Re-Animator

by Jeff Rovin

  Her eyes said it all: she didn’t want West around. Cain sympathized; he had been hoping for someone a little less austere. He looked over at his classmate, who had already reached into his pocket and withdrawn his wallet.

  “Herbert, Meg is right. Don’t you think we should talk about this?”

  “Why, Daniel? I’ve already decided.” West pulled out several bills. “What are you paying here?”

  “Eight hundred. Utilities included.”

  West removed ten one-hundred-dollar bills. “Here’s my share, first and last month. I’ll be paying five hundred since I’ll require the downstairs and the attic.”

  Cain stared at the proffered money; Megan tugged the front of his shirt.

  “Dan—can I talk to you?”

  “You know,” West assured them, “you’ll never even know I’m here.” He paused, said pointedly, “Except, of course, on the first of the month. Dr. Gruber left me quite a bit of his estate. In fact, if you ever need more, just ask. Money holds no particular fascination for me.”

  The young woman turned. “Mr. West, may I ask you something?”

  “Anything you like, Miss Halsey.”

  “You didn’t say why you left Switzerland.”

  He smiled benignly. “There was no more I could learn there, naturally.” He looked over at Cain. “Do we have a deal?”

  The young man looked down at his feet. After a moment, he reached out suddenly and accepted the money. “Done.”

  “Done!” West smiled, then took off for the steps. “I’ll get my things.”

  “Need any help?” Cain shouted.

  West didn’t answer, and, when she heard him scuttle out the front door, Megan slammed her books onto an old upright piano, sending clouds of dust in every direction.

  “Tell me, Daniel Jonathan Cain, was I being a little too subtle?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you miss the fact that I think the guy is a total creep?”

  Cain pocketed the money. “Guess what, hon? I don’t like him much either, but his money’s the right denomination, and what does it matter who takes the room? If it isn’t going to be you, it might just as well be Larry Talbot.”

  “Who?”

  “The Wolfman. All it means is that you’ll have to be a little quieter when we make love.”

  She tapped her toe angrily. “If we make love, you mean.”

  Cain picked up her books and headed for the stairs. “If that’s a declaration of war, I’m sure I can always ally myself with Miss Poland.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “I’ll tell Professor Norvig you’re spying on him.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’ll tell your dad you slept here while he was in Israel.”

  Megan spun. “You wouldn’t.”

  He smiled. “You’re right. I’d much rather do it than reminisce about it.”

  Cain held out his hand, and, sighing, the young woman took it. “Okay, have yourself your odd little roomie. Just don’t expect me to have much to do with him. He’s obnoxious and he’s short.”

  “Frankly, my dear, I get the feeling Herbert West would just as soon you, me, and the rest of the world leave him alone. Which is exactly what I intend to do.”

  So saying, Cain walked his fiancée to her car, while, grinning broadly despite his huffing and grunting, West dragged his trunks and suitcases from the rented station wagon along the curving concrete walk.

  Dr. Carl Hill sat sipping scotch in his apartment, lying back on the recliner and staring out at the river. Only minutes before, he’d canceled Babette, the girl from Boston he’d reserved for the evening. The appearance of Gruber’s former associate made it impossible for him to think of anything but why the youth had really come to Miskatonic—and if whatever had happened to the professor could possibly happen to him as well.

  “Not unless the boy is using voodoo,” he told himself without quite believing it.

  He put the glass to his lips, realized there were many ways to poison someone, and reluctantly put the glass aside. He folded his hands on his belly. Sighing away his fears, he retrieved the glass.

  “Life is full of danger,” he decided. “Death is all around us.”

  The loft, for example, had once been death—an Ogan Chemical processing plant which had been closed down when the river turned red and all the fish died. Kenneth Ogan had taken the spillage seriously enough to leave his San Clemente estate and fly east to personally lock the door.

  “Now they’re busy burying the stuff in the Appalachian Mountains,” Hill mumbled, feeling the effects of the drink and the two Valium he’d washed down. “You can’t live in fear of dying, or you can’t live at all!” He saluted the bottle of Valium. “Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible!”

  Still, West’s presence troubled him. After their meeting, he’d borrowed the youth’s file from Dean Halsey. In it, West had outlined, very amorphously, studies of the brain he hoped to accomplish. That was why Halsey had taken pains to introduce them. West had an ambitious program to study the rage center of the brain and find a way to subjugate it without lobotomy. That sounded laudable enough on the surface, but nothing in his file from Switzerland hinted at any similar work. Most of his classes were in chemistry, not the brain.

  Halsey, of course, hadn’t bothered to make that analysis. All he saw was the last student of a brilliant scientist asking to enroll in his institution.

  “What does research matter when prestige can be had?”

  It was amazing, he reflected, that so shallow and plain a man as Halsey could have created such a radiant creature as Megan. He looked over at the thick file he’d brought home, the file he’d expected to go through slowly, lovingly, before Babette arrived tonight. The photographs, the notes, the mementoes—

  He got up and refilled his glass.

  “No sense getting aroused now,” he cautioned himself, and put the file back in his briefcase. He sat back down, and his mind returned to Herbert West.

  The youth was obviously a hothead and would tip his hand soon enough. What he had to do was encourage that, not let the boy bait him as he had today, force him to lose his temper. He must retain the upper hand.

  West was only twenty-four, half his age. He’d seen nothing of the world and even less, he was sure, of medicine. The surgeon fell asleep in the recliner, relishing all the ways he could use his position to draw and quarter the brash young man . . .

  CHAPTER

  4

  The students watched attentively as Scott wheeled the table into the classroom. On it was a young woman, whom Cain recognized as Wendy Grant. Her parents had wanted her body donated to science, and Hill had wasted little time claiming it; he wanted a fresh brain for this morning’s class. As usual, what Hill wanted Dean Halsey was only too happy to give.

  Cain noticed that the incision in her torso where the autopsy had been performed was only perfunctorily repaired, and for the first time in his brief career he felt an unpleasant sense of ghoulishness. Since she had been entrusted to them, ailing, to her final appearance here in Hill’s class, the poor young woman had been nothing more than a slab of meat.

  Scott situated the table so that the very top of the woman’s head overlapped the sink. Thanking his assistant, Dr. Hill rose from his desk and stood behind the body. He was wearing rubber gloves, a green smock and cap, and a white apron; his manner was casual as he picked up a scalpel in one hand and, after examining it, bent over the dead girl and put the other hand beneath her head. Lifting it slightly, he made a slow lateral cut, speaking while he did.

  “You make the incision at the base of the skull, cutting away enough of the fascia to get your fingers in.”

  He lay the scalpel on the tray and snaked his fingers beneath the flap of skin.

  “Then, grasping firmly with both hands, you pull the skin forward, over the skull.”

  There was a slurping sound as flesh separated from bone, clots of blood plopping and oozing into the
sink.

  “It’s very much like peeling a large orange,” Hill said, glancing briefly into the classroom, a half-smile playing about his lips. The quip defused some of the queasy tension that had settled on the room, although one student, a proctologist who was taking the course to meet a minimum requirement, had to turn away to keep from vomiting.

  Hill quickly regained his serious demeanor. “Once the skull is plainly visible, you take the bone saw and cut around the perimeter.”

  As Hill did just that, Cain marveled again at his hands. Hill held the instrument firmly but delicately as the fanlike blades threw bone dust into the air. His dexterity and attentiveness must make him quite a doting lover, Cain couldn’t help but reflect.

  When Hill finished, he laid the saw aside and, with a hand on either side of the skull, gently tugged off its top. He set it on the instrument tray and picked up a pair of scissors, carefully snipping away sinew inside the braincase. This done, he gently inserted his fingers and withdrew the contents. He stood erect, cradling the brain in his hands.

  “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the human brain. Once the brainstem of an individual—I’m talking about the reticular activating system, heart regulation, respiratory system—once these activities cease, the brain can only survive an additional six to twelve minutes.”

  His eyes came to rest on Herbert West, who was seated in the front row.

  “I repeat: six to twelve minutes.”

  West looked away with mild disgust and began drumming the eraser of his pencil on the desk. Hill ignored him.

  “Brain death is true death, at least for those of us who don’t believe in religious dogma. Brain death brings about an irreversible conclusion to life, a—”

  West snapped his pencil in two and let both halves fall to the floor. The silence grew heavy as Hill glowered at him. West met his gaze, making a point of picking up another pencil and holding it tightly between both fists.

  The surgeon briefly considered giving West the floor. He would let him rave so that the others would see how unbalanced he was, and it would put an end to his little disruptions. But Gruber had been too sharp a judge of talent to ally himself with a fool; if West’s intent were to get under his skin, he would find another way of doing it. Against the instincts crying out inside, Hill ignored the challenge by turning and laying the brain on the instrument tray.

  “We all want to retain our personalities in some idyllic afterlife,” Hill went on evenly. “We all pray for some miracle, some drug, potion, pill. Perhaps, though, it takes something more than that, something internal. We achieve our goals in life by being obsessed with them. Perhaps it takes that same kind of desire to transcend death—a supreme effort, an incredible surge of will, to keep alive and as a unified whole the electricity of the brain, what we colloquially call the soul. I believe this is true; I believe it is the only means by which humans can become immortal.”

  West broke a second pencil, and Hill snapped stiffly to attention. Cain looked from the surgeon to West. He felt his own pulse race; he could imagine what Hill was going through.

  The lanky man stared out through hooded eyes. “Is there a problem, Mr. West?”

  “There is indeed, Dr. Hill.”

  “One that cannot wait until after class?”

  West’s upper lip curled with disdain. “Class? This isn’t a class, it’s nothing more than a primer on the dark ages of medicine. Come into the twentieth century!”

  The doctor’s patience evaporated. His forehead reddened, the veins pulsing; his arms hung straight down, the fists like rock. “I think we’ve heard quite enough from you, my impudent young colleague.”

  “I’d rather be impudent than ignorant.”

  “In my judgment, you are both!”

  Cain replied slowly, “In that case, your judgment is faulty . . . like your theories.”

  Hill grabbed a beaker and was a moment away from throwing it when he saw the disbelieving looks on the faces of his students. Looking out at them, he realized that he had lost this round, that West had made him look unbalanced. There was nothing to do now but retreat and regroup.

  Clearing his throat, he set the beaker back on the counter and took a moment to collect himself. “The fact is, Mr. West, what you think is not important. Whether you like it or not, it is you who must please me, and not vice versa. Therefore, I strongly suggest that you leave here and acquire a much-improved attitude.” He noticed the litter around West’s chair and said snidely, “And while you’re at it, I also suggest you get yourself a pen. Both will be necessary before I allow you to return here tomorrow.” He turned back to the counter, saying over his shoulder, “That will be all for today. Class dismissed.”

  West jumped up. “No, Doctor, it is you who should be dismissed!”

  Hill felt his control slipping again. He came around slowly. “What did you say?”

  “Isn’t it bad enough you left Switzerland in disgrace? Must you compound your sins by standing up there and teaching such . . . drivel? These people are here to learn, and you’re closing their minds before they even have a chance!”

  Hill tugged off his gloves. “And what are you here for, Mr. West? Certainly not to learn!”

  “There is nothing I can learn from you! In fact, you should have stolen more of Gruber’s ideas. Then at least you’d have ideas!”

  From the corner of his eye, Hill saw that the class was filing out much too slowly. They were hanging on every word, which only added to his displeasure. Throwing his apron aside, he strode to West’s side. Although he towered over the diminutive youth, West stood his ground defiantly.

  “Whether it’s merely a misconception under which you labor, or whether you suffer from complete dementia, I promise you this: it is going to be a singular pleasure to fail you!”

  Hill turned and stalked from the classroom, the other students shaking their heads as they followed. Their manner belied their sympathies, whispered conversation and uneasy backward glances charging West with crimes ranging from disrespect to lunacy. West ignored them and also Cain, who was the last to leave. He’d been hovering by the door, deciding whether to have a long chat with his roommate or back off. He finally opted for the latter, seeing only hostility in West’s small eyes.

  When everyone was gone, West parted his lips slightly. He’d been sucking air through his nose, which caused his nostrils to flare and gave him a bat-like look. He took a calming breath.

  “We shall see,” he uttered coldly, “just who will fail, you silly little man.”

  Collecting his books, West noticed the brain in the tray and went to it. After casting a furtive glance toward the corridor, the young man casually tore a fistful of paper towels from a roll and wrapped the organ inside, slipping it into the folds of his overcoat. A quick check of the toe tag revealed what Cain had mentioned earlier, as they had moved some of the larger pieces of furniture from the basement to the attic: this was the girl who had died of a heart attack the day before. A cruel smile played about his lips as he headed for the corridor, the hem of his coat trailing an occasional drop of blood.

  We shall see, Carl Hill, he thought exultantly. You, Miss Grant, and I . . . shall see!

  Chopin peppered the air; the music, the wine, and the events of the day lulled Dean Halsey into a state of relaxed satisfaction. Seated beneath the crystal chandelier of his spacious dining room, he leaned to his side and thanked his daughter for an excellent meal, then regarded Dr. Hill.

  “An excellent meal for a scientist who excels.” He raised his nearly empty wineglass. “A half-million dollars, Carl, and not in small monthly doses. Half of it now, half of it when you or any member of your team publishes the particulars about the drill.”

  Hill smiled, but his mind was not on the grant. Having the money to refine the drill and build more than their one prototype was important, but Scott and the others could do most of the programming and engineering. The technology itself was merely a sideline to the main event, his continuing search
for the seat of the will and the soul.

  Yet, at the moment, his mind was not on that either. Nor was it on Megan Halsey. Ordinarily, he could not keep his eyes from her. Whether the stately young woman was in a striking pants-suit, as now, or in a bathing suit as she swam at the university pool, or in tight shorts as she played tennis in the park, he savored the sight of her flesh and form, his mind swept up in how he would worship it and her, if given the chance.

  The fingers of one hand worked lightly along the baroque handle of his steak knife. Though his eyes were on Megan Halsey’s breasts, tonight he didn’t see them. Nor were his ears attuned to the droning of Dean Halsey.

  Tonight he was consumed with Herbert West.

  He couldn’t fathom what West wanted from him. Money? He didn’t seem the type. Retribution? That made sense, but whom was he avenging?

  He’d worked with Gruber, so that was the likely choice.

  Hill considered the possibility. Much depended on how much West knew about what had gone on in Switzerland. The young man was aware that he’d worked with Gruber, that he’d used the late scientist’s ideas as a springboard. But in his single-minded devotion to Gruber, did he know how much farther he’d gone with those ideas? Did West know of the computer program he and Scott had written to scan the human brain and ignore all electrical activity save that generated by the cerebral cortex? Was he aware of the surges he’d measured whenever the subjects were presented with a moral dilemma? Did he know that he’d spent years on his own expanding on Gruber’s very simplistic notions?

  Probably not. West wasn’t the type to see gray areas. His world was black and white.

  He wondered, though, if West might also be here for Nancy.

  West had to know about her dying when the program had shut down her brain instead of merely ignoring superfluous readings. Gruber or someone else at the school had to have mentioned it. But did he also know that the brain death of Nancy Joseph had not been the sole reason for his dismissal? That his problems did not stem from that or from literally having burned the student’s brain inside her skull while he had hastily tried to write a program to reactivate it? That he was dismissed not for his experiments, for she’d signed all the appropriate releases, but because it was expressly against school policy for professors and students to be lovers?