The Cargo in the Attaché

The administrative wing of the Derleth & Sons Funeral Home was never meant to be a place of lingering. The polished linoleum floors gleamed under fluorescent lights, and the air smelled of antiseptic and wilted flowers. I had taken the night auditor position three weeks ago, hoping for quiet solitude where I could catch up on paperwork. The previous auditor had quit abruptly, leaving behind a half-empty coffee mug and a stack of unprocessed invoices. I didn’t ask questions; the pay was good, and the dead were more punctual than the living.

For the first few nights, nothing seemed amiss. I would unlock the heavy oak door at 11 PM, settle into the swivel chair, and click on the banker’s lamp. The soft hum of the building’s ventilation system was my only companion. But on the fourth night, as I pushed open the door, I heard a faint, sibilant murmur from the hallway—like whispered condolences at a graveside. I froze, listened, but the sound faded. I chalked it up to the old pipes settling.

A week later, the whispers grew bolder. They followed me as I walked to the break room, curling around my ears like smoke. ‘Stay,’ they seemed to say. ‘We have all the time in the world.’ I began to feel a phantom tap on my shoulder every time I bent over the filing cabinet. I would whirl around, heart hammering, but there was never anyone there. I stopped reacting. I refused to give them the satisfaction of fear. I even tried to laugh it off, telling myself that the building was just old, that my mind was playing tricks.

But the whispers were not to be ignored. One night, as I was packing my leather attaché case with ledgers and reference books, a male voice, deep and resonant, breathed directly into my right ear, so close I felt the warmth of imaginary breath: ‘I want to come with you.’ My hand froze mid-gesture, clutching a stack of invoices. A cold dread crawled up my spine, and the fine hairs on my arms stood on end. I didn’t move, didn’t turn. I could feel eyes boring into the back of my neck, but when I finally dared to glance over my shoulder, the office was empty. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, mocking my solitude.

I slammed my attaché case shut and hurried out, not even bothering to switch off the lamp. That night, I lay awake in my apartment, staring at the case propped against the door. I told myself it was just my imagination, a stress-induced hallucination. But the whisper had felt so real, so intimate. I began to notice things about the case—a faint, earthy smell emanating from the leather, as if it had been soaked in damp soil. The brass latches grew tarnished, and the stitching along the handle seemed to loosen, as if something inside was pressing outward.

The next evening at work, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. The whispers followed me from room to room, low and buzzing, like a swarm of flies. ‘Take us,’ they intoned. ‘We want to see the world.’ I tried to ignore them, focusing on the rows of urns in the columbarium. But my hands trembled, and I spilled a cup of stale coffee across a pile of receipts. As I knelt to clean it up, I saw a pair of scuffed shoes standing beside me. I looked up—but there was no one there. The shoes were gone, replaced by a faint indentation in the carpet, as if someone had just stepped away.

Over the following days, the attaché case became a fixture in my nightmares. It sat by my bed, watching me. I dreamed of opening it to find not papers, but a gaping mouth filled with graveyard dirt, whispering secrets of the dead. I awoke in cold sweats, the echoing voice still ringing in my ears. I tried to leave the case at the office, but it would appear on my doorstep the next morning, intact and waiting. I burned it once, but the smoke curled into the shape of a hand, beckoning me. I threw it into the river, but by the time I returned home, it was sitting on my kitchen table, dripping with algae and fish scales.

One Thursday night, I resolved to confront the source. I brought a vial of holy water and a smudge stick—leftover from a friend’s new-age phase—and performed a crude cleansing ritual in the office. The smoke filled the room, and for a moment, the whispers ceased. But then they returned, angrier, more desperate. ‘You cannot banish us,’ they snarled. ‘We have no place else to go. We have no place else to go.’ The lights flickered, and the temperature plummeted. I saw shadows writhe along the walls, coalescing into a single figure with hollow eyes. It pointed at my attaché case, lying open on the desk, its emptiness like a wound.

I understood then. The case was a vessel, and I had been chosen as its new bearer. The whispers were the voices of the dead who had been cremated, their ashes scattered without proper rites, their souls left to wander. They craved a place to rest, a living person to carry them. The previous auditor had found this out the hard way. The whispers had spoken to him too, but he had tried to silence them, and they had silenced him instead.

The figure extended a hand, and I found myself stepping forward, my own hand reaching out. The attaché case snapped shut with a click that echoed like a coffin lid. Now, I am never alone. The whispers are my constant companions, crooning in my ear, urging me to open the case, to release them. When I sleep, I dream of a very long road, and I am walking, carrying the case, and behind me, the funeral home recedes into a tiny speck. But ahead, the road stretches endlessly, and I know that whenever I stop, the whispers will grow louder, more insistent, until I am forced to open the case and let them out—into a new place, a new life, a new victim. And I will have no choice but to find another innocent to carry the burden, for the cargo in the attaché never stays still for long.