by Brian Hodge
She selected the thinnest blade from the tray and went to work on him, slipping the tip under one eyelid and working it in and around. Gareth, considerate, angled his head to help. They came out easier than she expected and, mercifully, there was almost no blood.
Would that she could’ve said the same of her own.
But she persevered, until she saw the world anew, and shared it with the closest thing to God she was likely to ever know. She would give them their theater and, since she now had at hand so many tools of the trade, couldn’t think of any reason not to indulge Wrath for a long time to come.
Starting on the top floor, maybe, and working her way down.
A GOOD DEAD MAN IS HARD TO FIND
Hate to interrupt, but sharing a few preliminary details seems essential for this particular story, to put its elements in their proper context.
I wrote this for a planned shared world anthology called Monster Noir, created and edited by Steve Savile. The premise was fun and fertile and full of endless possibilities: Back in the 1950s, a community called Nyxon was founded as a sanctuary for all the old movie monsters and assorted fellow travelers, to continue doing what they’ve always done, but now away from polite society.
Steve put up a number of extant and newly created characters as open source material for anybody’s use, as connective tissue between the stories. Among the former, which I used, was Dr. Septimus Pretorius—one of Henry Frankenstein’s old professors; among the latter, the quartet of brothers who go by a multitude of names.
For the main focus, I gravitated toward genuine historical lowlifes William Burke and William Hare, a pair of Irishmen who got up to grim mischief in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Scotland. Their repute has gone down as nocturnal body-snatchers who toiled to supply the growing black market demand for medical school cadavers, although that’s not entirely accurate. They did little, if any, actual body-snatching, since they reasoned that creating their own dead bodies out of live ones was easier than digging up and walking off with those that were dead already. I deemed them fair game for the anthology because they turned up a time or two in the offerings of Hammer Films and the like, although seemingly reinvented with a working class English demeanor.
As for Monster Noir, sadly, that befell a series of publishing misfortunes and, as of this writing, has for now been given up for undead.
The Brothers never showed on the premises until after eleven, or so said those who claimed to know. Coming up fast on twelve now and they still weren’t here, and Hare started thinking maybe they’d best give it up for now. Stroke of midnight’s when the proprietors started up with the wench-and-goat show and, well, you see it once, really, was there any good reason to see it again? None as Hare could think of.
First time and all, you hear what’s going to transpire and it sounds like a spectacle that’ll surely bring a case of wood to a John Thomas that doesn’t get up to much mischief these days. Then it happens and all you can think of is how amazingly disgusting it all is. That, and maybe wondering, Don’t that horn HURT?
Bloody old world was full of disappointments like that.
Hare tossed down the last murky dregs of ale and clacked his tin mug back to a tabletop with more scars than one of old Doc Pretorius’s rush jobs.
“William,” he said. “I propose we cut our pecuniary losses for one night and take leave of this fine establishment before I see something that causes a right failing of me gorge.”
“Ain’t waiting another day longer than what we needs to, William,” said Burke. “We needs the money, and we needs it quicklike. And if it’s the goat as what’s got ya worried…I think it kinda likes it.”
“It ain’t the goat as such, William.”
“Well, it would be for me.” Burke gave a shrug of the heavy shoulders that put the muscle behind their operation, that could bear a pillow down on a face and hold it tight as long as matters required. “Dunno why. Gots a soft spot for goats, I guess.” Then he brightened with an idea: “You ain’t gotta watch, ya know.”
“Got ears, though, now, ain’t I? And wouldn’t I look bloody silly with me fingers stuck in ‘em for the duration? Never be able to show me face in ‘ere again without some sportin’ fella ready to carve it off for chuckles.”
The Tea & Strumpets was just that kind of place even on its better nights.
Alas, moments later it looked as though he wouldn’t be leaving just yet, the door easing open slicklike, instead of banging as usual, and in they came as though they owned the place: four blokes in pale gray silken suits and their eyes hidden behind the little round lenses of identical dark glasses. Even the rowdiest of the rabble parted before them, a real knife-through-butter act, and wouldn’t you know it that a front row table suddenly opened right up.
Same brothers, a different name everywhere they went. The Krays, they were called here. Hard to keep track of it all once you start trying to chase them down halfway across Nyxon and back. Course, you just mention “The Brothers,” and most folks knew exactly the lads you meant.
“Creepy buggers, ain’t they,” Burke said. “For a bunch o’ dandies, I mean. Something peculiar about a man what never goes anywhere without a pair of dainty white gloves…let alone four of ‘em.”
“You’d do well to keep such observations to yourself, William. Them gloves’d show your blood off nice and sparkly bright.” He stood and slapped a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “In fact, ‘owsabout you let me ‘andle the talky bits and you sit tight with your gob shut.”
Burke sucked at his teeth with an agreeable nod. “For the best, prob’ly.”
Hare made his way across the stickiest floor in Queenstown District, shouldering the worst of the drunks out of his way and slipping past the sturdy ones with polite finesse. He checked his pocket watch and sighed. Three minutes to midnight and he swore he could hear bleating from backstage.
He approached their table with his hands in front so everybody could see them in plain sight and empty. He stepped up to the nearest brother and not a one of them paid him the least bit of attention. Rather not deal with these chaps at all, but he didn’t see any way around it—if it was going on in public, these four knew about it, along with a frightful grasp of most things going on in private, too.
“Mister Kray…? A moment of your time, if you please?”
And just like that, didn’t he have all four of them peering right at him. No eyes to speak of, just eight dark gray discs like the soulless eyes of sharks.
“Don’t want no trouble, now. Just a bit o’ info. Prepared to pay for it, too.”
At the far side of the table, two of them exchanged a glance, then pivoted their pallid blond heads back his way. Lovely.
“Do we look like we’re in need of your money?” they said.
“Well, I do ‘ear you lads can burn through a fat wallet in a night’s time without much effort.” Feeling himself about to stammer, Hare cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is…can a man of discriminatin’ tastes ever have too much wedge on hand?”
The nearest Kray burst into laughter, and a colder sound William Hare thought he’d never heard. “Ignore my brothers,” the fella said, and stood, rising from his seat like a pale cobra. “Sometimes they amuse themselves in strange ways.”
If that had been meant to put him at ease—and Hare doubted it was—it only made things worse.
“Movin’ right along,” he said. “This shouldn’t come as a total surprise tonight, neither. Tried sending you four a note of introduction the other day…that is, if the scabby runt ever made it as far as he promised ‘e could, and I can’t swear as ‘e did.”
The Brother mused this over, or pretended to, as though each day brought them dozens of hand-delivered notes. “You and your partner—and I believe that’s him over there digging the last of his dinner from between his molars—you’re seeking an addict…am I right? A very special kind of addict?”
“Got the note, then. Good.”
The Brother shook
his head. “No.” He leaned in close enough to whisper. “We just read minds.”
Then the laugh again. This one apparently amused himself in strange ways too. He slipped a hand into one of his pockets and came out with a folded slip of paper, and with his gloved and nimble fingers danced it before Hare’s eyes.
“A name. To your specifications. And where he can frequently be found. But I’m a curious man.”
Truer words, and all that. Hare held his tongue.
“What kind of business could a rat-faced graveworm like you possibly have with one of his kind? Because I have my doubts you’ll be half as glad to find him as you seem to think you will.”
“’ere now—graveworm indeed! Just you ‘old on.” Hare drew himself up to his full wiry height and couldn’t help but scowl. “I dunno who you been talking to to ‘ear such nonsense, but we ain’t never robbed a grave in our lives. Well…maybe one or two when times got tight. But still. Respectable murderers, we are. We ain’t no common robbers of graves. If a man’s not got pride in ‘is work, what does ‘e got?”
The Brother Kray nodded once. “Well argued.”
“And our business is our own. And our employer’s.”
The Kray’s face creased with a thin smile that fell well short of his little dark specs. “Interesting.”
Bollocks. Said a bit too much, hadn’t he?
From all around came an uproar of cheers and guttural zeal. Hare chanced a glance toward the platform and saw that some dead-eyed salt had sauntered out from offstage. She gave the audience a mechanical shimmy and took a preliminary bow.
“Who but one man,” the Kray went on, “could possibly be ambitious enough to want any business with one of the Hydes?”
They exchanged cash for paper, and since Hare didn’t deny the speculation, and probably couldn’t have convinced the creepy sod if he had, the Brother seemed to file the information away for use some other time, in ways that he might only know when fresh opportunity arose.
Hare pocketed the name and waved to Burke that it was time to leave, and the goat earned his keep for one more night.
*
Out of the alleys and back in the streets, they trudged home toward the boarding house where it felt as though they’d been living forever, and always would. Peculiar, the way time seemed to fold, linking past and present, and papering over interim years and incidents that the two of them could barely remember, if at all.
The Queenstown District, it was called here, although nobody could say who’d made the final decision that settled it once and forevermore. Some had wanted to call it Queens End, or so he’d heard, with another contingent stumping for Queens Bottoms, of all things. Bleedin’ disrespectful, the both of them, to Hare’s thinking.
Queenstown suited it just fine. Gave the old place a touch of dignity and class, and maybe she needed that. The buildings looked stately enough high up, with Georgian lines and Tudor timbers, but drop your gaze straight ahead, and why, it seemed like every other shop was a butcher’s, windows full of the upended carcasses of lambs and pigs and the odd bit you couldn’t quite put your finger on. And the fog—bloody hell, it never let up, did it, a permanent misty cataract over the sun by day, and come nightfall, a rolling dank murk that might spit out a dapper vampire, or maybe the Ripper himself, in his top hat and cloak.
“Like living here, do you, William?” Burke asked.
“Well enough, I suppose,” said Hare. “Don’t you?”
“Yeh, sure. But…I guess what’s got its ‘ooks into me is…‘ow’d we come to be ‘ere?” Burke stumped along the cobbles and cogitated, a low and inquisitive rumble building deep in his chest. He wasn’t a man given to overthinking a situation, and when he pushed it, it appeared to hurt. “What I mean to say is…when was it we started soundin’ like we come from the East End o’ London? Ain’t never been there in me life, but ain’t I sounding just like one o’ them blokes?”
“True, that.”
“Irish lads, ain’t we? By way of Scotland?”
“That we are, William.”
“So ‘ow come we doesn’t sound like it no more? A thing like shouldn’t ‘appen to the likes o’ us. A pair o’ more stable fellas than us you could never wanna meet.”
“Well, now, you raise an excellent point, William, and I’m none too clear on all that meself.” Hare took a look around and shook his head. “Nope. Don’t look much like Edinburgh, does she?”
“Still…we’re ‘ere, ‘owever it ‘appened,” Burke said, “and it feels like ‘ome enough to me. I wouldn’t give two squirts o’ piss for a city where you couldn’t count on sellin’ a dead body for a tidy profit at the end of an honest night’s work.”
“It’s got that going for it, right. Although…I confess I do miss Mags.”
“Yeh,” said Burke, now glum. “And I miss me Helen. ‘ow come they didn’t make the trip, William? I keep expectin’ ‘em to turn up at the door and they never does.”
“Maybe you should give up on that one, eh, William,” Hare said, as gentle as he could. “I’m guessing it’s somethin’ to do with not enough folks rememberin’ ‘em. We’re the ones folks remember. And maybe for our dear wives’ sakes, that’s the best.”
“What does you mean by that, William?” Burke cocked his head and began, absently but with increasing agitation, to scratch at his neck the way he sometimes did when he puzzled over past and present. “I ain’t followin’ what you mean.”
“Nor should you, old son. It’s just the ale talkin’.”
When, after a moment, Burke stopped fiddling with his neck, it was a welcome relief. Not sure why, but Hare was convinced that whatever memory was gnawing at his partner was best left alone, snug as body in an undisturbed grave. Because from time to time the same thing happened to him, as well, except it was his eyes that itched.
Some days it felt they hadn’t so much moved to Nyxon, and Queenstown, as they’d been reborn here, fixed into place and worked and reworked by the memories of people he didn’t even know.
For a long time now, a rhyme had been lodged in his forebrain:
Up the close and down the stair,
In the house with Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox, the man who buys the beef.
Somebody had to make up a thing like that, because Hare sure hadn’t done it. He had no gift for rhymes, and no use for them, either. So if somebody else had made it up, then that somebody had to know what the pair of them got up to, and truth was, even in a fogbound shadowland like this, a trade such as theirs was best kept mum, on a need-to-know basis. But it couldn’t be just one clever somebody, could it? Plenty knew, felt like. There were times when Hare’s head echoed with the sound of entire mobs of nippers singing that bloody little rhyme at him.
And Knox…why, on any given day he scarcely remembered the man. Had to stop and remind himself sometimes. Medical fella, right? Right. Taught some classes, never enough bodies to open up for lessons on how all the icky bits hook together. Demand bred supply, with no questions asked when you brought him fresh ones.
Men of science were he and Burke, when you looked at it from the proper angle. Public servants of the highest order. Certainly they deserved better in the sartorial department than the tatty duds hanging in their closets. They’d earned uniforms. The ladies always liked a man in uniform.
The cobbles led home, as the cobbles always did, and they made their goodnights on the stairs.
“A sound sleep to you, William,” said Hare. “We’ll surely need it tomorrow.”
*
Four days ago they were in the presence of genius, of that he had no doubt, although if this was the price of such a lofty intellect, Hare was happy to have received a lesser scoopful on the day the good Lord was dishing out brains.
Neither he nor Burke had a trace of squeamishness when it came to dead bodies. Wouldn’t be much good at their work if they did, now would they? But corpses, even when you had to create them yourself
, were strictly a commodity, see. Merchandise, nothing more. Move the meat, help the cause of science, do your public service for your fellow man.
But to live with the buggers, day in and day out? Oi.
Yet that’s exactly what this Doc Pretorius did. Bits and pieces floating in tanks of murky fluid, where they sometimes gave the occasional twitch—why, the splash alone was enough to seize up your heart. Then there were the whole ones, wee little fellas peeking out from jars, their tiny features distorted by curves and ripples in the glass. Cute, in their way, but most looked ill-tempered, like if you tried to pet them they’d just as soon snap your finger off. He had no idea if they were alive or dead.
You could almost say the same of Pretorius. He reminded Hare of an old coat Burke had taken to wearing during one of their more skint winters, nicked from a docile specimen they’d acquired and delivered. Mostly wool, the coat was, but mended with patches of rabbit fur and cotton blanket and such. That was Pretorius all over—knobby old head as bald as a buzzard’s, and skin tones that didn’t quite match up here and there. And if that wasn’t a pair of lady’s hands poking out from the ends of his sleeves, Hare didn’t know ladies’ hands half as well as he thought. God only knew what the geezer’s insides looked like.
And maybe the doc could fit him with a pair of new ears while they were at it, because Hare could not have heard that right, what the old man had just asked of them.
Burke, however, didn’t appear the least bit phased. “We doesn’t come cheap,” was all he had to say, puffed up with pride, but then Burke wasn’t one for thinking through the sheer bloody headaches of a situation.
“I expected no less,” Pretorius told them. “Deliver what I’ve asked for, and I’m prepared to compensate you very handsomely.”
