Brian Freeman - Dark Screams - Volume Six

Leaky Baker was enjoying it.

He’d been a predator all his life, gaining his greatest thrills from the pain and discomfort of others, and here he was with an amassed flock gathered, one he could toy with and humiliate and anger. And he loved it. Loved the crowd he worked with his bare hands, that sea of faces that had come for him and him alone.

“I’ve sold the corpses of yer mothers and sisters and fat fetching daughters to the surgeon’s knife!” he called out at them. “And what a merry lark it was! So much beef were them whores! I pissed on their graves out of respect, just as I piss on the lot of you buggering cocksuckers!”

You could almost hear something snap out in the crowd. Like maybe some restraint of self-control, and civilization had finally reached the breaking point and burst, setting free the bloody-hungering beast within. Eyes were wide and hating; mouths scowling, teeth gnashing, drool wiped from lips with grubby fists. From the high buildings opposite, people screamed from windows, a few nearly falling out from four and five stories up. The guards up on the scaffold stepped back momentarily, feeling the raw and smoldering rage of the crowd like a wind blown from a smelting oven. Then, wiping sweat from their faces and maybe thinking of their meaningless and violent deaths at the hands of the crowd, they took hold of Baker. But he was a pleasant sort right to the end. Although his hands were tied behind his back, his legs were free and he kicked one of the watchmen. The other locked an arm around his throat while the hangman slipped the white hood over his head. Through it all, the attendant minister, pale as flour now, kept reading verses from the Book of Common Prayer… though you could hardly hear him over the bellowing crowd.

A woman atop a man’s square shoulders tossed her greasy hair back and pulled from a bottle of gin. “HEY, GRAVE ROBBER! WE’RE GOING TO TAN YOUR HIDE AND CUT YOUR BALLS OFF!”

“AYE,” said a man in front. “YANK OUT HIS BOWELS AND FEED HIS STOMACH TO THE RATS, I SAY!”

“BURN HIM! BURN THE FOOKING BASTARD!”

Clow was not caring for this much. He could smell the sour, boozy stink of the crowd, and it was an acrid odor like something black and vile simmering away in a witch’s cauldron. If they didn’t hang Baker and soon, those gathered would not be able to hold themselves back. And what scared him most was at that moment when everything in the Grassmarket was balanced precariously in a deadly neutrality, it wouldn’t have taken much to incite the mob. A single finger pointing and the cried accusation of grave robber would bring death. There were plenty of snatchers in the crowd and plenty of people who knew who they were. A simple accusation and both he and Kierney would be dismembered, disemboweled, and strung up for a public stoning or burning.

The police on watch were looking very frightened.

You could feel the electricity surging through the crowd, arcing from body to body to body in an unbroken circuit, amping up and revving itself to full bore. An awful hot stink wafted from them.

Something was about to happen.

The crowd, still shouting and screaming and crying out for blood, began to inch toward the scaffold. They were a single thrumming machine of intolerance. A machine with a million legs and a million scratching fingers, a million bunching muscles and chattering teeth and fixed eyes, all lorded over by a single insane mind. The machine would not back down. It was roaring, gone kinetic with a burning stink now that critical mass had been reached. Gears were grinding and wheels spinning, sparks flying and smoke rising. Nothing could stand in the way of the machine. It would crush any and all…

And at the last possible moment, the order was given by the sergeant of the guard, and the trap was sprung beneath Leaky Baker. His body jerked and his neck snapped with the sound of a dry twig. His legs kicked for a moment or two and that was it. He swung from side to side, slowly revolving.

You could hear the almost orgasmic cry of the crowd. Death hunger and death lust had been satisfied, and they relaxed, sighed with the sound of a thousand balloons deflating. They began to shrink and pull away from one another, no longer wanting the press of sweaty flesh against their own. A few groups still raged for more, but most began to break away, looking almost embarrassed.

The police knew how to deal with the scattered bands of rowdies and they began to corral them in on horseback. Clow and Kierney were nearly exhausted by it all themselves and they leaned against each other.

“That was a bit of a scrape,” Clow said.

“Aye, for just the one moment there, I saw the angelic face of me whoring mother welcoming me beyond the pearly gates.” Kierney sighed. “Is not an experience I’ll be wanting again soon.”

As the police kept the unruly elements at bay and the others began fading away to the drab hopelessness of their crowded, close lives, the body of Leaky Baker was cut down. After the attendant police surgeon was satisfied that his neck was quite broken and his life was quite gone, the body was dragged from the scaffold and dumped into an enclosed mortuary wagon. From there it would be brought to Surgeon’s Hall for dissection by the anatomists.

Kierney took off his hat and pressed it to his chest. “And so we bid ye a fond and final farewell, Leaky… ye ripe, thievin’ fuck.”

Clow grinned. “Aye, to the silence and worms and sighing vaults, Leaky, ye great bloody gob.”

That evening, as a light mist dappled the cobblestones and pushed a chill into the air, Clow and Kierney pulled their dog cart up a steep street, nodding to those they passed. They turned onto Infirmary Street, sighting the hospital and tree-lined Surgeon’s Square just beyond. It lay out of reach of those dirty, rotting streets and was like a world unto itself. The buildings were tall and clean, set with carvings and high windows. No beggars and trash and filth to be found here. The gaslights flickered evenly. Boys meticulously swept the cobbles free of dirt. Over to the right was Surgeon’s Hall and to the left was a tall, narrow building with hooded windows.

Dr. Gray’s anatomy school.

A couple of regal, elegantly dressed men passed Clow and Kierney, snapping open umbrellas and ignoring the men entirely.

Kierney looked over his shoulder at the clock on the steeple down the hill. “Oi, we’re late,” he said.

“Off with us, then,” Clow said.

They pushed the cart over to the rear entrance of the anatomy school, a wind kicking up now and spraying rain in their faces. It was an ugly night, but they’d worked worse. Dr. Gray had need of the complete skeletons of a boy and girl both under ten years of age, and Clow was only too happy to oblige. He had the both of them in stock, just a bit of washing and dusting and those bones were shiny and proper-looking.

They knocked on the door and it was answered by Gray almost immediately. He was tall and stern, with piercing eyes like needles. Dressed in a surgical apron dark with old stains, he motioned them in.

“And be quick about it,” he said.

They brought their crates down the stairs and set them atop a scathed wooden table. Anxiously, Gray opened them and examined the bones within. He studied scapulas and tibias, baskets of rib cage and pelvic girdles with an appraising, expert eye.

“Hmm,” he said. “Interesting… interesting.”

“To your liking, guv?” Kierney said.

“We shall see, we shall see,” Gray said, examining the vertebral columns with a magnifying glass.

Kierney looked at Clow and he smiled. Good old Dr. Gray. A fine enough man in his own way, but a bit fussy, a bit overbearing. But he was no fancy high-hat, and they both knew it. Though he exuded culture, intelligence, and sophistication, they both knew he’d been born in the slums of Glasgow, working himself out step-by-step and putting himself through medical school. Now he was a surgeon and anatomist of no little skill. But when they were with him sometimes, they could still see it in his eyes… that predatory gleam that bespoke humble, lean beginnings. He was a gentleman now, to be sure, but there was something stark and subtly evil about him that told you flat out you did not ever wish to cross him.