The Resurrectionist
Page 6
I will be leaving for a travel excursion that may take a great deal of time to complete.
Your Brother, S.
* * *
August 1900
Bernard,
I must express my gratitude, insomuch that your foreboding of my certain demise can only attest to your love and most heartfelt concern for me. I had time to consider in depth that which you have instructed me, years ago, regarding what to pay heed to whilst I continue my work further. I trust I will be in your debt and I thank you––though I admit I would be grateful if in matters of peril and premonitions of gloom that you were not a sophist but indeed a fool.
Dear brother––you preserved your life, you coveted it; it was impossible for you to continue in medicine with sickness and death all around, you needed to pursue a quieter science––I understand.
You steadily follow the guidance of the learned; you read what you have been instructed to read. You are like a child at practice on a piano. You balance a stick on the backs of your hands just along the knuckles while you play, ensuring proper posture. Then you play something bland and unimaginative; however, the stick will never fall to the floor, bravo! When I perform, the stick falls, then a symphony flows from me.
—Black
* * *
October 1901
Bernard,
I am no longer performing, or traveling. I now indulge in the luxury and leisure of my home. I am no longer in the service of man.
You must know these creations can mean nothing to you nor any other educated man as they meant nothing to me until they were there, on a table before me. Their fatal wounds visible, the hollow in their gaze that no taxidermist could create. No artist or magician is able to conjure the sincerity that only life can bring to the eyes. Bernard, I tell you, I now have them. They live.
I understand if you have concerns for my welfare. In time, after my research is complete, I will unveil my discovery. I am as confident as the sun is bright that you won’t be disappointed. All is progressing well with little disruption; I pray heaven not change that, I cannot afford a disturbance. My time now is vital, and how long I need I could never know.
I trust that you have, by this point, received the gift I sent to Samuel and I hope that all is in good order with you and my most gifted child. His well-being is certainly my greatest wish, and a promising future I am certain is assured whilst he remains in your steady care.
Please forgive my flattery as I am writing on a rare occasion of delight and rejoicing and all seems wonderful; the only dread, I suppose, is that I am restrained to the primitive exercise of poets and dreamers: scratching on paper, splashing ink, fumbling to communicate my joy, my bliss and exaltation. Finally, Bernard, I have finally come close enough to see that it can be achieved. If I could I wouldn’t write another stroke, I would grab hold of you and show you. Against your will and in defiance of your doubts, I would throw you to the floor of my laboratory so that you would gaze up as I did and be prostrate before it as I was and you would marvel as I do now.
Now surely you understand the meaning of my queer gift.
—S. Black
In 1908, Spencer Black entered negotiations with a New York publishing house, Sotsky and Son, for publication of his masterwork, The Codex Extinct Animalia. Only six copies were completed before Dr. Black withdrew the project and abruptly disappeared. The reasons for his sudden departure remain unknown.
Dr. Black had garnered many enemies during his career in the sciences, not the least of whom were the administration and colleagues of his former employer, the Academy of Medicine. Dr. Joab Holace, for example, never stopped attacking Black’s credibility and legitimacy. His articles were published in many well-known papers: London’s Royal Society of Surgeons Review in 1891, the New York Medical Journal in 1894, 1896, 1897, and again in 1908, with specific mention of Black’s book.
Dr. Spencer Quack is going to loft a fairy tale that can barely serve as adequate kindle for the fire. I have not read it, nor do I wish to. I am certain that the ink used to describe the creatures from his own madness is a waste of resources. His book will be nothing more than an extravagant and expensive joke the fool will play on himself.
—Joab A. Holace M.D., N.Y.C.M.
(The N.Y. Medical Journal, 1908)
After 1908, Alphonse continued alone in the strange practices of his father. In 1917, he was caught butchering small animals in a barn twenty-five miles north of Philadelphia; he was arrested and committed to a mental asylum. He remained there for eleven years, receiving only one visitor, in 1920: his younger brother Samuel. In 1929 the building burned down from a fire caused by lightning. During the storm, many of the patients escaped. Alphonse was among them.
From 1933 to 1947 Alphonse allegedly kept a private zoo, where he housed many of his own creations. He inherited his father’s fortune and also gained his own tremendous wealth by claiming to be able to restore youth and beauty for an astounding price. Nevertheless, little is known of Alphonse or his work. Like his father, he was extremely secretive.
As for Spencer Black, nothing is known of his whereabouts after 1908. There were no more public appearances; there were no more surgeries. He simply vanished. In 1925, his home in Philadelphia was turned into a small museum, where docents offered tours and lectures explaining his life and work. The museum closed in 1930. The property changed owners several times until 1968, when the last owners suddenly moved out, complaining of strange noises. The building is presently condemned.
The final clue to Dr. Spencer Black’s fate is a letter addressed to his brother, Bernard, sent seven years after their last correspondence. It is the last known document written by Black. He had just returned from a six-month excavation and research trip from the northernmost point of Greenland. The letter indicates that he had been actively pursing some bizarre treatment for his wife, Elise. Prior to receiving the letter, Bernard had no knowledge that Elise had been burned in a fire, or that Spencer had performed any kind of surgery on her. Bernard shared the letter with the police before embarking on a trip to find his brother.
February 1908
Bernard,
I have no choice but to conclude the fallacy of my previous studies, however painful it is to accept. I am writing you tonight to give the deepest thanks and offer the most sincere apology a man such as I can manage. Deluded by my own aims, I could not heed your most eloquent and obvious warning. I could not listen well enough to hear that the future of my work had been foretold by the mistakes of my predecessors, men I hadn’t the courage to name as mentors … especially you.
I now languish in the solitude of this letter, lamenting. Your laughter at my expense or your scorn would be a salve upon my mind. Nothing can help me, I know; it was I who was the cause of my peril.
I cannot be certain if you will ever receive this letter, nor is there much I would expect to arise from it if you could read it now. I can be certain, however, that if any news of me arrives to you it will be this letter and this letter alone. I have hidden my notes for you to retrieve. Please, brother, help me keep this from the sleepless man, my son, Alphonse.
I fear you know of what I am to write, but I fervently hope that you do not. I pray that my work, my labor of the past ten years has exceeded any science or philosophy that the learned shall ever endeavor, or be called upon, to examine. If that is so, then perhaps it will end here with me—this box that I have opened. I have succeeded, I have done what none other before me has.
I write only to you. I know that by now I am wretched in your esteem and that you haven’t even a decent man’s regard for me; I had once hoped that, perhaps, before we were in the grave, we could once again be friends … I know that cannot be.
My beloved and eternally precious Elise … how beautiful she was. I did love Elise dearly, but that is not why I ventured to perform this wicked work. I have butchered many men; all are innocent when they are on my table, all are exquisite.
My purpose has exceeded my function
, I am afraid. I have spent my life, the vainglory of my youth, consumed and drunken with the most sadistic of all exploits—study. How can one dare travel into the unknown? Something quite terrible is waiting there, a destruction that would not be mine had I not sought after it.
There was a time in the world when nature wore a different mask; since I set out to discover her secrets, my trials have only increased. What struggles, attempting to see that original face, nature’s original design. Now destiny has fulfilled her carefully plotted plan, my eventual and total ruin. Now she laughs and I will hear that mother of nature every night until my time arrives; I will hear her calling. That wretch, that filth-soaked thing whose foulness is exceeded only by her demon song.
Death, so terrible an object; you look away from it, fearing that it may see you and call your name. I have seen many die, scream, and many more writhe in anguish at the hands of disease, injury or healing. I am shamed to confess that when a patient screamed I was relieved some––I know their agony was less than what it could have been. But know this: if they knew what horrible things were available to them, they would take comfort in their own suffering.
We are living creatures, and within us is more than we know; the seed of life and death, together. It’s sewn into our bodies at birth; it can live and die without us. I have seen it and nurtured it and fought and defended it. I have sacrificed and bled and now I, too, will perish for it, because of it––I know not how to destroy it. I can hear her, that sound––I can hear the screaming––soaring in the darkness, searching for me. I can hear Hell calling my name. Elise, my dear wife! I resolved to save her. I chose to give her a great gift, an ancient past resurrected. She was a descendant of a powerful species, the Fury. Elise is now no longer the same woman, nor is she the one in the cracked body of burned flesh. She has emerged, she has awoken like the cicada.
I learned many things, I wield a mighty sword now. I have taken her, as a worm, an opium-addicted wretch, writhing in a scorched body; listen to me Bernard, I write only truths. She now pounds the air with her wings and bellows Hell’s song in hunger. I baptized her; with my knife, I saved her … again, I saved her.
The last stone I unturned in my quest was the tombstone … Come quickly.
—S. Black.
Bernard never returned to his wife, Emma, in New York.
IN 1908, FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF Gray’s Anatomy, DR. SPENCER BLACK ARRANGED FOR THE PUBLICATION OF HIS Codex Extinct Animalia. JUST SIX COPIES WERE PRINTED BEFORE DR. BLACK WITHDREW THE PROJECT AND DISAPPEARED; THE BOOK WAS NEVER DISTRIBUTED, AND THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF MEDICAL ANTIQUITIES HAS THE ONLY KNOWN EXISTING COPY. WHY DR. BLACK STOPPED PRINTING SO ABRUPTLY (AND THEN VANISHED) REMAINS UNKNOWN.
THE BOOK IS AN ANATOMICAL REFERENCE MANUAL, A COMMON ENDEAVOR AMONG NATURALISTS AT THE TIME. IT HIGHLIGHTS THE ANATOMIES OF ELEVEN DIFFERENT SPECIES THAT ARE, AS INDICATED BY THE TITLE PAGE, PROPOSED TO BE EXTINCT. AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH CHAPTER, DR. BLACK DISCUSSES KEY POINTS OF INTEREST REGARDING THE RESPECTIVE SPECIES. ALTHOUGH HE SOMETIMES MENTIONS FINDING SPECIMENS (OR THE PARTIAL REMAINS OF A SPECIMEN) IN HIS TRAVELS, IT IS GENERALLY BELIEVED THAT BLACK FABRICATED ALL THESE CREATURES BY HAND. THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE SPECIMENS REMAINS UNKNOWN; MOST WERE LIKELY DESTROYED, BUT IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOME ARE IN THE COLLECTIONS OF AS-YET-UNKNOWN INDIVIDUALS.
AT TIMES DR. BLACK’S WRITING IS SCATTERED AND DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND. THERE IS A CERTAIN HYSTERICAL TONE TO HIS DESCRIPTIONS THAT WAS CHARACTERISTIC OF BLACK IN HIS LATER YEARS.
THE
CODEX EXTINCT
ANIMALIA
A STUDY OF THE LESSER KNOWN
SPECIES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
DESIGNED AS A REFERENCE FOR
ALL PRACTITIONERS IN SCIENCE,
MEDICINE, AND PHILOSOPHY
BY
SPENCER EDWARD BLACK, M.D.
WITH
comprehensive illustrations and explanatory
texts regarding the musculature and skeletal
systems: additional viscera of select animals
NEW YORK
SOTSKY AND SON
DR. BLACK CHOOSES THE SPHINX FOR THE FIRST CHAPTER, POSSIBLY AS A REFERENCE TO HER FAMED RIDDLE. FAILURE TO ANSWER THE RIDDLE CORRECTLY RESULTED IN INSTANT DEATH. THERE IS, HOWEVER, NOTHING ENIGMATIC ABOUT BLACK’S INTENTIONS. KNOWING THAT MOST OF HIS SPECIMENS WOULD LIKELY BE DESTROYED OR HIDDEN AWAY IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS, HE CREATED THE CODEX AS A LEGACY OF HIS RESEARCH—AND, PERHAPS, AS A MAP FOR FUTURE SCIENTISTS TO FOLLOW.
IN ADDITION TO A BRIEF INTRODUCTION, EACH CHAPTER FEATURES A STYLIZED DRAWING––A VISION OF WHAT BLACK THOUGHT THE CREATURES MAY HAVE LOOKED LIKE.
* * *
SPHINX ALATUS
* * *
* * *
KINGDOM Animalia
PHYLUM Vertebrata
CLASS Echidnæ
ORDER Praesidium
FAMILY Felidæ
GENUS Sphinx
SPECIES Sphinx alatus
MANY DETAILS REGARDING the heraldry of the sphinx are still unknown. These creatures varied widely throughout the African continent. In Egypt, there are great statues of this animal—the sphinx sol, the protector and scourge of Ra, the sun god. Sphinxes are shown bearing a ram’s head (a criosphinx) or a goat’s head. These species are typically depicted without wings; I suspect that, like many flightless birds, the sphinx lost its need for flight because of geographical isolation. This evolution likely occurred before the animal’s arrival in Egypt or Africa; however, I cannot determine whence it originated.
The famed sphinx of Thebes appears strikingly similar to the specimen in my record. Though few in number, the species had a developed human mind with an advanced intellect; they were more than likely fierce and successful predators.
THE BELIEF IN THE SIREN OR MERMAID WAS NOT UNCOMMON IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. MANY NATURALISTS AND TAXONOMISTS MAINTAINED THAT SUCH A CREATURE WAS PLAUSIBLE. DR. BLACK HIMSELF STATES THAT THE OCEANS WERE FAR TOO VAST TO REACH A DECISIVE CONCLUSION. IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT, FOR ALL THE SCIENTISTS OPPOSED TO BLACK’S RESEARCH, THERE WERE MANY WHO SUPPORTED HIM, AND EVEN MADE SIMILAR CLAIMS OF THEIR OWN.
* * *
SIREN OCEANUS
* * *
* * *
KINGDOM Animalia
PHYLUM Vertebrata
CLASS Mammichthyes
ORDER Caudata
FAMILY Sirenidæ
GENUS Siren
SPECIES Siren oceanus
THE SIREN, NEREID, AND mermaid are oft confused. The folklore of these creatures predates the conventions of the scientific method; nonetheless, the legends denote an accurate account of some of the evolutionary aspects regarding their species. I will begin with the homogenous nature of them as a species, differing only as dogs may differ in breed––albeit significant differences, indeed.
The siren was described as a bird in ancient times; only later did it become a woman of the water. There was, at some point in the past, a need to make specific distinctions between the water-human and the bird-human animals. Whether it was an error in classification or that the siren evolved into an aquatic mammal is not well understood.
Nereids, or naiades, share many of the traits of the deeper ocean-born species, but they are far more human than the mermaid; and, in many cases, they are nearly entirely human, save the distinct physiological aquatic attributes. This would explain their geographic preference for shallow, fresh water.
The mermaid (the female of the species Siren oceanus) was less common and certainly more elusive than the siren. It breathed underwater without any need to surface. I speculate the possibility of several variants of the species that exhibit more mammalian traits and therefore required the occasional breath, as do the dolphin and whale. The task of discovering any such animals intact by means of good fortune alone are nearly impossible.
This animal would need to have a fully evolved and substantially unique respiratory system; similar to the gills of a fish but conforming to the st
ructure of the human rib cage. If my theory is correct and there was once indeed an air-breathing mermaid, this would suggest the existence of a vast variety of species still occupying many shapes, sizes, and functions in the depths of our waters.
The pelvis and femur would be robust and generous in length. Considering the large size of the lumbar vertebrae and the thickness of the caudal and anal spines, this particular species of mermaid would have exhibited a greater agility and speed than nearly any other sea animal hitherto documented. The superficial tendons weave over the muscular tissues, allowing for greater tension, strength, and resistance. The presence of massive muscular tissue supporting all the fin spine regions would grant this animal superiority: a champion in the water.