Face down on the bed, her limbs were secured to its four posts. His open palm came down on her, cracking against heated, tender skin. She wailed, writhing uselessly against her restraints.
“Please,” she begged, face pressed to the mattress. She clenched as he circled the bed.
“What did I say would happen if you let that man touch you,” he snapped. Fear and humiliation burned like a furnace inside her. She deserved her punishment, every agonizing second of it.
His hand cracked sharply against her skin a second time.
“What did I say?” he demanded.
My nose wrinkled. What the fuck?
Tessa’s wide-eyed face looked at me expectantly. Gingerly, I closed the book I was holding, placing it carefully on the table between us.
“Yeah, I don’t know about this one, Tess. Not really my thing, you know?”
“You can’t say that after reading one page. More like half a page,” she complained.
Half was enough.
I eyed the book like it was going to jump up and bite me.
“I’m sure the writer did a great job,” I said, smiling weakly, reaching for my cup.
It was filled to the brim with bottom-shelf cabernet Tessa brought over. I tried not to grimace as the overly sweetened red wine coated my tongue. At least it was getting the job done, helping me slough off the monotony of my day to day in favor of something that felt a little more like living.
A pleasant lightness in my head had me sighing, the wine’s warmth heating me up from the inside. Tessa was drinking too, which meant she was sleeping over. As a semi-regular visitor to Snow Funeral Services, she was one of the rare guests that walked in on her own two feet.
“Just try it. I know you’ll like it. The last one I gave you might have been a little too spicy. This one is more tame,” Tessa reported.
“Tame?” I scoffed, reaching for the book. Cracking it open to a random page in the middle, I read the first line I saw.
“He touched the cool blade to her skin. She flinched from its cold hardness. Flattened to the tender flesh of her abdomen, one flick of his wrist and he could cut her.” I cocked my head, staring at her. “You call that tame?”
She shrugged, compressing her lips into an unapologetic smile.
“Yeah, you didn’t even get to the part where he—”
I held my hands up for her to stop.
“Okay, okay. I’ll read it. Probably. One day.” I closed the book.
It was joining the last couple of books Tessa gave me. They were forming a small tower on my nightstand, spines smooth and unbroken because I didn’t read them yet. They were a little too out there for me but she got them for free from her job and I couldn’t say no.
“It’s good, I swear,” she pushed.
My head nodded dutifully, taking a long draw of my wine.
“If you say so.”
She snorted, emptying the wine bottle between us into her cup.
“If you say so,” she said, mimicking me. I cut my eyes at her.
“Sorry, I think reading about a man flaying someone like a yellowtail a little off-putting. Sue me,” I said.
“He doesn’t kill her,” she said.
“Well, does either one of them die?” I asked and she smirked, thinking my ask meant I was interested, when in reality I just refused to read anything where one of the main characters kicked the bucket. I dealt with corpses all day. I didn’t want to read about them. And I definitely didn’t want to experience their loss, even if it was only fictional.
“I don’t know. Read it and find out.”
“I give up.” I rolled my eyes, leaning back in my chair.
I could still see the sharp yellow light from the illuminated bulb above us through my closed eyelids. Out on the patio overlooking the woods behind my cabin, we were mostly sheltered from the wind, but it was getting cold out.
The forest here looked impenetrably dark at night. In the daylight, though, it could look almost idyllic. Deer sometimes milled around the border of the property. A tiny creek babbled quietly down the footpath. And hundreds of birds woke me every morning with their songs.
Given the fact that our main revenue came from cremating corpses in the main building, this place had no business looking so damn story-book in the light of day.
The cabin was a glorified shed when I was a kid, used for storage and little else until my dad renovated it after mom died, turning it into the tiny home it was today.
Down on the far side of the property, this part of the land sloped down towards the woods and a creek. As if at any moment it could roll away into the trees, taking me with it into the all-consuming dark.
On the other side of the property near the road was my dad’s house: my childhood home. He renovated that too when mom died. Nothing like a little grief to kickstart new hobbies and interests. Nobody was more productive than a person who wanted to stay distracted.
My distraction of choice had been mom’s books. I obsessively read her collection of anatomy, funerary, and science books. Her notes in the margins made me feel close to her in a way that looking at old photos couldn’t.
It helped that at twelve-years-old I’d gained an encyclopedic knowledge on the science of decomposition. She had studied mortuary and funeral science after meeting my dad during med school. He left his medical career to support her opening Snow Funeral Services when I was barely out of diapers.
My dad had run it since she died ten years ago, bringing me in as soon as I was tall enough to reach the top cooling lockers myself.
“You should be thanking me. That book doesn’t even come out until next week. That’s why I’m heading out to Chicago next weekend,” she said.
“Thanks for taking time out of your jet-set lifestyle to see me,” I teased.
“I could probably score you a ticket to come,” she said, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. She filled them in red to match the mass of coppery waves on her head.
I’d kill for some of that body. My straight black hair couldn’t hold a curl to save its life. As a mostly virtual personal assistant, it didn’t matter whether she was here at Snow Funeral Services or her own home when she worked.
Her employers were the authors who wrote the books that she kept giving me. At least once every month or two, she had to fly out to help at book signings, tours or festivals.
Our lives couldn’t have been more opposite.
I lived at work. In the daytime if I squinted hard enough, I could see the mortuary and crematorium through the trees outside my bedroom window.
“I don’t think I can get the time off on such short notice. Dad would have to work doubles the whole time I’m gone.”
She sighed dramatically.
“Yay for another exciting weekend of contouring a dead grandma’s face,” she snarked.
“Someone has to do it.”
“Yeah, you. Every day for the rest of your life until it’s your turn to lie on the table.”
The wine soured in my mouth.
I looked everywhere but at her, not wanting her to see how much what she said affected me. I loved my work, but dying before ever properly living was probably my greatest fear.
The forest in front of us, a blackened mass under the dim crescent moon seemed to heave forward, threatening to engulf me.
I blinked hard, dispelling the illusion with another long swallow of saccharine wine.
It wasn’t like I could leave. Dad couldn’t run the mortuary alone. If I left, he’d have to hire help that we couldn’t afford. He’d go even more into debt. The doors to Snow’s would be forced to close and he couldn’t do that. It was her legacy.
It was also mine, whether I liked it or not.
This place; the woods, the creek, the mortuary, prepping dead bodies with my dad. Day after day. That was my fate. I forced some more wine down my throat.
“Tessa?”
“Yeah?”
“What does that guy use the knife for?” I asked, changing the subject. Tessa turned slowly to face me, a devilish smile on her lips.
“What do you think he uses it for?”
Her devious smile scared me a little. Hopefully he used it to prepare a lovely charcuterie board for them to share. There was only so much you could do with a knife. I mean… unless that was what they were doing. I frowned, not wanting to take it there because there was no way…
Was there?
My eyes bulged and Tessa erupted in manic cackles.
“You know what? I’m sorry I asked.” An involuntary shiver shook through me. “Why do you like that stuff?”
“Honestly, just read it and you’ll be into it too. I swear.”
I was certain she was wrong, but I didn’t argue. A few moments of silence passed before she spoke again.
“Hey,” she said, turning to look at me, her index finger drawing a nervous ring around the rim of her wine glass. “What does a dead body look like?”
The wine I was sipping took a detour down the wrong tube. I sputtered and coughed, eyes watering, trying not to spill my wine. Tessa’s laugh echoed into the night. I gasped, coming back up for air.
“Thanks a lot,” I sniffed, Putting my cup down. Tessa chuckled.
“No, really. I’ve never wondered before, not really, but I… I kind of want to see one. I mean, if you work with them all day it can’t be that bad right.”
Wrong. Dead wrong. Depending on how they died. And I was used to it. Tessa? Tessa would be fucking scarred for life.
I shook my head. “Girl, you’re drunk. You do not want to see a corpse.”
“I do,” she argued, sitting up straighter. “Just take me inside and let me have a peek at one.”
I shook my head some more. “Nope. Not happening. Fresh out of corpses.”
“This is literally a morgue, Em. You have dead bodies in the basement or in the fridge or whatever. You literally told me earlier that one was brought in this morning and–”
“That’s it. You’re cut off.”
“Come on, Em,” she insisted, her voice pitching high in an exaggerated whine.
I stopped, staring at her. She may have been keeping it light, but her clear green eyes were focused. She was serious.
My brow furrowed.
“I just want to see what one looks like and then we can come right back.”
For real? What they looked like depended wholly on how they died.
Road accidents? Grizzly. Sometimes torn limb from limb or decapitated.
Same with suicides, depending on the method.
If you were lucky enough to die in your sleep you got the pleasure of being an attractive corpse, for all that was worth. Then, you literally just looked asleep. Pale, deathly pale. Your extremities turned purple, your body got lumpy and cold, but generally, asleep.
Snow Funeral Services was family run, small, so we saw only about forty bodies a month. By now though, I’d seen it all. The most tragic part about dead bodies was that on some level, everybody was just meat.
“Well, after dying, bodies swell. They can get so big that they look double their usual size. That’s when they start to stink and the insects show up. Then everything that isn’t hair, bone or cartilage liquefies,” I said fluttering my lashes. “Do they put that stuff in those books you like?”
Tessa shivered, swallowing hard. “N-no, usually they leave that part out,” she said. Good call. I would too. I picked up the empty wine bottle and got up, done entertaining her morbid curiosity.
“I’ll be right back.”
I slipped into the silent warmth of my cabin. The fire in my pellet stove still glowed, making the mild night on the patio feel colder than it was.
Soon, it would be warm enough that I wouldn’t need the stove at night. I walked through my living room, and through to the kitchen to retrieve the second wine bottle. The remnants of our dinner, cooked on my little two-plate burner stove, filled the sink, the number of dishes seeming to explode exponentially whenever I had company.
Tessa always slept over to make the trip over here worth it. We were twenty-five minutes out of the city and her being the more mobile one, we tended to spend girl’s nights here. Much to her dismay a lot of the time.
With her bright hair and even brighter personality, she was out of place at the mortuary where most people were dead or close to it. We’d been friends since fourth grade so the spook factor of the property was gone for her.
It had been a lot harder to convince my ex, Cody to come over but usually, the promise of sex was enough for him to get over the fact that there were bodies over there.
I came back to the patio with the wine, unscrewing the cap and pouring her glass first.
“Will your dad say yes if I ask him?” she asked. I opened my mouth to ask what she wanted to ask him, then sighed, remembering where the conversation left off before I went inside. She wasn’t letting this go.
“No, probably not,” I answered honestly. “Why do you even want to see one?”
“I don’t know.” Tess shrugged, swishing her wine around in her glass. “Just curious, I guess. I’ve been to funerals but never open-casket. And you’re my best friend and you work with them all day. I guess I kind of want to see what you do. Plus.” She paused, motioning to the book on the table. “That definitely helped.”
I frowned. It wasn’t adding up. What the hell was in that book? What was she reading about? Fucking psychos who tied girls up and held knives to their stomachs? Oh and don’t forget dead bodies, too?
“You scare me,” I joked with a raised brow and she chuckled in response.
“Don’t yuck my yum,” she teased. “And if anyone should be afraid, it should definitely be me. You’ve touched more dead men than living men.”
“Ouch.” I winced, reflecting on my nonexistent love life that Dad might as well have thrown in the incinerator with the last Jane Doe.
“Just because I like a little something extra with my romance doesn’t make me any weirder than you.”
Tess narrowed her eyes at me. “Besides prepping dead bodies, what else do you even do around here?”
“You know what I do. Assist with autopsies. Embalming. I prep the bodies for viewing. I have to talk to—”
“No, I know that, but you’re acting like there’s way too much in your schedule to read one measly three-hundred-page book. You barely make it out to the city to see me and you’re not dating anyone right now…”
The sound of a particularly loud cricket filled the silence.
She didn’t have to call me out like that but as one of the living residents of Snow Funeral Services, I probably got out as much as one of the corpses.
“I said I’d read the freaking book,” I said, picking it up and examining the moody, red, and black cover with a sigh.
“Maybe read it outside, like, in the sun.”
I whacked her with the book. “Are you saying I’m pale now, too?”
“No offense but you look like Morticia Adams circa 1960,” she said and I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to think of a comeback, and coming up dry.
I couldn’t argue with that. Everyone who ever said I looked like the actress who played Morticia Addams, then said ‘yeah, makes sense’ when I told them what I did for a living would agree with her.
Carolyn Jones was gorgeous and I appreciated the compliment but the only way I looked like her was if you squinted real hard. I tossed the book down then glanced at the time on my phone.
12:38.
Dad said never to enter the mortuary after midnight but…
Fuck it.
I narrowed my eyes on Tess, the wine mixing with the blood in my veins whispering why the hell not. “You sure you want to see a dead body?” I asked. “Because you can’t unsee one.”
Tessa’s eyes widened over the rim of her glass. “Seriously?”
“Yep. You win.”
I stood, leaving her floundering to catch up as I ditched my wine and kicked on my boots, making for the path to the mortuary.
“Hurry up, before I change my mind.”
Tessa scrambled to get up and followed me down the patio steps. The mortuary was up a gentle incline from my cabin.
“I need you to be quiet, okay?” I said over my shoulder.
“Why?” Tessa chuckled. “Are they gonna wake up if I’m too loud?”
No, unfortunately. That would have offered some much-needed excitement around here but I’d have to hold out for the zombie apocalypse.
“No, but Dad might.”
For as long as I could remember he’d warned me about entering the mortuary after midnight. It was nothing but idiotic superstition, but I didn’t rebel. I spent enough time there during the day to not want to spend my evenings with the dead, too.
I could bend the rules, just this once.
We tiptoed along the hedges behind the family home where I grew up, staying low as we darted across the gravel drive toward the main building.
Tess giggled, high on the rush and I hushed her sharply even though the wine was making it low key difficult not to want to laugh with her. We weren’t actually trespassing though. Not really breaking any laws. You couldn’t B and E a building you owned.
“Shhh?” I urged her, unable to keep from grinning.
“Sorry!”
We came up behind the mortuary. My keys were still in my pocket from closing up at six and I reached for them, then saw the sliver of light leaking from the edges of the solid metal door. It was open.
A prickle of unease ratcheted up my spine, making me shiver.
Did dad leave it like that? He wouldn’t ever forget to lock the mortuary. Was he still inside? Maybe there was a last minute drop off.
“What are you waiting for?” Tess whispered loudly and I swallowed, trying to remember if I did lock the door when I left but I couldn’t remember.
“Em?”
Pushing the door open, I led the way in, figuring it had to be me who left it unlocked and thanking my lucky stars that Tess had the idiotic idea to come see a dead body before Dad noticed my screw up. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Crossing the short distance to the stairs that went down to the basement cooling room, I heard banging. I froze, about to ask Tessa whether she heard it too but her hand gripping my arm like a vice told me she had. I shooed her back outside.
“What the fuck was that?” she shout-whispered when we were outside. I fought the urge to say it was a ghost.
“Things like that happen sometimes. Let me go and look.”
She grabbed my arm, tugging. “What do you mean things like that happen?” I peeled her surprisingly strong grip from my arm, looking into her wide eyes.
“Just wait here,” I insisted. “It’s probably nothing. Remember, everyone in there is dead anyway.”
Her shifty expression hadn’t calmed but she wasn’t squeezing the life out of my arm anymore.
Shit. If another raccoon got in, Dad was going to kill me. If I could just get to the supply closet at the bottom of the stairs I could grab a broom and shooed it back outside.
“Em, don’t leave me out here alone,” Tess hissed as I stepped back inside.
“I’ll be back in like two seconds, relax.”
Steeling myself in case of a trash panda attack, I slunk silently down the steps. Hazy light filtered around the edges of the open cooling room door. Raccoons definitely couldn’t open doors, right?
A late night drop off then. It had to be. Those weren’t super uncommon. The dead didn’t always respect business hours and we were the first choice when there was hospital overflow.
“Who was this guy?” my dad asked, his voice distant, muffled through the door.
“Why don’t you ask him and find out,” a deep voice snapped sarcastically.
My body stiffened, foot hovering over the next step.
That was not my father. The shock gave way to immediate curiosity and I couldn’t help easing my way down the rest of the steps, close enough to see into the room.
Sweat broke out over my temples when he came into view. Not my father.
Him.
The owner of the other voice.
The imposing, tall dark-haired man pushed the trolley from the room. Crafted of shadows and sharp lines, his chin and jaw were stubbled, his hair mostly pushed back from his face with a curl of deep brown falling over his smooth forehead.
He twisted his head to one side and my mouth went dry at the sight of deep black ink clawing up one side of his neck. The stranger wore a fitted button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the creases of his elbows, revealing even more heavily inked skin, down to the knuckles on each of his fingers.
His voice may have stopped me in my tracks, but his face ripped all the air from my lungs. Hard, masculine lines shaped his cheekbones, nose, and brow. I couldn’t tell his eye color from here but they were severe, piercing under straight, dark eyebrows. His jaw gave his face an almost regal bearing.
I silently closed my gaping mouth, working my jaw as my neck and cheeks flushed.
His searing energy seemed to twist and bend everything around it; scrambling thoughts and warping metal. I wanted to back away from him but I couldn’t seem to move.
He looked thirty, maybe? Not as old as my dad, but older than me for sure. Questions about him interrupted my thoughts so loudly that I didn’t realize there was a body on the trolley he was pushing.
Was he being embalmed? And if he was, why was this guy pushing the cart? Why was he even down here?
The body on the trolley was still dressed and not yet cleaned. I couldn’t even see a toe tag.
Heat rose through my body, setting my teeth on edge. Something was wrong.
I slipped my phone out of my pocket, ready to call the cops. But, no, I couldn’t do that, my dad was in there.
A bolt of unease ricocheted up my spine, triggering a cold sweat over my chest as I shakily slid my phone back into my pocket and swallowed hard.
“That was what we discussed,” said the man with the deep voice and I realized he was answering a question from Dad that I’d been too deaf with nerves to hear, the ringing in my ears slowly dissipating now.
“Can’t we renegotiate? That’s what business partners do, isn’t it?”
“Is that we are? Partners?” he asked.
I shivered at his words, at the implication, but the rough sound of his voice made me squirm. The hard edge as attractive as it was dangerous. Who was this guy?
“But we—”
“Did you think I came here tonight to talk about the disposal fee with you, undertaker?”
The disposal…
What?
Bodies were interred, cremated, laid to rest; all kinds of things.
Typically, they weren’t disposed of unless they needed to be hidden. I jumped to my feet and ran up the stairs, his words chasing me as I ran.
I burst out the door, panting. Tessa stood up from her position crouched against the back of the building.
“There you are, I thought you had—”
“You need to go back to the cabin,” I gasped.
“What? Why?” Her face fell.
Because there was a body being disposed of in my dad’s mortuary.
“Th-there was… it’s a body. Last minute drop-off from the hospital,” I stammered, the lie fighting me on its way out.
“Are you kidding me?”
“They need it tomorrow.”
Tessa frowned. I hated lying to her but I didn’t even know what I stumbled on downstairs. She couldn’t see it. She couldn’t be a part of whatever it was.
“Don’t hospitals have morgues? People die there all the time.”
I glanced quickly over my shoulder, so frazzled I swore I heard something back there.
“They get overflow sometimes and we’re close,” I said, only halfway lying now. “I need to help my dad. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“You work too much,” she grumbled, gathering the lapels of her leather jacket with a little shiver against the chill in the air as she turned.
“I’m going to finish the bottle without you if you don’t hurry your ass up,” she called back and I waited until she was out of sight, nearly back to the cabin, before going back inside.
My heart bleated out a discordant rhythm as I passed the threshold, inhaling deeply to settle the flutter of anxiety in my stomach.
A man stood where the stairs should have been.
I staggered back with a muted gasp, my muscles knotting, fear gripping my throat so tight I almost choked.
His hands, bloody now, hung at his sides. His shoulders, wide enough to nearly fill the passage to the stairs, made him even more imposing up close.
A magnetism radiated off him, pushing me away and pulling me close simultaneously. Drawing me like a moth to a flame. Making me want to run like prey from a predator.
His stare settled on me, eerily placid save for the lifting of a single brow.
“And who are you, little lamb,” he purred. That voice curled around me, making me clench. I steadied my stance, standing straighter to look him in the eye as I lifted my chin. I was scared as hell, but I’d be damned if I let him know that.
“Emily Snow,” I stated, my voice coming out stronger than it had any right to sound with my pulse throbbing in my ears. “Who the hell are you?”
He’d been handsome from a distance. Five feet away from me, he was startlingly beautiful. Hard and unyielding but perfectly formed, like lace carved from stone. His eyes under the fluorescent bulbs were so light, they looked clear.
“I fucking live here,” I lobbied back.
His brow rose slightly and his lip twitched. Was he making fun of me? Was he amused?
“I gave you my name, who are you?”
A small smile spread across his lips, and a muscle in my jaw twitched.
“A ghost.”
He turned and walked back down the stairs.
With his gaze finally off me, my whole body uncoiled.
A fucking ghost?
I stared down the steps after him. He walked into the basement like he owned the place. My dad would lose his shit if I followed him down and my fingernails dug deeply into my palms with the effort of keeping myself from charging after the man. Whoever he was, he had more mortuary privileges than me.
I listened for a moment, just long enough to hear Dad’s voice as he spoke to the man. To confirm the blood on his hands belonged to the man on the trolley and not my father.
A shiver ran over my skin as I spun on my heel and left the building. I wrapped my arms around myself, teeth chattering as I tried to warm the ice water in my veins.
