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morvantmortuary · 1 year

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morvant mortuary x the boy au -

the House

(prologue)

Even as you walked in to an empty house, alone, it still somehow felt like you were intruding.

If you felt a prickle down the back of your neck, or a sudden chill, you only attributed it to the stillness of the House compared to the summer breeze outside.

It was almost too still. Like the House had breath to hold.

Like - in an insane way - it was hoping you liked it as much as you were secretly wishing to.

You didn’t hear the front door close behind you — the damning click of the lock was oddly soft, given how heavy the dark wood looked.

As ominous as the House looked on the outside, it was huge on the inside. If it hadn’t been for the vaguely dusty (but miraculously not moth-eaten), thick, woven floor rugs, you felt like your footsteps would have echoed through the room.

For reasons you couldn’t quite explain, you were thankful they couldn’t.

You walked towards one of the floor to ceiling windows, hidden behind rich outer curtains — a deep wine-colored satin, of all things — with a once-cream cotton underneath, there to muffle the light (and afternoon heat) but not douse it entirely.

Curiously, they weren’t as dusty as you expected, especially not near the edges. You could imagine the people who lived here once, pulling them aside to sneak looks at the drive, at the clients coming up the path. It wouldn’t be to spy on any neighbors; the nearest residents were the ones buried in the cemetery at the edge of the property. The nearest living ones were back towards the edge of town, as if people were terrified of building their houses any closer to this one.

Well. At least it meant the services you held here would be uninterrupted by outside noise. You’d hoped the more cheerful Cajun wakes would add some lightness to the place, but even that seemed like a tall order in such a huge room.

You pulled the curtains wide apart at last, letting what little dwindling afternoon sun there was into the House for the first time in how many years.

What you assumed was the clientele parlor was a somber kind of beautiful, all antique furniture in dark wood clustered comfortingly around a massive fireplace - which surprised you, given how far south you were. But if the House was really as old as the listing said, it could’ve been built at a time where winters were still cold enough to be bitter down here. You imagined you wouldn’t need it, especially nowadays, with every summer the warmest on record. But maybe you could do something kind of Pinterest-y with it. Arrange a spray of flowers in place of flames, or a collection of glass orbs. Maybe even candles, just to be tongue-in-cheek.

Your gaze wandered higher towards the shadowy ceiling, up the once tasteful, now chipped off-white paint on the chimney - someone’s attempt to brighten architecture that couldn’t help but loom - and felt like it tripped over the dark wood frame hung over the dusty, similarly mute-painted mantle.

Instinctively, you stepped backwards when you realized that what was in the frame was looking right back at you.

It was a moderately sized portrait, a carefully arranged photograph in place of the oils of the old days. Not huge, but still dominating the space. You were kind of surprised it hadn’t caught your eye as soon as you’d walked in. You turned, looking over your shoulder at the front door and back again to chart the distance — and sure enough, yes, it was a straight line from the front door’s line of sight to this. Maybe it was the lighting? You searched the room, locating two subtle floor lamps next to the couch and the loveseat, but that wouldn’t have put the light in the right place for that.

You looked back to the portrait again, and this time noticed the two cobweb-covered, small-ish candelabras at either end of the mantle, the candles in them melted so low they might as well have not been there at all. Ah. Okay, so they weren’t going for anything subtle, here. You supposed, with the rest of the curtains open and the power actually on, it wouldn’t seem as recessed into shadow as it did now. With the candelabras lit, it would’ve commanded the room.

Four figures looked down on you from their honored place — you realized someone likely hung the portrait that high just so visitors could feel looked down on by the homeowners, and know instinctually where they stood.

Comforting, you thought derisively, given how many people would’ve come in here on the worst day of their lives. It spoke volumes towards the sensibilities of its subjects, that’s for damn sure.

And yet, if you squinted, you could still see the faintest outline around the frame where a larger one had hung there before, with another faint outline around that, like rings on a tree — and another faded blank spot just down and to the right, as if a matching portrait had been removed entirely. Clearly, this was a family used to having portraits of themselves front and center over the generations, even if they couldn’t or wouldn’t admit they maybe weren’t as grand as they used to be.

The people staring back at you were eerily lovely, in a distant, haughty way. There were two adults; the most commanding was a man in what looked like a very well-tailored suit, seated in the center of the frame in a chair of dark, glossy wood — clearly considering himself a patriarch. His hair was a deep casket-wood brown, carefully slicked back and styled meticulously, with the ghost of a smile around his thin lips. His eyes were piercing, brown almost to the point of looking weirdly burgundy, in the low light. The way he seemed to be leaning slightly forward in the ornate chair, as if peering at the viewer, made something churn in your stomach. You couldn’t explain it, but he just… unsettled you. You would’ve hated to meet him in person, even the curve of his mouth seemed subtly cruel.

The woman standing to his right was beautiful, but coldly perfect in a way that reminded you of marble. Her eyes were an intense shade of green, but dark, reminiscent of the floor of a sunless forest. Her hair, long and shining and black, hung around her pale shoulders, almost a premature widow’s veil. Her mouth, with lips like a doll’s, was set into a careful neutral line… but it still made you think that with the slightest twitch of a muscle, it could twist with raw emotion. Her white dress was immaculate and gorgeously wrapped around her slender frame, too sterile and perfect to seem… maternal.

Because there were children, here. Teenagers, really. They couldn’t have been older than fifteen (you weren’t sure, kids under college age but above elementary all kind of blended together for you nowadays). They stood together to the left of their father, for these were very much their parents, you realized. A boy and a girl, spookily similar to one another from their faces to their posture (perfect, practiced), but still an amalgam of the two adults: he had the shape of the woman’s eyes and a likeness in his mouth, but she had inherited their father’s stare to balance out the green eyes and distinctive nose of their mother.

The girl, a younger mirror of her mother in matching white, was giving the camera a venomous look that spoke inescapably of familiarity. You could almost hear the photographer saying something she didn’t like right as they took the photo. If her father unsettled you, she unsettled you still more: there was a rage you recognized in her even in this singular, still moment, something familiar about the indignity endured while growing up thinking you were a teenage girl. You could only imagine encountering her in person, and were silently thankful you never would — not as she was captured in this instant, at least.

The boy, in a similarly expensive suit that echoed the older man’s, simply stood on her other side, keeping her between himself and their father’s chair. His eyes - or what you could see of them, almost hiding behind a long-ish flop of sleek brown bangs (definitely a reflection of the time) and round glasses — were the same deep color as his father’s, bordering almost on red. But there was something… softer, to them. A sadness, rather than anger or malice. He kept his face as placid as his mother’s, and you almost wondered if it was something he practiced, with just how still he seemed compared to his sister.

Where her hands were clasped in front of her skirt, you saw his at his sides. The longer you looked, the more you could see that the skin of both their knuckles was bone white. Even standing there must have been a struggle for them, somehow.

Your gaze lingered on the four of them longer than you could quite explain. The photograph was so vivid, it felt like they were standing in the room with you, and looking away would almost be… rude.

Well, rude to the wife and husband, maybe. In the case of the girl, it was like averting your eyes from a big cat tensed to pounce.

And from the boy, like you were looking away from someone… trapped, almost. Unable to meet their eyes because you were just as unable to help.

A feeling - a feathery light something, just on the edge of substance - crept down the back of your neck.

Like there were eyes on you, as well.

Shivering, you whipped around to scan the vast room, but saw only older photographs on the walls staring back at you, or important-looking busts of stone (or well-crafted plaster imitation) gazing back from shelves full of large leather(-looking?) bound books and other living room conversation pieces.

There was no one looking back at you now.

Or at least, no one you could see.

You looked down at the blueprint scan again before pulling your well-creased print copy of the listing out of your pocket, scanning it quickly even though you must’ve read the damn thing a thousand times by now. You didn’t know why; it wasn’t like you didn’t have it saved in triplicate on your phone and your laptop. But it had become a weird sort of talisman for you: a reminder that serendipity was real. That opportunity could land right in your lap, if you were brave enough to seize it and keep it.

Your eyes combed the print, and sure enough, you’d been right. Nowhere in the ad copy did it mention the house came furnished. Yet as you looked around, everything was perfectly staged.

Some of that could be the real estate agency, sure. But these were… nice things. Like, really nice. “Antique” in the good way, worth something substantial. Way outside of the budget you had been planning after you’d finished the cost of renovations, that was for damn sure.

What had happened that these people just… left everything here, untouched?

Had they chosen to not take anything, unwilling to bring any memories of this place wherever they went?

Or had they been chased out?

And if so… by what?

“…Bright side,” you muttered, trying not to spook yourself. “Keep looking on the bright side.”

You finally turned your back on the portrait to take in the rest of the room. Whoever cared for the House before must have done so with great attention to detail — you knelt next to the couch, examining the way that the carved wooden legs had seemed to resist the dust and rot that had crept into the edges of the room, despite the work of hired cleaners. The whole set looked salvageable; it would be a huge Get if you were able to keep them for your own clientele. It looked much more professional than having to dumpster dive and source semi-matching pieces from flea markets and internet ads.

As you stood up and looked around the parlor, you tried to picture yourself having consultations grouped around the little coffee table. Maybe with a vase of lilies in the center? Unless lilies were too expected. But at least some kind of flower, something so maybe the House didn’t feel quite as gloomy as the occasion that it was built for. Perhaps changing the curtains to something lighter still…

Your planning was interrupted by scratching from a room over.

Turning to follow the sound, you found yourself squinting at the border of the afternoon sunlight, where the room fell back into shadow.

There was a set of dark double doors discretely set into the carved wood paneling on the other side of the room, just far enough back that you’d missed them coming in the front door. Your first thought, upon seeing them, was relief that they already seemed to be ADA-compliant for wheelchair users. One more thing off your To-Do list.

Your second thought was wondering just what could be behind them.

Standing there, you stalled briefly, wondering if you should call in Bev from the porch for backup. But she’d been hard enough to get to the House itself, and getting her inside seemed to be an impossible errand.

Whatever stray critter had made a nest in there, you’d have to face alone.

You swallowed, reaching into your bag for your maglite - the big-ass, heavy flashlight that had been a gift from your well-meaning but slightly paranoid folks upon moving out on your own. Along with being bright enough to be seen from space (or so it felt to you) with a strobe mode for getting attention during emergencies, it was also hefty, made of cold metal where it wasn’t thick, slip-proof ergonomic rubber.

Meaning if your uninvited visitor had some troubling foam around their mouth, it was a decent way to… forcibly re-negotiate your personal bubble, if need be.

Your free hand rested on the curved doorknob, and for a panicked second, you wondered if there was any chance a gator had found a way up through rotten floorboards. The swamp was a stone’s throw from here, after all, and those suckers could get goddamn huge. You could just see the news story now, the local color piece that would get passed around the Internet as a quaint oddity in the right circles: ‘Abandoned Louisiana Funeral Home Infested by 20-Foot Gator, One Person Chomped at Scene.’

“It’s a possum,” you said firmly to yourself. “It’s just going to be a little old possum with a cute little face, that can’t get rabies because they’re the only marsupial in North America. You’ll just be an adult and call animal control. It’ll be fine.”

Talking sense to yourself would have worked if whatever was on the other side didn’t start scrabbling even faster, as if frantic at the mere sound of your voice.

You let go of the doorknob immediately, backing away even though it sounded like it was coming from the far side of the room. Briefly, you debated just calling animal control now and letting them open the door for you. Just in case.

But that wouldn’t be a very good way to ingratiate yourself with a town as small as this — you couldn’t see yourself being considered a reliable funeral director if you were also the person who called emergency services for, like, some baby raccoons. Or rats. Or baby rats.

(…To your credit, this sounded bigger than either of those things, but still.)

No, you were just going to have to be brave about this.

“Okay,” you called softly, talking to god knew what. You weren’t expecting them to talk back, but it still seemed only fair to give them some sort of warning. “I’m coming in now.”

You turned the knob slowly, giving the both of you some precious extra seconds to brace yourselves…

Before finally flinging open the righthand door.

The room was pitch black, and you swiped your flashlight quickly around, looking for the source of the noise before it could lunge or shriek or skitter away —

But only silence and stillness awaited you.

You frowned and stepped cautiously further inside, your footfall clicking slightly on the hardwood floor. You’d heard something. You knew you had.

But the only thing you could see were rows and rows of chairs, their backs standing straight together like neat little tombstones. Your light bounced off each of them in turn as you scanned the room, trying to figure out exactly how big it was and what on earth it could be for.

The bier at the front and center of the room was the last thing illuminated, as if revealing itself to you, and you rolled your eyes at yourself. Of course there was a viewing room in the House. (Well, there was room to quibble on terminology. There’d been a push to call it a ‘slumber room’ for a while, but you felt more comfortable just calling it what it was. No one ever slept in one, unless they were real tired or real weird.)

But still, how could there not be one whatever it was called, if this home had been hosting wakes and services almost since it was built? The sheer number of people who must have had their last day above ground in this room, laid right there in serene repose in their casket —

Well, hmm. Maybe not the best mental path to meander down right now, even for you.

You turned your light around the room more casually now, trying to picture it with working electricity and full of people. It was pretty decently sized, with the same dark paneling as the wall outside, and two tall windows muffled by heavy curtains on either side of the dais. The light in here would be decent, even actually pretty, if it was facing the direction you thought it was—

A bulky shape in the corner made you jump again, and you squeaked even as it reflected back to you from a lacquered black surface.

“…Piano,” you managed, choking a little both from fear and from the dust stirring around you. “Just a goddamn piano.”

Not a small one by any means, also old and apparently well-cared for in its day - like everything else you’d seen in the House so far. You treaded carefully towards that side of the room, checking the floor and between chair legs as you passed each row to make sure there were no hidden visitors after all. The last thing you needed was to end up in the hospital the next town over for a rabies shot series before you’d even bought the place. You couldn’t imagine that would contribute much to your image as a professional, either.

Then again, you thought as you inspected the piano up close, maybe you were being a little hard on these Greymoon folks. Maybe they weren’t as judgmental as you had already secretly decided they were. It would take you a little while to get to know them, just as they would need to get to know you. And besides, you really were going to be new at this. Surely they would be reasonably cut you some slack, especially if the place you were buying already seemed to have… kind of a reputation, if various faces and Bev’s behavior were anything to go by?

You mulled this over, checking the wood for any signs of wear or age, then examined the seat to make sure no critters had burrowed into the cushion for a nest. Weirdly, not only did the piano look almost polished, the seat itself seemed relatively free of dust or wear.

“Gonna have to ask Bev for that cleaning crew’s number,” you muttered, impressed. If parts of this place still looked this good after nineteen years unused, you wondered what miracles they could manage with weekly cleanings of a functioning home. Not to mention, now you’d be able to hire someone for live music at your services, instead of having to pipe everything in over speakers —

The way your light reflected off the piano keys gave you pause.

You couldn’t put your finger on why, at first, staring at the way they seemed to glow at you from the dark. The wooden fallboard being up wouldn’t have surprised you if it didn’t also seem to be… weirdly shiny, almost. Definitely moreso than the rest of the furniture in the room. But how, when this place had been empty for so long?

Your brain processed it before you did, and noted it almost passively: There’s no dust on any of it.

You ignored this voice, leaning forward to look again. There had to be dust. Even if there was a cleaning crew in here every couple of weeks, there should still be some traces of dust simply from sitting in a House this fucking old. Things didn’t just sit and not gather dust, especially when there was no one in here on a daily basis.

When no one had lived here for decades.

But the keys continued to glint back at you, looking as though they’d been touched that very morning. As though you’d even interrupted someone playing when you’d arrived.

You rolled your eyes at how determined you seemed to be to scare yourself, turning to head to the next room that needed examined, until the face made you stop dead in your tracks.

It was a little face, sitting on the music shelf. It was attached to a man made of cloth - a doll, almost.

You stepped closer, both vaguely unnerved and intrigued.

The little guy made of cloth had a cheerful expression, a roughly embroidered smile with wide eyes behind thick black glasses. Brown hair slightly obscured the glasses and the eyes, and the body seemed to be clothed in scrap fabrics from a tailor’s floor - it looked like actual material from a suit had been filched to make the pants, vest, dress shirt, and tie.

He looked so strange in the context of things, it was almost tragi-comical: a blithely smiling little face left in a room that had borne witness to so much sadness. Was he an abandoned toy, left here by some grieving child? A homemade grave offering that had somehow fallen out of the casket during transport? How many goodbyes had the little eyes made of thread seen play out in front of him?

As much as the logical part of you was alarmed by the sight of it here so unexpectedly, your sentimental side couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him, all alone in this big dark room by himself.

You reached out a hand without realizing it, set to pick him up, until you forced yourself to stop.

What were you doing? This wasn’t yours. You hadn’t bought this place, you had no right to any of the things in it.

But he just looked so lonely, you countered to yourself. What was he going to do anyway, just sit here forever, being politely ignored by the cleaning crew? What about if someone else bought it? Would he be thrown away, left to smile forever in some trash heap?

But you didn’t know where he’d been all this time. What if he had little gnats or fleas living inside him by now?

Nothing a little cleaning and a TLC couldn’t fix, though; you’d rescued a fair amount of grody thrift store finds in your mortuary school days. With some scrubbing and some new stitches, he’d be adorable. Like a little funerary mascot, in a way.

“Fuck, can I please stop being weird for once,” you whispered to yourself, your hand falling limply to your side. You had a job to do, goddamn it. This place could be your one chance at establishing a real future for yourself without going into more debt; you didn’t have time to be making a pro/con list about some abandoned scrap doll.

But your fingers flexed as you stared at him, still hesitating.

“…Look,” you said at last, talking to a thing that definitely could not consciously process speech. “If I think this place will work out, I’ll come get you after I sign the paperwork, okay? I’ll give you a good wash and put you somewhere less depressing.”

You started to walk away, then paused again, feeling like you had in the parlor with the family portrait.

Like something was watching you intently.

“…If I don’t buy the place,” you added, under your breath and over your shoulder. “You can always just, like, fall into my bag or something.” You shrugged. “My shitty apartment has sunlight, at least.”

For a moment, you lingered like you actually expected the little thing to answer you.

When you realized this, you hid your face in your palm, embarrassed on your own behalf. “Oh, fuck me, I’m losing my shit and I haven’t even started work yet,” you mumbled.

Rolling your shoulders, you hastily stalked back towards the doorway, wondering if there was a small gas leak in a nearby room somewhere that was making you imagine these things. You’d have to make sure you the whole place inspected top to bottom before you opened, that was for damn sure.

You were so caught up in your own thoughts, you forgot you hadn’t actually identified the source of the scratching sounds.

—

Later, when forced to consider the exact circumstances that would lead you to your fate, you would be forced to admit to yourself that you had kind of skimmed this first inspection of the rest of the House.

In your defense, you were mostly concerned with the parts that could prevent your future funeral home from functioning if they weren’t restorable. There was no point sinking so much of your savings into something that would just end up being a bottomless, money-hungry pit due to repair costs.

So yeah, when you went up the stairs to check things out, your mind was already on the embalming room in the basement. But you weren’t super worried about what was up there, anyway. There was no way you were going to use all of these rooms for just yourself.

They were mostly bedrooms, but none really seemed to speak to any sort of unifying aesthetic. One room with a balcony that overlooked the back property was furnished all in white, from the plush rug, to the vanity chair, to the bedspread, to the heavy old-fashioned canopy curtains that shaded the bed in its own pool of darkness. For reasons inexplicable to you - maybe it was the hush of the footsteps, or the natural chill of no sunlight - it reminded you of a sick person’s room. Like someone would only be in here if they were never coming out. It smelled, oddly, like dried roses — it was so strong, you caught yourself looking around, wondering if a vase had been left in here to putrefy in years of summer heat.

What you found instead was a surprising gash in the wall to the left of the bed, perilously close to the full-length window doors. It was horizontally long, and oddly thin, like whatever had been flung wasn’t actually that large. Still. You ran your fingers curiously over the violent notch, finding the plaster had given way almost entirely.

Whatever had caused this, for being as dimensionally small as it was, would have to have been thrown into the wall with immense force.

In a rage, for instance, or out of soul-crushing frustration.

“…I can patch that,” you muttered, trying to ignore the return of the creeping feeling down your neck. You nodded, rubbing the hole with your thumb thoughtfully as though it could possibly buff out. “Cover over that no problem. Hell, maybe I’ll make it a, um…” You frowned, trying to figure out what else a funeral home could possibly need. “A grieving room.” Some people down in these parts were twitchy about crying in front of others. You had plenty of family members who were a great example of the phenomenon.

But it also just felt like a room that was fit for crying in, for reasons yet again inexplicable.

You tried not to leave the room too quickly, the feeling of intruding in someone’s space once again matting itself like moss over your skin.

You missed the figure in the mirror watching you go.

Another bedroom was an odd, contrasting companion to the first: this one was painted a soft, rosy pink, but you could barely tell under all the papers taped hastily onto the walls, as if someone was desperately trying to cover it up. The room was a mess, but there was too much dust everywhere for it to feel like someone had only recently stepped out.

There was so much dust, actually, it felt like it clung to the soles of your shoes, causing you to pick your feet up with a shudder. Hadn’t Bev sworn they paid a cleaning crew to come through here regularly? Were they only obligated to clean up the first floor? You had sworn the white room hadn’t been this bad…

You blazed a trail through the dust, trying to figure out what set this room apart. There were clothes strewn over every surface, it seemed like, at least a few decades old. Though they were oddly mostly white, with some smatterings of green and black, a part of you felt like you were looking at a wardrobe spread from one of those high school dramas that came on when you were little. You remembered watching them with older girls in your family who were supposed to be babysitting you after school or on weekends, learning a bit too much too quick about how badly sex ed was failing teenagers from the soapy plots and love triangles. You remembered thinking the girls always looked pretty, but by the time you were old enough to wear any of the clothes you saw onscreen, they were out of date — plus, you had your own presentation issues to work out at the time.

Again, you wondered what had happened to make the previous occupants leave everything behind. It was like whatever girl had lived here had walked out of the room and never walked back in again.

You also wondered if you were an awful person for speculating how well some of it would sell on Depop. Vintage was in again, after all.

Walking closer to the walls, your eyes scanned the strange pages carefully, trying to figure out just what the wide sheets of yellowed paper were…

And realized you were looking at an anatomical drawing of the parts of a cat, as laid out during a dissection.

Backing up a step, and not for the first time in this House, your eyes combed the rest of the drawings. To your fascination and mild nausea, all of them seemed to be the same painstakingly detailed diagrams of local fauna - chipmunks, squirrels, doves, lizards - all in the same careful hand with precise linework. You couldn’t help but admire them a little; your own such diagrams in mortuary school had always looked far more clumsy, even when you’d been oh-so-careful with your scalpel.

These must have all taken hours, based on how skillfully they were done. Multiplying them by just how many were on the walls, you wondered if the girl who lived here had been dissecting little animals endlessly, from dawn until well after dusk.

Her bedspread was also pink and frilly, delicate, though you noticed rough edges where she’d been trying to pull the frills off with a seam-ripper. On the shelves surrounding her bed in its little nook, there were tons of large, ominous looking books, ranging from ones you recognized like Gray’s Anatomy to and classic novels to embalming texts that were considered antique and niche even in your school’s library.

And yet, on the shelf above the bed itself, you still saw some well-loved plushies, and a doll with mussed hair that spoke of countless adventures.

…And also, one taxidermy mouse that appeared to be wearing sequins and nipple pasties like a burlesque performer.

Whoever she had been, the contrast between her and her bedroom spoke volumes, even now.

Your mind returned to the angry-looking girl in the portrait downstairs, and you couldn’t help but nod to yourself. “Makes sense,” you whispered.

It also explained why the cleaning crew didn’t seem to frequent here as much. If the diagrams had been a surprise to you, who worked with dead people, you imagined they were deeply uncomfortable to people who stayed solely within the realm of the living.

There was a bathroom that adjoined this room, small and simple in its white porcelain tile. It was immaculate, too, as if the aforementioned crew paid extra attention to this room to make up for avoiding the girl’s room next door. You were a little relieved to see there weren’t as many traces of the previous residents here — any grooming products seemed to have been carefully cleared away, as if in anticipation of a visitor. Maybe some things were a little too intimate to leave staged, you guessed. Especially if the House is already a source of gossip.

As you turned to go, you paused, noting what appeared to be a thin white ring of something grainy around the edges of the room. You’d only just missed disturbing it with your foot as you’d walked in. Maybe it was pest poison? Something to keep curious critters away? You’d lived places where people fended off scorpions with lavender, after all. You handwaved it — it wasn’t your problem yet.

When you tried to open the door to the next bedroom, though, you found it locked from the inside.

You blinked, puzzled. That was… weird, even for here. You couldn’t imagine what would need to be locked in here that hadn’t required a lock on the girl’s room. Even though the cleaners didn’t go in there, they still obviously could.

So what was different here?

You walked back into the bathroom again - careful to avoid stepping in the coarse border, whatever it was - and tried the door that connected there as well. Again, it was also locked from the inside.

Letting go of the doorknob abruptly, an irrational part of you wondered if you were disturbing whoever was in there.

For a moment, you actually listened for impatient footsteps marching towards you.

…And then you remembered where you were, and how long it had been since anyone lived here, and shook your head.

“Bev has keys,” you said dismissively, leaving the bathroom once again. This also wasn’t your problem yet, after all.

But you still stepped over the ring of whatever the white stuff was.

The last bedroom on the floor was unlocked, and still had stickers on the door. You counted bands you recognized from the mid-eighties to early nineties, including a vintage Selena one placed with apparent love at an eye level slightly higher than yours.

Walking in, you didn’t think anything about the paint, because every available inch of the walls was covered in photographs.

It gave you pause for a minute, overwhelming you slightly just as the anatomical diagrams had in the last room. They were in every format available back then, some of them obviously altered, some of them clearly fading with time in their untouched state.

You walked closer, picking out a few of the faces instantly - you recognized the boy and girl from the family portrait downstairs, looking much more lively here than they did there. Their mother, whenever she appeared, seemed to command a stiffness in the room - everyone was clearly posing when she was around, locked in place rather than living a genuine moment.Their father was also in a few of the photos, always sitting or leaning off to the side, as if he was above most of what was happening in the room.

When you first saw his double in a photo, you wondered if maybe it was some kind of weird exposure trick… until you realized there was indeed another man almost identical to him. It wasn’t hard to tell them apart after a few photos: his hair long and soft around his face rather than slicked back, and only ever seemed to go back in a ponytail on a rare occasion. His face was similarly softer, with deeper laugh lines. Where Vincent’s face seemed to perpetually scowl or sneer, the other man’s seemed like it was impossible for him to do so.

Especially when he was looking at a beautiful woman with long, warm brown hair, seemingly always dressed in dark blouses and dresses that gave you serious Stevie Nicks vibes, with eyes that were so deep and galaxy-holding black that you thought you’d fall into them. She could’ve been a model, or someone’s muse, but she held herself so much less stiffly than the first woman. Like she actually liked being alive.

The photographer seemed to have almost as many photos of these two as he did of the twins from downstairs, and they were almost always gazing at one another, or in the midst of laughter, or caught in a dance. When they were actually looking at the camera, you couldn’t help but notice the way latent pride set at the corners of their mouths, or in the way their eyes crinkled in a smile.

You were so busy following the photos along the wall, you about tripped over something draped in a sheet leaned up against an empty desk.

You caught yourself before you crashed down onto the rug (still less dusty than the one in the girl’s room), and looked around for a moment before you remembered you were supposed to be up here alone.

With a tired sigh, you grabbed the sheet, pulling it carefully off what turned out to be a matching frame to the one downstairs —

Where a second family stood around the same chair as the people in the parlor.

The beautiful woman with the dark eyes was the one seated, her chin coyly leaning in her palm as she smiled knowingly at the camera. Behind her, the man with long hair was wearing a mirror of the first brother’s suit, although it seemed less harshly tailored in the way it hung on him. One of his hands rested adoringly on her shoulder, while the other clapped the shoulder of a teenage boy you hadn’t seen yet.

He was slightly older than the twins downstairs, with his mother’s dark hair and eyes, and a softness to his features you recognized as his father’s. Rather than being dressed in a matching suit, he was in a dark purple dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up around his elbows. Around his neck was a medallion of some sort that you couldn’t quite make out, but was seemingly simple in its metalwork.

His hand was lovingly placed on his mother’s other shoulder, completing the connection between the three.

You stared, tilting your head slightly to the side as if that would help you understand better.

It was understandable why this portrait wasn’t hung next to the other one downstairs: compared to this family, the first family looked like they were all on strings pulled taut to the point of snapping.

Despite having never met them, you were willing to bet the first man wasn’t about to be shown up by his brother’s family looking like they actually loved each other. He seemed like the type.

But something else caught your eye, too — a fourth figure, looming just beyond the family in a background doorway.

You leaned closer, frowning. Why was this one so hard to make out, if the lighting was the same in both pictures? It looked almost… opaque, somehow. Like it had been entirely engulfed in its own shadow. Like the features had been blurred away in the exposure.

If it had any features to begin with, something in you pointed out.

You stepped back, not super sure where this thought had come from and not thrilled by it, either.

Looking away (for some lighter distraction), your eyes roamed over the other photos again. It was easier to pick people out, now, and you could even spot some photos where the photographer had let himself be captured—

Until you also spotted shadowy figures in photos you hadn’t noticed before.

Some were looming behind the teens, usually whenever the photographer was also in the photo.

Some were in photos that you had originally thought were still-life, revealing themselves usually in a space where you wouldn’t expect them.

When you started seeing photos of the viewing room, set up for different services, you turned back towards the door. Whatever else was in here, you’d seen enough.

You shut the door behind you as if to keep something contained there.

A final room seemed to take up most of the space of the floor, big and airy, with high windows for catching the light outside. It was huge, behind two sliding wood doors, but when you looked inside, you didn’t bother cataloguing everything you saw on different work benches and tables and such.

If anything, you were almost trying to convince yourself it was empty.

A quick run up the second set of stairs led you to some linen closets, another bathroom that seemed… fine, mostly, save for some weird feeling you couldn’t put your finger on, and an attic hatch at the end of the hallway you couldn’t be fucking bothered with right now.

When you found the master bedroom, you opened it long enough to look around and make sure it actually had been cleaned.

“Cool,” you said to no one, thankful for a seemingly ordinary staged bedroom with no defining oddities. “I’ll sleep here, I guess.”

And with that, you nearly slammed the door, running all the way back down to the safety of the first floor.

—

After a quick peek through the screen door to make sure Bev hadn’t drove off and left you (she hadn’t), you walked to the family room back off the parlor, separated by another set of doors.

This had also clearly been cleaned and staged, throw blankets neatly folded over the couch and loveseat, pillows puffed probably just this morning in the arm chair.

Peeking into the kitchen, you got a similarly pleasant, ordinary vibe. While you could see there was more counter space here than most - probably to hold any food the families had catered for their wakes and such - it still seemed almost entirely separate from the rest of the House, the sun pleasant in the windows that looked out over the—

Cemetery. The next door cemetery.

Okay, so it wasn’t completely separate from the House. But at least it was like, comfortable. Chill. You could imagine yourself unwinding in here after a long day with some food, reading a book in the fading sunlight with a glass of wine. The porch just outside looked pleasant too, provided it didn’t have any looming hornets’ nests you couldn’t see yet.

Turning to the back of the kitchen, you saw one door that led outside to the enlarged pavement for transport — handy, you figured, especially when you came home with groceries.

Aside from all the bodies that needed to come and go, of course.

Immediately adjacent to that was another door. The door you’d likely been thinking about this whole time, behind which was the room that would make or break your entire trek to this tiny town near the bayou.

Just wanting to get it over with at this point - if it wasn’t for you, you were ready to get out of here - you near-marched over to it, twisting the knob and opening it to pure darkness all in one fluid movement.

The downstairs chill was palpable. More than palpable — it set your skin off in goosebumps instantly, as if to spite another growing crescendo of cicadas outside.

You were an adult. You were an adult about to make a serious financial decision. You could brave a basement in a decidedly spooky House.

You had to do this, for the good of yourself, and future you, and any kind of good life you ever hoped to have.

Taking a deep breath and flicking your maglite back on, you descended before you could think too much more about it.

—

In an inversion that would have been unexpected for anyone who wasn’t you, the prep room felt the most familiar to you of anywhere in the House. Even in the dark.

But as your light moved over the gleaming surfaces, a weird peace settled over you. This was what you knew. This was what you were here for.

You fought to suppress the thrill that passed through you as the stainless steel flashed back from the depths of the room, refusing to believe it wasn’t a trick of the gloom until you were right next to the equipment yourself.

It was perfect. It was all perfect.

For being unused for nineteen years, it looked like someone could have walked in yesterday and had everything in the room singing. There was a miraculous lack of rust or grime anywhere your light brushed, and while the room was a tad musty, there was none of the disastrous miasma of rot and ruin that you’d anticipated. Hell, even the tile floor gleamed back at you from the dark, and your footsteps echoed without the muffling of dust. Even the embalming machine, admittedly a bit old-fashioned now, looked perfectly clear where it sat like it was ready for a fresh batch of fluid.

You really, really needed to get the number for the real estate agency’s cleaning crew, you thought to yourself, sweeping your light around further and finding nary a cobweb in any of the corners. This was unreal. It was like someone had scrubbed it down sparkling just the other day, mop and all.

For the first time in your self-guided tour, you felt yourself grinning from ear to ear.

You could afford and own your own funeral home. You wouldn’t go into crazy debt trying to rehabilitate the place, and you could move out on your own to start your own business. Hell, at the asking price, you could afford more than just the Frigid embalming machine you’d been wanting. You might even be able to redo the whole viewing room just for the sake of aesthetics.

For the first time in what must have been ages - if ever - laughter bounced off the cold steel as your joy bubbled over, allowing yourself a giddy hop in place at your sheer goddamn good luck. When had anything ever worked out this well for you?

You didn’t see or feel the eyes watching you from behind the crack of the office door.

If you had, you might have noticed how they seemed to gaze without blinking for ages, wide with a perplexed sort of shock.

Or that they seemed to glow red, even in the perfect pitch black of the room.

(It's a little later than I would have liked to have posted, and originally I was planning on having the Realtor's reaction as part of the chapter, but you know what? I'm trying to convince myself that not everything I post has to be over 10k, for whatever weird made-up rule I've set for myself, so this is an exercise in that.

If you've read this far, I hope you have someone who looks at you like a stranger in a basement looks at the Reader!!)

#maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #morvant mortuary #southern slasher oc #slasher oc #necromancer oc #slasher oc x reader #maxi morvant x reader #maxi morvant x you #non-binary reader #genderqueer reader #mortician reader #the boy au #monsterkisser fics #rora isn't in this yet but it's part of the twins' birthday celebration <3 #animal death mention tw #cat death mention tw #ask to tag

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