| The Dead Donβt Stay Buried -> Various!Creepypasta x Fem!Reader |
Rain fell in slow, heavy clumps while faster drops burst violently across the windshield, smearing into transparent streaks each time the wipers dragged across the glass with a tired mechanical groan.
The blades skipped slightly near the center.
Metal rattling beneath the dashboard.
The low hiss of tires cutting through flooded asphalt.
Everything sounded muffled beneath the storm.
The distant mountains dissolved into a bruised smear of muddy brown and dusty black, their peaks powdered white beneath fresh snow that clung to the trees in uneven patches. Fog drifted lazily between them, swallowing entire stretches of forest before coughing them back up again farther down the road.
From a distance, the mountains looked strangely small.
But the closer ridges crowded tightly against the road, rising beside the car in massive walls of dripping pine and exposed stone. Their shadows pressed heavily against the windows.
The kind of closeness that made it feel impossible to breathe.
Water streamed down the rock faces in thin silver threads.
Branches shuddered overhead beneath the weight of rain and melting snow.
Somewhere deeper in the woods, something metallic groaned softly in the windβan old signpost maybe, or rusted mining equipment half-swallowed by the trees.
The sound carried strangely through the mountains.
The heater clicked weakly beneath the dashboard, pushing out air that smelled faintly of dust and old engine oil. Damp wool and lake water lingered in the cramped interior of the van, mixing with the coppery trace of blood that no amount of cleaning ever fully removed from county vehicles.
In the back, the stretcher wheels rattled softly every time the road curved.
Easy to ignore if you tried.
Still, you found yourself counting the noise unconsciously.
The body shifted slightly during sharper turns, the black plastic rustling almost delicately in the dark behind you.
You kept your eyes fixed ahead.
Meanwhile, the windshield framed the world in flashes: wet guardrails that glistened under passing headlights, telephone poles leaning with the weight of age, an endless sea of trees, and the steep drops of the Appalachiaβs which vanished into dark nothingness .
Jim Thorpe always felt isolated during storms.
Like the rain washed the rest of Pennsylvania away and left only the mountains behind.
The fog thickened suddenly as the road curved higher.
For a few seconds the headlights illuminated nothing except swirling white mist.
The emptiness made your stomach tighten instinctively.
Officer Harlow shifted beside you, one hand tightening around the steering wheel as the van crept forward through the dark.
The turn signal clicked hollowly through the silence.
It was pointless, really.
There was no one out here besides you, the officer, and the half rotted corpse behind you.
Somewhere beneath the storm, hidden deep in the trees beyond the shoulder, came the faint sound of running water.
Lake Harmony overflowed badly this time of year.
The streams feeding down from the mountains became violent after heavy rain, dragging branches, roadkill, and sometimes worse things down through the ravines.
Behind you, something wet struck the metal floor of the van with a soft patter.
Lake water leaked slowly through the seams of the body bag, gathering into dark trembling beads before slipping free. The sound was quietβbarely more than a dripβyet in the suffocating silence of the vehicle it seemed impossibly loud.
Each drop landed with a hollow metallic tick that buried itself somewhere deep behind your eyes.
You became horribly aware of the space behind you.
The stretcher restraints creaking faintly with every turn.
Plastic rustling softly against itself.
The heavy shape lying motionless in the dark.
It took every ounce of your willpower not to look.
Not to peel back the black plastic and search the girlβs face for something recognizable.
And yet the feeling persisted stubbornly beneath your ribsβthat awful gnawing certainty that you should.
Like forgetting the name of someone from childhood.
Like passing a stranger on the street who somehow already knew yours.
Your fingertips dug harder into the paper coffee cup balanced in your lap. The cardboard had gone soft from condensation, bending slightly beneath the pressure.
Outside, rainwater rushed violently through roadside ditches, carrying leaves and mud downhill into darkness. The mountains rose on either side of the narrow road in immense black walls, their tree lines barely visible through fog and sleet.
The windshield wipers groaned again.
Officer Harlow finally shifted beside you, one hand tightening slightly around the steering wheel.
βDo you recognize her?β he asked quietly.
The question slid through the van like another sound of the storm.
Another drip struck the metal floor behind you.
Your eyes remained fixed ahead, watching the headlights smear weakly across rain-slick pavement.
The word came too quickly.
Harlow glanced toward you briefly before returning his attention to the road.
He looked exhausted beneath the passing flashes of light. Deep shadows pooled beneath his eyes, emphasizing the sharpness of his expression whenever lightning flickered somewhere beyond the mountains.
For a moment neither of you spoke.
The silence that followed felt different now.
The body shifted faintly behind you as the van rounded another curve.
Then settled still again.
βAre you sure?β he pressed, dark eyes finding yours through the rearview mirror this time. The dim orange glow from passing streetlights caught briefly against the tired lines of his face, sharpening the suspicion hidden there. βYou didnβt recognize her?β
βYes,β you repeated firmly.
The edge in your voice surprised even you.
Heat prickled uncomfortably beneath your skin almost immediately afterwardβnot anger exactly, but the sharp anxious sting that always followed confrontation. Your thoughts fluttered wildly against one another, frantic and directionless.
Did he know you were lying?
Could he somehow prove it?
The possibility made your stomach tighten painfully.
You had spent most of your life becoming smaller around conflict.
It was simpler that way. Safer to nod politely through accusations, sidestep uncomfortable questions, lower your eyes and let louder people fill silence for you.
Even now, with a dead girl leaking lake water in the back of the van and your own name carved into her chest, some pathetic part of you still wanted to avoid making things difficult.
You hated that about yourself.
Because if recognizing her matteredβif saying something could somehow help the investigation or bring peace to whatever remained of that poor girlβthen staying quiet made you selfish.
The word settled heavily in your chest.
Outside, the town drifted past in blurred smears of amber and gray. Rainwater cascaded down steep sidewalks and flooded stairwells between buildings, carrying cigarette butts, dead leaves, and black sludge toward the storm drains.
Jim Thorpeβs narrow streets gleamed wet beneath the headlights, the old brick storefronts towering close enough to feel oppressive.
The mountains loomed over everything.
The windshield wipers dragged back and forth with another heavy groan.
Behind you, water continued dripping steadily onto metal.
Your fingers tightened unconsciously around the coffee cup again. The cardboard had nearly collapsed beneath your grip now, softened completely by heat and condensation.
Harlow kept looking at you.
Not aggressively, but carefully.
Like he was trying to piece together whether you were about to break apart in front of him.
βYou look pale,β he said after a moment.
A humorless laugh almost escaped you.
Why was everyone saying that to you lately?
As if you didnβt spend most of your days under fluorescent lights beside refrigerated bodies?
As if pallor wasnβt practically hereditary in your family?
You spared a glance at yourself in the murky mirror of the vanβs side.
Admittedly, you did strike a resemblance t the corpses you worked on.
His tone remained neutral, but something beneath it sharpened slightly.
The rain intensified suddenly, hammering against the roof of the van so loudly it swallowed the rest of the world whole.
Water streaked violently across the windshield faster than the wipers could clear it, blurring the town into smeared gold reflections and shadow.
For several long seconds, neither of you could see much beyond the headlights.
Just the suffocating shape of the mountains pressing close around the road.
Then lightning flashed somewhere overhead.
Bright enough to bleach the interior of the van white for a split second.
And in that instant, reflected faintly in the rearview mirror, you saw the body bag sitting upright.
The black plastic hung slack around narrow shoulders. Water streamed from the shape in thin rivulets onto the floor below. Its head tilted slightly to one side, face obscured completely by darkness and folds of plastic.
Darkness crashed back in immediately afterward.
Your entire body locked painfully still.
The heater hissed weakly beneath the dashboard.
The tires cut through standing water with a low roar.
βYou sure youβre okay?β
You realized too late that youβd stopped breathing.
βIβm fine,β you whispered.
But your voice sounded wrong now.
Thin and strangled, like someone else had spoken for you instead.
Lightening struck occasionally,illuminating your too-stressed expression to Harlowβs unyielding, prying gaze.
The officer left almost immediately after helping you unload the stretcher.
A muttered goodnight, the tilt of his hat, and then the heavy slam of the van doors.
Then headlights disappeared slowly through curtains of rain, swallowed piece by piece by fog and an unnerving dark until only pale flickers of red taillights remained.
You stood beneath the awning for a moment longer than necessary, fingers curled tightly around the intake clipboard while rain battered the roof overhead in violent uneven waves.
Water spilled from clogged gutters nearby, overflowing in heavy streams that slapped against concrete hard enough to splash the legs of your pants.
The body waited beside you silently beneath black plastic.
The zipper reflected weak yellow security light in thin silver flashes whenever lightning flickered somewhere deeper in the mountains.
You avoided looking at it.
Instead your attention drifted toward the mortuary entrance.
The funeral home seemed unnaturally stiff tonight.
Still; like a held breath.
The old brick building groaned softly somewhere above you as wind pushed through loose siding and ancient pipes. The sound traveled strangely through the nightβlow, wooden, and almost human beneath the hiss of rain.
You swallowed, stalled, and then forced yourself forwards.
The basement key stuck halfway into the lock like it always did. You had to shoulder the swollen door open with more force than expected, and the familiar smell hit immediately; cold air undercutting the musk of dust and the trace of undiluted bleach.
Formaldehyde lingered permanently in the back of your throat no matter how long you worked there, the scent starting to seep in again as well.
Ashamedly, this crapshack was your home now after all .
The overhead fluorescent lights buzzed weakly awake one by one as you stepped inside, illuminating the narrow basement hallway in flickering bands of pale yellow-white. The tile floor reflected the light dully beneath a thin sheen of tracked rainwater.
Behind you, stretcher wheels rattled loudly over the threshold as you pulled the body inside yourself.
The sound echoed, metal vibrating against tile.
Loose wheels squeaking sharply every few feet.
The noises seemed far too loud for the hour.
You grimaced instinctively and glanced toward the staircase leading upstairs, half-expecting your father to appear at the top landing and complain about waking the building.
The thought hit harder than expected.
Your chest tightened briefly, and then the feeling passed like the brief respite of a summer breeze.
The storm muffled the rest of town completely down here.
Just the hum of refrigeration units farther down the hall and rainwater ticking softly against the narrow windows near the ceiling.
You exhaled slowly, shifting your focus on the routine.
You knew the motions well enough your body could perform them half asleep.
The stretcher turned sharply as you maneuvered it toward the embalming room.
One wheel caught briefly against uneven tile before lurching free with a squeal.
Perturbed at the idea of having something else that needed fixing you snapped your gaze down to the floor.
You stopped walking immediately.
Dark footprints stretched across the pale tile floor ahead of you.
Wet soil pressed into grout lines and drying slowly beneath fluorescent lights.
Your eyes tracked them automatically.
Barely human-shaped beneath streaks of mountain mud and rainwater.
The prints crossed the hallway toward your fatherβs office at the far end of the basement.
Then stopped directly outside the door.
As though whoever made them had simply vanished.
Your grip tightened unconsciously around the stretcher handle.
Cold prickled slowly across the back of your neck, the hairs standing on end one by one.
Behind you, lake water continued slipping steadily from the body bag onto tile.
You stared at the footprints too long.
Long enough for details to begin feeling wrong.
The strange dragging impression near the heel, as if whatever made them walked unevenly.
Another fluorescent light overhead flickered violently before settling again with a low electrical buzz.
Your fatherβs office door stood slightly ajar beyond the footprints..
You were suddenly overcome by the bizarre certainty that someone had already gone in there before you arrived.
Your pulse thudded unpleasantly behind your ribs.
You looked back toward the basement entrance instinctively.
Still closed, still locked.
Nothing of value had been taken.
And yet the feeling remained.
A morbid curiosity settled quietly into the back of your mind, needling at you with thin bony fingers.
It rationalized itself quickly,
Your phone sat heavy in your pocket.
Harlow had only just left.
If someone was inside, you could call.
If someone was hurt, hiding, waitingβ
The thought tightened painfully around your lungs.
Your eyes drifted again toward your fatherβs office.
The door remained cracked open only slightly, revealing nothing beyond a narrow wedge of darkness.
The footprints seemed darker now.
Wet mountain soil drying slowly into grout lines.
A strange dragging impression marred several of them, as though one foot had been pulled unevenly behind the other.
You imagined following them.
Pushing open the office door.
Your stomach lurched hard.
Every instinct in your body revolted against the idea immediately.
The same animal part of the brain that notices eyes in the woods before the rest of you catches up.
The thought arrived suddenly and with startling force.
The mountains had taught you that lesson young.
There were noises you ignored.
Roads you didnβt take after dark.
Shapes in tree lines you pretended not to notice.
Living in Appalachia meant understanding that curiosity could become a kind of suicide.
Your rainboots suddenly felt impossibly heavy against the tile floor. Anchored there. Your legs stiffened beneath you until even the thought of movement felt difficult, heavy like lead.
Cowardice rooted itself deep in your spine.
Hated the humiliating relief that followed your decision.
Routine fixed everything.
You tore your gaze away from the office door and forced yourself toward the supply cabinet instead. The wheels of the stretcher squealed softly behind you as it rolled a few inches across uneven tile.
The sound nearly made you jump.
Your hands shook more than you wanted them to as you pulled open the cabinet drawers, staring at a crowd of gloves in your fatherβs size.
You grabbed the first pair in your size and struggled briefly with them, fingers catching awkwardly against damp skin before finally snapping into place with soft elastic pops.
The embalming room smelled faintly metallic tonight beneath the usual sterile sting of disinfectant and formaldehyde. Cold air drifted steadily from the refrigeration units along the far wall, humming softly enough to blend with the overhead lights until the sounds became one continuous mechanical drone.
You focused on that noise.
Not the possibility of someone standing silently in the dark only feet away.
The body bag crackled loudly as you unzipped it, the sound too bright in the tiled room, like someone crumpling cellophane inside your skull.
Cold damp air escaped immediately, rolling out in a visible cloud that ghosted across the stainless steel table. The smell followed seconds laterβlake water, mud, and something human underneath beginning to turn, that particular sweetness that meant the bacteria had started their work in earnest, breaking down the last of her from the inside out.
The girl's face emerged slowly beneath the harsh fluorescent lights.
Colorless and swollen lightly from the water, yes, but recognizable in a way that made your hands hesitate on the zipper.
Pale hair clinging damply to her cheeks and throat in tangled strands that you would have to comb out later, working from the ends to avoid pulling, the way you'd been taught. Her eyelashes were still wet, clumped together in dark triangles against her skin.
For one impossible moment, she looked less dead than exhausted. Like someone sleeping badly, dreaming something they couldn't wake from.
Her large eyes seemed peaceful behind translucent lids, her thin lips quirked up in a small, serene smileβthe relaxation of muscles that happens when the rigor releases, when the face settles into its final expression whether you want it to or not.
Your chest tightened painfully.
You knew that smile, you knew that face
Not from Eerie, not from Split River High, not even from Lake Harmony.
The realization slid slowly beneath your skin like something cold and alive, a leech finding purchase in soft tissue.
Three years ago beneath softer lighting and different flowers, in the viewing room at your father's funeral home on Marrow Road before it had been closed down.
You remembered powdering her cheeks with the brush that had belonged to your mother, working the cosmetic into the waxen skin until it looked like something approaching warmth. Remembered folding her hands carefully over her stomach while her mother cried hard enough to vomit in the hallway upstairs, the sound carrying through the vents.
You remembered your father standing in the doorway, watching you work, his own hands red-knuckled and trembling from the early Parkinson's he wouldn't acknowledge.
"She's a sweet thing," he'd said, his voice the gravel it became in the evenings. "Handle her gently."
The memory hit so vividly your hands nearly slipped against the plastic beneath her shoulders. Muscle memory overpowered reason, and like an automaton you moved; the woman was heavier than expected as you transferred her from the stretcher to the embalming table, waterlogged tissue adding density that dry flesh never had. Your muscles strained beneath the dead weight, the lumbar region of your spine protesting the torque.
Cold soaked slowly through your gloves where your fingers pressed against her sleevesβcotton, damp, the same blouse she'd been wearing then, you realized with a lurch, the same pearl buttons you'd fastened at her throat to hide the autopsy incision.
You positioned her head on the headrest, fingers finding the occipital bone, tilting her chin up to expose the carotid. The skin was cold, rubbery, resisting your touch like it remembered you from before and didn't want you back.
The trocar waited on the instrument tray, heavy and gleaming. You reached for it, and your hand stopped.
Not possible. You knew they had been closed. You had checked. The lake hadn't done thisβpost-mortem clouding didn't force lids apart. But there they were, staring up at the ceiling, the corneas milky with decomposition.
You could feel the office behind you.
The door you hadn't closed. The darkness where the light didn't reach. The weight of someone standing in the space between the filing cabinets, watching you work with a patience that was more akin to a predator scouting out its next meal.
The trocar slipped from your fingers and clattered against the tile, loud as a gunshot.
You knew what you would see if you did.
You didnβt bend to retrieve it.
Your breath fogs in the cold room, each exhale visible, measured, deliberateβthe technique your father taught you for steadying your hands before making the incision.
Count backward from ten. Make the first cut on one.
But you can't remember what number you're on. The body on the table has begun to steam slightly in the dry air, moisture rising from her clothes in thin wisps that curl toward the ceiling like fingers uncurling.
Her eyes are still open. Still fixed. And nowβnow you see that the smile has changed. It has widened, fractionally, the corners of her mouth lifting in a way that requires muscle contraction, requires blood flow, requires life.
"You're not real," you say. Your voice doesn't sound like yours. It sounds like your father's voice, that flat professional tone that promised everything was under control. "You're tissue and fluid and decay. You're chemistry breaking down."
The body doesn't respond.
But the steam rises faster, and you smell something beneath the lake water and rotβsomething older, mineral, like the inside of a cave that has never seen sunlight.
Like the abandoned dorm building.
Behind you, the office creaks.
Not the hinge of a door, but the floor.
Weight shifting on old boards.
Someoneβsomethingβtaking a single step from the carpet onto the linoleum threshold.
Your training takes over, or some fragment of it. You reach for the trocar without looking down, fingers finding the metal by memory, the weight familiar, comforting in its violence. You grip it tight enough to make your knuckles ache and force yourself to look at the body, only the body, the task at hand.
The jugular. You need to access the jugular to begin drainage.
You position the instrument above her throat, angling for the hollow where the vein lies shallow. Your hand trembles. The point hovers over her skin, not breaking, just touching, a dimple forming in the waxy surface.
Your training takes over, or some fragment of it. You reach for the trocar without looking down, fingers finding the metal by memory, the weight familiar, comforting in its violence. You grip it tight enough to make your knuckles ache and force yourself to look at the body, only the body, the task at hand.
You start with the clothes. Standard procedureβremove, catalog, preserve. Your scissors snip through the damp cotton blouse,
You peel the fabric back from her shoulders, working methodically, refusing to rush, refusing to think.
Beneath her ribs, however, you canβt manage to ignore the fact that the same scar is there.
On her left side, just above the hip, a smooth patch of healed tissue the size of a half-dollar. You freeze, scissors hovering. You touch your own side through your shirt, the phantom ache that never quite goes away.
The same dimensions, the same placement, the same waxy texture that the doctors in Philadelphia called a birth defect.
But you know this body. You prepared it three years ago. You washed it yourself, handled every inch of it with gloved hands, and there was no scar.
She'd died of lymphoma, wasting away in a hospital bed, her skin unblemished except for the bruises from IV lines and the hollows where the disease had eaten her from within.
You force your hands to keep moving. The blouse comes away, then the bra, the underwear, everything placed in evidence bags. You roll her gently, checking for lividity, for wounds, for the telltale signs of struggle.
There are no marks from the lake. No debris in her hair, no algae under her fingernails, no water in her lungs when you aspirate a sample into the beakerβjust clear fluid, chemically neutral, but contextually wrong.
You palpate her abdomen, feeling for the organs, for the stiffness that should indicate her cause of death. The cancer had taken her liver, her spleen, her lymph nodes. You remember the autopsy report, the hollowed-out cavities, the way she'd felt light when you lifted her, as if the disease had already done your job and removed everything heavy from inside.
Now she feels dense. You press against her stomach and feel something shift beneath the skin, something solid and organized that shouldn't be there three years post-mortem.
You make the incision. Not the jugularβyou need to see inside.
The scalpel slides through tissue that parts too easily, without resistance, without bleeding. You spread the wound and look.
Two of them, healthy, pink-gray, perfused with blood that hasn't started to break down. You touch one with your gloved finger and it gives, resilient, living tissue in a dead woman who died of organ failure, who had no kidneys left when you buried her.
Your breath stops. Your hands withdraw, trembling now beyond control.
She didn't drown. She didn't die of cancer this time. She died of something that left her organs intact, that filled her back up with what she'd lost, that arranged her hands and opened her eyes andβ
Behind you, the floorboards creak again. Three distinct footsteps, heavy, unhurried, moving from the office carpet across the tile threshold. You see the shadow stretch across the floor beside the table, long and hooded, black against white, and you smell itβthat particular combination of wet limestone and copper that you thought you'd left in Eerie.
The body on the table stays perfectly still. Her eyes have closed again. The smile is gone, replaced by the slack neutrality of true death.
The footsteps reach the door. The handle turns, the mechanism clicking with deliberate precision. The door opens, the bell from the outer office chiming faintly, impossibly, though you're certain you locked the front entrance.
You stand alone in the preparation room with a woman who died twice, who carries your scar, who has been filled back up with something that resembles life, and you realize with a clarity that makes your teeth ache that you are not preparing a body for burial but for it to perhaps walk the Earth again.
