He didn’t tell them the first time he watched the movies he had all the lights on. He had the controller in his hand and pressed pause when he jumped out of his skin. He didn’t tell them that Erica sat next to him, pretending to read, but really keeping an eye on him. Horror movies were exciting, a shot of fear in the safety of your own home. You could turn them off, or laugh at the poor quality, or the god-awful acting, or grab your sister’s hand when you needed to.

When he stepped into the morgue at the hospital, and tracked his eyes along all the metal doors, he realized that real fear wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t a shot of adrenaline that left him breathless. It wasn’t something he could stop and push to the back of his mind. It was never going to leave him.

“I’ll give you a few moments,” Morris whispered.

Hamish hadn’t come with him. He was probably elsewhere in the hospital getting his nose fixed. Rory took another step inside, but refused to look at the trolley in the middle of the room. He wrinkled his nose, noted the room smelled clean, fresh, not giving away its purpose at all. The walls were painted white and the metal doors were polished to a mirror shine.

The morgue didn’t fill him with fear, but the trolley did. There was no creepy groaning, or shadows, or wolves howling, or people screaming.

This horror was real, and Rory took a deep breath before finally looking.

When their dad died, they stood side by side, hands linked. Rory’s fingers twitched, needing that connection, but no one was there to hold him.

True horror wasn’t screaming, bloodshed, and fear. It was silence, and no movement. It was seeing someone you loved, there in front of you, but gone. It was holding your breath to hear someone else’s, and hearing nothing. Or pressing your fingers to their wrist for a pulse and nothing tapping back. It was touching someone and expecting their warmth, but shivering at the cold.

Rory held Erica’s hand and watched, expecting it to curl round his like it had when they were kids. When the movie got too much, and he reached for her, and she reached back.

Her hand was cold, and when Rory took a step closer, then lay a kiss to her forehead, she felt even colder. He backed away fast and slipped down the wall.

****

At some point someone wheeled Erica away, put her back behind the mirrored door. Rory didn’t look up, he sat with his back to the wall, picking his nails down to the hilt. He thought he’d cry, or scream, and a part of him was ashamed he hadn’t. The overwhelming emotion was emptiness, a huge endless cavern in his chest where his grief-poisoned heart had fallen.

“Rory…” Morris whispered.