I work at a funeral home, and a body keeps showing up in the wrong drawer.

I’ve been keeping track of the strange things that happen at the funeral home, mostly because I realized a few months into the job that if I didn’t start writing them down, I would either forget the details or convince myself that none of it had actually happened. I told myself that this would help, that writing the occurrences down would make sense of them, or at least allow me to sleep at night, but the truth is that writing only seems to remind me of how little I actually understand this place. Last week, something happened that unsettled me more than anything I’ve experienced so far, and I know I need to share it before I lose track of the details.

This one started last week with a body that was, in every possible way, completely ordinary. The body arrived late in the evening, unremarkable in every way. Normal age, ordinary cause of death, regular paperwork. Nothing about him stood out to me when we moved him onto the operating table except for the way that his arm shifted slightly when we adjusted the sheet, which I told myself was just residual movement, the kind you read about in training but don’t really expect to see. Martin didn’t comment on it, so I didn’t either. 

We tagged him, logged him, and placed him in the refrigeration unit like we always do, the same one we’ve used since I started here, sliding the drawer closed until the seal caught with that familiar slightly hollow sound that echoes more than it should in a room that small. I remember checking the label twice before I left, not because anything seemed wrong, but because I had gotten into the habit of double checking things after what happened with Daniel Crowe.

The next morning, I arrived earlier than usual, partly out of habit and partly because sleep has become a little more difficult since I started working here. After unlocking the front door and setting my things down in the office, I made my way back to the preparation room with the vague intention of getting a head start on the day’s work before anyone else came in. 

The drawer was closed. That was the first thing I noticed, and for a moment it felt reassuring  because it meant whatever I had expected to find, though I couldn’t have said exactly what that was, hadn’t happened. Then I opened it. 

It was empty.

I froze, staring at the other drawers, my mind racing for a rational explanation. Maybe a janitor’s mistake, Martin moving it temporarily, or a misread label. I stood there for several seconds, looking at where the body should have been, trying to fit what I was seeing into something that made sense. There are only so many explanations for something like that, and all of them rely on the assumption that something ordinary has gone wrong in a way that can eventually be corrected.

I checked the label again, even though I already knew it was the right drawer, and then I started opening the others. I went one by one, moving down the row more quickly than I probably should have, though I was still careful enough to make sure I wasn’t overlooking something obvious in my haste. I found him four drawers over, positioned exactly as we had left him, sheet pulled up neatly, tag still in place. There was nothing to suggest anything had changed except for the fact that he was no longer where he was supposed to be. I closed the drawer, paused, and then opened it again, just to confirm that I hadn’t made a mistake. He remained where he was.

When I told Martin, he listened without interrupting, his expression neutral in a way that I have come to recognize as intentional. When I finished explaining what I had found, he simply told me to write it down, as though that was the most practical and reasonable response to the situation.

“Time, drawer, anything else you notice,” he said, already turning back to what he had been doing, which left me with the impression that this was not the first time something like this had happened, even if this was the first time I had been the one to notice it. The rest of the day was uneventful, and that night before I left, I checked the drawer again. I decided to let him stay in the drawer he was in when I came in that morning. But then, without really thinking about why, I marked the outside of the drawer. I pulled off a short piece of masking tape from the roll and stuck it over where the top of the drawer the body was connected to the bottom edge of the drawer above it. 

That night I went home with a small pit in my stomach, though I wasn’t sure if I could explain exactly why. I knew that the body had freaked me out, but could I really convince myself, or anyone else, that the body had moved on its own during the night? I was one of the last ones to leave in the night, and I was the first to get there in the morning. Though any efforts I had put into easing my worries in the night were immediately undone the following morning. 

When I came to work the next morning, I skipped out on my normal morning routine and went straight downstairs to storage. To my relief, the drawer was still closed. But on further inspection, any hope I was feeling that I had imagined the events of yesterday left as soon as they had come. The mark was broken. The tape wasn’t torn, but it had clearly been moved. It looked like someone peeled the tape off of the drawer, opened it, closed it again, and tried to press the tape back down to where it was before. I could tell that the tape had been removed because it was slightly creased and had a tiny dog-ear fold at the top corner. And when I put my face closer to the tape, really trying to remember if I had just done a bad job at taping it shut yesterday, I could swear I saw a fingerprint on the tape.

I remember feeling something settle in my chest at that point, not panic exactly, but a certainty that whatever was happening was not the result of a mistake I could correct by being more careful. I steeled myself with a nervous, shaky breath, and I opened the drawer. It was empty, but this time I didn’t hesitate. I moved through the others until I found him again, farther down, and positioned slightly differently than before. One arm dangled at just enough of an angle that I was certain it hadn’t been the night before. Over the next few days, I documented everything.

Not just the drawer numbers and the times, but the order I checked them in, the placement of the tools on the cart, the way the condensation formed along the inside of the unit doors, even the faint variations in the sounds of the refrigeration unit inside of the unit doors, because the more I paid attention the more it felt like the movement wasn’t random. 

On the fourth night, I stayed late. I told Martin I had paperwork to finish, which was partially true, but I mostly wanted to see if anything would happen when I was there. Up until this point, all of the changes had occurred overnight, in that stretch of time where no one was watching. The building felt different at night, quieter in a way that seemed heavier rather than empty, like the absence of sound was itself something that had settled into the walls and floors. And when I stepped into the preparation room, I had the distinct feeling that I was interrupting something, though I couldn’t have said what. 

The drawer was closed when I approached it, the metal handle colder than usual beneath my fingers. For a moment, I found myself hesitating, aware that this no longer felt like a routine action, but something closer to a confirmation of what I already suspected I would find. When I finally pulled it open, he was there, positioned exactly where I had left him. The sheet was still drawn neatly over him, the tag still in place, and nothing at all to suggest that anything had changed. That should have felt reassuring, though it wasn’t, because by that point the absence of change felt just as deliberate as the movements had.

I stood there longer than I meant to watching, listening, aware of the low, steady vibration of the unit beneath my hand and the way the room seemed to hold its silence in a way that felt almost expectant, like it was waiting for something that hadn’t happened yet. Eventually, I closed the drawer again, pressing it firmly until I felt the seal catch, and turned toward the door, already reaching for the light switch. I had all intentions of leaving, because there is a point where staying any longer stops feeling like observation and starts feeling like participation, and I was not sure which side of that line I was standing on anymore. Then, with my hand hovering just a foot or two from the switch, the lights went out.

For a brief moment, the room existed only in the dim spill of light from the hallway behind me, enough to outline the edges og the counters and the shape of the refrigeration unit against the wall. It was enough light to barely see, but not enough to fill in the details, and it was in that in between space where nothing was fully visible but nothing was entirely hidden either that I heard it. It was not loud, and it was not sudden. It was a slow, deliberate sound, like the careful shifting of weight across a surface. That kind of sound does not belong to machinery or settling buildings, but to something that is choosing to move. 

I did not turn immediately. Instead, I stood there with my hand still held up near the light switch, aware of the way the silence around the room seemed to deepen. I held my breath, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up one by one. Finally, a chill ran up my spine, and I worked up all of the courage I had left. When I turned back towards the unit, the drawer was open. Not partially, not slightly misaligned in a way that could be explained later, but fully extended with the metal track visible beneath it, the interior exposed in a way that made it immediately clear that it had not been left that way by accident.

For a moment, I thought it was empty again. Then I realized I was looking at it from the wrong angle. He had been moved forward. Not dramatically, but enough that the sheet rested closer to the edge than it had before, the fabric catching lightly on the lip of the drawer as though it had been pushed off in that direction rather than placed there. I did not step closer. I did not reach out. I simply stood where I was, aware of the distance between us in a way that felt significant, as though it was something that could change without warning. After a few seconds that felt longer than they should have, I took a step back. I jumped when I was met with a clanging sound that echoed in the small room.

The drawer didn’t jerk or slide abruptly, but moved outwards in a small movement that caused it to extend out fully and collide with the end of the track. It stopped moving as soon as I did as I froze in the middle of my backwards step, startled by the sudden sound. I felt something shift in my understanding then, because up until that moment, I had been treating the movement as something separate from me, something that occurred independently and could be observed from a distance. I stepped back again, slower this time. The drawer followed, clanging into the edge of the track again. It wasn’t by the same distance, but it was enough to make it clear that the relationship between my movement and its own was not coincidental.

I stopped. It stopped. The room felt smaller then. Not physically, but in a way that made the space between us seem less reliable than it had before, like it could close without any warning if I wasn’t careful. I do not remember deciding to leave for the night, only that at some point I was no longer in the room, the light still off behind me and the door closing with more force than I intended, the sound of it settling into the wooden frame louder than it should have been in the quiet hallway. I stood there for a moment, listening, half expecting to hear something from the other side of the door. Maybe another shift, another movement, something that would confirm that it had not stopped simply because I wasn’t looking at it anymore. There was nothing. The silence returned, steady and unbroken, as though the room had reset itself the moment I stepped out of it.

And the next morning when I returned to work like I always do, the drawer was closed. I stood in front of it for longer than I should have, my hand resting lightly on the handle, aware of the faint vibration beneath my fingers and the way it felt like it went straight through to my bones. My hesitation had become more pronounced than it had even last night, some part of me already understanding that opening it was no longer just a matter of confirming what could have changed, but acknowledging that it would. When I did finally pull it open, it was empty. I did not check the others right away.

Instead, I turned, already aware of where my attention was being drawn, and found him on the preparation table. He was positioned neatly, the sheet folded back just slightly enough to expose his face to the overhead light. There was something different about him then, something subtle enough that I might not have noticed it if I hadn’t already been looking for changes, because his head had shifted just enough that it was no longer angled up in that familiar, neutral position. His head was turned slightly towards the door, toward the space where I stood. 

I remained where I was, aware of the distance between us, aware of the stillness of the room, and aware of the uncomfortable certainty that whatever had been happening over the past few days was no longer contained to a pattern that I could observe and record without consequence. I stepped back into the hallway and closed the door, leaving everything exactly as it was.

I went home earlier than usual that day, taking the same route I always take through town, the sidewalks mostly empty, the fog still lingering in the spaces between buildings where the streetlights don’t quite reach. And for a while, the walk felt no different than it ever had, the sound of my footsteps steady against the pavement, the quiet of the town settling in around me in that familiar, muted way.

It wasn’t until several minutes had passed that I became aware of a second rhythm beneath my own, faint enough that I could have dismissed it as an echo or a trick of the way sound carries in the fog, but consistent enough that I could not ignore it once I had noticed it. I slowed, not abruptly, but gradually, paying closer attention to the spacing of my steps. I heard the way each one landed and lifted, and the sound behind me that adjusted with it, not perfectly, not in a way that mirrored me exactly, but in a way that suggested awareness rather than a coincidence.  When I came to a stop, the sound behind me did the same, not immediately but after a slight delay, as though whatever was making it needed an extra moment to register the change.

I did not turn right away. Instead, I stood there listening, aware of the quiet pressing in on all sides, aware of how little there was to mask the sound if it chose to return. And when I finally looked back, there was nothing there. The sidewalk stretched empty behind me, the fog softening the edges of everything softly until the distance became difficult to judge. For a moment I considered the possibility that I had imagined it entirely, that the pattern I thought I had heard was nothing more than my own steps reflected back at me in a way I had misinterpreted. Then I started walking again, and after a few seconds, the second rhythm returned. Faint, measured, following.

I have been writing it down even more consistently since then. Every detail, every change, every small inconsistency that refuses to settle into something I can explain, because it feels increasingly important that I keep track of where things are supposed to be, even if that understanding only lasts until the next time I look. But I have stopped trying to move him. And I have started paying attention to the spaces outside of the funeral home, because I can no longer ignore the possibility that whatever has been shifting inside that room might not be confined to it, and that the distance between where it is and where I am may not be as fixed as I once believed it to be.