The Five Gates of Hell

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There was an old sailors’ graveyard in Moon Beach. It was the place where the funeral business first put down its roots. Over the graveyard wall, between two warehouses, you could just make out the Witch’s Fingers, four long talons of sand that lay in the mouth of the river. Rumour had it that, on stormy nights a century before, they used to reach out, gouge holes in passing ships, and drag them down.

There was one funeral director, supposedly, who used to put lamps on the Fingers and lure ships to their doom.

But times had changed. There hadn’t been a wreck for years, and all the funeral parlours had moved downtown …

There were very few land burials in Moon Beach any more. It was considered old-fashioned and unhealthy, it was something that only happened to the poor. Instead, the dead were buried in ocean cemeteries, twelve miles out. A special festival was held every year in their honour. Children loved it. Suddenly there were white chocolate bones everywhere and marzipan skulls and ice-cream coffins on a stick. There were costume parties too. You had to wear something blue because that was the colour people went when they were buried under the sea. You could paint your hands and face if you liked, or even dye your hair. That’s what people did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year.

And then, sooner or later, they turned blue for ever …