The dead don’t protest. They don’t weep, they don’t beg, they don’t plead for second chances. By the time I arrive, their stories are already written—the ink just hasn’t dried yet.
The city outside the hospital was a patchwork of old and new, where horse-drawn carriages still rattled down cobblestone streets alongside rumbling automobiles. The streetlights flickered with gas and electric glow alike, a city caught between eras, never quite settling into the modern age. Rain slicked the pavement, casting long reflections of neon signs advertising jazz clubs, tobacconists, and apothecaries. The air smelled of coal smoke, damp wool, and something faintly metallic—an acrid blend of progress and decay, clinging to the lungs like ink on paper.
I stepped through the front entrance of St. Hubert’s Infirmary, shaking the rain from my coat. The reception hall was a stark contrast to the cold streets outside—warm light flickered from hanging lamps, and the scent of antiseptic clung to every surface. Nurses in white uniforms moved with quiet efficiency, their skirts swishing against polished floors. A man in a charcoal suit—likely a doctor—glanced up from a ledger behind the front desk and immediately averted his eyes when he saw me.
“Undertaker,” he muttered, his voice tight with discomfort.
I gave him a slow nod, neither confirming nor denying the title. “I’m here for Margaret Lorne.”
The doctor didn’t look at me directly. No one ever did, not if they could help it. Instead, he flicked through his records, his fingers moving quickly, as though getting me out of his sight would make the encounter less unsettling. “Room 212. She passed an hour ago.”
A nurse lingered nearby, clutching a clipboard against her chest. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, and the way her gaze flitted toward me and then away spoke of curiosity laced with unease. “Is it true what they say?” she asked suddenly. “That they… speak to you before they turn?”
The doctor shot her a sharp look, but I only tilted my head slightly, considering the question. “Some do,” I admitted. “Some don’t.”
She shuddered. “That’s awful.”
“It’s just the way things are,” I replied, adjusting my gloves. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
I made my way down the corridor, my boots echoing against the marble floors. The hospital was eerily quiet at this hour, the gaslights casting long shadows along the walls. I passed a few orderlies who stepped aside without a word, their eyes averted.
One older nurse offered a murmured, “God keep her,” before disappearing into a side room. Others whispered as I passed. I was used to it. People feared what they didn’t understand, and they understood death even less than they did me.
I paused before an open doorway where two nurses stood talking in hushed tones. They noticed me, stiffening slightly, but neither moved away. “Did you hear about the one last week?” one asked, voice barely above a whisper. “Old man lived alone, no family, no one to claim his book. But when it formed, it had a name on the spine no one recognized.”
“Mistakes happen,” the other replied, though she didn’t sound convinced.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I let their conversation fade as I continued onward.
Mistakes didn’t happen. Not in Transcription. The dead knew their own stories, and their books always formed as they were meant to. But unease had a way of settling in the bones, even for those who did not deal in ink and flesh.
By the time I reached Room 212, I already knew what to expect. The stillness, the scent of old linen and fading breath, the weight of a presence just on the edge of existence. A soul waiting for its final chapter to be written.
The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and the ghost of old sweat, the kind of scent that lingered in places meant to keep people alive but failed at the job more often than anyone cared to admit. The body on the bed was still, an old woman in a crisp white gown. Her hair was grey and thin, and her skin sagged as if it had lost its purpose.
A nurse stood near the door, arms crossed, her posture rigid with the kind of unease that only came with witnessing the transition too many times. She didn’t look at me, not really. People rarely did.
I set my case down beside the bed and unlatched the brass clasps. The tools inside weren’t much—just the necessities. A clean ledger, a set of cataloging slips, and a pair of thin gloves to keep my own presence from interfering with the process. The work wasn’t glamorous, but it was necessary. Death called, and I answered.
The woman on the bed had been called Margaret Lorne in life. Sixty-eight years old. A widow. No surviving children. Records said she’d been a schoolteacher once. The kind of person who left an imprint on the world in the form of chalk-dusted desks and the careful scrawl of forgotten lessons.
Now, she’d leave something more permanent.
The first signs of Transcription began at her fingertips. Ink seeped from beneath her nails, deep and rich, as if her veins had been filled with it instead of blood. The lines curled along her skin, shaping the first words of a story no one had read before.
I waited. Never interfere. That was the first rule of the Undertakers. The story had to tell itself.
The ink spread in quiet rivulets, dissolving the flesh in its wake. Bone softened into pulp. Skin tightened into parchment. It was a slow, measured process, as if the body were unspooling the narrative of an entire life from deep within itself.
Transcription. From dust to ink, from breath to memory. From life to something more permanent, if no less ephemeral.
It took hours, it always did. Time had a different meaning when measuring the length of a life. I’d seen this a hundred times, a thousand, but each Transcription still held that peculiar kind of wonder—the fascination of watching a life distill into something tangible, something that could be read and understood.
Violent ends never formed books so cleanly. But Margaret Lorne had gone peacefully, and her body responded in kind.
The page of the book pressed down beneath a fingertip, then another, until Margaret Lorne had been consumed and replaced, leaving a thick, leather-bound book resting where her body had once lain.
I reached out and turned it over. The cover was embossed with an elegant fleur-de-lis pattern, and the spine read, “Margaret Lorne - The Quiet Archivist.”
A fitting name. It suited her. The story had settled, the ink dried, the past transcribed. I let out a slow breath and slipped the book into my case. Another soul shelved, another life recorded.
The nurse near the door finally spoke, her voice quiet. “Do you ever read them?”
I glanced up at her. “No.”
She nodded, as if that was the answer she expected. “Why not?”
Because that wasn’t my role. Because the stories weren’t for me. Because some things were meant to be recorded, not relived. “They’re not mine to read.”
She didn’t ask anything else.
I turned back to my case, locking the clasps. Another job done, another page closed. It should have been just another day. But the dead, I would soon learn, had one last lesson left to teach me.