The Flesh Market

by Richard Wright

  The fourth was older, a grey hunched thing, long dead. There were holes about its skin where its desiccated parchment remains had shredded as it moved, and what moisture she saw in the callow moonlight came from rot and decay. If the thing had ever been buried, its grave clothes had long since rotted to nothing. It was naked, a different kind of customer to those she had been forced to dally with, seeking to sate different hungers.

  They came for her without pause, arms out and heads lolling. The old one stayed silent, as the freshest groaned deep in their throats. Retreating toward a forbidding building, her back pressing to the door, she dreamed of repentance and heaven, knowing that it was too late for either.

  As the dead closed the final feet, the door behind her opened and firm, hard hands dragged her inside. She screamed, but female voices soothed her as a bolt slammed home and cold fists beat against the far side of the wood. "Shh, girl," said a woman. "You're safe now. This is Magdalene Asylum, and nothing gets in or out of here without our say-so."

  To the West, several stories below the Mile, smoke poured through the Grassmarket. One of the buildings was ablaze, and the only surprise was that more had not yet joined it. Men and women fought each other as they ran, the message to flee to the castle either never having reached them, or having been misunderstood. Some stayed in their rooms, and many survived the night. Others ran through the streets, not knowing that dead things plugged both ends of the long quadrangle of the market, marching inwards in an instinctive pincer movement, ready to slaughter.

  Outside the Last Drop public house, a simpleton watched an old woman eat a screaming man. She had him pinned to the ground, and despite being bigger than she, her victim could not throw her off. Her jaw was clamped to his cheek, worrying through the flesh, blood flowing from her lips to drench her scrawny neck and dirt-grey shawl.

  A big man, the simpleton's nickname reflected his intel-lect, though he bore the moniker with no ill feeling because he knew it was the truth. His sister always said it with a smile, and when she smiled he was happy. It was his sister he sought, but there were so many people shouting and running, banging into him as they passed, that he couldn't remember how to get to her house. When he saw the lady eating the man's face, even the thought of his sister vanished from his mind. Tears flowed from his eyes, smearing soot-stained cheeks, and he shook his head. He could not understand why the lady was eating the man. "No, Jamie, no," he muttered, not knowing he was doing so. "Jamie doesn't like it."

  Movement caught his eye behind the lady, drawing his attention not because it was big and riotous like the running and screaming, but because it was small and furtive. There, in the shadows of a close entrance. Two children held each other as they huddled against the grimy brickwork, a boy and a girl. Brother and sister, perhaps. They stared at the old lady too, their faces white and unmoving. He recognised them, though he did not know their names. He had told them jokes, and sang to them. He had played their day-of-the-week games. Shame bubbled up in him when he noticed that they were not crying like him, and the corners of his mouth turned down. Perhaps they would be able to tell him what was happening, or show him where his sister lived.

  Smoke passed, burning his eyes, and when it cleared the children were no longer alone. There was a bleeding man behind them, staggering from the gloom with drool on his lips, his left ear and chunks of his neck missing. When he saw the children his arms rose towards them, and his shuffle grew more urgent.

  The simpleton screamed, still no nearer to being able to explain what he was seeing, knowing only that there was danger. Taking two fast steps, he leaped over the woman, clipping her shoulder with his bare left foot and sending her sprawling, her victim's cheek still in her teeth. Paying her no heed, his focus narrowing down to two tiny forms and a predator, he sprinted to the close, beating the bleeding man by a heartbeat. Snatching up the children, one in each strong arm, he scooted back. The old woman lifted herself from the ground, her victim already on his feet and running as he clutched his ruined face, and turned towards them.

  Neither of the things stepped closer. The bleeding man swayed where he stood, head cocked, eyes on the still children in the simpleton's grip. Its hunger was palpable, but it made no move. The old woman waited too, sensing something new, something strange. The simpleton held his breath against the smoke and fate, his back to the grimy wall with nowhere to run. The children were safe in his arms, and he moved his head slowly back and forth, taking in first one predator and then another with teary eyes, waiting and thinking of his sister.

  The dead clogged the far end of the Grassmarket, where the folk of Edinburgh fought with makeshift weapons to reach the brightly lit castle above. Behind them lay West Port, the Irish immigrant district. Battles raged there too. Although it would not be clear for some hours, it was in West Port that the dead were first seen, where the first attacks took place. To the people crowded through that district, thoughts of flight were just a distracting fantasy. Word had spread that the dead were between them and sanctuary, and so each family held their ground in their home, a thousand miniature sieges.

  In a lodging house in Tanner's Close, a woman banged nails through shards of smashed-up furniture, pinning them in place behind the front windows. Her husband, so much younger than she, worked the same task at the front door. It was a frantic chore, for until moments ago they had thought themselves sealed in.

  Lights off, they had been waiting quietly with their sole tenant, a military pensioner who had bided with them for some weeks. The door had smashed open, the fragile lock inadequate against the strange strength of the dead men, and a hulking brute had collapsed through to join them, landing on the old man and fastening ferocious jaws into his calf.

  It was her husband who had saved them all. Though he stood barely five foot four, tiny next to the thing making the pensioner bleat like a goat in a slaughterhouse, he had exploded with rage. Snatching up a kettle with one hand, he brought it down on the thing's head, an over arm strike that crunched the skull like dry clay. Though it didn't stop the brute moving, it forced it to release its prey, and they bundled it back out of the door as the old man slid to the floor, clutching his leg and moaning.

  "Stop mewling, old man," her husband had snapped, a dull fire in his eyes, "or I'll finish what it started." The old man glared at him, then turned his face against the straw pallet of one of the beds to stifle his own cries. "Shut the door," her husband said, turning away with a nonchalant confidence that thrilled her. "I'll find hammer and nails."

  She was safe with her man, she knew. With him by her side, there was no need for fear.

  As the night went on, past midnight and into the wee small hours, the streets of Edinburgh Old Town cleared of the living. The thousands crammed into the castle, their bites and scratches patched, their broken limbs reset, took comfort from the men of war to whom they had passed responsibility for their safety. Some even slept.

  For thousands more, trapped in their own rooms or those of their neighbours, the night was longer, and many feared that the sun would never again rise. The most devout spoke of final judgement and the wages of sin, each more certain than the next that they were being put to suffering for the deeds of their fellows. Such thoughts were not forgotten come daybreak, and there was much overflowing of the coffers of churches in the following days, the poor getting poorer that they might buy eventual passage in their preferred direction. None who laid eyes on the shambling horrors their friends and loved ones had become would easily forget them.

  With the light, soldiers moved through the streets and buildings one at a time, clearing away both the static and the restless dead. The operation began on the morning of Monday, September 18th, in crisp golden sunlight, and much of the work was complete before nightfall. Patrols roamed the quiet streets for four days after, as people kept to their homes as much as they could. The appetites of the dead meant that they had little patience for hiding, if they could even claim to understand such a concept, and the few remaining st
ragglers soon announced themselves and were despatched. On Friday the 22nd September the all clear was given. The threat was gone.

  Or at least, as some commentators whispered, the threat was sleeping.

  Chapter 2

  Robert Knox

  Monday, October 15th, 1827

  The rapping was persistent, digging into the edges of Knox's mind and pulling him inexorably from a deep, exhausted slumber. The climb to full wakefulness was slow, for the day had been long. Only a few short weeks ago, the academic term had begun at the University of Edinburgh, and the competition to lure in medical students was fierce among the rival anatomists supplementing their researches with lectures and dissection classes. The previous year he had entered partnership with his old tutor James Barclay, and though his friend's declining health had left Knox with the full burden of the teaching duties, there had been a sense of shared responsibility. Now Barclay was dead, and the school at 10 Surgeon's Square belonged solely to Knox. It was the opportunity he had waited a lifetime for, and this was the year that would make or break his ambition.

  The distant knocking reeled him into the world, and he opened his eyes. His left was blind, the sight stolen from it by smallpox many years hence. The right gazed into the darkness. It was still night, but his disorientated body clock offered him no further clues than that.

  Night. Knocking at the door. Knox's heart kicked into gear as memory and the present mixed together. The rapping on the door. The chaos on the streets. The rush to the castle, and the dead things that had reached for him in the bowels of the hospital there.

  Mary stirred in bed beside him, and memory receded to its proper place. "Robert," she said, "what hour is it?"

  "Late," he told her, reaching a hand back to stroke her hair. "Too late for callers." He heard the front door open. "McCrimmon has it. Sleep, Mary. I'll see to this."

  Though his lanterns were doused he found the door to the bedroom easily enough, and once on the landing he was aided by light filtering up from below. Leaning over the banister, he listened to his butler address their nocturnal visitor. "I must insist, sir. The master of the house is not to be disturbed. Whatever it is need wait for a civilised hour."

  "Not this, friend." Knox recognised the nasal whine of the voice as soon as he heard it. "I'm here on his say-so, see? It's news he wants for badly. He won't thank you for delaying it."

  "A risk I am prepared to endure. Good night to you."

  "Wait," said Knox, descending the stairs. McCrimmon looked back from where he blocked the door, his intimidating height shielding the view of the man outside. "Let him in. I'll see him."

  "As you wish, sir." He pulled the door open, revealing young David Paterson on the step, cap in hand, shuffling nervously from one foot to the other. "Do you wish me to prepare some refreshments?"

  "No, that will be all McCrimmon." The man paused, uncomfortable with leaving his master alone with a midnight caller of unknown provenance. "He works for me, at the school." Knox shot Paterson a sharp glance as he explained. "I presume he is here on some suitably urgent business matter."

  "As you say, sir. I shall retire to the pantry, and await your pleasure." The subtext was clear enough. I shall be close at hand, should you require assistance. Knox nodded, accepting the lamp McCrimmon held as the butler made his way down the corridor. When he was certain his servant was gone he waved Paterson inside, glancing once out to the street to see whether the boy had been followed. Fog had settled fast over the city, smothering the gaslights so that they were visible only as diffuse halos. Whether Paterson had taken pains to go undiscovered through the streets was a moot point, for nobody would have been able to track him that night. It was foolish paranoia to think that anybody would be interested anyway. If the matter Paterson wished to discuss was as Knox suspected then they were doing nothing wrong, at least in the eyes of the law.

  In his early twenties, Paterson had the look of a weasel about him, the impression heightened by the way he sidled inside. Knox waved him into the drawing room then followed, lips pursed, and closed the door behind him.

  Paterson glanced at the books on the shelves around him as though such an accumulation of knowledge in one place might do him physical harm. Crossing to the armchairs by the window, he stared at one as though it might bite, trying to decide whether he should sit. Knox intervened before the boy took a liberty too far. "The hour is ungodly, boy. Now would be an excellent time to divest yourself of whatever burning news you believe will not wait until the sun rejoins us."

  Paterson turned back to him, and stood almost to attention. "Aye, Doctor. Pardon for the late hour, but I thought you should know of it immediately, sir." He shuffled, his eyes like a puppy expecting a whipping.

  Knox pinched the bridge of his nose as he fought back his temper. "David Paterson, if you cannot satisfy me with an answer to my question, I am going to be seeking a new porter in the morning. For preference, one who can engage his mind, his discretion, and his tongue, all at the same time."

  Paterson stared, the hollows of his face exaggerated in the lamplight, as he struggled to process the statement. With considerable satisfaction, Knox noted the boy's eyes widen as his sudden predicament dawned on him. "Aye sir! I mean, sir, no! There's a delivery, Doctor Knox. Merry Andrew called on me at my home, just a half hour gone sir. He's taking the delivery up to the school, and wants you to meet him there."

  Knox shook his head. "For how long, Paterson, have you considered me at the beck and call of that graveyard horror?" Tired and infuriated, he grabbed the porter's arm, hauling him back to the entrance. "Have you so little regard for your position as to lose track of who employs you? Get out, weasel. We will discuss this further in the morning, and you should pray that I sleep well for whatever remains of this night."

  As Knox swung the front door open, McCrimmon rushed from the back of the house and seized the boy. With a rough shove, he ejected him from the house.

  "Wait, sir, please!" Paterson hissed the words as he stumbled down the stone steps from the door. "It's not like the others, sir!" McCrimmon closed the door gently but firmly, mindful still of the late hour, and Knox barely heard Paterson's closing hiss. "It's a walker, Doctor Knox! Merry Andrew's found you a walker!"

  #

  By the time Knox reached the school, William Fergusson was already waiting for him in the lecture theatre, Paterson having been sent to his George Square lodgings to fetch him. Among Knox's most promising students, the young man was one of three assistants he employed to assist with lectures and dissections. An oversubscription to his classes was among the fruits of his exhausting labours, and without help he would have been turning people away at the door. With Fergusson, Miller, and Jones to hand, he could cope more easily with the workload, and the extra fees he was thus able to generate more than compensated for the stipends he paid them.

  There had been no time to send for Miller and Jones as well, and he hoped that Fergusson would be sufficient for the task in hand. Paterson was there too, perched on the edge of the dissecting table beside the lectern, though Knox expected little reliable assistance from that source. Towering over them all was Andrew Merrilees, known to his peers as Merry Andrew the Graveyard King. Thin and pale, Andrew's gaunt cheekbones and receding gums heightened the impression that he might be one of the very cadavers he specialised in acquiring. His clothes would have fitted perfectly were he four stone heavier, but hung loosely about him, and were soiled with fresh earth. It did not strain the imagination to guess at how he had spent his evening, even before the delivery was revealed.

  Knox preferred to remain uncertain. Purchasing a dead body was no crime, though debates raged through the country's upper echelons about whether it should become so. It was a preposterous position to take, and it staggered Knox that any man of intelligence could set their stall behind it. Without cadavers to work with, how was a student of medicine to learn the skills they might require in their career? How was any teacher to instruct them? What gravely wounded man, t
old that he required surgery, would be fool enough to pass his life to a doctor who had practised his craft in notebooks alone?

  As important to Knox as these most basic arguments: how was research into the conditions and function of the human body to progress without subjects to study? The science of anatomy, the research he had chosen to pursue rather than medicine itself, would stop in its tracks without flesh to feed it.

  The arguments raged on, but for the present a man in Knox's position was permitted, expected, to source a steady supply of the dead. There was no crime in that. What was most certainly a crime, an abhorrent one, was the desecration of a grave and the theft of the corpse it contained. Knox would endorse no such practice, were he aware that it had occurred. Instead, he relied on donations of bodies to his school, for which he offered reasonable recompense to those who took the time to make such deliveries. To avoid salacious gossip, for the notion of human dissection was one the public at large naturally found unpalatable, such transactions were most often discreet and nocturnal.

  Merry Andrew was one of several donors he made use of, and despite the telling stain of fresh dirt, Knox chose not to be aware of what had very likely taken place in a cemetery somewhere that very evening. More than usual, he was inclined to take on trust that nothing illegal had transpired. The conditions and function of the human body were not what this particular delivery pertained to. There was instead a different knowledge being sought.