The following are diary entries taken from a leather-bound notebook that was recovered from an abandoned house awaiting demolition.
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Jun. 6, 1984
Maybe I'm paranoid, I don't know. I'm just going to write these; maybe it will help me figure out what's going on. Last night, something really strange happened in the morgue.
My name is Todd Reather. I work at Campbell City Forensics Morgue, been here for about 12 years. It's an old brick building, but we're one of the few morgues with both the cold storage and the autopsy equipment. My official title here is Anatomical Pathology Technologist. Basically, that's fancy for "the guy who cleans the body." It's not the best work, but it's a living. Best I can do with my degree, I suppose. Anyway, there's me, then there's Jane Sousa, she's a doctor about my age, and she's the medical examiner who actually does the autopsies. I watch her a lot when she works and I don't; it's pretty interesting to see how some of these people died.
The cop who works here is Brett Neilson; he's a stocky guy in his early 20's, nice kid. I guess he got suckered into transferring from the PD, and you can tell he's really uncomfortable here, around all the bodies. After a while, I've gotten used to it. Anyway, he checks all the bodies in and out of the morgue and sends the official reports back to the PD.
Then there's Crane. That's his last name, I don't even know his first name, and he wouldn't tell me when I asked him. God, this guy's creepy. He's got to be 80 something, but he's newer here than Brett is. He looks like we should be doing the autopsies on him; he's so sickly and bony and covered in liver spots. He smells like he hasn't showered in weeks, either. And he walks around with a cane that makes a loud clanking sound whenever it connects with the floor. It would annoy the hell out of me if he didn't hang it on the gurney whenever he wheeled the bodies in. Yeah, that's his job. He transports the bodies from the hospital to our office, and since he supposedly works out of the hospital, I don't have to see him too much.
Anyway, this is what happened last night:
It was about 11 P.M. I was the only one in the office, Sousa went home at 9 like she always does, and Brett had to respond to a call in the area since apparently the rest of the police were way at the other end of the city. I was cleaning up around the fridges and equipment when I heard the front door at the end of our long hallway creak open, followed by the familiar clanking sound of Crane's cane. Odd, since we never usually get deliveries this late. A few seconds later, he stepped into the main room where I was. Without looking at me, he grabbed an empty gurney from the corner and headed back outside. I heard a door slam, and then the gurney being wheeled down the hall. Crane entered the room again with the gurney and a body in a blue body bag. Strange, we've never used blue. I guessed that the hospital must have switched over or something. Crane left the gurney by the door, put the clipboard with the hospital's presumed cause of death on the table, and limped back out of the hallway without so much as a glance my way (which didn't bother me too much, the guy scares the crap out of me anyway). I waited until I heard the van's engine turn over and then walked to the body bag. I picked up the clipboard and glanced at the ER doctor's comments. ...lacerations...removal of hands at the wrists...severe blood loss... This was going to be messy.
What happened next shocked me more than anything I'd ever seen in my 12 years here. I put my hand to the zipper of the body bag, and all of a sudden, the body within began to violently convulse on the gurney. Instinctively, I stumbled backwards, knocking over a table full of scalpels and clamps. By brain snapped back into reality. That person is alive; I have to get them out. I reached again for the zipper and pulled. Nothing. There was no visible obstruction, but the zipper was stuck shut. The body was still careening around the gurney, making it hard to grip the zipper. I regained my grasp and gave another sharp tug. The zipper wouldn't give. Then, almost as quickly as it had started, the body stopped convulsing, lying perfectly still on the gurney. I yanked at the zipper and it immediately gave and opened.
