The Corpse Queen

by Heather M. Herrman

  “Where does he get all these?” she asked.

  “He finds some, buys others,” James said. “Used to buy a lot from the Tooth Fairy, but as you know, he and your aunt aren’t exactly on the best of terms now.”

  Molly continued down the line, each jar’s contents more horrific than the last. She knew that preserving anomalies was important for science, but something about this particular collection felt wrong.

  “Here.” James’s eyes shone with excitement. “Look at this.”

  He held out a jar. Inside, a small bit of flesh, no bigger than a finger, floated.

  Vestigial Tail from a 16-year-old girl . . .

  Molly grabbed the jar. Kitty.

  “Where did he get this?”

  It was Kitty’s. It had to be.

  James looked alarmed at her reaction. He reached gently for the jar, but she yanked it away.

  “Careful, Molly.” He frowned. “That’s a very rare specimen.”

  “She was a person, not a specimen.” Her eyes stung. Holding the jar to the light, she watched the stolen piece of Kitty whirl inside the liquid.

  James’s face wrinkled in concern. “Molly, are you all right?”

  “Where did the doctor get this?” She held up the jar. “This. This particular specimen.” She cringed at the word.

  James considered. “I’m not certain.”

  “Please.” She stepped closer, her eyes boring into his. “This is important. I want you to—”

  But before she could finish, James leaned in to kiss her.

  * * *

  Molly shoved him angrily away.

  “What the hell was that?” she said.

  He ducked his head, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I thought you wanted me to. When you agreed to come here with me after the café—”

  “Wanted you to?” Molly was so angry she was shaking. “I wanted you to treat me like a colleague. I just didn’t think I had to ask.”

  “Molly, please. Wait!”

  But she was already climbing down the ladder, clumsily clutching the jar with Kitty’s tail to her chest.

  James started after her. “Wait! Please!”

  “No. Leave me alone.” She heard him pause, then stop.

  Jumping down from the ladder, Molly raced across the empty lecture room to the church’s door.

  Outside, the sky was a corpse-eye blue. Feet crunching over the gravel, Molly hurried toward the house. She needed solitude. Time to make sense of what had just happened. Instead, she heard voices coming from the foyer.

  “Thank you. This information is very helpful,” a man said.

  “It’s also very delicate,” Ava whispered. “As I’m sure you know. I’m putting myself at risk by telling you anything at all.”

  Molly peered around the corner to see a police officer standing across from her aunt. A distinguished white mustache framed the man’s lips, and his coat gleamed with polished brass buttons.

  Gasping, Molly shoved the jar into her pocket and pressed herself against the wall.

  “I give you my word as a gentleman no one will know it came from you.” The policeman’s voice boomed with authority. “Least of all him.”

  “Thank you.” Despite speaking to a police officer amidst the center of her illegal empire, Ava sounded perfectly calm. “And I do hope you and your wife will be able to attend our upcoming party.”

  There was the creak of a door opening. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” The door slammed closed.

  Heart pounding, Molly stepped into the foyer.

  “Molly?” Ava spun, a hand going to her chest. “My goodness, you startled me.”

  “Why was there a police officer in our house?”

  Her aunt’s face shifted. “I was taking care of some rather unpleasant business.”

  “What was it?”

  Ava sighed, considering. “I have it on good authority that the Tooth Fairy is the man plaguing this city,” she said finally. “The Knifeman, or whatever the papers are calling him.”

  Molly blanched. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The body he left you was a natural death. And—”

  “The actions of madmen rarely conform to our logic,” Ava said. “And it’s certainly not in our interest to try to fathom their reasons. Let the policemen do that.” She turned around to leave.

  Molly’s mind was spinning so fast she felt the room tilt. “You said the Tooth Fairy was a nuisance. A spoiled child.”

  She stopped. “I didn’t want to alarm you.”

  “But who told you he was the Knifeman?”

  Ava frowned. “I’d prefer not to disclose their name. Suffice it to say, I’m very close with the source.”

  Molly felt the jar in her pocket. LaValle.

  In the attic, she’d been nearly ready to accept him as the killer.

  But James had said the Tooth Fairy sold anomalies to the doctor. If LaValle was in business with him, the doctor’s keen eye might easily have noted that too many of the man’s wares were unnaturally fresh. Like Kitty. A newly severed limb that had yet to set into rigor mortis had to have been harvested within ten hours of someone’s death, and not even the best grave robber was that consistently lucky.

  Though it still didn’t explain how the Tooth Fairy might have found Kitty in the first place.

  “Are they going to arrest him?”

  Ava shook her head. “I don’t know. I suspect they’ll need to find their own proof, but I’ve done all I can.”

  Molly’s mind felt like it had been scattered with buckshot, the information painfully peppering her brain. She’d waited so long to know the name of Kitty’s killer, but now that Ava was giving it to her, she felt none of the relief she’d expected. Only the awkward feeling of a mended bone that didn’t quite set.

  “And you’re sure it’s him?”

  A tender look flashed across her aunt’s eyes, and she pulled Molly into a fierce hug. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Molly.”

  Her skin smelled of sweat and the delicate scent of her perfume—sweet orange blossom. It was the first time they’d shared such affection. Molly closed her eyes and let her head press against the rustling fabric of Ava’s dress. Through its thin layer, she could hear the quick, birdlike rhythm of Ava’s heart.

  Her aunt pulled away. “Dinner’s waiting for you. I’ve had Maeve lay you a place. I’m afraid I have too much work planning for the party to join you tonight.”

  With a curt nod, she disappeared up the stairs. Molly heard the click of her door as it opened and then the sigh of the wood as Ava shut herself inside.

  Molly retreated to the empty kitchen. A fire burned in the hearth, keeping the stone walls warm. Perhaps Edgar had been telling one of the other boys about Kitty, and the news had somehow gotten back to the Tooth Fairy. If he sold anomalies to men like the doctor, then he’d certainly want anything so valuable. But something about it still didn’t sit right.

  All this time, a piece of Kitty had been inside the very walls where Molly worked.

  With shaking hands, Molly pulled the jar from her dress and set it on the table. Staring into the murky liquid, she tried and failed to understand why this should be worth so much more than Kitty’s life.

  “Please,” she whispered. She’d give anything right now to have just one more chance to speak to her friend. One more chance to put things right and tell Kitty she was sorry for not truly listening to her that night.

  But there was nothing left of Kitty. Just a lump of flesh.

  Pushing back her chair, Molly stood, grabbing the jar.

  “I’m sorry.”

  With trembling fingers, she unscrewed the lid. And in a single quick motion she tossed Kitty’s tail into the flames.

  The fire rose higher, burning brilliantly with the chemicals from the preservation fluid. The last bit
of her friend burned, then disappeared.

  The quiet of the empty kitchen was heightened by the heavy air outside, the windows shut tight against the winter wind. A smell of cooked meat and chemicals rapidly filled the room.

  Molly ran to a window, trying to open it, but the swollen wood stayed stuck. Frustrated, she beat at the pane, pounding her palms like a trapped moth against the glass.

  Then came the sound of footsteps—careful, quiet.

  31

  Tom needs you.”

  One of the twins—she’d still not learned how to tell them apart, and it seemed a point of pride for them that she couldn’t—danced nervously from foot to foot as his brother tried to tug him toward the door. Both boys were dressed in their work clothes, black pants and gray button shirts and flat caps like a newsboy’s.

  His brother elbowed him in the ribs, his face a mask of fury. “You shouldn’t have made us come. He said not to tell!”

  “Well, he don’t know everything,” the first one said, eyes defiant and sparkling. “Besides, he said she was a doctor.”

  “Studying to be a doctor,” the other one said, correcting him.

  “Tom told you that?” Molly asked, surprised.

  The boy nodded, face grave. “And he needs you now. Real bad. Will you come?”

  She nodded, heart thumping in alarm.

  The boys drove her through the city to a neighborhood just on its outskirts. The buildings were slumped together, and the tenants—mostly Irish—shared the space with the rats. “He lives here?” Molly asked. Her aunt surely paid Tom well enough that he could have found a better place than this.

  “Not anymore,” the first said. “It’s his ma’s.”

  She followed the twins up a dank alley to a small door, then climbed a steep staircase inside to a room at the top.

  Knocking softly, the twin in front pushed open the door.

  An animal smell, rank and ugly, rushed out, worse than the contents of the dead stomach she’d butchered in class. The cramped space was filled with trash, bits of food, and filthy rags. Piles of rotting newspaper blocked its single window.

  “Tom,” Molly said, shocked.

  He looked up as if in a daze. But when he saw her, he sprang to his feet.

  “What is she doing here?” His whole body tensed. She was reminded once again of her old tomcat, of the way his eyes would sometimes go mad with the moon.

  “What’s the matter?” Molly spoke softly. She moved closer to a mattress where a woman lay. Her face was drawn, her breathing shallow. “Tom, is this your mother?”

  She waited. But he would not look at her. When he spoke, it was through gritted teeth. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

  “It’s all right,” she said gently. “I’m here to help.”

  Finally, he knelt beside her, taking the hand of the woman on the bed. Lifting it, he pressed it tenderly to his cheek. “She’s been like this for a week now,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “It’s my goddamn father!” Tom barked the words. “He can’t keep his hands off her. The doctors told her with the last one that she wasn’t to have any more kids, and here she is, pregnant again!” He looked at Molly. “She’s near fifty. How is it even possible?”

  “It happens sometimes,” Molly said, remembering such cases from her books. She leaned over the woman. “But pregnancy shouldn’t do this. What else has happened?”

  “This.” Tom held a bottle up to her, its brown surface glinting in the reflection of the few candles that burned around the room’s periphery. She saw then that there were dozens like it, scattered across the floor.

  Molly took it. “Laudanum?”

  He nodded grimly. “I called a doctor in when the cramps started near a month ago. He gave her this.” He shook his head, disgusted. “It ain’t cheap, but I kept paying for it and giving it to her like he said. Now it’s the only thing she wants. She doesn’t even recognize me the times that I’m here.”

  Molly studied his mother, lying supine on the filthy mattress. “Let me do this next bit alone,” she said. “Turn away.”

  She lifted the sheet. The woman’s body was thin, but Molly could see how it had been stretched and remade with each birth, the curves eating up any angles that might once have been before sinking to loose flesh as she lost weight.

  A dark stain spread across her skirts.

  Gently, Molly pulled them away, the fabric sticking to the woman’s skin.

  The undergarments had been soiled, and a feral smell rose from Tom’s mother, a mix of blood and urine and despair. “Bring me some water! And a cloth,” Molly called.

  One of the twins scurried to obey, returning with a bowl and a wet rag. “This is filthy,” Molly said, surveying the rag’s blackened surface. “I’ll need a clean one.”

  “Here.” Tom pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “It’s fresh.”

  She marveled at the whiteness of it, at him standing there in this room. His tidy presence, his pressed shirt and neatly groomed hair, in the midst of so much disarray. She’d said that the man who died at the pub must not have had a woman in his life because of the way he looked, but Tom had always kept his appearance up, and if this woman on the bed were any indication, he’d done it by himself for a very long time.

  “Jesus.” Tom inhaled sharply at he stared at the dried blood. “There’s so much of it.”

  “Let me finish,” Molly said. “Turn back around.” Gently, she began to clean away the mess from between the woman’s legs. The twins slipped quietly out the door.

  There was no doubt there had been a miscarriage. The amount of blood, coupled with the woman’s flat breasts, her tender abdomen, denoted the changes. She’d lost this one a little at a time, but it was gone now; Molly was sure of it.

  Finished cleaning, Molly looked up. “Give me a glass,” she said. “Water. Cold if you can.”

  A minute later, Tom was back, pressing a broken teacup into her hand.

  She lifted it slowly to his mother’s lips. Her eyes slipped open a crack.

  “Medicine,” she croaked. “Please. I need . . . medicine.”

  “No,” Molly said, voice firm. “There’ll be no more of that.”

  She had read about addiction, though she’d never seen it firsthand. The doctors didn’t even agree laudanum could cause it, some postulating that only weaker constitutions could not handle the tincture. But there were other, more disturbing tales of a rising epidemic. Of drugs given for pain, paid for dearly and then paid for twice again as the patients lost themselves to the medicine, finding a world where they could erase the one in which they lived.

  “Let me speak to you,” she said to Tom. “Outside.”

  He followed. Molly looked around for the twins, but they were gone.

  “She wasn’t always like this,” Tom said, and she heard in his voice the same fierceness that sometimes entered into her own. “She liked her drink, but it were never this bad.”

  “Listen to me, Tom. It’s the drug. She’s had too much of it. You’ll have to wean her off it.”

  “But the doctor said—”

  “The doctor gave her the first thing out of his medicine bag to help her with the pain. That was all.” She wondered if it would have been different if a woman had tended her. Someone who could understand. “You’ll need to stay with her. Taper it off gradually. A teaspoon a day for the first two days, half that again each one after, until she can go without. It won’t be easy.” She met his gaze. “She’ll want the drug. More than anything.”

  “And the baby?”

  “Gone,” Molly said. “Find someone to clean her. I did the best I could, but she needs a bath. The room needs airing.”

  “I’ll manage it,” Tom said. “I wanted to earlier, only she refused.”
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br />   “If you need help, I—”

  “I’ll manage,” he said again.

  Thinking herself dismissed, she started to go.

  “Molly . . .”

  She turned. Face lit by the lantern and hollowed by its shadows, Tom Donaghue looked like a man starved.

  “When this is over, I mean to leave.” He spoke haltingly. “There’s free land out west. Kansas, maybe. They say if you’re willing to work it, you can have it. I’ve been saving my money. The older ones, my brothers and sisters, they’re too far gone, but the little two—the boy and the girl—I’m gonna take them with me.”

  She felt like someone had just plunged a hand into her breast and squeezed her lungs. “When?”

  “As soon as I can. When I get Ma free of this, though I don’t doubt she’ll just find a different-colored bottle to replace it.” He laughed. The sound was ugly.

  “Will I see you again?”

  She hated herself for asking. Hated herself even more for needing to know.

  “I don’t know.” He moved closer to her, and she could smell him. Sweat and earth and the clean, soapy scent that was Tom. “Probably not. I don’t like goodbyes.”

  Before she could respond, he had hold of her, pulling her to him, burying his hands in her hair. His mouth pressed to her ear.

  And then it was he who asked.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Kiss me.”

  She’d thought she wouldn’t know how. James had tried to take something from her, but this was hers to give. She’d lain awake in bed imagining such a moment a hundred times over, and every time she was as fumbling as she’d been with the bodies in the lecture room. But this was different. Easy. They fell into each other like water, their mouths sliding together in a single pulsing wave.

  When he pulled away, she felt a piece of herself tearing off with him. She wanted him to stay. For once, she needed someone to choose her. Not leave, like everyone she’d loved before.

  “Goodbye, Molly Green,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

  She left him, not daring to turn around.