The mortician couldn’t have dug up the grave quickly by himself, but the bell’s jangling roused the caretaker, and he, in turn, summoned the gravediggers. Between the four of them, it took only an hour and a half to uncover the coffin. The bell didn’t stop ringing the entire time. Miss Alkemya perched on a nearby gravestone and read a penny dreadful that she’d brought with her. Despite the chill, she seemed quite cheerful.
They’d told the caretaker that they, too, had heard the bell as they walked past, and came in to assist. He seemed to accept their explanation.
They unearthed Oliver’s coffin and hauled it up. Miss Alkemya knelt down next to it and helped them pry off the lid. Once, her hand brushed the mortician’s.
The lid came off. Oliver blinked in the light, and Miss Alkemya picked him up out of the grave. “Shh, there we are. Shhh. Just like a bad dream, wasn’t it? All over now.”
“I’ll get his parents.” The caretaker hurried away.
The mortician felt frozen, as though he could do nothing but stare and feel his stomach twist. This was wrong. The boy had looked so sweet and quiet, and now he was moving and making little mewling sounds, and they were acting like it was all such a glad thing—didn’t anyone else appreciate death?
“Do you know where you are, love? Are you cold?” She glanced up at the mortician, and quickly he unbuttoned his coat and passed it to her. She wrapped it around the child. “Oliver, dear, give us a word. A look. Anything?”
“His lips are sutured shut,” the mortician said quietly. “Standard practice—let me.” He knelt down and, with his pocketknife, cut the stitches inside Oliver’s mouth.
The little boy looked at the mortician. “You put people in boxes,” he said. “Mumma told me. And then they go to heaven.”
Helpless, the mortician looked to Miss Alkemya. She smiled.
“Yes, I suppose I do,” he said. “I suppose they do.”
“Where’s my mumma?”
“She’ll be along directly,” Miss Alkemya crooned. She wrapped her arms tight around the child and held him close.
“We can look after him till Mr. Yardley brings back the parents,” one of the gravediggers said. He lowered his voice and added, “Better get the young miss home before anyone asks questions.”
The mortician nodded, and retrieved his coat and lantern. He had some questions he wanted to ask Miss Alkemya as well.
As they left the graveyard, she kept looking back over her shoulder. “No heartbeat, and no breath. But he sounded like a normal three-year-old boy. Closer and closer, I’m sure of it.”
The mortician stopped and looked at her. “What were you doing here tonight?” He already knew the answer, and yet—
She smiled.
“You’ve been raising them?” You’ve been destroying my work? he didn’t add. “How? Witchcraft?”
She sniffed. “Merely science.” From a pocket of her cloak, Miss Alkemya pulled a few folded sheets of paper, bound in a black ribbon. “The last three pages of Whitby and Underdark’s notes—and my own formulae. I found them in an old book years ago, but I didn’t have the beginning stages of the process. I only realized a month or so ago that you did.”
“Only fragments and guesswork,” he said, and reached out a trembling hand. “May I?” He passed her the lantern, and undid the ribbon. Two pages were covered with Whitby’s cramped handwriting, and the following three with Miss Alkemya’s bold copperplate.
“Their perfect form requires going through all the lesser forms—glass, turquoise, silver, gold—and stops at some new substance, halfway between flesh and stone, and I thought, Why end there? Why not restore as well? I wrote a paper, you know, for the Royal Academy. They rejected it, outright, because of my sex. But now they won’t be able to—especially if you co-author the paper.”
“Co-author?” The mortician felt as flimsy as an echo in the wake of Miss Alkemya’s enthusiasm.
“Of course. After all, my formulae don’t work at all without your embalming.”
The mortician thought of the mayor’s gloating smile; of Mrs. Beaumont, opening and closing the door of his shop interminably; of the frosty still calm that each of his clients possessed. With a heavy heart, he said, “There are so many things I would gladly do for you—so very many things. But not raising the dead—it is unnatural, and ugly. And besides,” he added, “I don’t think they find it agreeable.”
Miss Alkemya took her papers from him and said, grave and melancholy, “You care nothing for Science, then—or me?”
The mortician’s voice wavered. “I care very much for you.”
Her mouth twisted briefly; then her expression became placid again. “You needn’t walk me home. I’ll find my own way.”
He stood and watched her disappear into the mist. His feet seemed glued to the ground and his tongue witless—he could think of nothing to say except fragments of her poems, meaningless when divorced from their context.
Just before she left his sight, she turned back to face him. “If you’d ever lost a loved one,” she called, “you wouldn’t hesitate to raise the dead.”
The mortician was too ashamed to answer.
***
He awoke the next morning to the sound of Jones driving the hearse into the alleyway and unloading a new body. For a moment he lay in a warm muddled haze of sleep and pleasant anticipation—there was no joy greater than a new client. Then the shop door opened and closed, and the mortician remembered. The risen dead. His work. Laila.
A letter from her was waiting in his letterbox by the time he’d washed, shaved and dressed. It was a thick letter, and the mortician weighed it in his palm uneasily. Was it a good-bye? An angry recrimination? Pleading? The mortician couldn’t imagine Miss Alkemya pleading, but the way she’d looked at little Oliver last night—she wanted this, more than anything else in the world. It hurt the mortician’s pride a bit (though, truth be told, he had also chosen his work over her).
Consumed with idle speculation, weighing the letter still in his hand, the mortician walked back into his mortuary to examine the new client. He looked up. The letter dropped from his hand.
Laila.
She lay on the cold metal table, covered from chest to ankles with a white sheet. Her hair, loose and tangled, fanned out around her head. She looked—not sleeping, too still to be sleeping—but peaceful, expectant. Like she was waiting for the next breath to come.
The mortician’s eyes burned and felt heavy, and he didn’t know why. All he knew was that he didn’t want to look at Laila. He scooped up the letter, retreated to his office and flung open the cabinet doors. His treasures comforted him a little.
He’d tossed the letter on his writing desk, his name facing up. It felt like an accusation in Miss Alkemya’s handwriting. He walked around the room once, twice, but on the third circuit he snatched the letter off his desk, tore it open, and began to read.
Only the first sheet of paper was a letter; the rest were Whitby and Underdark’s notes and Miss Alkemya’s additions. He put those aside.
“My dear,” she had written, “there is no future for me if I cannot do this. If I cannot be a scientist, I would rather not be alive.
“Tho’ extreme, this was the only way to convince you. Here are the formulae—if you firmly believe the dead should remain so, then throw them in the fire and consign me to dust. But if you truly love me, you will not do so.
“We could have such a bright future. I trust that I will see you again.”
The mortician folded her letter—round damp splashes had appeared while he was reading it, smearing the ink—and mopped his face. With more than a little trepidation, he gathered up the formulae and went back to the mortuary.
She was still there, still dead. But, he thought, not for long. He stripped off his coat and went to work.
The embalming practice had become routine to the mortician, and yet now it took on a new meaning. He washed Miss Alkemya’s skin in disinfectant and breathed in the harsh fumes as though they were per
fume. They intoxicated him. And touching her!—Oh, it was a frightening and glorious experience to massage the rigor mortis from her thighs and take her arms and gently bend them this way and that. Every time he folded the sheet back to reveal a little more of her skin, his heart beat faster. She had given him this, his greatest joy. She trusted him. She loved him.
He loved her, as well.
The mortician didn’t bother to cap her eyes or sew her mouth shut; it would only have to be undone when she rose again. He stopped, again and again, to read and reread her notes and his own researches; she would be perfect. There could be no mistakes.
The embalming solution was easy to prepare, but his hands trembled now as he mixed together the noxious ingredients: water and disinfectant, formaldehyde and phenol and methanol, and certain powders that he’d bought from a gyptian peddler at great expense, twice boiled in urine and milk.
With the tips of his fingers, he found Miss Alkemya’s right carotid artery and jugular vein. Without a strong pulse through them, they were thin and pliable cords, easily hidden beneath the skin. But the mortician knew each inch of Miss Alkemya’s neck now, and it took only a moment to incise both and begin pumping the embalming fluid into her carotid artery. The drainage flowed out of her jugular smoothly—no circulatory clots, no need for more drainage points. Miss Alkemya had a fine heart, indeed—a fine heart in many ways.
The cavity embalming, the application of powder and cosmetic and perfume, the redressing and tender styling of her hair—all of this took several hours, and felt like only the space of a few short breaths to the mortician. And yet he could recall each moment with crystal clarity, as if they too were embalmed in his mind. He loved the silence, broken only by his footsteps and the clink now and again of his tools. He loved the steady rhythm of his work. He loved Miss Alkemya for lying there so still and quiet—he was so glad to share those glorious, happy hours with her.
The embalming completed, he turned to Miss Alkemya’s formulae. Simple enough—an ointment that could be applied to the skin, the clothing or even the casket of the deceased. When it soaked down through all the layers and reached the embalming fluid, it revivified the body. It was a simple concoction, though it used many chemicals the mortician had nearly forgotten about, stored away on dusty shelves. He mixed it within a quarter of an hour, and placed the bowl next to Miss Alkemya on the table.
She was so beautiful at this moment—frozen in time, hanging suspended between breath and bone. He loved her permanence: that her hands would remain clasped as long as they existed, a slight smile quirking her lips. She was not just an empty shell; she was Art, and Eternity.
And it would be madness to bring her back to life. All this perfection, destroyed for tottering movement and laughter, even low and musical laughter? He would hate the sight and sound and feel of her, after these sublime hours.
He hesitated.
He imagined what his life would be like if he revivified her. Miss Alkemya was intelligent. She laughed at his jokes. She understood death; she understood Art. She was the only person the mortician had ever seriously considered marrying, and the only person who would have accepted him.
But if he brought her back, it would only be the first of many acquiescences. First: Life. Then: Her paper for the Royal Scientific Society. Then: Chemists and journalists and sensation-seekers, possibly even an audience with the Queen. Then: An introduction into Society, demands that he go to dinners and speak about his work, host dances at his own home. Possibly even (he shuddered) children.
If she truly loved him—and she did, she must—then she would not ask him to go through all that. She would understand.
He removed the bowl from beside her and tossed it into the sink with the rest of his tools. Later, he’d wash them out and send Miss Alkemya’s potion down the drain.
I still have the formulae—I could always bring her back later—I’m just not ready yet, he told himself, and knew he lied.
The mortician pulled up his stool and sat with Miss Alkemya until the church bells told him it was evening. Then he stood and pulled on his coat. Tonight he’d collect rocks and sand, and tomorrow send a closed casket to her grieving father. He hated death; he wouldn’t dare open it. Miss Alkemya would remain here, the mortician’s constant companion.
He buttoned up the bottom of his coat and blew her a kiss. She looked as if she were smiling at him. And the mortician wished he could lie down next to her, be still and silent and eternally united—but there was the work.
There was always the work.
VISITING HOURS
Josh Strnad
Jane entered the room looking back over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t been detected. Confident that nobody had seen her, and noting that Eddie was already waiting at the table, she shut the door behind her and breathed a deep sigh. The room was little more than a cube with a single door, bare, dingy walls that may once have been white, and a concrete floor that had long ago lost its shine. An old fluorescent light buzzed and crackled overhead, its one bad bulb flickering on and off like a dance-club strobe that had lost its sense of rhythm. At the empty gray card table, in a rusty metal folding chair, sat Eddie.
“I can’t stay for long,” Jane said, sliding her chair out from the other side of the table so she could sit and face her ex-husband. “Chris may start looking for me.” The chair legs screeched on the concrete like fingernails down a chalkboard. Jane shivered, but more from nerves than from the noise. Eddie grinned at her.
“I’ve told you about Chris, haven’t I?” Jane took Eddie’s silence for assent, and leaned forward to look him in the eye. “We’re married now. Have been for a while.” She let the statement hang in the air with all the weight of an anvil in a cartoon booby-trap. Eddie didn’t take the bait, so she continued. “He wouldn’t like me coming to see you like this.”
Neither spoke for a few minutes. The light above flashed and hummed. A fly landed on the table; Jane tried to slap it and missed, only scaring it back into the air. Eddie continued to grin, but now it looked more like a sneer.
“He’s good to me, Eddie. Good to me in a way that you never were.” A strand of Jane’s hair fell into her face, and she pushed it back so she could better look at the man across the table. “He says he loves me, and I believe him. I love him back.”
There was no question about it now. That was definitely a sneer.
“Well, you don’t have to believe me; it’s true. I do love him. That’s why this is the last time I’m going to come visit you.” No reaction from Eddie. Only a blank stare. Jane shook her head and continued. “I mean it this time. I’ve got to quit sneaking around like this. I think he suspects something. He even asked me about you the other day. I told him you were nothing to me anymore… but I think he knows better.”
Eddie sat in his chair, head tipped slightly to one side. He grinned. His left hand resting on the table still wore a tarnished and dented gold band on its ring finger. Jane picked his hand up and gripped it gently between both of her own. “I just can’t seem to get over you.” She laughed at herself, surprised to feel a lump growing in her throat. She sniffed. “After all this time, knowing everything that I know about you… after all the harm you’ve done to me… after all the pain I’ve seen you cause others.” She let go of his hand to wipe moisture from the corners of her eyes. He let her. “You’re bad, Eddie! Very bad. There’s good reason you’re locked away here.” He regarded her with stony silence. She may as well have been talking to a wall.
“Besides, I love Chris,” she repeated, nodding as though to assure herself. “I would never want to break his heart, which is sure to happen if I keep coming to visit you.” She turned her head to give Eddie a sidelong glance, and thrust her nose upward in a haughty manner. “What you and I had, Eddie, was never really true love anyhow.”
She threw her hand up, palm out to silence any protests. “No! I know I’m right. You wanna know why I married you in the first place, honey? It wasn’t love. It was…” she
searched for the right word, staring at the dusty light fixture on the ceiling as though she expected to see it written up there.
“…Fun.” She smiled at him, showing her teeth, and he returned the favor. “You were fun, Eddie: exciting, amusing, even a little bit dangerous. All those things made you devilishly attractive to me when I was a girl…” She paused, staring down at the table, fumbling with her hands, though they were empty. “They still do.” Her face felt hot as she blushed a deep red all the way down her neck. He stared at her.
She got up from her chair and walked around to his side of the table. She knelt down, took his face in her hands, and kissed him on the mouth; the kiss was slow and lingering. She ran her fingers through his long, thin hair. She took his hand off the table and placed it on her hip, shuddering with surprise and pleasure when he let it slide down her leg, pulling a little at her skirt. She shut her eyes and allowed herself to be lost in his feel, his taste, his smell.
She kissed him twice more, holding him in a tight embrace before she tore herself away, gulping breaths of air and heart pounding as though she had just run a marathon. She stared at him, wide-eyed, from across the room, and he stared back. “No more!” she exclaimed, as much to herself as to him. “No more!” She looked off into the corner, unable to hold his gaze. She stood up straight, and spoke with a strength she did not quite feel. “This is the last time I’m going to be here with you. I’ll not be coming back. I have a new husband now.”
Now that she had put a little distance between herself and Eddie, she felt queasy, as though she had swallowed a live octopus that was trying to escape her stomach. How could she have allowed herself to do that? The pesky fly buzzed near her head, and she swished it away.
She leaned on the wall to keep her balance, leaving a sweaty handprint smear. The room spun. “This ends here,” she told Eddie in a stern voice, and she almost meant it.
Arcane Page 34