D Cornish - The Lamplighter

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten, he counted under his breath, switch back!

The whole structure seemed to tremble slightly with every step. Between the rough stone wall and rickety rail there was barely room for the prentice to swing his elbows. The Snooks must have been squished like pudding in a dish to come up here.

Gritting his teeth determinedly, Rossamund climbed in the stuffy, dusty, closetlike dark, marveling at this secret stair and wondering how many folk in Winstermill knew of its existence. Eyes wide to make the best of the weak light, he hoisted the sack over his back. Something soft and blunt bumped and prodded again and again into his kidney.

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten… Switch back!

Over and over, higher and higher, and it was colder and darker as he went.

On a landing by a dirty green bright-limn, Rossamund put the sack down. As he caught his wind he indulged a little curiosity.

He toed the bag. It rocked and squelched softly.

He gingerly undid the cord that bound the top, already loose and in need of retying-or so he told himself. The sack sagged open but that was all.

He lifted it up to the light and peeked within… and sat back with a stifled yelp.

An eye had stared back at him.

Rossamund recoiled, but the eye did not blink or twitch or twinkle with life. A little shaken, the prentice returned to his investigations. He pulled at the sack's mouth, carefully, cautiously, and there was the eye again-a dark, sightless eye and an anemic forehead a-bristle with short, white hairs… and a blunt, broad-nostriled snout. The smell of swine was strong now.

Looking closer he found it was indeed a pig-or the head of one, at least-sitting atop a gelatinous knot of gizzards. He grimaced. What could a surgeon possibly want with a pig's head? He closed the sack and tied the cord about with the best version of the previous knot he could manage. He had read that physicians and surgeons like to practice stitching wounds on pig bits. Or maybe he just wants to cut it up and see what's inside? Rossamund carried the sack for several flights more, uneasy with his package now he was aware of its gruesome contents, holding it away from his body as best he could.

At last the flights stopped at a square portal.

With a low, whistling puff of relief, Rossamund caught a breath.

There was no handle on the door before him, no grip or lock, just two solid panels of wood, big enough, he figured, for the Snooks to squeeze through. He thumped it hard and low and with a thunk, a click and a whir that made Rossamund flinch and shy in fright, the portal opened. The gap revealed the other side was better lit.The prentice gladly snatched up his package and crouched through and saw that the panels which had slid clear of the portal were really the back of a heavy bureau. On the farther side of the square opening he was amazed to find himself in a tight whitewashed corridor. There was a purple door at its farther end, just as the Snooks had described. What business did Swill have with such a secluded venue? Through the smudgy mullions of a small window set almost three feet into the wall Rossamund could see the frigid night, clear and starlit above the gray mass of Winstermill's roofs, and beyond this the dark line of the low hills of the Brindleshaws.

He rapped at the door just as he had been told: three knocks, three knocks, two. He could not hear any sound beyond, and was beginning to hope he could just leave the sack there and go back down to the kitchen. Douse-lanterns must be soon? Surely his imposition would be done by now?

The port slowly opened.

Rossamund came to attention.

Holding a bright-limn high, the owner of a flat round face regarded him shrewdly. "Aye?" Her thin lips contorted. This certainly was not Grotius Swill. It was the epimelain from the infirmary.

He declared more boldly than he felt, "Mother Snooks sent me up," and held up the sack. "I have a delivery for Mister Swill."

"Surgeon Swill to you, young man!"

"Surgeon Swill," Rossamund mouthed obediently.

The woman looked suspiciously down the long, narrow passage. "Stay," she insisted, and with a crisp rustle turned and swung the purple door closed. Yet it did not shut, and Rossamund was left with a sliver of a view into the room beyond. Her bright-limn made ghastly shadows as the epimelain shuffled across the room. He heard the creak and latching of some other door, then stillness. Trying not to make a sound, the young prentice peered through the gap between door and jamb. In the barely lit apartment was a long, low table with shallow gutters carved down each side that bent to a stoppered drain at its end. On the floor next to this sat a wooden pail of sawdust. Between this table and thin, shuttered windows in the right-hand wall stood a life-size armature of a human body made of wood and porcelain complete with removable parts, which Rossamund at first thought with a start was a sickly person retired into the corner. When he realized what it was, he stared for a moment in horror. Worse yet, what he could see of the back wall was neatly arranged with several tall screens showing oddly proportioned people in various states of flaying, dismemberment or decay. In such grisly surroundings, Rossamund wondered how a person could possibly remain in his right mind.

He pushed at the door just a little, his compulsion to see more overcoming his terror of being caught.

Near the door on a stand was a tray a-clutter with tools designed to prize flesh apart, or clamp flesh together; things to gouge and maim-all of them laid tidily inside velvet-lined boxes. Next to these were clumps of frayed cloth he recognized as pledgets and yards of tow, which must have been for tying off free-flowing wounds. Clustered above were many lamps shuttered with mirror-backed hoods that would reflect and intensify their light when lit.

He took half a step inside the door. Between the windows was a gaunt bookshelf carefully stacked with papery piles weighted with jars and pots of desiccated bits and parts: wizened embryos of unguessable genus, distorted eyeballs, withered organs, all decaying slowly, slowly, one tiny bubble at a time in preserving alcohols. Stacked with them was a small library of books. Rossamund struggled to make out their titles with such little light: Phantasmagoria one read perhaps; the thickest of all maybe showing Ex Monsteria. He had learned enough from Craumpalin to realize that these were rare books on forbidden subjects not normally required for a surgeon to read-and Rossamund longed to look into them.

Swill's voice, angry and loud, came from some other room deeper within. Rossamund pulled away from the fascinating slivered view and as he did, glimpsed a terrible sight: the flayed skin of a person, glistening as if fresh, pinned out on a frame that stood right by the door. He stoppered a cry of fright and took a clumsy rearward step.

Better light flooded the apartment and determined steps tramped toward the young prentice from behind the purple door. It flung wide and Grotius Swill stood there wearing a brown leather apron besmeared with darker brown stains, his own bright-limn up by his face. He looked furious.

"I… I have this for you, sir," Rossamund quailed, lifting the foul sack. "From Mother Snooks."

Swill took it, looking over his shoulder-gaze catching for but an instant on the flayed skin-and back to Rossamund. "Where is the Snooks? Why has she sent you?"

"She is down in the kitchens, I reckon, sir. She says her hip hurts too much to climb the stairs tonight." He delivered the message exactly as the culinare had told him.

Swill's lips pursed tight as he listened. His eyes became cold slits.

"I see," he said after a long pause. "And you are her porter, are you?"

"I… I've j-just done what I've b-been told, sir," the prentice stammered.