Chapter 1
THE MOON IS ALMOST FULL, dangling in the sky like a bare light bulb in a cavernous room.
It casts sinister-looking shadows in the places where the light can’t quite reach, turning sanctuaries into nightmare realms. Wren takes a sip of her coffee and watches as the steam swirls up in front of her face.
It’s late and quiet, with only the comforting, muffled sounds of the city to listen to.
She savors the taste of cinnamon on her tongue, closing her eyes and feeling the heat hit every part of her insides.
The cool evening descends upon Louisiana, compelling everyone to venture outside as soon as the colors of sunset begin to bleed across the sky.
The languid heat of the day starts its slow retreat, seeping out into the atmosphere and leaving behind a crisp blanket of night.
The sounds begin to change. The cacophony of day is replaced with a strange serenity.
Crickets and frogs, emboldened by the night, compete for attention, their soothing duel becoming an accidental lullaby.
Life continues all around her, despite the late hour.
Car horns softly wail, nocturnal street dwellers whisper stories on the breeze, and everything just keeps going despite the horrors that lurk in the shadows.
But Wren doesn’t fear the shadows. She finds herself searching for them more and more, craving their sideways comfort.
The autumn air wraps itself around her, tickling her skin with its clean, cool touch.
Every year it feels like this kind of weather will never come, but when it does, it brings contentment like an old friend.
It’s the week before Halloween, and New Orleans is abuzz, but here, she finds peace and quiet.
Wren breathes a long drag of it in through her nose before turning around and walking back into the building behind her.
Inside the morgue, there’s a comfortable stagnancy, a feeling of suspended animation.
It’s easy to understand why it could be off-putting, but Wren likes it this way.
She walks through rows of bodies zipped up in their black cocoons, like a harvester checking her crops.
She cross-references each name with the drawer number, making sure no soul ends up misplaced.
Each bag is opened and inspected with a clinical reverence, assuring people’s loved ones are resting as easily as they can.
The flickering fluorescent lights and the grinding screech of a bone saw at work are the sights and sounds that soothe her.
It’s a stark contrast to the silver moonlight and bustling life happening just outside.
This is where life and death intersect. It’s where beginnings end and bodies fulfill their purpose as life’s most miraculous vessels.
As she walks between the newer residents of the morgue and the lucky ones on their way to their final resting places, she feels the cold metal through her gloves. A shiver sends itself up her spine as she quickly adjusts to the manufactured chill in the air.
She says a silent goodbye to the bodies who are waiting to be transferred from this clinical place, away from the harsh lights and sharp implements of their autopsies.
Soon, they will be in the skilled hands of a mortician, a vital link in the chain of dignified departure from this realm.
Morticians have a difficult task: transforming a lifeless husk into the image of a person who their loved ones—those who have memory-mapped each freckle and dimple—can recognize.
Only then can their loved ones truly grieve. When the echo of a casket slamming shut reverberates through a stuffy funeral home, the end becomes known. That’s when the reality of loss hits hardest.
But Wren’s job is not to stage bodies. As a forensic pathologist, she has a solid foot in the clinical realm and relies mainly on science to guide her.
She selects a bag, beginning the somber ritual of checking the inside tag to make sure it matches the outside label.
As she zips open the black material, a man’s face appears.
He is young, with dark hair and clean-shaven skin.
If not for his battered face from a fatal car accident, he would look peaceful.
For a moment, she just stares down at him, quietly apologizing for the violent end he faced.
But suddenly, without warning, her heart drops and she zips the bag closed.
Her mind launches forth a memory of Richard and the brutal finality of the last moment she saw him.
She lurches forward, catching a sob in her throat before quickly steadying herself.
She shakes her head, knowing this won’t be the last time she finds herself thrown into the abyss of grieving for her husband, now gone for almost two months, and has to claw her way back to the surface.
It’s here, in the house of endings, that she finds herself in a perfect place to navigate the tightrope walk between professionalism and personal grief.
She continues on her path for a few more moments before hearing the soft chime that indicates a visitor has entered the morgue anteroom.
She looks up through the door’s glass window and notices a young man with wild, curly brown hair standing awkwardly on the other side.
When her eyes catch his, he nods an acknowledgment.
“Come on in!” she yells, waving her gloved hand theatrically.
He jumps to attention, pushing the door forward. It opens with a sigh, like it had been waiting to release the tension Wren was cooking up alone in there.
“Good evening, Wyatt.” She smiles, picking up a clipboard. She checks off portions of paperwork, making her way around the morgue refrigerator slowly.
Wyatt the mortician smiles his usual close-lipped grin, nodding to her in response. “Everyone present and accounted for?” he asks wryly.
Wren chuckles, pulling a drawer out to double-check a tag. “So far, no escapees.”
“Well, the night is young.” He pushes a transport gurney from the anteroom, checking his own paperwork. “Can Chad Smith come out to play?”
She can’t help but shake her head. Wyatt is odd, but after close to a year of working adjacent to him, she has learned to appreciate his dry humor and brevity with words.
She’s sure that, outside this context, his off-color jokes may get a few strange looks, but to her, there is something endearing about her fellow death workers.
No matter how unsettling the situation may be, they can always find an inappropriate joke.
She’s reminded of how grateful she is to work in a place that provides a revolving cast of fascinating characters.
“Chad, we’ll miss you.” She pulls his drawer out, motioning for Wyatt to step in with the gurney.
Together they transfer Chad’s large frame onto it.
Wyatt begins to zip the canvas body bag over the morgue’s black polyethylene bag.
The zipper on the funeral home cover is thick and shows its age, but Wyatt manages to get it closed with Wren’s help.
“Hey, I meant to ask you, remember that body last week that you had to bring back to us?” Wren asks.
Wyatt visibly cringes. “The one we were halfway through embalming? Yes, I remember that one.”
“You know I felt terrible about it. But once the sister mentioned the domestic abuse situation, we had to double- check.”
“Totally understandable. It’s an inconvenience, but a rare one we can handle.” He smiles reassuringly.
“Was it you who did that wire work in the mouth?” she asks.
He shifts his weight uncomfortably, anticipating a compliment or a critique—either would probably make him want to melt into a puddle on the anteroom floor.
“Um, yeah. I started doing the two extra needle injector pins as a fail-safe because I have this extreme fear of a pin coming loose and the mouth falling open. I know it’s not standard, but I feel like adding them diagonally just holds the mouth shut better anyways and—”
“You don’t need to justify it, Wyatt. I was just interested.
The extra pins made it much harder to reopen the mouth, and that’s exactly what should happen,” she says, trying to get his eyes to raise from the floor for a second.
“Do you get flak at all for using more than two? We have to account for everything here, and it can be tight.”
He looks up finally, realizing she’s having a genuine conversation with him and not lecturing at him. “Strangely, no. So don’t blow my cover.” A smile returns to his face.
“Your secret technique is safe with me. I’ve seen a mouth fall open at a viewing, so I just appreciated the extra care taken with it.” She keeps her tone encouraging, matching his smile with one of her own.
She has noticed that Wyatt has a tendency to sink into his head at a moment’s notice, often getting very self-critical.
Lately she has seen him loosen up a bit, sharing pieces of his day or week with her when he comes in to do a transport.
He’s one of the people she doesn’t dread an interaction with, at the very least.
“Thank you,” he says, now looking pleased.
“Anything else new?” she asks, trying to steer the end of the conversation in another direction as he fills out some paperwork.
He doesn’t answer right away, clearly thinking through what he’s about to say. Finally he speaks, and his voice comes out unsure. “Do you believe in ghosts, Doc?” he asks.
The question is sudden, and Wren’s immediate reaction is one of confusion.
“Did you just ask me about ghosts in a morgue? Wyatt, I didn’t peg you as being so cliché.” She smirks, pushing a drawer back in hard. The metal makes a shearing sound that cuts through the hum of the refrigeration unit.
He chuckles, nodding in acknowledgment. “I know, I know. But I had a weird experience at the funeral home the other night and—” He stops and shakes his head, as if trying to erase the information he was about to share.