Just Another Day At The Morgue, page 1
Just Another Day At the Morgue
BL Maxwell
Copyright
JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE MORGUE
Copyright © 2024 BL Maxwell
Editing provided by: AnEdit
All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permissions from the author, except for using small quotes for book review quotations. All characters and storylines are the property of the author. The characters, events and places portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
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Warning:
Intended for a mature 18+ audience only. This book contains material that may be offensive to some and is intended for a mature, adult audience. It contains graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
Also By BL Maxwell
The Things We Lose
One
Bran
Iwalked the hall of the hospital like I always did, head down with earbuds in, and not looking around as I hurried to my office in the hospital morgue. I’d been here a few weeks now, and every day I wondered why I thought it was a good idea to take a job that was surrounded by so much death. But in a way I was part of death.
Not only in my job as a coroner, but the fact my mother had been a Necromancer. She could call upon any spirit and compel them to do whatever she asked of them. Her ability came from magic, but I had inherited a gift from her that I fought to hide daily, and working here made it even harder to do that.
Buddy leaned in close to my leg and I had to fight the urge to reach down and pet him. He’d died years ago, but my childhood dog had never left me. He seemed to know I needed him and was with me almost constantly. His whimper of warning had me looking up and as soon as my eyes were on the old woman wandering down the hall she was in my face yelling.
“Do you see me? Can you hear me? Help me. I don’t know where I’m at.”
I forced myself not to react and walked through her. The cold that ripped through my body was horrible, and the images I gained from it were not much better. Hurrying to the morgue, I slammed the door shut and slumped against it.
“Tough morning?” Jordan, my assistant asked as he slid the chair out from his desk.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I mumbled. I mumbled a lot around Jordan. Mostly to stop myself from saying something that would make him question my sanity, but also because I really liked him and didn’t want him to leave.
“We got a new one,” he said as I walked through the door that led to the examination suite. There on the table was a bag that I’d seen many times. Only the body inside was different. Buddy walked over and lay down off to the side like he always did. I still wasn’t sure why his spirit had stuck around. Maybe he knew I needed him, or maybe he chose to stay. Either way I was glad he was always there for me.
At the end of the table stood a man. He’d obviously been in an accident. His skull was visible through the gash on his forehead, and his hands were bloody and mangled. He watched me as I walked around the room, but I was careful not to show him I knew he was there.
Then something very strange happened. Buddy walked over to him and sat in front of him. The man reached down and petted him, his hand lingering on Buddy’s silky ears as he glanced at me. “You can see me,” he whispered.
I forced myself not to react and to concentrate on the clipboard that had been resting on top of the body. It said he’d been in a horrible car accident while driving to Sacramento from Nevada. He had no family, no next of kin. No one to claim the body, and no one to make sure he had a decent burial. I wondered again why Buddy had gone to him. He tended to stay away from other spirits, and I’d often wondered if he couldn’t see them, or if he chose to ignore them. Either way, with all the spirits we were exposed to daily, this had never happened.
“What’s your dog’s name,” the spirit asked.
“Buddy,” I said, an automatic response to a question I hadn’t been asked for more than ten years. Buddy grinned his doggy grin at me while enjoying the attention he was getting from the spirit who seemed to be all alone in both life and death. “Do you remember what happened?” I decided to dive right in since he wasn’t attacking me or yelling at me to help him.
“You can hear me? I thought so, but I don’t know how I knew.” He looked confused as he stared off into the distance. I turned to look in the direction his eyes were fixed on, but all I saw was the tile wall of the morgue.
“I can. Unfortunately,” I admitted, and unzipped the bag. His body was an even bigger mess than his spirit was, and when he saw himself, he gasped, and in an instant, he was standing beside me.
“What happened to me?”
“Blunt force trauma. That’s what happens when you don’t wear your seatbelt.” I finished reading the report, and knew I’d find out far more with the autopsy.
“I always wear my seatbelt. Always,” he murmured, and when I glanced up at him, he was looking down at his body. “Is this how it always is?”
“Only when there’s unfinished business. Did you have some unfinished business—Justice? That’s your name? For real?”
“Jus for short. What unfinished business?” His voice took on the breathy quality that told me he’d be vanishing soon. I wasn’t sure if they ran out of energy, or something pulled them somewhere else. Mostly I tried not to talk to them, so there was a lot I didn’t know and was unwilling to ask about.
“Only you know that.” I slid his body out of the bag. It had extensive damage. The accident he’d been in had to have been horrible, not only was his body mangled but it looked like there’d been a fire. Which explained why half of his head looked the way it did. “Looks like the accident was worse than you thought.”
“What was that?” Jordan asked, as he walked in. “Oh, wow. Yeah, that looks like it was a really bad accident.” He turned his back to the table and focused on the wall instead. “I just wanted to warn you, they’re bringing down one of the patients that didn’t make it. She’s been on life support for a while now, but her family finally decided to let her go.” He still focused on the wall.
“Thanks Jordan, you can go back out to the office if you’d rather.” Jordan was very good at his job, but so far, he hadn’t gotten used to being around the dead.
“No, it’s okay I don’t mind.” He wrapped his arms around his waist and seemed to force himself to stay where he was. Buddy glided over to him and leaned against him. He took a deep breath and relaxed as much as he could. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to get used to it.”
“I understand, it’s not for everyone. But you’re doing a great job.”
“Part of my job is assisting you when you’re doing an autopsy.” He sounded defeated, but I knew more than anyone how hard this job was.
“How about if I call you once I’m done. Then you can go through his things and see if you find any information about a next of kin.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he said before rushing to the door.
“Well, you tried Buddy.” He huffed at me before going back to the spot he liked to lay at and curling up.
Two
Jordan
Itried to stick it out, but seeing that guy in such a mess was hard for me to stomach. Bran was able to look at every case like the professional he was. Unlike me who felt it all. All their pain, and especially all their sorrow. His spirit dog Buddy leaned heavy on me, trying to siphon off some of the pain and give me some relief, but it wasn’t enough. I’d heard Bran say his name on many occasions and worked out the fact Buddy had been his dog, and for some reason, his spirit was still here.
As soon as Bran excused me, I practically ran to my desk, and scrambled to pull out the bag of crystals I kept in the drawer. My hands shook as I took out the large piece of selenite, I would use to store everything I’d absorbed. After speaking the words that had been passed down in my family for generations, saor mi o'n phian, I started to feel some relief.
The crystal glowed with the power it was now charged with, a power I didn’t know how to control, and didn’t want to use. Some in my family used the power for good while others chose to use it for bad. But I did my best not to use it at all. Much in the way Bran tried to ignore the fact he could see every spirit that crossed his path.
He didn’t need to tell me this, it was obvious in the way he would become distracted and seem to stare off at nothing. My uncle was the same, and over the years it was harder and harder for him to hide it, or to deal with the constant wants and needs of the dead.
“Jordan, can you come in here please?” Bran called from the other room.
I shoved the crystals back in my drawer and braced myself for more. I walked into the room where he now had the deceased on the
Buddy leaned against my leg again, even though I couldn’t see him I could feel his warmth. Which was weird since he was a spirit, but he was kind, and that kindness shone through the coldness of death.
“I noticed he had a wallet in his pants can you check for a next of kin?”
“Sure.” I walked over to where he’d left his belongings and picked up the wallet. A bolt of cold ran through my arm and I had to force myself not to flinch.
“Are you okay?” Bran asked, looking up from where he was finishing his notes on injuries, and abrasions on the body.
“Yeah, just jumpy today.” I knew it was a lame excuse, but if he expected me to not notice him talking to spirits, then I expected him to not question when I reacted to energy I was trying not to react to.
I walked over to where he kept the bins where the belongings were stored. And after putting the clothing in one of them, I opened his wallet to see what I’d find. There were a few credit cards, an ATM card, a coffee rewards card, and a picture of a man next to a motorcycle. “There’s no driver’s license but there are a few credit cards maybe we can find him from them?”
“Give it a try,” Bran said as he got lost in his work.
I hurried back to my desk and googled the name, Justice Rafferty. Not much came up, but there was a Facebook post about someone looking for a man with that same name. It looked like he’d driven to Sacramento from Nevada, but the post didn’t say why he’d left or where he was going. They’d been posting on social media hoping someone had seen his truck and could tell them where he was.
There was a picture on the post that was definitely the guy in the other room. He was 34, single, and had not shown up for work over a month ago. The post said he had no reason to leave the state.
“They’re going to be surprised that he ended up in Sacramento,” I mumbled just as Bran walked through the door.
“Did you find something?” he asked and looked over my shoulder.
“There’s someone out of Nevada that’s been looking for a coworker that has been missing for around a month. It doesn’t sound like he had any connection to the Sacramento area. I’ll message them and see if I can find out more information.”
After Bran left the room, I took the credit card and held it between my hands. Closing my eyes, I opened my senses hoping to find out more. A shock of pain sliced through my skull, and I fought the urge to vomit. No images came to me. Nothing that would help with his identity other than the post I’d found. It was so frustrating. My power was limited to emotions, and feelings, so unless there were strong emotions attached to an object it was useless to me.
But still I had a niggling feeling there was something more here than a man who had left home and gotten into a traffic accident. I slipped the cards and picture back into the wallet before I noticed another card. It was for a local psychic and had a time and today’s date written on it.
I knew the psychic. Janis, she helped a lot of the local ghost hunters and urban explorers with anything from the other side of the realm they didn’t know how to deal with. Janis was always willing to help and had more experience than anyone else in the Sacramento area. But why would he have her card?
As I thought about it, the temperature in the room dropped, and I knew a spirit was close by even if I couldn’t see it. I tensed up, anticipating what could happen next. Just then Bran burst through the door, he looked up and the blood drained from his face.
“Jordan, don’t move,” he whispered, and his focus was directly in front of me.
“What is it?” I asked, as I held my breath and tried like hell not to move at all.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.” His eyes met mine for a split-second before he was focused once again on what was in front of me. Then the pain hit. In an instant Bran was in front of me, so close all I could see was his face. The pain receded, but I wasn’t sure why, and I realized I’d closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was caged in between his body and the wall. He had both his arms outstretched and his hands pressed against the wall. His face was so close I could feel his breath on my lips.
“What’s happening?” I asked, then I felt his ghost dog lean against my leg.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I can see ghosts, and right now the spirit of the man in there on the table is trying to enter your body. Buddy and I can hold him off for a while but not forever. And he’s very determined to get in.”
I met his eyes and squared my shoulders. “Then let him.” I hadn’t done this before, and in fact tried to keep a distance from spirits if I could. But I sensed I needed to help this spirit if I could.
Three
Bran
His words stunned me. For one thing, he was not shocked at all when I admitted I could see spirits. He also didn’t question who Buddy was. “Do you know what you’re agreeing to?”
“Yes. I’ve touched the other side of the veil many times. I think he may have contacted a local psychic, but I don’t know why. Maybe he can tell us.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the spirit who now stood directly behind me. A moment before he’d been fighting against me to get to Jordan. “I don’t think you understand what I’m saying,” I whispered.
“He can give us some answers.” Jorden met my eyes, and there was a level of understanding there that shocked me. He knew exactly what was happening. My mind rushed to grapple with the fact we’d worked here together so close to the dead, but nothing like this had happened before.
Buddy was still there, and I forced myself not to look down at him when he leaned harder against Jordan and looked up at me with a whimper. He only did that when he warned me of spirits he seemed to sense I’d want to avoid. But he also had seemed to understand the spirit of the man did not mean us any harm.
“You’re sure?” I asked Jordan, and he gave a slight nod. I moved away, and as soon as I did the spirit collided with him, sending him back against the wall with a slam.
“Jordan, are you okay?”
His eyes flickered open, and he looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time before his eyes met mine. “You’re the one who can call spirits,” he said to me, but it wasn’t Jordan’s voice.
“I can’t call them only if they’re in the same vicinity. It’s not a spell that pulls them to me.”
“I tried to ask you to help me before, but you ignored me. I need to tell you, what happened to me was not an accident.” His voice was frantic. He spoke quickly, and his voice faltered as his powers started to wane.
“Tell me now while you have time.”
“Someone called me, a voice from the past. They told me they had information about my family, and it was here in Sacramento. The next day someone left a business card for a psychic on the windshield of my truck. I left right then and drove straight through to get here.”
“Did you live here before?”
“No.” Jordan’s features wavered as the ghost fought to stay inside him and keep control of the living body he did not know how to manipulate. “Call the psychic, she has answers. I was on the phone with her when I got in the accident.”
Something definitely wasn’t right. It went way beyond a pushy ghost, and the fact he had nothing on him that told us much about who he was. Jordan’s face crumbled in pain, but he fought against it and tried to give the spirit what it needed.
“You don’t have much more time, if there’s more you need to say then now is the time.” I wasn’t sure why some spirits were more confused than others. Some seemed perfectly coherent of what had happened to them, while many more were confused, and unaware of anything. I wondered once again if a spirit getting knocked out of a body somehow short-circuited the memory.
As the thought crossed my mind, the spirit was flung out of his body, just as Jordan collapsed. I caught him and eased him into his chair while the spirit faded away, spent from using too much energy to possess Jordan. “You’re okay now. Just take it easy.” I patted his chest, and his hand came up and covered mine. Warm, his hand was warm and comforting.
