Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance abuse, violence, self-injury, attempted suicide, and involuntary medical procedures.



In 1817 Edinburgh, two young resurrection men named Davey and Munro steal the recently buried body of Penelope Harkness from Thornhill Kirkyard. They leave the body’s clothes behind because their crime would become a felony if they were caught taking property from the grave. The boys fill the grave back up with dirt and place the corpse in a wheelbarrow. Davey is uneasy as they go about their work, feeling “an odd thinness in the still air that made it harder to catch his breath” and worrying about the rumors that a plague has returned to the city (4). The resurrection men prepare to leave the churchyard and go to the doctor who purchases the bodies they exhume. Three cloaked men appear out of the darkness and block their path. Munro escapes, but one of the men seizes Davey, cuts Davey’s arm, and adds a drop of his blood to a vial of purple liquid. The blood turns the vial’s contents a glowing golden color, which causes the mysterious men to smile. The next morning, the priest finds the abandoned wheelbarrow containing Penelope Harkness’s body.