The Resurrectionists

The fresher the corpse, the better the pay, my father had always said to me, eyes as grey as the corpses we dragged from the earth. 

For years my family resurrected bodies for the sake of research and livelihood. It began with my great-grandfather, a man of medicine without a means to dissect. Legally-accessible cadavers were in short supply; if you were lucky enough to obtain even the left-overs, it was but a shared body mutilated by doctor after doctor. With the study of anatomy at its height, our great anatomist desired not to be left behind; he wanted first pickings. 

Father described his grandfather’s epiphany as both an end and a beginning: the end of his medical career, but the beginning of a lucrative venture. 

Each day he passed the gates of the lower east cemetery, heard shovels breaking through soil and roots, listened to the sound of fresh mourning break through the trees. I could almost imagine him stopping at the gates, grasping at the metal bars as realization dawned upon him. 

Cadavers, indeed, were readily available, if only one knew where to look. 

In only a few short months, he went from doctor to supplier—his fellow anatomists now beggars at his feet. Without him, he must’ve mused, there would be no progress. 

Family was quickly dragged into this venture, a clan of able bodies; scouters, informants, and muscle all. Family cut out the need for outside extremities, their schemes locked within the trust of home and blood. 

What my family did was not “wrong” in the laws of our magistrates. The dead weren’t property, only their tombs, and the clothes on their backs, or the rings on their fingers. And so we left those items behind. 

But what remained grey to the law became stark to the people. As one could fathom, the families of our snatched bodies were not too keen to discover the grave they’d been visiting no longer held the physical presence of their loved one beneath their feet. 

Grave robbers, too stupid and careless to hide their efforts, often found themselves at the end of a barrel, or in the chains of the watchmen, dragged to a jail cell. 

Nothing was more valuable than a fresh corpse; this had been ingrained into my father’s mind, and into my own. But what value that corpse possessed — scientific or financial — blurred all too easily. 

Each week we’d watch for new burials, scattered among the plots. Sometimes I’d join the mourners, poised as another weeping woman, clad in black skirts and fallacious tears. We’d gather information this way, learn of fresh bodies — their age, time of death, the reason for their fatality; all pertinent details for the exchange. Paupers were easy pickings when coin was scarce; unmarked graves were designed for the taking, never to be missed. But snatching the corpse of a rich, old man, less than a day in the soil, was a dream and a challenge; we could almost feel the weight of the coin in our pockets. At the end of days, we would join at the supper table to show our cards, place our bets, and plan our plunder. 

And then we’d dig, illuminated by a cracked lantern and the moon. 

Dirt packed thick beneath our broken nails. My brother and I wielded wooden shovels and spades, cut through loose earth, as my parents kept watch. The soil always smudged our cheeks, coated our hair and clothes. Worms tickled at our ankles; angered as we halved their bodies with crude weapons, disturbing their earth once again. 

And then the shovel met hardwood, a vibration running up to the palms of our hands. We’d claw at the soil, freshly turned, no longer a dry dust, but a heavier, damp clump covering our ticket to temporary wealth. 

A sack, deadening the sound of our hoist, was placed on the lid of the coffin; the wood groaned and splintered, struggling against the weight of the remaining soil, to keep sealed the soulless body sleeping in its pillowed chest. My father pulled out the body with a rope tied around its neck, vertebrae snapping as we rested the lucky corpse from its earth. As my brother and I removed its clothes and tied stiff limbs into a sack, our mother kept watch of the perimeter with our only firearm, a wraith in the moonlight. 

It wasn’t uncommon for grave gangs and watchmen to be lurking about these days — there to steal your body, or to steal your life. And we couldn’t forget the paranoid relatives, gathering in violent groups. I had heard countless rumors of resurrectionists killed in duty by angered left-behinds. I wondered if this might ever happen to us; or whether these tales were falsehoods only meant to scare us away. 

I confess that there were times when I looked down at the faces of these bodies and wondered if their souls, too, were looking down upon us from the Heavens; whether they still felt for the flesh they left behind. Was there to be judgement for us, a poised bolt of lightning towering above our heads? Or did a curse linger on their skin, awaiting snatching hands; revenge even after death?

I remembered how my aunt passed from an inexplicable case of smallpox. My mother explained how it sprouted so quickly, how it claimed her in a matter of weeks, her daughter just a few days later. A string of bad luck, my mother called it, beginning with the loss of a good profit. The last body she’d turned for sale was deemed rotten despite being but a day old; the anatomists wouldn’t even touch it. 

Over time people grew outraged, and continued to demand greater policing of the dead. In a blink, watchmen began increasing their patrols of our graveyards. From our flat we could hear the gunshots and screams, only to read news about the nameless grave robbers murdered beneath willow trees, blood soaking into soil. 

They began digging deeper graves, found clever ways to seal coffins, to make them stronger against our methods. They’d strap down the bodies, or fill the graves with rocks. An unlucky robber could even come face-to-face with a servant and a musket. 

Spite all, father and mother remained undeterred. We grew more careful with our timing, our frequency of visits; it grated at my family, it skewered our profits, but we pressed on for a time. Until we couldn’t. 

In the winter months it became nearly impossible to maneuver around the patrol. Father couldn’t risk us getting caught and killed, but he didn’t wish to quit. I could see the frustration in the way he’d chew at his nails, the violent shake of his knees as he sat, glaring out at the warped window of our flat. Mother would count what funds we had left, as if imagining it would magically grow before her. Every hour she’d separate the coins one by one, whispering her counts, fooling herself to believe earlier calculations were wrong. She barely touched what food we could afford, consuming instead the fear that our business would fall into the hands of other snatchers; that all would be lost. 

My brother and I whispered uncertainties to each other as our parents slept. What would our family be without this? This routine, so entrenched in our very beings? The questions terrified us, left us restless. My brother began hunting for jobs at the docks, and I considered suitors in the square; we were desirous of stability, and the graves began to haunt us—as if the dirt was waiting to take us too. 

Still, our anatomists demanded bodies to study, and we could not provide them; not timely, not efficiently. Of the bodies we could provide, we received very little in return; limbs no better than chum in the water. These bodies were no longer fresh. What were once only days old, were now weeks in the dirt. Decaying, putrid things even salt could not preserve on the cart ride to anatomy schools and hospitals. 

For the last body, only good for its left arm, we were given but one pound. At the slam of the door in my father’s face, he merely stared down at the cobbled street, eyes wild. Mother was weeping in the rain as my brother began to walk home, frustration bristling at his back. Father slammed repeatedly on the wooden door, wanting the anatomist to return, to take more of the body we’d spent hours pulling out of flooded soil. His palms were torn from the rope; the body had not wanted to emerge from its grave. We should’ve let it remain. 

Fresh fresh fresh… we need something fresh. My father would pace about our small living space, mouthing to himself, wearing down the wood. His hair was thinning, his mouth a permanent, wrinkled frown of desperation. Mother was bedridden by now, having caught pneumonia by the rain and cold, and it wouldn’t leave her lungs. She looked like a corpse covered in thick blankets; sunken cheeks and yellowed eyes. Her fingers were knobs of knuckles held loosely by a string of flesh. I fell asleep to her wracking sobs and violent coughs. My brother was spared the noise, having taken up a position as a night fisherman; he shared not a coin of his earnings with my parents, but was kind enough to bring back a stolen cod from time to time. I didn’t blame him. I knew he’d leave us soon. I’d only hoped I could go with him. 

It wasn’t until the first snow fell, like ash from the sky, that my father discovered a solution to our woes. 

He awoke from the bed with a gasp, air expanding in his lungs; it was if he survived a drowning. He ran to me, pulling me up and out of a half-sleep, fingers digging into my arms. His words didn’t come at first. There was only a grin, crooked and long and wild. I thought his face might snap in two. He laughed so hard he started crying, shaking my body, as if that would help me see his revelation. 

Father ordered me to grab my coat, to pull on my warmest clothing. He didn’t think of mother wheezing in the bed; she’d barely stirred as he stomped throughout our small space. She was pale enough that I could see blue branches crawling up her neck and onto her face. 

And still, I obeyed. I couldn’t let father go out alone. My brother wasn’t here to help him; God forbid he got lost in the cold, slipped on the ice. 

Wrapped in scarves and wool, we trudged forth into winter. A blanket of black and white. 

He made for the cemetery in fast-paced, frantic steps; a mix of impatience and excitement. I struggled to keep up with him. The cold was suffocating, and my heart was fearful, though I couldn’t gather why. 

As we reached the frozen gates, he told me to wait, hands lingering on my shoulders—an assurance of some kind. He took the firearm from my gloved hands. Before I could ask why, he was off; I lost sight of him in the snow. 

Minutes passed. I shifted on my feet to relieve the wet chill seeping into broken boots. Curled and uncurled my toes to continue the flow of blood. 

Five minutes passed, then another ten. 

Concern was now a burning in my chest. Without a second thought, my fingers grasped at the metal bars of the gate and pushed, its wails cutting through the air around me. 

I called for my father, listened carefully for the sound of his voice. 

I walked past familiar tombstones, their names engraved in my memory. I knew which ones we had taken. Knew which ones were just bones. And, for the briefest of moments, I wondered whether we’d be buried here one day, only to be dug up for science.

There were worse things. 

As I reached the patch of dead willow trees, I spotted my father pacing, a small pond like a mirror of black glass behind him. The pistol hung loosely in his hand, forefinger tapping lightly on the trigger. 

Coming closer, I could make out his furious ramblings, watched the spit fly from out his mouth. 

Where were the watchmen? 

A painful irony, really. When my father wanted them here, when he needed them most, there wasn’t a damn one in sight. For the first time in months, there was no one here; only my father, myself, and the dead. 

I made my presence known and he turned to me like a cornered animal. I didn’t recognize his eyes, could only see now the blood dripping from off his fingers. He’d chewed too deep down past the nails, breaking flesh. 

We need something fresh. 

His bruised mantra echoed around us as he tracked dirt and snow with each step. His breathing danced around his head in white angry plumes. 

I knew we needed the money. I had become the one to count our coins on the supper table while our mother was confined to bed. We had only weeks to gather bodies, and a fresh corpse would give us another month. Father wouldn’t settle for a pauper’s grave. The soil was unforgiving in this cold; the hassle wasn’t worth the price. 

My eyes focused on the gun in his hands. I half-suspected he wielded it not for protection, but for something more sinister. 

It hurt to watch him suffer like this. I gather it wasn’t just the dwindling coin, but the feeling of failure clouding his heart. Why could he not succeed for our family? Would he be the one to crumble it all to dust? 

Was any of this pain worth it?

Slowly, I entered his space, reached my fingers to his hand with the gun, speaking calmly to him. I wanted him to stand still, to breathe and be rational. We weren’t in the business of murder. 

He flinched at my touch and knocked my hand away, a sharp curse in his words, pointed at me, through me. 

We need something fresh. 

Father was frantic now, stepping away from me and digging his hands into his scalp, pulling at the tufts of hair that remained. His grey eyes were unblinking as he stared down at the snow. 

I tried telling him we could find other means for a life, used my brother as an example — he was able to find purpose elsewhere; couldn’t we? Perhaps we were allowed to be destined for other things. What came before us needed not define us this day. 

I reached for his shoulders, as he had done for me at the gates — an assurance, a desire to believe all would be well. That we’d find another way. 

Father mouthed the words back at me and a cold realization spread across his face. 

He pushed me back and I nearly fell, stumbling to catch my balance. 

Another way. 

I spoke his name as a question, watched his face contort between grief and finite determination. 

His arm raised the gun, pointed it at me. 

I tried looking for the shake of his hand, for any sign of resistance to the solution that now poisoned his mind. But he was still. 

Something fresh. 

I cried out to him, raised my hands, a warning and a plea. I could feel hot tears on my cheeks. 

He cocked the gun.

I stood in horror, the betrayal weighing on my chest like stones in a coffin. 

The shot rang out as I made good sense to move, the bullet just grazing my shoulder. A few inches higher and he’d have my neck. 

I ducked at the sound of his pivot in the snow, and pulled the shiv from out my boot in a swift motion, pushing toward him. 

My father set his sights, but I reached him too quickly, lifting up his arm as a second bullet shot up and into the sky. 

My fingers dug into his wrist, nails making half-moons in his skin. I demanded he drop the gun but still he fought me, a demon wrestling behind his eyes. He was stronger than me and pushed back with a force I could barely contain. He nearly snapped my arm as he pushed me down into the snow. I screamed at him, a strangled sound without words, but he did not hear my pain. 

He strained to angle the gun at my head, his face still despite the tears welling up in his eyes. 

Please don’t make me do this. 

I stared up into the grey of his eyes, cried out, and plunged the shiv into his neck, closing my eyes as blade met skin. 

The gun dropped from his hand, his limbs loosened. His head fell into the crook of my neck and my arms immediately wrapped around him in a hug, my fingers digging into his coat. I held him as the life bled from him and onto the snow. 

I held him until the blood froze at my knees, until the tears no longer stung my eyes, util my voice was just a scratch in my throat. 

And then I dug. 

My hands clawed at the cold earth, ice cutting up the skin of my arms. 

I must’ve been digging for hours. I could feel the winter sun on my back, could hear the sound of morning doves in the willows. 

The grave was shallow, unmarked, but still I placed my father in that earth. It took him without question, without judgment. 

I could not take his body to the anatomists; I would not take a body to them ever again. 

Gingerly, I packed the soil over his corpse, until his grey eyes were hidden from me forever.