The Resurrection Men
What price would you pay to rescue your beloved from the grave?
Chapter 1: Even Angels Die
It was a beautiful service. As expected, for I spared no expense. To honor her in death as I did in life, or so I told my father in law when we organized it together. Truthfully, a desperate reflex; As though if I spent enough, I could bring her back.
During the somber procession to her grave, I noticed many of the upper class graves were covered by wrought iron cages. Not to keep vengeful revenants from escaping, as I’d thought when I was small.
Rather, a precaution against those basest of scoundrels who might dig up the dead to rob them of any jewelry, fine raiments or other valuables they were buried with. It’s also a poorly kept secret that many cadavers used by medical schools are obtained this way.
Resurrection men, in the common parlance. Grave robbers. The most audacious of which are why the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, and the pyramids themselves for that matter, are but pale shadows of their former glory. There’s some poetry to it, however; Every breath drawn by the living is, in some sense, stolen from the dead we’ve replaced.
All graves but those of the poorest also feature an air tube, capped at the top by a small deflector to keep rain out, and a bell. The bell could be rung by someone accidentally buried alive by tugging a string which trails from the bell, down the air pipe and into the coffin.
A non-trivial added cost! Much less than the cages, but today I understood at last why they’re so common. Apart from the alarming frequency with which death is wrongly diagnosed these days on account of the immature state of life sciences, grieving families must cling to any remote hope that their loved one is among those who may yet ring that bell.
I vaguely recall a tale from my youth, told breathlessly to a small group of us by the ringleader of a midnight excursion to the local graveyard. The sort of frivolous, and in retrospect dangerous adventure, that any proper boy’s childhood is replete with. The tale goes that one evening, a grave keeper heard one of the small bells ringing and dashed to that grave, so he might calm down the poor soul trapped below while arranging to have them brought up.
Only, when a woman’s voice echoed up the air pipe begging to be exhumed, the grave keeper rebuked her. “Madame”, he supposedly said, “The papers for this grave say you were buried in January. It is now April. I do not know what you are, but alive you are not, and I shan’t dig you up.” With that, he severed the string from the bell, and was done with the matter.
It’s a shame that it took such a tragedy to collect us all in one place. All those assurances that we’d gather for a grand dinner this year, or the next, or the next. Like so many plans put off ‘til the morrow, it never came to pass. Like the plans I made with Annika.
When the casket was open, I could not bear to look. However I might’ve wanted to savor her perfect, pale skin one last time, I resolved soon after she died never to look upon her remains. So as to remember only the living, ravishing, delicate beauty I met that adventurous Summer, following the close of the war.
Having picked up a taste for motoring during my service, I’d purchased a motorbike with which I decided to tour the English countryside. Petrol shortages led the fellow I bought it from to build a great, ungainly wood gas mechanism into the sidecar, which I first thought to remove as it was a blemish on an otherwise beautiful machine.
However, petrol stations are still rare, especially so as you get away from cities. Accordingly, I did not tamper with it after all. It soon proved its worth, as I could periodically stop along some wooded region, chop down some saplings, convert them to pellets in the span of an hour, then be back on the road for another hundred miles before having to repeat the process.
It was during one of these stops, as I roasted a rabbit I’d shot and skinned over a campfire while reducing yet another sapling to pellets, that I first encountered Annika. Ghostly maiden of the woods, I thought. A tantalizing mirage. She fit so perfectly into the natural beauty surrounding her, I could hardly conceive that she was a real woman, but some feminine manifestation of Summer.
Those who knew her would forgive me; In many ways, I was right. She so loved God’s creatures, and it only enriched my love for her. I recall her first words to me were angry Russian, shouted from a distance as she approached. Soon clarified in English as “You are on private property. By what right do you cut down our trees?”
Her ancestral town had the misfortune to be devastated by the war. Many survived, working the fields outside the town when the bombs fell. There was just nothing to rebuild. So they went their separate ways, seeking their fortunes elsewhere. As fate would have it, Annika’s family resettled in England.
I must’ve made quite a picture! Hair wild from the wind, as I was never one to wear a motorist’s helmet. What’s the point of such a contraption, except to feel the wind whipping your hair about as you thunder down the road? Oil stains all over my shirt and trousers. Not thinking, I pawed at my face, to wipe some of the sweat away. All I accomplished was to smear it with oil. It was the first time I heard the sublime music of her laughter.
For an unaccompanied young woman to go motoring with a man she’s only just met, sans escort, would be unthinkable…had she been English. Our courtship was handily expedited by her peasant background, and her family’s discovery that I stood to inherit my father’s industrial empire. That some of his factories make munitions seems to disturb only me.
“Go! Be young!” Her stout, muscular mother urged us…after a long, at times subtly threatening discussion concerning when I was to return her, and in what condition. So, we went. And we were young. Still the highest point of my life, never more clear than when viewed from the lowest.
The motorbike isn’t yet commonplace enough that musicians should write songs glorifying the experience of tearing down a country road with a beautiful woman on the back. Clinging to you, hands wandering about your chest and stomach under the pretext of securing a safer hold. Stops now chosen not just for the preponderance of trees, but picturesque views against which to admire Annika.
I thought I’d already exhausted my tears the day I learned of her death. Drowned in a waterway when a bridge collapsed under her motor carriage. Of all the damnable things! She never learned to swim, understandably. That set me to agonizing over whether I could’ve saved her, had I only thought to take her swimming now and again…or if I’d accompanied her that day.
A bystander was quick to retrieve her, but not quick enough. I met with the man once, only to assure him I placed no blame on his shoulders. I returned to drinking for a time. Not for too long, I’m more disciplined than that. But I could scarcely function if sober! My limbs wouldn’t answer commands to move me from the bedroom to the kitchen, that I might eat. I did not bathe, nor read mail, nor leave the house.
Death is not felt discretely when that person is dearly beloved. By all who know her, not just myself. Ripples of grief spread out from the event, her poor mother wanting no part of a world without Annika living in it…a sentiment I deeply understand. Every day which passed after that felt wrong, as if I was being carried by the merciless currents of time into a future I refused to inhabit. “Until death do us part” I once said, taking for granted that we’d both go at once.
The usual words are spoken by the man of God; That she’s with the heavenly father now. That what he gives to us is also his to take, and that it’s not ours to understand why. Can this really be meant to comfort? What cosmic plan requires that my wife drown due to a collapsed bridge? My insides writhe for the remainder of his speech, but I hold my tongue.
The casket is lowered, ever so slowly, into the grave. The cold, wet Earth swallowing up the only source of warmth and beauty in this world, so far as my heart will admit. A young man hops gingerly into the grave, to check the bell mechanism. All in attendance know it’s a futile gesture. He lingers, attaching some incidental hose to her casket, then climbs out.
“All great works of literature written in the Queen’s tongue consist of just twenty six letters. Sufficient, even so, to capture the greatest heights of beauty and the darkest depths of human despair. But I defy the masters of that craft to capture the smallest fragment of my sorrow today. For me, the world burned on the day I learned of my darling’s…”
I choked up. Some part of me still refused to confess aloud that she’s gone. I scanned the faces of those in attendance. All but the children shared in my pain. Blessed, enviable children, who don’t yet know what death is. I composed myself, much as I could in such a state.
“Annika, likewise, eludes satisfactory description. One of the great beauties of our time. Gentleness beyond compare, an angel’s constitution. To say that she was the combined light of every heavenly body, every star in the sky, every stunning sunrise over the now desolate, frozen landscape of my life does not begin to convey it. Though the future is known only to God, I vouchsafe that I will not remarry, as there is not in all the world another woman who compares. My lone sustaining hope is that there is a world after this one in which we might be reunited.”
I lingered after the ceremony, all in attendance meeting with me one by one to say their piece. I sincerely found scraps of healing in it, and told them so. The still living who knew her in life vowed not to let our shared memories of her fade. Last of them was a Baron known to my father, whose own wife was one of those falsely believed dead, saved only by the little bell above her grave. Lucky him, I bitterly thought.
His wife, who accompanied him to the funeral, appeared lily white to the point that I imagined I could see through her skin. Symmetrical, doll-like features shielded from what little sun broke through the cloud cover by a veil, and a frilly black parasol.
The Baron, a great mountainous beast of a man, offered his heartfelt condolences…as well as a business card. I inquired about it but was hushed, then told to call the number on the back as soon as I returned home.
What a queer thing to do at a funeral! I assumed I would find it was well intentioned when I called. Perhaps someone who specializes in memorializing the deceased. I thanked him for his kind words, pocketed the card and headed home. The gravity of the day crushed, again, my will to resist the bottle, so that I soon resigned myself to a long night of drinking.
In this piteous stupor, I remembered the card. Stumbling to the coat rack, I fished it out of my jacket pocket and studied it more closely, even as the sharp black print swam around on the paper in defiance of my efforts to read it. “Beady and Scholls Resurrection Services”. The address, surprisingly, was directly adjacent to the graveyard I just returned from.
I wondered at the name. A metaphor of some kind, but it wasn’t clear what for. I don’t recall when I passed out, only that it was in the living room, for that’s where I next awoke. A loud rapping at the door pierced my skull with every impact! I cringed at the thought of appearing before some door to door salesman, a man of my stature, afflicted with such a hangover.
Instead it was my sister, accompanied by a lovely young thing in a sky blue dress and floppy sun hat. “My dear sister”, I stammered, “whatever can you want so early in the morning?” She looked disturbed. “It’s four in the afternoon, Charles. Goodness, don’t tell me you’ve taken up drinking again.” I glared. Her face softened somewhat, presumably recalling why she found me like this.
The girl with her glanced around nervously, most likely unsure of whether she was wanted. I invited them both in. Shortly, my sister introduced me to the visitor, Beverly Wainsborough. I dimly remembered meeting her at a charitable gala.
Pretty enough, with long brown curls falling down either side of her face, a petite upturned nose and high, narrow cheekbones. I silently scolded myself for looking appreciatively on the features of some strange woman, just a day after Annika was given over to the worms.
This private shame erupted into rage when my sister clarified the purpose of her visit. I’m not a hateful man, and under better conditions not the least bit unstable. But despite myself, when it became clear that my sister meant to set me up with this stranger not more than twenty four hours after Annika’s funeral, all restraint evaporated.
“OUT! BOTH OF YOU!” I bellowed, nostrils flared. “You’ll not mend my heart so easily as foisting some new woman on me, the very day after my wife was laid to rest! Our marital bed not yet cold, her wardrobe still full! That you would dare try this nauseates me! Depart from my home and bring nobody after this!”
I knew I’d pay for it later. And really, I’d reacted too strongly to what I knew in my heart was a well intentioned gesture. Yet I could not bear what she’d done. For a woman to have so little understanding of the ways of the heart astonishes me, but is not unprecedented for my sister, who because of that quality remains unmarried.
She must’ve meant for me to spend the day getting to know poor Beverly, who I expected would have some choice words about me for her family and friends. I resolved to smooth it over sometime soon. Should her family still be as influential as I recall, I might’ve put my foot in it by turning her away so rudely.
Chapter 2: The Card
Having turned away unwanted company, I found myself with the day freed up. Hangover still beating at my brow from the inside, I judiciously shelved my liquor and instead rang the number on the business card. The recollection was so vague I wondered if the card had said something more mundane.
“Hello? Re….Resurrection...services?” I mumbled, not anticipating how difficult it would be to hold a conversation in this state. “Indeed! First things first. Who referred you?” I fed the voice on the other end the Baron’s last name and the nature of my family’s connections with his. “Very good. When can you stop by our offices? It’s best to get things moving as soon after death as possible, for freshness.”
I raised an eyebrow. The day after Annika’s death made the paper, being that I’m a man of wealth, I was approached by all manner of hucksters peddling “electric spirit-phones”, seances, and other purported means of speaking with the dead. I worried this was something along those lines. Sensing my wariness, the voice assured me that he dealt not in the supernatural, but in cutting-edge medical technologies known only to those with the means to pay for them.
“What use are medical technologies to the dead?” I asked rhetorically, mostly just thinking out loud. “The line between life and death is ever changing, dear fellow. That mysterious threshold driven ever backwards by advances in our understanding of what forces animate the human figure, why they cease, and how to replenish them. But if you find it all too dubious, simply come to my office, where I’ve arranged a small demonstration.”
Sickness, to prey on the hopes of a man who has lost the great love of his life. But they must count on that nagging splinter of doubt, which I found tugging at the back of my mind, to budge potential customers. It did the trick alright! Before long I found myself motoring back to the graveyard, those cages and bells still fresh in memory.
I’d paid handsomely for Annika’s little Baker electric carriage to be fished out of the water, repaired and reupholstered. Everything she ever touched was to remain immaculate, for however long I could keep it that way. I finally found the limits of my desperation when, upon noticing one of her recent footprints in the garden, I considered making a plaster impression of it.
Her little buggy’s somewhat embarrassing to drive. The primary market for electrics these days is women, and it shows. The cockpit’s like a little sitting room, comfortable plush seating all around, small ornate electric lanterns completing the feel of piloting an unusually cramped tea house down the road at a modest twenty miles per hour. It still smells of her perfume.
What would I find there? What could I possibly find? Some ruse to tug at the wreckage of my heart, sucking money from my bank account like hungry little ticks. Oh, how vultures eagerly circle when the wife of a wealthy man passes away! Yet I drove onward, soon arriving at the squat two story brick building across the street from the cemetery.
“Welcome! I expected you sooner. Traffic?” He glanced over my shoulder at the Baker electric. “Never mind. Come in! Let me take your coat.” He introduced himself as Roderick Beady, one half of the titular Beady and Scholls. My inquiry as to where the other half was hadn’t fully escaped my lips before the fat bearded fellow entered the room.
The two made a comical sight. Scholls portly to the point of hanging over his belt, Beady every bit as stickly thin as his name would lead a stranger to visualize. It’s satisfying when a name fits somebody so well.
With the three of us seated, Beady began his spiel. A brief history of the company, the basis in mythology for humans returning from the dead, that sort of thing.
“Did you know the pyramids were intended as sun powered resurrection machines, to cast the spirits of dead pharaohs into the sky?” a song and dance I knew to anticipate. “You said something about a demonstration.”
His eyes lit up. “Oh yes! Just a moment.” He scampered off like an excitable little goblin and returned with a dead frog on a plate. I groaned. Did he take me for some sort of rube? Voltaire’s experiments with using electricity to momentarily animate the muscles of frogs are known to every schoolboy.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was based on early misunderstandings of those experiments, as some mistook them for proof that electricity is a kind of life force. Vital principle. Prana, or Qi, as the Orientals refer to it. But he produced no battery or wires. Instead, with a grunt, he heaved a odd looking contraption up onto the desk from the space underneath it.
“This was our original prototype” he revealed. As he plugged it into the wall, confirming electricity still played some role, I again wondered if it wouldn’t be smoke and mirrors. A rudimentary deception to exploit men with more money than brains. “Just a few more treatments”, I imagined them promising their gullible patron, before disappearing soon after with the deposit.
He opened a hatch in the top of a glass cylinder filled with what looked to be saline solution. Depositing the limp frog into the fluid, he shut the hatch, made airtight by means of a rubber seal around the rim. Then, satisfied that he’d captured my attention, Beady flipped a switch. A pump rattled to life and as I looked on, a cloudy black fluid issued forth into the cylinder, billowing outward as it mixed with the salt water.
Once fully saturated, the water appeared hazy and fog-like. I could just make out the form of the frog, floating motionless inside. Beady toggled a second switch. A loud hum sounded, and brilliant blue arcs of electricity spread through the liquid, sending the frog into violent spasms.
As I thought! The trivial application of current, to give the appearance of life to a dead animal. Before I could ask that they spare me any further insult to my intelligence, Beady turned off the current…yet the frog continued moving? Thrashing about frantically within the cylinder as if in need of air. I blinked in disbelief.
“I can imagine what you must’ve thought when you read our card. We encounter a great many skeptics. But the demonstration never fails to make believers out of them.” He opened the hatch, and seized the still frantic animal from inside.
It croaked loudly several times, nearly squirming free of his grasp before settling down. “They’re frightfully strong when freshly reanimated. The glass has to be very thick, or they’d smash through it. That initial buzz will taper off in time. Of course, without regular injections, it eventually de-animates.”
Injections? Scholls produced a leather case from within his vest. Inside, a neat row of syringes, all filled with the same thick black fluid I saw enter the cylinder. I demanded to know what was in them.
“Oh come now. As a man with a background in business, surely you know that we cannot disclose our proprietary formula. As yet, we have no competitors, and I’d like to keep it that way.” He flashed me a knowing grin. I did not reciprocate.
“…I can tell you it’s adulterated somewhat, with additives that help keep the revived organism in good condition” he offered. “Preservatives mainly, of the sort commonly used for embalming.” I balked. “Poisons! Surely they would only return one to the grave if ingested?” He laughed.
“There’s much about the physiology of a resurrected creature that defies conventional understanding. They have no need to breathe, but do so out of reflex. No need or ability to digest victuals. Their hearts do not beat unless electrically induced, for which we include a small device. It’s necessary to maintain bloodflow for a minute or so, in order to circulate the injected materials throughout the body.”
My stomach began to churn. A feeling familiar to me as instinctive warning of unseen danger. As yet I did not believe anything except that they resuscitated a frog. Perhaps put into a deep sleep by refrigeration, making a big show of startling it back to wakefulness? Yet, the splinter in my mind only grew stronger. I now dared to hope. However foolish, however certain my disappointment.
So it was that I descended with them into the building’s basement where I found a subterranean tunnel, with a small electric tram positioned as if to enter it. “All aboard the grave-y train! Get it? A little levity helps in this line of work.”
Why he imagined I would laugh under such conditions is a mystery to me. I piled into one of the precarious steel carts. As Beady twisted a knob, I heard the electrical whine of a motor under load, whereupon we began moving.
I experienced my first pangs of hesitation as the train entered the tunnel. Had I done the right thing in coming here? Might they be abducting me with the intent of seeking ransom from my father? But as the little train trundled noisily down the damp, pitch-black corridor, I envisioned Annika ahead. The light at the end of the tunnel. The impossible possibility which drew me here. I had to know.
We came out into an astonishingly vast underground warehouse of sorts, with “Gravestation 001” stenciled in letters twenty feet high along the far wall. I held my nose as the stench hit me. The source of it soon became apparent as the train passed by heaps of waxy embalmed corpses. “What is this unholy place” I muttered, wondering again what I’d gotten myself into.
“Now now”, Beady admonished, “Your family fortune was made by filling countless graves. Can you blame us for emptying a few? Besides, didn’t Lazarus rise from the dead, to warn us of what awaits the damned? Didn’t Christ also rise from his grave, that we might all instead have eternal life? Does it particularly matter how we accomplish that? I say it doesn’t.” Beady harrumphed, stopped the train and hopped off. Scholls followed, his considerable mass tipping the little train as he climbed out.
A vast grid of tracks stretched out across the floor of the facility. Along it, a sort of bi-directional motorized carriage scooted to and fro, to which there was mounted a hydraulic elevator of some description. As it raised the platform to meet one of countless sliding hatches in the ceiling, receiving a casket from it as it opened, I realized we must be standing directly beneath the cemetery. Long, transparent rubber tubing ran up the walls, connecting to a spigot beneath each grave.
“Do you mean to tell me…!” I exclaimed. He nodded, plainly proud of his handiwork. “Every grave is individually addressable. The caskets removed from below, without any visible disturbance above. Really diminishes the danger of our work! In the old days we’d slink out there under cover of night with shovels, looking like common criminals. Too many close calls. When I found out that the remains of an abandoned tube station lay beneath the cemetery, I hatched a plan to excavate from there, which eventually resulted in what you see before you.”
What exactly was I looking at, though? Industrialized grave robbing, right under everyone’s noses? The remains of their dearly departed, extracted from what was to be their final resting place by this bizarre little man and his burly counterpart. “For...what...possible reason?” I managed. Still dazed, I was herded towards the centerpiece of the installation, a scaled up version of the little machine from his office.
Five cylinders rather than one. “Business is booming. Had to increase throughput. More than enough to pay off various coroners, though.” It dawned on me that the rash of mistaken burials were a cover story. He confirmed it. “You’re far from the first to avail yourself of our services, young man. A great many men and women in the city above us, attending galas, taking tea with friends, sitting even now in theatres and even parliament, are-”
“No. It can’t be...” I cut in. He slowly nodded, not breaking eye contact. “Of course, they’re sworn to secrecy…as are you, from this point on. No paperwork necessary! If we get away with all of this undiscovered, I’m sure you realize how easily we could dispense with you. Even with your connections, there are enough powerful people who depend on our outfit to keep them supplied with injections that they’ll gladly throw you under the bus if you try to go public.”
I assured them I had no such intention. As yet I couldn’t really say what I intended to do except gawk at the disturbing spectacle around me.
Chapter 3: The Miracle
The gentle throb of a nearby generator intensified. One of the glass cylinders, the fluid inside the same hazy black as I recalled from the model, now pulsated with current. It resembled a storm cloud, arcs of lightning leaping from one portion to the other.
Then the throb died down, and the arcs vanished. Below the cylinder, a sort of silicone sphincter bulged. As I watched in morbid fascination, it birthed a nude man coated head to toe in filthy black slime. He gasped for air as Beady and Scholls rushed to wrap him in a blanket. “How do you feel? Do you remember your name?” He struggled for a time to orient himself, then after that to form words. Eventually, he was able to answer their questions.
He looked no older than twenty. Athletic physique, pale as the moon. “The paramour of a certain lady of high standing. It’s not our place to judge, of course.” He winked as Scholls lifted the quivering young man onto a gurney, then wheeled him towards a small but well equipped lab at the edge of the grand warehouse.
“What happens to him now?” I pried. Reassured that I didn’t intend on divulging his secrets, Beady was more candid than before. “A warm bath. Any open wounds stitched shut. They’ll never heal of course, but can be handily concealed with cosmetics. She’ll be around to collect him after we’re done with you. Once a month, providing payments continue, we’ll send her a set of five injections. What’s needed for the coming month, plus a small reserve for emergencies.”
I again inquired as to where it comes from. He grew mildly irate. “It’s none of your concern where it comes from! Don’t you realize what we can do for you? Would you really look this particular gift horse in the mouth?” I thought of Annika, and bit my tongue. They led me to the motorized hydraulic lifter which was now busy retrieving a new casket. As it descended into view, I gasped in recognition.
Only yesterday I’d watched the same casket descend into the Earth, never imagining it would descend further. Never imagining I would glimpse it ever again. I trembled, envisioning her cold, lifeless body inside. I still didn’t wish to see it. Sensing this, Beady spoke up. “You don’t have to watch. There’s a waiting room by the lab.” But, could I come this far and still look away during the crucial moment? I felt as if I had to see it with my own eyes to believe.
Several times I began to object as they undressed her. “That’s my wife”, I might’ve said. Was my wife. Still, I dared to hope. A hope which only continued to grow, refusing every effort to tame it. Could I believe? Was it safe? Having reinforced my heart for a lifetime of solitary misery, was it truly possible that I might walk out of here with my darling wife beside me?
Scarcely breathing I stared, enraptured, as they dumped her into the cylinder. She flailed aimlessly, sinking to the bottom before the slight buoyancy afforded by gasses which accumulate during decomposition propped her somewhat upright. The intense vulgarity of it, to do such things with a corpse! Yet, if I could believe it, soon it would no longer be one.
Beady slid a throttle gently forward. A jet of the black fluid blasted forth into the chamber, soon achieving the desired mixture. Amid that black cloud, I could see her hair gently swaying in the fluid like seaweed in a current. Still, I dared to hope! So strongly now that I wanted to shout, to tear at my clothing, at my hair! On the verge of losing my mind. Could it be? Could I believe it?
Beady toggled a switch. I felt the small hairs on my body stand on end as some unseen electrical field radiating from the chamber engulfed us. Muffled pops signaled electrical arcs within the chamber, the same rapid blue flashes as before. Then, suddenly, confirmation. Of what I both dreaded, and desperately wished for. She began to move.
Sluggish at first, then suddenly violent, thrashing about in a panic. “She won’t drown, will she?” I cried out. “You promised me they don’t need air!” Scholls placed a hand on my shoulder to steady me. “Settle down, it’s nearly finished.” The silicone orifice dilated as my dear Annika, coated in a thin film of oily residue, slipped through it. At once, I was beside her.
“Don’t touch her just yet”. I did in fact mean to shake her, but obeyed Beady’s instruction lest I somehow disrupt the procedure. Annika clumsily struck at empty air, kicked, and gasped like a fish out of water. Then slowly she settled down, and her eyelids fluttered.
The hope building within me until now reached its climax as, in defiance of everything I knew to be impossible until today, my wife’s eyes opened. Her pupils constricted, squinting on account of the bright lights overhead. Then she looked at me.
“...Charles?” I burst into tears. There was no controlling it. I fell to my knees beside her, holding her cold, frail hands in mine. “Why am I so cold?” she weakly inquired. Scholls and Beady gently helped me to my feet, then set about wheeling her off to the lab. I insisted that I be the one to bathe her. They produced a fresh set of clothing. “Best that she not leave here in the gown she was buried in”, Scholls cautioned. I could see the wisdom in that.
Annika fell silent on the trip back to the office, no doubt finding her surroundings as unsettling as I did on the way in. I felt content simply to hold her close to me, warming her body with mine. Marveling all the while that taking a chance on that business card restored my life, my heart, and my reason to continue in this world!
As we departed, Beady assured me that he would handle the official side of things. The coroner who originally pronounced Annika dead would publicly reverse himself, attributing his prior diagnosis to the nascent state of science where death is concerned. After which I knew a great many people would be eager to confirm it for themselves.
For her part, Annika seemed surprised…and troubled. I felt nothing but elation to be sitting across from her as I drove home. “It was quite a bit of trouble, getting this heap running again after they pulled it out of the drink”, I quipped. “Motor, wiring, batteries, the whole lot needed replacement. But it’s your favorite. I knew you’d want-”
She finally spoke. “Charles, how did I get here? I remember now. The bridge collapsed. I couldn’t get out of the car. Gulped down water, then blacked out. Am I dead?” It took the wind out of my sails, but I quickly recovered. “Not anymore.” It just confused her. “What was that place, Charles? I saw bodies.” I didn’t have any answer for that which I thought would satisfy her, so I told her the truth…mostly.
“You were believed dead. But death is still poorly understood! There exist men of science who, by remarkable technology, can pull the apparently deceased back from the brink…for a steep price.” Still she appeared shaken, as if struggling to remember something.
“Annika, put all of that sordid business out of your mind. What’s important is that you’ve come back to me. All I’ve thought about since the accident was the Summer that we met, the happiest time of my life. When I thought I’d lost you forever, winter took hold. That was to be the rest of my life; Wandering the barren wastes alone, in freezing darkness until at last my body gave up the fight. To see your beautiful face is as though the clouds have parted, the sun has emerged, all the snow and ice melting to make way for Summer’s return.”
Faintly, she smiled. As I relished it, I became aware of the weight of a leather case jostling about in my jacket. Five full syringes. I insisted she get some rest when we arrived at my estate, against her protestation that she felt fine. I spent the rest of the evening making calls. Her mother and father would be the first to visit.
The depth of their anguish quite possibly exceeded my own following the accident. So, as expected, their euphoria upon learning she was alive bordered on the explosive. I almost couldn’t stop them from visiting that night. After she spoke with them at length on the phone, they agreed to delay their visit until the following day. Also the first day I would administer an injection.
It was a frustrating affair! She didn’t understand the necessity of it and simply wanted breakfast. When she gets hungry, there’s no reasoning with her. But no sooner had she chewed and swallowed the muffin, it came right back up. I held her hair as she emptied her stomach into the toilet. “What’s wrong with me?” she whimpered.
Thereafter it was easier to convince Annika of the injection’s necessity. I told her it was medicine, relating to the treatment which revived her the day before. She’s never liked needles and had to scrunch her eyes shut as I did it. Then came the heart stimulation. The little wand plugged easily enough into the outlet and, upon pressing the trigger, emitted a satisfying electrical crackle.
“That’s really going too far” she objected, but I insisted the injections would do her no good otherwise. So, she rolled up her nightgown and laid back, small conical breasts exposed, as I searched for a heartbeat. Of course I didn’t find one. I felt foolish for a moment, having forgotten such a detail. Instead I felt for my own, to get an idea of where to place the wand electrodes on Annika.
Once in position, I pressed the trigger and held it. The instructions said to maintain current for a little over one minute, to ensure at least a single full circulation through the vascular system. I held it for two, just for good measure. I studied her face waiting for some color to return. Of course it never did, but she soon proclaimed that her hunger and nausea had vanished.
“I feel wonderful! Whatever it is they gave you, it really does the trick.” She threw her arms around me. For a time I sat there, deep relief coursing through me. Happy simply to be holding my wife again, even though she was still distressingly cold. When her mother and father arrived by hired carriage, I insisted on paying their travel expenses. Both wept openly the moment they saw her emerge from the house, white gown flowing behind her in the wind.
I understood none of it. A solid ten minutes or more of incomprehensible Russian blubbering as the two took turns embracing Annika, touching her face and otherwise convincing themselves that she’d truly returned to the land of the living.
“It was this one!” her father proudly thundered, throwing one of his thick, hairy arms around me and clasping my back with the other. “You never gave up on our little girl, to the last. No doubt, you pay for finest medical treatment! Fool doctor still confuses her for death, but I can only sing of my happiness that she is return. A miracle from God!”
No sense disputing his analysis. If they were willing to accept it so easily, I was content to let them, without providing any of the discomforting details. I sensed Annika wanted to tell them, and resolved to keep an eye on her in order to prevent it.
They spent all day with us, simply eager to be around Annika. To laugh with her, to take tea, gushing with relief that the Lord in his infinite mercy had seen fit to restore their daughter. All the while I tensely watched, wondering.
“I don’t think it was a miracle”, she started. Her parents appeared confused. Before she could finish, I interjected. “What she means is, there are many matters of physiology not yet understood by doctors. We should not be hasty to proclaim something supernatural has transpired. The Vatican, after all, has its own process for determining that. We mustn’t presume to know better! Nor am I in any hurry to rock the boat by publishing such astonishing claims. And really, is it ours to ask why? I think not, let us simply be thankful.”
Both considered it, then nodded sternly. Annika stared at me with visible irritation. When her parents finally headed off, we got to arguing about how much even our immediate families should be told about the circumstances of her return. “You didn’t tell me everything, did you Charles? I know it now. If it was as you said, you’d not have hesitated to tell them. What really happened? What is it you injected me with? I’ll know if you’re lying.”
Chapter 4: The Bill Arrives
Difficult, as ever, to hide anything from her. She knows me too well! So at last, I told her the whole story. All the while she sat opposite me on the couch, eyes wide, hands over her mouth. “Come”, I urged, “surely I did the right thing? Was I really to turn them down? You’ve been given a new life.” She slowly turned to stare at me, still wide-eyed, now beginning to tremble. “But I’m not alive, Charles. Am I?”
I searched for some way to disagree but came up empty handed. The more Annika learned, the more difficult it was to discuss the matter in delicate terms. She fought my every effort to pretend it was something other than what it was. “I’m...an animated corpse. How did you do this? No, you couldn’t. It was those awful men, wasn’t it?” she continued to interrogate me, slowly growing more upset as the picture grew clearer.
“I’m not supposed to be here, Charles. What have you done? I’m so cold. I shouldn’t be here, I’m dead. I belong in the ground. So cold. What have you done?” The more I tried to console her, the more panicked she became. So I embraced her slender frame, holding her tight until it passed. I heard soft weeping. But when I held her before me and studied her face, no tears were coming out.
“Make love to me.” I tensed up. Somehow this eventuality hadn’t occurred to me, in all the excitement. Hesitation was plainly not the reaction she hoped for. “Make love to me, Charles!” Some judiciously chosen, gentle words later, I found myself shopping for lubricant and lambskin condoms. Not the sort of thing I relished purchasing in broad daylight, so I disguised myself as best I could.
Except, because Annika’s return made today’s paper, there was little hope of evading notice entirely. The shopkeeper watched me closely as I browsed his wares, only speaking up once satisfied that I was the same fellow from the article. “I don’t often see men of your standing in my little shop”, he remarked. “You saw no such thing” I snapped.
The instructions tucked into the syringe case offered no advice for intimacy. I improvised, turning my thoughts away from the cold leathery sensation, struggling not to become queasy. Eyes closed, I pictured Annika as I remembered her on our wedding night. Face flush, golden hair spread out over the pillows.
I waited until she fell asleep to shower. Shuddering all the while, hurriedly scrubbing every inch of my body…one part more thoroughly than the rest. Intensely regretting what should’ve been the joyous union of man and wife, if only her heart would beat! I began thinking of ways to curb her desire going forward. Not something I had any reason to give thought to before now, as my own appetites always kept pace with hers.
It was then that I set to planning a Summer outing. Touring the countryside on the same old wood gas motorbike I rode on the day we first met. Wonderfully romantic! Also a handy way to ensure that, so long as we’re outdoors, her mind does not turn to prurient matters. Now quite unable to sleep, I took a stroll to the separated garage.
Beneath a dusty cover I found the old beauty just as I’d left her. Some small maintenance would need to be done, cleaning out the burner, replenishing oil and so forth. Enough to tire me out. So I went to work. By the time the sun began to peek over the horizon I’d completed the job, including polishing every metal surface and bringing the tires up to an appropriate pressure.
As I made my way back to the house, now sorely in need of a second shower, I spotted what I thought was a woman atop the roof. A trick of the light I assumed. But as I drew closer it was revealed to be Annika. Still in her nightgown, tossed about by the wind. “Annika! What’s gotten into you? It’s dangerous! Come down from there!”
So, down she came. My jaw hung open, face locked into an expression of horror as I watched her fall, as though in slow motion. Gripped by the agony of watching her die a second time. But could death really take her so easily, as she is now? I seized on the hope, as I barreled towards the house, that in her present condition a simple fall like that would not do her in.
It all might’ve ended there, were I wrong. She would be committed again to the soil, this time for good, my selfish defiance of the natural order forcibly set right. But of course, she was still moving when I found her. Both legs broken as well as one arm…yet she laughed?
“It doesn’t hurt!” she tittered, continuing to babble indifferently as I fretted over her injuries. I couldn’t very well take her to the hospital, they’d notice straight away that she’s cold as ice and hasn’t any pulse. That left but one possible destination. Annika only continued laughing on the way, no apparent concern for the terrible fright she gave me.
Beady and Scholls didn’t greet me when I burst into their office, nor did I find them in the basement. I decided I could apologize for my trespass once I found them. Surely given the urgency of my visit, they wouldn’t hold something so minor against me? I carefully laid Annika’s broken body in one of the train cars, padded by my coat. She’d settled on quiet giggling now.
It was a trick to figure out the controls, made me wish that I watched Beady more closely the first time. Even so, soon enough we were on our way through the tunnel. Before long, we emerged into the warehouse. The track continued around the edge, and I did not halt the train for I saw neither Beady nor Scholls anywhere.
Finally the train arrived at a second tunnel. Bracing myself as I knew not what to expect on the other side, we entered. This was a much longer trip. At first I thought my ears deceived me, but as we approached the next stop, there was no mistaking it. The sound of rousing music!
Expecting to find those two at the source of it, I stopped the train. The station appeared to be a refurbished tube stop with wooden trim added, ornate lanterns hanging here and there, and posters advertising all manner of brands I’d never heard of. I left Annika on one of the benches, vowing to return soon with help. She didn’t seem to care about that one way or the other, much less appear interested in where she was.
The source of the music turned out to be a theater, some sort of dance number by the sound of it. But when I poked my head through the curtains, I received an unbearable shock. Row after row of gaudily dressed theater goers looked on in delight as some manner of ribald comedy played out on the stage.
The actors, insofar as I can call them that, were inanimate human remains. Dressed to the nines, moved about by strong fishing line tied to circlets at their wrists, neck and ankles. Life-sized marionettes.
One slapped the other’s hat off, at which the audience laughed uproariously. Scanning the audience, I noticed a number of the patrons injecting themselves with the black fluid. That explained the sickly sweet stench; Not a warm body among them.
“Take your seat or close the damned curtain” someone harshly whispered. So I closed the curtain and doubled back towards Annika. I found her still giggling, but laid out across the tracks. “What are you doing, you foolish girl?” I cried. How did she move from the bench? All I could figure was that she must’ve dragged herself with her one good arm. “No matter”, she cried. “None of it matters! I remember now…there’s an eternity of nothing after this! All alone in a cold, black void…but I was conscious for every second of it!”
I scooped her up, continuing to scold Annika as I seated her securely in one of the train cars. We were unexpectedly joined by an unfamiliar gentleman before I could get the train moving. “Dear me” he exclaimed. “She looks to be in poor repair! Are you on your way to the surgical center?” I asked where I might find it. “Is this your first visit, chap? It’s the very next stop.”
Chapter 5: The City of Nocturne
The next stop, indeed. It resembled nothing less than the main street of a prosperous town, but buried deep underground! All manner of colorful electric signs competed for my attention. I passed a boxing ring out in the open with spectators gathered to bet on the outcome.
One pugilist soundly struck the other. I heard bone splinter, then the poor fellow’s head hung back over his shoulders like a dangling hood. Yet he seemed more disappointed than hurt? The crowd, mostly men in their twenties or thirties, ate it up. “Off to the clinic with him!” barked the bookie, “He’ll be fighting fit within the hour!”
To think, I’d gone the better part of my life with all of this beneath my feet, none the wiser! I knew of tall tales concerning shanghai tunnels, used to spirit away drunks who would then wake up aboard ships headed out to sea. Slave labor until arrival. If I’d been told such an operation were going on beneath the city, I’d have laughed it off. Yet something far stranger now surrounded me.
I passed a series of brothels as I followed signs indicating the general direction of the clinic. I did my best to avert my eyes, and most of them took the hint, but one particularly bold Madame obstructed my path. “What’s the hurry, love? Don’t you like me?”
She was positively Amazonian, over six feet tall but with a wasp-like waist. Such a grossly exaggerated hourglass figure as to be more comical than lewd. I took note of four syringes loaded with the black stuff strapped to her muscular thigh.
Striving to establish eye contact past her abruptly protruding bosoms, swaying about as if conspiring to prevent it, I answered as politely as I could that I was on urgent business. “If you don’t like these, I have some smaller ones back in my room.” She produced a needle and thread from her cleavage and winked at me. “I’ll even let you attach ‘em.”
I recoiled in disgust, twirled around her as expertly as any rugby player, then ran the rest of the way to the medical pavilion. The lighting there proved mercifully less garish. Sterile white, save for the giant internally illuminated red cross above the entrance. Once satisfied I could find it a second time, I doubled back to fetch Annika.
Her broken limbs made the most distressing noises as they shook about, dangling as they did despite my efforts to hold her firmly. “You’re wasting your time” she whispered. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put me together again.”
“You’re delirious” I muttered. “But you’re in denial” she rebuked, eyes placidly shut as though asleep. “Can’t you see I’m dead?” She burst into another fit of giggling. It was a strenuous trek this time on account of her weight burdening me. I attracted many concerned stares as well, but before long she was in the care of the local doctor and his trio of nurses.
One of those nurses appeared ‘enhanced’ nearly to the same degree as the street walker I escaped earlier. Sensing my gaze, she explained “I get all my work done here. Doctor McCullough is a genius.”
A genius among madmen must be no less mad, I thought. He didn’t disappoint, entering through a pair of windowed doors. Broad shouldered but a touch shorter than myself, wearing a surgeon’s frock and some manner of queer device strapped to his back.
Once he began cutting into Annika despite my startled cries, it became clear what his harness was for. One of his forearms had, most likely by his own hand, been replaced by an electrical surgical saw. Once finished with it, he simply popped that forearm off as one might remove a glove, placed it on the rack slung across his back with the others, then withdrew the arm he needed next.
It struck me as similar to a quiver, but with a variety of motorized surgical prosthetics instead of arrows. A voltaic cell on his belt, about the size of a soup can, recharged the arms docked to the rack while not in use via a thin black cable. Like nothing I’d ever seen, or had any desire to. “She’s done quite a number on her tibia. Fell, I take it?” I nodded, not taking my eyes off his crude mechanical limb as he worked.
“You’re in luck, I just received a new shipment of tibias. May need a few bolts here and there, particularly in the arm. One of my nurses will draw up the bill while I’m working. That’s everything I need from you, I don’t like an audience.” The shapely nurse from before shooed me out of the operating room and, following some preparation, presented me with paperwork to sign.
It was difficult to leave Annika in such a place, but all things considered she must surely be safer here than anywhere else. I paced outside for a few minutes before getting it in my head to explore this place a bit. Imagining, I suppose, that I’d seen the worst of it already. That it held no more surprises.
A modern day necropolis! No exaggeration to say so, a real city of the dead if ever there was one. Bustling with shoppers, merrymakers, businessmen and all manner of compact electric carriages. I searched for petrol models but saw none, eventually reasoning that their fumes would only accumulate to intolerable thickness in this enclosed space.
A wild young lad zipped past me in a roadster built out of a coffin, a Jacob’s Ladder mounted to the hood sparking as he accelerated. Two more on battery motorbikes followed in close pursuit, whooping raucously. Despite everything, I smiled. But once the commotion died down, my gaze fell on a pair of iron double doors in the far wall.
Chapter 6: Best Laid Plans
No sign above them. No locks either, one hung ajar as if inviting me in. Would I be held accountable for trespassing if they didn’t even bother to chain it up? Although it wasn’t even clear to me that I was welcome down here at all, so far coasting along under the pretense that I belonged. It was my father who taught me to carry myself that way, when first he began introducing me to his business partners.
With some grunting and heaving, I moved the door on its rusty hinges enough to grant passage…then shut it behind me, lest anyone unexpectedly follow. The corridor was hewn from solid rock, descending still further into the earth, and dripping with moisture. In the distance I heard bats screech as they flapped about.
Humming bulbs strung at intervals lit the way, almost more of a hinderance than a help as they prevented my eyes from adjusting to the dark. Soon I arrived at the far end of the tunnel. Another pair of iron doors. Not wanting to have come this far only to turn around, I put my shoulder against one of the doors and (with no small effort) worked it far enough open that I could peer through.
I couldn’t comprehend the sight before me. Row after row of nightmarish creatures resembling nothing more than immense earwigs lay restrained in a grid. Their pulsating abdomens were being milked for the familiar black fluid by motorized suction pumps. Long, clear rubber hose trailed from each stall up along the ceiling, then to a central reservoir.
The creature nearest me seemed to notice my gaze. It emitted a high pitched series of clicks and chirps, writhing about impotently under its leather straps. Then, Roderick Beady appeared. “Settle down, you.” he murmured, scowling at the insectoid monstrosity. He produced an electric wand identical to the one he’d sent me home with, then used it to jab the creature in its delicate mouth parts. The beast shrieked. I heard prolonged sizzling, and smelt some sickly burnt aroma.
Beyond the stalls, I glimpsed something like a massive subterranean excavation site. Men in hard hats shouted and gestured at one another, as a slowly pivoting crane bore a palette of crates. Then there was the centerpiece of it all: A porous mound in the middle of the cavern, with a hole at the top leading down into the Earth. Not unlike an anthill.
An unseen buzzer sounded. Six men in the sort of protective armor often worn by dog trainers approach the mound, collectively holding a long pole with a loop of cord at the end. Then, one of the giant insects, perhaps the size of a bear, crawled out of the hole. Before the beast could react, those men slipped their lasso around its bulbous head and pulled it tight. The great ungainly thing chirped loudly, struggling to free itself.
It eventually took another two men, in addition to the first six, to subdue it. The electric wands were employed, but only seemed to enrage the poor thing, turning it into a game of endurance. Finally exhausted, the six-legged monster was herded off into an empty stall and strapped into its harness. I now felt I had a good idea of what fate awaited it, briefly feeling pangs of sympathy for the ugly monster.
With some questions answered but many more raised, I backed away from the spectacle, turning back towards the tunnel entrance…only to be confronted by Mr. Beady. “Wandered off from the tour, did you?” His voice dripped with acid. I hastily recounted Annika’s leap from the roof and resulting injuries, which seemed to soften him up somewhat.
“Even so, you’ve seen it all now. I can’t say as I expected a principled man like you to betray my trust so casually.” I fell over myself apologizing, and insisted I was no more inclined to breathe a word about any of this now than before. The promise of a generous additional sum finally put the matter to rest and, while walking back to the clinic, he addressed the matter of Annika’s erratic behaviors.
“Aside from the standard preservatives, the injections also contain a substance developed for interrogation which suppresses short term memory. Besides the importance of reviving the body before it has significantly decomposed, there’s also the problem of doing so within the window of time necessary for the memory serum to be any benefit.”
I told him I was sure I didn’t understand the connection. “Without the serum, they’re paralyzed by madness. They can only be restored to sanity by making them forget where they were before we brought them back.” I thought to inquire about the giant insects, but elected not to press on a sore spot.
He went on about how I may have received an irregular batch with insufficient memory serum, apologized and offered a replacement set of syringes. “If you went to McCullough, he’s likely to send you home with some nerve tonic. He’s a bit liberal with the stuff, but in your case I recommend it.”
Sure enough, upon releasing Annika to my care he produced a pair of green glass bottles shaped like flasks with a soupy translucent concoction inside. The label, covered in decorative flourishes, read “Doc McCullough’s restorative nerve tonic. Suitable for the treatment of hysteria, insomnia, diminished vigor, possession and rickets. Contains sasparilla, berberis, cocaine, & a few other expertly blended ingredients.” Bit suspect that he brewed his own, but I thanked him all the same.
Annika curled up next to me as we rode the tram back to the warehouse. Fine little stitches marked where Doc McCullough went in to replace shattered bones. I wondered how she could heal so quickly before it occurred to me that she could not heal at all, which must greatly simplify a doctor’s work. As we passed by the tangle of transparent rubber tubing leading up to each of the grave hatches overhead, I inquired what they were for.
“Haven’t you pried enough?” Beady snapped. I reminded him of my generosity, and once again his lips loosened for it. “A preservative gas is piped up into the caskets. This slows the rate of decay, in advance of potential resurrection orders or in case we need to borrow bits and pieces for...maintenance.” I thought back to Doc McCullough’s windfall of fresh tibias.
Annika resumed her soft, demented giggling. I pushed the tonic on her but couldn’t persuade her to drink. While I was in Beady’s lab writing him a check I hoped might compensate for my indiscretions, she wandered aimlessly about the warehouse.
If only I kept a closer eye on her, I might’ve seen her unscrew the hose which carries black fluid to the resurrection chambers. She lugged it over to the gas distribution juncture, twisting it into place before returning to the control panel. A lazy press on the throttle and the black fluid surged up through the clear hoses, then into the graves.
An ear-splitting alarm sounded. All around the perimeter of the warehouse, klaxons blared and red lights strobed. Beady was on his feet in a flash. “You damned idiot! Get away from there!” He shouted, knocking Annika to the floor. His eyes bugged out of his head as they traced the re-routed hose to its new destination. Beady withdrew an electric wand from his vest, and motioned as if to jab Annika with it.
A sudden fist to his jaw put a stop to that. No real mass to his slight frame, my blow sent him tumbling across the cold concrete floor. I worried I might’ve done more damage than I meant to. But glancing over my shoulder, I spotted curious spectators beginning to emerge from the tunnels to see what the noise was about. Time for a hasty exit!
Rather than bother with the little train, Annika and I simply hoofed it down the remaining length of tunnel into the basement level of Beady & Scholls’ office. Once we climbed the stairs, then exited onto the street, I located Annika’s carriage and set about lifting her into the passenger seat.
That’s when I heard it. If I stood still for a moment, over the distant echoes of the sirens, something else wafted to my ears from the graveyard across the street…the music of thousands of little bells, frantically ringing.
We were off as soon as the sun rose. Thick plumes of black smoke rose from various points in the city, accompanied by desperate cries of terrified mothers searching for their children. The handy little motorbike, Annika perched on the rear seat in a lovely sun dress, proved able to edge around the piled up motor carriages on our way out of the city. Riding up on the sidewalk at times...but then, police had their hands full with more pressing matters.
At the edge of the city, the voice of an elderly man issued forth from loudspeakers mounted outside the church. “The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many saints who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, went into the holy city, and appeared to many.”
His voice trailed off into the distance, now only empty country road ahead of us. I wondered at just how many graveyards were part of Beady’s network. If there yet remained any city we might settle in which wasn’t presently crawling with...unwelcome guests.
If not, I concluded that it would trouble me very little, for I had with me everything necessary for my happiness. The freshly born Summer, a gleaming motorbike, the open road winding about my beautiful English countryside...and Annika.
I’d packed only a month’s worth of victuals, not expecting to need more. In the little leather case under my seat, four remaining syringes rattled about. And beside them, a handsome little pistol.
Chapter 7: Greater War
2
The war was welcomed by certain quarters of society. Badly needed social hygiene, some said. Others said that there’s nothing quite like a good, solid war against a common foe to unite the people. An unambiguously evil regime, who we would not feel any scrap of troublesome sympathy for while murdering its foot soldiers by the millions.
And it did unite us, like never before! Britons fighting alongside Chinamen, Americans beside Mohammedans and so forth. A profoundly beautiful moment in which every nation of the Earth worked seamlessly together towards a singular purpose like a vast, well oiled machine. But then, we began to lose.
