“So, yeah, I set out alone to Greyfriars in the night—didn’t even bother to bring a torch, seein’ how I know the grounds there so well. Could walk it blindfolded and not trip on a single stone, I’m telling ye. Not a single rock nor anthill in that place I couldn’t sniff out on a moonless night and with both my eyes closed.
“The gate was unlocked. That was the first strange thing I remember. I hopped it out of habit, just in case, but I remember that very clearly. It was closed, mind you, but not locked. So course I assume someone else beat me to it, someone else is going to take my prize pig, so I race over to the grave and no one’s there. Dirt tilled from the burial, but no one’s dug it up. No one’s in the kirkyard at all. No wind either. It was like even the ghosts stopped moving. It was so still I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. I do remember that part. I don’t ken if it’s important, or if it means anything at all, but God’s honest truth: that last night that I remember the night was as still as I had ever heard her. The lights were even out at George Heriot’s. Not even a candle in the window.
“I get to digging, but before I get more’n a few inches into the ground, a man is suddenly standing right in front of me. That’s the only way I can explain it, he just appears right before my nose. Didn’t even hear him coming, couldn’t even hear him breathing. He’s wearing a hat that blocks his face, and in the dark I can’t tell what sort of face is under it at all. But I still have my spade, mind you, and I hold it up at his face and tell him not to come a step closer. This is my body, I says, I found her, and what’s more, I was here first. Any resurrection man worth his salt knows not to steal a body from someone who’s already stealing it.
“But this man, this ghost or whatever he is, he just smiles something awful, and I see a row of yellow teeth in the shadows. And it’s about then that I get the sense that I’ve seen him before, that he was one of the men that met me and Davey that night—you remember, Jack—and so I think, ‘Oh, he’s just a copper, then.’ I make like I’m about to run, but before I can even tell my legs to get, the gent gets ahold of me and sticks a handkerchief in my face, wet with this sort of sweet-smelling—I don’t know. Smelled like flowers, and like death. I tried to hold my breath, tried to struggle against him, but then everything got heavy and dizzy, and next thing I knew, it was sunrise, and he was wheeling me in a chair with a veil over my head.
“We were somewhere in the Old Town, I could tell from the smells and the way the cobblestones moved, and I’m pretty sure we crossed a bridge, but I couldn’t tell where. I told ye, I had this heavy, black lace—veil or something—over my head and over me, like I was a widow in mourning or some’un’s gran. I tried to run, but it was like my legs were gone and I couldn’t move my arms. I could barely see out from beneath the fabric, so alls I could do was wait and hope he would leave me for long enough that I could somehow find a way to get free.
“We made it to a building with a golden plaque on the door, and the man in the hat knocked a few times, and they wheeled me in, through a big room and into another room like a theater. That’s like what it was, I remember, a theater with rows of benches and everything, and sawdust on the floor—I could smell that, couldn’t mistake it for the world.
“They pulled off my veil then. There was no one in the audience, just two tables on the stage, and a doctor in a coat. There was an old man sleeping on one of the tables. Maybe not old, it was hard to see, but ’e looked old enough to me. And must have been old to be sleeping. The man in the top hat took payment from the doc and left me staring out, hoping they wouldn’t notice I was still alive when they had tried to kill me.
“The doctor sharpened a knife, and that was when I couldn’t help myself—I called out, I suppose, or maybe just yelped like a dog. And then he got out his own handkerchief and poured some blue potion on it. I tried to move, I tried to run, I swear, but it was like I was strapped in even though my limbs were free. My brain had gone bad. He pushed the handkerchief up to my face and it was that same smell again—a body gone rotten, and some sweet flower like a lady’s perfume. And then the room went dizzy and black and I couldn’t cry out anymore. It was voodoo or something. It didn’t hurt, thought it would, but it didn’t. Felt like going to sleep and made the rest of my memories hazy. If I hadn’t woken up without ol’ lefty here”—he gestured with his head to the space where his left arm had formerly been—“then I might have thought that maybe I had dreamed it or maybe I had had too much at the pub the night before.