She
I make my way through the gaslit thoroughfares, taking a route that avoids my former place of work. But even though there are several streets between me and the London terminus of the death train, I’m compelled to glance behind me every few steps, to peer down alleyways and into dark corners. Every shadow has me stumbling, my knees buckling with fear that forces bile into my already blistering throat. I cough and retch. Passers-by think me drunk and move wide of me as I approach. But I am stone-cold sober. Terror not intoxication has me lurching along the pavements, a bowel-churning fear that renews with the rising sun and grows with each passing hour. Will today be the day She finds me?
*
I arrive late for my appointment at a gentlemen’s club on account of my circuitous route. “Mr Harker for Dr Edwards,” I say. The man I speak to looks with distaste at my dishevelled state and I fear he will show me the door. I offer a letter of invitation, which he reluctantly takes and reads.
His tone remains brusque. “I’ll speak to him. Wait here.”
He returns with a bespectacled man in tweeds. The historian is younger than I imagined and has the most disarming demeanour. If he finds my appearance alarming, he does not show it. He makes a remark about the coldness of the evening, and we indulge in small talk as he leads me into a small sitting room. Presently, I am in a large wing-back leather chair before a roaring fire with a glass of whisky in my trembling hand. Perhaps my plan to unburden myself will meet with success today at last. Dr Edwards will hear me. He will believe and will not, unlike others I have told my story to, offer to refer me to an alienist or suggest laudanum and bedrest.
*
When we are finally settled, my host takes up his notebook and pen. He smiles. “Well, to begin, I must thank you for responding to my advertisement, Mr Harker. It is good of you to agree to recount your experiences for our journal. Eyewitness testimony is not easy to come by. Now please, tell me all.” There’s excited anticipation in his eyes. Here’s his chance to extend the body of history with my personal experiences. But he expects facts and figures, a dispassionate account. Little does he know.
I take another generous mouthful of fine single malt and start. “I began my employment with the London Necropolis Railway in 1861. My principal job was to oversee the transportation of …” I feel suddenly feverish, wipe away a trickle of sweat that runs down my cheek and push on. “I oversaw the delivery of the bodies. The exhumations. Disinterred to make way for new sewers, train stations, and so forth.”
“A grisly exercise,” the doctor remarks, “but a necessary one, wouldn’t you say?”
A throw away comment about the grimmest of occupations. He doesn’t understand the scale of it. Why would he? The newspapers have been reticent over the details due to the uncharacteristic squeamishness of their reporters on this particular story. “Yes, it was,” I reply, endeavouring to keep a steady voice. “But there were thousands of them.” I take up my glass and drain it. “Thousands of bodies in various states of decay!”
“Of course. I don’t wish to diminish the enormity of the project nor its distressing nature, but some of London’s graveyards were overflowing,” my companion says and seeing me nursing an empty glass offers to get me another whisky.
“No. No, thank you. I must keep my wits about me,” I say and add after a few moments, “if I am ever to stand a chance of getting home safely.”
Dr Edwards gives me an odd look. I ignore it and resume my story before fear silences me. “I coordinated the loading of the cases and coffins. For the larger exhumations, each case carried many bodies. Adults. Children. From just one site alone, there were almost eight thousand individuals.” I stop to steady my breath, feeling a little lightheaded and after only one glass of whisky.
“They were taken to be re-interred in Surrey, I understand,” my host says, his pen darting across the page in his keenness to get everything down.
“Yes. At the London Necropolis,” I reply. “The City of the Dead as some call it. Established for the purpose around twenty miles from here. But there was … there was …” I’m so keen to get to the point at last, I stumble over my words and stop briefly to collect myself before continuing. “There was an odd occurrence I wish to describe.”
The frantic scribbling stops. The historian looks up. “Yes, you mentioned this in your letter to me. It has obviously unsettled you. Tell me about it.”
After a deep breath, I plough on. “Aside from the mass exhumations, there were, one night, other remains that were kept apart from everything else and carried in the hearse vans, as we would for our normal funeral services. It was unusual. No one accompanied them. No mourners. There were no custodians.”
Dr Edwards leans forward. The fire flashes in his pupils. “What is known about them? Were you given names? Did you carry the headstones, too?” he says.
I had not expected him to be so interested in this portion of my story and am bolstered by his curiosity. “We were never told who they were, and there were no headstones. Some said they were murderers or suicides. Why else would they come to us on such a night and in such a way? But whoever they were, someone had paid for individual coffins and the first-class service.” My mouth is dry. Heat rises beneath my clothes. I lift my glass, forgetting it’s empty. And suddenly my vision blurs and I am falling.
My host is at my side. “Mr Harker?” He repeats my name, but his voice comes as if from far away.
I make to speak but cannot, and I curse my weakness. I am in a swoon. The first opportunity to tell my story and I have not the strength to continue. But nothing can still my memories. They bludgeon their way into my mind even now, and I am back at The London Necropolis Railway and that dreadful night so many years before – the night of my last assignment with the company.
*
There were such looks of horror and disgust on my men’s faces. Six coffins destined for the hearse carriages lay now in a neat row. And just as the final one was unloaded from the solemn conveyance that brought it, steam issued in a rushing hiss from the stack of the train as it made its final preparations to leave. It tumbled over the coffins. We could no longer see our baleful cargo until the murky mist dispersed wraithlike into the still, cold air.
The men stood some yards away, speaking to each other in low, urgent voices, their breath coming in brisk bursts through the meagre rags they wore over their lower faces to keep out the stench.
For hours they’d toiled, loading the larger casements with little complaint, yet these few boxes, delivered in the dead of night, had them hesitating, their faces wary. I cursed them for their superstitions and odd notions. But was I not also entertaining lurid ideas? My increasingly desperate attempts to cajole one of the others to help me watch over this particular consignment during the journey had failed. I had no choice but to accompany it alone.
*
It was well after midnight when all were aboard and the wrench of metal against metal sounded as we pulled away in a jolting stutter. And, for a while, the smell of coal and burning oil tempered the miasma of decomposition that hung all around.
Soon, we gathered speed, and once a regular rhythm was established, I checked again that all coffins were secure in the compartments along one side of the carriage. Nothing was amiss. The caskets were safely in place, and I began to entertain the idea that they would reach Surrey with no further drama, though what fate awaited them there, I hardly knew. Were they, as my men speculated, destined for an ignominious burial, denied religious rites and consigned to some dark corner of the grounds?
I endeavoured to put the notion aside. The project would be completed soon enough, and all would return to normal. And with every passing mile, my mood lightened. All would be well, I told myself, and a tot from my hip flask helped me to relax.
*
And then it happened. An ungodly screech issued from the brakes, and I was thrown to the floor in a heap. There wasn’t time to get up, let alone to prevent it from happening. One coffin had become dislodged and slid out from its wooden shelf to hit the carriage end with a shuddering thud.
The train gathered speed again almost immediately, but the damage had been done. The casket lay at a precarious angle, the lid off at one end, and from beneath the silk that shrouded the remains, a portion of the contents had escaped to fall to the floor.
They’d long been in the ground before being placed into the new oak casket. Black, foetid earth and a whisp of raven hair clung to the stone-grey skull. Its mouth yawned wide, and what teeth remained were unusually pointed as if they’d been filed. The prospect made me nauseous, but somehow, I had to make good.
I scrambled up and heaved the casket back onto the shelf. And with my scarf about my fingers, I bent to retrieve the skull and threw it in before pushing the lid back into place.
If only I’d had more light than that seeping from the lantern in the corner of the carriage. I would have seen it earlier, that tiny skeletal hand that had been kicked aside as I worked. An infant’s, I thought, when I finally caught sight of it. The occupant of the fallen coffin had not been buried alone: there had also been a child.
But as I stooped in the lurching train to pick up the piteous thing, in one stumble, my boot came down to crush it to dust. There was hardly enough to fill a thimble. I attempted to scoop it up from the floor with my clumsy, callused fingers, but it slipped between them like sand. There was little to be done but to sweep the remains into a dark recess before retreating to one corner for the rest of the journey, sickened by my sacrilege.
*
“Is everything all right?” someone shouted when I stepped down from the train at the cemetery station. “The driver thought he saw something out on the track. Had to pull up sharp.”
“I’m afraid a coffin fell when we braked, but there was no damage,” I lied. “All is well.”
“Aye,” said the man. “Now let’s please get this over with, sir. None of us wants to be here longer than we need to.”
*
Soon, there was little time to think about the unfortunate incident with the coffin. I was too busy with the unloading. But later, weary from my toils, I took a brief rest, as was my due, under a dim gaslight near the station building. An early morning mist was descending by that time, which had me shivering even under a greatcoat, and I took a slug of brandy to stave off the chill.
The spirit provided a brief respite from the thoughts that flooded my mind now there was little else to occupy it. It sent warmth through my breast and pushed the guilt at what I had done just a little further away. But within minutes, the cold was biting at my skin and throat as the thickening fog quickly closed in, moving like smoke, swirling about me. It was like nothing I’d experienced before.
*
I was walking about and stamping my feet to keep warm when a shadow of movement came from the direction of the graveyard and my spirits swelled a little at the prospect of company. And as it came ever nearer, a faint glow appeared.
Yes, it must be one of my men with his lamp, I thought, ready for a break and a mouthful or two of brandy. “Hello there,” I shouted, but there was no reply. Yet the shadow continued to darken until a human outline showed.
Alarm quickened my blood as it became clearer, and I sprang forward. It was not one of the men. The shape of a woman, long skirts trailing in her wake, was coming ever nearer.
This could not be allowed. “Madam. I must ask you to leave. This is no place for you,” I called. She did not reply. Instead, she continued towards me, moving as if she floated, and for some seconds I was mesmerised, entranced by her grace.
Soon, she was but feet away. I tried to speak, but my words stuck in my throat. I made to move, but there was such a heaviness in my legs. Closer still, her thin hand reached out towards me. Impossibly long fingers brushed my cheek, their touch at first gentle but so cold it stung.
But then all changed. I felt the scrape of her nails against my flesh, the pain as she dug them deep. I fell to the floor, my eyes tight shut, and a hiss issued from unseen lips, then a growl like that of an animal and at my ear I felt her fiery breath.
She was on me, yet my hands, raised to push my assailant away, met with nothing but frigid air. How could his be? She had no substance, but still I felt her icy digits almost at my throat.
*
Suddenly a shout sounded, followed by the rapid crunch of boots on gravel, and just before the men reached me, my eyes opened, forced apart by the demon before me. Long hair, black as jet, framed the terrible face but inches from mine. Her eyes blazed, mouth gaping to bare teeth, sharp as knives. Then, in a flash, she was gone.
“Did you see her?” I said to the first man to reach me. “Did you?”
“Calm yourself, Mr Harker. There is no one here but us and the cemetery workers,” he said. “We heard a dreadful scream and came running.”
I clambered up, stumbled forward, my breath rasping. “Where are the coffins that travelled in the hearse van?”
I sensed my companion’s shudder in his voice. “Safely in the ground over at the far end. Well away from the others. A strange business if you ask me.”
*
I feel the heat of whisky on my lips and voices around me now and open my eyes, expecting to find myself on the path to the burial ground, my men around me. But I am slumped in a chair at Dr Edwards’ club.
“My dear Mr Harker. You took quite a turn there,” my host says. “Perhaps we should wait until you’re feeling better before you continue your story. Go home and rest, my good man. I’ll get you a cab.”
I endeavour to object, but my words come all in a jumble. Somehow, however, I manage to give my address and the route I wish to take.
I repeat the route as I climb into a hansom cab. “I must insist on it,” I declare. “My life depends on it. She is close. I know it.”
The historian’s face creases with worry. He reaches up and takes my hand to give it a warm shake. “Don’t worry yourself, Mr Harker. The driver has your instructions. Now good evening to you. I hope you are back to your old self soon.”
*
A quick call up to the driver to move off and we are rattling along London cobbles. My eyelids are heavy. So heavy that I doze for a while, and when I open them once more, it is too late. The driver has ignored my request. He has taken the shortest route, and the terminus comes into view.
My heart thuds so hard, I fear it will burst. I bang on the roof, call up to the driver, “No! I said not to go this way. Don’t go this way, I implore you. Turn back! Turn back!”
But my words go unheard in the noisy clamour of the busy street. The driver’s whip cracks, and we ride on. I soon sense her presence. She who seeks the man who desecrated her coffin, who destroyed something dear, is close. And I know that soon, I will feel her frigid hands on me once more, and this time, there will be no one to help me.