tell her I had an emergency that required attending, and ask her to stay with Emily until I returned. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and agreed.
* * *
? ? ?
UPON RETRIEVING THE KEYS for Dr. Steevens’ Hospital from Swift’s Hospital for Lunatics, I crossed the open field to the south entrance and, like the previous night, let myself in. I then quickly made my way back to the morgue without spying a single soul in the hospital corridors. I found the guard post vacant. A book sat opened on top of the stool where we had found Appleyard the night before, but there was no sign of him now. Most likely, he had left to attend to his personal needs and would be back momentarily. I considered waiting for him before entering, then decided it would be best to hurry.
I entered the morgue and rushed to the back corner where we had found the body thought to be Patrick O’Cuiv’s. The steel table was empty. The jars that held his organs were empty, too. There was something peculiar about the condition of the room, though. Blood and filth covered the autopsy table, and the workspace reeked of rancid meat, as if the mess had festered for a week rather than just for one day. Upon completion of an autopsy, it was standard practice to clean and sterilize the space in order to prepare for the next procedure. Leaving the table and accoutrements in such a state would surely land someone in trouble. As I circled the table, my shoes made a sick sucking noise with each step. At first, I dared not glance down, but I knew I must, so I forced my eyes to the floor—bloody footprints littered the marble, a number of them from bare feet. They seemed to encircle the table, then beat a path between the beds off to the right, fading as they went, until terminating at the third bed in. That bed bore a card numbered 28773—O’Cuiv’s—the same number that appeared on the bag containing O’Cuiv’s personal effects, a bag I now noted as missing.
There was a body on the bed, covered by a white sheet.
My heart tightened within my chest.
You cannot let him put the man back together again.
My wife’s words echoed through my mind, and I shook them away.
Certainly O’Cuiv’s organs were returned to his chest cavity, and his body placed back in his bed, following the autopsy; that would be standard procedure. The bloody footprints were probably nothing more than a mess left by a careless doctor.
Bloody, bare footprints, my wife’s voice whispered at my ear.
He walked from the table and returned to his bed—the moment his heart was returned, he was whole again—with the heart came blood, with blood there is life. The blood is the life.
* * *
? ? ?
SURELY THIS WAS NOT what she meant. It could not be what she meant.
It was then the sheet moved.
Not a sudden move, not even a major move, just a slight shift in the sheet; a bulge towards the center that came and went in an instant, as if the body beneath considered turning on its side, then thought better of it.
Nonsense!
A trick of the light, or perhaps a stray breeze had found its way to the basement from up above.
The sheet moved again, this time accompanied by a soft moan.
I took a step closer.
I did not want to approach it—that was the furthest thought from my mind—but my feet shuffled closer anyway. First one step, then another, then another after that, following the bloody footprints from the autopsy table to the bed, towards whatever stirred beneath.
In my mind’s eye, I saw O’Cuiv’s organs in the bowls, the heart somehow beating with life, beating so ferociously that its bowl vibrated on the table with each thumpity-thump, that steady double patter I heard so often through the stethoscope. Following each contraction came the expulsion of blood, thick and black, unhealthy blood, riddled with clots. The clumps reached the rim of the bowl, then somehow tried to climb out under their own volition, escaping the evil heart and oozing away, oozing