Death Notice. Todd Ritter

Hollow. Kat didn’t know him well. Other than exchanging greetings at the Shop and Save or in passing on the street, they had barely spoken. But he was enough of a fixture in town for her to know he had been a decent man—hardworking and dependable. She also knew there was no reason he should be lying dead in a pine box on Old Mill Road.

      “George,” she whispered as she unsteadily approached the body again. “What happened to you?”

      His corpse had been crammed inside the coffin like a doll stuffed into a shoe box. His arms were folded across his chest, each open hand resting against the opposite shoulder. The ashen shade of his hair matched the pale flesh on his hands, neck, and face.

      Two polished pennies sat atop each of his eyes, hugged by bushy, gray-studded eyebrows. Both coins had been placed heads up, Abe Lincoln’s profile glinting in Kat’s direction. The effect was eerie, the pennies looking like eyes themselves—dead and unblinking.

      A wound marred the right side of his neck, partially hidden by his shirt collar. Pushing the fabric out of the way, Kat examined the gash. About three inches long, it had been stitched shut with black thread. Beads of blood had frozen to the thread, like raindrops in a spiderweb.

      Similar ice crystals could be seen on George’s lips, which were coated with rust-colored flecks of dirt. That’s when Kat realized it wasn’t dirt she saw. It was dried blood. Lots of it, crusted around more black thread that crisscrossed his lips.

      George Winnick’s mouth had been sewn shut.

      Kat gasped again as the pain in her ribs deepened. It was an overwhelming sensation—part nausea, part horror. Still, she managed to make it back to her patrol car and radio Carl.

      “I need you to listen closely,” she said. “Call the EMS squad. Tell them to get here immediately.”

      “There’s someone inside the box?”

      “Yes. George Winnick.”

      Carl reacted the way Kat had expected him to—he prayed. She waited as he murmured a quick prayer for George’s soul. After the amen, he asked, “How did he die?”

      Kat told him she didn’t know.

      “What I do know is that you need to get on the horn and call the county sheriff. Tell him to bring the medical examiner. We’re going to need some help, because this—”

      She stopped speaking when she realized she had no idea what this was. Nor did she have the first clue how to handle it. All she knew was that she had been right about the relentless chill. The cold was a bad omen.

      Very bad.

      TWO

      It’s called a death sentence—that single line in an obituary detailing who died, how, and when. Henry Goll, who wrote them on a daily basis, enjoyed the nickname. He liked its sly wordplay, its mordant wit. Plus, he appreciated how the name hinted at a deeper, darker truth just below its surface: from the moment we are born, we are sentenced to death.

      Part of Henry’s job was to make sure every obituary printed in the Perry Hollow Gazette contained a death sentence. For the most part, it was easy. A grieving family gave the information to the county’s only funeral home, which in turn faxed it to Henry. Using that as a guide, he sat in his cupboard-sized office and wrote a respectful overview of the deceased’s life. The death sentence always came first. It was the meat of the obituary, the only thing readers really wanted to know. The rest—family, work histories, achievements—were just side dishes to be consumed later.

      Henry knew the obituary for George Winnick was a fake because it wasn’t a complete death sentence. Other than a name and a time of death, it contained barely any information at all.

      George Winnick, 67, of Perry Hollow, Pa., died at 10:45 P.M. on March 14.

      Five years of being the obituary writer at the Gazette had made Henry an expert at spotting fakes, which arrived with alarming frequency. He had no idea how anyone could see humor in that kind of prank, but many did. The worst offenders were teenagers, who often sent in fake death notices of much-reviled teachers. Others were sent by the alleged corpse’s friends, usually during a milestone birthday. Under Henry’s watch, none had managed to sneak into the paper. Whenever he saw an obituary claiming someone had died on his fiftieth birthday, he automatically threw it away.

      He was close to doing the same with George Winnick’s, which had been sitting in the fax machine when he entered his office that morning. But because there was nothing suspicious about the age and date listed, he figured it was best to at least confirm it was a fake before relegating it to the trash.

      Henry’s first and only call was to the McNeil Funeral Home. Tucked away on the far end of Oak Street, McNeil was a father and son outfit that had a monopoly on Perry Hollow’s dead. If someone in town passed away, the folks at McNeil knew about it.

      Deana Swan, the funeral home’s receptionist, answered the phone after a single ring.

      “McNeil Funeral Home,” she said in a bored voice. “This is Deana. How may I help you?”

      Henry cleared his throat before speaking. “This is Henry Goll from the Perry Hollow Gazette.”

      Deana interrupted him with a pert “Hey, Henry.”

      “I have a question about a fax I received.”

      “Why don’t you ever say hello to me?”

      Taken aback, Henry replied with a confused “Pardon?”

      “You call here, like, every day. And you just get straight to the point. No hello. No chitchat. Why is that?”

      Henry was at a loss for words. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not that interesting.”

      Deana’s response of “That’s not what I heard” surprised him, mainly because she offered no follow-up. Henry didn’t find himself interesting in the least, so he doubted Deana’s mysterious source.

      “Trust me,” he said. “I’m not.”

      Henry wasn’t lying. He might have been interesting once, but his life in the past five years was a strict schedule of work and solitude. Every morning he arrived at his third-floor office by nine. He worked until six, taking an hour to eat lunch at his desk. When he left for the day, it was via the back stairs, where he could bypass the prying eyes in the main newsroom. Once home, Henry exercised for precisely an hour. After that, he prepared dinner, watched an old movie on TV, then read a book until he grew tired. In the morning, he had breakfast, made his lunch, and repeated the routine.

      His unbending schedule, coupled with the fact that he rarely showed his pale face in the newsroom, had earned him a nickname among the reporters—Henry Ghoul.

      No one suspected Henry knew about the nickname. But he did. And he thought it amusingly appropriate, just like death sentence. He was the phantom of the newsroom, the odd duck writing about dead people. Sometimes he went out of his way to act accordingly, sweeping ghostlike up the back steps and making sure moody music emanated from his office under the eaves.

      As for the other, crueler reason they called him Ghoul, Henry tried not to think about it. He couldn’t change the way he looked. Not now, anyway.

      “Well, interesting or not, you should visit me sometime,” Deana said. “We can go to lunch.”

      Her suggestion was the biggest surprise in a conversation filled with them.

      “That’s probably not a good idea,” Henry said.

      “Why? I don’t even know what you look like.”

      Henry touched his face before he spoke, his fingertips running along the scar that started at his left ear, sliced through the corners of both lips, and ended in the center of his chin. Moving upward, his hand slid across the mottled skin above his left eye. Although he couldn’t see it, he knew the large burn mark retained a dark redness against the white of his flesh. It