Page 8 of Mortis

His eyes filled with tears.

No. Please, no.

James began to turn. He saw there was nothing at eye level, and for a delirious second, relief tried to take hold. Then he remembered how tall the thing in the woods was supposed to be.

His gaze lifted, higher and higher, until two crimson eyes burned through the darkness. James couldn’t move. Couldn’t run or even scream. The creature towered over him, almost invisible except for those eyes. Watching and waiting.

James’ face crumpled. His chest ached. His pulse hammered so violently that he wondered if the creature could hear it.

“Please,” James whispered.

The creature tilted its head, almost curious. As though it . . . understood.

Then its mouth appeared from the darkness, slowly stretching into a grin. Too wide and too many teeth. And James’ stomach dropped, because it did understand him.

Somewhere in the distance, Ollie finally screamed his name.

“JAMES!”

James opened his mouth to answer, and the creature opened its mouth too.

Only one of them made a sound.

1

TEDDY

“Fuck, harder.”

A moan worthy of a porn film bounced off the plasterboard ceiling.

“Yeah, baby. Go deeper.”

I straightened from where I’d been leaning over Dorothy Robinson’s dead body and glared at Arlo from behind my surgical mask. He was curled up on the counter in the far corner of the embalming room, dressed in a plastic apron and his own mask, which I knew hid a wry grin.

“Will you fuck off back out front?” I snapped, gesturing to the trocar currently lodged in Dorothy’s abdomen. I had to raise my voice slightly to be heard over the rhythmic suction of the aspirator as it removed the remaining gas and undigested food from her stomach.

“But I’m bored,” Arlo whined, rolling the “r” in his Scottish brogue.

My gloved hand landed on my forehead.

Three minutes.

Three whole minutes.

That was how long he’d lasted before becoming a nuisance.

“Maybe if you were doing your job, you wouldn’t be.”

“Psh.” He waved me off with an eye roll. “You need to get that stick out of your arse, Teds.”

I frowned. “There’s no stick up my arse.”

“You haven’t had anything up your arse in ages,” he shot back, raising one dark, perfectly waxed eyebrow. “Maybe if you had, you wouldn’t be such a bloody stick in the mud.”

“Why are we still talking about sticks?”

“My point is,” Arlo continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Poor Mrs Robinson’s getting more jabby action than you, and she’s been dead since Tuesday.”