Merry Old Saint Morte • Robyn Marie

St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowerie

New York City, Christmas Eve, 1895

In the Before

MY SHOVEL broke on the last chunk of dirt, and I chucked it out of the hole, tossing my coat up after it. My undershirt was black at the cuffs, faded to yellow from hours of the sweaty work I'd agreed to do for a thoughtless twenty dollars. (A sum I'd since reconsidered—somewhere between my first jab at the rock-hard plot, and the consequent snap of my only gerddamn shovel.) Snow flurried. Drifting in matted clumps, oblivious, through the glow of the lantern above me; colliding with the freshly turned dirt piles and my over-warm skin; blanketing one surface and melting on the other. The air was sharp. Each inhale stabbed my chest and gutted my lungs like a hunting knife. Old boots, wilted flowers, and a hint of the tobacco tangled in my stretched scarf—That's how the fusty air smelled as I breathed it. And without my methodic digging, the winter silence it dwelt on chewed in my ear.

I cleared my throat.

Every joint popped as I squatted where I stood. My burrowing had uncovered a coffin, and I swept the remaining dirt crumbs away under the oxblood gloves protecting my hands. The wood beneath was frozen mid-decay. One more damp summer and the lumber would tear completely, easy as cheesecloth, but now it needed a good bootheel to buckle, and I kicked, welcoming the chance to stretch my sore legs. A person still existed inside the coffin. I was expecting bones, and it disturbed my focus long enough for my breath to escape—catching in the lamplight like wandering ciggie smoke—and then I was back at work, breaking into the last bed of a dead boy.

Snowflakes touched his face, too, and stayed; nestling in his empty eye sockets, collecting, unspoiled, on his shriveled skin. I fished him loose, folding him in half with a crack (for my broken shovel). His stale body swelled my burlap bag like I was Old Saint Nicholas bearing gifts, and I prepared to hoist him up and out of the hole when a wink of light stopped me. Across the burial ground, a red spark bobbed at a walker's pace, between rows of headstones and crude markers that blended into the night the farther they stood from me. My chest tightened. I dropped the bag. Grabbing my lantern I lifted the latch, snuffed the flame, and ducked; dragging my coat in after me.

The farmer searched for the fox, and here I hid inside the hen house.

Utterly cold now, I hunkered. Lying on my side in an opened grave, beside the bagged corpse. The coffin's soiled-silk lining was damp. I could feel it, breathing, through my clothes. And I waited. The copper's footsteps crunched in the steady silence, thunderous in my strained ears. I held my breath and counted:

One.

Crunch

Two.

Crunch

Three.

The frozen grass shattered under hobnails and leather. I imagined the candle's flame beneath the red-coated glass of the police lantern, its long fingers of light creeping to find me. I crossed myself—Father. Son. Holy. Spirit—and buried my face in my patched coat. Were I caught tonight; my real father would carve his disappointment into me with whatever he had on hand. My brother wouldn't stop him, either. No, he'd watch. And if they both discovered my business—if they knew about the money I'd earned, stashed under my ticking mattress at the flophouse—

The footsteps moved off, and I took my chance. Hurling my belongings out first, I scrambled onto higher ground and scooped up the bag and my coat, aiming wildly for the iron fence. A shout followed, and I catapulted from the churchyard as a gunshot punctuated the broken silence. The bullet chipped a fleur-de-lis on the gate's arch as I flew passed. The spark imprinted in the corner of my eye, coloring my vision. My vessels bloated. In my head, I could see the granules of life, like orange germs under a microscope, running, crazed, through the maze of my body.

After two city blocks, the knives in my lungs overwhelmed me and set me coughing. I tucked into an alley where the snow lay black from chimney soot and stopped to catch my breath. A door stood open; yellow light traveled the bumpy width of the alley to lean heavily on the bricks of the opposite building. The sign above the lintel was snow-covered, illegible. But the scent of whoring wafted from the open doorway like fresh pastry, and I knew where I was. I'd spent the last four hours alone. The reminder of living people and their indiscreet laughter needled me. There was a girl in the doorway. She sat on the steps just inside the cathouse; her knees were drawn, supporting her crossed arms beneath an old, knit shawl. Her feet tipped toward each other. Laced tight at the ankle inside a pair of cracked, leather boots that long deserved a funeral.

Wrestling my frigid coat on, I swung the burlap bag over a shoulder. I could walk now (no single copper would pursue me on these villainous streets at night), and I did, tucking into my frayed collar.

"Have me for a dollar, Mister?"

The girl in the open doorway was already on her feet at the sound of me, resting her dirty hands on her hips.

"Oi! Don't be rude."

An ice clod hit my shoulder. I thought it was a rock at first until a second one burst like a broken necklace on the cobbles in front of me, pearls bouncing into the dark.

I halted.

Slowly, I turned.

The girl was no older than me, younger maybe—like the dead boy in the burlap I carried whose bones poked my back. But unlike the boy, she was still alive and standing on wary feet behind me. We were alone. The light from the open door illuminated her impoverished skirts. Her hair was grimy-blonde. Her ratty curls styled poorly from a magazine. She'd dyed some strands scarlet, the odd color giving away her impropriety.

She was hungry.

And I liked the shape of her mouth.

The girl shivered. Her fist clenched another lump of solid snow. My shoulder stung, and I let her my hand to the knife on my belt, and then beyond it into my coat. She took a tremulous step away from my approach, and I pulled the thoughtless twenty dollar bill from my pocket to reassure her. A bruise on her cheek floated the black beauty patch she wore on a purple sea. I ingested it, the taste familiar. I had bruises too. But I had my clothes to cover them, not a fragile silk heart.

The dead boy weighed on me. I crouched and laid the money in the soot between us, moving to give the girl distance. I waited to see what she would do.

"Who is that for?"

"For you."

I hoped she'd trust me. I didn't know why that was important.

"Yeah? And what do you want in return?"

I shrugged one shoulder, "Nothing at all. Buy yourself a coat, consider it a gift." I tugged my flat cap. "Merry Christmas," I said,

and left her in the alley.

MR. HASKETT lived on Fifth Avenue, a goodly distance from the Bowery and the slums. His mansion blunted the corner of Fifty-Second Street, a stack of bricks dusted in winter salt and new money. The stench of the latter roamed his yard like a loose hound, baying loudly for attention. He supped with black-tailed bank accounts and sang sour notes in all the wrong ears, but my ears—and the ears of the New York underbelly in general—thought him an operatic phenom. A grotesque bird with grotesque tastes screeching in a gilded cage. A cage I'd break a bar or two from before I was finished.

I needed that money more than he did, for my unfolding future. My life was becoming; separating from my father, but I couldn't flourish poor.

Besides, he'd sought me out personal.

I stamped my feet on the marble stoop to find my toes again and rang the bell. A blank-faced servant admitted me at the back door. His hair was oiled-perfection. Parted on the right, side-swept and neatly combed. He shuffled me to the corner staircase, past the kitchen fire, and bowed uncomfortably at the waist, gesturing me forward like a tight-skinned mannequin in a pressed, human suit.

"Mr. Haskett awaits you in the dining room."

"Much obliged."

He didn't see me further, and I found my way, stomping up the narrow gullet to the main house.

The carpet runner delivered me into the dimly lit Great Hall. Two stories high, it loomed, ready to devour me whole in a single collapse. The balconies that separated the floors grew along its throat like shelf mushrooms or rows of misplaced teeth. There was an oppressive hush born out of unused space, and I stepped carefully to avoid waking the room; my burlap bag thawed on the parquet floor, leaving a trail to catch me. Gas lamps whispered behind shy hands. The low flames gleamed on polished wooden edges and glanced off dozens of twisted horns that lurked in obscured corners. A hundred eyes watched me approach. And I found a hundred more when I pushed open the tall double doors to the dining room and walked into a well-lit gallery of stuffed heads.

A fire crackled in the hearth.

The heat was suffocating after hours of being outdoors. The room smelled of cinnamon and maple bacon. A holiday banquet moldered on the long table. Glazed food tucked in between pine branches and exotic raptor feathers. Most of which were longer than my arm. The shafts bright yellow. The barbules were green and blue and brown.

I cleared my throat.

The man I presumed to be Mr. Haskett, rose from one of two wing chairs stark against the fireplace. Above the mantel, and mounted on a large, wooden base, the taxidermied head of a carnosaur hung, mouth gaped mid-roar. Its sharp, milk-colored teeth and pasty gums grinned at me. "See how great and terrible I am? Now, imagine the man who put me on his wall." The firelight traveled across its dull scales like a glint of unpolished silver. Mr. Haskett fancied himself a hunter. But his game had the stink of false prey. The variety of glass-eyed mammals and deinos that regarded me from the walls and display cases, I was sure, had never seen Mr. Haskett in life. Acquainted, instead, at the behest of money, in the cold impasse of death.

Now, Money crooked its finger at me. A brandy snifter cupped in his hand; Mr. Haskett strode to meet me, flinging open a jocular arm.

"If it isn't Merry Old Saint Morte, bearing gifts."

His hand grabbed the nape of my neck and tightened. The alcohol on his breath burned in my nose; his trimmed mustache scuffed my cheek, and he kissed me, below the ear, his thumb pressed to find a pulse in my neck. I stood fixed and waited. When he finished, I let go of the knife on my belt.

"You're a good lad," Mr. Haskett clapped the side of my face in a familiar manner. "And a pretty boy.

Weren't we hoping he'd be a prettyun, Hobbs?"

Mr. Hobbs leaned on an elbow, poking his head out from where he sat in the second wing chair that crowded the fire. While Mr. Haskett was a boar smoked by his ankles, Mr. Hobbs's presence imitated moldy cheese. Distinguished gray hair straggled over his forehead, and he examined me. A pair of spectacles perched on his rigid nose. He said nothing.

Mr. Haskett placed his snifter on the table and chafed his palms, talking:

"What have you brought me?" he asked, and then to his companion, "I told you to put an order in Hobbs. Didn't I tell you?" and then to me again, "We've heard nothing but good about you and your work, Mr. Morte."

That wasn't my real name and, somehow, he knew it.

I cleared my throat and jiggled the heavy burlap bag, bait in a stream. "Sixteen-year-old male as ordered. Thomas Brown. Still has his meat."

Mr. Haskett withdrew a dining chair. "Will you do the honors, Mr. Morte?"

I opened the bag and paused. "Yes, but before lad Brown joins you for dinner, I'll be needing an extra forty for delivery."

"I don't understand. We agreed to twenty."

"Did we?"

"I paid you in advance. At your request."

"And I dug up a child at yours. I also evaded a bullet for you, Mr. Haskett. Forty dollars or I will make certain no resurrectionist in New York sells to you again. And then what will you do about your particular proclivity for silent, party guests?"

My gaze slid to Hobbs. He gazed back.

The burst veins on Mr. Haskett's face deepened a shade. "And what should stop me from ringing the police and reporting you as a solicitor of human remains?"

"I'll tell them you hired me."

"Naive, idiot. Who do you think the police will believe? The word of a gentleman? Or the squealings of a sour chick hatched in the wrong nest? You dirty little shit—"

My gaze slid to Hobbs. He gazed back, curious. It had taken me all of stepping into the room to divide my feelings between the two. Only one of them I could stomach. Thomas Brown thudded on the Oriental rug under my feet, and, at the end of his nasty speech, I took Mr. Haskett by the tailored lapels, shoving him backward into the food-laden table. He swung at me and missed. I bent him around, greeting the side of his face with an empty plate. There was a lot of him to lean over, but I managed, fitting against him from behind. The tip of the hunting knife tickled his cheek. He liked that a lot less than he liked the feel of me. I turned the blade closer to his widened eye.

"The threat of death always sends the ballsack scurrying," I said, patting Mr. Haskett's pockets until the wallet revealed itself, tucked into the left side of his trousers. I peeled my money out and threw the carcass into the jellies.

I needed it more than he did, the gerddamn swine.

The dining room was hotter than a smelting furnace. I baked in the folds of my coat. The stuffed heads on the walls mewled and growled, their wild cries echoed, urging me, urging me. In the museum cases, horned rodents reared on spindle-legs, placing small paws on the glass, greedily watching. I drew a line of blood for them, a surface wound, no deeper than an unsteady shave, right there, below Mr. Haskett's ear. The fire flared in congratulations. The food melted, turning to candle wax that spread over the tablecloth in a dense puddle and welled into Mr. Haskett's mouth and nose.

He gagged.

But that was just the edge of the plate in his throat.

Amidst the heated jungle of sights and sounds in my mind, I was aware of Mr. Hobbs. And I spoke to him, wiping Mr. Haskett's blood off my blade with the aid of his own mustache:

"And what about you Mr. Hobbs? Would you like me to get you a gift? Or were you planning to make me your guest?" I gestured to the fourth chair and place setting. I doubted either man had invited their mother.

Mr. Hobbs stood beside the wing chair, his lithe frame a dark splotch on the backdrop of the hearth. He toyed with his brandy glass, slowly swirling the liquor it held.

"You were Phillip's idea," he raised the snifter to his mouth and let it hover, "I have other...proclivities as you say. We both prefer the quiet ones, yes, but I like mine designed by God for the purpose and not quite as dry." He let his gaze wander. "Philip thought it amusing if we did you in with a butter knife. It seems yours was sharper."

Mr. Hobbs took a delicate sip from his glass.

Mr. Haskett's quick breathing annoyed me. It took most of my concentration not to cover his face and cease it for good. "Mr. Haskett," I slapped his upturned cheek a few times, "is no killer. He hires people to find him trophies.

Do you?"

Mr. Hobbs adjusted his spectacles. "There has been no one to fill that need, Mr. Morte. And I am loath to foul my hands. But as Phillip—Mr. Haskett has said, we've heard all about you and your talent. Finding bodies when there are naturally, none to be had."

"And who sir, would you like to spend Christmas with?"

"She'd have to be likely. There is art in a pretty face."

Grapes sprawled from a silver serving set. I plucked one and rolled it in my palm. "I may know a girl who's hungry," I said. "If you have the money. I shall charge you more for freshness, mind. The same fee any anatomist or medical professional would pay."

"Done."

I fit the grape into my mouth

and bit down.

I FOUND the girl in the alley where we parted. She remained alone, or rather, that's how I came upon her, now. This time, she didn't hear me approach as I walked, soft-shod, up behind her. She lingered, standing on one foot, her head cocked, her attention transfixed by the ribbon of starry sky drying on the laundry line high above. A lit ciggie glimmered near her elbow, captured in dirty fingers. Her arms were crossed for warmth, and I finished the contemplation for her: She'd get a coat tomorrow. A new one. Black, maybe, with a mink collar and fur-lined pockets for her hands. She looked at both of them; examined one side and then the other, and recrossed her arms, decided. Yes, pockets. Pockets were important.

I drew my knife.

She sat at the table. Flagrant strokes of dried red divided her pale neck, giving her new dress a dowdy collar. From here, the eye roved upward; attracted by the wink of firelight on a single, pearl earring as it swayed in her left ear. The rhythm, so blatantly effected upon her without her consent, made her appearance even more lifeless than it already was, drawing attention to her posed nature; to her distended elbows and her stiff hands and the cutlery she pointed toward a plate of food she could never eat. The blue silk she wore, matched the scarf in her hair, stealing their hues from the feathers in the foreground, while behind her, the head of a white, saber-toothed tiger protruded from the dark wainscot. Music played. Mr. Hobbs touched her slack face with gold linen, dabbing a fresh ooze of blood from her chin as it escaped her mouth. She didn't flinch or flutter. He folded the napkin to hide the stain and returned to his holiday meal.

This was the picture I held in my mind as I embraced her, locking an arm across her chest, before running the blade through her throat.

The ciggie fell.

Embers splashed on the cobbles.

She was alive for minutes after the cut; her hands grasped my arm and then her neck and my arm again, confused. I dragged her into the next alley where trash barrels and bundled newspapers made a quiet hollow, and I laid her on her back in the snow. Her throat clicked with each failed swallow; her life spurted from her neck like a broken water pipe. I told myself this was business. This was the money. But my veins sang with an illicit thrill, and I wasn't ashamed I'd done it.

Again.

The girl tried to touch me. Her shaky fingers spread toward my knee. I touched her, stroking the beauty patch on her cheek with an oxblood finger.

"Shhh," I gazed at her, and she gazed back. Misdirected blood spattered her face. She didn't like my hands on her. I turned the knife blade to her forehead, and carved an inverted cross with the tip, branding her like every corpse I sold. Tonight Mr. Hobbs would have a dinner guest: my trademarked flesh.

St. Mark's Church tolled the midnight bells.

"Merry Christmas," I said, pulling the money from her bodice. Twenty steps closer to my becoming. I cleared my throat and sat beside her on a crate and waited as she died.

Robyn Marie lives on borrowed aesthetic, free range tv, green tea, and ghost stories. "Merry Old Saint Morte" is prequel #0.1 to her alt-world zombie/dinosaur novel Bonedead, here on Wattpad.

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