“And,” I said, “suddenly, every funeral was a closed casket. Every body that was brought to him, he said he’d ‘done his best’ but they just weren’t fit for viewing. Some people thought it was because he was getting sicker, that he had lost his touch. They were partly right.”

“Finally, one family brought him a woman who had died pretty young in childbirth. They said she was beautiful in life and she was beautiful even when she had died and they wanted to see her. He tried to stop them from opening the casket but it was too late.”

“What was inside?” Kevin asked. His eyes were wide.

“Nothing but bones,” I said, and his eyes widened a little more. “Bones and stones to weigh the casket down. See, he’d been taking each dead body and stripping the skin from it. He still did his undertaker duties by disposing of the organs and the blood, but all he left was the bones.” I licked my lips, then added, “They found the skin he’d stolen from all the bodies. It was in the basement. He’d sewn all the pieces into a big blanket with thick black thread connecting each patch, like a quilt.”