The Black Book of Secrets by F E Higgins Read Free Book Online

am if you change your
mind. I’ll give you a week to think it over.’
    That night I cursed myself again and again for getting
myself into debt to the monster. By the time the
sun rose I knew that I had no choice. I sent for Ratchet
and he came to the cottage to explain what I had
to do. He handed me my only tool: a wooden spade.
    ‘Quieter than a metal one,’ said Jeremiah. ‘Anyone
in this business knows that.’
    And what a business, the business of bodysnatching.
    That night, some time after one, I went to the
churchyard with a heavy heart. How I hated myself
for what I was about to do. I knew the grave in
q uestion. Hadn’t I dug it myself the previous day and
watched the coffin lowered into it that very afternoon?
And now here I was digging it up again. With
every spadeful of dirt I thought of that scoundrelRatchet. His wealth was made off the backs of the
poor. He must have half the village in his debt.
    It was raining now and the moon hid herself behind
the clouds, ashamed to witness what I was doing. The
wind whipped around my head. Water streamed off
my hat. The cold froze my hands. The dark clay was
sticky with water. It took a supreme effort to raise
the shovel; it released only with a loud sucking noise
as if the earth herself had come alive and was trying
to pull it, and me with it, into the bowels of hell
below.
    As the earth piled up on the side my sweat
mingled with the driving rain. In my chest my heart
pounded like a blacksmith’s hammer. At last I hit wood.
I dropped to my knees and scraped the coffin clean
with my hands. The lid was held down by a single nail
at each corner. I forced the edge of the spade underneath
and began to lever it up. The wood splintered
and cracked and split. ‘Sweet Lord, forgive me,’ I muttered
and crossed myself as a bolt of lightning ripped
the sky apart. In its fiery light I gazed down on the
poor soul within.
    He wasn’t a rich man, I could tell from the q uality
of the finish on the box and the cheap fittings, but
who was in these parts? Rich or poor, like us all he
ended up in the dirt. He was young though, and his
handsome face was unmarked by the accident that
had killed him – he had fallen under the wheels of a
cart. His pale hands were laid across his chest and his
ashen face was peaceful. His earthly worries were over.
Mine had just begun.
    I hesitated only a second, then took the poor chap
by the shoulders and dragged him out of the coffin and
up on to the side of the grave. I looked up at the
heavens and I swore that this was the first and last
time I would do this. I thought that, the soul gone,
a body would be lighter, relieved of the burden of life,
but I felt as if I were lifting a dead horse. I dragged
him across the grass between the headstones to the
church gates, where Jeremiah had said there would be
someone waiting.
    I saw them. Two men dressed in black, their faces
and heads hidden beneath hoods. Without a word they
took the body and threw it on to the back of theircart between barrels of ale. They covered it with straw
and then took off.
    I waited until I could no longer hear the horses’
hooves before returning to fill in the grave. I worked
like a man possessed, shovelling with the energy of a
demon, and when it was finally done I went home.
    I woke the next day convinced I had dreamed it
all, but there by the fireplace was the wooden shovel.
I could hardly bear to look upon myself in the mirror.
Whatever my reason for doing it, I was still no better
than a common bodysnatcher. Resurrectionists, they liked
to call themselves, but to give a person a fancy name
don’t change his nature. Doubtless the corpse was now
far away, likely as not in the City, under the knife of
a surgeon in the anatomy school and all in the interest
of science. At least that’s what the doctors said.
They paid good money for bodies, and Jeremiah was
lining his pockets with it, but never had I thought I
would be involved in such a grisly, sinful business.
    Jeremiah