The Resurrectionist Read Online Free PDF

from the chest of the first, and though this second body is but half-made, on its top there is a head, as perfect as the body is grotesque. Half-hidden by its larger twin this smaller head seems to sleep, nestled close against its protector, the tiny form cradled by the larger’s arm.
    But while the smaller sleeps the larger is awake, or so it appears, for by some trick of the preserver’s art its eyes are rendered so they seem to follow the viewer to every corner of the room. The lids half-hooded over sightless orbs, their depths somehow malign, like those of a toad or some heavy, hateful thing, jealous of life and all its joys. But for the puckered stitches which run in a Y from their necks to their common nave, their skin is smooth, perfect as any child’s, yet pale and chill as marble or alabaster.
    On the shelves all about stand a hundred other jars, eachfilled with their own monstrosity. In some the limbs and organs of the dead preserved, hands and eyes, ears and feet, their flesh turned grey and horrible by the alcohol; in others different things, less easily recognised: a blackened lung, a massive heart, an eyeball trailing its white thread of nerve like a jellyfish. In one stands the head of a man neatly bisected with a saw, the face on one side perfect and unblemished, eyes closed as if but for a moment, the other half pressed close against the glass to reveal the layers of bone and brain and muscle, the delicate chambers of the nose, the tongue’s fat root. But here too are other things, less easy for the untutored eye to look upon, ones which draw their shapes from the shadowed realms of fevered sleep. Six-fingered hands, a scaled foot, the generative organs of an hermaphrodite, a half-grown cock and balls nestled in its vagina’s anemone folds. And in their midst a line of larger jars, each holding a child deformed in some dreadful way: one’s head an empty sac which billows on its neck; another made as a mermaid is, its back and legs disappearing into serpent coils; the head of the next turned inside out, the teeth growing in concentric rings through the exposed meat of the palate as if the inverted hole sought to consume the face in which it sits from chin to brow.
    Each is preserved through the work of Mr Tyne, by whose cunning hands these creatures and their skeletons are given this semblance of life. Once, long ago, he was apprenticed to Gaunt, who makes teeth for the rich. From him he learned the art of setting teeth with wire and horn, of carving palates and clamps to hold them tight in their new owner’s mouths. And from him as well he learned to find teeth, whether from the living or, more often, from the mouths of the dead. It was through this trade that he came to the attention of Mr Poll, who saw in him even then a talent for the craft, for the finding of the dead and the purloining of their riches. In time hebought Mr Tyne from his apprenticeship and took him as his own, setting him to work among the rookeries and slums, procuring the bodies of the dead as he once procured their teeth for Gaunt.
    In every way he is my master’s man, his faithful shadow, uncomplaining in his diligence, ruthless in Mr Poll’s interests. Throughout the city he has men and places that he goes, sniffing out cases in which my master might find interest, arranging for the delivery of those we cannot save to the house. His is a secret nature, prying and watchful, and though he has no power over Robert and me, we have learned to watch him well, and trust him not at all. For there is no trace of kindness in him, however these creations that he makes seem to show the stifling hand of a mother’s love, and he treats this house as if it were his own. But though he is my master’s man in every outward way, I have sometimes glimpsed another thing within, a hatred harboured deep inside, as if he bridled to be so possessed.

A S THE DANCING PAUSES and she lowers her mask I feel myself tremble; in the hissing cast of the