Chapter 20
The son is become a warrior fire and surpasses the tincture, for he himself is the treasure and he himself is attired in the philosophic matter. Come hither, ye sons of wisdom, and rejoice, for the dominion of death is over, and the son reigns; he wears the red garment, and the purple is put on. Tractatus aureus.
Some unknown time later I raised my head. My watch said seven-thirty, a concept which was, for a while, meaningless. I could not imagine why I had fallen asleep kneeling by my bed. Too much to drink again, Charles, I said to myself. No wonder I had nightmares. Finally, the thinking part of my brain began to function once more. It was a beautiful July morning in Arkham and Herbert West was dead.
His eyes were still open, and their empty stare horrified me so much that I pressed my fingers on the eyelids to close them. Then he seemed only asleep, the long lashes lying on his cheeks. He was so recently dead that the characteristic pallor, indicative of the pooling of the stilled blood, had not yet begun. The horror I had felt at his revelations of the night before was gone, dissolved in the fact of his death. Now I felt only pity. I pulled down his left shirt sleeve and fastened the silver cufflink. It was time to do what I had promised.
But I hesitated, standing there next to his bed. I thought with weary revulsion of the long chain of links that had to be forged for his salvation. I could not do it. I wanted only to stay with him. I wanted to be dead myself. It would be so easy. The drug bottle stood on the chest of drawers. The empty syringe lay on the counterpane where it had fallen from his fingers. I had only to refill it, lie down beside him, and do as he had done.
What stopped me, strangely enough, was the thought of my father. He had given in to his despair, without any thought for me or my mother. I did not want to die a suicide, and the son of a suicide. Surely I could prove myself stronger, for the sake of my friend? And I had given him my word. “All right, Herbert.” I brushed the fair hair from his forehead and touched his cheek. Then I left the room, taking the syringe and the drug bottle with me.
I descended to the cellar once more and closed the hidden door to the laboratory. Following West’s instructions, I left the house by way of the rear door, which opened from the back hallway into the shrubbery behind the house. But before I could find my way to the street, a figure glided from behind some bushes and confronted me.
I say ‘confronted,’ but in truth he did no more than stand in front of me. In the light of the new day, I saw him clearly. He was nearly skeletal, the bones of his face covered only by dead-white skin, except for his lips, which were the colour of liver. What was left of his hair was white too, giving him the appearance of an albino. But his eyes were not the white-lashed, rabbit-like sort commonly seen in such individuals. They were dark and muddy, peering from deep sockets like wary animals.
Perhaps I was beyond shock, or perhaps I had known all along that this encounter was necessary.
“John Hocks,” I said, “what do you want here?”
“Hocks.” His voice was deep but faint, as though it came from a hole in the ground. “They called me that once. But not any more. Now they call me Will.” He smiled, showing blackened teeth. “It’s a joke. Because I won’t.”
“You won’t… what?”
“Do what they want. And I won’t die. Until he does.” He twitched his hand toward West’s house. “The one who raped me.”
“What do you mean, raped?”
Another twitch of those liver-lips. “Well, what would you call it? Every day, every night, I feel it inside me, can’t forget, ever.”
“What is it that you remember?”
“I was in the water. I sank down, down, fighting all the way and kept fighting down there in the darkness, gasping for air. Air! Air! How I wanted it! But all I got was water, cold and heavy inside me. It went on and on. In the box under the ground, I kept drowning. Then finally, peace – until he made me live again, forced life into me like a shaft of heated iron. It was a violation. Because I had given it up and it wasn’t his to give back to me. I ran and ran, tried to spew it up so I could fall into the sweet peace again. But I couldn’t do it. He put something in me that wanted… blood, it wanted life, any life. I killed, I ate, ripped, drank. But all I ever wanted was the dark, and sleep.” His words came more slowly and farther apart, as though he was a clock running down.
“He thought you might have been able to return fully to life. That was his intention.”
“It wasn’t his to give back. He stole my death, and I’m here to get it back from him.” He grinned again, showing the waste of his blackened teeth.
“You’re too late, then, John Hocks. Herbert West is dead. He lies dead in this house.”
For the first time, he showed surprise. “Dead? How do you know?”
“I was with him when he died. Now I’m going to find people to help me bury him. And John Hocks, I tell you that before he died, he said to me that he was wrong to bring you back to life. He was sorry.”
“Aah.” He drew a long breath, and I heard a kind of sticky creaking, as though the fabric of his body shifted and strained. “All right, I’ll… wait. When I see them take his body away, I’ll know. I might even leave you a present. But if you’re lying…”
He lurched toward me, and it was as though all the ghosts of West’s victims looked out from his eyes, avid for my blood. I pushed past him and plunged blindly into the shrubbery. Once on the street, I ran. After a couple of hundred yards, I slowed down and looked back. He hadn’t followed me, and I almost wondered whether my encounter with him had been a hallucination born of weariness and anxiety.
At home, the first thing I did was to pour away the drug remaining in the bottle, if only to stop myself from using it. I smashed the bottle and the syringe, and wrapped the fragments and the needle in a handkerchief.
I washed myself and changed my clothes, hoping to dispel the effects of a sleepless night, too much wine and emotional strain. I was afraid to lie down, lest I fall asleep and waste precious time. At eight-thirty I set out again, taking with me the handkerchief containing the glass fragments. I strolled through the Miskatonic campus toward River Street, trying to look casual and unhurried, even though all I could think about was the ordeal before me, and the fact that every passing minute diminished my chances of success.
Once I reached the riverside promenade, I deliberately slowed my steps and paused as though to admire the view. The flowing water swirled against the wall beneath me and the fragments of glass sparkled briefly before they disappeared forever. Then I went to Alfred’s Restaurant and tried to put on a convincing performance with eggs, toast and coffee. But I had to force myself to swallow, and finally abandoned half the meal uneaten.
The closer I got to West’s house, the more aware I became of the pain in my heart, of fear and apprehension at what lay before me. I was afraid that in my absence Hocks would have broken in and violated West’s corpse in such a way that revivification would be impossible.
As I approached the house, three black crows peered down from the roof. I had never seen crows there before. It was as though they were inspecting me. Was I ready for the task? I had served only the briefest of apprenticeships before the summons came. Fear surged up again but I told myself that I was a necessary part of the events being played out here.
I went up the walk, up the steps and across the porch. The crows flew away, croaking harshly. There was no sign of Hocks, but maybe he was still lurking in the shrubbery. I rang the bell. I rang and knocked many times, as West had told me to do. Finally, I looked in one or two windows and went around the corner of the house and looked in the garage. Then I made my way to the house next door. Its occupant, a lawyer, was an acquaintance of mine. I explained that there appeared to be some trouble at Dr. West’s house and asked to use his telephone. It was already quarter after nine. West had been dead for more than two hours.
I told the police officer who answered that I had had no response at the home of Dr. West and suspected that all was
not well there. I had arranged to meet him at nine o’clock, I said. A little persuasion was necessary to convince the policeman that action was needed. Might Dr. West be at the hospital? I assured the man that this was not the case, but he should certainly check if he wished. Had I looked to see whether Dr. West’s car was in its garage? Yes, I had done so, and yes, it was there. These details seemed to satisfy him and he said he would dispatch a couple of officers.
It was a long ten minutes before they arrived and forced open the door. I had left the second floor apartment unlocked, since West had told me this was his usual custom.
The policemen climbed up the stairs, but I lagged behind. They had to be first on the scene. I could hear their voices and footsteps above me. When I detected an increase in the volume and urgency of their tones, I knew they had found him.
The elder of the two, Officer Hatch, came out of West’s bedroom to meet me. “I have some bad news, Mr. Milburn,” he said. “Dr. West is dead.”
Even with my knowledge, his words fell like a blow. I stumbled a little, and Hatch grasped my arm. “May I see him?” I asked.
“All right, but don’t touch anything. We have to look over the premises.”
I did not have to play at grief as I entered the room. It took me hard when I saw my friend lying as I had left him. Hatch gave me a few moments, then asked, “Who was his next of kin, do you know? And did he have a doctor? We have to find someone to issue a death certificate.”
Time reversed itself to the previous night, when I had asked West this same question. I saw his wide-eyed look of mock surprise. “What would I want with one of those fellows? I’m never ill and even if I was, I could deal with it as well as any of them, or better. What you must do, Charles, is make sure they summon good old Dr. Tillotson.”
He went on to tell me that there were two physicians in Arkham who were called upon to examine dead persons not known to have any doctor attending them. One was Dr. Stanley, an eager young fellow, very keen on the latest methods. “He wouldn’t hesitate to recommend a post-mortem in the case of an apparently healthy thirty-six year old man who has died suddenly,” West had said. “And that would surely be fatal to our enterprise. Now I happen to know that Stanley is away right now. He goes to Maine for two weeks every summer. Fishing, I believe. In his absence, Dr. Tillotson is called. His methods aren’t nearly so rigorous. And he’s open to… negotiation.”
Now I said, “Dr. West’s next of kin are his two brothers in Boston. And I don’t believe he had a doctor. He was rarely ill.”
“Is that so?” said Hatch. “I suggest you go into the parlour and wait, Mr. Milburn. We have to ask you some questions, but first I’ll telephone Dr. Stanley.” He went into the study.
An alarm bell went off in my head. Could it be that West had been mistaken about Stanley and his fishing trip? Or perhaps he had already returned? Holding my breath, I hovered in the doorway to the study. What would I do if it were Stanley who was to come after all? Surely he wouldn’t remove the body immediately? I would have to be prepared to do the revivification in whatever interval of time was allowed me between the departure of the officials and the removal of the body. But would they leave me alone with it? And what would they do when they realized there was no longer a body to remove? Well, but there was one. But it was already embalmed. The progressive-minded Dr. Stanley would surely realize this. I grew dizzy, contemplating these possibilities. After a few minutes I heard Hatch say, “I see, Miss. So he won’t be back until next week? No, I need someone right now. I guess I’ll try Dr. Tillotson.”
Relief made my legs weak as I went back to the sitting room, but panic returned when I checked my watch. It was almost ten o’clock. West had told me that if I was not able to begin the revivification by noon, I may as well not bother. “Unless you’re curious to see what sort of curiosity I’ll be by then. But that’s your business entirely.”
Hatch came back, followed by Foskett, his associate. While they waited for Tillotson, they questioned me about my relationship to the deceased and my doings of the past two days. I told them that I had dined with Dr. West the previous evening. Afterward we had talked until quite late. I made a point of mentioning that West had complained of a headache several times in the course of the evening. He and I had arranged to meet again at nine the next day to discuss some investments about which I wanted his advice. I showed them the papers which I had fortunately remembered to bring with me – prospectuses of mining ventures in Colorado. On receiving no response to my ringing of the doorbell, I had summoned them. The rest they knew.
After this they asked me the same questions all over again, only in a different order, using different words. I knew this was intended to disconcert me and cause me to vary my answers if I was lying. “Did Dr. West have much to drink last night?” asked Foskett suddenly. No, I assured him, which was the truth, he had had only a little wine with the meal. They left me and went to investigate the dining room and the remains of the supper.
Some unknown time later, the doorbell rang and Foskett went to answer it, returning with Tillotson in tow. The latter was a short, beefy man, red-faced from the climb up the stairs. He carried a medical bag in one hand and a fat cigar in the other.
He greeted Hatch with a grunt, and indicated me with his cigar-holding hand. “Who’s this?”
“I’m a friend of Dr. West’s,” I said, going over to him and holding out my hand. “Charles Milburn. I’m looking after things here until Dr. West’s brothers in Boston have been notified.”
Tillotson transferred the cigar from hand to mouth so he could shake my hand, then took it out again so he could talk. “Is that so? That seems irregular to me. He has no family here, eh? Is there a Mrs. West?” He looked around as though he expected such a person to materialize from the air.
“Dr. West was a bachelor,” I said.
“Hmm. Well, it takes all kinds, I guess.” He vanished into the bedroom. I followed, not caring if he thought that was irregular too.
After his initial reaction, Tillotson did not object to my company. In fact, he seemed pleased to have an audience for his comments and heavy-handed witticisms. He asked me the same questions I had answered twice already for Hatch and Foskett. I was careful to mention West’s fictitious headache and otherwise to say exactly what I had told the policemen. It pained me a little to see the fumble-fingered way he dealt with West’s clothing, including the fact that he had neglected to put down his cigar and scattered ashes over the body. “Gee, look at these clothes,” he muttered. “Was this guy a pansy or something? Is this what he was wearing last night?”
I hoped he did not expect an answer to the first question since I wasn’t about to give him one, but in response to the second I said that yes, Dr. West was dressed as he had been the previous evening, except that he had removed his jacket. I noticed that Tillotson was careful to unfasten West’s cufflinks and push his sleeves up in order to look at his arms. When he picked up the left arm, I grew tense.
“Was he a dope fiend, do you know?”
“Dr. West was extremely moderate in his habits,” I replied. “He certainly did not have a drug habit, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“So how do you explain this?” He pointed to the mark on West’s arm made by the needle.
“I don’t explain it, but I know he wasn’t a dope fiend, as you put it.”
“Well, maybe not, but it looks like he had a reason to prescribe something for himself.” He looked at me closely with bright blue eyes that seemed rather too intelligent. “Dr. West was having some kind of trouble, wasn’t he? A lawsuit, I think I heard.”
“Yes, there was something like that,” I admitted. “But surely you’re not suggesting…”
“Oh, I’m not suggesting anything,” Tillotson said. “But it’s kind of funny for such a young man to drop dead suddenly like this.”
“Indeed, and I assume you have been called in to determine a probable cause of death, not to make irresponsible allegations.�
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“No need to get testy, now, Mr. Milburn. All right, here’s how it looks to me. An aneurysm, probably cerebral. He comes in here last night, pretty late from what you say. He’s feeling not so good, takes off his glasses, hangs up his jacket over here and lies down until he feels better. Only he never does. He hasn’t been dead very long, maybe five or six hours.”
Less than four hours, you old fool, I thought. But not much less.
“But the thing is,” Tillotson continued, “it’s pretty hard to tell for sure with these things. An autopsy would be needed for a definitive answer. Which would also settle the question of suicide.”
“Dr. Tillotson,” I said, “as far as I am concerned, the question of suicide exists only in so far as you yourself have raised it. Do you see any evidence here to indicate suicide? Perhaps you should speak to the police officers about it, since they were first to arrive on the scene.”
He looked annoyed. “Well, of course I’ll have to see what Hatch and Foskett turned up. But what I’m getting at is, since you’re representing the family, what there is of them, do you feel there’s any percentage in further investigation?”
“I, and Dr. West’s brothers too, I’m sure, are concerned only that this sad event be handled properly and promptly. If Officers Hatch and Foskett have found no evidence that Dr. West’s death was anything but natural, and you yourself support this view, I do not think any further investigation is needed, no.”
“In that case, I’m sure we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement,” said Tillotson, grinning.
With a mixture of relief and disgust, I realized he was finally getting to the point. “Indeed, Dr. Tillotson. Perhaps I could offer you fifty dollars for your expenses.” I held out the money, hearing West’s voice in my mind. “Fifty ought to be about right. More than that would only make him curious.”
“I’m much obliged, Mr. Milburn. Now, if we could go into Dr. West’s study, I’ll make out the death certificate. ‘Apparent brain aneurysm,’ I’ll put for cause of death. Will that do?”
“If that’s your professional judgment, certainly,” I replied, unable to keep a chill out of my voice.
Tillotson chuckled as we left the bedroom. “‘Professional judgment.’ Oh, that’s a good one,” he said.
Finally, they were gone and Herbert West was officially dead. I looked at my watch and was startled to see that it was eleven o’clock. West had been dead for four hours. I went back to the bedroom. Tillotson had left his clothing disordered. Clumsily, I rearranged the rumpled shirt, buttoned up his vest and straightened his arms so that his hands lay at his sides. His hands, which had done unimaginable deeds, both wonderful and vile, but would do no more unless I found in myself the resolve to carry out the rest of the work. “Get on with it, Charles,” I whispered, but in truth I felt like weeping.
The first thing I did was telephone Hiram West at his office in Boston. I did not know him well, having met him only once or twice when he was in Arkham. He was a silent man, very different from his bombastic father, but with an alertness that suggested the silence was by no means empty.
“Mr. West, this is Charles Milburn, from Arkham. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, concerning your brother Herbert.”
“Oh yes?”
“He died last night. It appears to have been a brain aneurysm.”
“Were you there? Did you witness his death?”
“No. No, I didn’t. I dined with him last night, but when I returned this morning, he was dead.”
“Why did you go back?”
His manner reminded me of my questioning by the police, but I explained about my fictitious prearranged meeting with West. “I would like to express my condolences,” I added, “and to offer my assistance in making some of the arrangements here, if you wish.”
“That would be helpful, Mr. Milburn. I will telephone our Arkham establishment immediately, to advise them of the situation. Where is the body now?”
We agreed that he would notify Jeremy, the third brother, and arrange for obituary notices in the Boston newspapers. I would do the same in Arkham. The funeral was to be three days hence. I could expect the undertaker’s men to come and collect the body that afternoon.
This business concluded, I turned my attention to the main purpose of this insane enterprise. I had decided that I would begin by carrying West’s body down to the laboratory and that of his double to the bedroom. That way, no matter when the undertaker’s men arrived, the correct corpse would be available. If I was unable to revivify West, or in the event I decided not to do, I would cremate him in his own incinerator.
As I was going down the stairs to the ground floor, I was startled to hear a key being inserted into the front door. It opened to reveal Mrs. Fisk, West’s housekeeper. “Oh, good morning, Mr. Milburn,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you. I had an idea that Dr. West would be having a late morning today, so I thought I would come a little later than usual.”
She was a middle-aged woman, tall and strongly built, with abundant hair that may have at one time been some shade of blonde, but was now a curious mixture of silver and bronze. Her only other noteworthy feature was a pair of blue-green eyes, as remarkable in their way as West’s grey ones.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, Mrs. Fisk,” I began, and told my tale once more.
She was silent for some time after I finished speaking. “I’m very sorry to hear this, Mr. Milburn. He was so young. Would you like me to lay out the body? I know what to do. I suppose West’s Funeral Home will be handling the funeral, but it’s not decent to leave the poor man lying there, is it?”
I had not anticipated this suggestion and felt panicked. This would mean more delays. Already I had barely an hour in which to begin the revivification. Then remembered how awkward I had always found the business of undressing the corpses West and I had worked on. I had already been dreading that part of the operation, especially in view of my emotional entanglements with him. Mrs. Fisk, with her steadiness and experience, was a Godsend.
“Yes, that would be extremely helpful. Dr. West had no family close by.” Forget his brothers, I thought, remembering West’s suggestion that they were planning to kill him. This woman, Andre and I – we were his family.
West’s bedroom was filled with cool, bright light from the north-facing window, tinged a faint green from the leaves of a large chestnut tree outside. He still looked only asleep. I brought in a basin of water and Mrs. Fisk followed with towels and washcloths. Unlike Tillotson’s coarse joviality, which had grated on my nerves, her comments, delivered in a calm, low voice, provided a welcome distraction from the inner turmoil which threatened to overwhelm me as we removed West’s clothing.
“He always wore such beautiful clothes,” Mrs. Fisk said. Look at this vest, now. Pure silk, that is. And the best linen for his shirts. That’s right, just hold him up like that while I take it off.”
I had been correct in thinking that dealing with the body would be easier with her assistance. She sponged poor West down while I held his limbs steady, or turned him this way and that.
“How was he to work for, Mrs. Fisk?” I asked. Having heard so much of horror from West himself the previous night, I was curious as to how she saw him.
“He was wonderful. Well, for one thing he was a very tidy man, so that made it much easier for me. And he was always polite. He wasn’t always friendly, but that was all right. I don’t expect to be friends with the people I work for, but I want them to treat me like a human being.
“He was sort of lonely, wasn’t he? I’d be preparing one of those dinners he gave for his friends, and he’d come into the kitchen to see how things were going. Then he’d offer to stir something or cut something up. ‘I feel at home in kitchens,’ he’d say, and he was a good cook too. And more often than not, he’d get me arguing about something.
“He liked to argue, you know, for fun. At first I thought he was trying to make me mad so I’d quit, for some reason. But that wa
sn’t it. He just wanted me to take the opposite side and start firing back at him. God was one of his favourite subjects. He had a whole list of reasons why God doesn’t exist, and I’d come back with my reasons why he does. Or whether it’s all right to own slaves, or to execute criminals. He’d argue both sides of those, different days. It sure made some jobs go faster. Peeling potatoes, or apples, or shelling peas, for instance. ‘Let’s chop some logic along with these vegetables,’ he’d say. I’ll miss that.”
Her words conjured up a vivid image of the two of them in the kitchen, a pan of potatoes between them, West gesturing eloquently with a paring knife while he argued God out of existence. Despite my sorrow, I smiled. “Yes, he loved a good argument,” I said. “I had a few with him myself.”
“And he wasn’t cheap,” Mrs. Fisk continued, “either with his time or his money. He’d be out day and night, as long as there were sick people that needed doctoring. He worked too hard, I thought. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what killed him. And he didn’t sleep well. That’s always a sign of trouble.”
“How do you know that, Mrs. Fisk?”
“I can’t count the times I’d come in on a morning and find his bed hadn’t been slept in. Now maybe he made it up himself, but I don’t think so. When he was a regular doctor, before the war, I figured it was because he’d been called out all night. But later, after he began doing his special work, that couldn’t have been it, could it?”
“Maybe he had emergencies at the hospital,” I said. And thought, Maybe he was busy in the cellar.
“I don’t think he was a really happy man, Mr. Milburn. Sometimes I thought he was missing something. Oh, I know people said he should have gotten married, but that’s not what I mean. He was missing something inside and didn’t know where to look for it.”
“That’s an interesting thought, Mrs. Fisk.”
“And he didn’t eat right. I don’t think he ever had three meals a day. I’d leave him something for dinner every day before I went home but most times I think Andre had more of it than Dr. West. Look, you can see how skinny he was getting.”
It was true. He was lightly built but had always looked fit and well-muscled. Now his ribs stood out too starkly, and the cords of muscle on his arms and legs.
“He was a good man,” said Mrs. Fisk. “I’ve heard people say he thought he was too good for Arkham, and that he was cold-hearted. But if that was so, I wouldn’t have expected him to bother with my John.”
“What do you mean?”
“My son John. He works at Bolton Worsted. A couple of years ago he caught his hand in one of the machines. I thought he’d lose it for sure. Dr. Billington said it would have to come off because there was too much damage and it would get infected and cause blood poisoning. But I said ‘Wait until I ask Dr. West.’ So Dr. Billington called him and said we would get John out to Arkham to see him. But Dr. West, he said ‘No need for that, I’ll come over in my car right now.’ And he brought John back here and fixed his hand. How? I don’t know how. But John was back at work in a month and you can barely see the scars. And when I asked Dr. West how much I owed him, he said, ‘Nothing at all.’ How about that?”
By now we were finished. West’s body lay on the bed, straight and clean, covered with a sheet.
“Now what do you think he’d want to be buried in?” asked Mrs. Fisk. “He had so many suits of clothes it’s a wonder he could keep track of them.”
“I’ll pick something out before the undertakers come,” I said. West’s double was already wearing a suit. “Definitely a second-best one for him,” West had said, laughing.
Mrs. Fisk finally left, after I had told her the anticipated time of the funeral and asked if she would help with the preparations for the reception which would follow the service. Finally I was alone, and now there was every reason for haste. West had been dead for nearly five hours.
And yet I hesitated still, thinking once more of the things he had done. Two murders, certainly. Even if Clapham-Lee had been insincere and an opportunist, even though he was alive now, after a fashion, West had killed him. And to bring him back to life deliberately in a diminished state, without any of the sustaining ties to others, without the power of reason, surely this was cruelty elevated to a Rococo pitch. But he had given Andre Boudreau’s life back to him too, and Andre seemed to be a happy man, and devoted to West.
Then there were the mindless creatures. Eleven of them, if I could believe what West had told me, including one who had ended as a public spectacle before expiring, and others who must have endured periods of half-existence in the cellar. And what about the ‘composites’ he had mentioned? I had not been able to make myself ask him for details about them, but I had seen some of them in the vision from the window. One who could contrive such abnormalities was himself an abnormality.
“He will fumble in ignorance with the ultimate things,” Quarrington had said in his final assessment of West. He might become a creature of evil, but would be transformed with the help of his friend. I was that friend, the only one who could attempt that transformation, if I chose to do so.
And whatever West had done, his servants loved him. Mrs. Fisk, that good, sensible woman, had said unequivocally, “He was a good man.” But would she have so described him had she known what I knew? Or if West had not paid her as generously as he had? She had seen him heal her son without expectation of payment. But did that deed negate the others?
What balance could I use to weigh his heart?
Thoroughly confused and troubled, I went once more into the bedroom and looked at his face. The remoteness of death had begun to take over his features. Soon, I thought, he will be as marble. It’s now or never.
Where is he now? I saw him inject the drug. I watched the mechanism that was his living body slow and stop working. Here lie his flesh and bones, but the thing that made him Herbert West, the doctor, the necromancer, my friend, where is that? What is that?
Despite my urgency, this conundrum did not yield. It resisted me, as it had resisted better men, philosophers, mystics and poets, throughout the ages. “Behold, I show you a mystery.” There was no point in hammering against that door. Either I had faith or I did not.
“It can’t be just mechanism, Herbert!” I spoke aloud in the silent room. “If you were standing here you’d know it too, God damn it!” I was angry – at West for putting me in this predicament, at the world for its imperfections, its cruelty, the flaw at the heart of things that manifested itself in the corruption of Tillotson, the falseness of Clapham-Lee, the perfidy of West’s brothers, in West himself and his transgressions; finally, in the corpse of this young man, dead before his time and by his own hand.
I’ll do it! I decided. If West was less than perfect, so also was the world he had inhabited. If I could, I would restore him to it as I had promised. The world deserved to have West in it. “He must be transformed and unified,” Quarrington had said. Well, I knew of only one way to achieve that.
Once he was alive again, his fate would be out of my hands. Perhaps he would only die again. Or maybe he would be free to find that missing piece of himself, to seek his own completion and face the consequences of his choices, including John Hocks. I was only an instrument, not the maker. I laid my hand on his chest. “I’ll bring you back, Herbert, if I can. I swear it.”
First we had to descend into the cellar, the abyss from which he would be reborn or in which he would be utterly destroyed. I ran downstairs, unlocked and opened the secret door, fumbled in the blackness for the electrical switch. Then I climbed back up the many steps, no longer hurrying, telling myself to conserve my strength. I wrapped the sheet around West’s body and picked him up. Strangely, the corpse had not yet begun to stiffen. As I shifted it to get a better grip, his head lolled against my shoulder and I smelled the perfume of narcissus from his hair, and from the sheet he was wrapped in, the scent of lavender.
West was not a large man, but despite his recent loss of weight he was a heavy burden f
or a fellow with a game leg who was not particularly athletic. By the time I had negotiated the stairs to the ground floor, I was breathing hard, and as I reached the cellar I was afraid that I would drop him. At last we were in the laboratory. I set him down on the table with relief and rested before I went into the annexe. “I’m going to fetch your fetch, Herbert,” I said, with a laugh that surprised me.
The gangster was about the same size as West, but seemed heavier. Of course, now I was climbing up, dragging the dead weight against the pull of gravity. I was also squeamishly aware that this fellow had been dead not for several hours, but for several months. Despite West’s assurance that he had done “a first-class job of embalming, guaranteed leak-proof,” I felt my nerves recoil as the corpse settled against me. It was as though it radiated deadness, that its state was contagious. There were no lingering perfumes here, only a cold stench of the preservatives with which he had been filled.
I had to rest twice on the way up, propping the corpse on the banister to reduce the weight on my arms. Finally, I deposited it carefully on West’s bed. Mindful of Mrs. Fisk’s admonitions about decency, I arranged the limbs and straightened the clothing. West’s second-best suit was far better than most people’s best ones, and the fellow looked quite splendid when I had finished. West’s gold-rimmed spectacles gleamed on the dead face, the lenses reflecting blandly the cool light from the windows. From a little distance he looked almost uncannily like Herbert West. Satisfied, I returned to the laboratory.
The apparatus was assembled and ready. The flask of violet-coloured fluid (the essence of Herbert West?) stood nearby. “Here we are again, Herbert,” I said, “in the laboratory, about to begin the work.”
I unwrapped his body and laid it straight on the table, arms at his sides. Now it was unmistakably a corpse, like so many others I had seen in this place. His skin was cool. Not cold yet, but strangely cool, like kid leather over the bones. His flesh had already begun to shrink and settle, loosening from the bones, revealing the hollow of the abdominal cavity and the narrow valleys between the ribs. His head rolled a little to one side and as I tried to straighten it, I saw that one of his eyes had slipped slightly open, showing a sliver of gummed white and giving his face an idiotic, leering expression. Even his hair felt dead. Repelled, I pulled my hands away. This was no longer my friend. This was only the dross left behind after the vital spirit had departed. Its future was not life but corruption.
I remembered a disgusting story by the mad Edgar Poe, for whose writings West had an inexplicable fondness. He had insisted on reading this tale to me once, complete with theatrical effects. It was titled, if I recall, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” A man at the point of death was hypnotized (although Poe said ‘mesmerized,’ using the term current in his day) and so remained sentient even after death had occurred. After several months, during which he was in a state of ‘sleep-waking’ or trance, the hypnotist for some reason awakened him, at which point, exclaiming repeatedly that he was dead, the unfortunate man dissolved, all in a minute (and here I quote, the phrase having stuck in my mind), into “a nearly liquid mass of loathsome – of detestable putrescence.” Surely that was the only fate possible for the thing that lay before me.
I wanted to run from the lab and the house, to leave Arkham and never come back. But I could not. If I abandoned him now, he would haunt me forever. I could not escape this obligation. With something like a sob, I unstoppered the flask and poured the fluid into the reservoir of the apparatus.
The few times I had performed the delicate operation of inserting the cannulas into the correct blood vessels, West had been at my side to help and instruct me. Now he was the subject, I the experimenter, and an error on my part would mean permanent death for him.
I checked the apparatus, making sure that all the connections were properly made and secured, the instruments assembled and ready to hand. Minutes were slipping by, and each one was precious. Each one’s passage might mean an irreparable loss to him or increase the chances of the arrival of outsiders.
But I could not bring myself to begin. This was a process which, once started, had to continue, to success or failure. Surely it would be a failure, I thought, wearily. How could this collection of glass and rubber, steel and chemicals, bring a dead man back to life, no matter what I did with it? Yes, I had witnessed such transformations in this very place, but never one that had been entirely successful. Never mind that Andre Boudreau was supposedly an example of success; I could not be certain that the fellow wasn’t deluded, and I knew that West lied without hesitation when it suited him. What good would it do, I asked myself, to mutilate his corpse, to make it vibrate and flail its limbs and utter garbled sounds? Did I want to see his face (now so still, like a locked casket of wonders) twist into grotesqueness, his eyes grow muddled with agony as he tottered on the brink of the abyss?
The alchemists had spoken of exactly this moment – the beginning of the Great Work, a perilous enterprise which could not be hurried but which, once begun, had to be pursued to its end. The instrument had to be worthy of the power that wielded it. I did not think I was worthy. I had been pressed into service, shaped quickly and roughly, and here I was, my materials ready around me, but my hands trembling, my will vacillating and weak.
Did the alchemist ever succumb to despair, I wondered, as his candles dimmed in the cold dawn light? Did he look appalled at his crucibles and alembics, the powders he had ground with his gritty pestle, the liquids he had distilled in his stained flasks? When all was said and done, those things were dead matter. He could move them here and there, heat them, mix them with this or that, but without the intervention of a mystery, in the end the stuff would be as dead as before, no matter how much he had made it fizz and bubble in the fever pitch of excitement, with the bellows labouring and the furnace glowing like the fires of hell. He did not possess the elusive element, only believed that it existed in the world, to be pursued, courted, hunted. He had to give his whole life to that effort. His hopes, fears, sweat, frenzy, tears and despair were necessary ingredients in the search. They had to be incorporated into the work, or it would come to nothing. Unless I was prepared to take the dark road equipped only with my tiny flickering flame of love and faith; unless I was prepared myself to perish in the effort, I had no business here.
Having relished this unhappy irony to its fullest, I began to pray. It was a formless prayer, without an object, without style, almost without words, merely a sincere and anguished intention that my fingers and eyes and tired brain be equal to the appointed task. I bowed my head over the table as I murmured, as if to ask my dead friend for the help he could no longer give, and noticed that in my haste I had spilled some of the revivifying fluid. A small pool of it lay on the surface of the table, near West’s left hand. Without thinking, I dipped my fingers in it and brought them to my mouth.
The stuff tasted of salt, of metals, of blood. I felt it too, as a warmth and vibration on my tongue. A wind of energy swept through me, blowing away the weariness of the sleepless night and the long, anxious day. The air in the room rippled and glowed. The emerald on my finger burned with a radiant fire. In my mind I found a knowledge of the veins and arteries, their complexities and those of the tissues and structures in which they were embedded. Suddenly I laughed out loud. I was the chosen instrument, and here before me was my material.
For the first time I could look at his naked body without constraint, as though it were my own. Now he looked like an image of himself, his skin glowing faintly golden under the incandescent lights. I had been brought to this place to do these things for him. At this moment, I was nearer to him than a brother, a lover, a friend, as near as his mother when she began the labour of giving birth to him. I laid my hands on his chest and ran them down the length of his torso. I could feel the link, alive between us.
“Here I am,” I said aloud, neither knowing nor caring to whom I spoke. “Use me.” I kissed him to seal my promise, and began.
I t
ilted his head back to expose the throat. Then I picked up a scalpel. I felt as though someone else’s hands guided mine as I made the incision, unthinkingly applying the force needed to part the tissues. There was the jugular vein, a dull blue cable embedded in the flesh. I picked up the cannula and inserted it, feeling the slight resistance and give as it slid inside. Once it was secured, I located the femoral artery, made the incision unhesitatingly and slid in the arterial cannula. All was now ready. Nothing could be gained by waiting, and much might be lost.
I opened the main valve and activated the pump. Into his body I introduced his own essence, watching the pressure meters, watching the hitherto empty flask fill with his red blood. It did not take long before the fluid reservoir was nearly empty. I closed the valves, withdrew the invading instruments and sewed up the two small incisions as he had shown me, wincing every time I pushed the needle through the skin. But he showed no sign of feeling it. He was still dead.
Now his immediate fate was out of my hands. I felt dizzy with relief, but could not disengage myself. I remained with him, talking to him, telling him that I was here, I had done what he had wanted me to do, I was waiting for him to come back. I called him by his name, I called him brother and beloved friend. I was caught between hope and sorrow, but it was too early to mourn or to rejoice. So why not hope? He had been dead less than six hours and the means of his death had been such that the body’s mechanisms were intact. But another part of me watched with sorrow, thinking: This is like a dream in which I found my heart’s desire, but when I awoke, it was gone. Remembering my final promise to him, I took the pistol from its drawer and laid it nearby, hoping I would not need to use it; indeed, I did not think I would be able to.
Then a strange thing happened. I had a sensation of wearing clothes that did not fit me, but it was more fundamental than that. My body did not fit me. My vision, too was disturbed, as though my familiar spectacles had been turned into powerful magnifying lenses. Then something fell into place, and I was – myself? The air in the room rippled again, and I was looking down at my own face. It was myself lying dead I was looking at. No, I was Herbert West, bending over the body of his dead friend, Charles Milburn.
We were together then, as we had never been before. As I laid my hands on his body I could feel his hands on mine. As I watched his face, I could see my own, lying still in death beneath me. In the time out of time as I waited for life to return to him, a door opened in the fabric of the world and my essence merged with his. I thought his thoughts and my own in the same moment.
There was only one thing to do, there was only one person, only one in the whole world, who could do it. And he lay dead in this place I had created for my work. This was my metier, the body on the table was the instrument I played, and the work was approaching its resolution and finale.
Who am I? Lately it feels like I have a raging mob in my mind. I am plagued by that other, who calls himself my friend, but keeps reminding me of things I do not want to know. I already know everything I need to – I use the things of the world as my mind tells me to use them, to further knowledge. What can I do besides this?
Why must I keep thinking about what he would say? He is not a scientist. He lives by his nerve impulses and jumbled emotions. “But, Herbert, do they suffer while you do that to them? How can you do that?” Well, I can and I do. They do not suffer or if they do, I know how to deal with it – a snip here, a nick there and their sufferings end. So why do these useless thoughts gather around me like the Furies gathered around Oedipus? If I can’t sleep, soon I won’t be able to work, and I can’t sleep without nightmares. Or drugs, which I know will be the ruin of me in the end.
Which way do I go now? Tell me that, my opinionated friend. My colleagues and my own brothers conspire against me. Those things I made in France haunt my sleep and Hocks waits outside my window. And Clapham-Lee… Oh but what a piece of work he was when I finished with him! How beautifully vacant was his gaze! But the way he tried to cling to me when I was turning him loose… I had to hit him to make him let go. He was like a frightened little child on the first day of school…
No! Why must I remember this stuff? It’s all his influence. Charles Milburn, that overdeveloped conscience on legs. I should have finished him off long ago, in 1914…
Damn it, why do these thoughts insist on crowding in, unproductive meanderings that waste my time and energy? What will I do, now that he is dead? All right, but with luck maybe he won’t be dead for long. And if he is, I will just have to find another assistant, or go on alone. There is no one like him. Now what does that mean? He wasn’t all that clever, really. He kept muddling up his thoughts with emotions and getting sidetracked. I shouldn’t have listened to Q. I should have found someone with a knowledge of scientific principles and methods. But there’s no one like him. No one who knows me as he does. Without him I have no mirror. Yes, and I can run free in the world without his tiresome scruples to weigh me down.
“Run then, until you have run your course. Without him you are a mirror reflecting blackness, a self-consuming fire, a dead stone. Don’t you know who he is? When all roads lead you to the abyss, Herbert West, he is your bridge, your only hope. I told you this in 1911, and now I’m telling you again.”
Damn you too, Quarrington, and your metaphors and crazy notions! Wait, something’s happening here. Yes, he’s alive!
I came to myself with a quivering jolt. The air around me sparkled with iridescence. It was July of 1923 and the body of Herbert West lay on the table before me. I was Charles Milburn again, and something was happening. A miracle was happening. Forty-seven minutes exactly had elapsed since I had mingled the revivifying fluid with his blood. Now I thought I felt a slight flutter under my fingers when I held them to his wrist. No, there was nothing. Seconds later, another flutter, then a third. With shaking hands, I groped for West’s stethoscope, clamped it to my ears and applied the business end to his chest. Yes! There were heartbeats, faint and far apart, but unmistakable.
Exultation swept through me. I felt my own heartbeats pounding in my ears. Resolutely, I ignored them and concentrated on the matter at hand. I must not fail now, through carelessness induced by excitement.
“Once there is a pulse,” West had instructed, “it is crucial that the subject begins to breathe. If respiration does not begin spontaneously, it must be induced.”
I watched for signs. There was no movement of his chest and the mirror I held to his lips remained unclouded. There was only one thing to do. I placed my left hand on his forehead and my right under his jaw. I held his nostrils closed and opened his mouth. I placed my mouth hard on his and breathed steadily once, waited a second or two, and breathed once more. Nothing. I repeated this several more times. In between breaths, I felt for his pulse. It was still there, faint but discernable. Finally, as I inhaled in preparation for another breath, I saw his chest begin to rise and fall. He had a pulse. He was breathing. He was alive.
I felt a wildness growing inside me. I wanted to shout and caper. I wanted to run up into the street and yell, “He’s alive! He was dead and now he’s alive and I don’t care what any of you might think!” But of course I did none of these things. I was Charles Milburn again, and a dreadful anxiety warred with my elation. I had, for the moment, done everything I could. Now I could only watch, hoping that my efforts would not be proved vain by a relapse into death, or worse, a state of subnormal life from which I would have to free him. Quarrington’s prediction that he would die two deaths would be as good then as if he lived another thirty years.
For an unguessable time I hovered over him. Already the signs of death were receding. Once more he looked only asleep. Despite the struggles of conscience I had experienced, despite my ambivalence about what I was doing, some innocent part of me was full of an unreserved joy as I watched. For the first time, I indulged freely in hope.
I grew dizzy, as though I was being drawn out of myself, becoming lighter than air. A fragrance filled the subterranean room
, of the dewy earth on a summer morning, of rain on parched earth. The light glowed intensely golden, as though the sun itself had descended into this underworld. The body before me, Herbert West’s body, was transfigured, made more beautiful than he had ever been in life. His skin grew lightly flushed, as though his blood ran with exultant vitality. His hair was pure gold.
“It’s the red dawn!” I cried. “He is made anew; he was washed clean by his death, whiter than snow, and now he lives again, filled with the elixir vitae. Here is the quintessence, the magistery!”
I was with him, as though we shared the same blood and breath. I had given him my life in a great wave of love and hope. “It’s enough,” I babbled, as the room spun around me. “I’ve done everything now and it’s enough, thank God, it’s enough. Herbert, say something! Speak to me, please speak to me! Show me that you’re alive!” I bent over him, grasped his shoulders and gazed once more into his living face.
His eyes moved under the closed lids. He lifted his left hand as though to brush aside some obstacle. Then he opened his eyes, those ice-grey eyes I had thought I would never see again after the final slide into the unfocussed stare of death. But I did not know what he saw. I did not think it was me. His lips moved, silently articulating words that I could have sworn were, “Only now…”
Then he spoke aloud, to whom I did not know, except that it was not to me. He stared past me in a way that would have troubled me had I not already been troubled, and said, “Fire and darkness, the sword, the putrescence… Then the twisted road… the place of life in death. Oh no, I will not speak of it. Not to anyone.”
He closed his eyes and appeared to fall asleep.
The Friendship of Mortals Page 32
