I couldn’t complain,” Harrison said.

Harvesting organs and even entire limbs from his clients posed little problem. The organs of course were never missed, and as for the limbs and even torsos, mannequin parts were effective substitutes. If necessary, the hands were gloved due to an unfortunate chemical “accident” that took place during the embalming process. Families were extremely unhappy at this—until Harrison offered them a discount to make up for the extra shock during their time of grief.