“I’m not entirely sure.” He moved a hand across her father’s cheek, indicating without quite touching the skin. “I…wasn’t able to ascertain what happened.”

The veins were black. They created dark rivers beneath the skin, threading across their cheeks, their foreheads, their noses. The thickest branches ran down their throats, and the funeral director had tried to disguise them by giving them clothes with high collars.

“They were like this when I received them. It looks like blood, but it’s not,” the smooth-faced figure before her said. His voice was low, halting, uncertain. “Their blood was drained and replaced during the embalming process. The formaldehyde should have removed any discoloration, but—”

Formaldehyde. He drained their blood and filled them with formaldehyde. The thought was like a punch to her stomach, and Margot felt nausea rise through her.

Everything about this was wrong. Bodies were supposed to relax after death. Rigor mortis should have set in and then faded again, leaving them limp and soft and malleable. Peaceful, even. They were anything but.

The rictus-frozen faces stared blindly at the ceiling. The hands folded over their chests were frozen into grasping claws. Every muscle was taut, stretched to their limits, ready to snap. Their mouths were wired shut, but she was certain, at the moment they died, they had been screaming.

She tried to open her mouth to speak, but in her dream and in reality, words had failed her. She couldn’t breathe.

A snap rang through the room like a gunshot. Her mother’s jaw flew open. The wire holding it in place had given out, and Margot lurched back. The stretched mouth was unnaturally long, the way that could only happen when the jaw was broken. Inside, pulpy, blackened gums were swollen tight around the teeth.

The funeral director moved forward, slamming the lids down in quick succession.

A gasping cry escaped Margot. The lids were shut, but the image was still burned inside her mind, inescapable. The gaping, silently howling scream. The last time she would ever see her mother in the flesh.

“I am very sorry,” the funeral director’s smooth face whispered as he leaned, unsteadily, against the caskets. “I think it would be best to keep the lids closed.”

27

Margot jolted upright, a gasp dying in her throat. Her clothes were drenched in sweat. Her lungs burned, warning her that she’d been holding her breath. A burning, aching headache throbbed.

She was still in her room. The phone’s flashlight sent its cold glow across the ceiling, not quite reaching far enough to properly light any of the walls. The window, locked, rattled as a cold wind pulled at it.

Margot hunched forward, breathing in heaving gulps as she pulled her knees up to her chest. She shook. Her body ached. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but there was no sign of dawn through the window.