Pompey stepped forward and presented a silver tray on which operating tools were arranged. Mirablis picked up one of the surgical knives and, without hesitation, began to cut away the skin over the left common carotid. Once it was exposed, he skillfully severed it and lifted a portion of the artery out of the body and quickly inserted a metal cannula into the opening. He quickly sealed the hollow tube and moved to repeat the operation on the right carotid. After that, he made a drain incision in the right internal jugular.
Pompey set aside the instrument tray and signed for Sasquatch to bring forward a five-gallon jug of the elixir. The mute then filled two oversized syringes with the greenish yellow fluid and affixed them to the carotid tubes. Then, with Pompey on the left, Sasquatch on the right, the plungers on the syringes were slowly but firmly pushed home, forcing nearly a gallon of elixir re-vitae into the subject’s veins. There was a burst of black, oxygen-depleted blood from the dead man’s jugular as it was displaced by the invading liquid. The smell that accompanied the expulsion was a familiar one for Mirablis, but unpleasant nonetheless. He coughed thickly and daubed his upper lip with a mixture of lanolin and rose oil in order to better tolerate the stench. He then methodically repeated his drainage procedures on the femoral arteries, draining blood from the right leg while forcing elixir into the left. The old blood collected in the gutters gouged into the table’s surface and flowed sluggishly into pails positioned under its drains.
Mirablis walked back to the head of the table, lifting the cadaver’s hands to make sure gravity had done its job properly. He paused to marvel over how refined the subject’s hands were. Not the sort one would imagine finding on the wrists of a farmer. But there was no point in dwelling on whom or what this man had been. He would be able to tell him all these things himself soon enough—providing he survived the revivification process with his wits and language center intact.
He whistled tunelessly to himself as he exposed the axillary arteries in both the left and right arms. While he was waiting for the last of the blood to drain into metal catch basins, he busied himself with replacing the crow-pecked eye with a new one. Luckily for their friend, one of the elixir’s properties was its ability to prevent tissue rejection. And when it came to organ transplants—he could not hope to be in better hands, aged though they were. Even though Mirablis was no longer as young as he once was, he was still capable enough to splice optic nerves. However, he did not feel nearly as confident in regard to the subject’s broken neck. From his experiments and observations, he had learned that while the revivification process returned the dead to life and imparted them with a vitality that bordered on the immortal, it had its limit. And damage to the spinal cord and brain after revival seemed to be it. But that decision would have to wait after he’d finished purging the body.
Mirablis moved back and forth, checking and double-checking the limbs, massaging them vigorously to ensure the elixir was spread evenly throughout the emptied veins. It was exceptionally important that the hands and the face were thoroughly saturated; any discoloration in the subject’s body and legs could be easily disguised, but the hands and the face were necessary in order for him to pass as normal. Bandages and masks invariably called attention to themselves, and gloves interfered with dexterity. Besides, physical appearance had everything to do with how the subject would be received by the public. Something as grotesque as Sasquatch was good enough for testing out theories and techniques, but it would be of little use in winning the hearts and minds of the hoi polloi.
Mirablis motioned for Pompey to roll the corpse over to one side so he could inject dosages of the elixir re-vitae directly into its buttocks. Without natural circulation to speed the fluid on its way through the body, he had discovered it was better to be safe than sorry. He eyed the corpse’s slightly distended belly then thumped it experimentally with his thumb and forefinger before selecting a long, slender trocar and inserting it through the navel. There was a sound similar to that of air escaping from a child’s balloon, immediately followed by a strong, foul odor that forced Mirablis to turn away from the work at hand. Once he had recomposed himself, he pumped an infusion of elixir into the abdomen via a large hypodermic.
Satisfied with his handiwork, Mirablis stepped away from the body. Pompey silently moved in and, taking up the needle and thread from the instrument tray, began to suture the veins together again then return them to their rightful places with the exact same care he gave to darning his master’s socks.
Mirablis pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to mop his brow as he sat down on a nearby chair. Though he was tired, his energy was still high. He was very excited about the prospects for this subject. In many ways, this was the ideal specimen. He desperately needed this one to succeed; he knew that this was very likely his last chance. He was close to a century in age. He’d outlived virtually everyone he’d ever known, with the exception of Pompey—and Pompey didn’t count, really, since he technically died forty years ago.
He could only hope that the new subject did not share the same unfortunate side effects of revivification as Pompey and Sasquatch. And, if he did return to the land of the living, that he could use the tongue in his head to do more than scream. The last three revivals all had to be dismantled because of their unfortunate tendency to do nothing more than shriek and claw at their own flesh—and anything else that moved. To bring back a walking, talking, reasoning white man from beyond the grave was all he needed to finally be able to announce to the world: “This is my gift to you, and it is good!”
Pompey tapped his master on the shoulder, awaking the old man from a doze.
“Ah! Finished already, are we?” Mirablis said, peering at the sutures that ran along the dead man’s neck, thighs and inner arms. “Excellent work, Pompey! Excellent! I’ll make a surgeon of you yet! You may return him to the tank.”
Pompey glanced at the unnatural position of the body’s neck then back at Mirablis.
“No, I did not forget, Pompey!” Mirablis said with a dry laugh. “I am not that old a fool! I’ve decided not to repair the neck surgically and run the risk that the scalpel might slip and damage the spinal cord after the elixir has started its work. I have elected to use a less … intrusive … means of correcting our friend’s neck problem. But all that will have to wait.”
As Sasquatch placed the body within its cradle, Pompey stepped forward and fitted a metal skullcap onto its shaven head. An umbilicus of braided copper wire as thick as a man’s finger ran from the top of the skullcap and passed through a hole drilled in the lid of the tank, where it lay on the cavern floor in a great coil, like a serpent from ancient myth. At the other end of the umbilicus was a huge lightning rod.
“You know what to do,” Mirablis said.
The Indian silently strapped the lightning rod across his back and hefted the heavy coil of copper wiring onto his shoulder.
Then, with barely a grunt, the patchwork shaman began his climb from the bowels of the earth to the vault of heaven.
Chapter Seven
One of the primary reasons Mirablis had chosen this particular cavern to set up shop was that it possessed a natural chimney that permitted the circulation of fresh air from the outer world. As it so happened, the flue that served as the ventilation shaft was wide enough to accommodate a solitary climber. A normal, healthy adult male could make his way to the surface in three hours. Sasquatch, on the other hand, usually reached the top in just under forty-five minutes.
Sasquatch enjoyed climbing the chimney, as it was one of the few times where he was free of the old man. Without Mirablis’s stream-of-consciousness monologues filling his mind, Sasquatch’s thoughts were finally able to emerge. However, his thoughts were no more his own than were those given to him by Mirablis.
Once, long ago, Sasquatch had been a shaman. A warrior. A maker of shields. A buffalo hunter. But not as one man. Before the pony soldiers came, his name had not been Sasquatch, but Iron Crow. And Small Eagle. And Lean Bear. And Yellow Elk. There were
others living within him as well—but these four were the loudest inside his head.
Sasquatch often sat in the darkness of the cave and traced the scars that covered his body, listening to the voices inside him as they counted and cataloged what part belonged to whom.
Lean Bear would always start it off by saying: “The right arm is mine.”
Then Small Eagle would chime in with: “The left arm belongs to me!”
“The right leg was once my own,” Yellow Elk would reply.
Often the voices got into arguments as to whose body part was the most useful or strongest. Sometimes the discussions would get quite heated. Just when Sasquatch thought that the three would come to blows, Iron Crow would intone in his wisest voice: “But mine is his head and mine is his heart.” This always made the others fall silent, much to Sasquatch’s relief.
But try as he might, not even the part of Sasquatch that was Iron Crow could understand Mirablis’ drive to conquer Death. A world without Death was a world out of balance—the very essence of madness. Yet, if there was one thing Sasquatch had learned, it was that most white men were crazy.
Over the years Sasquatch had watched Mirablis try time and time again to bring white men back from the spirit world. Those that emerged from the tank had all been worse than crazy, even in the eyes of the whites. They shook and foamed at the mouth like rabid animals while screaming and trying to bite and claw everything around them. Sasquatch believed they came back from the spirit world that way because most white men are a part of nothing but themselves, even when they are made of pieces of other white men. They were simply not used to living together, fighting together and dying together, as his people were.
Or perhaps the reason for their madness was because the white men Mirablis had tried to bring back were men whose bodies were unmourned and buried in paupers’ graves. Maybe what they had seen while they were in the spirit world was what made them scream so horribly.
However, Sasquatch had a feeling the hanged man might be different. It was said among his people that the life of a man could be read in the manner of his death. In that case, the hanged man had died trying to protect something that was and yet was not of himself. Sasquatch knew what it was like to die that way.
The giant’s train of thought was broken by a strong blast of cold air whistling down the flue. He shrugged the lightning rod off his crooked back and shoved it and what remained of the coil of copper wiring through the crevice that opened onto the surface. He then wriggled out through the narrow opening.
Sasquatch straightened himself as well as his crooked back allowed, blinking the dirt from his eyes. Glancing over the edge of the cliff, he could glimpse the roof of the cabin a hundred feet below. Looking out on the surrounding foothills and the imposing mountains that rose just beyond them, he smiled as a feeling of peace came over him. He muttered a small prayer to the ancestors of his people.
Unlike Pompey, Sasquatch was not truly mute, but the effort it took for him to speak aloud effectively rendered him speechless under normal circumstances. Having finished his prayer, Sasquatch picked up the heavy lightning rod and jammed its sharpened point into the ground, then crouched low on his haunches and opened the leather bag he wore on his breechcloth. He removed from his medicine pouch a pair of thunderstones, marked with the signs known only to shamans and the spirits who serve them. As Sasquatch rattled the bones of the ancient beast-gods in his cupped hands, he began to chant in a voice twisted by disuse.
Even though it was the wrong time of year, and the conditions not right for such weather, storm clouds began to mass in the sky above. Sasquatch’s distorted chant grew louder, more like the cry of an animal than a voice lifted in prayer. The clouds became heavier and darker, their bellies sporadically lit from within by brief flashes of purple white light. Sasquatch’s chant grew faster and louder, until he was shouting over the howling wind that shook the stunted trees and scrub that surrounded him.
Then, with a final, agonized cry that sent bloody spittle flying from his lips, a burning finger stabbed forth from the storm clouds and struck the lightning rod, followed by an explosion than shook the entire hillside.
Immediately following the thunderclap came a sudden clattering noise, as if a horde of giant warriors were banging their shields with their spears. Hailstones the size of quail eggs began to pour from the sky. Even though the chunks of ice struck with the force of stones from a sling, the nearly naked Sasquatch did not flinch as he knelt to embrace the storm, his jet black hair crackling with static electricity.
Chapter Eight
Johnny Pearl never really had a good picture in his mind of what Heaven might look like. To tell the truth, he never really saw much point in worrying over it, since he was pretty sure he wasn’t ever going to be let in. Back when he was a boy growing up in North Carolina, the preacher always seemed a lot more interested in warning the congregation about what was waiting for them in Hell than what they had to look forward to in Heaven. Still, Johnny had been under the general impression that Paradise was full of folks dressed in long white gowns with little wings sticking out their backs and halos over their heads, plucking harps and the like.
He wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but one thing was certain—it wasn’t any Heaven he had heard tell of. But it wasn’t any Hell he was familiar with neither. There weren’t any mansions in the sky, or angels sitting on clouds, but there sure weren’t any fellows with horns and pointy tails poking him in the butt with pitchforks, either.
As far as he could make out, he was at a big barn dance of some sort, with lots of other folk milling around, though he couldn’t remember arriving or how he got there. Some of the people who were laughing and talking and dancing looked sort of familiar, though. He could have sworn he saw Abraham Lincoln walk by, strolling alongside Stonewall Jackson. The two sipped cider and chatted like old school chums.
He frowned and turned to study the other guests at the barn dance. Some of the people seemed on their own, while others walked arm in arm or in the company of entire families. Some looked happy, others looked frightened, but the vast majority wore expressions not too different from that of Johnny Pearl’s—polite bafflement. As he continued to scan the crowd, he spotted a face in the string band he seemed to know but couldn’t place. Then, with a jolt, he recognized the young mandolin player as having been a member of his regiment—one he had personally watch die of a shrapnel wound to the belly. The dead soldier paused long enough to nod hello to his war buddy, then resumed playing.
“Johnny!” Someone was calling his name. Someone whose voice he’d thought was stilled forever. “Johnny! Over here!”
Katie waved at him from halfway across the barn, hopping up and down to get his attention. Pearl ran to his wife and snatched her up in his arms, twirling her about so fiercely Katie’s feet left the ground.
“I missed you so much, Katie!” he said, though he could not remember how long it had been since he last laid eyes on his wife. Had it been weeks? Months? Seconds?
“I missed you too, Johnny.” She smiled in return, her gaze fixed on a point just beyond his shoulder. “We all did.”
He turned to follow the direction of her gaze. Behind him stood his parents and younger brother. They looked exactly as he remembered last seeing them, the day he marched off to join his regiment. He opened his mouth to say how glad he was to see them, how much he had missed them, how sorry he was for not being there when they needed him most, but all that came out was a whispered, “Mama?”
Mrs. Pearl held out her hands to her eldest child, her eyes shining with tears of joy. “Oh, Johnny—I knew you’d make it.”
He made a soft sobbing noise as he took his mother’s hands in his, covering the palms with kisses.
“It’s good that you could make it, son,” Mr. Pearl said, squeezing his son’s shoulder. “We’re proud of you, Johnny.” His father stepped forward and pulled him into his arms, kissing his cheek as he had the day Johnny went off to war. He was relieved t
o discover his father still smelled of his favorite pipe tobacco and penny licorice. “Always have been, always will be.”
“Hey, Johnny.”
He looked down at his younger brother, forever frozen at ten years old. “Hey, Tommy,” he smiled in return, his hand dropping onto the boy’s curly head.
Tommy frowned and cocked his head to one side. “How come you look different, Johnny?”
“It’s been a long time since you last saw me, Tommy,” Pearl explained gently.
“That’s okay,” Tommy replied, beaming up at his older brother. “Even though you look different, I still knew it was you.”
“Come, Johnny,” Katie said, holding out her arms to her husband. “Come dance with me.”
He smiled as he remembered how they used to dance to keep warm during the long, cold winter nights, their only music Katie’s sweet voice lifted in song and the howling of the wind in the eaves. As his arm closed about her waist, he felt something grab hold of his suspenders and yank. He frowned and glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one hovering behind him, trying to cut in. He shrugged and turned back to face his wife, pulling Katie closer. There was a second, stronger tug—but this time it pulled him backward several feet, wrenching him free of his wife’s embrace.
“Johnny!”
He threw himself forward, doing his best to fight against whatever it was that was pulling him away. Katie grabbed his outstretched hand and tried to keep him from slipping any further, but it was no use. It felt as if someone was pulling him by the hair at the back of his head. Even though his feet were motionless, he continued to slide backward, like an iron filing dragged by a magnet.
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