Only the
Thunder Knows
By
Gord Rollo
JournalStone
San Francisco
Copyright © 2013 by Gord Rollo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
ISBN: 978-1-936564-82-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-940161-16-7 (hc – limited edition)
ISBN: 978-1-936564-79-8 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013935628
Printed in the United States of America
JournalStone rev. date: June 7, 2013
Cover Design: Denis Daniel
Cover Art: Alan M. Clark
Edited By: Norman Rubenstein
Dedication
I’d like to give a shout out to my friend and fellow author Steve Savile. He’s a brilliant writer and a huge inspiration for me. More importantly for the project you’re holding in your hands, it was Steve who originally suggested the idea for a dark tale about the grave robbers turned serial killers, Burke and Hare. For years we talked about writing something together and I’d hoped this book might eventually be the one. Unfortunately, Steve is so incredibly busy (not that there is anything unfortunate about that—he’s earned every bit of his success) we just couldn’t find the time to make it happen this time around. When this opportunity came along for me, and I heard that Rena Mason was writing a historical horror tale set in Great Britain, I knew I wanted to write something in a similar historical vein as well. Burke and Hare fit that theme perfectly. I asked Steve if he minded if I wrote the story myself and he graciously told me to go ahead. I still hope we get the chance to work together sometime soon, but for now I’ll be content if Steve reads my book and doesn’t think I screwed it up too badly.
Endorsements
“Only the Thunder Knows is a wonderfully written story by Gord Rollo, possibly his very best writing (which is saying quite a bit). The story starts with two grave robbers but it moves into unexpected territory as it continues and by the end I was totally enthralled. I was amazed at the skill Rollo brings to the table to be able to pull this off. Very highly recommended!” – John R. Little
“Readers who enjoy toying with alternate-historical hypotheses and can endure gore should find these lively accounts appealing.”
– Publishers Weekly
A Little Knowledge
Is
A Dangerous Thing
An Introduction by Alan M. Clark
This volume marks the beginning of the new Double Down series of books to be released by JournalStone Publishing. The unusual tête-bêche books are inspired by the Ace Doubles from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Part of what draws the two novellas in this book into one volume is that each of the authors has chosen to give their story a well-known historical setting. Both take place in Great Britain; Gord Rollo’s, “Only the Thunder Knows,” in Edinburgh in the late Georgian era of the resurrectionists, particularly Burke and Hare, and Rena Mason’s, “East End Girls,” in Victorian London during the time of Jack the Ripper.
I love a good historical fiction or alternate history tale, one that helps me do a bit of time-travel, and these stories transport me to fascinating periods. Nearly everyone enjoys looking back in history and considering a simpler time. Some of that pleasure comes from trying to imagine how the world might be today if events had unfolded differently in the past. For me, much of the enjoyment comes from knowing that the people of the past had something to look forward to; some of the advances in science and medicine that we enjoy today. Those people had hope of a better world, and we know they had the guts and the drive to get there, for here we are. When casually considering the past, however, we often don’t think about what it took to turn those hopes for a better world into reality; the struggles, the growing pains, the unintended consequences of trying something new.
Both the late Georgian and Victorian eras saw enormous advancements in science in Great Britain. With the science came new technologies in medicine and industry. Of course there were those who capitalized on the economic growth that ensued, and they had their share of hubris, their ofttimes heedless and single‐minded efforts to drive the technologies into the future resulting in unintended consequences that caused their fellow man no end of trouble and harm. Of course we are always on the cusp of knowing more, but frequently, even when we have only a little knowledge, we tend to have big ideas—sometimes dangerous ideas—of what we could do with it. But then, this is in part how we learn. We make mistakes. It’s messy, but there seems to be an inevitability about the process and no good way around it.
What’s fascinating to me is that when looking back on such eras we are strangely nostalgic about our naiveté. Some even lament the loss of those simpler times. What these periods provide for the writer is settings for great tragic drama.
And Mason and Rollo have employed them for just that.
“East End Girls” takes place in the 1880s when the industrial revolution had made Great Britain the richest nation in the world. That same revolution, however, had put so many of the British people out of work that the East End of London experienced some of the worst poverty known anywhere at the time. The poor and vulnerable were the prey of Jack the Ripper. Perhaps nothing could have stopped the first murder, but with better law enforcement techniques the subsequent murders might have been prevented. The repeated loss of life becomes more poignant when considering that fingerprinting, a technology that might have helped catch the killer, was introduced to the London police and rejected by shortsighted officials in 1886, 2 years before the Ripper. In this case, the lack of action in taking up a technology caused unintended harm. Yes, I think it even as I tap the keys to write this—they were simpler times. Jack the Ripper may have had little fear of being caught. Because the history of the Ripper has many such wellsprings of collective human regret, I have always been fascinated with stories of the murderer and have explored the history in my own writing. Mason’s tale has wonderful new twists and turns to add to the growing body of speculation about Jack the Ripper.
Gord Rollo’s story is centered around the most notorious characters from the dark history of bodysnatching, William Burke and William Hare. To this day, the best way to study anatomy is to dissect a human being. In modern times we tend to have plenty of people willing to hand over their bodies after death to this purpose, but that’s not how it’s always been. In the past, due to religious beliefs and other scruples throughout most of the developing world, we have not been consistently willing to give up our dead for dissection sufficient to the need of every one striving to become a physician.
Whenever we’ve failed to meet that need, a market for stolen dead bodies has emerged. My grandfather, Dr. Sam Lillard Clark (1898 to 1961), was head of the Anatomy Department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and was on the Tennessee Anatomical Board (he
called it the Board Stiff), charged with the task of securing cadavers for all the medical students in Tennessee. When there were not enough to go around, he employed a body snatcher. I have long loved the history of bodysnatching, ever since reading my grandfather’s paper, “Medical Education from the Ground Up,” that he wrote and delivered to his gentleman’s club in the 1940s. Part of the paper are the words of his body snatcher—originally recorded on Dictaphone® (wax cylinder dictation machine), then transcribed by my grandfather into the paper—telling of his exploits in the Nashville area, the city where I grew up.
Rollo’s novella puts a shovel in my hand and pays me handsomely to dig for corpses alongside his characters, and I’m right there with them when they make an incredible discovery that turns the reader’s expectations inside out.
When I was asked to paint the cover art for this Double Down book, I was excited by the subject matter. Reading the beautifully crafted stories I became immersed in long lost, gritty worlds of British history, both realistically and fantastically portrayed by Rollo and Mason. Then I was offered the honor of writing this introduction! Rarely have I been presented with a project that so well suits my own interests. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have.
Only the
Thunder Knows
By
Gord Rollo
Chapter
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
October, 1828
Other than the incessant rain, which is pretty much a given this far north, the Gaffer had told Charlie Mawson hot wax burns would be what he’d hate most about igniting the gaslights along the narrow cobbled streets of Westport. The Warden’s Curse he’d called it, but the Gaffer had been wrong. Naturally, Charlie cursed every time he held his pole aloft and scalding drops of melted candle rained down on him, but the skin on his hands had toughened up – burnt into insensitivity most likely – and for the last week he had taken to wearing a wide-brimmed felt hat which he fancied made him look like a Spaniard out to fence his way across some pirate’s galleon. Besides, practice had taught him ways to avoid most of the spills. The burns he could cope with.
No, it was the fog he truly despised, the thick Edinburgh pea‐soupers that left the cobbles invisible beneath his feet as he trudged along the empty streets.
Charlie loathed being alone when the fog descended on the city. And he hated the way his mind conjured up all kinds of demons and phantoms – always just out of sight and reach but only just so – hovering ominously on the periphery of his vision, masked by the swirling mist. And when the fog rolled in extra thick, as it had tonight, blanketing Westport in its eerie shroud, Charlie’s palms would grow sweaty and chills danced up and down his back as iron bands of dread tightened slowly around his chest, squeezing the very breath from his lungs.
Charlie had thought it a stroke of genius on his part to apply for a job as a Warden with the gasworks – instead of being cooped up in some rat-infested factory along the Firth of Forth all day long, he’d be working outside, no one watching over his every move. And it was good money besides. He couldn’t believe how many folks on the route paid him an extra ha’penny a week to knock them awake come sunrise. Easy money, he’d thought, knocking on a few windows after he’d doused the gaslights for the day to come. Thirty days into his employment, and the fog had convinced Charlie that a factory job wasn’t the ‘evil to end all evils’ after all.
Ah, to Hell and buggery, just get on with it, yer fool, Charlie thought, chastising himself. Once the blasted lights are burnin’ you’ll feel better.
A Hackney cab ghosted by in the distance; or perhaps it was one of those fancy new two-wheeled hansom cabs he’d been hearing about lately, its iron-rimmed wheels striking sparks on the uneven cobbles. Though in truth he might never have known it was there without the clop of the horse’s shoes and the clatter of the wheel rims on the broken stones. The fog smudged out its black shape until it simply ceased to be.
Charlie shivered, thinking of ghoulies and ghosties and other nasty things that went bump in the night.
Fear is peculiar like that, Charlie knew. You struggled through with clenched teeth like you were lugging a bloody great bag of coal on your back. You’ve just got to get on with it or it will drop you in your tracks. And right enough, once he’d ignited most of the gaslights along the High Street he felt more in control. The flames burned off some of the fog and pushed the darkness back to a safer distance. Charlie knew it was all in his head but nevertheless he felt the bands around his chest slowly ease their grip. He took several deep breaths, doing his best to relax.
Then he heard the footsteps.
Slow and measured.
Heavy, confident strides.
Assuredly male. Not the leggy gait of a whore out working the streets or the nervous tap-tap-scuffle of a more refined lady – no self-respecting woman would be out this late, he reasoned, certainly not in this part of town – definitely a man.
He felt his chest tightening again.
The footsteps approached out of the fog, coming from some still unlit section of the city but with the all-encompassing white mist it was impossible to judge if they came from behind him, ahead of him or from either side. That was another thing Charlie hated about the fog; it rendered direction meaningless. He strained to peer through the gloom but there was nothing to see except a calico cat sheltered under the eaves of the local bakery, enjoying the lingering aromas of cinnamon and saffron that were drifting out from the air vents.
Suddenly, like one of the wraiths that plagued his imagination, a tall figure dressed in black strode purposefully out of the night, the curtain of fog torn asunder and scattered by his appearance. Charlie stared at the shape coalescing out of the mist. The fragment of jaundiced light from the gaslight gave the man’s face a deathlike pallor, as though his bone‐white skull showed through the folds of skin drawn over it. The newcomer was like something that might walk out of Dante’s Hell. Tails fluttered like the wings of black birds around his legs.
The footsteps slowed.
Stopped.
Charlie very nearly screamed but he bit down on it hard enough to draw blood from his bottom lip.
The newcomer was big, well over six feet and easily fifteen stone, though his bulky overcoat and top hat made him appear both wider and taller. Their eyes met for a moment but Charlie quickly broke the contact and looked away, pretending to fumble with the glass casing on the light above him despite the fact that it was already lit and closed. Fear tied anxious knots deep in his belly.
Sweet Mary, Mother of All Things Good and Holy!
He had thought, for no more than a heartbeat, that the tall man had no eyes. Good Catholic boy that he was, Charlie moved instinctively to make the sign of the cross on his chest but he stopped himself. He didn’t want the stranger thinking he was some simpleton fresh out from the asylum.
Just keep yer head down an’ let him walk by, Charlie, my old son. Just let him walk by…
“A word with you, young sir?” a deep, gravelly voice asked. Then silence and Charlie had no choice but to look up and face its owner.
A small measure of relief washed over him: The man wasn’t some mystical Speaker of the Dead; he did in fact have eyes and not cold round shillings, albeit the strangest eyes Charlie had ever seen. Twin blanks; the whole eye the same ice white as the stranger’s long hair and slightly ragged beard – an exact match for the shifting banks of fog. A shiver wormed its way down the length of Charlie’s back.
“Can I help you, Gov’nor?”
“That depends. I’m looking for Tanner’s Close,” White Eyes said. “I was told I might find a lodging house there. It is, after all, deep into the dead of night and even the most restless souls must sleep.”
Directions. All he wants is a place to kip down. Thank Christ for that. For all that Charlie still couldn’t look the stranger square in the eye.
“Aye sir…‘tis.” Charlie turned and pointed along the street in the direction of the Quaysid
e. “Down that way toward the water, Tanner’s is the fourth turning you’ll come to, you can’t miss it. Go into the crescent and you’ll see Log’s Lodging House right on the corner. Big building. Bit rundown, but then what isn’t around here? Anyway, like I said, you can’t miss it.”
He was rambling.
White Eyes made no response. His inspection was invasive. It made Charlie feel dirty, violated, as though the tall man wasn’t staring at him, but rather into him. Perhaps, Charlie thought wildly, he could see into his soul and was actually reading it then to see if he spoke the truth or not. Charlie shook his head blaming the crazy notion on the wee dram of whiskey he’d knocked back before coming out. Apparently satisfied, he gave Charlie a slight nod then moved off down the street without so much as another word.
Would a thank you ‘ave killed you, you upper‐ class git? Oh no, too good to be thankin’ the likes of a simple Warden. Bleedin’ Toff.
The stranger stopped in midstride, inclining his head ever so slightly as though listening to some sound only he could hear, and then walked on. Over his shoulder, he called: “My thanks, young man. You’ll find your reward, I am sure, in Heaven. Ah… and speaking of the good Lord’s house, the old lady on Princess Street won’t wake up come sunrise, so save your banging, Charlie Mawson. She’s sleeping the good sleep.”
Charlie could only stare, unwilling, unable to turn his back on this mysterious man. How the bloody buggerin’ Hell does he know my name?
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