TRANSCRIPTION 🔗
WEBVTT
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Welcome, weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar. You've stepped into the horror
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fiction side of Weird Darkness, and it happens to be
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midnight in the macabre. The burlap sacking went over the
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coffin lid first, the way it always did, and Cyrus
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Pell set the heel of his boot on it and leaned.
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the pine gave way with a wet crack that the
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burlap muffled. He dug down at the head end only,
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a hole four feet long and three across and five
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feet deep, with the rest of the grave left alone
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under its mound of raw clay. The sexton out here
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at the infirmary ground didn't bother tamping a pauper's fill,
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and two days of rain had done the settling for him.
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The clay had come up in slabs that stuck to
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the wooden spade and had to be knocked off against
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his knee and scraped with his boot. He used wood,
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because iron clanged against stone like a broken bell. Out here,
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a mile past Carthage, with nothing around but the infirmary's
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dark windows and the stubble fields, there was nobody to
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hear it. But he used it anyway. Nine years in
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this trade had taught him to work the same whether
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anyone was listening or not. Lem Hatcher held the dim
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lantern up top with the shutter cracked to fingers width
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so that a single blade of light lay across the
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broken lid. Well, what do you think? I don't know yet.
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Give me the hook. The hook came down on its rope.
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Cyrus got his fingers under the splintered edge of the
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lid and lifted away a piece the size of a
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stove door. There she was. The top of her, a
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woman somewhere past fifty, with grey hair gone flat against
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the pine, and a cheap muslin shroud tied off under
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her chin. The infirmary buried the poor and destitute in
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whatever clothes they happened to die in, sometimes less. The
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sexton had told them she went in the ground Tuesday.
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A fever case out of the infirmary wards, with no
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people to claim her, and the Sexton was paid $ 2
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a grave for telling them things like that. For years,
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the infirmary had handed its unclaimed dead to the colleges, quietly,
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through the back door, and nobody had needed to dig
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for them. The Harrison business had put the directors off it.
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Since then, the ground out here was worked the old way,
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and the Sexton's $ 2 were worth paying. Her skin had
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the color of a tallow candle, He'd seen enough of
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them to know she'd be going loose by now, the
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stiffness most of the way out of her. And that
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was what the college paid for. Stiff ones were hard
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to get into a sack. He had a headache behind
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his left eye that had been there since supper. He
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blamed the cold and the beer at Dutch Henry's, where
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he and Lem had waited out the early dark, and
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then the bending when the digging started. and the nine
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years of whatever ills a resurrectionist would breathe in at
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night in the middle of freshly dug graves. When he
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looked away from the body and back up at the lantern,
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the lantern doubled, two blades of light where there was one,
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and then slid back together. He set the hook under
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the woman's jaw and seated the point behind the angle
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of the bone.' Take her.' Lem took her. The rope
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went taut. and the woman came up out of her box,
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with her head tipped back and her arms trailing, the
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shroud catching on the splinters and tearing, until she hung
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above the hole with her heels knocking against the grave wall.
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Cyrus caught her ankles and fed her up, and Lem
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swung her onto the grass and let the rope go slack.' Clothes.
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I know about the clothes.' Lem tossed the shroud down
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to him, torn already, and he balled it up and
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dropped it into the box where she'd been, because the
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law didn't count a body as property, and did count
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a shroud. The judge in Hamilton County could put a
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man in the workhouse for a yard of muslin a
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good deal easier than he could put
Load full transcript
him in the
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penitentiary for the woman inside it, so the clothes went
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back in the grave every time, and a sack went
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around the woman. He heard Lem working his sack over
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her head up top, the drawstring, the grunt as he
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rolled her Cyrus stood in the hole with the lid
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pieces around his boots and the open box in front
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of him and waited for his eyes to refocus to
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a single image. They didn't. The two blades of lantern
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light split to four. Hand me up. He reached for
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the edge. But the edge wasn't where he'd put his hand.
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Cyrus went down with his legs through the broken lid
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into the box and the rest of him folded against
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the grave wall, his right arm under him. He knew
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he'd fallen. For a moment, that was the only thing
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he knew, the plain fact of wet, cold clay against
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his cheek and a splinter of pine standing into the
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skin below his ear, and he waited for the sting
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to go up his arm. He attempted to push up
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and roll to his side to lift his face from
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the clay. He didn't roll. He couldn't roll. He tried
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his hand. He could feel it under him, the knuckles
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pressed into the sacking, and the cold coming up through
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the burlap and he told the fingers to close. The
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fingers lay there. He tried the other hand, and his knee,
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and his jaw. He'd meant to call Lem's name, but
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his mouth stayed as it was, half open against the clay,
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with the breath going in and out of it on
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its own, shallow and slow. Above him, the lantern swung. Sigh.
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The hole went dark, where Lem's head came over the
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edge and blocked the light. Sigh. Quit it. The light
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came back, full now. The shutter thrown all the way open.
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Cyrus could see the grave wall in front of his face,
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every spade mark in the clay, a white root cut
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clean through, a worm turning in the wet. He could
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see the inside of the box where the woman had lain,
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the pine wet and dark where the rain had gotten in.
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He couldn't turn his eye to find Lem. His eye
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went up and it went down, and it wouldn't go
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to the side. Boots came down beside his head. Lem
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had come into the hole after him, and the lid
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cracked again under his weight. Sigh. A hand on his shoulder,
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hauling him over onto his back. The grave wall went away,
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and the sky came in, the color of a slate roof.
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Sleet was starting. He felt it hit his face. He
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felt it hit his open eyes, and couldn't shut them
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against it. Sigh. Look at me. Lem's face hung over his.
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the lantern behind it making a black shape of the
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hat and the beard, and Lem's breath came down on him,
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beer and pipe smoke. Lem's fingers went to his throat
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and pressed under the jaw and held. Cyrus could feel
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the fingers, the cold of them and the pressure and
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the grit of clay on the fingertips. He could feel
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the dull pump of his own blood going under the skin,
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slow and faint. Lem held his fingers there a long
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time before they eventually came away Oh, no! The blood
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under the skin had been too slow, too faint. Lem's
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hands went first to his own face and dragged down
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over the beard, then to his hat, which he took
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off and put back on, then to Cyrus again, two
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fingers at the wrist this time, and Cyrus wheeled his
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blood toward those fingers and felt it go on as
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it had, with the cold already in it from the
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clay and the sleet and the hour. He'd been digging
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up a grave in November. His hands had been like
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ice even before he fell, and Lem's two fingers found
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only that. Cold. It's the apoplexy. Lem was talking to
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the hole, not to him. Just like you said how
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your paw went. Cyrus's father had gone down in a
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barn in Boone County in 1861 and and been found
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by the hired boy, flat on the straw with his
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eyes open, and the doctor who rode out had looked
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at him, said apoplexy, and gone home after the undertaker
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arrived and took him away in a box with pennies
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on his eyes, because the lids wouldn't stay down. Cyrus
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had told it that way over beer more than once.
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He thought now of his father on that barn floor,
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with his eyes open, and understood for the first time
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in nineteen years that It might not have been death
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the hired boy saw. The eyes might have been looking.
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Lem's thumb came down on one of his eyelids, and
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then the other. And the dark came, as well as
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the relief from the icy sleet stinging his open eyes.
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Thank you, Lem, he thought. Then Lem climbed out of
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the grave. Cyrus lay behind his own lids and heard
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him up there. He heard the rope being gathered. and
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the sack with the woman in it dragged across wet
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grass toward where the wagon stood behind the infirmary's woodlot
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and the wagon bed taking her weight. Then nothing for
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a while. Lem was standing by the wagon, Cyrus thought,
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making up his mind. The sleet thickened and filled the
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hole with a hiss as the ice crystals fell upon
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the clay and wet, and Cyrus found that with much
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effort he could open his eyes to it, and least
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he could do that. If somebody was going to look
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at him, he wanted it to be at open eyes,
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sleet or no sleet. He thought about what Lem knew.
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Lem knew that a man found dead in an opened
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grave with a wooden spade and a hook beside him
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was a resurrectionist, found out at last. and that the
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dead man's partner would be looked for. He knew the
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county had hanged nobody for this trade, and jailed plenty.
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He knew about the Harrison business two years back, the
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dead man's son with a search warrant walking the halls
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of a college on 6th Street and finding his own
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father hanging in the body chute by a rope, and
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the papers running it for a month, and the whole
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city watching the colleges ever since. The grave left open
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with a dead digger in it, would bring all of
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that down on everyone. And Lem knew that Cyrus had
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no people. A wife in Covington eleven years gone, no children,
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and a room over a saddlery on Plum Street with
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the rent paid through Saturday. The rope came back down
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into the hole. Cyrus watched it come and watched Lem's
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boots come down after it. Look at my eyes, he thought. Lem,
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look at me. My eyes are open again. but Lem
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kept his face turned away from Cyrus's while he worked.
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Not the hook, Cyrus thought. Dear God, Lem, not the hook.
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Lem couldn't hear him, but Lem didn't use the hook
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and wrapped the rope around him instead, under the arms
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and across the chest. Lem knotted the rope at his
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breastbone and climbed out and took the strain, and Cyrus
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went up the grave wall feet last, the clay dragging
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at his coat and the broken lid falling away beneath him.
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until he lay on the grass with the sleet in
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his face and the woman's open grave at his side.
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Lem filled it, fast and badly, the wooden spade thumping
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the clay back into the hole and the sacking left
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in the bottom with the shroud. Cyrus heard the sexton's
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numbered stake go back into the fill with one blow
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at the spade's flat and no second blow to straighten it.
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Then he came and stood over Cyrus with the lantern.
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The eyes were open again Lem looked at them a
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moment and thumbed them shut a second time, harder, and
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they stayed shut only until he looked away. I'm sorry, Cy.
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The hat came off and went back on. You'd do
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the same. You know you would. He looked at the
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eyes again and away. I remember you saying your paws
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wouldn't stay shut either. Creepy. Cyrus did know it. He
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lay there knowing it while Lem went through his coat.
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The money went first, four dollars and some silver, into
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Lem's
own pocket without a count. Then the knife and
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the tobacco. Lem's hands worked quick and sure now, and
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Cyrus understood each thing they took as it went. The
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college wanted stiffs delivered with nothing on. The college paid
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for the body alone because clothes could be traced to
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a name, and a name brought the police in. His
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boots came off next. Lem loosed the rope to get
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at the coat, and then the coat, the vest, the shirt,
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the trousers, the woolen drawers, and when he was done,
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he tied the rope back on under the arms against
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the skin. The sleet stung his skin in areas never
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before exposed to the elements as they were now. He
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felt every pellet of it. Lem rolled him onto a
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sack and worked it up over his legs. The burlap
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smelled of potatoes and of the last three bodies they'd
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carried in it, and it came up over his chest
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and his face. The world went to brown weave, with
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the lantern a smear behind it. He heard Lem bundle
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the clothes. He heard the wooden spade bite into the
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fill one more time, then the clothes going into the hole,
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then the spade again. His boots, his coat, four dollars
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worth of good wool, went into the ground where the
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woman had been. The drawstring closed over his head, and
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he felt Lem pull the tail of the rope out
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through it and knot it off outside. The wagon bed
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was planks with a tarp over them, and he lay
237
00:14:33.600 --> 00:14:36.960
against the woman. She was on her side in her sack,
238
00:14:37.539 --> 00:14:39.649
and he was on his back in his, and where
239
00:14:39.669 --> 00:14:42.090
the bed jolted them together, he felt her against his
240
00:14:42.230 --> 00:14:45.110
arm through two layers of burlap. The cold of her
241
00:14:45.190 --> 00:14:48.450
felt even through the fabric. He felt the give in
242
00:14:48.470 --> 00:14:51.539
her weight shifting with each bump and jolt of the wagon.
243
00:14:52.620 --> 00:14:55.779
She'd been dead since Tuesday. He wondered if the two
244
00:14:55.840 --> 00:14:58.980
of them were the same temperature now, or near enough
245
00:14:59.059 --> 00:15:02.539
that Lem's fingers couldn't tell. What he did not have
246
00:15:02.559 --> 00:15:05.809
to
wonder about was where they were going, and that
247
00:15:05.830 --> 00:15:09.419
they were going together. and Lem would be paid handsomely
248
00:15:09.519 --> 00:15:12.379
for both of them, with no one to split the take.
249
00:15:13.820 --> 00:15:16.129
The road from the infirmary ground to the city was
250
00:15:16.190 --> 00:15:19.330
ten miles of macadam and mud, and the wagon took
251
00:15:19.470 --> 00:15:22.570
every yard of it into his spine. He could feel
252
00:15:22.649 --> 00:15:26.750
the planks, every knot and slat underneath them, a protruding
253
00:15:26.809 --> 00:15:30.379
nail pushing into the fabric, pressing against a rib. He
254
00:15:30.399 --> 00:15:32.820
could feel every pellet of sleet that came through the
255
00:15:32.879 --> 00:15:35.759
tarp seam and found the sack, and he couldn't so
256
00:15:35.799 --> 00:15:39.440
much as turn his face from it, He'd carried eleven
257
00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:41.960
bodies in this wagon since he'd bought it in the spring.
258
00:15:42.820 --> 00:15:45.639
Not once had he ridden anywhere but the driver's bench.
259
00:15:47.600 --> 00:15:51.450
Lem drove the way he always drove, slow, with no lantern,
260
00:15:51.649 --> 00:15:55.370
and the wheels found the familiar ruts, allowing Cyrus to
261
00:15:55.409 --> 00:16:00.129
gauge approximately where along the route he was. Somewhere near Carthage,
262
00:16:00.190 --> 00:16:02.889
a dog came out barking and ran along beside them,
263
00:16:03.490 --> 00:16:07.750
lost interest. After that, the wagon stopped, and Cyrus heard
264
00:16:07.789 --> 00:16:13.529
a bottle uncorked. A long swallow. The cork. Lem didn't
265
00:16:13.710 --> 00:16:17.049
drink once the wagon was loaded. Lem had a rule
266
00:16:17.100 --> 00:16:20.860
about it. But then, Lem had never had a night
267
00:16:21.059 --> 00:16:27.720
like this. The wagon went on. Cyrus tried, in the dark,
268
00:16:28.139 --> 00:16:31.279
to take stock of what he had left. His eyes,
269
00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:34.480
which he could barely manage to open and close... allowing
270
00:16:34.519 --> 00:16:37.490
him to look up and down with effort. His breath,
271
00:16:37.889 --> 00:16:40.529
though it was shallow, and the whole of his skin,
272
00:16:40.690 --> 00:16:44.090
the cold, and the burlap, and the woman's arm against his.
273
00:16:45.250 --> 00:16:49.649
Nothing else answered his will. And the headache, oh, the headache.
274
00:16:50.450 --> 00:16:54.320
Had it actually gotten worse? He'd been a man who
275
00:16:54.340 --> 00:16:56.480
got out of bed at three in the afternoon, and
276
00:16:56.519 --> 00:16:58.940
dug in the dark, and drank at dawn, and had
277
00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:01.179
not since the day his wife went across the river
278
00:17:01.570 --> 00:17:04.829
been required to think of himself as someone who would
279
00:17:04.970 --> 00:17:08.789
or even could stop working. He thought about it now.
280
00:17:09.930 --> 00:17:12.309
He thought his father perhaps had the same thoughts on
281
00:17:12.329 --> 00:17:17.170
that barn floor, for however long that had been. Time
282
00:17:17.210 --> 00:17:20.029
seemed so slow now, with nothing to do but focus
283
00:17:20.109 --> 00:17:23.700
on the pain, discomfort, and inability to do anything about it.
284
00:17:25.849 --> 00:17:28.309
They came into the city by the Carthage Pike, and
285
00:17:28.349 --> 00:17:31.009
he knew it by the sound. the wheels going from
286
00:17:31.109 --> 00:17:36.069
mud to paving, the horse's shoes finding stone. Gas lights
287
00:17:36.130 --> 00:17:39.140
came through the tarp seam in a slow procession, a
288
00:17:39.190 --> 00:17:44.660
smear of yellow, then dark, then yellow. Three o'clock, he thought,
289
00:17:44.940 --> 00:17:49.740
by how empty the streets sounded. The wagon turned and
290
00:17:49.819 --> 00:17:53.420
turned again, and the sound went close and hollow on
291
00:17:53.460 --> 00:18:00.160
both sides. An alley. The horse stopped. Lamb got down.
292
00:18:00.940 --> 00:18:03.180
Cyrus heard him go to a door and knock in
293
00:18:03.220 --> 00:18:08.029
the pattern. Two and one and two. And wait. And
294
00:18:08.069 --> 00:18:12.609
knock again. A long time went by. Then a bolt
295
00:18:12.990 --> 00:18:16.930
and a voice Cyrus knew. The porters, a Kentuckian named
296
00:18:17.079 --> 00:18:19.319
Odom who had a walleye and took a dollar a
297
00:18:19.339 --> 00:18:25.720
head on the side. You're late. Had trouble. How many? Two.
298
00:18:27.400 --> 00:18:30.380
Boots came to the wagon. The tarp went back, the
299
00:18:30.420 --> 00:18:33.880
sleet came in, and lantern light came in through the burlap.
300
00:18:34.819 --> 00:18:39.420
I was small. Woman, fever. The infirmary buried her Tuesday.
301
00:18:40.230 --> 00:18:49.630
I and him? A pause. Cyrus heard Lem's hat come off. Man, forty, about, fresh.
302
00:18:50.579 --> 00:18:56.099
Fresh how? Found him tonight on the Lebanon Road in
303
00:18:56.119 --> 00:19:03.369
the ditch coming in. Apoplexy, looks like. Nobody's. Nobody's. Odom
304
00:19:03.390 --> 00:19:06.509
let the word sit. You know what Haskett's gonna ask.
305
00:19:07.269 --> 00:19:11.430
Haskett can ask. He'll pay for fresh. He's been crying
306
00:19:11.470 --> 00:19:16.720
for fresh since the term started. Odom said nothing for
307
00:19:16.759 --> 00:19:19.740
a while, and Cyrus lay in the sack and listened
308
00:19:19.859 --> 00:19:23.359
to the horse breathe. Then Odom slapped the side of
309
00:19:23.380 --> 00:19:27.279
the wagon. Get the rope on them. Nobody in the
310
00:19:27.359 --> 00:19:31.859
alley said his name. The chute was a wooden box
311
00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:34.539
the width of a man's shoulders, set into the wall
312
00:19:34.579 --> 00:19:37.579
at the alley's level. It dropped to the cellar, and
313
00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:40.309
from the cellar the shaft went straight up through the
314
00:19:40.329 --> 00:19:43.130
building to the
room at the top with a windlass
315
00:19:43.190 --> 00:19:46.569
over it. Nine times he'd stood in this alley with
316
00:19:46.650 --> 00:19:49.289
a sack at his feet and watched it go in
317
00:19:49.369 --> 00:19:51.680
at the little door and heard it slide and had
318
00:19:51.720 --> 00:19:54.319
taken his money from Odom through the big door after
319
00:19:54.759 --> 00:19:58.339
and gone home. He'd never seen where it came out.
320
00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:03.200
They sent the woman first. He heard her slide and
321
00:20:03.259 --> 00:20:06.579
a thump below the street and then the windlass somewhere
322
00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:10.079
above taking her up. a long scraping sound that went
323
00:20:10.500 --> 00:20:14.779
on and on, then a second thump far above, and voices,
324
00:20:15.319 --> 00:20:20.430
and then quiet. Then they lifted him. Odom took his
325
00:20:20.490 --> 00:20:23.049
legs and Lem took his shoulders, and he went into
326
00:20:23.069 --> 00:20:26.069
the chute feet first on his back, and slid, the
327
00:20:26.109 --> 00:20:29.109
planks dragging the length of him through the burlap until
328
00:20:29.150 --> 00:20:32.000
his heels struck a cellar floor that smelled of brine
329
00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:35.660
and the rest of him came down after them. Hands
330
00:20:35.700 --> 00:20:38.509
he didn't know found the tail of Lem's rope and
331
00:20:38.609 --> 00:20:41.930
bent the windlass line onto it. Then the rope went
332
00:20:42.029 --> 00:20:46.569
taut under his arms, and he rose. He went up
333
00:20:46.589 --> 00:20:49.029
the shaft in the dark with his arms pulled over
334
00:20:49.089 --> 00:20:51.529
his head by the rope and his heels bumping the
335
00:20:51.569 --> 00:20:54.630
boards painfully with each shift of his weight during the pull.
336
00:20:55.450 --> 00:20:57.859
He could feel his arms aching as they were stretched,
337
00:20:58.519 --> 00:21:00.839
and it was the first time he ever wondered if
338
00:21:00.859 --> 00:21:04.220
he had ever unknowingly put some other poor soul through
339
00:21:04.240 --> 00:21:08.880
this torture after being paid his silver. Through the sack
340
00:21:08.910 --> 00:21:12.640
there was nothing to see but a brown dark, and, once,
341
00:21:12.920 --> 00:21:16.140
a thread of gaslight where a board had shrunk. The
342
00:21:16.160 --> 00:21:20.640
windlass creaked above him, and somewhere up there was swearing, softly,
343
00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:24.460
with every turn. He thought of the Harrison boy with
344
00:21:24.500 --> 00:21:27.450
his warrant, walking up to the top of this same chute,
345
00:21:27.970 --> 00:21:31.150
and the thing he'd found hanging in it. John Scott
346
00:21:31.190 --> 00:21:36.250
Harrison had at least been dead. God, he hoped Harrison
347
00:21:36.269 --> 00:21:40.839
was dead. Was he? How could Cyrus have known? How
348
00:21:40.859 --> 00:21:44.559
could anyone have known? Come to think of it, how
349
00:21:44.619 --> 00:21:47.839
could he know he wasn't dead himself at this moment?
350
00:21:48.940 --> 00:21:53.349
Was this what it was to be deceased? His head
351
00:21:53.390 --> 00:21:56.170
came out of the shaft into air and light, and
352
00:21:56.210 --> 00:21:58.269
hands took the rope and dragged him over a lip
353
00:21:58.309 --> 00:22:01.349
of wood onto a floor. Even through the burlap, he
354
00:22:01.369 --> 00:22:05.799
could feel the rough cut that created the uneven floorboards. Lord,
355
00:22:05.839 --> 00:22:09.880
he's heavy. CUT THE SACK. A knife went in by
356
00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:12.549
his feet and ran up the burlap, and the sack
357
00:22:12.589 --> 00:22:15.369
fell away on either side, and someone worked the knot
358
00:22:15.450 --> 00:22:17.599
loose at his chest, and the rope went with it.
359
00:22:18.630 --> 00:22:21.859
The light hit him. Gas jets, three of them, hissing
360
00:22:21.950 --> 00:22:24.579
yellow in brackets along a wall of brick painted white
361
00:22:24.619 --> 00:22:27.769
a long time ago. A ceiling with a stain on it.
362
00:22:28.579 --> 00:22:31.700
A man's face, young, with an even younger man's mustache,
363
00:22:31.880 --> 00:22:33.910
looking down at him with the plain interest of a
364
00:22:33.940 --> 00:22:38.549
boy looking at a fish. The boy leaned closer. Fresh one.
365
00:22:39.549 --> 00:22:43.450
Get the gentleman onto the slab. A second voice, older,
366
00:22:43.529 --> 00:22:48.250
somewhere behind his head. The janitors, Cyrus figured. Odom, the
367
00:22:48.289 --> 00:22:50.309
woman goes in with the others. Put this one on
368
00:22:50.329 --> 00:22:53.380
his own table under the end jet. Dr. Haskett'll want
369
00:22:53.400 --> 00:22:55.799
to look at him before the five o'clock men come in.
370
00:22:57.420 --> 00:22:59.720
Hans took his wrists and ankles, and he felt the
371
00:22:59.759 --> 00:23:03.740
fingers lock around the bones. He felt himself swung, the
372
00:23:03.839 --> 00:23:06.140
air of the room moving over all of him. and
373
00:23:06.180 --> 00:23:09.200
it was as cold as the alley. The college didn't
374
00:23:09.240 --> 00:23:13.200
heat this room, for the subject's sake. A table came
375
00:23:13.299 --> 00:23:16.480
up hard under his back, zinc, cold enough that he'd
376
00:23:16.500 --> 00:23:20.640
have gasped, had he been physically able. His head went
377
00:23:20.700 --> 00:23:23.460
back onto the metal with a knock, his arms related
378
00:23:23.500 --> 00:23:28.339
to sides, and someone put his heels together. Shut his eyes, Tolliver.
379
00:23:28.640 --> 00:23:32.579
He's staring at you. The boy's thumb came down on
380
00:23:32.740 --> 00:23:35.720
one lid, and then the other. and once again Cyrus
381
00:23:35.769 --> 00:23:42.750
found himself in darkness. He lay on the zinc and listened.
382
00:23:44.130 --> 00:23:47.259
It was a long room. He knew it from the sound,
383
00:23:47.819 --> 00:23:50.660
from how far the janitor's boots went before they stopped
384
00:23:51.059 --> 00:23:55.160
and how the voices thinned at that distance. The gas hissed.
385
00:23:55.839 --> 00:23:58.440
Somewhere down the room, water dripped into a basin at
386
00:23:58.480 --> 00:24:02.460
long intervals. There was a smell he knew from the
387
00:24:02.579 --> 00:24:05.720
alley and had never known at this strength, and under
388
00:24:05.779 --> 00:24:10.319
it the unmistakable smell of carbolic, and under that, the
389
00:24:10.359 --> 00:24:12.809
woman from the infirmary ground who had come up to
390
00:24:12.849 --> 00:24:15.470
shoot ahead of him and lay down somewhere to his
391
00:24:15.549 --> 00:24:19.349
left among the other subjects. He was also sure he
392
00:24:19.390 --> 00:24:23.150
could smell tobacco, and was thankful it covered up some
393
00:24:23.170 --> 00:24:26.759
of the other scents. He counted the number of the
394
00:24:26.819 --> 00:24:30.490
living by the sounds the room made around them. Odom
395
00:24:30.730 --> 00:24:33.789
and the boy Tolliver moving something heavy onto a table
396
00:24:33.829 --> 00:24:36.569
down the way a lid coming off a vat and
397
00:24:36.609 --> 00:24:40.269
going back down down the room the janitor told someone
398
00:24:40.309 --> 00:24:43.609
to mind her arm whether the man was referring to
399
00:24:43.630 --> 00:24:45.819
the arm of a female assistant or the arm of
400
00:24:45.859 --> 00:24:49.759
a corpse Cyrus had no way of knowing he opened
401
00:24:49.799 --> 00:24:54.579
his eyes nobody saw the jet above him hissed in
402
00:24:54.619 --> 00:24:57.019
its bracket and lit a brown stain on the ceiling
403
00:24:57.839 --> 00:25:00.559
and he looked up at it and then down At
404
00:25:00.579 --> 00:25:02.430
the top of his own chest, the hair on it,
405
00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:05.460
the rise and fall of it, so slight and so
406
00:25:05.579 --> 00:25:09.259
slow that he could barely see it himself. Up again.
407
00:25:10.640 --> 00:25:13.480
That was his range, up and down and the lids.
408
00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:17.970
He seemed to have more control over them now. Maybe
409
00:25:18.029 --> 00:25:20.930
now someone would finally see him, as he could see them.
410
00:25:22.329 --> 00:25:24.970
Odom's voice came from down the room. Doctor won't be
411
00:25:25.069 --> 00:25:29.549
in till half four. He'll come when he comes. The janitor.
412
00:25:30.180 --> 00:25:33.420
The woman was ordered. You've been paid for her. And
413
00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:37.539
the man? Hatcher's waiting on thirty for him. Hatcher will
414
00:25:37.559 --> 00:25:41.099
get what Dr. Haskett says the man is worth. When Dr.
415
00:25:41.140 --> 00:25:43.839
Haskett has looked at him, then Hatcher can wait in
416
00:25:43.880 --> 00:25:48.920
the alley for it, and so can you. Boots went away.
417
00:25:49.640 --> 00:25:52.180
The door closed far off with the sound of a bolt.
418
00:25:53.369 --> 00:25:56.329
Then the room was the gas and the drip and
419
00:25:56.369 --> 00:25:59.380
the boy, Tolliver, who hadn't gone. and who came and
420
00:25:59.440 --> 00:26:02.380
stood beside him for a while, where Cyrus couldn't see him.
421
00:26:03.140 --> 00:26:07.170
Where'd they find you, I wonder? Tolliver's voice was soft
422
00:26:07.230 --> 00:26:11.609
and not unkind. You got a laboring man's hands? Look
423
00:26:11.630 --> 00:26:16.589
at the nails, you've been digging something. Cyrus lay and
424
00:26:16.650 --> 00:26:20.619
looked at the ceiling. Tolliver's shadow moved across the jet.
425
00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:25.819
I closed those, I know I did. The thumb came
426
00:26:25.880 --> 00:26:29.690
down a second time on each eyelid. He went away
427
00:26:29.750 --> 00:26:32.450
down the room, and Cyrus opened his eyes again and
428
00:26:32.490 --> 00:26:34.920
heard him turning the jets down to a blue bead
429
00:26:34.940 --> 00:26:38.720
of flame, one after another, and then a chair scrape,
430
00:26:39.180 --> 00:26:43.309
and a match, and the smell of the pipe. The
431
00:26:43.329 --> 00:26:46.730
boy had the night watch then. The college kept a
432
00:26:46.789 --> 00:26:49.529
student in the room the night before a session, Odom
433
00:26:49.569 --> 00:26:52.309
had told him once, on account of the smell drawing
434
00:26:52.410 --> 00:26:56.359
rats and the chute drawing thieves. Arrival College on 12th
435
00:26:56.420 --> 00:26:59.160
Street had emptied this room of three subjects one night
436
00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:02.019
in 77 by walking in the alley door with a wagon,
437
00:27:02.519 --> 00:27:06.220
and the dean had never gotten over it. The gas hissed,
438
00:27:06.660 --> 00:27:10.529
and the drip dripped. Cyrus lay on the zinc, with
439
00:27:10.619 --> 00:27:12.619
the cold of it all the way onto his back,
440
00:27:13.349 --> 00:27:15.910
and he tried one more time with everything he had
441
00:27:15.950 --> 00:27:21.410
left to move his right hand. It did not. Would not.
442
00:27:22.849 --> 00:27:27.049
Sometime after, A bell somewhere struck four. The boy fell
443
00:27:27.109 --> 00:27:30.589
into a slumber. Cyrus knew it by the breathing, which
444
00:27:30.670 --> 00:27:35.049
went long and caught and went long. He lay under
445
00:27:35.089 --> 00:27:37.670
the end jet and looked at the ceiling and thought
446
00:27:37.710 --> 00:27:43.799
for the first time about the knife. He'd never seen one.
447
00:27:44.299 --> 00:27:46.839
In nine years of this, he'd never been in the room,
448
00:27:47.079 --> 00:27:51.500
never watched them work, never wanted to. What the college
449
00:27:51.539 --> 00:27:53.680
did with what he brought to them he knew only
450
00:27:53.740 --> 00:27:57.180
through conversation and the routine of his trade, with no
451
00:27:57.259 --> 00:28:01.849
interest in the particulars. He knew they cut. The subjects
452
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:04.470
came out the far end of the term as cleaned
453
00:28:04.549 --> 00:28:07.809
bone and buckets of what was left,
because Odom had
454
00:28:07.890 --> 00:28:11.250
told him once what a skeleton fetched, articulated, and what
455
00:28:11.289 --> 00:28:13.849
a loose one went for, and had laughed about it.
456
00:28:14.910 --> 00:28:17.930
The woman from the infirmary ground would be opened this
457
00:28:17.990 --> 00:28:21.170
morning by five young men at once, each with his
458
00:28:21.269 --> 00:28:23.779
own part of her, because that was how it was done.
459
00:28:25.140 --> 00:28:28.960
He thought about where they would start. He didn't know.
460
00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:31.819
He hoped it was the hand, and that the boy
461
00:28:31.859 --> 00:28:34.720
with the mustache would begin at his right one, the
462
00:28:34.759 --> 00:28:38.619
hand he had tried hardest to move moments before. Maybe
463
00:28:38.660 --> 00:28:41.559
that first cut would find whatever his mind could not
464
00:28:41.839 --> 00:28:44.299
and make the hand move to let them know he
465
00:28:44.339 --> 00:28:49.509
was still among the living. Assuming he was still among
466
00:28:49.549 --> 00:28:53.430
the living. The door at the far end opened at
467
00:28:53.450 --> 00:28:55.789
a quarter to five by a church bell somewhere in
468
00:28:55.809 --> 00:28:58.390
the city, and a man's boots came down the room
469
00:28:58.450 --> 00:29:03.829
in no hurry.' Oliver!' a chair went over.' Sir, you
470
00:29:03.869 --> 00:29:08.539
were asleep.'' I was resting my eyes, sir.' Rest them
471
00:29:08.619 --> 00:29:13.240
on the register. What did Odom bring in? Cyrus heard
472
00:29:13.259 --> 00:29:16.140
a heavy book dragged across the table, and a page turned.
473
00:29:16.900 --> 00:29:19.940
He heard the tapping of a finger onto the page. Two, sir.
474
00:29:20.200 --> 00:29:23.529
A woman, fifty or so, fever case out of the infirmary.
475
00:29:23.650 --> 00:29:27.769
Buried Tuesday. And a man. Odom's got him down as
476
00:29:27.829 --> 00:29:32.789
found on the Lebanon Road. Found. That's what Hatcher said, sir.
477
00:29:33.109 --> 00:29:36.029
In a ditch, on his way in the night. Apoplexy.
478
00:29:36.980 --> 00:29:39.970
Hatcher has never found anything in his life that wasn't unfair.
479
00:29:40.259 --> 00:29:45.279
four feet of clay. The boots came closer. Show me.
480
00:29:46.740 --> 00:29:49.460
They came and stood over him. His eyes were open,
481
00:29:49.640 --> 00:29:51.579
and he kept them open, and he listened to a
482
00:29:51.599 --> 00:29:54.240
man breathe through his nose, a foot above his face.
483
00:29:55.200 --> 00:29:58.109
The breathing had a whistle in it. The man smelled
484
00:29:58.170 --> 00:30:02.069
of bay rum and wet wool and, under those, of
485
00:30:02.130 --> 00:30:07.069
this room. More than the room itself, somehow. A hand
486
00:30:07.109 --> 00:30:09.450
took his jaw and turned his head to one side,
487
00:30:10.309 --> 00:30:13.349
then the other. Fingers went into his hair and felt
488
00:30:13.410 --> 00:30:16.650
the skull, back to front, and pressed behind one ear
489
00:30:16.950 --> 00:30:19.339
and then the other, and the thumb found the splinter
490
00:30:19.390 --> 00:30:22.740
cut below his ear and pressed that too. The pain
491
00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:26.740
shot through Cyrus' skin, sharp, but there was no flinching.
492
00:30:27.259 --> 00:30:31.500
no wincing, no groan, only the eyes moving up and
493
00:30:31.579 --> 00:30:36.740
down that neither man indicated seeing. Haskett turned the jet
494
00:30:36.809 --> 00:30:39.930
above him up a quarter turn, no more, and bent
495
00:30:40.009 --> 00:30:43.509
into what light there was. A face hung over him,
496
00:30:44.089 --> 00:30:49.250
long and clean-shaven, fifty-five or sixty, with grey eyes behind
497
00:30:49.329 --> 00:30:52.410
spectacles and a mouth that had been pressed shut so
498
00:30:52.450 --> 00:30:56.359
many years it had set that way. The eyes looked
499
00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:01.450
into his, They looked for a long moment. He looked back.
500
00:31:02.170 --> 00:31:04.930
He looked straight up into the gray eyes, and then,
501
00:31:04.990 --> 00:31:08.650
with everything in him, he looked down. In his own head,
502
00:31:08.970 --> 00:31:11.950
it was a hard, plain look down the length of himself.
503
00:31:12.769 --> 00:31:16.710
His eyes moved, the width of a hair. He looked
504
00:31:16.769 --> 00:31:21.210
up again. The face didn't change. Haskett's thumbs drew the
505
00:31:21.250 --> 00:31:25.630
lids down. And the dark came back. I moved my eyes,
506
00:31:26.230 --> 00:31:29.329
Cyrus thought. You looked directly at me. You must have
507
00:31:29.369 --> 00:31:34.329
seen me look down. Pupils wide and equal. No rigor
508
00:31:34.369 --> 00:31:38.130
at all. Haskett's voice went away a little toward Tolliver.
509
00:31:38.670 --> 00:31:42.859
Hatcher's right about one thing. He's fresh. When did Hatcher
510
00:31:42.900 --> 00:31:46.259
say he found him? Tonight, sir. On his way in.
511
00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:50.240
Then he's two or three hours dead and never had
512
00:31:50.299 --> 00:31:54.220
time to stiffen. A hand lifted Cyrus' arm by the
513
00:31:54.259 --> 00:31:57.569
wrist and let it fall. And it fell, and the
514
00:31:57.589 --> 00:32:01.509
zinc rang. Near as cold as the woman, though. No
515
00:32:01.589 --> 00:32:06.430
settling of the blood on the neck. Turn him. Hands
516
00:32:06.470 --> 00:32:09.069
rolled him onto his face, and his cheek hit the metal.
517
00:32:09.890 --> 00:32:12.359
He felt them look at his back, felt the finger
518
00:32:12.470 --> 00:32:15.019
press the skin of his flank where the stain should
519
00:32:15.059 --> 00:32:19.420
have been, and lift away. Pale where he'd be pale anyway,
520
00:32:19.900 --> 00:32:26.099
and nothing on the flanks. The cold slows it. Still...
521
00:32:26.920 --> 00:32:30.599
Haskett went quiet. Cyrus lay with his face on the
522
00:32:30.660 --> 00:32:33.380
zinc and his eyes open again, looking at the white
523
00:32:33.480 --> 00:32:37.609
brick a yard away, and heard the man think. Hatcher's
524
00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:42.910
lying about where? That much is nothing new. He isn't
525
00:32:42.950 --> 00:32:46.390
lying about when, and he isn't being clever because a
526
00:32:46.690 --> 00:32:50.250
resurrectionist doesn't bring me a subject fresher than he needs to.
527
00:32:51.210 --> 00:32:56.930
He brought him because he had him. Sir, roll him back.
528
00:32:58.349 --> 00:33:00.750
The hands came and the zinc took his back again,
529
00:33:01.470 --> 00:33:05.029
and the ceiling, and the gas, and nobody looked at
530
00:33:05.069 --> 00:33:08.829
his face. He didn't come out of a grave, Tolliver.
531
00:33:09.150 --> 00:33:13.230
There's fresh clay under his nails. Dead men don't dig.
532
00:33:14.230 --> 00:33:18.269
Nobody dug this one up. He dropped. and Hatcher saw
533
00:33:18.329 --> 00:33:22.089
it happen, or near enough, and did what Hatcher does.
534
00:33:23.910 --> 00:33:31.390
A pause. What's he asking? Odom said thirty. Cyrus heard
535
00:33:31.410 --> 00:33:35.900
the man sigh. I'll give twenty-five, and not a cent
536
00:33:35.960 --> 00:33:38.920
for the story. Put it in the book as twenty-five,
537
00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:43.500
found dead, origin unknown, and put the woman in as twenty.
538
00:33:44.839 --> 00:33:48.440
The boots went away a step. and stopped. And Tolliver.
539
00:33:49.279 --> 00:33:52.559
He goes first this morning. You five o'clock men have
540
00:33:52.579 --> 00:33:55.660
been on that laborer from the river since October, and
541
00:33:55.680 --> 00:33:58.720
there's nothing left of him to learn from. You'll start
542
00:33:58.900 --> 00:34:02.930
on this one. The abdomen, sir, or the arm? The abdomen.
543
00:34:03.430 --> 00:34:06.230
Always the abdomen on a fresh one. It's the first
544
00:34:06.289 --> 00:34:11.710
thing to go. Odom went down the back stairs with
545
00:34:11.730 --> 00:34:14.019
the money in his fist and a lantern in the
546
00:34:14.059 --> 00:34:16.809
other hand. and Lamb Hatcher was where he'd been told
547
00:34:16.849 --> 00:34:19.809
to wait, on the wagon seat, under the dripping eave,
548
00:34:19.869 --> 00:34:23.679
with the horse blanket over his knees.' Twenty- five for the man,'
549
00:34:24.010 --> 00:34:26.769
Odom counted it in Lamb's palm by the lantern. The
550
00:34:26.789 --> 00:34:31.449
bills limped with damp. The coins last.' Twenty- four for the woman,
551
00:34:31.590 --> 00:34:34.389
like we agreed beforehand. He says not a cent for
552
00:34:34.409 --> 00:34:36.820
the story, and he says to tell you he knows
553
00:34:36.880 --> 00:34:41.530
there is one.' Lamb folded the bills without looking at them.'
554
00:34:41.139 --> 00:34:45.039
He can know what he likes,' He's got the man
555
00:34:45.099 --> 00:34:49.800
down as found. That's how the book reads. Odom held
556
00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:52.340
out his own hand, and Lem put a dollar in it,
557
00:34:53.039 --> 00:34:57.090
and then another, and Odom put both away. You look
558
00:34:57.130 --> 00:35:00.409
like a man who could use a drink, Hatcher. I've
559
00:35:00.429 --> 00:35:05.349
had one. Have another? Lem got down off the seat
560
00:35:05.670 --> 00:35:07.989
and reached into the wagon bed and came up with
561
00:35:08.030 --> 00:35:11.090
the wooden spade and the hook and leaned them against
562
00:35:11.130 --> 00:35:15.119
the brick beside the door. Odom's good eye went from
563
00:35:15.179 --> 00:35:18.139
the tools to Lem. What am I supposed to do
564
00:35:18.159 --> 00:35:23.010
with those? Keep them. Odom shook his head and went
565
00:35:23.070 --> 00:35:26.789
back to the door. The Lebanon Road? Nobody finds anybody
566
00:35:26.849 --> 00:35:32.550
on the Lebanon Road. The bolt clicked behind him. Lem
567
00:35:32.590 --> 00:35:35.269
climbed back onto the seat and sat a while longer
568
00:35:35.409 --> 00:35:37.849
under the eave with the money in his coat and
569
00:35:37.869 --> 00:35:40.690
the sleet turning to rain on the tarp behind him
570
00:35:41.030 --> 00:35:44.170
where the two sacks had laid on the planks. Then
571
00:35:44.210 --> 00:35:46.570
he clicked to the horse and took the wagon out
572
00:35:46.590 --> 00:35:49.130
of the alley toward the river. And the wheels went
573
00:35:49.170 --> 00:35:53.929
from stone to mud to ruts he knew somewhere past
574
00:35:53.969 --> 00:36:01.889
the gasworks. And he didn't look back. Cyrus heard the
575
00:36:01.909 --> 00:36:04.570
rest of them come up the stairs in a group, talking.
576
00:36:05.320 --> 00:36:07.400
And the talk stopped when the door opened and the
577
00:36:07.460 --> 00:36:12.769
room reached them and started again lower. Haskett's gentlemen? came
578
00:36:12.829 --> 00:36:15.510
from the far end, and the boots spread out down
579
00:36:15.530 --> 00:36:18.889
the room. He learned the new ones by their voices.
580
00:36:19.670 --> 00:36:23.110
One was from the south, Kentucky or farther, with a
581
00:36:23.130 --> 00:36:25.949
drawl he hadn't grown up proper with, but had put
582
00:36:26.130 --> 00:36:30.010
on at college to fit in, Cyrus thought. Another laughed,
583
00:36:30.550 --> 00:36:33.139
at everything, and a third said nothing at all and
584
00:36:33.219 --> 00:36:36.780
came to stand at Cyrus' left side, close and breathed.
585
00:36:37.639 --> 00:36:39.659
The fourth was a tall one by the sound of
586
00:36:39.679 --> 00:36:43.239
where his voice came from, who got out one word, Lord,
587
00:36:43.619 --> 00:36:47.300
when the sheet came off. And then nothing. With Tolliver,
588
00:36:47.340 --> 00:36:51.429
that made five by Cyrus' count. Tolliver had laid a
589
00:36:51.449 --> 00:36:54.179
sheet over him after Haskett left, over the face and all.
590
00:36:54.760 --> 00:37:00.250
And he felt it go. Fresh subject. Male, forty. Laboring class.
591
00:37:00.349 --> 00:37:03.829
Brought in overnight. Haskett's voice came from the foot
of
592
00:37:03.849 --> 00:37:07.510
the table. You'll find him an improvement on Mr. October.
593
00:37:08.610 --> 00:37:12.230
The one who laughed at everything laughed again. Mr. Beale,
594
00:37:12.530 --> 00:37:17.349
the cloth. His eyes were frantically opening and closing, looking
595
00:37:17.429 --> 00:37:19.150
up and down, but every head in the room was
596
00:37:19.210 --> 00:37:22.530
turned toward Haskett and the foot of the table, and Beale,
597
00:37:22.760 --> 00:37:26.159
still listening, laid the cloth over his face without looking down.
598
00:37:27.579 --> 00:37:31.260
It was wet. He hadn't expected that. It was wet,
599
00:37:31.380 --> 00:37:34.000
and it smelled of carbolic, and to lay across his
600
00:37:34.139 --> 00:37:36.980
open eyes and his mouth and his nose, and the
601
00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:39.929
light went to a gray glow through the weave. His
602
00:37:39.969 --> 00:37:42.340
breath had to find its way through wet linen now,
603
00:37:43.199 --> 00:37:46.559
but found it, barely.' We cover the face because the
604
00:37:46.599 --> 00:37:48.780
face is the part you'll want to look at, and
605
00:37:48.900 --> 00:37:52.260
I want you looking at the abdomen. You'll have the
606
00:37:52.320 --> 00:37:56.400
head in February.' Haskett's voice moved along the table as
607
00:37:56.440 --> 00:38:00.400
he placed them.' Mr. Beale, the right side. Mr. Tolliver,
608
00:38:00.460 --> 00:38:04.949
the left. Mr. Carrow, the limbs, which you may leave
609
00:38:05.050 --> 00:38:10.280
for now. Mr. Dunn, you'll observe and keep the register.' Mr. Shaw,
610
00:38:10.780 --> 00:38:16.280
the knife is yours. Cyrus lay under the cloth, still unmoving,
611
00:38:16.400 --> 00:38:19.820
despite every effort and intention to do so. He could
612
00:38:19.860 --> 00:38:22.659
feel the pressure in his chest, not from a hand
613
00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:26.940
or instrument, but the panic. He could hear Shaw breathing,
614
00:38:27.760 --> 00:38:30.949
the silent one. Shaw was at his left side still,
615
00:38:31.050 --> 00:38:33.690
and the man's breathing had quickened, and there was the
616
00:38:33.750 --> 00:38:36.530
sound of a hand going into a case and metal
617
00:38:36.630 --> 00:38:40.480
touching metal. Why would Cyrus' breath not quicken to let
618
00:38:40.519 --> 00:38:43.739
them see he was still alive? This can't be death,
619
00:38:43.960 --> 00:38:48.530
he thought. It can't be. Haskett's voice came nearer. From
620
00:38:48.570 --> 00:38:52.130
the point of the breastbone to the pubes. One stroke
621
00:38:52.190 --> 00:38:54.929
if you could manage it, and through the skin only.
622
00:38:55.150 --> 00:38:58.250
You're not opening him yet. You're drawing the line you'll
623
00:38:58.309 --> 00:39:03.780
open along. Firmly, Mr. Shaw. He won't complain. The same
624
00:39:03.840 --> 00:39:08.059
man laughed again, and finally Cyrus could hear himself screaming.
625
00:39:08.599 --> 00:39:11.019
He felt Shaw's hand come down flat on his chest,
626
00:39:11.099 --> 00:39:15.059
below the breastbone, and press, and spread the skin. Why
627
00:39:15.099 --> 00:39:18.289
could they not hear him screaming? He felt the fingers.
628
00:39:18.789 --> 00:39:21.710
He felt the pulse in them, quick. A young man's pulse,
629
00:39:21.789 --> 00:39:24.130
the first heartbeat other than his own that he'd felt
630
00:39:24.250 --> 00:39:28.590
since the fall. Then, the steel. It was then that
631
00:39:28.639 --> 00:39:32.340
Cyrus knew the screaming. was only in his mind, his conscience,
632
00:39:32.679 --> 00:39:36.519
his soul perhaps making one final, silent plea that no
633
00:39:36.579 --> 00:39:40.309
one would hear. The blade came down cold and rested
634
00:39:40.369 --> 00:39:43.829
on his skin, exactly where Haskett had indicated. And it
635
00:39:43.869 --> 00:39:47.869
didn't move yet. Cyrus could feel the tears come from
636
00:39:47.909 --> 00:39:51.409
his eyes. mixing with the carbolic on the cloth, unnoticed
637
00:39:51.570 --> 00:39:54.610
by the men in the room. He looked up through
638
00:39:54.630 --> 00:39:57.309
the gray of the cloth as he felt the slight
639
00:39:57.409 --> 00:40:01.849
puncture of the sharp edge, and then its movement down
640
00:40:02.210 --> 00:40:14.480
from his breastbone. Thanks for joining me. Find more horror
641
00:40:14.519 --> 00:40:20.699
fiction at weirddarkness.com slash midnight. I'm Darren Marlar, and I
642
00:40:20.739 --> 00:40:25.630
hope you'll join me again soon at midnight in the macabre.