Page 12 of Mortis

But whenever the alarm went off, Arlo and I took turns checking it out. My grandad always insisted on doing his share, even though we’d pointed out that chasing potential burglars in his seventies was probably a bad idea.

He’d called us ageist.

I sat up and stretched towards the ceiling until my spine popped. Arlo had already burrowed beneath the duvet and was staring up at me from his pillow.

“Be careful,” he whispered, his eyes sparkling in the near darkness.

“It’ll be fine,” I replied with a yawn. “Mr Grainger probably tried the wrong door again.”

He’d been responsible for our last call-out nine months ago. After one too many beers at the pub, the owner of the fish and chip shop a few doors down had decided to sleep in the empty flat above his takeaway rather than face an argument with his wife. Unfortunately, he’d ended up on the funeral home’s doorstep instead, and the alarm had gone off after he’d tried his key three times, called the lock a cunt, and then broken it.

“Still,” Arlo replied, snuggling deeper beneath the duvet.

I leaned over and dropped a quick kiss on his forehead. He hummed contentedly and closed his eyes.

Lucky bastard.

He’d be asleep before I even left the room.

I swung my legs over the side of the mattress and stood, rooting around in the darkness for clothes. My pyjamas consisted of a ratty Jujutsu Kaisen T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. Considerably less fashionable than Arlo’s silk ensemble. I swapped them for skinny jeans that definitely needed washing and an oversized Adidas hoodie I’d picked up from a charity shop years ago.

“See you in the morning, Lolo,” I whispered.

Arlo responded with a piglike snort, and I grinned, making a mental note to tell him about it later. Just so I could listen to him insist for the millionth time that he “absolutely, one hundred percent, would never do something as inelegant as snore.”

With a quiet chuckle, I slipped out of the room and padded through the flat.

It wasn’t much to look at. One of three flats inside a converted Victorian house a short walk from the high street. The bedrooms were barely large enough to fit our double beds, and the kitchen amounted to little more than a fridge, an oven, and a handful of cupboards squeezed into the corner of an open-plan living room. Most of the available space had been sacrificed to bookshelves that groaned beneath the weight of smutty romances, manga, figurines, and enough miscellaneous knick-knacks to qualify as a small museum.

The bathroom was somehow even smaller than the kitchen, and it was also Arlo’s favourite place in the flat. He’d happily spend hours soaking in the tub with an audiobook, half a dozen candles, and whatever bath bomb he’d most recently bought from the Lush in nearby Oxford.

I locked the front door behind me before heading downstairs and out onto the street. The start of October had dragged the night in early, leaving Blackthorn cloaked in darkness. The only light came from the streetlamps dotted along the pavement. The air was cold enough to bite, and when I exhaled, my breath clouded in front of me. I immediately regretted not grabbing my parka before leaving, but the funeral home was only a ten-minute walk away.

I’d survive.

Probably.

The streets were predictably empty. I only nearly shit myself once when a stray cat launched itself out of an alleyway with a yowl that sounded suspiciously demonic. I was fairly certain it shaved at least a year off my life expectancy.

Beyond that, the walk was uneventful.

Quiet.

Exactly how I liked it.

Most people hated silence. Hated the weight of it. The way it forced them to sit with their own thoughts. But I never understood that, because the quiet helped me think. Helped me work. It brought a kind of peace that I struggled to find anywhere else. I didn’t mind my own company or the company of the dead. The dead were excellent listeners, and they tended to take your secrets to the grave.

I’d shared plenty of mine.

Like how every birthday my grandad celebrated made me a little more anxious than the last.

Or how enormous our tiny flat might suddenly feel if Arlo ever moved out and left me there alone.

Or how much time I spent thinking about the ridiculous local legend that had haunted Blackthorn for decades.

The Satyr.

A horned creature with glowing red eyes and hooves for feet that supposedly stalked Barrowfell Woods.