Chapter 2
In early May of 1911, I asked Alma Halsey if she would care to accompany me to a concert of chamber music to be performed by students at the Peabody Recital Hall. I had given this matter a great deal of thought in the previous weeks. To most young men, my deliberation might seem amusing, but I was very unsophisticated for my age. Due to family misfortunes I had been cut off from the social milieu in which a young person learns the social graces.
Moreover, I have always known that I do not belong among the fortunate few who are blessed with beauty. The first person to inform me of this fact was my cousin Alice, at seven years old a golden-haired princess who was, now that I come to think of it, the only other person I have ever known with eyes the same colour as Herbert West’s. In all innocence, she had once compared me to the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland, kindly adding, “But you’re a very sweet little mouse, Charlie.” I was only four at the time, but I knew that mice, however sweet, were a different species. This was before I fell out of a tree a few years later and broke my leg in three places. It had not healed properly, leaving me with a discernable limp. Added a little later was a pair of thick glasses to combat my short-sightedness.
By the time I was in my early twenties I had learned how to avoid situations in which I should be imposing myself on those who did not care for my company or appearance. So finely could I judge my possible effect on someone that by simple avoidance I managed to elude rejection altogether. This of necessity had limited my social contacts even further, especially with young women.
But Alma was different. She had an easy friendliness that dissolved my protective veneer. I had begun to think that there was a genuine warmth between us, and was certain that even if she declined my invitation she would do so with kindness. Of course, I also considered whether this would result in a lingering awkwardness which might impair our collegial relationship, but decided that it was worth the risk.
I was surprised when she accepted with alacrity. “That would be very pleasant, Charles. I had been intending to go anyway, alone, since none of my friends cares much for chamber music. But it’s much better to have company at a concert.”
We agreed to meet in the main quadrangle of the campus, not far from Peabody Hall. I offered to escort Alma from her lodgings, but she refused, saying, “It makes no sense for you to go all that way, then back to campus again. It’s quite in the opposite direction from where you live. Much more efficient to meet in the Square.” I agreed, but privately resolved to see her home afterwards.
Spring comes late and hard to the Miskatonic Valley, but by May, even Arkham had begun to show signs of approaching summer. The evening of the concert was mild and still, flushed with the golden light of sunset.
I felt a lightening of the spirit as I walked along the tree-shaded avenues of the college district. The past few weeks had not been altogether pleasant. The odd emotional upheavals I had experienced as the result of my two encounters with Herbert West, along with a certain unease in my place of work and the dithering I had gone through before asking Alma to go out with me had been something of a strain.
No one had reprimanded or even questioned my permitting West to consult the Necronomicon. Dr. Armitage had said something about the young man’s reputation, but did not appear otherwise concerned. Peter Runcible had said only that he expected me to make up the three hours I had been away from my duties, which I was happy to do. My report, finally completed after three drafts, was filed along with all the others under Book Vault – Researchers’ Interviews, and the matter seemed forgotten.
I kept my ears open for any news of strange doings at the Medical School, cautiously sounding out Alma, but without results. Except for my distant sightings of West, and that enigmatic and disconcerting meeting in Howard’s Alley, it was as though he had never existed.
When I met Alma in the Square, I was pleasantly surprised to see that she was wearing a pretty summer dress, quite unlike her usual practical yet unconventional attire. I was glad I had worn my best suit, rather than one of the second-bests she was familiar with from the office.
“Good evening, Alma,” I said. “You are looking very pretty.”
“Thank you, Charles. It’s such a lovely evening I decided to do it the honour of gilding the lily.” She twirled around so that her skirts swung around her ankles. Laughing, she took my arm and we went into the hall.
The place was sparsely populated as yet, and we selected a pair of seats near the front. As we chatted of nothing in particular I could hear the room filling up behind us. According to the program, the opening piece would be Beethoven’s Sonata for violin and piano no. 5 in F major, known as the Spring Sonata, followed by six of Paganini’s twenty-four Caprices. I remarked to Alma that the latter were fiendishly difficult to play.
“Yes,” she said, tapping her program. “This fellow, Alvaro Castelo-Branco, apparently is something of a prodigy. He comes from Kingsport, from the Portuguese people there. But look, how unusual – selections from J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations arranged for string trio.”
“Why unusual?” I asked. “I seem to recall that it’s a fairly well known piece.”
“Yes, but it’s usually performed on the piano,” she explained. “This version is something of a novelty. The arrangement is by a Russian violinist. It should be an interesting concert.” Her eyes sparkled. Quite suddenly, I felt a corresponding lightness, as though the air itself had become effervescent.
Just as the Beethoven began, my glance was drawn to the far side of the hall by a late arrival. It was Herbert West. He was alone, and took a seat at the far end of a row, near the wall.
The Paganini Caprices were indeed spectacular. Alma was right about young Castelo-Branco, the violinist. Now, of course, he is internationally known, his humble Kingsport origins almost forgotten. Unschooled though I was, I could discern his brilliance, contrasted with the more pedestrian talents of his fellow performers.
I watched as well as listened with pleasure, becoming truly conscious for the first time of the physical act of playing the violin. Castelo-Branco was exerting the same intense yet controlled effort as someone engaged in a fencing match, except that he stood in one place. His breathing was rapid, and I could see a sheen of sweat on his brow. It was fascinating, as though the music he played had become incarnate, no longer merely notes in the aether, but a living body which took up space and had weight. When he had done I joined the rest of the audience in rapturous applause.
But it is the Bach I will remember forever. The first grave, deliberate notes of the aria struck me deeply, with their promise of something wonderful to come. I was content to wait for it without impatience, because of the inherent completeness of the simple melody.
For some reason I looked just then toward Herbert West. He was leaning forward, his fingers on his brow so that his eyes were covered, in an attitude of profound concentration. A few moments later, he leaned back in his seat, eyes closed, as though giving himself up to the music.
The aria ended and the first variation began; with its quicker tempo, I felt a deep gladness run through me, as though I was at the start of some glorious enterprise. Impulsively, I reached for Alma’s hand and pressed it hard. She looked at me, startled, then smiled and returned the pressure.
The intermission came all too soon. While the music lasted I had felt myself swung in a magical net of stars. The magic was compounded of the music, the nearness of Alma and a kind of thrilling of the nerves that seemed to come from another source altogether. As we strolled around the lobby I had little to say, but Alma commented on the performance with typical succinctness: “The Beethoven was good, the Paganini amazing, the Bach – I don’t know. Maybe if the cellist and violist had been up to Castelo-Branco’s calibre.”
“I loved the Goldbergs,” I said. “It was passion contained within a structure, an adventure of the spirit.”
Alma was amused by my enthusiasm. “I’ll bet Bach would be surprised to hear that! What a romantic yo
u are, Charles,” she said, laughing, and launched into something about counterpoint. I was happy enough to listen to her while I sipped sherry and watched people engage in their social minuets around us. Several of them were acquaintances of Alma’s. She dutifully introduced me, adding some brief but trenchant details after the persons in question had moved on.
Then Herbert West was before me, shaking my hand vigorously. “Milburn! I hoped it was you. Good evening, Miss Halsey.”
I thought I detected a distinct lack of enthusiasm in Alma’s response. “Hello Mr. West. How are you? I would have thought you would be too taken up with examinations to bother with music.”
“I have had a bellyful of examinations, all right,” West replied, laughing. “But I’m happy to say they’re over. This is something of a celebration.” He went on to make some remarks about the performance, saying that he was certain that the music of Bach was so mathematical that it must have a measurable effect on the brain, could there only be a means of making the correct measurements. Alma responded with a little more warmth than she had shown initially. I watched them, noting, in my rather bemused state, that they resembled one another. Both were lightly built, with blond hair and light-coloured eyes. But beyond this, there was an element of contrast. Alma radiated warmth, West coolness. I was trying to figure out how this could be when I realized that he had asked me something. I roused myself from my reverie with an effort.
“…would you and Miss Halsey care to join me?”
“Excuse me,” I said. “I wasn’t listening, I’m afraid.”
“He’s still afloat on the Goldberg Variations,” laughed Alma. “Mr. West has asked us to accompany him to supper. I’m afraid I must decline, but perhaps you are available?”
“Well, Milburn? I’d like to prolong this pleasant evening, so how about some post-concert festivities?”
“That sounds delightful,” I said, without thinking. “But Alma, you must allow me to take you home first. I hope that will be all right with you,” I said to West. I felt that I had committed some sort of faux pas with respect to one or both of them, and was not certain what I should do to remedy it.
“Of course,” he replied. “I am entirely at your disposal. We’ll form an honour guard for Miss Halsey.” He bowed rather mockingly toward Alma, who responded in a similar vein.
“Nonsense! It’s only a few blocks. I have no need for knights-errant to safeguard me home.”
I insisted, however, so following the rest of the concert, which featured a Mozart piano trio of which I have no memory at all, although I normally enjoy his music, West and I accompanied Alma to the door of her house. Along the way, it occurred to me that this was an odd way to conclude an evening with a young lady. West did not seem in the least disconcerted at having created a ‘three’s a crowd’ situation. He participated eagerly in the conversation, discoursing on a number of topics, from violin making in 18th century Italy to the latest political scandals in Boston. As on the other occasions I had met him he seemed to bring with him his own charged atmosphere. Again, I felt it affecting me, adding a spring to my step and a kind of devil-may-care attitude which was entirely foreign to me.
Alma must have sensed something of this, for she looked at me sharply as we shook hands on her doorstep. “Good night, Charles. Thank you for the concert. Enjoy yourself, but don’t forget that excellent precept, ‘Nothing in excess.’ Good night, Mr. West.”
“Quantum sufficit,” I replied, smartly. “Vale.”
“Ah the independent Miss Halsey,” said West, as we turned our steps toward Arkham’s commercial centre on River Street. “There’s a good deal of her father, the venerable Allan, in her, whether she admits it or not.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, a little nettled that he should be making what seemed to be a less than complimentary remark about a young woman who had obviously been my chosen companion for the evening.
“Merely that both of them are rather given to laying down the law to everyone around them. I suppose it comes with the territory for him, but…”
I remembered Alma saying that West had been nearly expelled from the Medical School, and assumed that this incident, necessarily involving the Dean, would have coloured his attitude toward the Halsey family. But surely that was rather unjust? I was spared the need to reply, however, for he dropped the subject.
“Well, where shall we dine?” he asked. On my expressing no preference, he suggested Da Vinci’s Grill, a place I had heard of but never patronized. It was not a restaurant frequented by the academic set, but rather a wood-panelled, leather and brass establishment of the sort beloved by men of business. I felt as we entered that we had somehow been transported to the financial district of New York City.
West, it appeared, was known here. A brief word to the head waiter secured for us a table in a remote corner, bathed in its own pool of yellow light.
“Do you come here often?” I asked, curious. “You seem to be what they call a ‘regular’.”
“My father,” he replied, looking a little embarrassed, “is the regular. I am merely a hanger-on, not even a crony, but the food is good, the service discreet, and it’s not Miskatonic. There are times when it’s refreshing to get away from the atmosphere of academia.”
“Your father is in business, I believe?” I said, carefully avoiding any mention of funeral parlours.
“God yes, he’s in business. Bakeries, breweries, real estate – you name it, Hiram West owns a piece of it. And his mortuaries, of course. A dozen of those – he’s the king of the death business in Massachusetts. One time I suggested that he adopt as a slogan ‘Go west with West’s,’ but he was not amused.”
He looked at me seriously, but I caught a glimpse of mischief lurking in his eyes, and let loose the laughter his words had provoked. After this we were easier with one another. In answer to my tentative questions he told me that he was the youngest of three brothers, of whom the other two were businessmen like their father. Like me, he had grown up in Boston, not so very far from my home in Beacon Hill, except that I had been taught that the mansions of Back Bay were haunts of the nouveau riche, to be regarded with disdain. On my asking about his mother, he replied, “I have been motherless since the age of eight.” There was a finality about this statement that discouraged further questions on the subject.
Whatever West thought of his father (and I detected a mixture of emotions, among them shame, exasperation and a grudging respect), he had certainly not rejected the benefits of the elder West’s positive cash flow. Now, as on the two previous occasions I had met him, he was immaculately dressed. My best suit didn’t begin to come close. He looked less like a student than a successful young professional man. Yet underneath and above and around all this was what really interested me about him – a kind of barely suppressed hidden laughter, as though he was saying: “I know a great secret, and if you are the kind of fellow I think you are I might let you in on it.”
He dealt briskly with the waiter after making a few unobtrusive suggestions that prevented me from dithering over the menu, which was quite lengthy.
“Well, Milburn,” he said, once we were settled with drinks, our orders placed. “Quid pro quo, now – what of your domestic origins?”
“My parents are both dead,” I said, realizing too late how stark that sounded, but wishing to avoid the particulars of their deaths, especially my father’s. “I grew up in Boston. My father was a banker. It was a fairly ordinary life, really, but now I’m alone. I have a bachelor’s degree in classics and my librarian’s degree, of course. Since last fall I have been a cataloguer at Miskatonic University Library.”
“Oh, so you do something besides guard the Necronomicon?” He was teasing me, but I detected something else in his voice. “Come to think of it, I’ve never thought much about what you librarians do all day, besides fuss with books and tell people where things are. What’s a cataloguer?”
“Well, you know the card catalogue – all those cabinets full of drawers in
the main hall of the Library – my colleagues and I have made all that. No, not the cabinets, of course, but the contents. The descriptions and index terms on the cards. It’s an index to all the books in the Library. You can find any book described there, and from the description and the call number you can tell whether it might be of use to you, and where to find it. You can look under authors, or subjects or titles, whatever suits you. All the books, however different from one another, fit into this structure, so once you know how it works, you can follow a thread from your starting point to the thing you need. It’s all quite logical.”
“I’m a great believer in logic. But how do you cataloguers make sure you’re all describing and classifying the same way? Surely you don’t have one system for your Greeks and Romans, and Alma Halsey quite another for the sciences?”
“There are rules for description, quite complex ones. A new version was published just three years ago. And we use a classification system developed here at Miskatonic in the 1880s. But surely you must have used the card catalogue at some point? How could you get three-fourths of the way through medical school without doing that?”
He looked a little uncomfortable. “We medical fellows have our methods and short cuts. It’s considered weak, actually, to use the Library. Occasionally one of us will slip in when desperate, if we can be sure of not meeting any of the others. And we borrow books from our professors, of course.”
“So you didn’t get desperate until you needed the Necronomicon?” I asked.
“Well, not desperate, exactly. Only certain that it would have the answers I needed. And it did, too.” But he would say no more about that. “So there are rules? All you have to do is look them up and you can catalogue anything? Or, for that matter, anyone could?”
I was a little disconcerted. I felt as though I was being interviewed, for what I could not imagine.
“It’s not that simple. The rules have to be applied in context. There’s a lot of room for interpretation. Cataloguing is more art than science. The best cataloguers try to think like the researchers who use the catalogue, to see it the way they do. Not everyone can do that.”
“But you can?”
“Yes, I think so. That’s one of the things that makes my work interesting.”
By this time our meals had come and we were making short work of them. West had ordered a couple of bottles of wine as well, and I was finding myself more voluble than is my habit as a result.
“We cataloguers are not moles, as some of my colleagues think,” I said. “I think of us as… weavers. Spiders, perhaps.”
To my surprise, West immediately saw what I was getting at. “Spiders? Of course, the catalogue is a kind of web, isn’t it? At least, that’s what your description made me think of. I suppose you have to be fairly versatile, don’t you – to understand what all those books are about? And then there are different languages… I have more respect for you librarians now, I can tell you,” he said, raising his glass. “To cataloguers.”
“Yes!” I said, my enthusiasm for my obscure field breaking out in response to his understanding. “But enough about me. What led you to the study of medicine?”
“Death,” said Herbert West.
My surprise must have shown on my face, but after a moment he continued. “When I was eight, my mother died, and my twin brother. They got sick and never got better, despite all the doctors and treatments my father called in. I watched it all, as a child will, even though they tried to stop me. It seemed to go on forever, but I suppose it was only a couple of weeks. Every time another doctor left, I would go to my mother and ask her if she would get better. Until she couldn’t speak any more. And my brother – well, it was like watching myself die.
“Their deaths left me virtually alone, since my two remaining brothers were five and eight years older than I. I got angry instead of sad, because I was certain there was something that could have been done to save them. Everyone was just too stupid to see it. So I read everything I could find about death, which wasn’t much, in the Pater’s library. Yes, he actually has one, bought lock, stock and barrel – if you can say that about a library – in the true Hiram West manner. Once I was in school I found more – scientific stuff, but also philosophy. My teachers suggested I study medicine, so here I am.”
While he was speaking I found myself touched with pity by the vision he had conjured up – the little boy, frightened at what was happening to his mother and brother. Twin brother, no less. But it was too glib. And there was no passion in his eyes to match the words.
Still, I could not very well express doubts about a story like this. Instead I asked, “And what area of medicine will you specialize in, or do you know?”
“I think so,” he replied. “It’s something I’m developing myself, and altogether unprecedented. Would you like me to tell you? It’s quite a story.”
Here it is, I thought. Aloud I said, “Tell me.”
Over coffee and brandy he told me a great deal. Some of it, perhaps most, was the truth, or nearly.
“You know, of course, that my father owns several funeral parlours. He no longer works as an undertaker; as I mentioned earlier, he has expanded his business interests and now is concerned primarily with managing all his enterprises. But at one time he was a funeral director. He apprenticed under my grandfather and great-uncle, who started the business.” He laughed. “Father would rather soil his hands metaphorically and achieve greater profits. But I have always been aware that some of our livelihood came from dealing with the dead.
“Anyway, a few years ago when I was considering medicine as a profession, I did my own apprenticeship. I thought exposure to corpses would be practical, if only as preparation for the dissecting room.
“At the same time I was taking courses in biology and philosophy at the University. Have you ever read Haeckel?” On my expressing only a passing familiarity with the name, he explained. “Ernst Heinrich Haeckel is a German who has worked in both these fields. He developed a theory of the mechanism of life, based on the work of Darwin.
“The key word here is mechanism. All living things can be reduced to pure matter. You may have heard that most of the human body consists of water. Water and carbon, and a few other elements. Put them all together, precisely, and you have that violinist who entertained us so superbly tonight. Or Bach himself, for that matter. Change the chemistry, even slightly, and you have an idiot, or a lump of dead flesh. The thing that makes the difference between those two states, that’s what I am looking for.”
“Death, you mean? The moment the soul leaves the body, or – ?”
West waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not concerned with the soul. I’ve never seen one or heard of anyone who has – not anyone credible, anyway. And I’ve seen several people die – oh yes, they don’t spare our delicate feelings at the Med. School! – and many others who were already dead, of course. Not a soul among them. It’s all chemistry and electricity, from respiration to digestion and the activity of the brain. I leave the soul to dreamers and clerics.
“The thing that really interested me was the way in which the physical mechanism changes to produce the ultimate change we call death. I felt that if I could understand that I could come up with some way to delay, or even reverse it.”
“So you’re a student of Thanatos,” I said. On his inquiring look I explained. “A personification of death in ancient Greece.”
“If you say so,” West said. “Anyway, one summer there was a minor plague here in Arkham, one of those sudden things that comes and goes within a few weeks. We undertakers were uncommonly busy, as you may imagine. I was probably working too hard, and such work too! Like the Black Death of the 14th century. Well, one night I had a dream – they’re all brain chemistry, don’t deceive yourself! – it’s your own mind sending you messages, but sometimes they’re useful. I dreamt I could see the chemical composition of a dead body – the very essence, I mean, as though it had been exploded into fundamental particles. I could see
that there was an imbalance, and I knew that I could re-start the engine of life by the application of an appropriate chemical stimulus.
“When I began at the Medical School, I tried discussing my idea with some of my professors. They agreed in theory, but did not seem in the least interested in any practical experimentation. So I went ahead anyway, on my own.
“You know how embalming works, don’t you?” I shook my head, surprised by the question. “No? Well, it was developed by physicians. William Harvey used the injection technique in his study of blood circulation. A Scottish anatomist called William Hunter was the first to apply it to preservation of corpses. It became a profession in its own right during the Civil War, when people wanted their sons’ bodies shipped home for burial. Now I have found a medical use for the technique once more. You see, in embalming, the corpse’s blood is drained and replaced with a preservative fluid. There is a special apparatus for injecting the chemical and aspirating the body fluids. It occurred to me that with a few modifications this could be a means to inject a revivifying fluid into a body without circulation, a body whose heart had stopped. The chief problem, of course, was what would such a fluid consist of, and how could it be made? This became my obsession.
“First I had to develop a substance enough like blood to substitute for it, but which had also the necessary galvanizing effect. It wasn’t easy. A hundred times I felt like giving up. Many rabbits, guinea pigs, cats, dogs and monkeys met their ends at my hands. Several times I obtained signs of life, but since each species requires a unique formulation, there was no point in wasting my time on formulae that could be used on animals only. I approached the college authorities again, to give me authorization to use human subjects.
“You know, Milburn, these professor-doctors, they make all kinds of sanctimonious noises about working for the good of mankind, doing no harm and all sorts of mumbo-jumbo, but when someone comes along ready to make them a gift of something truly revolutionary, they retreat into a pathetic Puritanism. Not only did they refuse me, they threatened to take away my laboratory privileges if I persisted.
“Well, you can guess what happened next. In desperation, I availed myself of a human subject from the only source readily open to me – one of my father’s mortuaries. I had to transport the body to a lab at the Medical School, where I had the necessary equipment and chemicals. It had to be done discreetly, of course, which meant I had to do it in the middle of the night. Even then, there was a night watchman who had to be negotiated with. Unfortunately, the experiment failed, probably because the corpse was too old by then, the delicate mechanisms of life stalled beyond repair. And worst of all, I was discovered by some busybody who reported me to the college authorities. The learned and benevolent Dr. Halsey himself threatened me with expulsion should I so much as hoist a guinea pig in the laboratory again. And my father, though no saint, was not pleased at my unorthodox proceedings with one of his clients. But he did help to work things out with Halsey in the end.”
As West spoke, I watched his hands. They were strong hands, beautifully shaped, the nails cut short and immaculately clean. I watched them pick up and lay down items of cutlery, raise his glass to his lips, make an eloquent gesture to emphasize a point. I had difficulty imagining that these hands had done the things that he described, had touched many corpses, had intimately probed their cold flesh and opened their arteries. These hands had been stained, perhaps, with blood grown thick and viscous with death. They had handled shining knives and hollow needles, poisons and secret substances. He must have looked with his grey eyes into blank, glazed ones in which death had extinguished the spark, and thought, “It need not be forever,” as he calculated the forces required to accomplish the unthinkable.
I remembered the few dead people I had seen – my grandmother, when I was nine, and my mother. My father too, but he was alone in the category of the self-murdered. To me they had seemed like spent flowers, drawn in upon themselves, sealed shut from life, stilled forever. I could not imagine wanting to animate them. Surely the very desire to open these closed beings, to force life back into them, was a blasphemy. I realized I was sliding into bemusement, and spoke to bring myself back.
“So it wasn’t dissecting room cadavers after all,” I said.
“No, of course not. Such things would be of no use to my work. They’re pretty much pickled by the time we students get our hands on them. Mind you, that little adventure I described to you some weeks ago did happen, but it was routine medical student stuff – tradition, really. Even Halsey probably did something like that, centuries ago.”
“So you’re telling me that you are able to bring the dead back to life.”
“Yes,” he answered simply. “Under certain conditions I believe I can do just that.”
“And what might those conditions be?” I asked. So reasonable had he sounded until now that I hesitated to express disbelief without further details.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out. I know that there’s a limit of time after death beyond which my method will not work. But I don’t know as yet whether there’s a gradation of effectiveness within the limit. In other words, I suspect that a corpse can be restored to full and effective life within only a short time after death. Beyond that time, a kind of life is possible, but the individual may no longer be recognizable as the person they were before death, due to loss of cognitive functions. Such a being may still serve a purpose, however.”
“What sort of purpose?”
“Well, as an experimental subject, for example. What you would have is a body with physiological functions, but no mind. A perfect thing on which to perform certain experimental procedures, don’t you think? Consider how that would prolong the useful life of the citizen.”
I could not tell whether he was joking. I thought not. I wondered if the horror I felt showed in my face. “Have you actually done that? Carried out experiments on one of these… mindless things?”
“No, for the simple reason that I have not yet achieved a successful revivification. I must do some more fundamental work first, but that’s difficult, now that I’m under scrutiny by the Medical School.”
“But West, I’m not sure I understand. You’re saying that you might be able to restore a dead person to full life, is that right?”
“Exactly. I’m certain of it. But within certain parameters only.”
“All right,” I said. I was trying hard to get my mind around the idea. “All right, but a person who is dead usually dies of something. Something harmful, I mean, that has done damage to the body. That’s why they’re dead. So even if you manage to restore life, wouldn’t you just have someone who’s on the point of death again?”
“Ah, but it would give you a chance to heal them, wouldn’t it? How often do you hear it said that someone might have lived if only help had arrived sooner? If we had been able to try this or that technique? Once the body is functioning again, measures could be taken to counteract the injury or disease, just as though death had not intervened. Obviously, it would make no sense to revivify bodies that were seriously damaged or deteriorated. And even if a person is revivified for only a short time it could make a great difference, in certain situations.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s consider a few. Unfinished business, for example. People who die before they can make a will, confess to a crime or make some other revelation, such as the identity of a murderer. Wouldn’t that be useful?”
“I suppose so, but it conjures up some rather macabre scenarios. A dead person being dragged back over the threshold and interrogated by greedy relatives or the police.”
He seemed a little annoyed. “Perhaps, but it’s unlikely that the greedy relatives or police would be capable of or equipped to carry out the procedure. For me, all those worthy reasons are beside the point, actually. The real reason I have devoted myself to this problem is to introduce the element of choice. When I perfect my discovery there will be a choice even to return from death,
however briefly.”
“But it won’t be the dead person’s choice, but someone else’s. Yours, I suppose. A corpse would have no idea that it might be brought back to life. What if it didn’t want to be?”
“Corpses don’t have a choice. They simply don’t care. But once alive again, he would have the choice to end his life once more. That choice is always available, to all of us.”
A lot you know about that, I thought, remembering again the scene in my father’s study the day after the collapse of the Western Massachusetts Bank. But I didn’t want to talk about that with Herbert West.
“So who would such a person be?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this… thing you would have after you administer your formula – who would it be? If he died as John Smith of Arkham, is that who he would be when he comes back to life? Someone with all the attributes of the living John Smith – oh, I don’t know – his speech habits, food preferences, sense of humour. You know, things that aren’t necessarily dependent on intelligence, but which certainly are part of someone’s personality.”
“Personality... I don’t know, Milburn. I haven’t given that much thought. I suppose there might be some changes. That’s something else that would be revealed only by experimentation.”
I could not let go of the matter so easily. “This John Smith, would he still love his wife? His children? Would he keep his friendships? Because those things are as important as cognitive functions, surely?”
He stared at me for a second or two, as though he had discovered a new life form sitting in the chair across from him. “Are they as important?” he asked. “I’m not certain about that. And I have no idea how one would test such notions scientifically.” After another short silence, he appeared to have dismissed the subject.
“There could be another reason for this research.” He gave me a mischievous look. “With your concern about the soul, I would have expected you to have thought of it already. Wouldn’t you like to have a chance to speak with someone who had actually crossed the threshold, as you put it? Surely he would have a tale worth listening to. Why, even a materialist like myself might be interested, if only as a means of exploring the effect of oxygen deprivation on the brain.”
“Is that how the Necronomicon comes into it?”
“Ah, the Necronomicon. As a matter of fact it does, very much so. But look, I think they’re getting ready to close here. How about if we go back to my rooms, and I can tell you the rest?”
West insisted on settling the bill. “After all, I invited you and have been bending your ear for hours. The least I can do is supply the grub.”
We walked rather slowly back to the college district, West showing consideration for both my limp and unaccustomed state of tipsiness. He, on the other hand, did not seem in the least affected by the lateness of the hour or the amount of wine he had drunk.
West’s rooms occupied the entire ground floor of a Georgian house on College Street, near Miskatonic and St. Mary’s Hospital. The apartment was spacious and comfortably furnished with what he described as castoffs from the paternal attics. He made us some coffee and resumed his narrative.
“Curiously, I found the beginning of the thread that led me to the Necronomicon in my father’s library,” West began. “Truly! Remember, I told you that he had bought the collection intact. Well, whoever put it together had wide-ranging interests, as well as good taste in bindings, which was what mattered to Father. But I found it quite valuable. In a way, my entire career began with those books. You see, among them were some writings on alchemy. Fortunately, I made the leap to chemistry before I absorbed too much of the mystical mumbo-jumbo. In college I couldn’t choose between chemistry and biology, so looked for something in common between the two, which led me to my present interests.”
I remembered what he had told me in the restaurant, that it had been the deaths of his mother and brother that had led him to study medicine. I nearly asked him about this apparent contradiction, but he was clearly in full flight, pacing back and forth with a glass of whiskey in his hand.
“Anyway, to get back to Father’s library, it was in one of those books that I found an oblique reference to “the principle of life in death as articulated by Alhazred.” Well, that phrase “life in death,” struck me as worth following up, but I had no idea who Alhazred might be, until I asked one of my professors – Quarrington, it was. He wrote one of my endorsements for you back in the spring. He’s a professor emeritus of philosophy. An interesting fellow – knows something about everything. Anyway, he told me about Abdul Alhazred, of San’aa in Yemen, who wrote a book called Al Azif in the 8th century. Some time later the Al Azif was translated into Greek, under the title Necronomicon, which it retained in other translations, into Latin and even English.”
“That would be the uniform title for it, then, with Al Azif as a cross-reference. And The Book of Dead Names, too, of course.” I said this before I had realized it.
“Uniform title?” repeated West. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s something we use in cataloguing, to bring together works that have been issued under different titles. I’m sorry; I spoke without thinking. Please go on.”
“Well, anyway, Al Azif is the Necronomicon, or rather, the Necronomicon is a translation of a translation of Al Azif. Imagine my delight when I found we had a copy, right here in Arkham! In Latin, fortunately, not Arabic. But as you know, my Latin is only just functional, so I was extremely lucky that you were there to translate for me.”
“But I couldn’t understand any of it!” I exclaimed. “The words, yes, but not their significance.”
“I understood them quite well,” said West, a strange look in his eyes. “They inspired me, in fact. After those hours with the Necronomicon, I did my best work so far. It wasn’t facts I found there, you understand, but something that turned my thinking about the nature of cells and how they function as living entities. It made all the difference. I was in the laboratory every night for weeks, and now I think I have a revivifying fluid that will be effective on a human subject. What I need now is a subject. And an assistant.”
“Surely one of your fellow students – ” I began, but West cut me off with his characteristic wave of the hand.
“They’re a bunch of sheep,” he said with contempt. “They won’t get involved in anything even slightly unorthodox, for fear of jeopardizing the all-important diploma. In fact, I’m fairly certain it was one of these fellow students of mine that tipped off Halsey the night I made that one attempt I told you about.”
He began pacing again. “I’m so close!” he exclaimed. “But now it’s more risky than ever. I have a laboratory of sorts here, but it’s barely adequate. So I’ll have to break some more rules, I guess. Any amount of them. And even more, I need a trustworthy assistant. How about it, Milburn?”
“Me?” I cried, astonished. “Why on earth would you want me? I’m a librarian, not a doctor or a scientist of any sort. And in case you haven’t noticed, I limp.”
Again that wave of the hand. “So what, I’m not planning on doing any running. It’s quite simple, Milburn. You’re a romantic, and despite all those rules you live by, you obviously know it’s necessary to break them sometimes. Look at that Necronomicon business. I was certain you would find some reason to keep me from it. My reputation had preceded me, I knew. So I was pleasantly surprised when you let me go ahead. Believe me, anyone at Miskatonic who breaks a rule, however small, has my vote.” He smiled. “And now that my professors think I’ve gone in for reading dusty old tomes they figure I’m not as dangerous.”
“So what would this… assistant of yours do?” I asked.
“Simply be an extra pair of hands, eyes and ears. One pair of each, I mean.” Again that smile. “Say you’ll consider it, at least.”
“I’ll consider, but not tonight,” I said, starting to get up from the sofa. “I’m about ready to collapse.”
“Of course,” said West, e
xtending his hand and hauling me to my feet. “I’ve kept you entirely too late. Look, suppose we meet here in three days, at six o’clock? You’re finished work by then? Good. Well, good night, Milburn. It’s been a delightful evening.”
I walked slowly home under a sky full of stars. It had been a long evening – Alma, the music, and now the revelations of Herbert West. I had never known anyone like him. His brilliance and coldness, combined with a worldly air, produced in me an impression of ineffable glamour. Having been on the sidelines for most of my life, I was immensely flattered that one of the players at the centre of things had noticed me, even wanted my help. Oh, I realized even then that West was probably not all he seemed. There were disturbing hints of unsavoury connections and a love of deception for its own sake. But what of it? Why should I not, for once in my life, avoid the well-trodden path of duty and seek adventure in wilder realms?
Did I really believe that Herbert West could raise the dead? I did not, then, but I believed he was a man who could do extraordinary things, and that by associating with him I might become a little less ordinary myself.
The Friendship of Mortals Page 3