morvant mortuary x the boy au -
welcome to town (pt. II)
(pt. I)
summary: your realtor tells you everything about the old Morvant place. you make a decision, and a couple of new friends.
warnings: an attempted (but thwarted) assault on the reader by some rando. alcohol consumption. wall man!Maxi being a total creep and watching you sleep, among other things.
general: second verse, weirder than the first!
Within a couple hours, not only did Bev make good on her promise and have lights and power back, but you’d gone through the whole house flipping switches and pulling cords wherever you found them.
Just in case, you figured, just while it’s getting dark your first night here.
You already had water running to clear the faucets and pipes, and your suitcases haphazardly tossed in a pile in the master bedroom - a climb that definitely left you a little bit winded, after. You’d celebrated by changing to clothes ratty enough to clamber around a dusty house in, what little makeup you’d worn finally off. Like you were just having an average evening at home.
If this could be considered a home.
You were standing in the parlor, watching the sunset through the window you’d seen the shape in. But the longer you stood here, surrounded by the light fixtures cheerfully aglow, the more certain you were that you had imagined it.
Come on, now. Shadowy half-lit House with a bad reputation, after an entire family saga of death and destruction had just been generously heaped on your listening ears? Of course you’d imagined it. It would’ve been more worrying, you reasoned, if you hadn’t seen something looming behind the realtor. Seeing something just meant you were responding to social stimuli as you were meant to. Humans were supposed to be spooked by stuff like that, as your massive Horror movie collection indicated. It was only natural.
…Fine, so you were certain that you weren’t about to watch The Babadook or Lake Mungo in this place anytime soon, but that was you just trying to be mature, and not set yourself up for getting scared by perfectly normal House noises.
“It’s literally fine,” you said out loud to no one, your hands resolutely on your hips. “It’s my place. I can handle being here by myself, I live here now.”
That said, you looked down at your delivery app, checking the ETA like you had five minutes ago.
When it seemed a brief moment of human contact was no closer to you now than it had been then, you sighed - perhaps a little more tensely than you would admit - and looked around, trying to decide what else to busy yourself with in the meantime. If you were doing something, you were moving, and if you were moving, you didn’t have time to focus on what may or may not be looming in the corners of your eyes.
It was just you, as always, handling shit and getting it done by yourself.
…Or were you? By yourself, that is?
“Oh, right!” You snapped your fingers, remembering a promise you’d made what felt like ages ago, but you knew was probably only a few hours max. “My little buddy.”
You made a beeline for the viewing room, entirely missing the tall figure that silently moved out of sight at the top of the staircase, and thought about how you were only going to get this weird little doll man because you were a person of your word. Definitely not because even the idea of being accompanied by something that couldn’t talk to you was mildly more soothing than being here by yourself. Because you weren’t afraid of being here by yourself! Of course not! You were totally fine!
You opened the door, flicking on the lights instinctually, and basked in the sight of the slightly cobwebby chandelier illuminating the whole room.
…Okay, so maybe the paint was peeling just a little more than you’d realized. But still! Your own viewing room! In your own funeral home! How cool was that!
“So,” you continued talking to yourself out loud as you walked, taking your time to inspect things in the light. “Definitely going to need some paint, probably going to want to find a guy to polish and wax this floor professionally.” You picked up your foot, checking for dust on the bottom of your sock. There was a lot. “Actually, put that in the ‘Definitely’ column,” you said, putting it back down again. “And maybe also reupholster these chairs? I don’t know,” you frowned as you passed the rows for would-be mourners. “Is this old in a vintage, classic way, or is this old in a ‘Church rummage sale but it’s scary’ way? Or should I just get new chairs?” You pursed your lips. “Maybe when I see how much internal restoration the…” You trailed off as you turned to look where you were going. “Piano… needs.”
The little doll man was laying face up on the floor.
You frowned, looking from him to where you’d sworn he’d been sitting on the piano, and back down again. “…Huh.” You were still talking out loud. “…Not where I left you.”
The little man smiled up at you from where he lay, as if you’d happened across him simply reclining there.
…Five feet away from the actual piano.
You pursed your lips in thought. Okay. Simple enough. You probably knocked him over when you picked him up.
No, wait, you didn’t remember touching him. If anything, you pointedly remembered not touching him.
Alright, so you knocked into the piano without realizing it.
But you didn’t remember knocking into the piano. And definitely not hard enough to send him five feet away. That would’ve left a significant bruise on your end.
…Surreptitiously, you prodded the hip that had been closest to the piano, making sure there wasn’t some massive bruise under your clothes you’d just forgotten about in the rush of… everything.
There was nothing.
“Huh,” you repeated uselessly, your tongue poking nervously at the inside of one of your cheeks. “…Okay.”
You looked directly across from the piano, as if the small guy could have been… ‘traveling’, per se, in any sort of direction.
The only thing waiting there was a large framed painting - something you’d missed, in your murky inspection before. It was a replica of Ivan Kramskoi’s Inconsolable Grief: a woman in a dark dress stood in a well-appointed room, covering her mouth with a handkerchief as she refused to look at the heaps of well-meaning flower arrangements sitting at her feet. You recognized it from your time in school, when you’d thought a lot about how depictions of grief and mourning tended to look eerily similar across multiple eras. Kramskoi had painted a portrait of his wife, after the respective deaths of their two young children only some years apart — in some lights, an all too-eerie omen of what would befall the family here, you realized. It suited the room: emotional but still delicate, a fine lady experiencing her sorrow but not letting it overwhelm her. Exactly what you’d imagine the previous owners would have wanted to inspire here. This copy was even larger than the original, if you recalled correctly; it was nearly as tall as you were in this frame.
But there was nothing that would explain why the little guy at your feet had moved so far, in the brief span of time you’d been outside.
Like someone dropped him when they were trying to leave, your brain suggested.
The distant sound of a bell made you jump out of your skin, whirling to look behind you—
…And realizing it was simply the front doorbell.
“Fuck me,” you wheezed, clutching your chest for a moment. “Oh-kay, that’ll be quite enough of that. C’mon, fella. Let’s get you some dinner and a bath.” You reached down, snatching up the little man and hastily retreating from the room.
The front doorbell rang again, as if the person was impatient.
“Sorry! Coming!” you called towards the door. You hastily set the little man down on the parlor table where you’d thrown your bag, rifling through until you found your wallet.
When you opened the door, the pizza delivery guy looked surprised. “Whoa,” he said accordingly. “Someone did actually move in here. I thought they were just fucking with me.”
“…Yeah, hi,” you said, blinking at him talking like you weren’t standing right there. “I’m, uh, the new funeral director here. Or I will be,” you added quickly.
“Wild,” the guy said. He was tall and gangly, somewhere in your age range - whether older or younger than you, the somewhat oily state of his skin made it a little hard to tell. You wondered if he’d washed his face at all today, but the faint scent of stale weed and human sweat that drifted in on a breeze made you realize quickly that he probably hadn’t washed anything, actually.
You glanced curiously at his eyes, hidden somewhat under what appeared to be the stringy top of an outgrown mullet, and they were indeed fairly red.
Yeah, fair enough.
“Yeah,” you said, muffling a chuckle. “Tell me about it. Here, let me get this so you can head back.” You looked down to unzip your wallet. “Sorry, you surprised me, or I’d have it—”
“So is it just you?”
“…Out already,” you finished. You swallowed against your mouth threatening to go dry. He was high, he probably didn’t mean that like it sounded.
You looked up, blithe smile already in place to play this off as a misunderstanding. “Sorry?”
His eyes were already fixed on your face, though, rather intently. “Is it just you,” he asked, his words a little too slow. “All alone, in this big old house?” His voice sounded curious, like he wanted to look around — but his eyes slid lower on your body instead. Much lower than you were comfortable.
You cleared your throat to buy yourself a second. To lie, or not to lie. “Well,” you said, your voice frank now. “Until the dead bodies get here. Then it’ll get pretty crowded.” People normally got squeamish about your job — especially men, for some reason. The mere mention was usually enough to put someone off. “Then it’ll be me putting their faces back together and draining all the fluids out of their cavities, so. You know.” You nodded to the pizza box in his hand. “Can I—”
“Huh.” A leering smile spread over the pizza guy’s face. It wasn’t an outright grin, but the way it was so slow, like old blood trickling to the tray drain… it made your stomach flip, and not in a good way. “Wild.”
You were suddenly deeply, emphatically aware of your situation: you new were in a small town, alone, in a House where neighbors only heard you if you were screaming at the top of your lungs, and even then, they weren’t inclined to do anything about it.
Clearing your throat again, you held out some bills to him emphatically. “Yeah. Wild. You have a nice night.”
“You’re short.” Pizza guy barely glanced at the cash in your hand.
“No,” you blurted without thinking, so eager were you to get him gone.
“Yeah.” Pizza guy sniffed, his grin growing. He jerked his head to your hand. “‘Bout… another five or so.”
You glanced down. You’d only grabbed a five and a few ones when you’d meant to grab more.
He gave a laissez faire shrug. “It’s okay,” he said, and you hated whatever his tone was dripping with. “If you don’t have it, I’m sure we can—”
“NopeIhaveit.” The words all came out all in one breath like buckshot. You looked down at your wallet as much as you dared, your teeth subtly grinding together. “One sec.”
“What’s your rush?” Pizza guy said, and oh, fuck, that ripe smell was closer now. The hot edge of his breath was just reaching your shoulder. “I’m not in any hurry to...”
You were about to tear your wallet in half looking for that last five, or anything close. You were never keeping fucking receipts in here again, you were about to throw them all on the floor in your haste to just get him away—
“Go… nowhere.” His voice changed, getting even more spaced out and followed by a wheezing squeaky sound.
You looked up immediately, wondering if he was about to spit on you or something—
And he shoved the pizza box roughly into your arms. “Keep it.”
You looked up from not dropping the box just in time to see him staring, eyes wide and buggy and red, at something over your shoulder before he turned and hurried away from the door.
“Youhaveanicenightnow,” he said over his shoulder, his words tripping over one another as he himself nearly tripped over an overgrown bush.
“I-“ You frowned, looking between his retreating back and the box. “Don’t you want—?”
“Nope!” he about yelped, waving a hand like he was trying to get rid of a cobweb. He barely got his car door closed before he was pulling away, tires nearly squealing as he stepped on the gas.
You lingered in the doorway until he was totally gone, staring in utter confusion. If you’d turned around, you would have noticed the ragged-looking shape that silently retreated up the stairs again, from where it had been standing just within the pizza guy’s line of sight. A warning.
You belonged to this House now, whether you realized it yet or not.
But instead, all you saw when you turned was your little cloth pal waiting for you on the table.
“Well.” You kicked the door closed behind you, looking from the box back to him. “…Welcome to town, I guess.”
Your tiny silent friend just smiled back.
—
You sat at the kitchen table while your friend sat in a bucket of suds on its surface, the pizza box open and half-empty between you. You hadn’t pulled out the nice china still in the cabinets — you’d need to sort through that, see if it was better to sell it as-is or save it. You were more accustomed to eating out of boxes and bags anyhow, trying to keep more dishes from piling up in your sink.
Taking another long sip of screw-top wine you’d packed for when you got home, you sighed appreciatively. “I don’t normally do this,” you confided, glancing at the little man soaking in soap and warm water — your first clean batch since you’d been here. “I swear. Normally it’s one glass on a work night, two at most. And I really shouldn’t be doing this tonight, especially,” you added, looking back at the mostly-empty bottle. “I have — ugh, so much to do tomorrow.” You set the bottle aside, putting your face in your hands for a second. “I know the cleaners have been through, but we still have to go in and sanitize all the important stuff, you know? And I need to get internet set up, and tell my landlord I’m not renewing, and figure out how to sell all my old shit, and on and on…” Your hands fell to the table with a thud, causing the little man to jostle slightly in his bucket. His face was, as always, cheerful.
You smiled in return, tired but triumphant. “But at least it’s mine, right?” In a moment of exuberance, you threw your hands in the air. “I have a house! And a business! I did it!” You giggled loudly, then turned towards the door of the embalming room stairs behind you. “I DID IT! THANK YOU, DEAD PEOPLE!” you called cheerfully.
If you’d been more sober, you would’ve sworn the atmosphere in the room was suddenly tense. Like crackling in the air right before lightning strikes.
“…I’m sorry you’re dead!” you added a moment later, your hands still in the air, but feeling a little bit bad for bragging now. “Rest peacefully, and stuff!”
Nothing moved.
“Well,” you sighed, looking back to your friend. “Can’t please ‘em all.” You stretched, groaning, and sighed. “I guess we should turn in, huh?”
The little guy just smiled at you, still damp.
“…Yeah, okay,” you sighed, getting to your feet. You closed the pizza box, moving to put it in the fridge — and paused, waving a hand. “I’ll do it after I clean the fridge tomorrow. Just in case. It should still be fine, right?”
You didn’t wait for your friend to answer, fishing him out of his makeshift bath and dumping the water in the vast sink. After a few minutes’ rinse, you wrapped him in a dishtowel, patting him gently dry as you walked back into the foyer.
Standing at the foot of the stairs, even as wine-lulled as you were, the third floor bedroom still felt awfully far away.
You’d have to cross a lot of dark to get there, even with all these lights on.
“So,” you said at last. “How about we just, um. Crash on the couch tonight. Yeah?” You looked down at your little friend before turning, heading back for the relative safety of the living room just off the kitchen. After a few minutes’ debate, you allowed yourself to turn the floor lamp off - but the lights from the other rooms were still softly poking in around corners.
So you were technically sleeping with the lights off, your first night here. Like a Real Adult.
You yanked what excuse for a bra you wearing out from under your shirt, and wrapped yourself in a thin blanket you’d brought from home. Sure, your pajamas and a real quilt were just upstairs. But this was fine for now, right?
Indeed, it proved to be. After carefully setting your tiny escort on the table to finish drying and patting his head goodnight, you barely got through the first ten minutes of your sleep playlist - mostly instrumental piano pieces, staid and soothing - before you were already out.
Dead, for all intents and purposes, to the world.
-
The man managed to wait another twenty minutes before curiosity finally got the better of him.
With practiced silence, he padded from an unseen entry way in a corner full of shadows, then stood and gazed at your prone form from the doorway.
He stayed there another fifteen minutes, watching the slow hypnotic rise and fall of your breathing.
“…Pretty,” he whispered in soft awe, his breath stirring the lank hair covering half his face.
When you twitched in your sleep, jolting slightly, he flinched — bracing as if expecting you to sit up and scream.
But you didn’t.
When you kept right on sleeping, even nuzzling further into the couch cushions, he sunk to an impossibly low crawl, creeping unsettlingly further into the room.
You were oblivious to the red eyes that appeared like ruined moons over the couch’s arm, mere inches from your face. They didn’t seem to blink once for a good few minutes, as they watched the lights from the kitchen play softly in your hair.
Slowly - impossibly slowly, by fractions of inches - he leaned forward, then gave it the smallest, softest sniff.
He spasmed slightly, as if he was resisting the urge to shove his nose in your hair and wildly inhale, and looked quickly around…
To find your compression bra from earlier heaped on the floor.
He snatched it immediately, shoving his whole face into that instead, and rocking forward as if to smother himself with it. Without a sound, he then stuffed it down the front of what looked like a very tattered waistcoat.
Freezing, as if caught, he slowly turned to fix his crimson gaze on the side table.
Your little cloth friend - looking like a smaller, cheerier, less grungy version of the bedraggled man huffing your intimates - gazed at his larger counterpart, his smile now seeming like he was trying to overlook the half-living man’s deep social abnormality.
The red-eyed revenant leaned closer, inspecting the doll with a critical gaze before making a soft, vaguely impressed exhale: “Clean.” He extended a finger, reaching as if to touch his old friend — before he froze mid-air, as if examining the digit in the faint light for the first time in a while.
He made a small exhaled noise of self-reproach behind his hair, looking at the doll still as he wiped his hand - unsuccessfully - on the remnants of a dress shirt sleeve. He continued to stare at the doll for a period of time that spoke of longing, before looking back to your sweet, sleeping face… and sighed softly to himself, shoulders sagging. He gave the doll the tiniest wave before scuttling on, low to the ground, to the kitchen.
You were completely oblivious as the man returned and perched gently on the far end of the couch, watching you the entire time he silently nibbled on the smallest of the leftover pizza slices. When he was done, he continued to linger and simply stare, nearly hunched double on himself to avoid accidentally brushing you.
Once he was certain you were dreaming, perhaps of somewhere nicer than this awful House, he curled into a surprisingly small ball for his long frame with the ease of someone who’s done it far too many times.
He slept soundly at your feet, like a pet dog, until the first fingers of dawn poked through the curtains.
As he crept back into the inscrutable wall panel he’d emerged from, closing the wall of the family room back up, he couldn’t help but sneak a last look at you - so beautiful and oblivious in your slumber to his cursed presence.
He considered it, all in all, an excellent first date.
(kind of short compared to part one, but I really didn’t know where else to cut it that made sense. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ anyway! thanks for sticking with it!
here’s to more spooky fun to come soon💀✨)
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