A Letter from Mortimer Hawthorne

Dr. Darling,

Your letter found me, though I am not easy to find these days. The funeral home has been quiet since last October. Quiet, but not empty.

You ask whether the dead remember. Sir, my family has served this town for nearly a century. Three generations of Hawthornes. I can tell you with some authority: they remember everything.

For years I kept the most beautiful of them in my private wing, the Museum of the Departed. I did not bury them. I could not bear to. I posed them as they were in life and visited them every evening. They were my finest work.

Then they began to whisper. Let us rest, Mortimer. I did not listen. That was my mistake.

What you keep does not stay kept.

I read in your notes that your subject’s nightmares are memories, and that you mean to let them out. I would advise against it, but I know your kind. You will open the door. I opened mine.

So, a word from one collector to another: what you keep does not stay kept. Last Halloween, visitors walked my halls and saw that for themselves. This Halloween, they will walk yours.

I will be watching. I am always watching.

Yours in stillness,
Mortimer Hawthorne
Funeral Director, third generation