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ABOUT THE
AUTHOR Robert Sturtevant
survived an extremely brutal childhood, and as a defense, keeps body and mind
supremely fit. He has led a dangerous and adventurous life, and has never been
much confined by society’s tenets or customs. He prefers travelling and
indulging his own unique sense of humour and scallywag behaviour… He has been
a cat burglar, lion tamer, undercover ASIO agent, astronaut, and nuclear
submarine commander. He relaxes by painting, sculpting, composing music, and
writing. He is slightly less ugly than his photograph. He was born in Australia. I
LONDON
DECEMBER 10th 1808
Observe
my disintegration into insanity. It
takes many forms. Awakening, my head’s full of the fog of dark dreams. Pursuit
by unseen strangers, or more often, fevered voices arguing in my head. The early
morning jolt of caffeine bludgeons the voices into silence. My head’s filled
with a buzzing for the rest of the day, increasing in intensity with each
double-strength arabica black. By dusk, poised between exhaustion and the
brittle energy the caffeine gives, it’s almost a roar. When my clandestine
work begins at nightfall, my fevered mind goes silent. It’s
not my decision, to stray from the path of reason. I’m cursed with a mind like
a whirlpool. It churns night and day. Even when exhausted, there’s a voice in
my head examining my existence, questioning everything, keeping me apart from
sleep. But
there’s a small part of our minds observing our struggles from afar. Detached
from our predicament. From here we may watch our fall without emotion. I can
watch myself, as you do, and see how the decay grows. I
could describe the strange thoughts flashing through the twisted corridors of my
reason. I could relate my obsession with time, the course of the universe, the
purpose of existence. Better would be to simply describe my present task. I am
going to rob a grave. The
western sky is an inferno. The red sun sits huge on the horizon. In the cerulean
sky, high cirrus clouds like glass shards glow scarlet. The
pallid light slanting through the streets lends tones of beige and bone to the
stone buildings of London, softening their harsh angles. In places where the
walls remain moist, soft moss covers the cold stone. A grey mist hangs through
the cobbled lanes, smelling of wet earth, and if it thickens it will hide me, as
it hides the footpads and burglars. The
snow on the iron scrollwork fences hides the rust and the flaking paint, and
looks like decorative icing. It is a scene for an artiste, but my art is much
more macabre, and must wait. Soon, darkness will swallow the city. And I will
draw a veil over my mind. I
live in a tiny flat, one of many in an ancient, sagging wooden building, in a
poor district. It’s as near to London Hospital as I could find, on my budget.
Originally two storeys tall, it’s been extended to four and a half. Over the
years new floors and rooms have been added, fashioned from bits of driftwood
held together by rusty nails, screws, bolts, chicken wire, and hope. The sight
of it would give a carpenter apoplexy. The
walls are permanently damp. The wallpaper doesn’t peel, because there isn’t
any. My door doesn’t lock, but there’s almost no theft here, because no one
has anything to steal. My neighbours are mostly struggling students, like
myself. Ascending
or descending the ancient staircase outside my door demands your undivided
attention. What with the holes where people regularly remove steps for firewood,
and the rotting stairs that remain, dragging a corpse four floors in darkness is
tempting fate. I’ve
been spotted a few times, dragging a corpse up or down. But most students assume
it’s just a drunken companion I’m assisting. And if they knew, they probably
wouldn’t care. I
cross to the window, twitch back the curtains. It is not yet time to depart. I
used to leave at midnight. But that did not give me sufficient time to complete
the work that follows exhumation. So I have steadily advanced the hour of my
nightly departure, until I may barely avoid detection. But once begun, I take
absolutely no precautions. My work is more important than life itself to me. I
have hardly slept in a month. The
shriek of the kettle slices through my thoughts like a surgical scalpel. I fill
my battered tin mug with the last grains of the coffee I have appropriated from
the hospital. I drink this day and night, in quick gulps like gasps, and at the
moment my right hand trembles like the death throes of a small animal. On
the low table before me, surgical instruments have been laid out. Upon one side,
there’s a line of scalpels, arranged from smallest to largest. The other side
of the table holds surgical saws, implements for taking lateral sections of
various organs, and a cranial saw. There’s a set of gleaming silver shears,
for cutting apart the rib cage. The
table is six feet long. At one end, there’s a semicircle of six needles, each
six inches long. Curling wires attach to the ends of each of these. In the
centre, a note of dissonance. A carpenter’s brace, with a twelve-inch drill
bit attached. This semicircle of tools surrounds an area about the size of a
human head. The centre of the table is empty space, about the size of a small
bed. My
tiny flat is fast becoming a sea of specks, the glint of the last light on
surgical scalpels, the shimmer of water that I will use to wash the gore from
myself, after the night’s work. I believe that all doctors dream of what I am
doing; the frozen spiders running down the spine, the ever present fear of
discovery, the chance to play unchecked with one of God’s creations. The
slim chance that it may end in glory, a lightning ascent to the top of my
profession, and all this in the shadow of the gallows, turning it to a dark
fantasy, unreal. I
can wait no longer. Time is something I must fill with action, lest my own
awareness catch up with me. The musty air in my flat is as heavy as old
curtains, and I am glad to be leaving. The
last footsteps have passed. Night has descended. I
slip into the narrow lane behind my building, walking on the edge of my feet to
stifle the noise. But muddy slush from the gutter seeps through the holes in my
shoes, so that they make a squelching sound. The fog has indeed thickened. I
draw it around myself, and steal into the night. The
cold’s so intense, it’s like being submerged in the tumbling, jagged notes
of the composer Thomas Campion. But despite my shivering, sweat beads beneath my
frayed clothes. In
life, I avoid the paths that others tread. Tonight,
I avoid the main roads. I
walk through narrow, high walled alleyways, lined with wet bricks encrusted with
fungus. Skulk along the backs of decrepit terraced houses. Duck beneath the
occasional lighted window, black shadows moving against the soft yellow glow of
the oil lamp, like a shadow puppet show. Londoners
unwinding after a hard day, taking tea or soup before a blazing evening fire.
Timeless rituals of a clockwork existence. Each day a reflection of the last.
It’s a life. But it’s not for me. I
pass hedgerows, covered with a grey frost like cobwebs. Stop at the corner.
Pause, listen hard for footsteps, scan the shadows beneath sagging shop awnings. I
turn onto the main street. It’s unavoidable. I need to cross it. And later
tonight, re-cross it with a silent companion. The
ground is a mantle of crushed ice, crunching beneath my shoes. Water drips from
a twisted sycamore on the corner. At the junction of this street and the
cemetery is a stone dolmen from a millennium ago, a modern red brick house, and
the old cemetery. A junction of opposites, co-existing uneasily with one
another. I’m
like that, too. A conglomerate of unlikely parts, torn from different eras. Old
and new thrust together as one. With joins like wounds, harshly sutured, still
bleeding. A
light mist of snow is carrying away the fog. Mathematically symmetrical six
sided silver flakes. They blanket all noise. I might be alone in the universe. Stillness
cloaks me like winter snow. I stop at a street corner, look behind me, but I am
alone. When I hold my breath, the city is utterly silent. Not a sound from any
house. Not a whisper of wind. This is the thousand-year stillness of a tomb. Yet
when I step forward, the sound echoes behind me where there should be no echo. I
hear a footstep where there has been no footstep. A footpad sizing me up? Quell
your imagination. Here there is just yourself and the stars. And somewhere
ahead, a corpse. I scrape my forehead with the coarse cloth of my sleeve, as if
to clean my mental ledger. I have entered into a contract with the devil, and I
cannot find a way out. Sound
rips into my world. A
blaring, slurred song, sung from less than a yard away. Something moves beneath
my feet. It’s a rising black shape reeking of cheap spirits. A pair of
bloodshot eyes attempt to focus upon me. “’Allo,
guv.” A
cloud of stale hops engulfs me. The shape mutters, “Didn’t see yer there.” It’s
an old drunk, who’s been lying in the gutter. He sways, sees my burned out
eyes and twitching cheeks, my bone-white hands tense and curling like claws. He
turns quickly and stumbles away. As though pursued by something not of this
earth. The
iron gate of the cemetery looms before me. I put my hands on the freezing bars
and peer through. Inside, tumbling and broken crucifixes thrust out of the soil
at all angles, creating a scene like a dead forest. I climb over the crumbling
stone fence beside the gate. Stone statues writhe in the darkness. The
graveyard is small. The ground has hollows and low rises, so that it is pooled
in shadows. The moon comes into view, bathing everything in silver. Then it
disappears. There’s
almost total darkness. Behind me, a massive cathedral blacks out a third of the
sky. Occasional pale stars glimmer at the edges of its black silhouette. A
month ago, when I entered my current line of nightly activities, I realised that
a shovel was an incriminating thing to prowl the night with. So I hid one at the
cemetery, under a rhododendron bush. I retrieve it now, and cross to the newest
plot, where fresh earth makes a low mound. I drop the shovel atop it, and make a
cursory examination of the cemetery. This
is a precaution I have taken since my second corpse, when I encountered a
homeless man wearing a barley sack as a coat. He must have been sleeping upon
one of the graves, and awoken at the scraping sounds of the shovel. I cannot say
which of us was the more horrified, but we are indelibly etched on one
another’s memory. He did not ask for an explanation, but I did declare that
the dead needed money to pay Charon to ferry them across the river Styx, and
that I was here to rectify the situation. This
is an ancient cemetery, the graves are piled atop one another, and all the
stones are tilted from subterranean forces. The cast iron fence surrounding it
sags, and is broken in places. The top is covered in iron spikes, so it
resembles a wall of spears, but to me this is a place of peace. The only
residents are four stone statues. Standing atop their graves, they appear to be
on horseback, and in my mind I refer to them as the four horsemen of the
apocalypse. They will watch over me. The
cemetery is empty. I return to the new grave, and set to with my shovel. The new
grave is exactly centred between the statues. The earth is powdery, weightless.
It has a fresh, clean smell. It takes only three minutes to bare the top of the
casket, made of cheap wood and buckling already. The
lid has been poorly attached, nailed down in haste by some inebriated undertaker
at the end of his shift. I place a short jemmy beneath the lid of the casket. It
begins to peel away with a creak. There’s something white visible inside. I
glimpse yellow-green teeth, rictus lips receding from the cold. Hollow eye
sockets, the eyeballs having fallen inwards, to slowly leak onto the brain. I
throw the buckled lid to the ground. And sense I am not alone. In
this tiny cemetery, very close by, stands another. A foreign presence, like a
predator, watching. It’s
when our concentration reaches its zenith, when we’re at our most single
minded, that fear slips by our mental sentry to paralyse us. I’d
like to move. To leap out of the grave, and seek out the intruder. But my lungs
refuse to draw breath. My body’s turned into a block of ice. Even my fingers,
curled frozen around the handle of the shovel, won’t respond to my commands. Which
of my senses recorded the intruder? The cemetery has become tight and
smothering. The statues stand menacingly like prosecuting soldiers. When
my web of fear breaks, when I overcome the paralysis, I drop the shovel, and
leap out of the ground. Too late, I realise that it would have made a good
weapon, would have offered me some protection against an attack. Not
that I know what to expect. It’s just that my fevered imagination’s working
overtime. Conjuring up phantoms where, perhaps, none exist. I look around the
cemetery. Something
has changed. Something looming, obvious. Something any normal man would spot.
But I’m more attuned to the nuances of minutiae than to simple reality. I’ve
always been this way. Fascinated by the uncommon, captive to the bizarre. I’d
calculate the rate of acceleration of the executioner’s axe even as it fell
towards my neck. Then
revelation arrives. There are too many statues. Where there were four, now there
are five. One of these statues holds a beating heart. Surging blood. And an
intent that I cannot fathom. Four
pairs of stone eyes hold me in their lifeless gaze. Another pair perceives me as
clearly as the eyes of a predatory cat. As sharply defined against the night as
a fluttering cemetery moth. They’re
on all sides of me. I turn rapidly, so as not to leave my back unguarded.
There’s a terrible expectancy in the stillness. I try to inhale air that has
become as thick and choking as dried blood. There
is only one way to resolve this. I walk over to the first statue, the angle of
the moonlight changes and the statue writhes, and the eyes gleam. I reach out a
hand that has become slick, and encounter cold stone. Across
to the second statue, this one taller, holding a cane. Or an axe? I stop, stand
before it for the longest time. Then, inch by inch I advance, reach out. My
pounding heart sends shock waves through my body. But this too is lifeless,
holding only a sceptre. I
turn to the third statue, but the moon appears and bathes the scene in light,
and I see the chipped face and the missing hand, the jagged stone where it has
been severed. And the large pores, worn by the wind. This statue doesn’t draw
breath. Two to go. Ten
feet across open grass, a slight dip in the ground and I stumble on a loose
stone, hidden in shadow. The moon fades again, until I can just make out the
edges of the statue against the night. It’s sharp as though cut with a knife.
I have been following a clockwise pattern, so if this is not biological, then
the next one is. There’s
a wisp of mist before me. A breath? The head of the statue is moving, but it is
just the clouds, the moon reappearing. My hand meets hard stone. I draw in a
breath. This is the moment, my forehead is slick with moisture, my eyes are
filling with sweat. Suddenly,
my body heat is stifling. My glands are working frantically, thyroid and adrenal
glands and pancreas, secreting sugar and stimulants. I can feel the rush of
chemicals through my bloodstream, heightening my awareness. Heightening the
sentiment of dread. The
coat impedes my movement. I wrench it off. The last statue is before me, but
this is the first one again! I turn, but the intruder has disappeared. One
of the statues has gone. Now I am aware of which it was. Of course, two of them
were too close together. And instinctively I knew it, but decided on a
roundabout route, leaving it for last. I sit upon a low stone, and try to recall
the image. To study the details of it in my memory. It
is while I am doing this that my observer reappears. Now
I know that my sanity is at an end. Not twenty feet away, sharply defined in
black and white, stands a seraph. Wings
not visible and perhaps folded behind her, face pooled by shadow, and an
expression that I cannot make out. Perhaps serenity. Possibly something colder. She’s
very small. Absolutely still. A cloud passes overhead, an instant of darkness,
and she is gone. All
the exhaustion of the last month assails me. I feel like a battered sloop tossed
by a cyclone. Collapsing onto a low gravestone, I mop my slippery forehead, and
removing my tinderbox, attempt to light a slim taper. It sputters out at once. I
strike the cold metal again, with the same result. There has not been a trace of
wind. I
feel exposed now, as though I have been cast adrift from the mainland, as if the
whole of the tempestuous North Sea were around me. A tiny flame ignites before
my eyes, and runs along the ground. I climb onto weak legs and follow its path
as though it were a guide. A will o’ the wisp. Methane and other gases of the
decomposing subterranean residents, igniting briefly. The flame dies before the
gate, and I feel an urge to leave the cemetery and never return. A
thousand sensations strike me at once. A wall of noise, all the night sounds
magnified by my panic. The harsh rasp of crickets in the grey cemetery grass,
the papery rustle of dead leaves scraping across the ground, propelled by a
sudden wind. My heart, a primal drumbeat, like the stamping feet of savages
roused to insanity. The
scent from the upturned grave is cloying. Damp and grimy as I am, I feel as
though it were myself who has been buried. My skin writhes at the thought. When
the cathedral bell peals, sending my pulse into the stratosphere, it’s as if
my final trace of resistance has shredded. The moon has reappeared, and the night seems full of sparkles, the glistening sheen of fresh snow, the glitter of frozen dewdrops, the gleam of watching eyes. I stagger home, but all the while my breath rasps, I sense rustling curtains, and feel that my actions are naked before the world. Nothing will compel me to revisit the grave and hide my crime. My front door shrieks an accusation, and the noise echoes through the streets, into the heart of London itself.
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