Which Witch is Which? Natalie stared at the three headless corpses on the gurneys. Their clothes should have been stripped already, but her assistants were busy. Half of were off, and most of those left were at the office Halloween party. No one was around now, even Grace had gone to the party, at Natalie's insistence. It was strange to have the hallways and offices so empty. She had never really noticed the constant background noise until it was gone. There was no keyboard tapping, no centrifuge whirring, no autoclave humming. Half of the lights in the hallway were had been turned off, and she only had one on in the middle of the room. It created long, deep shadows behind her desk and along the front and side of the big refrigeration unit. Having three headless bodies dressed in black crowding the room didn't help, either. It was all kind of...creepy. "You're being silly, Lambert," she said aloud, trying to dispel the silence. "Get to work!" Most of the bodies that came in tonight would end up ruled as accidental deaths from alcohol poisoning or drunken driving, but not these three. She snapped on her latex gloves and opened the three small bags on the end of one of the tables. Three warty, blue-green faces looked up at her, all having nearly identical quizzical expressions under bushy black eyebrows. The blue tinge was from death, the green was stage makeup. She poked at a hooked nose experimentally and it wiggled under her touch. The glue was coming off on one side. "So!" she said aloud. "Now to determine which head goes to which body." She began the comparison, looking at skin tones and body type. She'd do DNA tests later to be sure, but it should be pretty easy, even with all the makeup. The first one was easy. One of the corpses was considerably smaller than the others, by a good 25 cm. The smallest head belonged to that one. She took the head in the bag and plopped it between the legs of that body. "One down, two to go," she mumbled to herself. The other two heads would be more difficult: they were nearly the same size and shape, and, with the makeup on, the same color. It was when she turned to get a cloth to wipe away some of the makeup that she heard the noise in the refrigerator behind her. Natalie stood perfectly still, her hand outstretched toward her tray of instruments. The sound continued, a bumping against the inside of the unit. Nothing in there should be able to move enough to make that noise. She had some bacteria in petri dishes, but the cold kept them from growing. Besides, they weren't likely to get big enough to try to get out anyway...Right? She slowly pulled her hand back toward herself and turned around to face the source of the noise. The sound continued, growing more insistent. No, she realized after it skipped a beat, that was her heart pounding; the noise had stopped. She peeled her gloves off and slowly walked to the door of the fridge. She found herself unwilling to open the door and find out what was moving. "Oh just open it!" she told herself and, quickly, before she could have second thoughts, she yanked the doors open to find--- Nothing unusual. The top shelf had petri dishes: all were lidded and looked normal. Bags of blood on the center shelf: also normal, for lab, at least. On the bottom shelf, boxes of testing supplies that needed to be refrigerated: normal. Two containers of yogurt and a soda trying to look inconspicuous on the bottom shelf: unorthodox and technically unallowed, but, again, for her lab: normal. Natalie closed the doors and shook her head. She was hearing things. It was probably a normal sound for the unit, but she never heard it with all the other noises of the office. The motor probably needed looked at. She jotted down a note to that effect and pulled on another pair of gloves. Back to her headless customers. It took ten minutes of scrubbing, but Natalie was finally able to get a look at the skin under the theater makeup. The skin tones were very similar, but one was slightly darker and Natalie thought that she managed to match Head #1 to Body #2, which left the other set paired as well. As she bundled up Head #1 to put it with its former body, she heard the thumping again. After pausing to be sure it wasn't her heart, Natalie walked over to the refrigerator. The metal casing was vibrating slightly with each thump, but more on the right side than the left. Pulling off her gloves again and tossing them into the biohazard container, she tried to work up the courage to open the doors. She'd seen so many strange things lately, learned so much that she had thought was only true in books in movies, that she really shouldn't be surprised that there was something haunting the Coroner's Office. Or more precisely, the Coroner's Office's fridge. The noise suddenly stopped, and Natalie pulled open the right-hand door after a moment of shock. Again, nothing. Sighing, she closed the door. "Boo," a voice next to her said conversationally. Natalie screamed and scuttled backwards, nearly knocking one of her beheaded patients onto the floor as she slammed into the gurney. She threw her hands over her eyes and stood still, willing whatever it was to go away. "Nat! It's only me!" Natalie peeked out from between her fingers to see Nick standing across the room from her. He managed to look baffled and amazed at the same time. "Damn it, Nick! Don't do that!" she yelled, yanking her hands completely away from her face. "I'm sorry! I won't sneak up on you again," he said, crossing the room to put his hands on her shoulders. "Are you ok? You're shaking." "I'm fine," she snapped, and moved out from under his hands. "It's just not nice to scare people." "I said I was sorry for sneaking up on you. It was just a joke; it is Halloween after all," he pointed out, smiling. So he was going to play innocent. He was playing tricks on her using his vampire abilities, and he wasn't even going to 'fess up. He probably thought that Halloween was the perfect holiday; the vampires' chance to play "Let's Scare the Mortals". If he was going to be that way: fine. But he could at least tell her how he had gotten the fridge make noise. "How did you do it?" Natalie demanded, crossing her arms on her chest and tapping her bootie-covered foot. "I've told you before: I don't know how I do it exactly. I just move very, very fast," he explained, his brow wrinkled in concern. "Are you sure you're ok?" He sniffed the air. "Have you been having problems with formaldehyde fumes again?" "No! I'm fine!" she snapped and angrily yanked on yet another pair of gloves. "If you don't want to tell me, then...just be that way! I won't pry into your secret tricks, but don't expect me to treat your condition properly if I don't know all that it entails!" "What are you talking about, Nat? You already knew I could do that!" "Oh yeah, you've told me everything!" she said sarcastically. "Like how you can make noises where none should be?!" Nick stared blankly at her and didn't answer. He probably didn't expect her to call him on it. Probably just thought that she was an inferior mortal. She picked up a head to move to its body. "These three were decapitated when the stage fell. Freak accident. I'll have the official report to you later. You can go now." She turned her back on him and made a show of looking closely at one of the neck wounds. Her hands were still shaking from the adrenaline rush of being frightened, and her hands shook as she pulled away one of the black costumes. Now she was just angry at herself for being so stupidly scared and she wanted Nick to leave so that she could sit down and get herself together before anyone came back from the party. "Nat, I have no idea what you're talking about. I have been as truthful with you as I can without putting you at risk." He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him. "I swear that I did no more than say 'boo.' Now, what scared you so much?" Nat took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. He really did look like he was telling the truth. Maybe she was over-reacting. "I thought I heard a noise. Twice. That's what had me so spooked." She gave a quick, half-hearted laugh. "I've managed to scare myself pretty good, huh?" "I guess so," he said and smiled. "What kind of a noise was it?" "It was a bumping, thumping sound from the refrigerator. It's probably just the motor needing a tune-up. I'm sorry I yelled at you." She suddenly felt much more relaxed. She'd just gotten jumpy. She nodded at the body on the table. Nick schooled his features into polite attention as Natalie outlined her findings. "These three unlucky witches were cackling almost to the second they got their heads lopped off. The cuts are clean and there's--" THUMP. "...there's no evidence of--" THUMP. "...of secondary trauma..." Natalie's voice petered out as the thumping continued at a faster rate than ever before. Nick was standing very still, obviously listening very closely to the sound. He swiveled on his heels until he faced the fridge. He slowly walked towards it, Natalie following behind him, all but stepping on his heels. Nick yanked open the right-hand door to see what she had, exactly nothing. The noise stopped several seconds later. Natalie peered around his arm as he half-heartedly poked at the bags of blood. "I don't sense anything alive," he said softly, "and I don't think it's the motor." "What do you think it is?" Natalie whispered. "I have no idea...but it's stopped for now," he whispered back. "Lets just wait here and see if anything happens...Why are we whispering?" "I don't know! Maybe whatever-it-is can hear us," she whispered. Natalie's heart started to pound as adrenaline again flooded her system. "I'm going to work in a haunted lab! Especially since I don't even believe in ghosts." "There aren't any ghosts in here, Nat," Nick said, trying to sound somewhat reassuring. "I'm sure it's somethi--" "Hey, guys!" Nick and Natalie both jumped and turned around, clinging to each other. When they regained control of themselves and let go of each other with embarrassed grins, they saw Schanke leaning against the doorframe. What they didn't see, however, was Schanke's mischievous smile as he hid a remote control in his pocket.