The Resurrectionist

by A. Rae Dunlap

when I was nearly arrested for smuggling a naked corpse in a wheelbarrow down Chambers Street at half past midnight, but I fear that’s getting rather ahead of myself.

Huh

As ill-suited as I was to be a leader, it was evident that I was a considerably worse follower and uniquely repelled by both mundanity and tradition.

The essence of life, the very organs that granted our being, that was the wonder of it all! To unlock the mysteries of the human form was to behold God’s masterpiece firsthand, and that is what sparked the fire within me for the very first time.

On that very night, my father died in his sleep.

Yet I must insist that, in the end, this is not a story about Death. It is perhaps a Life story—or even, yes, a Love story. It is the story of how I clawed my way from the decay of a crumbling legacy into the modern era of Reason and Science. It is the story of how I escaped the prison of archaic superstition to the freedom of enlightenment. It is the story of how a rose can blossom from even the bloodiest soil, of how light can grow from shadow, how love can grow from despair. This, dear reader, is the story of my Resurrection.

But it had quickly become apparent to me that coded language and slight exaggeration were all part of the jostling for prestige amongst my scholastic comrades.

The gore within gleamed grotesquely in the lamplight, and for a moment, I was tempted to sway.

His hair was somehow even more disheveled than it had been the day before, and he was wearing a thick canvas apron with tanned leather trim over a plain muslin shirt wide open at the neck. I immediately

Gone was the standoffish air of an aloof businessman, replaced by the aura of a familiar, charming companion. It was endlessly perplexing.

But as I’ve forewarned, this is not the tale of my life as it was. This is the tale of how that life ended and my new life began. My old life was buried one idle Monday in the fifth week of my night watch. And like all avalanches of the most ominous designs, this one began with the near-imperceptible ping of a single pebble against my windowpane.

I shook my head. “I want to believe you. I want to believe you wouldn’t use me so unscrupulously. But all the evidence is to the contrary.”

“I can’t tell whether you’re stupider than you seem, more naïve than I’d come to believe, or so intentionally obtuse as to be a rare and volatile combination of the two.”

“I snatch bodies. There is a difference. I do not desecrate or dishonour the dead. I do not deprive them of their worldly possessions. Everything that they carry with them beneath the ground into their hallowed tomb remains there, save for their corpse. I simply give their death meaning.”

“Hardly. In fact . . .” Aneurin turned to peer over his shoulder. “Now where is she, I’d just seen her—ah!”

Something about his tone, his manner, the way he held my gaze as he said it—left me struck speechless, dumbly staring back at him.

a deep well of knowledge from which I myself was increasingly eager to draw.

“And I’ll tell you why it’s a good idea: because it’s worth two guineas and a crown, and I’ll give you half.” I was utterly gobsmacked. “It’s . . . it’s worth what?!” The fact that a near-mouldering corpse could be worth a small fortune had caught me completely off guard. “Two guineas and a crown is the going price for the corpse of a grown man.” “For a grown man? As opposed to—” “Six shillings per foot and nine-pence per inch thereafter for a child.” I was struck dumb. “That’s . . . that’s obscene. You’re insane.”

You came here for knowledge, and this is the price of it. Now that you know, you can’t look away. No more pleading innocence for you.”

“You came to Edinburgh because you were looking for the face of God and couldn’t find it in your Bible. Don’t cast blame on me if His true appearance is not the one of beatific serenity you’d been deceived into believing. This is the face of Progress, James. Don’t you dare look away.”

Was I, the noble son of a landed family, about to tow a freshly stolen corpse into my chamber window and exchange it for money? No, not money, but Progress,

His expression transformed into one of brazen confidence. “Why, won’t you?” And with that, he toppled out the window and rappelled into the darkness below.

This is wrong. Then why doesn’t it feel wrong? You should go back on your word, refuse to carry on. Then why don’t I want to?

For all intents and purposes, Aneurin and his ilk were heretics; desecrating holy ground and paying off men of the cloth for the privilege. While I understood the necessity well enough, it was still a bitter truth to swallow.

Is this your doing? Malstrom’s? For God’s sake, this is the work of a sadist and a madman!”

I was forced to admit that it was impossible to imagine reconciling my Christian morals with the depravity I had uncovered there.

The laboratory was clearly not Aneurin’s alone; it must be supervised by Malstrom himself.

“We know you’re a bookworm, but that’s not it. You’re distracted, distant. Charlie’s doing a talk on fumigators, and I know for a fact you’ve got very strong opinions about them, but you haven’t said a word since he started going on about it.

“Ease off him, Hamish. It’s the dead of winter, we’re trapped indoors and haven’t seen the sun for days, and we’ve been cut off from access to all our favourite toys at Malstrom’s and have nothing else to play with except textbooks. We’re allowed to be a bit tetchy.”

Why would Edith be writing?

Though if I’d sliced through the flesh of a man without so much as a flinch of hesitation, how much worse could it be to lift him, whole and unsullied, from beneath the earth?

The rationalisation of desperate times is so interesting to me

We are members of the league of men who call ourselves not by the mantle of snatchers, but Resurrectionists. Our motivation is not the value of the bodies we steal, but in the second life we give them; each acts as a post-mortem Prometheus, bringing fire to mankind.

“If you are to become one of us, a true Resurrectionist, you must believe in the work we are doing, in our purpose and our plan. And until I’m sure you see it, I cannot let you be a part of it. You must understand that, just as actions have consequences, just as laws have repercussions, progress has a cost. And to join me in this, it must be one you are ready to pay.”

They are an unscrupulous bunch, wholly without honour, and they have no qualms infringing upon the territory of the other snatchers working in this city.

“Oh!” It belatedly dawned on me that this must be a nickname of his that I’d not yet been privy to; the thought was amusing and a bit endearing. Nye. It suited him.

“They’re depositing the displaced soil carefully on top of the sack to avoid disturbing the grass around the burial site; if the sexton or a family member sees errant dirt strewn about the grave, they are liable to suspect a snatching.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Thomas muttered from above us as he brushed the dirt gruffly from his knees. “What kind of physician are you that you can’t tell a man’s head from his bloody feet?”

Nye swore silently under his breath, then straightened his back to issue an order to Thomas. “Get the saw and get down here. We’ll have to decapitate.”

Nye made himself useful in the removal of the man’s boots, undergarments, and trousers, then took charge of collecting all the discarded clothing and tossing it haphazardly back into the pit. For some reason, I found this action more shocking than the stripping of the corpse, though I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting; for him to fold it lovingly and place it back in the coffin like an offering? Such actions were borne of sentiment, an impulse which, I was quickly discovering, had no business in the world of snatching.

I had no time to mourn my loss of innocence, for right on my heels appeared Nye, swinging into the room like an avenging angel, full of newfound swagger and beaming from ear to ear.

How does one discern wakefulness from dreaming? How may we be certain that what we perceive as our reality is not, in fact, the fevered nocturnal manifestations of a distant, unknowable consciousness?

That dreams lack Reason, which is the Truth of all matters. That dreams defy Logic, which is the Root of all things.

That in dreaming, we recuse our enlightened mindfulness to beastly baser instincts and, in doing so, nega...

listened to the arguments unconvinced, for it often seemed to me that I was more human for dreaming than ...

And Nye. Every moment with him felt like a dream decoded, a riddle unravelled in a foreign tongue.

When I could not tell dreams from wakefulness, he remained my touchstone and my Truth; a glimmer in his eye and a quirk of his lips were all that it took to make me feel manifest, whole, and worthy.

My hands brought forth and gave new life to that which had been seized by Death—a power so heady it was intoxicating to wield.

“Because when I say gang, James, I mean it; these are not merely a ragged group of snatchers gone bad. They are trained, organised, and efficient.

and for the first time that evening, I began to have some doubts about my plot.

and I marveled at how perfectly we fit together like this: two pieces of a puzzle sliding into place, magnets drawn effortlessly into alignment. It was an indulgently sentimental thought, I realized, but I could scarcely bring myself to feel ashamed at my affections—for if Nye’s embrace was any indication, he felt entirely the same.

How could anything be unnatural when our coupling felt as easy as breathing air? How could the life I’d found with Nye be anything other than a benediction, full of grace? How could Nye ever be less than everything?