The Eyeball Collector Read Online Free PDF

of any other help, the gravedigger struggled to push the coffin into the grave, all the time muttering under his breath, until eventually Hector stepped forward dazedly to help. The cheap wooden box, already splitting at the joins, sat just below the grave’s edges, no more than three feet under. Hector not having the money to pay for a single plot, his father had been buried on top of someone else. He walked away to the sound of soil landing on the coffin lid. He was deeply ashamed that his father was buried in a pauper’s grave and vowed to right that as soon as he had the chance, if he had to dig him up and move him himself.
    Hector did not know where he was going and for the moment he didn’t care. On he went past the gin shops and the gin pipes, always wondering if they had ever been his father’s. He passed beneath ominous street names: Fetter’s Gate, Melancholy Lane, Old Goat’s Alley, names that were soon to become all too familiar. And in the crepuscular shadows he could see movement and bustle. But he did not feel excitement nor did he feel alive, only half dead and afraid.
    Earlier that day he had left for the last time the wide, well-lit streets and the tended squares of the north. He had passed the lines of shining carriages waiting outside the theatres and restaurants (where once Fitzbaudly wines had been served nightly) to cross the Bridge once again.
    And now, with his father dead and buried, he felt only disbelief and numbness.
    Unhesitatingly he walked on through the misty rain. He heard not one of the cries for help from the wretches all around. He felt none of the grasping fingers that pulled at his coat. Even when a wild-eyed tramp stepped right in front of him, arms akimbo, he paid no heed. The tramp, seeing the desperate stare on his face, dropped his hands and let him be. Eventually Hector sank down on the steps of yet another soot-blackened and dilapidated building and put his head in his hands. He was exhausted. So lost was he in his thoughts that he did not hear the door open behind him. But he did feel the bony arms that wrapped themselves around him and quite literally dragged him inside. The door shut with a resounding bang and the gloom enveloped him.
    ‘Ah, has the good Lord Himself sent us another one?’ The cracked voice came from close to his head. ‘Don’t worry, dearie, we’ll look after yer here. Has yer been left out in the cold?’
    Hector managed to extricate himself from the woman’s surprisingly strong grip (he thought it was a woman – from her voice he couldn’t be sure) and turned to take a look at his captor. He realized afterwards when he saw her in daylight that this gloom was in fact the kindest light in which to view her, but for now he could see enough only to make out a short, wizened little figure of the female persuasion.
    ‘I’m Mrs Fitch,’ she said. ‘I knows what it’s like to be on the mean streets of Urbs Umida. I knows yer pain. But the Lord –’ here she quickly crossed herself – ‘He saved me from meself by the curious means of a tragic accident. I nearly committed a terrible crime but He showed me the way and allowed me to redeem meself. Don’t fink it has been easy, oh no, I am tested all the time. And up there –’ she glanced heavenward, though in fact her sights were somewhat lower – ‘is the greatest trial of ’em all. Poor Ned Upstairs, saved from one tragedy, gone straight into another. Stuck in a useless body.’
    ‘Where am I?’ asked Hector when Mrs Fitch stopped talking to take a rattling breath.
    ‘Why, you’re in the best place you could possibly be: Lottie Fitch’s home for Exposed Babies and Abandoned Boys.’
    ‘But I have not been abandoned,’ protested Hector. ‘My father has . . . died.’
    ‘Ah, such a tragedy for one so young,’ said Lottie, and she gave him another squeeze. ‘But don’t yer worry, we’ll look after yer. Follow me.’
    Hector allowed Mrs Fitch to take him along the corridor. He