"How does digging up my body make you money?" Gordon asked.
Pete's gulp was so loud I could hear it from outside. "How is it you're walkin' around again, if you don't mind my askin'?"
"I do mind. I asked you a question." Gordon stepped forward but Pete held his ground. He seemed less afraid now that he realized Gordon wasn't a crazed demon.
"I can't say," Pete said with a shrug. "We ain't allowed to speak to no one about it."
"Is that so?" Gordon glanced around then lifted the bed beneath which Jimmy cowered.
Jimmy screamed.
"Shut up," Gordon growled. He set the bed back down, grabbed a fistful of Jimmy's jacket and dragged him out. He clamped a hand over Jimmy's mouth.
Jimmy gagged and I admit that my stomach somersaulted. I wouldn't want a dead man's hand covering my mouth, even if that hand wasn't as decayed as some of the others in the cold room.
Lincoln touched my back, settling my nerves.
"When I remove my hand," Gordon said to Jimmy, "you will answer my questions. Understand?"
Jimmy nodded, not taking his wide unblinking eyes off Gordon.
"He won't like that we told," Pete warned his friend.
"No one need know," Gordon said. "All I want is answers, then I'll return to my grave."
"You won't hurt us?" Pete asked. "After we tell? You won't drag us down to hell?"
"First of all, I wasn't in hell. Second of all, I don't plan on lingering here. I'd rather return to my afterlife. But I need answers or I can't rest completely. Do your small brains understand that?"
Pete and Jimmy both nodded quickly. Gordon removed his hand and Jimmy spat on the ground then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
"We don't know why he wanted you," he blurted out before Gordon even posed a question. "He told us which bodies to take and we did it."
"We're just following orders," Pete said, getting to his feet. "It ain't our fault."
Gordon let Jimmy go and the man backed up to his friend. "There ain't much work to be had around here and he paid well," Jimmy said. "Who'd say no to that kind of work? Not us."
"Who's paying you? The butcher?" Gordon asked.
Both men shook their heads. "That's my uncle's shop," Pete said. "He agreed to store the bodies there and let the captain in to see them whenever he wants."
"The captain is the man who paid you?"
Jimmy nodded.
"Does he have a name?"
"It's just Captain to us," Pete said. "We don't know his name, or where he lives, so don't go tryin' to beat the answer out of us."
"Jesus, Pete." Jimmy jabbed his friend in the ribs with his elbow. "Don't go puttin' ideas in his head."
"Is he a ship's captain?" Gordon asked.
Beside me, Lincoln nodded his approval of the question.
"Don't know," Pete said. "Maybe army."
"Nah." Jimmy shook his head. "He didn't bark orders like them army folks do. He were quieter. Didn't speak much, but we didn't see him often. Only when he wanted us to get another body."
"He were real precise, like an army man," Pete said. "Told us exactly where the bodies would be, and how far down they would be buried."
"So he asked for specific bodies? By name?"
"Aye, sir."
Gordon seemed as surprised by that as I was. I wondered if he knew or suspected who the captain was now. He'd mentioned being in the army himself. "What does he look like?"
"Like a toff," Pete said. "Mostly bald, wears spectacles."
"About your height," Jimmy added. "Thin fellow."
"Aside from depositing the bodies in the cool room, what has he done to them?"
Both men shrugged. "Nothing, far as we can tell," Pete said. "My uncle says the captain looks in on 'em sometimes, and asks to be left alone in there. Real strange."
"Is that it?" Gordon asked. "Is there anything more you can tell me? Do you know where to find him? How to contact him?"
"No, sir. He always comes here when he needs us," said Jimmy.
"So what you are going to do now, sir?" Pete asked.
"I leave," Gordon told him. "
You
stop digging up bodies for the captain, or anyone else."
"You going to haunt us if we don't?"
"Yes."
Jimmy gulped. "Thank you, sir. We'll stop right away." He jabbed Pete again.
But Pete's boldness had returned. He stepped forward and peered into Gordon's eyes. I'd trembled the first time I'd stared into a dead man's eyes, but Pete didn't flinch. "Is this some kind of magic trick to get us talkin'? You ain't the first one to ask these questions. Maybe the gypsy put you up to it, or the pigs."
"You've sparked some interest," Gordon said. "Nobody likes a grave robber. You're revolting, depraved."
"Aye, but the pay's good." Pete poked him in the shoulder. "I think you're usin' the night to play tricks on us. We shouldn't have fallen for it, Jimmy. It ain't the body in the cool room come back to haunt us. It's just a cove who's covered his face in chalk—"
Gordon grabbed the finger and wrenched it backward. Bone snapped. Pete cried out and cradled his finger close to his chest.
"Bloody hell!" he screamed. "You're mad!"
"Dead, not mad." Gordon picked up a knife from the table and grinned. The two men backed away. "Since that wasn't enough proof, here's something more definitive." He placed the blade between his teeth and rolled up his left sleeve. He turned his arm over for them to see. "Nothing hidden up there. My arm is real." He splayed his fingers on the table and drove the knife through the back of his hand. I heard the sickening crunch of bone from where I stood outside.
Jimmy and Pete jumped, their huge eyes on Gordon's bloodless hand as he pulled the knife from the flesh. Jimmy crossed himself and blubbered through a prayer again.
"It ain't no trick," Pete said, more to himself than his friend who wasn't listening anyway. He suddenly took off, running out the door and down the lane.
Lincoln could have stopped him, but he let him go. "He's told us all he knows," he said.
"What if he runs to tell the captain?" I asked.
"He claims not to know where to find him. I doubt he'd be believed anyway."
"Come back!" Jimmy screamed. "Don't leave me with this demon!"
"I'm not a demon," Gordon told him mildly. "I'm a resurrected dead man."
"Jesus," Jimmy spluttered.
"Not Jesus. Gordon Thackery." He strolled out of the room and wiggled his fingers in a wave at the blubbering Jimmy. "Be sure to remember my name if you tattle any tales."
Jimmy slammed the door shut.
None of us spoke as we left the lane behind and headed back to the butcher's shop. We spotted Lincoln's horse being led away by a stooped man in a cloak. Lincoln intercepted him before the man even realized he'd crept close. A few words were all it took for the thief to scamper off.
"What happens now?" Gordon asked me.
"I'll release you so you can return to your afterlife."
Lincoln rejoined us, leading the horse. The jittery animal balked and tried to push Lincoln to the side, but he calmed it with a hand to its neck and some quietly spoken words. Its ears flicked back and forth and the nostrils flared, but it didn't shy away again.
"He smells death on me," Gordon said. "I know horses well, and I know when they're afraid. He's afraid of me." He sighed. "It's too bad. I would have enjoyed one last ride while I was here."
"Perhaps I should release you now," I said. "It would be for the best."
When he didn't answer, I grew worried that he was going to protest and demand we let him stay. But finally he nodded. "It has been rather fun, but it must end. Pity."
"Not yet." Lincoln indicated the gate to the butcher's yard and Gordon swung it open.
"You have another task for him?" I was about to warn him of the perils of allowing a dead man to walk the streets for any length of time, when he shook his head.
"A final journey. Including yours, Thackery, we have four bodies to transport back to the cemetery. The cart won't take them all."
"Of course," Gordon said. "But you're not going to notify the police? Those two blighters should be put in prison."
"I'll take care of it in the morning."
Gordon seemed satisfied with that answer, but I knew Lincoln better and suspected he wasn't going to notify the police but try to learn more about the captain and the reason behind the thefts.
"It's good of you return them," Gordon said, as he pushed open the door to the butcher's shop.
Lincoln found equipment to hitch up the horse in a storeroom, while Gordon brought up the bodies. They piled them onto the cart and I sat alongside Lincoln as he drove. Our pace was slow enough that Gordon was able to walk. We must have looked an odd sight, with limbs hanging out of the cart, but the streets were entirely empty now.
It had begun to rain again. I hunched into my cloak, drawing the hood close to my face. Neither Lincoln nor Gordon seemed to mind the chill and rain. Indeed, Gordon lifted his face to the sky and opened his mouth like a child catching rain drops. I smiled. It was the first time I'd felt comfortable in the presence of a body I'd resurrected. I didn't fear Gordon at all.
"You must have been a good man when you were alive," I told him. "I think I would like to have known you."
He snapped his mouth shut and stared at me. Despite the hollowness of the sockets and the emptiness of his eyes, I didn't feel as if I were conversing with a dead man. "Thank you, Miss Charlie. I appreciate the sentiment, but I doubt you would have liked my company. Perhaps before my injury, but not after."
"The opium changed you," I said quietly.
"The cure for the pain was no cure at all. I wish someone had warned me before I tried it. It's like a beautiful lover. Beguiling and tempting at first, then it gets greedy, always wanting more. By the time you realize it's ultimately bad for you, it's too late. It already has its claws in too deep."
I knew little about opium addiction. There were houses where you could smoke it, but I'd never been inside one. The people who came and went from them were sometimes respectable members of society, many of them injured soldiers searching for relief from painful injuries. I'd never met an addict. From what I'd been told, opium rendered the addicts useless for hours after smoking it. They lost their lives to it, figuratively as well as literally.
"Do you know the man Jimmy and Pete referred to as the captain?" Lincoln asked.
"I think so," Gordon said. "If it's him, then I can't say for certain if he is, or was, an army man. I met him
after
I was invalided out. I use the term 'met' loosely."
"You were suffering the effects of opium at the time," Lincoln suggested.
Gordon nodded. "He would visit me, talk to me, but my memory fails me and I can't recall what was discussed or his name."
"Drat," I muttered.
"I do remember that he gave me something."
"An object?" Lincoln asked.
"A liquid. He would spoon feed it to me."
"How odd," I said. "Was it water, perhaps? Soup?"
"That sounds like the act of a good Samaritan." Gordon's dry, flaky lips flattened. "That doesn't fit with what we know of our grave robber."
"No," I said quietly. "You're right. Do you think he was poisoning you?"
"Possibly. But why? The addiction would have got me anyway."
"Did he visit you at the opium house or at home?" Lincoln asked.
"The opium den. I rarely went home. I lived and died among strangers who profited from my weakness. It's not a noble way to be, Miss Charlie. I hope you never have to see the miserable souls wasting away their lives on the stuff."
"Where is the house?" Lincoln asked, abruptly.
"Lower Pell Lane, off Ratcliffe Highway, at the docks."
"I know it."
I blinked at Lincoln. "How do you know it?"
"I've been there. A Chinaman named Lee is the so-called pharmacist."
Gordon snorted. "He's no pharmacist."
Lincoln didn't elaborate and I doubted I'd get further information out of him. That didn't mean I wouldn't try at a later time.
"What about them?" I pointed to the bodies behind us, squashed ungainly into the back of the small cart. "Do you recognize them from Mr. Lee's den?"
Gordon shook his head. "That doesn't mean they didn't frequent that hell too. I wouldn't have noticed the queen if she'd wandered in wearing a crown."
We pulled up the cemetery gates and deposited the bodies where the groundskeepers couldn't fail to see them in the morning. "I do hope they put the right body back in the right grave," I said, stepping back to inspect our handiwork.
"The extent of the decay on each should help them determine the order in which they were dug up." Lincoln passed his hand over the eyes of one of the corpses to close them. "Thackery?"
Gordon lay down on his back, hands by his sides. He looked quite peaceful. "Ready," he said.
I knelt and touched his hand. It wasn't necessary to do so to release the spirit, but I wanted to give him a connection to the living world right to the end. "Thank you, Gordon. You've been very helpful. Rest easy, now. Return to your afterlife. You are released."
White mist floated up and the now empty body subsided as if it had expelled a deep breath. I closed its eyes then gave the spirit of Gordon Thackery a small smile.
He returned it. "If you ever require my services again, Miss Charlie, please summon me. I'd be happy to help." He waved then his spirit mist dispersed and blew away.
"He's gone," I said rising.
Lincoln held his hand out to me to assist me up into the cart. "Are you all right?"
"Yes." My answer surprised me. I
was
all right. The experience hadn't been awful at all.
Lincoln climbed up beside me and urged the horse forward.
"Let's hope they stay buried this time," I said, looking back at the bodies. "Do you think the captain will try to retrieve them again?"
"Perhaps. I do know that he'll need to find other diggers. I doubt Jimmy and Pete will venture near the cemetery again for some time."
"Gordon did perform rather well." I chuckled, but it ended with a yawn.