Sheriff Donovan creeps through a dim hall. His steps are slow, and he leads with his hands. He feels his way forward. Donovan makes a face. His nose twists and mouth contorts into the shape of primordial disgust. Maggots swarm somewhere in the shadows.

"Christ, Bernie, you don't have company much, do you?" Donovan spits. The man's come to the undertaker's to seek answers for the severed head still leaking down his desk. He looks into the low light ahead. "Bernie! Bernie! We need to talk!" No answer. "It's Sheriff Donovan! I know you like your jokes, but the pastor didn't appreciate you desecrating a corpse on his land!" No reply. "You're not in trouble! I just want to talk!"

The sheriff passes jars of murky liquid. Odd lumps are suspended inside dirty cages just beyond the reach of light. Donovan taps a glass and another. A foot. A hand. A heart. Pickled body parts emerge from the brine. The sheriff stares at an unblinking eye before swallowing hard.

"Try to be a little more inconspicuous with your pranks!" Donovan shouts. "When another nobody's sent your way, do what you want, just don't toss the body in the graveyard! Or, if you do, bury it!"

Turning his head to escape the undertaker's peculiar collection, Donovan's vision only comes to rest on a corpse, a second, and a third. All sawed apart, forgotten, and left to crumble into dust. Maggots. A chest's been ripped open, ribs shattered, and stomach, intestines, and lungs rearranged. Worms. The skin's stripped from another, the skeleton's blood vessels and musculature exposed. Moths. The sheriff comes to face a face sliced into meticulously fine rows. Rats. Donovan moves swiftly over loose floorboards. Creaks and carcasses surround him. And then there's only darkness.

One footstep plunges Donovan into dense black and demolishes whatever daring he had left. His lips tremble. His fingers quiver. The sheriff's legs losing their purpose, the man must rely on the wall behind him for strength. He clings to it and stares into black air. He can smell the decaying things. He can hear them rot. But his eyes are blind. And sightless, Donovan's wits unravel. Not seeing the undertaker's experiments makes the man imagine the worst of what could be behind the sooty veil. The sheriff tries on a brave face, but the profile of his jaw doesn't stop his mind from loosing monsters inside his head.

Goblins. Demons. Ogres. Dragons. The sheriff's subconscious summons the darkest of animals in man's most ancient memory. Ghosts with toothy grins.

His nerves turn threadbare. He draws his gun. His voice drops to a whimper.

"Where are you, Bernie?"

Hugging the wall, Donovan's eyes snap back and forth. He moves in inches and retreats a step for every two forward he takes. His foot bumps into something. Donovan doesn't look down. Instead, his eyes strain into a ceiling hidden in ink. Through his boot, he can feel a cold, wet mass, and only after collecting a flagon of courage does Donovan force his vision to the floor. There, twisted about, the sheriff discovers a withered body inside a fine tailored suit. A creature chews off what's left of its face. The undertaker's cat.

The hands on Donovan's watch spin for some time before he moves next, and when he does, it's because of a nerve pinching the back of his neck. Digesting the scene, the sheriff convulses. He gags on the air inside his mouth, and then he lets out a laugh.

"Max, you haven't seen your master, have you?" Donovan asks the cat. "He doesn't feed you well, does he? Just be careful, that thing looks like it's been dead for weeks." The cat continues to eat the dead man's head, and Donovan, pressed against the wall, moves again through the black. He doesn't look back. One hand stays on the dry wood, while the other, pistol in a vice grip, points straight into the unknown. Again, he laughs.

Whatever's inside the man's head breaks.

"This town's had five sheriffs in the past four years, and I've worn my badge longer than all the previous lot," Donovan tells the loneliness. His teeth chatter. His eyes yawn wide. His gun swings through thick nothing, trying to take aim at anywhere and everywhere at once. "What am I doing here?" The sheriff shakes. He skulks down halls and around corners, burying himself deeper and deeper into dead air and farther and farther from light or life. Donovan moves through empty space without end. "Keep a low profile. Keep your job. Keep your life. Wasn't that the plan?"

Something ahead. A dim shape emerges from the shroud covering the ether. Two shapes. The sheriff approaches, growing his eyes as big as he can, straining to make out two oblong objects before him. But while his eyes fail to fill in their outlines, his nose has no problem identifying the things. They stink. A different kind of terror overtakes the man. No longer afraid of unknown, invisible thoughts, tension ripples the whole of Donovan's skeleton as a very real, very identifiably dread possesses him. The sheriff's feet slam down, resolved not to move any further. Donovan holds his breath.

Two coffins stand propped in front of him, fresh corpses sleeping inside. They reek more than all the cadavers strewn about the blackness. And more than that, they smile. These are ghosts with toothy grins. Egon and Duncan. They wait. Just a bit closer. Just a little bit. They wait. However, Donovan doesn't move toward Erebus. The man backs away.

"Lisbeth..."

Donovan stumbles through the same murky halls that brought him here, only now his steps come as fast as his heartbeat. He retreats. Any sense of moderation in his pace's erased, and while he trips over low tables and misplaced chairs, he doesn't let himself fall. Righting himself in midair, Donovan keeps going until a pair of fangs sink into his leg. Donovan kicks. Donovan screams. Donovan throws himself against the floor. The man sends curses and the barrel of his gun into the thing atop his leg. And then, with a meow, it disappears. Donovan blinks.

"It was only the cat?"

The sheriff's boot must have come down over the undertaker's animal, and the cat only naturally clamped its tiny teeth into his flesh. But now it's gone, and Donovan, left alone, falls apart atop a darkness-swathed table. He knocks a corpse dreaming on it aside and collapses here, his hands pulling at his hair. No matter how long or how deep he gasps, he can't gather enough air to fill his chest.

"I did what I told the pastor I'd do," Donovan spits. "I came to have a talk with the undertaker. I'll even leave him a note. It's not my fault Bernie's not here." Searching the table before him, the sheriff finds a wrinkled notebook. Onto it, he scrawls...

Bernard, the pastor doesn't appreciate your sense of humor.

Please throw any unclaimed corpses in the desert.

Anywhere outside the town will do.

The sheriff sets the paper under a cadaver's foot. He throws his pen to the floor. He heads for the door. Racing through twisting hallways, Donovan retraces his previous steps. He runs for the street, but not sure of where each room begins or ends, the sheriff's flight instead turns him around again and again and again. Three times, he makes for the undertaker's front room, and three times the last door leads him back to the coffins. Egon and Duncan. Donovan's nose twists, and he sprints the opposite way. The man bumps into the same tables and chairs and passes his own note once, twice, and again.

He finds the caskets. He finds the caskets. He finds the caskets. Every door brings him here. Left. Through a side hall, he comes to Egon and Duncan. Right. Into a door that previously opened to a parlor. Up. Scrambling atop a ladder that should lead to an attic. Down. Stairs meant for a storeroom in a basement. Forward. Straight lines curl, and the man's senses, time, and space are all made meaningless. Back. Even retracing his own path from a moment ago, the sheriff comes again to face his destiny. Donovan drops to his knees. He wheezes hard. He holds his head and, after several long breaths, attempts to stand with legs that are liquid. Donovan shuts his eyes. He folds his hands to cover his nose and mouth.

"I know you're there! I know you can hear me! I can smell you!" Donovan shouts. He presses his hands down even more over his nostrils. "The townsfolk told me about you when I took the job! I've experienced your kind in another town but didn't believe you'd be here! Why come out this far? Why not go back to a city? There are so many more people! Fat people! Succulent people! There are, what, a few hundred here? And if you look at us, we're only leather and bone!" No reply comes from the coffins. "Look, if you like it in the desert, that's fine! You can stay! Do what you want! Just leave me out of this! I've had seven deputies gunned down or disappear since I came here! Why am I still standing? Because I know how to look away! I ran when you took her from me, and I didn't ask questions when my men were found dead! I don't want to die! Please!" Donovan bawls. "Leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone! I don't want any part of your game!"

Silence. Donovan's eyes hide behind rivers and his chest is hollow, all his voice spilled over the floor. The sound of metal. Donovan sets his gun between legs which refuse to work. He cups his hands to his heart. There's nothing more inside him. He whispers his wife's name and waits.

"Can I help you up?" Bernie asks. Coming out of shadow-soaked air, the undertaker offers his hand. The man stands in a fine tailored suit. His face is obscured by darkness's paint.

"Bernie..." Donovan mutters. "I've... I've been looking for you..." The sheriff takes the undertaker's hand and rises with legs regaining their purpose. Donovan picks up his pistol and stands beside the pale gentleman. "I'm sorry for... I had a moment... I don't want you to..." Donovan searches the floor as he searches for words, but he doesn't find anything to explain his weakness. Shaking his head, the sheriff lifts his watery eyes to the undertaker. He looks at Bernie. The man is missing his nose, an ear, and an eye. His cheeks, too, are gone, chewed off by tiny teeth. The undertaker shouldn't be alive.

Donovan stares at the half-eaten thing offering its help. A puddle forms between his legs. He lifts his gun. He fires. He flees. The sheriff again lets his gun loose into what was once the undertaker. Four more splashes of yellow ignite the black air. Abandoning the bullets, he sets them screaming as he runs the opposite way. Barreling, the sheriff presses on as fast as he can in a single direction. Not stopping, not wavering, he forges a path through cabinets, shelves, and desks. He will not alter his speed. He will not change his course. He will escape. He will.

Donovan hits a wall. After a single second sizing up the wood, his knuckles roar. Splinters in his wake, Sheriff Donovan continues. In this new room, the darkness lighter and air less pungent, he hears a sound. The ghosts? The undertaker? Donovan swings around. Snapping his pistol at the noise, the lawman pushes it into a face. Deputy Stephens, himself asphyxiating in horror, stands with his own revolver inches from the sheriff.