The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2015 Edition

by Paula Guran

  “Doctor?” Avice said.

  “They’ll keep,” Dalkeith said to himself. Then, louder, “Beauty of this business, Mrs. Welles. Everything will keep . . . ”

  “But the mess,” she insisted, Bridewell’s doctrines running through her mind, cleanliness first and foremost. “The boys will dispose of it in the morning, before we reconvene.”

  “Ah. Tomorrow.” Dr. Dalkeith removed his spectacles, smeared them with a rag from his pocket, then perched them once more on the bridge of his crooked nose. “Ashes to ashes, Mrs. Welles. We’ve come full circle; again, my cold rooms are filled with nothing but dust.”

  “Very well,” Avice said stiffly. “I shall schedule an excursion for this evening.”

  The Surgeon turned away and continued to polish his tools. “Whatever you wish, Matron.” Dalkeith picked up a small, trowel-shaped implement. “Just ensure they remember their spades.”

  Every night for a fortnight, the children were sent out on the dig.

  By the second day they were exhausted, eyes red-ringed, complexions drawn despite the sun burning down as they plied oakum between nerveless fingers. William Henry whipped the boys thrice at Labor for nodding off, and yawning instead of praying morning and evening. The girls endured lectures from Miss Fiona who, in a fit of innovation, reintroduced the use of the isolation cell. In that close space, Millie or Victoria or Sarah or a Mary would peel back one corner of the thin wood camouflaging the hole Mary Ann Ross had dug, and drop whatever limb had been souvenired from Dr. Dalkeith’s workshop down into the dark of the cellar.

  Matron Welles didn’t stop this punishment, but would surreptitiously give extra rations after they’d endured the cell. Twice the first week and three times the second, she’d let them all sleep a few minutes extra—and before bed one night, she’d given Victoria a new lightweight shift and allowed Millie to inherit the old one, even though it was torn and grave-stained. The children couldn’t explain the Matron’s softened attitude—nor in all honestly could Avice—but neither did they question it. They faced William Henry’s floggings and Mrs. Welles’ gifts with equal trepidation, equal acceptance.

  Driven by their secret goal, they endured.

  In the wee hours, Tall Mary and Only Sarah strutted around their quarters, proud as ponies who’d chewed through their bits, showing off the blade they’d pilfered from Dr. Dalkeith’s stash during their “wrestling match.” Even seen through a fog of exhaustion, the shine hadn’t worn off their prize; without fail, they took it out of its hiding place before muster. To boast. To reassure themselves it was still there.

  The foot Alf had pocketed had been taken by Bert—as had the next one they’d claimed, along with the set of nearly-pink lungs, the shriveled stomach, the mismatched pair of thighs, one kidney, and a bloated slab of a liver. Once they’d nabbed a full torso—ribs and spine and all!—however, Bert had needed to borrow their strength to transport it underground without causing needless damage. At last he’d led them all, in the darkest part of the night, to that secret, better place. The place his mother had found.

  He made quick work of tying the rope he’d acquired at Labor to the iron bars of the isolation cell’s door. One by one they’d shimmied after him, into the disused cellar below, and waited near the rope’s dangling end, blackness pressing in. It was even colder down here than it was above. A strange smell scampered at their nostrils while Bert lit one of the candle stumps he’d been collecting and storing on earthen shelves. Weak light leapt and danced, throwing shadows across the dirt walls, the fine roots scraggling from the uneven ceiling, the caved-in door, and over the lumpen thing that lay on a length of pilfered canvas covering half of the packed-mud floor. Or, rather, the collection of things that lay there.

  Now, as Bert placed the torso between two tanned arms and above a badly sewn pelvis, what had once been a jumble of body parts was taking proper shape. There was a person’s core—recognizably female—both legs and both arms, the segments of each joined together. The hands—unwittingly donated by Ada Habel—had at last been neatly stitched onto the disparate wrists, though Bert’s needlework was nowhere near as fine as the girls’. It would be up to Millie and Victoria and Sarah to put their embroidery skills to practical use when it came time to assemble the daintier details: innards, facial features, hairline, the seam between neck and shoulders. Soaking in buckets, organs awaited transplantation. All they lacked was a right foot. A head. A gap in the chest waited for just the right heart.

  Bert, Alf, and Ned grinned. Millie’s own smile broadened as she paced the length of the canvas, examining all angles. The Marys pressed fists to their mouths to stifle giggles, while Victoria held her breath, hands raised as in prayer. Sarah alone stood calmly, off to one side, head cocked in contemplation.

  “I wish Little Sarah could have seen this,” she said. “She needed her more than we do.”

  “Not more than,” Bert said, his voice gentle as an embrace. “We all need her. We all need her terribly.”

  Yes, yes, we all do, chorused the others, fervently, until Big Sarah smiled.

  Slowly, finally, their new mother was coming together.

  Heavy rains kept them from the cellar for three agonizing days. The gravel yard flooded; an ankle-high sea of milky yellow water lapped at Bridewell’s main hall, drowning the work lots and the flower garden outside Matron Welles’ cottage. Tufts of wool and unraveled rope bobbed on the surface; in the Factory’s corner, cascades poured into the long-drop until it overflowed. On Martin Rook’s orders, women and children alike were kept indoors—to avoid pleurisy as much as cess.

  Despite the Superintendent’s best intentions, five workers were lost to fever and ague, one to drowning, and another was struck by lightning as she crossed the yard carrying an armful of copper pans to the kitchen. Bert watched her scalded figure dragged inside and felt a pang of loss. She’d had such a friendly smile, that lady, but it was toasted beyond recognition. Ugly and black. Completely unfit for their patchwork mother, who would only ever look on her children with warmth, or glee, or good-humored mischief. Never with burnt misery.

  Bert fretted so much about her, waiting unfinished underground, that he lost all appetite. Skinny already, he wizened with worry while Ned and Millie fought over his rations. By the time Matron at last summoned them back to the barn for lessons, he was nearly weak enough to need Dr. Dal’s strange machine to give him a jolt.

  The Surgeon’s boots squelched as he walked around the table, his hands leaving damp prints on the burnished wood surface. Swaying, he braced himself against the corpse before making each cut, blinking and blinking as though to clear the storm from his vision. Sweat plinked from the tip of his nose, stinking like old vinegar. Bubbles gurgled from deep in his belly, popping loud out his throat. When the blade slipped from his fingers, Dr. Dal plunged after it, like Millie’s mother had, that time, into the factory well.

  Waterlogged, Bert reckoned as the doc swam up to his feet. Soaked to the bone from so many drenched days.

  On the other side of the table, Matron’s mouth was a firm black line. A dark crease developed between her brows, stayed there. Back straight, she stilled in that way Bert and the other kids knew too well; inside she was coiled like a snake, ready to strike. Out of habit a dozen pairs of small shoulders trembled, preparing for a blow.

  “Settle down, little ones,” she said, the words strained just shy of soothing. “We won’t be long. If you’re good and quiet, I’ll ask Miss Fiona to bring you a ha’penny bag of boiled sweets next time she goes into town.”

  “Yes, Matron,” said one of the girls, pretending she was easily fooled.

  They tried not to squirm, to sit tight and so earn a reward that would never appear, but their agitation, followed by their bodies, rose with the Surgeon’s tirade.

  Dr. Dalkeith had upgraded from scalpel to handsaw, which he flailed as he interrogated invisible men. Ranting about criminal minds—their sins come from the minds, not the souls—he lectured in shouted snipp
ets.

  “Gentlemen of the Royal Society,” he slurred, “I beseech you. Cast your discerning eyes hither. When it comes down to it . . .” He stopped, swallowed hard and tapped a fist against his sternum. “When it comes to unlawful behavior, the body entire is superfluous. Instinct and intelligence—or lack thereof—are the seeds of misdemeanor. The cranium and what lies within it, I am convinced more than ever, are of the utmost interest. The primary seat of miscreant drive is here,” he pointed to the corpse’s forehead with the tip of his saw, “and the secondary, it might be argued, is here.” This time he jabbed the soft place between the woman’s ribs, severing a chunk of her breast in the process. “But our focus today is on the former—should ever be on the former. Why waste time? Am I not right, Mrs. Welles?”

  Jaw set, the Matron clasped her hands firmly and did not reply.

  The Surgeon took no notice. Grunting and puffing, wielding the tool double-fisted, he severed the corpse’s head in a matter of minutes then held the thing up by the hair. “Take notes, if you please, Avice. A fascinating specimen, wouldn’t you agree, Gentlemen?” Twisting the sample this way and that, he looked at the children as though expecting a response, then nodded as though he’d received one. As the doctor highlighted all aberrant features, Bert watched Mrs. Welles; watched her watching, taking notes as Dr. Dal had instructed, without ever writing anything down.

  “Proof!” The doctor staggered to a tall apothecary cabinet bracketed by floor-to-ceiling shelves to the left of the workshop. He tucked the head under his arm like a football, occasionally stroking its bedraggled blond hair. With some effort, he unlocked the leadlight doors and flung them wide. Stare fixed on the lowest shelf, he extracted a container twice as big as a chamber pot; lidless glass, dusty but clear, tinted pale greenish-blue. “If mere words cannot persuade you, Gentlemen, I shall endeavor to provide physical proof.”

  In moments, the head was sealed in the jar—Matron Welles had to melt the wax and affix the treated leather lid, for Dr. Dal had some trouble with the matches—and floating in a potent brine that distorted her once-lovely features, making her look almost as ugly as Millie’s mother, pulled too late from the well. Almost, but not quite.

  “If we get her quick,” Bert whispered to Alf, barely allowing his lips to move lest Matron Welles catch him, “she’d be a good face to look on. She’d be a good fit.”

  Gaze locked on the doctor, who had just thrust the full jar at Matron Welles before lurching over to the settee tucked off in a corner, Alf nodded. He raised his hand, hushing Bert’s next question, as the Matron collected a wool blanket and draped it over the doctor’s prostrate form, without tenderness. When muffled snores emerged from under the cover, Alf whispered, “Faint, Bert,” then balled his hand, turned to his right and punched Ned hard in the stomach.

  As air—followed by the extra breakfast rations he’d pigged—whooshed from Ned’s mouth, Bert let himself go slack. Closing his eyes, he flopped from the pew, falling with a dull thwap. He wasn’t sure what Alf planned, but if it needed Bert to be out cold, then he’d play the part convincingly.

  Cold seeped through his thin clothes as he lay there, trying not to inhale the smell of Ned’s puke. Footsteps clomped nearby as the kids ran from Bert to Mrs. Welles and back, while Alf called out, “They got the sickness, Matron! Just like Little Sarah—they got it real bad. Dr. Dal’s got to help them; he’s got to give them medicine, and make them better. Dr. Dal! Dr. Dal, wake up!”

  If Bert didn’t know better, he’d think the note of panic in Alf’s voice was pretty bloody compelling. The Marys—bunch of whiners at the best of times—picked up the boy’s keening, making a din powerful enough to rouse those out on the Isle. Not strong enough to make Dr. Dalkeith stir, it seemed—which, Bert guessed, was the real reason behind Alf’s caterwauling. Testing how deep the doc’s sleep was.

  “Hush! Hush, now. Hush. The Surgeon is . . . ” Matron Welles looked around as if searching for the right word. “ . . . indisposed. He has been working overly hard of late, and needs some rest. Hush! Hush. Alfred, Edward, carry Albert over to the infirmary—can you manage that, Edward?”

  Scowling at Alf, Ned clutched his stomach and brought up another splatter of soup and half-chewed bread.

  “Fine,” the Matron sighed. “Join Albert in the sickroom, but mop up that mess first. You,” she said, pointing to Big Sarah, “help take the boys to bed. And you,” she pointed, plucked at a name, “Mary—accompany the little ones to the dining hall. William Henry will bring the day’s Labor inside; we can’t have this infection spoiling the lot of you. And Superintendent Rook will not be pleased if you don’t make quota this week. The rains have set us far enough behind . . . ”

  Her instructions quieted as the Matron led the able children outside. When the pattering of their footfalls had dwindled, Bert risked cracking an eyelid. With a sour expression to match his reek, Ned glared at Alf, who rocked on his heels, practically bouncing with pride.

  “There’s hessian sacks by the barrow,” Alf said. He tilted his chin at Sarah. “Bag that head for us. Reckon doc’s pissed enough to forget he even jarred it in the first place.”

  Bert raised a brow, mutely questioning how Alf could possibly know such a thing.

  The boy shrugged, unfazed. “When William Henry gets far gone as the doc has, it knocks a good half hour off his memory at least. All manner of things you can get away with when a man’s blind as that.”

  Between the barn and the infirmary was no place for talk. Without knowing if or when Matron Welles would return to check on them, the boys put on a show of illness while Alf and Sarah carried their burdens in silence.

  “Lie still,” Alf said to Bert, throwing him down on the nearest cot. The blanket was thick, well-made; the pillow was filled with feather, not straw. Bert had half a mind to will himself really sick, just so he could rest here a few days, sleeping in his very own bed—but then he thought of the flood, the cellar, the preserved head, and the mess they’d be in if it all wasn’t cleaned up quick-smart.

  “I’m too scrawny,” Bert said, begrudgingly, when Mary slid the jar under the covers beside him, trying to camouflage its presence with artful tucking and fluffing. “You’ll have to give it to Ned.”

  Twisted on his side, Ned hugged the jar. If anyone checked on them—without looking too close—it’d seem Ned was cradling his aching guts, trying to hold them in.

  “How long d’you reckon Dr. Dal will be out?” Bert asked, drowsiness warring with his eagerness to reach the cellar.

  “Long enough,” Alf said. “Give it till evening prayer—if you haven’t seen him by then, he’ll be done till morning.”

  “All right,” Bert said, gauging the time by the length of the shadows creeping in the infirmary door. “Better get going, else Matron will come hunting you. Me and Ned’ll keep care of things here.” He snuggled into the mattress. “Meet us later. After moondark. Downstairs.”

  The panes in the bay window were begrimed with rain-spattered dirt. The irony, Avice thought, glancing at the decorative ceiling border, exhortations woven in a pattern of blackberries and pansies: Cleanliness—Godliness—Quietness—Regularity—Submission—Industry. Arms crossed, she stood with her back to the Superintendent’s desk, awaiting his return. Taking deep, slow breaths, she let the coals of her anger smolder.

  How dare he summon me like a maid, then leave with nothing more than, “Stay put!”

  Pulling her shawl tightly around her shoulders, Avice gazed outside, keeping an eye on the door’s reflection. In the yard, half a dozen Third class women trod widdershins, inside the walls. Barefoot and shorn like lambs, bearing thick iron collars, they drifted like ghosts from corner to corner. Arson is the perfect crime if you wanted to get caught, Avice had written in the Superintendent’s journal before these particular women were punished.

  As the procession paused at the western wall, the small wooden door swung smoothly inward. Through the narrow gap, one of the children slipped, hunched nearly
double and wrapped in one of the infirmary’s new blankets.

  “Edward,” she muttered, then corrected: “No. Albert.”

  Within seconds she had composed the entry for Rook’s journal; sick or not, the boy would have to be punished—for theft of the blanket, if not for intentionally infecting Bridewell’s vulnerable populace. She tallied the pounds of oakum that would have to be deducted from the daily totals, and added two-thirds of Bert’s allotted rations back into general stocks for redistribution. It pained her, after all the effort she’d made with the children this fortnight, that this one remained so headstrong . . .

  She considered dashing outside to give the boy his comeuppance—Martin would hardly notice her absence—then saw Bert intercepted by a black-clad form. Taller than any man had a right to be, thin as a bird-gutted scarecrow, Reverend Tanner’s wide-brimmed hat obscured the top half of his face and, in this weather, would serve better as an umbrella than a sun-screen. He took up more space with fear than his slight figure alone ever could.

  The child struggled to keep his blanket wrapped round him as he tried to sidestep the parson, and Avice chuckled. Official punishments could certainly wait, she decided, until after the Reverend had filled the boy’s mind with visions of fire and brimstone.

  Which left her here to face Martin Rook, whenever he deigned to return.

  “Think of the Devil,” she murmured as the office door creaked open.

  “Have a seat, Avice,” the Superintendent said before she could utter another word. A second later, she was at a loss for anything more than a grunt of surprise. Following quick on Martin’s heels was Miss Fiona, rosy-cheeked with self-satisfaction.

  “I’ll stand, thank you,” Avice began.

  “Sit.” Martin snapped his fingers, as though she were a dog, and pointed at a low stool in front of the desk. “Now, woman.”

  Not Matron, then. Not Avice. Woman.

  Rigid with fury, she inclined her head ever so slightly, gripped her skirts and smoothed them beneath her as she sat. Her boots crunched noisily on scattered chips of timber as she adjusted her position; the stool’s legs had been hastily shortened, sawn off two-thirds of their regular length. Perhaps Martin had done the job himself, right there, in too great a hurry to sweep the sawdust away. As the Superintendent leaned heavily against the imposing desk, Avice was forced to crane her neck to meet his eyes.