Finally Pia and George walked into the morgue itself. Arranged along the walls was a series of walk-in coolers. The fifteen or so corpses in the room were on separate gurneys, some covered by sheets, others fully exposed. Still in place on a few of the bodies were the various tubes and wires used to treat and monitor them while they were still alive. A couple of the bodies were clothed, others naked. Most still wore the hospital johnnies they expired in. Mixed in were a couple of long black body bags.

Pia and George were wondering why they couldn’t find anyone working there when the night diener, or mortuary attendant, startled them.

“What do you want?” the man asked. It was obvious he was unhappy at being disturbed. He was perhaps fifty or sixty, small of stature, wearing a stained lab coat. He had a bulbous head too large for his body with a badly maintained comb-over wedged on top. He wore small oval glasses and squinted through them at his uninvited guests. The casting department for the Victorian horror movie had done a good job.

“And how did you get in?” he added before Pia or George could answer his first question.

“We came in that way,” Pia said, indicating their entrance route.

“That’s the back entrance. Visitors are supposed to come in the front. No one ever comes in the back way.”

“We’re here to ask about a couple of autopsies,” George said. “Autopsies that might have been performed down here today. The patients would have been two staff members who died early this morning, Dr. Rothman and Dr. Yamamoto?”

The attendant laughed cynically, as if this was the funniest thing he had heard in ages.

“There hasn’t been an autopsy done down here in fifty years. I never heard of either of those patients. They’re not here, if that’s what you want to know. And if there was an autopsy, it would be done in the anatomy department of the medical school, where they still do them. On account of the teaching. You need to get in touch with the pathology resident on call. And you can go out the front way.” The man pointed in the direction of the usual exit. He then stood there implacably.

George looked at Pia, who didn’t seem in the mood to argue.

“Okay,” George said. “Thanks.”

As Pia and George waited for the elevator to rumble its way down to them, George snuck a look back toward the chamber of horrors.

“Can you believe that guy?”

“I’ve been in some creepy places, but that’s the creepiest.”

“Do you think he ever leaves?” George said.

“You get the impression that he lives down here.”

“I’ll be happy if I don’t see that face again.”

“I should think so,” said Pia. “If we come back down here, it means we’re dead.”