Chapter One

In recent years, in the area of London near Belsize Park, a young physician by the name of Sefton Palmer established himself as a reliable man of medicine and an individual of inquisitive disposition. Dr. Palmer was trusted by his patients, well-thought-of by his colleagues, and, it seemed, destined for extraordinary things.

Though his practice tied him to his particular corner of the metropolis, he was not opposed to travel and, thus, one day found himself in the countryside of Ireland, visiting with others of his profession. A detailed discussion of various medical discoveries with one colleague in particular had lasted longer than either had anticipated, setting him behind his intended time to make the journey over the then-frozen bogland toward the home of another colleague who waited in anticipation of his arrival.

Dr. Palmer and his trusted horse began the journey on a late-January evening long after the going down of the sun.

Reader, please bear in mind that bogs freeze in winter—they are nearly as much water as soil—and such bogs are easily disturbed by the pounding of horses’ hooves, even when the beast is kept to a sedate pace. Failure to remember these well-established truths will render the following narrative perplexing in the extreme.

Dr. Palmer undertook his traversal of the boggy countryside with an eye to efficiency, not wishing to arrive at the home of his fellow physician at too late an hour. Thus, he set his horse to a quick clip, not as mindful as he ought to be of the dangers of a dark country lane with which one is not familiar.

The oddest of sounds reached his ears. He slowed his horse, to which the animal did not seem to object. In the dark stillness, he listened. Pops. And snaps. After a moment, he realized what he was hearing: the ice in the bogs was cracking. While he intended to remain on the road, it was easy to grow lost on a dark night, something he ought to have considered sooner. And growing lost in the bogland came with a risk of being plunged into a boghole or finding himself unknowingly riding into a lake and drowning.

As if to add to his sudden realization of the precarious nature of his situation, a thick fog began rolling over the land. The already dim landscape grew dark as ink. The cracking of ice grew louder and more frequent. He grew increasingly frustrated. And increasingly concerned.

“Slow and careful.” He offered the instructions as much to himself as to his horse.

What little calm he’d managed to acquire disappeared as a sudden explosion of reddish-white light shot toward the sky. Followed by another. And another. Immense cones of fire appeared all around him. Their size and magnitude varied greatly. Some were six feet in diameter at the base, others five times that size. Their heights differed every bit as much—some no more than the height of a man, others reaching thirty feet into the air.

Two dozen, perhaps more, appeared and disappeared at unpredictable intervals and at vastly different distances. Some must have been at least a mile away. Even as he carefully led his horse onward, the cones of flame continued to appear and extinguish.

The effect was dazzling, shocking, and yet these columns of fire made little impact on the darkness, the light they produced being disproportional to their size. Neither did these pillars of fire add warmth to the frigid night. Dr. Palmer eyed them all with growing confusion and increasing interest. Though the blazes flickered without warning all over the landscape, each individual column stayed in place while it was visible, never wavering from its position.

What were they? What had caused them?

Rain began to fall, and with it, the columns of fire disappeared into the mysterious night.

The icy bogs continued to crack. But no more towers of fire appeared.

In three-quarters of an hour more, he found himself at the home of his colleague. Despite the shocking oddity of all he had seen, Dr. Palmer no longer felt upended nor worried. His was, after all, a mind more predisposed to curiosity than to concern.

“Palmer,” he was greeted, “I had nearly given you up.”

“I left after my time.” He set his hat on a hook near the door and pulled off his dripping wet coat. “The journey itself took longer than anticipated due to a most extraordinary experience.”

He was forthwith shown to a bedchamber where he could change from his damp clothing. Though the hour was terribly late, his interest in all he’d seen proved greater than his exhaustion. While his fellow physician most certainly longed to seek his own bed, Dr. Sefton Palmer thought not of that possibility. A mystery weighed on his mind, and his mind never permitted itself to be ignored.

“Have you ever, whilst traversing the bogs, experienced anything odd?” Palmer asked his colleague.

“Odd in what way?”

Palmer proceeded to describe what he’d seen in as much detail as he could. Only after expending tremendous energy on the endeavor did he realize that his account might not be believed, that his colleague might deem him confused or even mad.

“Strange things are spoken of on the bogs,” the other doctor acknowledged. “Though I cannot say I’ve heard tell of precisely what you describe, I would not dismiss the encounter out of hand. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’” Ending his reply with a nod to the Bard was quite common for Palmer’s colleague. He himself, though, was not so poetic.

“I know what I saw, but I do not know how or from whence it came,” Dr. Palmer said. “Neither do I know in what other forms it might occur. But, mark my words, good sir. I will solve the mystery of these sudden bursts of light even if I am required to dedicate the remainder of my life to doing so.”

Such declarations should not be made lightly, for they have a most disconcerting tendency to come true in surprising and far too often destructive ways.

Chapter Two

The question of lights appearing without warning or explanation took root in Dr. Palmer’s mind in the months that followed his shocking experience on the bogs in Ireland. He had formulated more theories than he had produced on that night, but he still had no definitive answers.

What he’d seen had not been a reflection. Though the lights had looked like fire, they were nothing of the sort. He had not eliminated the possibility of phosphorescence as was rumored to occur in marine life. He was also determined to learn more of any oddities peculiar to organic matter. He had heard of a very odd sort of lightning he meant to investigate. He had every intention of raising the question at the next meeting of the Royal Society.

Late of an afternoon, whilst his mind spun on the question of the reddish-white cones of fire-like light, Dr. Palmer was summoned to the bedside of one of his patients, a woman of heartbreakingly young years whose health was severely impacted by pulmonary consumption. Though he hoped to be proven wrong, he suspected she was approaching the end of her short earthly sojourn.

The door at Lavinia Abbott’s home was answered by her ever-faithful maid, Jane. Dr. Palmer was shown to Miss Lavinia’s bedchamber, where she had spent the entirety of the past three months unable to leave her bed, her condition deteriorating.

“I fear I’m not long for this world, Dr. Palmer.”

He crossed to her bedside and sat on the edge. Death was part of doctoring every bit as much as life was. That did not, however, render the experience less heartbreaking.

“What has convinced you of your imminent departure?” he asked her.

“I was earlier today seized with a horrible suffocation. How I resumed breathing, I do not know. I fear the next time I will not be so fortunate.”

Palmer evaluated her condition as she spoke and continued doing so in the silence that followed. Her pallor was significant. Her breathing was shallow and belabored. Her body had grown thin and frail.

“Are you in pain?” he asked, entirely willing to provide for her powders or tisanes to assure her comfort.

“Pains of mind,” Miss Lavinia said. “I fear I shall suffer another suffocation and you will be far away. I’ll not have you near to aid me.”

He took her hand in his, careful of her paper-thin skin. “If you wish,” he said, “I will remain here throughout the day and into the night to keep close watch on you.”

She smiled weakly at him. “You are a good man and a good doctor.”

“I try very hard to be.” He did, indeed. The matter of unexplained lights had distracted him of late, but he was determined to focus his attention on his ailing patient.

He settled himself in the room, keeping watch over Miss Lavinia.

Jane brought her broth and made certain the bedside pitcher was well supplied with water. She cast sad eyes upon the woman she’d looked after for a half decade, clearly agreeing with Miss Lavinia’s assessment of her own mortality.

Truth be told, Palmer agreed as well.

The remainder of the evening passed without incident. Miss Lavinia drifted into a light sleep not long after the sun dipped beneath the horizon. The lamp in the room was lit, casting a soft glow.

Dr. Palmer sat upon the edge of the bed once more as a cot was placed upon the floor. He meant to pass the night there, recognizing that the woman was fading. He’d only just checked the rhythm of her pulse and watched the rise and fall of her chest when the lamplight flashed bright and sudden upon her face, illuminating it in odd and unexpected ways.

“Jane, please move the lantern. Its light upon her face will wake her, and she needs as much rest as her body will allow.”

From behind him, the maid replied, “The lantern ain’t casting any light on her face, Doctor.”

Palmer focused his powers of observation once more upon the countenance of his patient. Unmistakable light darted over her features. It flashed and danced, producing enough light to illuminate her head but cast no light upon the room in general.

He stood once more, taking a step back and observing the unexpected sight from more of a distance. He was not mistaken in what he saw. A silvery light, not unlike that seen when moonlight is reflected on water, danced upon her face. The curtains in the window were drawn, eliminating that possible source. The light rendered her skin so white one might believe it to have been covered in paint. Indeed, the skin took on a look of having been glazed. All the while, the mysterious light continued to dart about.

The learned and curious doctor spoke not a word, even as his heart pounded in anticipation and wonderment. There was no heat emanating from the light, nor did it shine beyond the precise location where it emerged.

Though the color was different, it put him immediately and fully in mind of the columns of fire-like light he had seen on the bogs months earlier. This time, though, the inexplicable phenomenon had made itself known on the face of a human being.

“This ain’t the first time I’ve seen this happen, Dr. Palmer,” Jane said.

“When have you seen it before?” he inquired.

“This morning,” came the reply. “Miss Lavinia’s face lit in just this way. I found it quite dazzling, I did.”

“And did you tell anyone else what you’d seen?”

“Blimey, no. None of the other staff’d believe me, and Miss Lavinia would likely say I were being superstitious. Fine folk are always assuming that about us lowly folk. But I won’t never forget what I seen.”

Palmer checked the position of the lantern once more, confirming to himself that it was, indeed, not in such a place as to be the source of the lights which continued to appear on Miss Lavinia’s face. For an hour, the phenomenon continued before disappearing as suddenly as it had begun.

He stayed at Miss Lavinia Abbott’s side for the remaining days of her life. The lights returned twice more, though he could determine neither cause nor source nor pattern for their rising and extinguishing. The evening before her passing, the lights returned for a final time, fainter than on the previous occasions and lasting a shorter interval.

Palmer had theorized the lights he’d seen on the bog were the result of the freezing and thawing of organic material. As Miss Lavinia lived out her remaining days, her condition deteriorated. Perhaps it was her deterioration that had caused the mysterious light to appear. Perhaps it was deterioration in the bogs that had done the same.

He would have answers. He vowed that he would. For, as much as the bog lights had sat upon his mind, this experience added weight tenfold.

People could glow. And he would not rest until he knew why.

Chapter Three

The paper Dr. Palmer submitted to the College of Physicians on the luminescence he had observed was met mostly with silence. Though he was frustrated, he was not surprised. He’d filled the submission with details and theories but no data, no scientifically sound information. His next paper, he vowed, would be overrun with both.

It was in pursuit of this that he returned to Ireland, returned to the peat bogs where he’d first observed the cones of fire. He sat in the dark and the cold, watching and waiting for a return of that most extraordinary sight.

It did not return.

He did, however, experience something not entirely unrelated. The peat of those bogs, when cut, emitted an unmistakable, albeit brief, glow. It occurred when the peat was disturbed, and the light disappeared almost on the instant. Could this, he wondered, be related to what he’d seen more than nine months earlier? Could there be a connection?

Determined to know more and return to London with answers, he made an examination of the peat himself. He cut a bit, causing the momentary glow to continue. As it disappeared, he immediately sliced off a bit more, and the glow returned.

He guarded the slice of peat fiercely as he returned to the cottage he had let for a few weeks in pursuit of the answers he required. No one else was present; he could not permit the distraction. Palmer laid out his medical tools, quite as if he was about to undertake an examination of a patient or a dissection in a lab. He set his large cutting of peat on the table amidst his instruments. He lit a lamp and brought it near. Palmer set magnifying spectacles on his nose and bent over the peat block.

A bit of careful cutting and breaking revealed the presence of tiny white worms no more than half an inch in length. Palmer poked at them and nudged them and, in whatever way he could, caused the animals a bit of irritation, hoping to discover that they were the source of the soft glow he’d seen in the bog peat.

It did not seem to be enough.

Palmer refused to believe he was wrong yet again. The College of Physicians had dismissed his discoveries and hypotheses because he could not provide any evidence. He would have it this time. He swore he would. He would not rest without answers. Could not.

What else could irritate or cause excitation in the worms without causing them any harm? He looked around his cottage, searching for something, anything. His eyes fell upon a bottle of strong spirits. He could not place the worms in the alcohol as that might drown the creatures. The vapors, though, might prove sufficient.

He took careful hold of one worm with his smallest pair of tissue forceps. He filled a small, shallow dish with the alcohol, then held the worm over it, near enough for the vapors to envelop the creature. Mere moments later, it began to glow.

At last! At last he had succeeded in forcing a naturally occurring glow to appear!

The phosphorescence was a brilliant, beautiful, clear green that illuminated the entirety of the worm’s body. But it lasted a mere instant.

He subjected several of the worms to the same treatment and achieved the same result. With enough of these tiny creatures in peat, agitation of that peat would cause dozens upon dozens to produce the green light at once, creating the twinkling glow he’d seen.

It did not, though, explain the columns of fiery light he’d seen at the beginning of the year.

It did not explain the lights that had illuminated Miss Lavinia’s face.

And it did not explain the further phenomena of light he observed as the weeks and months continued to pass. For he’d committed himself to searching them out. Dedicated himself to the pursuit.

Palmer had attended the bedside of a woman dying of a pulmonary consumption not unlike that which had claimed Miss Lavinia Abbott. He had not tended to many patients since Miss Lavinia’s passing. One could not pursue elusive answers and doctor at the same time. At least not often.

As he had in Miss Lavinia’s home, he observed in this new location a moon-like light dancing upon the woman’s face, with something of the look of lightning, something of the look of the glowing peat, but not precisely like either one.

He was not alone in observing the phosphorescent illumination of this particular patient’s features. The unfortunate soul was attended also by her sisters and mother. The word of women was not generally considered by the medical establishment to be authoritative, but their corroboration of his observations might still have proven useful despite that prejudicial opinion—if only their recounting of the experience had matched his.

The light they had observed, the women insisted, had not been upon her face but hovering above it in the air she breathed out. It danced in diagonal glimmers, shimmering about near the head of the bed.

He did not think he had misjudged what he’d observed. He was too meticulous an observer. That this mystery held such weight in his mind made him even more aware of the details.

A fellow doctor in Ireland wrote to tell him of a similar experience occurring in a neighboring village. A man suffering with pulmonary tuberculosis was known to emit a glow as well. It was said, in fact, that these periods of body-produced light appeared nightly. It was described by the local people as a luminous fog or a sparkle of phosphorescence, but Palmer’s colleague could not confirm this. He further indicated that all he had heard pointed toward the odd light existing, as the sisters previously mentioned had insisted, in the air rather than upon the person of the patient.

That, while intriguing, was not the phenomenon Palmer was chasing. It was not the mystery he grew more and more determined to solve. He would not—could not—rest until he did! It was no longer a matter of mere curiosity but of necessity.

Back in his own home once more, Palmer became all but consumed by the pursuit of answers. He attempted to coax a glow from every living thing he could get his hands on. None cooperated.

The question rested heavily on his thoughts as he went about his days and even as he attempted to sleep. He thought upon it as he ate his meals and as he dressed for the day and undressed for the night.

Early one morning as he brushed through his hair, now a bit overgrown and less well-kept than it had once been, a spark of light emitted, jumping about between the strands of hair. He’d seen such a thing happen before but had paid it little heed. Until now.

The same thing happened on occasion when pulling a nightshirt on or off. A bit of a crackling feeling would emerge. The spark would follow, only to disappear as quickly as it had appeared. Could not the various lights he’d seen on bogs and on faces be related to this?

And thus he spent weeks rubbing together various materials, pulling out strands of his own hair, applying various substances, attempting to determine what, precisely, could force the spark of light to return. Linen rubbed against skin sometimes worked. No matter the amount of hair he pulled, only that left upon his head ever showed any success, and that only rarely.

He might have continued his experiments indefinitely if not for the whisperings of two strangers he passed on the street as he returned from seeing a patient, something he did with less frequency. The two men were discussing the widely held belief amongst those of the lowest classes that human bodies could produce light . . . after death.

Chapter Four

When Dr. Sefton Palmer arrived at the college where he had, a mere dozen years earlier, undertaken his medical education, he did so with an unmistakably frantic air. He would prove the existence of the lights he’d seen. He would discover their source, their cause, their nature.

He would, if it required pursuing the answers for the rest of his life.

Had his attention not been so entirely upon his pursuit, he might have noticed the odd looks he was receiving. He might have been concerned that people received him so quizzically. He was no more aware of these reactions than he was of his own haggard and unkempt appearance.

His steps took him to the office of the professor he’d most respected during his time at the college. Dr. Sherman would help him find the answers.

“Palmer.” The good professor looked entirely taken aback at seeing his former student upon the threshold of his office. “I had not expected you.”

“What do you know of the presence of lights in the human body?” Palmer had no time for pointless niceties.

“I know that you submitted a paper on the subject not many months ago.” Dr. Sherman did not seem pleased.

“I had hoped for help in solving these mysteries, but I have received nothing but silence or ridicule.” Palmer held his hat in his hands, crushing the brim in his frustration. “You said, when I was a pupil of yours, ‘The moment a doctor believes his learning to be complete, he ceases to be a good doctor.’ It seems to me there are a great many poor doctors who have dismissed out of hand what I have actually seen. I pray you will prove an advocate of your own advice.”

That seemed to soften the man. He waved Palmer farther inside his office. “The phenomena you described in your paper is not one that is recorded or known amongst your fellow men of medicine. It was met with skepticism, which is not unhealthy nor unheard of.”

“Skepticism and dismissal are not the same thing.” Palmer only just managed to keep himself from growling out the response.

“Not everyone has entirely dismissed it.”

Palmer looked to Dr. Sherman once more. “Who is not dismissing it?” He wanted names. Locations. He needed others to pursue this with him.

“There have been a few whispers,” Dr. Sherman said. “Some have seen twinkling lights on bogs or at sea. And the ability of some insects to glow is well known.”

“I am not speaking of such things.” He took to pacing, something he did with some regularity of late. “There is a connection to human beings. I know there is, and I’ve heard that some in the dissection room have seen corpses glow.”

“When did you last sleep, Palmer?” Dr. Sherman asked. “You look exhausted.”

“I don’t need you to be my doctor. I need to know if you’ve heard of these postmortem glows.”

“I have not,” he said.

Dr. Palmer shook his head, speeding up his pacing. “But that does not mean that it has not happened, that it is not true.”

Sherman stepped in the way of Palmer’s pacing, necessitating he stop. “Take my advice, young man. Return to your flat. Rest. Alleviate this worry from your mind.”

“It is not a ‘worry.’ It is a scientific mystery. I cannot merely abandon this pursuit.”

“I fear if you continue, it will drive you mad,” Dr. Sherman said.

“If I do not find the answers I need, it most certainly will.”

Dr. Sherman watched him for a long moment, brows drawn in concern, as if Palmer was unaware of the dire nature of his own condition. Palmer did not flinch under the pointed gaze. He knew Sherman was mistaken; pursuing these answers was not an ill-conceived quest. It had become his life’s mission.

A sigh emitted from the older doctor. “Blackstone still oversees the dissection room. Perhaps he will have some familiarity with the manifestation you speak of.”

Realizing his one-time idol did not intend to offer much else in the way of help, Palmer left without a backward glance. The struggle for knowledge abides no sentimental loyalties.

He knew perfectly well how to find the dissecting room. He might have been struggling to find answers to difficult questions, but he was not struggling with his memory. Blackstone’s office, located directly beside the room where the cadavers were kept, was empty, its usual living occupant apparently occupied elsewhere.

Irritated with the ceaseless obstacles he encountered, Palmer made his way into the dissecting room without waiting for its overseer to grant permission. The room was dark. No candles or lanterns were lit. The windows were covered in thick draperies. The odor of the room was not one any medical student ever forgot nor truly grew accustomed to. Palmer refused to be felled by olfactory discomfort.

He closed the door behind him, extinguishing every bit of light in the room, though there’d been precious little to begin with. Though he could see nothing, he knew what lay before him—a half-dozen tables with cadavers laid atop them, awaiting examination. Another encounter in this room that students struggled to not find disconcerting.

Palmer inched his way along the wall on which the door hung and placed himself in the corner, and waited. Waited for lights to appear. Waited for the rumors he’d heard to prove themselves true.

“Light up,” he whispered in short bursts of breath. “Light up.”

The room remained dark. Minutes ticked by. Perhaps hours. Still, he remained in his corner, watching, whispering, waiting.

And then . . . the lights came.

The subjects upon the tables became quite unexpectedly lit by a remarkably luminous appearance, emanating, as it would seem, from the cadavers themselves. They were lit to such a degree that their forms and shapes and various parts were as clear to see as if every lantern in the school had been lit and brought into the dissecting room, as if the heavy curtains had been pulled back and sunlight allowed to stream inside.

Palmer made mental notes of all he saw, memorizing the details, taking in every possible aspect. The whispers he’d heard were showing themselves to be true.

He would be vindicated. He would be listened to at last.

He stepped out of the dissecting room, searching out someone to act as witness to the phenomenon. Dr. Sherman and Dr. Blackstone were emerging from the latter’s office. Neither seemed overly surprised to see him, but they also did not look overly pleased.

“It is happening just as I said it would,” Palmer announced. “They are glowing in precisely the way I’ve seen others. You doubted, but it is happening. It is happening now.”

With looks of doubt, they followed him through the dissecting room doors once more. Soon enough, their disbelief would be turned to apology.

Again, the smell of the room rushed over Palmer. Again, he dismissed it. He pushed the door closed, plunging the room into the darkness necessary to see the glow.

But the glow was gone.

Utterly gone.

“It was happening,” he growled out. “It was.”

He could not see his colleagues, but he knew they would be considering him with equal parts pity and annoyance. He knew because that had become the near-constant response he received to his declarations.

“I am not lying, and I am not mad,” he insisted. “I saw what I saw.”

“Perhaps, Palmer, you should take a bit of time away,” Dr. Sherman said. “Find a quiet corner of the country and rest your mind.”

“I have not gone mad. And, somehow, I will prove it.”

With that proclamation, he stormed out. He knew now that bodies could glow after death, and he knew of one other means of observing the recently deceased.

He needed to find a Resurrection Man.

Chapter Five

Weeks had passed since Dr. Sefton Palmer had seen patients, attended bedsides, or interacted with any of the society he once had kept. Nothing was given place in his life but the question of lights. Nothing.

He stood in a graveyard at the very outskirts of London on a January night, one year to the day when he had first seen the columns of fire over a bog in Ireland. One year with more questions than answers. One year of replacing his doctoring with this pursuit. One year that had brought him to this place of death in the company of one who made his living disturbing the peace of the dearly departed.

Palmer had thrown his lot in with a resurrectionist.

They, a man who had once dedicated himself to healing people and a man who stole bodies from graves, stood in the dark, looking over the rolling mounds of dirt and the near-toppling headstones.

“You’ve seen corpse-lights?” Palmer asked his companion, not for the first time.

“All of us what ply our trade in these yards ’ave seen ’em.” The man spoke in gravelly tones, with no indication he found the occurrence the least intriguing. “I’ve a mate who comes from Wales. He calls ’em canhwyllan cyrph. Another bloke what plies the trade quotes some Scottish poet, writing about dead knights and their graves glowing bright in the dark.”

It was a poor summary of Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, but Scott was hardly the only writer to recount such a thing. Irish poet Thomas Moore spoke of them as well. Many accounts existed of such things. And if Palmer’s theory that these lights were the result of decomposition were true, the sight of them in graveyards made perfect sense.

Then, where were they?

Palmer paced among the graves, making note of those headstones still standing, careful of those toppled over. The grass grew high and wild. Perhaps that was hiding the lights he’d come to see. Perhaps conditions weren’t right. But he didn’t know what the “right” conditions were.

“Have you seen corpse-lights in this churchyard?” Palmer asked the resurrection man.

“Oi.”

“And was it on a night like tonight? Clear skies. Cold. The previous night was quite wet.”

“Oi.”

That, Palmer had decided, was part of the equation he was attempting to discover. The air needed to be cold. The ground and therefore the body needed to be wet, though it need be not raining at the time when the lights were expected. That the pattern still held true was a promising thing.

He would find his answers tonight. He was determined to.

“Have you ever seen these lights when the ground was not wet?”

“This ’ere’s London.” The man spoke sardonically, a tone he’d struck from the moment Palmer had first approached him about this undertaking. “When is the dirt at our feet ever not wet?”

It was a fair enough question. “Have you seen these lights anywhere other than graveyards?”

“Oi. And I’ve heard tell of them appearing in odd spots. There were a man drowned at Ettrick. Couldn’t find his body at first, but then the corpse-light gave him away. Found him straight off.”

Bodies even glowed in the water. This was not a trick of his imagination. Palmer was right. He would be believed, and he would not rest until he was. If he had to hire the assistance of dozens of resurrection men and house breakers and criminals of every ilk, he would do so. No more would he be ignored and dismissed and pitied.

He paced the churchyard, eyes constantly surveying the expanse of it, the crumbled remains of the nearby church, the tall, flowing grass, the quiet of this all-but-abandoned corner of the world. The glow would come. It must.

“Can you not encourage the corpse-lights?” Palmer pressed. “Agitate the soil or some such thing.”

“They don’t come because you demand it.” The resurrectionist picked at his fingernails with the point of a sinister blade. “It needs the right timing and a new body.”

“So resurrect one,” Palmer shot back. “It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“I’m here for a body, yes. The freshest ones fetch the best price.”

The freshest ones also, it seemed, produced the most light. “Where is the body you’ve come to harvest?”

He could see no newly turned-over dirt, no grave newly dug and filled. Indeed, not a thing in this churchyard appeared to have changed in decades, perhaps centuries. Had he been duped? How dare the man!

Palmer bristled. “I cannot see these lights if you’ve not brought me to a place where you mean to ply your trade.”

“I mean to ply it, never you fear.” Moonlight played upon the man’s ghastly features. “I’m not one for wasting m’time.”

“Neither am I. So point me to this body you’ve come for.”

With a look of pity not unlike the one Palmer had seen in the dissecting room but this time filled with a stomach-turning dose of amusement, the resurrectionist smiled at him. “The freshest ones fetch the best price.”

It was long after whispered in the College of Physicians that a young doctor by the name of Palmer had driven himself mad in pursuit of an unanswerable question. He had abandoned his patients, his home, and his faculties. In the end, he had disappeared. That was offered as a warning to his fellow men of medicine not to allow the inexplicable to become inescapable.

Dear reader, remember: Though this tale be cautionary, at its heart are two truths. The first, that lights have indeed been known to appear in all the places where our Dr. Palmer pursued and encountered them. The second, and far more important is this: Some questions are best left unanswered.