The Last Resurrectionist: Novella Series - Part One

by Jack Hartford

  Copyright © 2021 Gabriel O’Connor

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Gabriel O’Connor

  PART ONE

  Crack.

  That’s not good.

  Lincoln lifted the dead man’s arm to see a bone sticking out from the elbow.

  “Damn it,” Lincoln said as his breath sent a cloud into the air.

  He’d been pulling the body from its casket when it dropped onto the edge. The right arm snapped in half, barely held together. Lincoln looked around, out of habit, before processing his next step. He’s going to notice it, Lincoln thought, rotating the arm to examine the damage.

  I am the worst resurrectionist ever.

  He pulled the body all the way out and laid it on the ground. It was a middle-aged man in faded overalls. He grabbed hold of the upper arm with his left hand to keep it steady and took the bone in his right. He slowly pushed the bone back in. He felt the friction of the grain pulling at the flesh. Then the resistance disappeared and the bone slid right in. It landed somewhere around the socket with a thud.

  Close enough.

  Now there was a gaping hole in the man’s elbow.

  Lincoln covered the hole by pulling the rotted shirt sleeve down around it. It didn’t quite cover it so he pushed the cloth around the edges into the hole, stuffing it closed. That is absolutely not covered up at all. Good job.

  He looked back at the grave - a mess of broken wood and dirt. First things first.

  By far, the worst part of his job was cleaning up. For the next thirty minutes, he packed all the displaced dirt back into the grave. He couldn’t afford to leave a trace of his visit. He didn’t need any extra attention. Each shovelful of soil sent a waft of rotten meat into Lincoln’s nose.

  Lincoln looked at the dead man’s face. The skin was draped over the skull. His bones were for the termites now. Lincoln looked at his eyes - pale and reflecting moonlight.

  No.

  Cleaning up isn’t the worst part of this job.

  A murder of crows looked down at him as they circled the only tree among the graves. Lincoln might call them friends if he didn’t feel their constant judgment. He pushed them out of his mind and dragged the body bag over to the grave.

  || “Ya gotta put ‘em in a bag so they don’t get scraped up. You’re keeping ‘em safe and warm.” ||

  He remembered his father telling him this. A man caught between teaching his craft to a young boy and softening its grisly nature.

  Lincoln looked at the stuffed elbow hole.

  Sorry, Pops.

  || “We keep ‘em safe because their soul is still in there?” The young Lincoln asked.

  “Oh no, their soul’s long gone,” the father said, mounting the body bag on the horse. “We take care of them cause that’s what ya do with everything, right?” He took his son’s hands and raised them up. “These are powerful things, Link. It takes a strong man to keep their hands gentle.”

  The father stood up and gestured to the whole cemetery. “I’m giving all these bodies a second chance. They can come back up and serve a purpose one last time. They can teach new doctors and maybe help save some lives.” ||

  Lincoln slid the man’s body into the cloth, with some jostling and shoving to get it all the way in. He didn’t have the gentle command that his father talked about. Sometimes he felt like he did, especially in moments like this where he lost himself in one of his memories. Other times, he felt the softness with his fiancée. But when it came time to do the work, Lincoln found nothing tender about being a resurrectionist.

  Before tying the end of the bag closed, something pulled at the edge of Lincoln’s eyes. A spot of yellow among the man’s black shoes. It was from his left foot. Lincoln pulled it closer. A yellow stem had broken out from the shoe. There were a few spiny leaves on its end and a thin red line ran down the length. There was some kind of bud at the very tip. It looked like a vine attempting to be a flower.

  Or a vein trying to come back to life.

  This was the third instance of plant growth he’d found on a dead body. It wasn’t strange at first. Bodies decomposed and nature took over. But this was different. Lincoln removed the shoe. There were no roots connecting the vine to the earth.

  This vine was growing straight out of the man’s foot, breaking through the skin in the space by his big toe. Like a hair on his head, this plant seemed to grow from somewhere inside the man.

  Though it was the third time, that made it no less intriguing. Still, Lincoln couldn’t waste anymore time. He put the shoe back on and tied the end of the bag.

  His horse, Coda, stood under the lone tree by the graveyard’s edge, snorting only when the crows came too close. Lincoln gave a quiet whistle. Her ears perked up right away to his familiar call. She strolled towards him.

  Lincoln had fashioned a pulley system on the back of the horse with rope that he tied around the body bag. He pulled the rope on the other side, raising the bag, until it was completely slumped over Coda’s back hump.

  He tried wiping the sweat from his eyes but only managed to smudge dirt into them. He blinked a few times. Lincoln lifted his lantern and spent a moment watching the light and shadow dance on the gravestones. Something about chiseled rock jutting from soft earth felt supernatural to him. Like day and night meeting at the same time and place, existing at once and not at all.

  Around this time last year, Lincoln had an accomplice in his night-time activities. Years before that, resurrectionists like Lincoln’s father could even have a small team. They were precise and efficient. It took them less than twenty minutes to extract a corpse from a coffin.

  While Lincoln would welcome the speed, a crew like that would be far too hard to hide. And regardless, the network of body snatchers had all but disappeared by now. As far as Lincoln knew, he was the last of them.

  The final, desperate straggler.

  He clambered on the horse and pressed her forward. Lincoln only ever dug at the safest times and Dowerton proved to be quiet at this hour. He knew the routes to avoid the usual drunkards. He saw that several of the gas street lamps weren’t lit - he stuck close to the shadows they made.

  He’d heard rumors of new lamps across the sea that required no gas and turned on and off with a snap. Sounded like fantasy to Lincoln. Whatever it was, Dowerton wouldn’t have it.

  Dowerton was an aged place in both time and spirit. Though the entire region wasn’t living in luxury, Dowerton was the worst of them all. The rough edges were abundant in the buildings and the people. Everything felt like a ragged washcloth with holes and frayed ends. The cobbled streets were there for stepping and spitting on, forever caked with mud and mites. There were no neighborly gestures or helping hands - who could afford it? The small, starved town had no sense of home, nor a patience for comfort or enjoyment. Besides a select few, it was a place of work and survival, not much else.

  By all accounts, the town was damned.

  Lincoln wanted a way out.

  They crept into the belly of the town. He couldn’t help but notice some new posters on the walls and shopstands. They were for the competing mayoral candidate. The election was in one month. This was part of Lincoln’s internal calendar. One month to get out.

  Lincoln passed one poster that read,

  Keep your loved ones pure - Vote Hill to purge the dirty diggers!

  There was an illustration of a man digging into a grave while a sheriff was puncturing the man’s chest with a stake. Ouch. Over the last year, Jag Hill had made a name for himself as an ambassador of purity and sanctity for Dowerton. Part of that mission centered around resurrectionists.r />
  Lincoln’s father had been a resurrectionist when the practice was less maligned. Doctors required cadavers for experimentation and teaching. The only legal bodies they could acquire were the corpses of executed criminals. Whenever there was a shortage, they would hire a resurrectionist. Jag had already pressured some hospitals to abandon the practice, though he offered no alternative solution.

  The law was strange when it came to the dead. Defiling a grave was illegal but selling a body was not. Material property had a legal owner but a person’s body was their own - and in death there was no other owner in line. At least for now. Hill would change that. For a long time, most people turned a blind eye. Still, Lincoln’s father hadn’t wanted his night job to be public information.

  Since then, the deceased had become both more sacred and more unclean. If you dug a body from its grave you were defiling a soul’s resting place as well as working with the devil. Lincoln couldn’t tell if Hill really believed it or if it was just a political move. Regardless, his message resonated with much of the town. Lincoln only turned to his father’s old profession out of desperate necessity. He had a family to provide for and this happened to be a lucrative line of work if he was consistent.

  “Stop,” said a voice behind him.

  Lincoln pressed his hand on the horse’s neck to stop her. He turned to face the voice. It was Lincoln’s aunt. An older woman, at least sixty, wearing a thin but layered robe. Her hair was long. A soft auburn tinged with grey. She held a long pole in her right hand that ended with a wick.

  “They’re smoking in front of the hall,” she said, coming closer.

  “Who?” asked Lincoln. He let out a slow breath now that he recognized the speaker.

  “The boys,” she said, referring to the town’s police force by their common name.

  Lincoln slid off the horse and peered around the corner. Three officers were sitting on the steps in front of city hall, laughing and yelling at each other. A fourth, standing up, was the sheriff, Ford Kirby. Smoke hung around their shoulders and they were deep into their drinking night. Ford smacked one of the officers in the face and the others laughed.

  Lincoln turned to the woman. “Thanks, Marj,” he said. “You weren’t waiting for me were you?”

  She looked away. Then her eyes settled at her pole. “Was just finishing up when I saw you come in.”Lincoln pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for the unlit lamps,” he said, now pulling the horse’s reins into his hand. “Go home, I’ll wait for them to clear out.”

  Marjorie sighed. “I trust you Lincoln.” Lincoln made a wry grin. “Is that why you were checking on me?” She turned and patted the horse’s rump as she left.

  Lincoln waited twenty minutes before the drunken mess had dispersed. He led his horse across the street and tied her up behind the doctor’s office. This wasn’t the town’s only doctor but he was the least credible, and least liked, which meant most people steered clear. This was good news for Lincoln and the doctor’s working relationship.

  Lincoln knocked twice on the door. He heard two more knocks from deep inside the house. He checked around him once more for any prying eyes, and unstrapped the body bag from the horse. He pushed open the unlocked door.

  He dragged the body inside and shut the door behind him.

  “Bring it here, “ the doctor barked from his office.

  “Thanks for the help,” Lincoln muttered.

  The doctor’s office was clean and organized, save for one corner. A long table was riddled with dry blood and knife marks. Jars of colored liquids lined the shelf above. A bucket lay on the floor with a mess of blades and surgical tools.

  Lincoln heaved the body onto the table while the doctor kept writing notes at his desk. Doctor Darwin looked thin and bony. Then he lifted his head and laid eyes on the freshly delivered cadaver. He instantly became more plump and hearty. A vigorous smile stretched across his face. The hairs of his rough, pointed beard seemed to curl at that moment.

  “Bloody good stuff,” he said, standing up so fast he knocked over his ink bottle. He ignored the spreading ink and appeared next to the body, stooping low as he untied the bag.

  Lincoln had worked for Darwin almost immediately after the doctor moved in from a larger town called Bell. Nearly three years. The other anatomists in town already had their favored resurrectionists and Lincoln was a newcomer to the game. He’d tried to avoid walking in his father’s footsteps but he needed the work.

  In Dowerton, financial hardship was an inevitability. And Lincoln had failed to keep any job that involved working with others. He’d grown accustomed to Darwin’s oddities and appreciated his similar lone wolf nature.

  “You’re still a bit late,” Darwin said.

  Lincoln crossed his arms, leaning against the door frame. “Had to wait for the good ol’ drunk boys to go home.”

  Darwin zeroed in on the plant growth.

  Lincoln coughed. “That’s the third time I’ve seen that on your bodies.”

  Darwin focused on the little yellow stem.

  “My bodies?” he replied, taking the shoe off.

  “The ones you ask for.”

  Lincoln was glad the doctor’s attention was away from the elbow-bone-hole.

  “Are you getting bodies for anyone else?” Darwin asked.

  “Well, no,” Lincoln said. He got you there.

  Darwin pulled the toes apart so hard it looked like he might actually tear them off. He ran a small metal pick along the skin, scratching in soft strokes. He peeled away the skin near the vine, loosening the plant’s exit hole. He jabbed the pick into the stem and started pulling the vine out.

  Lots of things coming out of other things today….

  Darwin only pulled the vine a small way out. The section that had been inside the foot was a much darker color. The doctor stepped away and straightened his back. He proceeded around the body again, scanning every inch.

  “My back has been aching lately,” Lincoln said. It was an attempt at distraction but it was also true. Lately? Try the last two years. “You wouldn’t know how to relieve that would you?”

  Darwin murmured something. Then his face narrowed.

  Lincoln eyed him and then the body, finding his eyes snapping to the elbow hole. “What’s wrong?” That is absolutely not covered up at all.

  The doctor scratched his beard, flecks of dead skin getting caught in the hairs. He leaned in to look at the man’s hand.

  “He was married,” he said, pointing to the gold ring.

  Crisis averted. “What does that matter?” Lincoln asked, grateful for the diversion.

  “I didn’t expect him to be married,” the doctor said, standing back up. “It wasn’t in his report.”

  “So…..” Lincoln didn’t understand.

  Darwin’s eyes drifted around the body as he muttered under his breath, “I wonder if he has any children?”

  Lincoln stepped closer.

  Darwin’s eyes stopped.

  “And what’s this hole?”

  Damn it.

  Darwin dug out the shirt cloth from the cadaver’s elbow, revealing the black, bone-sized cavity.

  “Odd,” he said.

  “I really gotta get going,” Lincoln said, putting a hand on Darwin’s shoulder. “You mind paying me quick?”

  Darwin turned around, eyes wide and inquisitive.

  “What?” He said. “Oh yes, of course.” He left his tools on the body and went to his desk. He unlocked the safe underneath. It opened with a loud thud. Lincoln glanced out the window - a never-ending habit of his.

  Darwin came back with a small pouch of coins. Lincoln snatched them up and went for the door.

  “Thanks,” he said. Darwin returned to the body. The door shut, sending a wave of cold air in.

  Lincoln’s home was on the northeast corner of Dowerton, near the Hollow Wood. It stood alone, a few miles until the nearest neighbors. It was close enough to the river that you could almost hear the rushing water but far f
rom any ports. A good number of trees encircled the home. It wasn’t as dense as the central forest, but it gave them some privacy. Only a few of these outskirt houses were still standing. The last war forced a lot of people out of the countryside. Widowed mothers moved back into the city to make work and schooling easier.

  It was his parents’ home and he had been close to selling it. Stone steps led up to a sunken porch. The wood was peeling and one side window had a large crack through it. It was a small one-story affair and Lincoln’s childhood memories had aged and faded with it. If he didn’t have a reason to stay secluded, he would have left long ago. The reason he did stay was waiting for him inside.

  Lincoln tied Coda under the stable roof. He walked the short distance from the stable to the back door without a lantern. It was pitch black outside but he didn’t miss a step. He entered as quietly as he could.

  A soft glow cast into the tiny hallway. Lincoln put his hat on a nail in the wall before noticing the woman standing at the end of the hall, facing away from him. She was peering into a bedroom. She was a faint silhouette against the shadowed wall.

  Lincoln moved closer and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  The woman’s flinch was imperceptible, betrayed only by a small escape of breath. She recognized the feel of Lincoln’s hand and the air that followed him.