The Smile of the Dead

The Smile of the Dead
Alisha shook her head slowly, her breath fogging in the morgue’s cold air.
“No,” she said, her voice firm but trembling. “This is just a coincidence. A trick of the mind. If Archie is dead, then he might not have been the suspect after all. Maybe…” Her eyes drifted to the covered body on the table. “Maybe he knew who the real one was.”
Sam frowned. “Then why did he never say anything?”
Joel ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe he was too scared. Whoever did this to him wanted him quiet. And now he’s quiet forever.”
Georgia Moore’s shoulders shook as she tried to hold back tears. “He should have spoken. He should have told us where our daughter is. Now she’s out there… somewhere… and we still don’t know if she’s alive or dead.”
Richard Moore stepped closer to the table, glaring down at the sheet that covered Archie’s face. “He took the answers with him,” he said through gritted teeth. “But whoever killed him is still out there. And they wanted us to see this. They wanted us to know they are not done.”
The morgue felt colder by the second. Alisha pulled her jacket tighter around her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them, even though only the coroner stood quietly by the door.
“Then we need to find who it is,” Alisha said finally. Her voice sounded stronger than she felt. “If Archie was a witness instead of a suspect, then whoever silenced him might be the one who took Aubrey—and the others.”
Sam nodded grimly. “Then we start from the beginning. Every case. Every missing woman. We dig until something connects them all.”
Georgia turned toward her with wide, desperate eyes. “Do it. Please. Because if the police won’t save my daughter, then you will.”
Richard put an arm around his wife and led her out of the cold room. Their footsteps echoed down the hall, leaving Alisha, Joel, and Sam alone with Archie’s body.
Joel exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. “I hate this place. It feels like he’s still… here.”
Sam glanced toward the table uneasily. “Let’s go. There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”
But Alisha didn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the sheet.
“Alisha?” Joel asked softly.
She swallowed hard. “When we first came in here, it felt like someone was staring at me. Like there was a pair of eyes I couldn’t see. And now…”
Joel and Sam followed her gaze toward the body.
The overhead light flickered once.
And then the sound came—soft, wet, like mud sliding across metal.
The sheet shifted.
All three of them froze.
Sam’s voice was barely a whisper. “Did you see that?”
Joel took a step back. “It’s just air. The cold room does weird things.”
But the sheet moved again, this time more violently, as if something beneath it had jerked.
The coroner turned, startled. “What the hell—”
He stepped forward and pulled the sheet back.
Archie’s mouth was still open, his dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. But now there was something in his hand.
A piece of paper.
Joel cursed under his breath. “That wasn’t there before.”
The coroner reached down with gloved hands and carefully removed the paper. It was wet with soil and blood, but a message was scrawled across it in thick black ink, the letters uneven and smeared.
“NOT ME. LOOK BELOW.”
The words sent a shiver down Alisha’s spine.
Sam took the note, his hand shaking. “Look below? What the hell does that mean?”
Joel’s face darkened. “Maybe it means where they buried him. Maybe there’s something else down there.”
Alisha nodded slowly. “Then we need to go back to that empty lot. Right now.”
The coroner shook his head. “That place is a crime scene. You can’t just—”
But Alisha was already heading for the door.
The drive back to Morton Street was quiet except for the sound of the tires on the wet pavement. The night felt unnaturally still. No stray dogs, no sound of crickets, nothing but the wind rustling through the empty park.
When they reached the lot, police tape still fluttered around the edges, glowing faintly in the moonlight. The dirt where Archie had been found was freshly turned, dark and damp.
Sam grabbed a flashlight from the van and swept the beam across the ground. “This is it. This is where they dug him up.”
Joel crouched down and ran a gloved hand through the soil. “There’s something under here. Look—”
He pulled out a small ribbon. Pink.
Georgia’s voice echoed in Alisha’s memory. Aubrey was wearing a pink ribbon the day she vanished.
Alisha’s stomach turned. “They wanted us to find this.”
Sam straightened, scanning the shadows. “Then whoever did this is probably watching us right now.”
A sound came from the far side of the lot.
A low, dragging noise.
Joel swung the flashlight toward the sound, but the beam caught nothing—only the trees swaying in the wind.
Then came another sound. A laugh. Low. Wet. Almost like a cough.
Alisha’s blood went cold. “We’re not alone.”
The light flickered.
And then, for a split second, they saw it—
A figure standing at the edge of the lot. Hooded. Motionless.
When Joel moved the flashlight back, the figure was gone.
Sam grabbed Alisha’s arm. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
They ran back to the van, but as Joel fumbled with the keys, Alisha glanced back one last time.
The dirt where Archie had been buried was moving.
Slowly.
As if something was trying to crawl out.
Alisha frowned, her jaw tightening as she glared at the morgue wall, almost as if the very shadows were mocking them. “No,” she said sharply, her voice cutting through the tense air. “This is not some ghost story, Joel. Someone did this—someone with flesh and blood. A real person is playing with our minds, trying to scare us into losing focus. Whoever it is wants us rattled so we stop looking for Aubrey. And I refuse to let them win.” Her hands curled into fists. “This ends when we find who’s behind this and make them pay.”