The Ninth Victim

I'm an embalmer at the Southwood Mortuary, gifted with a peculiar sensitivity—I can hear the final words of the departed. When an unidentified young woman's desperate cry, "Nathaniel Carr... help me... don't kill me!" pierced my ears, a chill seized me. It was the exact name of my sister's fiancé, whom she had just brought home yesterday. My family branded me a jealous lunatic, smashing teacups to silence me. As the wedding bells chimed, my sister smiled on the altar, and the groom approached me, a wine glass in hand, his gaze behind his spectacles like a viper's: "I hear... you can speak with the dead?"