Seize the Night

the house so full that no human being could fit inside, until the density and weight of the furnishings distorted the very fabric of space-time, causing the house to implode out of our century and into the more comforting age of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lord Chesterfield.
    Mungojerrie, to all appearances unaffected by this surfeit of death and decor, was standing in the hallway, in the inconstant light that pulsed through the open door of the final room, peering intently past that last threshold. Then suddenly he became way too intent; His back was arched and his hackles were raised, as if he were a witch's familiar that had just seen the devil himself rising from a bubbling cauldron.
    Though gunless, I was not going to let Sasha go through another doorway first, because I believed that whoever entered this next room in the point position would be blown away or chopped like a celery stalk in a Cuisinart. Unless the last four bodies had been mutated in ways concealed by clothing, we had not encountered another refugee from The Island of Dr. Moreau since the woman slumped in the Morris chair downstairs, and we seemed overdue for another close encounter of the bowel loosening kind. I was tempted to pick up Mungojerrie and pitch him into the room ahead of me, to draw fire, but I reminded myself that if any of us survived, we would need the mouser to lead us through Wyvern, and even if he landed on his feet unscathed , in the great tradition of felines since time immemorial, he was likely thereafter to be uncooperative.
    I moved past the cat and crossed the threshold with absolutely no cunning, adlibbing and adrenaline-driven, hurtling headlong into a deluge of Victoriana. Sasha was close behind me, whispering my name with severe disapproval, as though it really ticked her off to lose her last best opportunity to be killed in this sentimental wonderland of filigree and potpourri.
    Amidst a visual cacophony of chintz, in a blizzard of bric-a-brac, a television screen presented the cuddly cartoon creatures of the veld capering through The Lion King. The marketing mavens at Disney ought to turn this into a bonanza, produce a special edition of the film for the terminally distraught, for rejected lovers and moody teenagers, for stockbrokers to keep on the shelf against the advent of another Black Monday, package the videotape or DVD with a square of black silk, a pad and pencil for the suicide note, and a lyrics sheet to allow the self-condemned to sing along with the major musical numbers until the toxins kick in.
    Two bodies, numbers ten and lucky eleven, lay on the quilted chintz spread, but they were less interesting than the robed figure of Death, who stood beside the bed. The Reaper, traveling without his customary scythe, was bending over the deceased, carefully arranging squares of black silk to conceal their faces, plucking at specks of lint, smoothing wrinkles in the fabric, surprisingly fussy for Hell's grim tyrant, as Alexander Pope had called him, although those who rise to the top of their professions know that attention to detail is essential.
    He was also shorter than I had imagined Death would be, about five feet eight. He was remarkably heavier than his popular image, too, although his apparent weight problem might be illusory, the fault of the second-rate haberdasher who had put him in a loosely fitted robe that did nothing to flatter his figure.
    When he realized that there were intruders behind him, he slowly turned to confront us, and he proved not to be Death, the lord of all worms, after all. He was merely Father Tom Eliot, the rector of St. Bernadette's Catholic Church, which explained why he wasn't wearing a hood, the robe was actually a cassock.
    Since my brain is pickled in poetry, I thought of how Robert Browning had described Death—“the pale priest of the mute people”—which seemed to fit this lowercase reaper. Even here in the animated African light, Father Tom's face appeared to be as pale and round as the Eucharistic wafer placed upon the tongue during communion.
    “I couldn't convince them to leave their mortal fate in God's hands,” Father Tom said, his voice quavering, his eyes brimming with tears. He didn't bother to remark upon our sudden appearance, as if he had known that someone would catch him at this forbidden work. “It's a terrible sin, an affront to God, this turning away from life. Rather than suffer in this world any longer, they've chosen damnation, yes, I'm afraid