“Oi. And I’ve heard tell of them appearing in odd spots. There were a man drowned at Ettrick. Couldn’t find his body at first, but then the corpse-light gave him away. Found him straight off.”
Bodies even glowed in the water. This was not a trick of his imagination. Palmer was right. He would be believed, and he would not rest until he was. If he had to hire the assistance of dozens of resurrection men and house breakers and criminals of every ilk, he would do so. No more would he be ignored and dismissed and pitied.
He paced the churchyard, eyes constantly surveying the expanse of it, the crumbled remains of the nearby church, the tall, flowing grass, the quiet of this all-but-abandoned corner of the world. The glow would come. It must.
“Can you not encourage the corpse-lights?” Palmer pressed. “Agitate the soil or some such thing.”
“They don’t come because you demand it.” The resurrectionist picked at his fingernails with the point of a sinister blade. “It needs the right timing and a new body.”
“So resurrect one,” Palmer shot back. “It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“I’m here for a body, yes. The freshest ones fetch the best price.”
The freshest ones also, it seemed, produced the most light. “Where is the body you’ve come to harvest?”
He could see no newly turned-over dirt, no grave newly dug and filled. Indeed, not a thing in this churchyard appeared to have changed in decades, perhaps centuries. Had he been duped? How dare the man!
Palmer bristled. “I cannot see these lights if you’ve not brought me to a place where you mean to ply your trade.”
“I mean to ply it, never you fear.” Moonlight played upon the man’s ghastly features. “I’m not one for wasting m’time.”
“Neither am I. So point me to this body you’ve come for.”
With a look of pity not unlike the one Palmer had seen in the dissecting room but this time filled with a stomach-turning dose of amusement, the resurrectionist smiled at him. “The freshest ones fetch the best price.”
It was long after whispered in the College of Physicians that a young doctor by the name of Palmer had driven himself mad in pursuit of an unanswerable question. He had abandoned his patients, his home, and his faculties. In the end, he had disappeared. That was offered as a warning to his fellow men of medicine not to allow the inexplicable to become inescapable.
Dear reader, remember: Though this tale be cautionary, at its heart are two truths. The first, that lights have indeed been known to appear in all the places where our Dr. Palmer pursued and encountered them. The second, and far more important is this: Some questions are best left unanswered.
Chapter 30
The smell of flowers was almost overwhelming. The coffin, though, was surprisingly comfortable. Gemma was able to lie perfectly still while breathing lightly and shallowly beneath the crinoline cage that was hidden by a light blanket and a layer of flowers.
As no one had yet cried out in shock or dropped dead with fright, she figured Baz was managing to keep still as well. Conversations bounced around. Words of remembrance were offered. Gemma didn’t know how many of Baz’s friends knew he weren’t actually dead and how many believed they had lost someone they cared about. In the end, it didn’t really matter. He’d be dead to them either way.
As unnerving as it was to lie in a coffin, knowing that somewhere someone was watching, ready to report back to her family and the man they answered to, it weren’t nothing compared to the way her heart pounded with terror at the thought of the lid being nailed in place with her still inside.
She and Baz had practiced finding and pushing out a nail from a plank of wood in the dark, but it’d taken Dominique a few days to alter existing coffins for them to use, especially given he’d been altering a hearse as well. They’d run out of time for practicing escaping the coffins themselves.
That worried her.
She’d pried open coffins before, but always from the outside. And she was blasted good at doing it without leaving marks, without drawing attention. She hated that she was good at that. But it also meant she’d a head full of knowledge on coffins andhow they worked. She prayed that’d be enough to get her out quickly, with time enough to free Baz.
Gemma forced herself to keep breathing shallowly as she heard Brogan tell the mourners it was time for removing the flowers and nailing the lids in place. Stone and Fletcher would be doing that as they’d been taught of the trick of it.
With her eyes closed, Gemma felt the darkness descend. Her heart drubbed a steady beat of worry. With the lid on, she could open her peepers at last. She immediately regretted it. Nothing but darkness and distant, echoing voices. Panic slithered over her like a snake in a garden.
The nails were pounded one by one. Heaven help her if they weren’t doing it proper. The coffin was lifted. She slipped her hand beneath herself and felt around until her fingers found the steel pry bar. Her lifeline. Her means of escape.
The coffin wobbled a little as it was moved. After a time, it thudded hard underneath, likely against the floor in the back of the hearse. Then it were shoved forward, deeper inside the vehicle that was to be the scene of the most impossible resurrection ever undertaken.
She ran her fingers along the inner edge of the coffin near the lid, following the notches Dominique had placed there. She heard the thud of Baz’s coffin set next to hers. Muffled voices filled the space around her, and the coffin was jostled. They’d be placing the flowers on either side to block the view through the hearse’s windows. She had to wait until all was quiet and the hearse was moving before she’d risk making a sound.
An eternity passed. There was air enough in the coffin, but her mind screamed that she was suffocating. It was the panic of being nailed in. Only a trick of the brain.
She felt the hearse jar into motion, bumping over the cobblestone street. Now was her chance. She jammed the jemmy bar in place, prying the coffin lid slowly and carefully; thesmallest crack in the lid and they’d be sniffed out. Applying pressure only on the nails holding the lid shut, that was the safest way. Once those nails were pried out, the lids could be lifted and moved.
Gemma worked one side a little at a time. Blessed air began to leak inside. The lid wasn’t free enough to let in much light. She worked at both sides, moving each a little at a time, keeping the lid from bowing. With those nearly free, she bent her arms over her head. She slid the point of her pry bar into the tiny crack between the lid and frame. There was one nail at the head that needed to be loosened. It was a harder angle to manage.