The Resurrectionist Read Free Page B

insistent. In the black I fumbled for my boots, groping my way towards the door.
    The hall outside was empty, my movements loud in the unfamiliar space. About me everything silent, and still. The knocking coming again as I descended, making me jump.
    Pushing the grille aside I peered out, and a face appeared, pressed so close I could smell the gin’s sweet stink upon his breath.
    ‘It’s a great time you’re taking for such a night,’ said avoice, its accent Irish, and thick. Instinctively I recoiled.
    ‘Who are you?’ I demanded, keeping my voice low. There was a moment then in which I felt him watching me. When he spoke again his voice was harder.
    ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said, ‘just open it.’
    ‘Not without a name,’ I insisted.
    ‘Get Tyne, or the prentice, they’ll know.’
    I hesitated, but as I did I heard a step behind me and, turning, saw Robert there, a lamp held in his hand.
    ‘No, Gabriel,’ he said, ‘do as he says.’
    The owner of the voice was small, and slight; behind him stood a cart, its shape outlined in the rain, another figure holding the horse’s head cradled to his chest. Then Mr Tyne at my elbow, his voice sharp in my ear.
    ‘Help them; there’s been enough noise already.’
    I pulled away, stepping out into the rain. In the doorway Mr Tyne watched, his eyes scanning the length of the sleeping street. Seeing me looking back he smiled, a thin thing of pleasure at my discomfort.
    The rain spilled downwards, cold wires descending to strike our faces and cheeks. In the cart the Irishman was lifting something from the straw, a bundle shape, swinging it towards me, and then it was on my shoulder, heavier than I had expected, its bindings wet and thick with the scent of earth. Staggering, I felt the weight within begin to shift, a loose collapsing motion, as if it were soil it held, or stones, cold water running from the sacking and down my neck. And as it did I understood what it was I held, the shock sent me slipping on the oily cobbles. But then Mr Tyne was upon me.
    ‘Sweet Jesus, boy,’ he hissed, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me upright, ‘would you have the beaks upon us?’
    Their names were Caley, and Walker. In the dark one might have taken Caley for a boy of fifteen, so slight was he. But by the lights in the cellar he was clearly as old as Robert or I, his slightness not that of youth but of poverty – though with his kissing lips and too-pretty face, there was something of the child about him all the same, callow and cruel, an abruptness in the way he moved which made me uneasy of being close to him.
    Once they were gone we unbound the bodies they had brought, began the washing. I should have been repulsed, I thought, as we worked, but I was not, nor was I afraid. Rather, I watched my hands upon their skin move as if they were not my own, as if I were outside myself, my body distant.
    I did not sleep again that night, images of those faces and bodies rising unbidden in my mind. On my fingers the smell of the vinegar still lingered, and on my arms and neck I could feel the memory of their touch. With the first light of the dawn I rose, taking myself down, back into the yard, and there I ran the butt, watching the water break onto the stones. Slowly I drew up my sleeves, lathering higher, but still I felt them there, and so at last I pulled off my shirt, and leaning forward let the water run across my hair and down my back, knowing even as I did it would not wash their presence from my flesh.

M Y FATHER DIED when I was twelve. We found him half a mile from the house, huddled in the wall’s low lee. His face turned away from the world, into the dark stones, his body half covered by the snow. The sky overhead as fragile as an egg.
    It was our neighbour, Tobias, who first noticed he was gone. January, the new year scarcely begun. I saw Tobias coming, from where I sat in the window above the kitchen. As he climbed he stared ahead, his head held stiff and straight;