I hope you enjoyed last week's offering, Rose's Story: "John Henry James" an excerpt of historical mystery set during the Revolutionary War. For my second unveiling, I wanted to share a story for all the horror/sci-fi buffs out there. While last week's protagonist was a Patriot with important friends and a righteous mission, this week's lead... isn't. You see, we'd like to think all our ancestors were good guys, but that isn't feasible. Long before the modern conveniences we enjoy today, our predecessors grew up in a dog-eat-dog world, and the main character of this week's story, Elias Hayes, was one of the outliers of the family tree.
In 19th century Edinburgh, Scotland, there were The Haves and The Have-Nots and Elias was a hopeless Have Not. As a night watchman at a graveyard, Elias is truly stuck in a dead-end job. But one night he gets an offer he can't refuse from the most diabolical doctor in town. You see, there's some bad business afoot in Edinburgh and local savvy entrepreneurs have started doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons. With medical science exploding in popularity all over the city, brilliant medical minds are learning more than ever about human anatomy, but the only way to learn is to get hands on with the corpses of those who have donated their bodies to science. But a low supply and a high demand create the need for more bodies... and, thus, more body snatchers. Tempted into the unthinkable, Elias Hayes reluctantly becomes a body snatcher, but when murder enters the mix, where will Elias draw the line? I now give you, Miles' Story: "Elias Hayes."
Miles' Story: Part II
Elias Hayes
Edinburgh, Scotland
1828 AD
“Excuse me, sir? My name is Dr. Robert Greene. I was wondering, are you the only night watchman on duty this evening?” Greene asked, stepping up to the stone security booth of Edinburgh’s Greyfriar’s Cemetery.
“Why ‘es, sir. I am. I’m ‘ere every night. Elias Hayes, sir. ‘Ow can I ‘elp you?”
“Yes, Mr. Hayes. Do you happen to know if there were any burials that took place here in the churchyard- or what do they call them here in Scotland, the kirkyard?- yesterday or today?”
“Why ‘es, sir. A woman was interred ‘ere jus’ this mornin’. Jus’ over there.”
“Were you here for it?”
“No, sir. M’ friend Bart Clark was though. E’s the daytime watchman.”
“Say, Mr. Hayes, if you don’t mind me asking, does this job pay well? I know that’s an awfully forward question for a stranger, but I was wondering if you might not like to make a bit more money for your troubles since you’re something of a night owl anyway?”
***
“Oolrigh’ then, Elias?”
“’m oolrigh’,” Elias had called back in a shaky voice from beneath a growing heap of wet earth. But he was only partially alright. His head ached and his stomach was doing flip flops in his belly. Who could blame it? The two exchanged nervous glances as they dug, the smell of dirt and earthworms penetrating their cold, dripping noses. A light rain began to fall from the black night sky.
“Looks li’ we’re ‘bout to ‘ave ourselves a lan’slide, Bart,” Elias said. “Jus’ a bi’ furthah.”
The rain drops struck the tombstones and the cold Scottish dampness chilled the men to their very bones as they dug into the mud. The two jerked with a start as a crow cried a soggy, solitary caw a few graves away.
“Bloody bird! I’ve a splitting ‘eadache already! So wha’ we going to do if she’s not ‘ool in one piece then?” Bart asked nervously with a yellow smile that faded all too quickly from his snuff-stained teeth to be so casual.
“Dunno. Guess we’ll jus’ pick up the pieces, and be on with her then,” Elias smiled. Grave robbing was an ugly business, he thought, but it beat the task that doctor would be put to when they got the body back to the lab.
“Cutting up corpses. Wha’ a righ’ mess of an occupation!” Elias snickered under his hot breath; a cloud of steam formed. It was getting colder and wetter. The cemetery’s night watchman may be around soon. A loud “clink” brought Elias’s mind back to dark, damp reality. Bart leered over Elias’s shoulder and the two threw their digging spades aside and jumped into the deep hole. A few swipes at the residual dirt uncovered the wooden coffin below them. It groaned under the weight of their bodies.
“Coas’ clear, Bart?” Elias called as he began to pry the lid. Bart craned his neck to see over the piles of dirt. “Yeah. Looks li’ … Hold on. My word, Elias. There’s a woman. I think she sawr us!”
“Wha’ are you on aboutchu blubbering lug?” But Elias realized that Bart’s eyes were not playing tricks on him. An old woman was walking towards them. She had long braided white hair and wore a gray dress. The men saw her coming and ducked for cover hoping they had not been seen. Bart peered out again after a few moments and the woman was upon them. The grave robbers both scrambled to their feet.
“We were just…we…” Bart stammered.
“Better bend than break,” the old woman said pleasantly. It was an old Scottish adage that she had spoken. Her face looked kindly enough. Was she the night watchman’s wife? Was she a distraught recent widow here to visit a grave? Bart and Elias looked at each other.
“Uh. Yeah,” Elias replied, hesitantly.
“Right?” the old woman asked inquisitively. “Better bend… than break?”
“Sure,” Bart offered. “Listen, mum, i’s righ’ cold ou’ ‘ere an’…”
“Better bend…” the old woman whispered, and she stepped behind a large angel’s statue and out of view. At that moment, Bart fell to the lid of the coffin yelling in pain.
“M’ leg!” he shouted. Elias dropped to his knees to help his friend. When they looked up again, they were completely alone.
“Ow! What was she on about? Oi, ow!” Bart said, seething with pain.
“Dunno,” Elias replied. “She was a strange old bat, for sure, walking ‘round a graveyard alone. It’s almos’ midnigh’! Maybe twas a sign tha’ we shouldn’ be ‘ere! Le’s get you back to the doctor. He can fix whatever’s wrong with yeh leg, but ‘elp me get this body ou’ firs’.”
The two men couldn’t open the wooden coffin lid, so they bashed it to splinters instead. Steam rose off their backs as they labored in the cold and the rain. Elias grabbed a sack and threw it over the body as they hoisted it out of the grave, Bart working one-legged. They looked around wondering where the woman had gone who said so strange a thing in a graveyard.
Elias supported Bart as they shouldered the weight of the body and the three hobbled to the edge of the cemetery where the horses were tied outside the kirkyard. The stallions snorted and pawed the ground fiercely in anticipation, their hardened hooves clanking off the cobblestones.
“Dirty deeds,” Elias admitted through gritted teeth, as they hoisted the limp body into the wooden wheelbarrow.
“Indeed,” Bart sniggered. He painfully mounted the steed he would ride ahead on, as lookout.
“Chk, chk, Brom Bones,” Bart whispered. “We go’ a body to deliv’r.”
***
The still death-shrouded body hit the table with a loud thud, which made Elias’ headache worse. He and Bart stood shaking with damp and cold as the candles in the basement laboratory flickered around them. “Where did you get it?” Greene asked.
“Greyfriar’s, of course. Uh, doc,” Bart simpered through his pain. “’ow ‘bout looking at me leg? Fair bit o’ pain, I’m in. I ‘urt it when…”
“When we realized ‘ow late it was gettin’,” Elias finished. He looked cross at Bart, who seemed to get the message.
“Yeah, right, I um, fell.. and could you just check on me leg?” Dr. Greene, to whom mending broken legs was laughable, looked annoyed, but reluctantly agreed.
“Here. Drink this for the pain,” he said, handing Bart a cup. “And here. I won’t wait for you to complain about your back pain again, either,” he said, handing a cup of relief to Elias as well. “Now, take that sack off it while I’m doing this,” Greene snapped. He pulled up Bart’s trouser leg as Elias untied the rope on the body’s shroud.
“Broken. How on earth did you snap your infernal tibia?” he asked.
“Wha’s a ruddy tibia?” Bart answered, wincing in pain as the doctor began to set his leg.
Elias yanked and pulled at the burlap that covered the frigid corpse. He yelled, horrified, all at once, and leapt away from the table. Startled, Bart and the doctor both jumped, resulting in Bart screaming in pain, “Wartch it, doc!”
Elias just stared at the table and slowly stepped backwards away from it. When Bart turned, he was equally horrified by the sight.
“Blimey,” he said. “It’s ‘er.” The flickering candlelight illuminated the bluish-gray face of the corpse. It was the woman they’d spoken to in the graveyard, and their blood ran cold moments later when Greene revealed that she, too, suffered from a broken tibia.
“Better bend than break.”
***
“I need another one,” Dr. Robert Greene said to the backsides of his two young grave-robbing henchmen. Bart and Elias groaned groggily from the hard stone floor of the Edinburgh University dissection lab.
“Wha’s tha', doc? We jus’ got you one,” Bart moaned, still delirious with sleep. Elias was startled. What for? It wasn’t even light out yet.
“Exactly what I said, you oaf. I need another body. Tonight!” Dr. Greene shouted impatiently. He slammed the heavy wooden door of the laboratory.
Elias sighed, sitting up and brushing the greasy dark hair from his eyes. He was at eye level with what was left of the creepy woman’s corpse. Organs floated in jars. The smell was… unpleasant. Wax was melted onto the table from a candle that had burned clear down to the wick.
Apparently, Dr. Greene had worked on through the night, his counterparts passing out on the floor nearby. Even though Elias and Bart weren’t exactly used to luxury, waking up to this was a shocking eye-opener. Elias shook the last traces of sleep from his clouded mind.
“And ‘ere I though’ ‘e was bringin’ us breakfas’ in bed!” Bart rolled over laughing a disgusting, slimy laugh.
“Well, you’re off the ‘ook. Broken leg and all. Bu’ where am I gonna ge’ another one yet?”
“Dunno,” Bart replied, straightening himself up and meanwhile coming face to gruesome face with the dissected corpse. “Think the ol’ bat’s got ‘erself a ‘usband?”
***
“Edgar, I’ve go’ a proposition for you,” Elias said to his younger brother. The boy was just 15, but tall and strong and as capable as any man. Elias’s green eyes met Edgar’s. He was going to have to tell it quick. Like pulling off a bandage.
“Stealing bodies?” Edgar exclaimed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Why?”
“Twelve guineas apiece. Tha’s why.”
“Blimey!”
“Blimey’s righ’. But to answer your question, the docs in the medical school cut ‘em up. See how they tick, you know? Makin’ all kindsa discov’ries, they say. I say they’re a lo’ of nutters lockin’ ‘emselfs up in the dark and cutting blokes open, but they pays well.”
An hour later, Elias, who was still not recovered physically or mentally from the night before, and his younger brother, Edgar Hayes, were on their way to the Edinburgh Vaults to meet with a man named McGee who had a few hot tips on “freshies.” Not to be put behind schedule, Dr. Greene had coordinated the meeting between Elias and McGee since it was costing him time and money to have one of his snatchers laid low with a broken leg. On their way to the Vaults, little brother Edgar had a lot of questions.
“Why’d we gotta dig ‘em up, ‘Lias?”
“Well, they can’t rightly cut up live ones, now can they?”
“But I though’ only the criminals go’ sold to the schools to ge’ cu’ up!”
Edgar was right about that. The bodies of Edinburgh’s truly sinister convicted criminals were often condemned not only to death, but also to dissection, and the practice worked as something of a crime deterrent.
“Well, Scots mus’ be straightenin’ themselfs ou’, see? No’ as many being condemned anymore. Them docs go through convicts right quick. Even ‘em poorhouse chaps and the blokes what die in the asylum… all of ‘em get donated to the medical schools. But it’s never ‘nough for all the docs that do the cuttin’ up. An’ they do this all over. Even in London. I know a fella what sells to Oxford and Cambridge! But them are the types what always wants more, what can I say? Greene pays me well for my services, and anyone willing to pay so well can be my boss any day. Now listen. After we meet McGee at the Vaults, we’re headin’ back to Greyfriars. To the Potter’s Field section of the kirkyard. Tha’s where they bury ‘em poor paupers no one cares about. No grave markers even. Just a field a dead people. Tha’s my drill. Scout the cemeteries lookin’ for a funeral, go back at night and dig ‘em up.”
“Brilliant! I think I might like this, ‘Lias!”
“Let’s hope no’, then…”
***
Elias and Edgar had just arrived at South Bridge where a man called Derby McGee was waiting to take them to a place Elias had never been- deep below the city of Edinburgh and into the legendary South Bridge Vaults.
“McGee?”
“Hayes? Follow me. Who’s ‘at?”
“M’ brother.”
“Lit’le young. Very well. Come on then.”
Elias’ head pounded as they followed McGee around one of the towers of the bridge, trailing him as he passed through a wrought iron gate and into a stone corridor. They were inside the bridge itself now as McGee ushered them through heavy wooden door beyond which was a dark stone staircase that appeared to be so long and so deep that it could very well have descended into hell itself. Edgar looked to his brother with trepidation, and a pang of unease shot through Elias at Edgar’s concerned expression. This was no business for a boy. What had he been thinking?
“You comin’ or not?” McGee shot back at them as he stepped deeper into the Scottish earth, his tiny lantern being the only source of light or warmth. Until.
They rounded a bend. In front of their eyes, an endless labyrinth sprawled in the dank, dark depths. Elias gawked, stopped in his tracks by the sight that seemed to go on and on and on. It was all made of stone and there were countless hundreds of tiny stalls lined up inside the corridor. Some were storage units, filled with myriad items. Everything from furniture to wooden crates to chests of clothing. Other stalls were rooms squatters inhabited, featuring entire families asleep in piles of straw, right then in the middle of the daytime. Surely these were some of Edinburgh’s lowliest, most destitute dregs of society. There were stalls outside of which scantily clad women stood. They beckoned at the passing men slowly, their missing teeth, pasty hunger-panged frames and the rancid smell of whiskey and vomit only luring in the most desperate of customers.
A sweet smell emanated from other booths yet… heady, smoky, deep… Passing by, Elias could see men and women in various states of dress and undress sprawled on exotically patterned cushions on the floor. Some were passed out, others smoking from a long pipe, all seemingly completely unaware that there even was a world around them.
Banging and hammering and cutting sounds came from other units where cobblers and hatters worked on their wares. In the darkness, people would dart from one stall into another, only shadows left in their wake. The Edinburgh Vaults were Scotland’s biggest rat’s nest and these people were its ugliest, most sinister vermin.
“In here,” McGee said finally, after it seemed as if they had been walking for miles through the debauchery. “Mr. McMasters, this is Elias Hayes and his brother.”
McMasters sat the dark room in a wooden chair. His fine, expensive suit was a dark forest green, his bald-top rotunda of curly hair was redder than fire, his skin a sallow yellow, his teeth brown and rotten and his light green eyes watered in the smoky air. He looked like a deranged clown in a real nice suit. He cut to the chase. “Who do you contract with?”
“Dr. Robert Greene.”
“Unfortunate. He’s talented, as the rumors go, but he’s not liked anywhere in Britain. Bit of a rotter, most say. For a young chap.”
“I don’ much like him m’self.”
“You need a body for him tonight?” he asked, and Elias nodded. “I know two lads name of Burke and Hare who get the job done. For a small cut, I’ll get you in with them.”
“Greene’s go’ enough to make it worth the while. He does surg’ries in the medical school’s operating theatre. He buys the bodies from us for 12 guineas apiece and charges all his students 3 guineas each to watch him perform the surg’ries.”
“What a greedy blighter. How many students he got?”
“Fifty.”
“He’s making a hundred and fifty guineas a night?”
“Tha’s righ’.”
Wiley old Duffy McMasters just shook his head. His wheels were visibly turning. “Greedy bastard. Might be time for us to take a cut on him then. We be the ones doin’ the dissectin’. That is, if you blokes don't mind your hands getting a little... bloodier than normal. Wha' you say?”
***
The Hayes boys are obviously in over their heads. Will Elias let his young brother stay caught up in the underworld life? And as for Elias himself, is his conscience gone for good?
There is a subplot that weaves its way around this story. It's that of Dr. Greene's paramour, Arabella Ainsley and her father, Edinburgh's most brilliant surgeon (and Greene's boss). When some disappearances begin to happen, Greene finds himself in trouble and Elias is left "holding the bag," one might say. You do not want to miss the rest of this story and all the snatching, murder, ghostly encounters and intrigue that go along with it. I hope you liked this sneak peek and I can't wait to share more with you! As always, your likes, comments and shares here and on social media go a LONG way in helping me get the word out, and I appreciate all of you who read and help me share. I've got a story from every genre in this book. What would you like to read next week? Thank you to you all. -Kelly