PLEASE COME COLLECT YOUR DEAD

Kerra Dain knew a bad job by the way people arranged the evidence.

Honest clients placed everything on the table and waited for her to decide what mattered. Liars built small exhibitions. They positioned photographs at careful angles, separated documents into neat piles, and left empty space around the object they hoped she would notice first.

The people waiting inside the Golden Bowl had placed a human tooth in the center of a white saucer.

Kerra stood beneath the restaurant’s red awning, rain dripping from the shoulders of her black coat, and examined them through the window.

A young woman sat with both hands locked around a cold cup of tea. Her eyes were swollen from days of interrupted sleep. Beside her, Lin Anya studied several papers with the calm concentration of someone deciding exactly where another person’s lie began.

Neither woman looked at the tooth.

That made Kerra interested.

She pushed open the door.

Warm air touched her face, carrying ginger, fried garlic, and the faint sweetness of bread from somewhere behind the kitchen. The lunch rush had ended. Chairs stood upside down on several tables, and a tired employee dragged a mop across the floor without looking toward the saucer.

Anya glanced at the clock. “You’re four minutes early.”

“You said there would be food.”

“There is.”

“Then I’m eleven minutes late.”

Kerra removed her wet coat and hung it beside the entrance. Underneath, she wore a charcoal shirt, work trousers, and boots scarred by substances no manufacturer included in its warranty.

The young woman stared at the thin blue thread tied around Kerra’s wrist.

Kerra sat across from her. “How dead is he?”

The woman’s fingers tightened around her cup.

Anya answered. “That’s what we need you to determine.”

Kerra looked at the tooth. “Alive people generally object when those are removed.”

“My father is missing,” the young woman said. Her voice sounded scraped raw. “His name is Olan Pryce.”

“Elin is one of the students using my advice office,” Anya said. “Her father worked as the night caretaker at Saint Orison Burial Grounds.”

“Worked?”

“He has been absent for nine days.”

Kerra pulled the saucer closer. The tooth was a lower molar, yellowed near the root and marked by a silver filling. Dark material clung inside one groove.

Not dried blood.

Soil.

“Who sent this?”

“No name.” Elin removed a cemetery key from her pocket and placed it beside the saucer. “It arrived yesterday. The tooth was wrapped in a page from my father’s notebook.”

“Where is the page?”

Anya handed Kerra a transparent evidence sleeve.

Good. No folded corners. No fingerprints pressed across the writing. No helpful relative had scrubbed the tooth with soap before placing it on the family dining table.

Kerra held the page beneath the light.

Olan’s handwriting leaned sharply to the right. The first half contained ordinary maintenance notes: a damaged drainpipe, loose stones near the eastern wall, a complaint about foxes disturbing flowers.

The final sentence had been written with enough pressure to tear the paper.

THE CHILDREN HAVE STARTED PLAYING UPSTAIRS AGAIN.

Kerra read it twice.

“The caretaker’s house has one floor,” Anya said.

“I know.”

Elin’s face changed. “You’ve been there?”

“No.”

“Then how--”

“I looked at the building plans before accepting this meeting.”

Preparation disappointed people who wanted mystery to announce itself with thunder. Most dangerous places first revealed themselves through property records, unpaid electrical bills, and renovations nobody could explain.

“When did your father begin working there?”

“Seven months ago.”

“When did he first mention children?”

“He didn’t.” Elin swallowed. “He stopped visiting us after the first month. He called every Sunday, but he always came up with reasons not to leave the cemetery.”

“Did his voice change?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he begin speaking more slowly? Repeating phrases? Forgetting names?”

Elin stared into her tea. “He started calling me Ellie.”

“Is that unusual?”

“My mother called me that. Nobody else.”

“Your mother is dead?”

“Six years.”

Kerra nodded once. “Did Olan ever describe seeing her?”

“No. But sometimes, when we spoke, I heard a woman near him.”

Anya stopped reading.

“What did she say?” Kerra asked.

“Nothing. Her lungs kept working.”

A kitchen knife struck a cutting board behind the serving window. Elin flinched. Kerra did not.

“What explanation did the cemetery owner provide?”

“He says my father resigned,” Elin said. “He produced a letter.”

Anya slid it across the table.

The signature at the bottom resembled the one on Olan’s employment contract, but resemblance was cheap. Kerra held both pages beside each other. The resignation had been dated ten days earlier. Olan’s final wage payment had been processed three days after that.

“Mr. Venn claims it was delayed payroll,” Anya said.

“Mr. Venn lies with paperwork,” Kerra replied. “That usually means he has practiced.”

Elin leaned forward. “Can you find my father?”

“Possibly.”

“Can you bring him home?”

“That is a different service.”

The answer hurt her. Kerra saw it travel across the young woman’s face before she lowered her eyes.

Kerra did not soften the truth. Hope given without evidence was only another method of taking control from someone frightened enough to accept it.

“I can determine whether he entered the cemetery after the date on that resignation,” she continued. “I can search the residence, inspect the graves, and identify evidence of abnormal activity. If he is alive, I will do what I reasonably can to remove him.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“I’ll bring back what belongs to you.”

Elin’s mouth trembled.

Anya pushed a plate of dumplings toward Kerra.

The timing was so deliberate that Kerra looked at her.

“She forgets to eat when people cry,” Anya told Elin.

“I do not.”

“You’ve eaten four meals here. Three involved crying.”

“Two involved possession.”

“The dumplings were unaffected.”

Kerra picked one up. It was excellent.

Elin watched her chew, confusion briefly interrupting her fear. That was useful. Terror narrowed the mind until every thought led toward the same locked door. Sometimes the smallest ordinary interruption returned a person to the room.

Anya opened another folder. “Saint Orison has employed four night caretakers in three years. Olan is the third to disappear.”

Kerra stopped chewing. “And the fourth?”

“Found in the chapel.”

“Alive?”

“For eleven minutes.”

Kerra set down the dumpling.

The room became quieter without actually losing sound. Water continued running in the kitchen. The mop bucket squeaked across the floor. Rain tapped against the windows with soft, persistent fingers.

Elin whispered, “Nobody told us.”

“Mr. Venn’s company classified the deaths and disappearances separately,” Anya said. “Different police jurisdictions, private settlements, incomplete employment records. Each incident appears isolated unless someone puts the contracts together.”

“What happened to the man in the chapel?” Kerra asked.

Anya passed her a photocopied report.

The caretaker had been discovered sitting upright against the altar. His mouth had been sewn closed with strands of human hair. Several teeth were missing. Blood had dried beneath his fingernails, and a sentence had been carved into the wooden floor beside him.

DO NOT LET IT LEARN YOUR VOICE.

Kerra looked at the molar on the saucer.

Elin followed her gaze and went pale. “Is that his?”

“The filling should make identification possible.”

“But you don’t think it belongs to my father.”

“I think someone wants you to believe it does before laboratory confirmation.”

“Why?”

“To make you afraid, make you enter the cemetery, or make you stay away from it.”

“That’s three different reasons.”

“Yes.”

“Which one is true?”

Kerra ate another dumpling. “That’s what five thousand dollars a week discovers.”

Elin blinked. “Five thousand?”

“Plus expenses.”

“I don’t have that kind of money.”

“I know.”

Anya placed a signed payment authorization on the table.

Kerra read the figure, then looked at her. “You’re paying?”

“The employment contracts support a civil investigation. My program has an emergency legal and safety fund.”

“Paranormal extermination is an unusual legal expense.”

“So is receiving your father’s tooth by courier.”

Reasonable.

Kerra folded the authorization and placed it inside her shirt pocket. “One week in advance. Protective materials billed separately. If the owner has lied about a death, concealed structural changes, or knowingly exposed me to an entity, the rate increases.”

“How much?” Anya asked.

“That depends on how offensive I find the lie.”

The restaurant telephone rang.

No employee moved toward it.

It rang again.

Anya frowned. “The line was disconnected this morning.”

Kerra slowly turned toward the counter.

On the third ring, the overhead lights dimmed. Elin’s cup trembled against its saucer. The tooth in front of Kerra made a small clicking sound, then rocked upright on its root.

The telephone rang for the fourth time.

Kerra crossed the restaurant and lifted the receiver.

At first she heard only static. Then came the sound of someone breathing through a throat filled with liquid.

A man whispered, “Ellie?”

Elin stood so abruptly that her chair struck the floor. “Dad?”

Kerra raised one finger, stopping her.

The voice on the telephone began to cry. “Please. Please come collect me.”

Behind it, children laughed. Not one child. Many.

Their bare feet pattered across a wooden floor while something clapped slowly in the distance.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Kerra’s living breath shortened. Cold traveled beneath her ribs, precise as a blade being drawn from its sheath.

The blue thread around her wrist tightened.

Her witness breath stood up.

“What is your full name?” the voice asked.

Kerra smiled without warmth. “You called me. You should know.”

The crying stopped.

The thing on the other end exhaled.

Every window in the Golden Bowl clouded white. A message appeared across the glass, traced from the outside by thirteen small fingers:

KER-RA DAIN

Elin covered her mouth.

Anya studied the writing. “Is that bad?”

“It misspelled my name first.”

Kerra hung up. The windows cleared instantly. Outside, the rain continued as if nothing had pressed its hands against the glass.

Kerra returned to the table, finished the last dumpling, and picked up the cemetery key.

“When are you going?” Elin asked.

“Now.”

Anya walked her to the entrance. “There is one more thing. Mr. Venn didn’t contact us. Someone placed a note inside Olan’s employment file. It contained your name and said a black card meant for you would reach me.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know.”

Anya hesitated at the door, then took a small black card from her coat. Blank except for two lines of type: KERRA DAIN, and an address Kerra didn’t recognize. Beneath them, smaller: PLEASE COME COLLECT.

“This arrived at my office three days later,” Anya said. “No sender. Only instructions to give it to you. I get maybe one of these a year. Always for someone else. Never for me.”

Kerra turned the card over. Nothing on the back.

“Keep it,” she said, and did not take it.

“You don’t want to know who sent it?”

“I want to know why Olan Pryce hasn’t called his daughter in nine days. The card can wait its turn.”

Anya put it away without argument, the way a person files something they suspect isn’t finished yet.

Anya opened the door. Cold rain swept across the threshold.

Kerra stepped outside.

Behind her, Anya said, “Please come collect their dead.”

Kerra glanced back at the tooth standing upright on the saucer. “Tell the Golden Bowl to keep the kitchen open. If the cemetery wants me overnight, it’s buying breakfast.”

The city thinned around her in stages. First the restaurants and their competing neon signs, then residential streets with porch lights left on for no one in particular, then long unlit stretches where the rain turned her headlights into two moving rooms. Kerra used the drive the way she used everything before a dangerous job: to become less of a person and more of an instrument. She checked the shovel’s copper edge at a red light. She counted her remaining salt packets at a rail crossing. She did not think about the voice that had called Elin’s father into a disconnected telephone, because thinking about it in advance would not change what waited at the end of the road, and fear rehearsed early only bought her exhaustion she could not afford to spend twice.

By the time streetlights gave way to unbroken dark, she had stopped checking the rearview mirror for anything following her. That habit she had learned to retire early. Some fears, once acknowledged, only grew teeth.

Two hours later, Kerra stopped her truck outside Saint Orison Burial Grounds.

The iron gates were already open.

Beyond them, thirteen fresh graves cut through the rain-dark earth.

Twelve were empty.

Inside the thirteenth, a telephone began to ring.