Vigil

by Saunders, Craig

  They knew what they had. I was a prize beyond imagining. I was immortal. I didn’t hate them at first. John Fallon was solicitous, the gentleman captor.

  I spent the first few years with my new owners – I was under no illusions as to the nature of the Americans – in a kind of daze. I was a creature of fascination for them.

  They had seen the research. Unit 731 had kept meticulous records detailing all their experiments and the results. After a time I had been insensible. My mind had rebelled against the torture I had been subjected to, convinced itself that I was dreaming. The mind is a powerful tool. A mind can bend reality, morph the truth into something more manageable, that the soul can live with. During my early incarceration it had shut down completely. Now it was alive, awake. Time moved slowly now, each sight buried away, each nuance of every sentence mulled over and taken out in the quiet times when I was left alone.

  In 1949 I was moved from the facility under the cover of darkness. I didn’t see the night, although I longed to feel the moonlight on my skin and hear the whisper of the wind. I was in a box, chained, moved like cargo.

  At first there was the bumping of people carrying me, the movements uneven. I could hear their speech through the thickness of my crate, although they didn’t know that I could hear them. They didn’t know what they were carrying. I was, it seemed, a dirty secret. I didn’t try to cry out, to plead with them to free me. I knew it would be a waste of time. These men were soldiers. I knew soldiers. Give a man an order and he will rebel. Give a hundred men and order and they will comply without question. Even if they had known they transported a living being I do not think they would have been swayed to release me. They were under the collective spell that ruled the human race.

  Shortly afterward I was loaded into a larger box. It smelled of oil, canvas, metal. I did not know what a truck was, so it was confusing. I was not frightened. I was not afraid of change. I had been tortured for decades. What was the use of fear? I could not die. Pain was passing. This was just a large metal box.

  When it began to move under its own power, the engine at the front roaring, drowning out the words of the driver, I was unafraid. The world moves on. People live less than a century. I had been alive for over five hundred years - perhaps longer. I understood change better than most. This was a new mode of transport. It required no horses, no men to pull it. I listened to the rumble of the wheels on the road. It was bumpy, but less so that a cart or a carriage. I could hear the drive shaft, the pistons, the rubber screeching on the road. There was a stone in the tread of the rear tire. A car, of some sort, but large enough to hold me and six soldiers. It seemed my idea of scale needed to change.

  I found out the names for things later. John Fallon was my captor, but he also took great pleasure in educating me.

  The truck was strange. The plane was exciting. I had never felt the sensation of flying. I knew of planes. Planes had been used in the first war. But I had never heard of something so big it could take not only my crate, but others, and twenty soldiers, all seated. This was an immense plane. It was huge. I did not understand the theory of flight, but it seemed that humans had moved on in huge leaps in the intervening years since I was last free to read a newspaper.

  The soldiers complained about the flight. We landed twice to refuel. Once, I thought, in England.

  The second time, outside New York. This wasn’t a place I had been before. When I had been born, come into awareness, this place had not existed. But I listened to the chatter as the people came to refuel our plane. These people spoke in with the sound of my birth language, the same words, the same vocabulary as I had. I was learning new words as time went along, but I was a fast learner. I also knew that I was remembering.

  Travel. Travel beyond my imagining. Travel to the new world. West, always west. Far away from the world I knew. Far away from Europe, across the ocean.

  I could feel the sun above me, burning at the crate, sun more powerful that any I had known before. I was hot, in my box. I couldn’t sweat, but I could smell the sweat on the soldiers that unloaded me from the plane, took me to another truck, drove me through the sunlight and the smell of sand, miles and miles of sand.

  Into a building. The building was hot, too. Into the shade, at last.

  A wait, then people came and opened the crate.

  John Fallon, looking down at me, through the open lid of my box.

  ‘Where am I?’ I asked, the standard question for people who were out of touch for hours.

  ‘Osceola,’ he said, with a kindly smile.

  ‘In the new world?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his tone saying he was pleased with my deduction. ‘America. This place is called Osceola. Your home.’

  It was my prison, not my home. But we both knew this. There was no sense in bringing it up.

  He brought me blood in a bag. It was cold, but it fuelled me like the oil fuelled the plane and the truck.

  And so the pattern was established. If I was good, blood. If I was bad…

  One captor is largely the same as another in that respect. Some would think that the prisoner becomes less human over the years, like an animal. It is not true. It is the jailor’s humanity that is stripped from him.

  I think toward the end John Fallon had lost anything that could be considered humanity. He had become the vampire, feeding from me, and I had become his conscience, chained under the earth, never to see the light again.

  *

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  1953

  Other doctors came. I remember their names but they were largely irrelevant. It was John Fallon that I grew up with.

  I remember the conversation we had in 1953.

  ‘Good morning, Sam,’ he said breezily, coming into my room. He had taken to calling me Sam. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because they thought I was the hope of America.

  He looked down at me as he spoke. I was still chained at that point.

  ‘John,’ I said. I had become surly and uncooperative over the years. Patience, however, is in my bones. I could bide my time. I dreamed of escape, and I knew that the only way that I could escape was to become a friend to this man. I needed to get free of these chains if ever I was to break free of this building, if ever I was to feel the night on my skin. I tempered my anger for many long years, in the hope that I would one day gain the night.

  ‘We’ve made some remarkable progress, Sam. I think you’ll be pleased.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ I told him.

  ‘Now, don’t be down. You understand this is for the best.’

  This was the illusion we had built for ourselves. This lie was the foundation of our relationship. To break that lie would be to take things to a different level, another stage of our relationship, one I did not wish to explore. So far they had taken blood. I was not afraid, but I did not wish to be opened and dissected. I remained civil in the hope that this would not come to pass.

  Cowardice, perhaps, but then who wants to have their hands and feet cut off, their eyes put out, their stomach removed and burnt while men of science watch, fascinated, rather than horrified, as the wounds closed and healed, fuelled by buckets of blood?

  It was the fascination that horrified me. Horror I could have dealt with. Was it human to be fascinated by the pain of others?

  ‘And what is this day’s news?’ I asked, turning my head to watch his eyes.

  He seemed pleased with himself as he said, ‘We have new technology that allows us to analyse your blood on a level that has hitherto been impossible.’

  ‘How remarkable,’ I replied.

  ‘I sense, Sam, that you are not as excited as I am. I have discovered that your blood has the properties of a virus. Do you know what a virus is?’

  ‘An illness, of sorts.’

  ‘Yes! And virulent beyond belief. It is unlike anything science has seen.’

  ‘I could have told you that.’

  ‘There is no known way of curing a virus.’

  ‘I am n
ot something that can be cured. I am a vampire, John. I am eternal. I am not subject to your science. You may test me until time ends, but you will never cure me.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Sam,’ said John, although I understood all too well. ‘We do not seek to cure you. We seek to use you to cure us. You are immune to all disease, all injury, you do not age. You could be the cure to all that ails the human race.’

  ‘And your country, they would own this cure?’

  ‘It would be for the good of all mankind!’

  He had that fervent look in his eyes. It is the look of madness. I have seen it many times before.

  I sighed. ‘This cure would not be a salve to man,’ I told him, although I knew there was no talking to a fanatic. ‘This cure would be mankind’s end. It would be the end of days. Armageddon, the Apocalypse. It is not a cure. It is an infection.’

  ‘But science advances, Sam. What today seems impossible will one day become possible. Perhaps not even in my lifetime, but certainly in yours. You are the key. The Rosetta stone for mankind. You can unlock our potential.’

  I knew I would be wasting my breath.

  ‘I will never be understood, I cannot be controlled. To try to do so is folly.’

  ‘I can’t accept that, Sam. Now, I wish to take a tissue sample. Will you allow me that?’

  I had no choice. But I thought perhaps I could bargain. A small victory would mean so much to me. A small victory is all you can ask for when you are chained to a bed.

  ‘Would somebody come and read me the papers? I wish to know what is happening with the world.’

  ‘It is nice to see you taking an interest,’ said Sam with a nod. ‘I will have someone come and read you the papers each day.’

  He produced a scalpel. He did not have the grace to even pretend to be sorry as he took a slice of my skin and placed it in a Petri dish.

  It had taken a few years, but at least we were back on a footing we could understand. Me, the subject. John Fallon, Frankenstein.

  *

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Unknown

  1999

  The indignities I suffered were different. Science moved on at a rate unimaginable in the 20th Century.

  They never cut anything off. But they did take samples. Endless samples. Samples of my liver, my brain, my heart, my kidneys, my gonads, nails, skin, blood, hair…every part of me was examined.

  John grew old. I did not. The fervour that once lit his eyes dulled.

  In 1999 John was given licence to run his own facility in France, and for the first time in fifty years I was moved to Europe.

  Fifty years of reading the paper every day.

  I learned, and I learned well.

  I was taken underground, chained, in a box, and placed in a room.

  Then, at some point, I was unchained. John Fallon, grey and full of wrinkles, was looking at me with solicitous eyes.

  ‘I thought it was time there was an element of trust.’

  I flexed my arms with wonder. I felt stronger. I had hope. Wasted, as hope always was, but such a human emotion.

  ‘I am becoming like you, and you like me,' I said, but I do not think John Fallon understood.

  *

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Unknown

  John Fallon came and went. He got older while I stayed the same. My life was a long succession of indignities and pain.

  But in the year 2000 something changed.

  John Fallon came in one day beaming like a much more youthful man. He must have been coming up for 75 or 80, the way I figured. He had been young when I had first met him, back in 1945. There had been so many new discoveries based on my blood, experiments into longevity for which I had been a guinea pig. He had taken full advantage of my blood and my unique abilities to test those advances.

  He was a vibrant man, always. Never once had I seen him less than full of energy. This day, despite his age, he was practically leaping out of skin.

  ‘What has got into you?’ I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer. He stood safely behind the glass. It was not glass but some other material that would not shatter, would not mar. It was thick enough to withstand my pummelling. There were holes in the glass, so sound could travel. A thick shield could come down on the outside making it airtight so that they could use their gas on me and continue their experiments.

  They thought it was kinder to allow me to roam this cell.

  Ten metres by ten.

  I preferred it when their cruelties hadn’t been wrapped in an air of humanity.

  ‘I have had some good news, Sam. I have been blessed with a son!’

  I could not help but smile. All I could think of was how a man of his years expected to be any kind of father. But then I had known that peculiar pride in a child before.

  ‘Congratulations, John.’

  ‘Thank you, Sam. Even at my age, it is a blessing. Thanks to you I am still alive to enjoy fatherhood. He is a fine boy.’

  ‘May he have a long and interesting life.’

  ‘Still, that is not why I came. I wanted to apologize to you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For this,’ he said. The shutter came down and he was obscured behind it, but I could hear his words drifting through the haze as the gas pumped into the room.

  I lost consciousness then. I fought it.

  At least when I had been awake I had known what they were doing to me. This way was so much worse.

  As I faded from waking to sleeping, I imagined the terrors that they would commit in the name of science on my scarred body.

  When I awoke I screamed with agony and clenched my fists. I was chained again and there was a team of scientists. Cameras were running, set into the ceiling.

  There was now a mechanical monstrosity in the place of my arm. It burned like silver, preventing me from rejecting it. I could not regenerate. I was in agony. All the while the scientists looked on, fascinated.

  John Fallon walked along the corridor toward my room and smiled, as though nothing was wrong.

  ‘Please understand, Sam, this is important for mankind. If you cooperate, I will remove the arm and everything will go back to normal.’

  I laughed through my pain. Even now we held onto the fallacy that was the core of our relationship. I thought feign friendship would save me some indignities. But now I knew the only way I could ever be free of this shame would be to tear his head from his body, to drink his flowing blood, put his eyes out.

  ‘Just pick up the cup to your right,’ he said.

  Shame. In my pain and through my red tears, invaded and violated, raped by this mechanical arm, I reached out and took the glass in unfeeling metal fingers.

  John Fallon actually clapped.

  ‘Now, Sam. We just want to test your dexterity. Would you write a few words on the sheet of paper on the table?’

  I was chained upright, so I could see what I wrote. I would jump through hoops for them. I wrote.

  I wrote the same thing, over and over, in French, Romanian, Turkish, Arabic, German, Austrian. John clapped like a child.

  ‘It works!’ he exclaimed, patting the other grinning scientists on the back.

  ‘Goddamn, it works.’

  I will drink your blood, I wrote, and with the mechanical hand I crushed the pen.

  *

  Chapter Eighty

  Unknown

  They took the arm from me after a week. They gave me so much plasma my stomach bulged, but the wound took weeks to heal. The silver they had put in their monstrosity slowed my regeneration. I had further weeks of indignity learning to do things with just one hand.

  John Fallon was solicitous, often enquiring about my health, but his nature was clear to me in a way I had not seen before. He was driven, and that was how he slept at night, telling himself that his experiments were in the name of science, but he was a monster to the very bone.

  He had no conscience. He had no soul. He was a man with darkness at the very heart o
f him. He was no newspaper sadist. He was no unthinking murderer like in the stories I read each day.

  Science can be cruel. Humanities progress can be charted through the trail of bodies.

  Then one day he did not come.

  I waited for him, like a puppy. The experiments continued. The other scientists did not speak to me or pretend to be my friend. For that I was grateful. I could not take the pretence any longer.

  But John Fallon was absent. For a week, two weeks. I asked, but they would not answer me. But there was a darkness about their eyes. A fear?

  I think it was.

  I thought he was ill. Perhaps even dead. He was well advanced in years. Had I thought he would live forever, like me?

  Maybe I did. I was so used to seeing him nearly every day that the change was jarring.

  It did give me time to think. After a month had passed the tests tailed off, until I was left for days at a time to think.

  I decided to try to sleep. The light in the room was always bright, but it didn’t hurt. Still, I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my head and laid on the floor in a corner.

  I slept.

  And I dreamt.

  I dreamt of John, laying in a bed, sweating, crying out in agony.

  Only his arm was not his own. It was the cybernetic arm, the metallic prosthetic that had been tested out on me. He sweated and cried and railed and time passed, in the way of dreams.

  Then he was flexing his arm, picking up a glass.

  He was sitting up, spooning food into himself, with his new arm. There was a grin on his face and he flexed his arm.