The Impossible Girl

by Lydia Kang

  She’d been asleep for some time, when she realized her body was moving. But not by her own volition. Warm hands, gentle hands, were on her body.

  They were undressing her.

  “We’ll put her in the same gown that Miss Cutter lent her,” the maid, Jane, was saying. “The missus says so.”

  “And what did the miss have to say about that? The way she acted, she didn’t want anyone in here but her.”

  “She didn’t have much to say about it,” Jane said. There was a slightly smug sound to her voice. “Mr. Schermerhorn fed her laudanum, and she’s sound asleep in the upstairs guest room! I suppose that’s one way to silence your wife-to-be.”

  The other maid’s hands had grabbed Cora’s hip and shoulder, and she was now in the process of turning her over; her arms flopped, doll-like, according to the law of gravity. She could feel the air on her wet back, and a towel drying her off.

  “Goodness, she’s soaked through with this ice. I suppose they wanted to preserve her for a while. Did they call to have a daguerreotype picture?”

  “No. I don’t believe so.” Cora was rolled, left and right, and there was a tugging on her arm. “Never mind with the corsets, Minny. Just put on the chemise and bloomers, and lots of perfume along the way. Her hair, we’ll just comb it and put in a fresh ribbon.” Jane paused. “Pity. I heard she used to go to cemeteries to find dead people for the resurrection men.”

  “No! She did? A Cutter woman?” Minny whistled. “No wonder the elder missus wants her buried and out of the house! I heard that the fiancé wasn’t the least pleased that Miss Cutter might have to share her inheritance. Perhaps Miss Cutter gave her poison! She reads those terrible novels all the time, about ghosts and murders.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if half the uppertens had used some inheritance powder to get their gold. But this one was ill anyway,” Jane said, poking Cora’s chest.

  “Mmm. Ugh, she’s awful cold. Lot of good that ice did to banish the fever.”

  There was more rustling of sheets and garments, flopping of Cora’s body this way and that way, as careful as the maids tried to be. Inside, she thought to say something.

  You shouldn’t dress me. I’ll do it later.

  I’m not really dead, you know.

  I’m so sleepy. So very sleepy.

  “Did you see that?” Jane said.

  “What?” Minny stopped touching her. “What is it?”

  “I swear, I saw her breathing.”

  “No, that can’t be. Three doctors said she was dead. They said she had no pulse. She’s dead as a day-old fish.”

  “Watch her.”

  For an eternity, Cora didn’t breathe. It was rather easy—she was already breathing so slowly.

  “Fetch that mirror, Minny,” Jane said. Cora felt a cold piece of metal on her upper lip. They were looking for the steam of a breath issuing from her nostrils. Cora didn’t breathe, and a knot of discomfort began to tighten in her chest.

  “Nothing. She’s dead.” The mirror was withdrawn, and Cora was unceremoniously flopped over onto her stomach as they buttoned the back of her gown. Facedown, she could breathe a little without being noticed, though her face was compressed into the linens on the bed. There was more primping of her body, and in the process, Cora fell asleep again.

  When she awoke later—perhaps a few minutes later, perhaps a few hours—she was no longer soaking in the wet, cold sheets. In fact, the feather mattress felt harder, and the air reeked of perfume. Oh. It must be the lily of the valley perfume they put on her when they changed her clothing.

  She heard voices, but they were muffled, strange, and masculine. The sounds were oddly distant and near at the same time. Cora tried to move her fingers, and she jerked a little when she realized her fingers were threaded into a cold, lifeless hand.

  She wiggled her fingers free from the dead one, but for some reason, the left side of her body did not respond at all to her commands. She tried to lift it, to move her hands and toes.

  Only the right side of her body responded.

  She attempted to open her eyes, which was enormously difficult as they felt pasted together. But slowly, they opened. Her left eyelid felt so sluggish compared to the right. Everything was dark. She shifted as best she could, just her right hand pushing against the bed. Her wrist hit wood nearby, perhaps a chair. The sound of her wrist hitting the hard surface made a quiet, cottony sound that seemed everywhere at once, as if the walls had drawn closer.

  She tried to speak. Perhaps Suzette was nearby now.

  “Errrruuuuuuh” was all that issued from her throat. Her tongue pushed uselessly against one side of her mouth, unable to form words. This couldn’t just be the herbs she’d taken, or the laudanum. Something was wrong.

  Oh no.

  She was having another apoplectic attack.

  It was almost too ridiculous—she and Suzette had lied about an attack and a bout of fever, and here she was having a genuine fit. She tried to speak, but once again her vocal cords didn’t comply. Only a louder hissing noise issued from her throat.

  Cora moved her right hand again, and this time reaching out, she felt a solid panel of wood. She lifted her arm, and her knuckles bounced against a hard plane, only a foot above her.

  No.

  No, this couldn’t be.

  No.

  Cora opened her eyes as wide as she could, but it was dark around her, darker than a moonless night. Her hand began to wildly knock and thump against the wood, and she began to breathe, faster and faster, until she realized she had to be calm. After all, she was supposed to be dead.

  But she wasn’t supposed to be in a coffin, nailed firmly shut.

  Not now.

  Not yet.

  CHAPTER 29

  A strange voice outside the coffin hollered.

  “Off, be yeh. Evergreens. Quick like. There’ll be no family waitin’.”

  Her body lurched, and she felt movement. Gravel crunched underneath turning wheels. Hooves clonking against cobblestone, and a whinny. She was in a wagon, no longer inside the Cutter residence.

  They were going to bury her.

  She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. And she couldn’t bear to keep her eyes open, lest they adjust to the dark. If she saw the reality of a coffin lid only inches away, she would go mad.

  Cora had to get out, without letting anyone know she was still alive. Somewhere out there, Suzette must know. Or did she? Her confused mind remembered Suzette’s fiancé giving her laudanum to sleep—or was that a dream? Suzette was supposed to hide her in the room, placing only her torn clothes and handfuls of soil inside the coffin.

  She let her working hand explore the wooden walls, while the wagon jiggled and bumped along a road she could not see. There was soft cloth padding beneath her. The wooden planks were relatively smooth. She scraped one with a fingernail, and could tell from the sound that the wood was thick, too, not like the cheap, thin pine boxes that the poor could purchase, knot-filled and barely sanded.

  A small amount of light peeped in through the edges of the lid. Hopefully, that meant air enough to let her breathe. But once she was under the ground, it wouldn’t matter. She would suffocate.

  Cora still felt dizzy, even lying down. Being unable to use the left side of her body was a problem. A vast problem. What if the effects of her fit were permanent? Even if she could open this coffin, she couldn’t escape because she was now an invalid. Someone must help her. Suzette must help her.

  Cora drooled a little, a disgusting feeling and so infuriating. She couldn’t close her mouth properly, and saliva dripped freely down her cheek and neck.

  Her right hand moved to her lower belly; she wondered whether the tiny thing inside her there was still alive, or whether it, too, was a victim of her apoplexy. She didn’t think she’d had a miscarriage. She wasn’t bleeding; that much she knew. Keep me alive, and there’s a chance for us both, she thought.

  But she might die, and very soon. She thought of Alexander, hopef
ully not acquiring a case of typhus at one of the city hospitals, and of Theo. This was his opportunity. He was the only resurrectionist who knew of her death right now. He could dig her up and claim Duncan’s bounty. How would he feel, when she was splayed open to the world, to find out that he’d been the agent of the death of his own future child?

  The very thought of it brought on a sob. Cora never cried, and yet the tears fell in thin rivulets down both surfaces of her cheeks. At least there was one part of her body that still worked on both sides.

  Small mercies.

  The thud jarred her awake.

  Her spine bounced against the bottom of the coffin, and she inhaled in surprise as her eyes opened to darkness. She had fallen asleep again. The wheels of the wagon had stopped turning, and the horse’s hooves no longer clacked on the street. There must have been a ferry ride, but she’d slept through it.

  Her left hand twitched, and her fingers reached, too, though she was unable to completely lift her left arm. It tingled with a strange sensation, as if a thousand ants were biting her arm.

  Her left arm was working a little! But where was she?

  A rain of soil and pebbles hitting the casket answered her question. Another shovelful brought on fresh panic.

  No one would come for her.

  No one would save her.

  Her plan had gone wrong, and the fierce instinct to stay quiet, to hide, to hide behind a false death, was swallowed whole by the realization that the men burying her were her only salvation now.

  “Heeeeooo,” she croaked. Her good hand slapped the coffin’s side, and she tried to pound on the lid, but there was no room to pull back her arm to hit any harder. “Stahh . . . sthop,” she lisped. “Stop!”

  The only thing that answered her was another shovelful of soil and rocks. Soon, the sound became more muffled. Already, there must be an inch of dirt atop her.

  “Ssstop!” she cried, her hand thumping the side of her tomb over and over again. “Help. Help. Please, help.” But her voice sounded small even in her own ears.

  “Help!” Cora cried.

  But no one answered her.

  There were no birds singing.

  There were no crickets calling.

  There was nothing but the sound of Cora’s breathing and cries, and the silence of being forgotten deep within the earth.

  Because she had been so ill from the herbs, Cora had no idea how much time she had lost while bobbing in and out of consciousness. She didn’t know if she’d been buried first thing at dawn, or late at night. What she did know was that soon, the news would spread that the girl with two hearts, the impossible girl, was dead now and ripe for the taking by whichever resurrectionist found her first.

  But they’d have to locate her and wait for dark. It might be hours before she was dug up.

  Even another five minutes was insufferable.

  From sheer panic, Cora kicked and screamed, her knees bouncing against the lid, her weakened left side awakening slowly only to be limited by her confined space. But very quickly, she realized she would use up what bit of fresh air she had in the casket, and calmed down. The worms cared not for her screams.

  She found that she was hungry, as it had now been well over a day since she’d eaten. Her mouth stank, and her tongue was both dry and pasty. Her bladder, which had been functionless from the side effects of the medicines, was now filled to brimming. During a fit of crying, she couldn’t contain her body’s overwhelming urge to relieve itself, and she urinated in a pool over herself and her gown, which sopped up the liquid and left her legs and back damp and reeking of ammonia.

  “I’m going to die here,” Cora said, happy to hear she was enunciating words again, but the despair answered her in silence.

  No one can hear you.

  No one.

  Her own team would not even know she had died until tomorrow, when they received Suzette’s note, well after her grave might already be pillaged. She grew sleepier and sleepier. Suffocation ought not to be so comfortable, she thought. In her exhaustion, her mind began to create the impossible—crickets spoke to her with Irish accents asking if she wanted to buy a loaf of bread; a leech discussed bleeding her to dry out her corpse more efficiently. The medicines had lost their potency, but now something terrible replaced them: the degradation of her own self and mind. And yet she was growing too stupefied to care.

  She heard a scraping but few sounds of voices, and she thought, The crickets and worms and the creatures of the earth are coming to get me. And she had some satisfaction that she would be consumed by the wild creatures of the earth, instead of the uncivil creatures of man.

  The scraping grew louder, and she wondered, for a moment, whether the flesh was being peeled from her bones. This ought to hurt more, she considered.

  Suddenly, there was a cracking noise, accompanied by the squeak of nails being pulled from new, unseasoned wood. Dirt fell softly onto her face and her dry lips.

  This was the strangest dream she’d ever had. A nightmare, and yet she felt so pleasant, like she was taking a warm bath after a night of working in the bitterest cold.

  Male voices spoke, their words swirling around her tangibly, as if she could touch them.

  “There she is, boys.”

  “I can’t believe it. The poor lass! After all she did for us.”

  Someone blew their nose, and a splat of phlegm hit the side of the casket.

  “It’s a good thing we found her early. Let’s have a moment, boys. Then we’ll get her into the wagon and rebury her in the woods, a good seven feet deep so no one ever finds her.”

  It was quiet for some time. Someone sniffled, and there was a muffled, very masculine sob, and then a thud-thud-thud, as if someone were patting someone else’s back. The dirt on Cora’s lips dusted her tongue and melted to the back of her throat, irritating it. She coughed. She opened her eyes, coughed again, and squinted into a night sky partially lit by a scythe moon.

  “Is it time for work?” she mumbled.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she’s alive!” someone yelled.

  With eyes so wide that whites ringed their irises, Friar Tom, Otto the Cat, and the Duke stood staring at her.

  “How in the devil did you get in there, Miss Cora?” the Duke said, stooping down to touch her hand.

  “Where’s Jacob?” Cora muttered. “Who are you?”

  Tom threw his shovel aside and turned to look at the Duke, who looked at Otto.

  “She’s delirious,” Otto said. “And she smells like a privy. Come on, let’s get her out of there.”

  Otto lowered himself into the grave and began to gather Cora up in his arms. The Duke came down to wrap her gown around her legs so they could extricate her.

  “Light as a feather,” Otto said, hoisting up her torso while the Friar lifted her legs.

  “Where is Jacob?” Cora repeated.

  “She can’t remember that she’s Jacob,” the Duke said.

  “I can’t believe she was Jacob all this time,” Otto said, pulling her onto the grass as the Duke hoisted himself out of the grave. “And I can’t believe that I had no idea until you told me an hour ago. I’m a right idiot, I am.”

  “I was fooled too,” Tom said, tucking his shirt in around his rounded belly. “Are you saying you knew all along?” he asked the Duke.

  “It was plain as day, but then again, I’ve always been able to tell the difference between a man and woman, not being married to the gin bottle like you two.”

  “You knew?” Cora whispered. She tried to focus, and soon she recognized the Duke’s grizzled black-and-gray hair. His face shone, and his eyes were warm with safety.

  “I did, Miss Cora. I always knew,” the Duke said, “but it wasn’t up to me to say so. Things were working out fine as it was.”

  Cora smiled weakly and sagged back onto the ground. She retched once, then again, but nothing came up.

  “She looks bad, Duke.”

  “She does. Looks like someone poisoned her. Maybe her
hearts aren’t strong enough. My wife will help me nurse her until she’s better. After that, she can disappear wherever she wishes. It was a bad decision, to hide from the living this way, but with hundreds of dollars on her head, perhaps it was easier than running.”

  The Duke gently wrapped a cloth around her body to keep her warm and enticed her to drink some water. Half of it slipped down her trachea, and she coughed violently, closing her eyes.

  “Oy, who’s that?” Tom stood suddenly from where he had been wrapping their digging instruments up in a heavy cloth.

  Cora stiffened. She wouldn’t have lifted her head to look, even if she could. Anyone else had to believe she was dead, so she kept her eyes closed and her breathing slow. She heard footsteps approach, boots quietly falling onto the grass.

  “That’s ours,” a voice said.

  “She’s not anyone’s. She’s going back into the grave. Her family hired us to make sure she sleeps long and sound. So, there’s nothing to fight over, you see,” the Duke said coolly.

  But Cora recognized the discomfiture in his voice. She blinked and looked up to see her boys surrounding her limp body, legs like stout pillars around her.

  “You shouldn’t talk. I’ll bet you’ve escaped your owner, haven’t you?”

  “I’m a free man,” the Duke said, but his voice was even tighter than before.

  “Free as a dog that’s slipped the rope.”

  There was a click, and a shot like a slap in the dark. Tom shouted and leaped over her body. She heard fists hitting skin, a tussle. Someone hit the ground, and the air went whooshing out of their lungs. A boot kicked her face as someone tripped over her body, and legs twisted and squirmed above her torso. The blow to her head shook some of the grogginess from her. Two men were fighting half on her body, half on the ground. There was a cry, and she heard someone fall nearby—into the grave. Something hard hit bony flesh—like a spade against a skull.

  The Duke was moaning, and nothing was to be heard from Tom, or Otto. Cora wanted to open her eyes, and she wanted to fight, but after being stiff in the coffin for so long after her apoplexy, she could still barely move her left side.