Page 74 of Mortis

The thought had rattled around my head for days. But just like an ostrich, I’d chosen to bury my head beneath the sand and pretend it wasn’t there. At least for now. At least until I was ready to admit Arlo might’ve been right after all.

Ugh.

He’d never let me hear the end of it.

No, everything was fine.

Until it wasn’t.

One morning, Arlo, Kael, and I arrived at Adler & Sons to find the front door unlocked, despite us being the first ones there.

We checked the lock.

Nothing.

The mechanism worked perfectly.

Then we searched the funeral home from top to bottom, convinced something had been stolen. We checked. Then checked again. But everything was exactly where it should’ve been.

The following morning, the front door was locked, but the two caskets waiting in separate viewing rooms had somehow swapped places overnight.

Grandad got quite the shock when he walked in with Mr Syed’s family, only to be greeted by the body of Ms Brewster. A kind old woman who’d worked at the local library until the day she dropped dead.

The three of us agreed not to tell my grandad about the strange happenings.

Whoever was responsible hadn’t stolen anything or vandalised the building. Swapping bodies around was unsettling, sure, and involving the dead in whatever game the culprit was playing felt deeply disrespectful. But I didn’t want to burden Grandad with something that might amount to nothing more than a prank that had gone too far.

So I’d come up with some bullshit excuse about moving the bodies because of a last-minute change to the viewing schedule. He’d frowned for the first time in what felt like years, yet still, he said he believed me. Blamed the confusion on himself and his “decrepit brain.”

It made me feel fucking awful.

By Thursday, I was hoping the weirdness had finally run its course.

I stepped into the embalming room, ready to begin preparing Mr Simpson. Kael followed close behind, as eager as ever to lend a helping claw wherever he could. While I laid out the instruments I’d need, he wheeled the embalming table towards the refrigeration units to collect the body.

That’s when I heard it.

Beep.

The sharp electronic chirp echoed through the room, and I frowned.

The autoclave.

It was signalling the end of a sterilisation cycle.

My gaze settled on the machine. A machine I’d definitely emptied before leaving yesterday.

With no bodies to prepare, I’d thrown a handful of instruments into the autoclave—more out of habit than necessity—and spent my free time giving the embalming room a thorough clean. Mr Simpson’s corpse hadn’t arrived until late afternoon, and after completing my initial inspections, Kael had put him into refrigeration.

A knot tightened in my chest as I crossed the room.

Don’t be stupid, I scolded myself, reaching for the handle. You probably left something in there and forgot. Or the timer’s malfunctioning.

But the unease only deepened as my hand settled on the latch. Despite every logical explanation running through my head, I suddenly wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was waiting inside.

I opened the door and froze.

The machine was empty except for a single instrument.