Resurrection Men - A Gothic Short Story
Seeking vengeance for her father's murder, Hannah comes face to face with one of the darkest duos in Scottish history.
Go to sleep or the body snatchers will get you.
Her father’s teasing nudged at her from the shadows of her mind. Hardly surprising that it had worked on a little girl, but a grown woman shouldn’t still be having nightmares.
He was always there these days, his memory clutching her ever tighter, but not in the warm fuzzy way other people speak of loved ones lost. He wasn’t simply lost. He was murdered. But his memories were cold tendrils groping through her mind, like tree roots invading the soil. They weren’t comforting or calming. They were dark, cold, insistent. Searching for something.
Body snatchers.
The thought urged itself to the forefront again. She poked at her porridge, now coagulated into a cold, clammy lump. She remembered mornings at the breakfast table, asking about the body snatchers. Her mother rolled her eyes, casting a withering glance at her father. “That’s just a daft story Hannah, to stop your chattering and get you to sleep. It doesn’t make sense anyway. For one thing, you’re alive. Resurrection men rob graves not bedrooms.”
Body snatchers. Resurrection men. Grave robbers. Shusy-lifters. Whatever name they went by, they haunted her dreams, they lurked in the shadows. When the terrors started keeping her awake at night, her father went to great lengths to repair the damage. He started by taking her to Edinburgh’s cemeteries, showing her the clever solutions devised by other worried folk to deter the theft of dead bodies.
A man approached them at Greyfriar’s Churchyard one November day. His eyes crinkled affectionately around the edges as he grasped her father’s hand with the strength of a decades-long friendship. “This is Mr. Ferguson, Hannah. He’s a night watchman, and he’ll tell you, it’s a boring job. There’s never anyone robbing graves, is there Ferguson?”
“That’s right,” the man nodded. “I see more nefarious activity from my church pew than I do in here at night.” Hannah stared at them from behind the bars of a mort safe. But she remained troubled. Their attempts to convince her that graverobbing was a thing of the past didn’t quiet her fears that the resurrection men would come for her.
From Greyfriar’s the pair walked up the hill towards St Giles. The old Tollbooth Prison was gone but the ominous presence lingered on. Her father pointed to the gallows. “That’s where the bodies come from love. Bad men. And there are plenty of bad men. Why rob graves when there are more than enough bad men to supply the universities?”
The university! She jolted back to the present.
Hannah sprang up from the table and began tearing through the piles of papers on her father’s desk. Her Uncle Peter had just finished sorting the mountain of paperwork in the study.
“Hannah what on earth are you doing!?” he wailed.
“Body snatchers,” she muttered under her breath.
Confusion darkened his face.
Hannah flailed a newspaper at him. “RUMORS OF BODYSNATCHERS” shouted the Caledonian Mercury headline.
“Body snatchers!” she said again. “Go to sleep or the body snatchers will get you, remember? THIS is how we do it.”
“Do wha…” the words trailed off as it dawned on him.
His bearded jaw clenched as he nodded his head vigorously. He was in.
“But how would we ever find out who’s doing it?”
How indeed. Hannah certainly shouldn’t investigate. Edinburgh’s seedy underbelly wasn’t a place for a woman to nose around.
Starting at the university made the most sense. The article, which voiced strengthening rumors that the anatomy college was using less than ethical means to source their cadavers, would surely have caused some squirming.
“You’re a constable, Uncle Peter, ask questions.” She impatiently waved the paper at him a second time. “Pretend you’re following up on this.”
He nodded. “This just might work,” he said, “that bastard Ferguson will pay.”
“Dr. Knox, may I have a word?”
The professor distractedly waved Uncle Peter in without looking up, scalpel in hand, stooped over the abdomen of a cadaver. Scruffy sideburns trudged their way down to a starched, unfolded collar which stood stiff and high against his neck.
Hannah stood outside the door, which was slightly ajar. She stared through the crack trying to calm her nerves, queasy with anticipation. Where was the blood? She expected this to be a gory place but to her surprise there wasn’t a drop of blood in sight. The air was stale and dead - a smell that was hung up somewhere between meat market and hospital.
Something stirred behind her. A well-dressed man lingered in an adjacent doorway, his pursed lips rising in two sharp peaks beneath a long nose. He whispered what sounded like a name to a second man hidden in the shadows who shushed him.
She turned her head as her uncle’s disembodied voice floated across the stagnant air, and the men disappeared. She tiptoed to the open doorway they had been standing in. The room yielded no clues, and she returned to her eavesdropping.
“Dr Knox, I’ll cut straight to it. Where does the school get these bodies?”
Did she detect the smallest falter in the professor’s hand? A furtiveness hiding in the recesses of his dark eyes?
“From the prison of course,” he said impatiently. “Rotten criminals.”
Disgust dripped from his wiry, furrowed brow down his pocked nose, over his pursed cracked lips and onto the dead man.
“That’s exactly what I thought,” said Uncle Peter, mirroring Dr. Knox’s indignation.
“To think the papers print this drivel!” Uncle Peter made an exaggerated eye roll and sat down with a heavy sigh.
“But of course, it’s my job to investigate. I suppose you’ll be going to the papers to put an end to these preposterous allegations?”
“No!” His sudden outburst brought Uncle Peter to his feet just as quickly as he’d sat down.
Dr. Knox glared from behind his collar. “We don’t want to draw more attention to this. Just let it blow over.” Again, Hannah sensed he was hiding something.
“Very well,” Uncle Peter said, heading toward the door. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Knox.”
Hannah bowed her head and followed her uncle down the hallway, unable to hide her eagerness to leave. How ironic that it wasn’t the dead man who made her skin crawl… it was the living one hunched over him.
“Uncle Peter, why would Mr. Ferguson kill Dad?”
“It was all for that damned ring your father brought back from Egypt. I told him it was worth a fortune. But I couldn’t convince him to sell it. Wouldn’t even take it to an appraiser for a quote. I loved my brother but what a fool he was. Got himself killed with that daft sentimentality.”
She winced. That ring was the one thing he had left after her mother died. Surely an old man can be forgiven sentimentality for his dead wife.
“Why did Mr. Ferguson want it though?”
“Its worth a fortune, I told you. I guarantee he took it to an appraiser in secret and made himself a very rich man.”
So Hannah turned her efforts to visiting every appraiser in the city, hoping she could confirm Uncle Peter’s suspicions. As she wearily opened yet another door with a tinkling bell, she cursed its cheeriness and approached the counter.
“Yes, madam I remember that ring,” the puffy faced man said, “that record will be in the ledger.” Sweat dripped from his brow as he bent over the cabinet. “Ah, here.”
She followed his clammy finger across the yellowed page. A sad resolve settled over her as her eyes found the name.
“You’re certain this is the man who put the ring up for auction?” she asked.
“Yes, quite.”
Her heart sank, and all she wanted was to retreat home to her father’s study and weep. But she had another stop to make.
Returning to the anatomy school, she found the professor’s door ajar. Creeping close she heard Irish accented whispers, and the same name floated over the stale air that the man in the shadows had uttered – Burke.
She drew her shawl about her and hurried down the hall. If her suspicions were correct, she needed an audience with the men from the shadows. But how? As she made her way to the entrance, she recalled the ledger at the front desk.
“Excuse me madam?” A scowling woman sighed at her from behind the desk.
“What do you want?” A perpetual state of annoyance had etched a sour expression into her face.
“I was supposed to meet a gentleman here, but he’s quite late. I wondered if I could check the ledger to see if he signed in?”
The woman waved at the book and turned back to her work.
Hannah skimmed the ledger. Nothing. “Excuse me…,” Hannah said again. The woman scowled deeper, her eyes nearly disappearing into her withered face.
“I don’t see his name here. Burke. I really need to get him a message. You wouldn’t know where I could find him?”
“That’ll be William Burke,” said a friendlier voice behind her. The owner of the voice stepped forward. “He was just here,” said the man. “If you head towards Tanner’s Close you might catch him at the Hare boarding house.”
Hannah smiled her thanks and hurried out the door.
“You did WHAT lass!?” Uncle Peter’s face turned red or whatever color a face turns from a blend of anger, fear, and relief.
“I had to see if I was right, and you always tell me I’ve got good intuition…”
“Yes but you should’ve left that to me!” he sputtered.
She waved her hand at him, feigning nonchalance. She wasn’t about to tell him that the narrow-nosed man had drawn a knife on her.
“I saw you outside Dr. Knox’s dissecting room, have you followed me?” Her hair moved in unison with each word as he hissed in her face. She didn’t dare respond, fearing the cold blade at her throat might move. He relaxed enough for her to speak, and she told him the awful story of her father’s murder, and the vengeance she sought. Vengeance, she proposed, that could benefit him as well. As she told her sorrowful tale, he softened his grip, and his expression.
“Not often a woman speaks of such violent vengeance.”
Like a cunning fox, he was crafting a plan behind those brooding eyes. She had risked a lot and and she had won. Perhaps she was a wily fox herself, preying on the weakness of money hungry men – or whatever it was they were hungry for. She didn’t care. She’d found the means to meet violence with violence – revenge by proxy.
A troubled sigh brought her back to her father’s study.
“I was right Uncle Peter! The men are both called William - Burke and Hare. I told them about Mr. Ferguson, and about Dad.”
Her uncle sat down, eyes welling as he twisted his hat in his hands. “I wish it hadn’t come to this. To see the light in your eyes go dark. I suppose there’s nothing left now but to see it through.”
The dawn broke cold and damp. Appropriate weather for retribution. Hannah’s shoulders slumped. She hadn’t anticipated this burden of revenge.
“Uncle Peter, Mr. Burke will be waiting with Mr. Ferguson. He hasn’t a clue. We just have to identify him - they will take care of the rest.”
As they entered the boarding house, she nodded to the Irishmen.
“Mr. Burke, meet Mr. Ferguson.” She gestured towards Uncle Peter. A panicked confusion flashed across his face.
She switched her kerchief into her left hand, the signal she had practiced. Her hands didn’t shake as she expected them to. Her voice didn’t quiver as she expected it to. Her will didn’t waiver as she expected it to. Justice wouldn’t bring her father back. But her world felt unsettled without it.
In a flash, Mr. Hare pounced from behind the door, boxing Uncle Peter round the ears, throwing him off balance before he had a chance to defend himself. His eyes held the sting of betrayal, and for a brief moment he tried to plead.
“Hannah! I can explain!”
He searched his niece’s face for compassion but found none. Instead, she turned away. Mr. Burke opened the door.
The condemned man mouthed a final word to his niece. “How?”
Hannah remained silent and walked through the open door, casting a nod to the criminals she was now forever tied to. A kind-eyed man gestured towards her from down the close.
“That’s it sorted then, lass?” Mr. Ferguson offered her his hand as she climbed into his carriage. She nodded. “Thank you for your help.” She hadn’t spoken to him since her father’s funeral, and when she called on him, she said nothing of her plot. She simply gave him an address at which she would need to be collected. “To manage my father’s affairs,” she had said quietly.
As the carriage lurched away over the cobblestones, her uncle’s muffled screams were cut short as the two men set about their grisly work. A chill crept deep into her bones. The body snatchers in her nightmares weren’t going anywhere, and now they had faces and names.
Only time would tell if that would be better or worse.
Historical note:
While this story is fictitious, bodysnatching was a very real phenomenon. Dr Knox, Burke and Hare were real-life figures, their stories culminating in the 1820s. When Burke & Hare’s exploits were discovered, Hare turned King’s Evidence, Burke was hanged and Knox left the city in disgrace. Burke’s skeleton is on display at the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomical Museum. Stay tuned for a follow up post about this macabre slice of Scottish history.
Cover image: Resurrectionists (1847) by Hablot Knight Browne
Thanks for reading! This is #2 in my series of short stories, (#1 A Cat for the Keeper, is a much more uplifting read!). The goal for my short stories is for them to be used as practice towards my first full length fiction, a historical novel set around the Pictish Battle of Dun Nechtain. At some point the short stories will only available for paying subscribers but for now, they are free!
Another great atmospheric story. Love your writing ☺️
Fantastic short story with accurate historical background! Well written and enjoyable!