When Two Dead Twins Moved at the Same Time in the Morgue, Doctor Frederick Suddenly Turned Pale

In the cold room of the morgue, the bodies of two little twin girls lay when one of them began to laugh and my blood froze in my veins.

It was my first shift at the city’s central morgue. It was nearing two o’clock at night, and the cold coming from the metal cabinets penetrated to the bones as if winter had been locked inside the building. Doctor Frederick Hayes stood at the table and filled out papers. And I could not take my eyes off those two little faces.

“Doctor… did you hear that too?” I asked quietly and took a step back.

Frederick stopped his pen.

“What should I have heard, Christina?”

“Laughter. A child’s laughter.”

Only the low hum of the old exhaust fan could be heard in the room. The girls had identical light-brown hair, and both wore white hospital bracelets on their wrists. A purple ribbon was tied in one girl’s hair, with a tiny silver bell hanging from it. That bell seemed motionless, but its presence remained strangely fixed in my memory.

Frederick looked over at the girls and sighed tiredly.

“It is your first days here. Working with death deceives the mind.”

“I am sure I heard a sound.”

“They are the only children in this room,” he told me calmly. “And dead children no longer have a reason to laugh.”

His words frightened me more than they reassured me. A few hours earlier I had seen the girls’ mother crying in the hospital corridor. She kept repeating that Elene and Nora had been completely healthy and had drunk only warm milk before going to sleep. But the police report said: suspected poisoning, both deaths occurring almost at the same time.

Frederick took out a small glass vial. A pale pink liquid swayed inside.

“They found this beside their bed,” he said. “Whatever happened, it began at their house.”

“Who gave it to them?”

“We will find that out if you do not get in my way.”

He put on gloves and reached for the scalpel.

“Hold the first girl still.”

I carefully touched her wrists. The skin was cold, but not as it should have been on corpses. My fingers were trembling. When the knife approached her chest, the girl’s hand suddenly moved and touched my wrist.

“Stop!” I screamed. “She squeezed my hand!”

“It is a postmortem convulsion.”

“Check yourself!”

Frederick looked into her eyes, then placed two fingers on her neck. Several seconds passed. His face slowly turned pale.

“Doctor?”

He moved his hand to her chest and froze. Then he placed his ear against the girl’s tiny heart.

“Impossible…” he whispered.

I fell to my knees beside the table. I put my ear to her chest and heard a weak, irregular beat.

Her heart was beating.

Then the girl’s lips opened slightly and childish giggling rang out in the room. Frederick staggered backward. The other twin’s fingers slowly curled on her stomach.

“They are alive too!” I screamed.

Frederick reached toward the telephone, but the name appearing on the screen suddenly stopped him. His hand remained in the air. At first I saw only his pale face, and then the small vial in his pocket.

The door was locked from the outside.

Frederick leaned toward me and said quietly:

“Christina, before you call anyone, you have to see this folder…”

His hand reached toward the black folder…

His hand reached toward the black folder, but before his fingers touched the lock, the morgue door opened with such force that the metal drawers hanging on the wall clattered.

Police Inspector Daniel Ward stood on the threshold. Two orderlies and a tall man dressed in an expensive coat entered with him. The man’s wet hair was combed back, and his face wore such calmness as if he were attending an ordinary meeting, not the deaths of two children here.

“I am Alex Hartman, the girls’ father,” he said. “Why are they not letting me approach my children?”

There was no fear in his voice. Only irritation.

Daniel looked at Frederick.

“Doctor, I was called from here. They told me that something had changed.”

Frederick immediately closed the folder.

“One of the bodies was moving. It may be a nervous reaction.”

“No,” I said. “She has a heartbeat. Both of them do.”

Alex looked at me for the first time. His eyes paused for a moment on the badge hanging around my neck.

“Who are you?”

“The new assistant.”

“Then you are probably mistaken.”

“A child’s heartbeat is not a mistake.”

The inspector approached the table. He put his hand on the first girl’s wrist and his color changed.

“Call an ambulance,” he said.

“I already called one,” Daniel replied.

At that moment, the little bell hanging from the purple ribbon rang again. The sound was so faint that only I heard it. The girl’s eyelids moved.

“Her name is Elene,” I said quickly. “The other is Nora.”

Alex turned his head sharply.

“How do you know?”

“It is written on the bracelets.”

“Both of them are named Lea,” he said.

Silence fell over the room. Daniel looked at the bracelets. One really said Elene, the other Nora.

“Their father should have known their names,” I said.

Alex’s jaw tightened.

“Everything got mixed up at the hospital. The children are in shock. I did not come here to argue.”

Frederick gripped my arm so tightly that his fingernails dug into my skin.

“Go outside, Christina.”

“Why?”

“Because this is already a police matter.”

But I saw something else in his eyes. Fear. Not because of the girls. Because of something that lay in the black folder.

The ambulance workers rushed in. They transferred the girls onto small stretchers. Elene’s hand clasped my fingers. Her skin was cold, but alive. Before they carried her through the door, the girl opened her eyes slightly and moved her lips.

“Mother…” I barely heard.

Alex heard it too. He blocked one of the orderlies’ way.

“The children will come to the hospital with me.”

“No,” Daniel said. “They are going to the doctors first.”

“I am their father!”

“And precisely for that reason you will have to wait.”

Alex cast the inspector a look as if those words were a threat. Then he went to Frederick and said to him in a low voice:

“If these two wake up, everything is over.”

Frederick lowered his eyes.

I froze.

“What did you say?” I asked.

Alex immediately looked at me.

“Nothing.”

But a small metal key fell from his hand onto the floor. It rolled directly toward the black folder.

Daniel picked up the key.

“Was this yours?”

Frederick did not answer.

The orderlies took the girls out. As they passed through the door, Nora’s little finger curled once more. I could no longer breathe.

Daniel put his hand on the folder.

“Now we will find out what you are hiding.”

Frederick raised his head.

“If you open it, no one will be able to protect us anymore.”

“Whom do you mean, doctor?”

At that moment, the sound of a telephone came from inside the folder. Not mine, not the inspector’s. The ringing came from where the documents should have been.

Daniel opened the lock and put his hand on the first sheet. Only one sentence could be seen on it: “The fourth child is still alive”…

“The fourth child is still alive”…

Daniel’s voice froze in the room. Frederick closed his eyes, while Alex lost for the first time the calm expression he had maintained all night.

“What does this mean?” I asked.

Frederick seized the chair.

“Christina, you have to leave here.”

“You have already told me far too much for me to be silent now.”

Daniel took a small memory card from the folder. On its surface, in red pen, was written: “Storage Room Twelve.” The clock hanging on the wall showed four. Outside, an ambulance siren wailed.

“Where is Storage Room Twelve?” Daniel asked.

Frederick answered:

“In the old children’s clinic.”

Alex struck the table with his fist.

“All of this is fabricated!”

“Then you will not be afraid for us to see it,” Daniel told him.

He inserted the memory card into the computer. A black-and-white camera recording appeared on the screen. In a narrow room of the old clinic stood two beds. The girls were sleeping. Beside them stood a woman, holding a small glass vial in her hand.

I immediately recognized the shape of the vial.

“They found this at Alex’s house.”

In the recording, the woman turned toward the camera. Her face appeared clearly.

Mother.

The woman who had been crying in the corridor a few hours earlier was pouring the liquid into the children’s cups herself. Then she stepped back and called someone. Alex entered the room.

“Is the dose enough?” he asked.

“They look as if they are no longer breathing,” the woman answered.

“Doctor Hayes will do the rest.”

Frederick’s face appeared on the screen. He stood with his back to the camera and changed the documents of both girls. He had written down the time of death in advance.

Only the sound of the video could be heard in the room.

“You…” Daniel turned to Frederick.

The doctor bit his lips.

“I did not want to kill them.”

“But you recorded the death.”

“Alex told me that the children had to disappear temporarily. Their mother owed money. If the children were officially considered dead, custody and the insurance money would remain with her.”

Alex shouted:

“Shut up!”

Daniel put his hand on his weapon.

“Where is the fourth child?”

Frederick looked toward me. His face completely collapsed.

“Elene and Nora are not the only ones. Their brother, Ioane, was left at the clinic at birth. Their mother was told that he had not survived. In reality, he was alive and was transferred to an orphanage.”

“Why did you hide him?” I asked.

“Because it did not suit Alex for three children to exist. Only the twins were entered in the inheritance documents. By making Ioane disappear, he gained control of everything.”

Alex ran toward the door, but Daniel blocked his way.

At that moment my phone rang. It was from the hospital.

“Mrs. Christina, the girls have regained consciousness,” a nurse told me. “But one of them keeps repeating that we must find her brother.”

On the other line I heard a child’s voice.

“Christina… Ioane is here…”

The call ended immediately.

Daniel put handcuffs on Alex. Frederick leaned against the wall and cried for the first time.

I thought we had already heard the worst. But a few seconds later, the police radio thundered.

“Inspector, movement has been detected in the old clinic. There is a child locked in Storage Room Twelve. Smoke is coming out of the room.”

Daniel looked at me.

But Alex smiled quietly.

“You will not find Ioane,” he said. “Because he is no longer there…”