Adelaide: City of Horror

My grandparents have guests, so Mum and I are staying in the house next door. It’s empty, because the Italian couple who used to live there died over two years ago. But the house is still full of all their furniture and clothes* and toothbrushes**. And crucifixes. LOTS of crucifixes***. Crucifixes and lots of fancy ornate furniture and a gold satin bedspread****.

Above the ornate bed and the gold satin bedspread, there’s a light-up picture of Jesus looking miserable.

I feel like I’m in the first scene of a horror film. I’m about to go and have a shower, and I know I’m going to come out, wearing a towel, and I’ll walk down the hall and it will be colder than I remembered. And I’ll open the door to the bedroom, and Mum will be lying on the bed, but she’ll be all wrinkled and grey and sunken, like she’s been dead for a hundred years.
I’ll scream (and, depending on what kind of horror film it is, my towel might fall down). Then sunken-dead Mum will open her eyes and draw a ragged, gasping breath...

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*dead-people clothes!

**dead-people toothbrushes!

***crucifixes? Should it be crucifices?

****PLEASE TELL ME somebody washed the sheets after they died.