Horror

by Scribes Stories · 6 min read · 2 views

The Taxidermist's Apprentice Wendell had taken the apprenticeship with old Mr. Hargrove mostly out of desperation, the town's only other available work being the slaughterhouse two towns over, and he had reasoned, in the naive confidence of his twenty two years, that stuffing dead animals for wealthy collectors could hardly be more unsettling than the alternative. He learned, within his first month, that the reasoning had been considerably flawed. Mr. Hargrove's workshop sat at the edge of town, a rambling old building filled with the mounted heads of deer and foxes and the occasional exotic specimen shipped in from collectors overseas, all of it presided over by the old taxidermist himself, a man whose steady, patient hands seemed unnervingly at odds with the strange, watchful quality Wendell increasingly noticed in his pale, deep set eyes. "You'll get used to the eyes," Hargrove told him, during Wendell's first difficult week, noticing his apprentice's obvious discomfort working with the specimens' glass replacements. "Every young apprentice struggles at first. The trick is understanding that what you're actually doing here is a kind of preservation, Wendell. A kindness, in its own strange way. These creatures don't simply disappear once we're finished with them. They remain, watching over this workshop, considerably longer than their natural lives would have ever otherwise allowed." Wendell found this explanation more unsettling than comforting, though he kept the reaction carefully hidden, needing the modest wage the apprenticeship provided considerably more than he needed to voice his growing unease about his employer's peculiar philosophy regarding the specimens' continued presence. The unease deepened considerably in his third month, when he began noticing something he initially dismissed as simple exhaustion playing tricks on an overworked mind. The mounted animals, arranged throughout the workshop in careful, lifelike poses, seemed, on certain evenings, to have shifted position slightly from where he distinctly remembered placing them the previous day. A fox's head turned marginally further toward the workshop door. A owl's wings spread a fraction wider than Wendell recalled arranging them. "You're imagining things," he told himself, repeatedly, dismissing each small observation as the natural result of long hours and insufficient sleep. But the observations continued accumulating, small and persistent, until Wendell found himself increasingly reluctant to work alone in the workshop after dark, a reluctance Mr. Hargrove seemed to notice with an expression Wendell found difficult to properly interpret. "The specimens make you uneasy," Hargrove observed, one particularly late evening, finding Wendell hesitating at the workshop's threshold rather than entering to complete an assigned task. "That's actually a good sign, Wendell, whatever discomfort it currently causes you. It means you're finally beginning to properly sense what this work actually involves, considerably beyond the simple technical craft of stuffing and mounting." "What exactly does it involve?" Wendell asked, genuine fear finally overcoming his careful professional restraint. Hargrove considered the question for a long moment, his pale eyes studying Wendell with an intensity that made the young apprentice acutely aware of how isolated the workshop actually was, how far from town, how unlikely anyone would be to hear him if something genuinely went wrong within these walls. "Every creature that passes through this workshop leaves something behind," Hargrove finally said, "beyond the physical remains we so carefully preserve. Call it essence, if you prefer, or spirit, or simply whatever remains once the body's natural processes have ceased but the creature's fundamental presence hasn't quite finished departing. My work, properly understood, isn't merely preserving the physical form. It's providing a vessel for that lingering presence to remain, considerably longer than nature would have otherwise allowed." "That sounds like considerably more than taxidermy," Wendell said carefully. "It is considerably more," Hargrove agreed, something almost pleased in his expression at Wendell's growing understanding. "I've been doing this work for forty three years, Wendell. Do you imagine my particular skill, the unusual lifelike quality collectors so consistently praise in my finished specimens, comes purely from technical craft alone? Every mounted creature in this workshop retains something of its original presence, preserved alongside its physical form, through methods my own teacher passed down to me, methods I've been patiently waiting to pass along myself, to an apprentice properly capable of receiving them." Wendell felt a cold, creeping dread settle through him, the workshop's watchful specimens suddenly feeling considerably more sinister than his earlier vague unease had prepared him to properly recognize. "What exactly are you asking of me?" he said, backing slowly toward the workshop's exit. "Only what every apprentice before you has eventually been asked," Hargrove said, his voice carrying an eerie calm that made Wendell's skin crawl. "To learn the full method, considerably beyond what I've shown you thus far. And to understand that the method requires, eventually, a willing contribution of your own essence, freely given, to properly complete your training and fully unlock the skill's true potential." "I want no part of that," Wendell said, finally reaching the door, hand closing around the handle with desperate urgency. "The choice was never actually yours to refuse, Wendell," Hargrove said quietly, and something in his tone made Wendell's blood run cold. "Every apprentice believes, at this exact moment, that refusal remains genuinely available to them. I believed the same thing myself, forty three years ago, standing precisely where you're currently standing, hand on precisely this same door handle. My own teacher explained, as I'm now explaining to you, that the workshop itself, once properly entered and properly worked within for long enough, begins its own quiet claim on anyone who spends sufficient time among its specimens. You've been here three months, Wendell. Long enough, I suspect, for that claim to have already taken firmer hold than you currently realize." Wendell fled the workshop that night, running the considerable distance back to town without once looking back at the building's darkened windows, convinced he could feel dozens of glass eyes tracking his desperate retreat. He did not return the following morning, sending word instead that he was quitting the apprenticeship entirely, citing simple unsuitability for the work rather than the genuine terror that had actually driven his departure. For several weeks afterward, Wendell believed he had successfully escaped whatever strange, unsettling claim Hargrove had described, resuming his ordinary life in town with a relief that gradually, cautiously, allowed him to nearly convince himself the whole episode had simply been an overactive imagination combined with genuine exhaustion. But the dreams began soon after, vivid and increasingly frequent, always featuring the same workshop, the same watchful specimens, and always ending with Wendell finding himself, in the dream's final moments, mounted among them, his own form arranged into careful, lifelike stillness while his consciousness remained, horribly, fully awake and aware within it. He woke from these dreams with a persistent, creeping sensation that something of himself had genuinely been left behind in that workshop, some essential portion of his presence claimed during those three unwitting months exactly as Hargrove had warned, regardless of his desperate physical escape. Years later, working an entirely different trade in a considerably distant town, Wendell would still, on certain quiet evenings, feel an inexplicable pull toward taxidermy shops he happened to pass, an uncomfortable, magnetic curiosity he could never quite explain to himself or fully resist examining, peering through their windows at the mounted specimens within, searching, though he could never quite admit it even to himself, for some sign of his own lingering presence, still watching from among the glass eyes of whatever unfortunate creature had ultimately received the portion of himself the old workshop had apparently, quietly, permanently claimed during those three unwitting months of his youth.