Chapter 5
Some years before, I had for a time read anything I could find about the experiences of persons who had nearly died but had subsequently been resuscitated or had spontaneously recovered. Their reports of what they experienced while ‘dead’ demonstrated a surprising degree of similarity: a feeling of floating toward a distant light, of great peace and exaltation. Some had seen their own bodies lying far beneath them. Most had been unhappy to return to life, feeling deprived of the tremendous events of which they had experienced only the beginning.
I had developed this interest after the deaths of my parents, of course, and after I had abandoned any efforts to communicate with them through a medium. I was drawn to the idea that a dying person may experience something wonderful, rather than the terror of imminent extinction.
After West’s initial revivification attempt, I remembered these accounts of the near-death experience, and wondered what John Hocks might have reported to us had there been an opportunity to question him. With all the excitement, I had not considered doing this until after Hocks had vanished. I suppose it was also because I had not really believed that West’s treatment would be successful. After all, my participation in the business had been prompted not by scientific motives but by personal ones – namely, a fascination with the investigator, rather than with the subject being investigated.
But now I had an opportunity to pursue this area of interest, as well as assisting West with his. I drew up a list of questions to ask: What did you see? How did you feel? Were you afraid? Could you hear sounds? Were there any others in that place? And so on. I became quite enthusiastic and finally discussed the matter with West.
“I have no objections, Charles. If you want to interview the subjects, feel free, as long as you are prepared to quit immediately should it become necessary. In fact, it would be useful for me to observe their responses to your questions – oh, not what they say, but how well they understand and articulate. As an indication of cognitive function, you know.”
“Why not what they say? It might be interesting.”
“To a romantic like you, because these are romantically inspired questions. I can give you the real answer now: the glorious visions result from brain cells starved of oxygen. It’s like the fall colours of the leaves, which are also products of breakdown. That’s why you find all those similarities among the different accounts – the visions are the results of the same chemical processes.”
“Well, but has it ever occurred to you that these brain processes might be the means by which the consciousness finds the peace of death? After all, it’s not the body we’re talking about here. It’s the inner self, the spirit, that experiences these ecstasies. So instead of saying that the ecstasy results from the death of brain cells, one could say that the soul departs from the body in ecstasy as the brain cells die.” I suspected I was on shaky ground, but persisted in my argument nonetheless.
“I think that’s what the logicians would call an argument a posteriori, Charles. And anyway, you can talk all you like about the soul and what might be happening to it, but until you can scientifically demonstrate the existence of a soul there is no point in speculating about when it leaves the body or where it goes. I am not concerned about anyone’s soul.”
I was disappointed by West’s mechanistic outlook, and resolved to prove a thing or two to him, just as he was determined to prove to the Miskatonic professors that the ideas they had mocked had a basis in fact.
By the time the fall semester began, West was fully reinstated at the Medical School and started his internship at St. Mary’s Hospital. On the few occasions we met he warned me that he had every intention of carrying out another revivification experiment as soon as the opportunity arose.
“Now that I have full laboratory access and am working in the hospital too, it will be much easier, although still risky,” he said. “At least the matter of transport will be simpler. No more grave robbing and getting overly friendly with corpses on the street, Charles.”
I had to admit that this was a relief. There had been no more reports of the supposed ‘wild man,’ and when I thought of John Hocks at all, I assumed he had left the district.
Early in October Miskatonic threw open its doors to alumni, supporters and the interested public for its quadrennial Open House. This event was intended to promote the institution as a worthwhile cause for philanthropists, and to attract promising students and faculty.
As a junior member of the Library staff I took my turn at presiding over an exhibit of informative materials and answering questions from passers-by. I led tour groups around the building, giving a set speech about collections and services.
The tour did not include the vault in the Administration Office. I was asked several times about the Necronomicon and the other rare volumes. The idly curious had to be satisfied when I told them that these books were kept in a secure place due to their rarity, and that a special application was required to see them. One immensely aged individual, however, was so insistent, and in such a whispery voice, difficult to comprehend, that in the end I approached Dr. Armitage to obtain special permission for a viewing. To my surprise, he recognized the old fellow, and introduced him to me as Dr. Augustus Quarrington, Professor emeritus of philosophy. After a moment, I recognized the name. He had written one of West’s letters in support of his application to see the ancient book. And he had been one of West’s professors, too.
I escorted Quarrington, who walked very fast for a man of his age, to the consultation room. It was my first visit to the Necronomicon since that disconcerting one in July. It was also my last, since John Bowen returned to Miskatonic shortly after this and resumed responsibility for the books in the vault.
I picked up the black-bound volume with its silver clasps and placed it in front of the old man. This time it weighed no more than it should have, and there were no strange odours. Quarrington did not open it immediately, but put both hands on it and ran them over the leather, in a way that reminded me of a blind person trying to determine the identity of an object. Then he opened the book and leafed through it, seemingly at random. At intervals he bent so closely to the page he was looking at that he seemed about to kiss it. More than once, he muttered words incomprehensible to me, words which did not sound like any language with which I was acquainted.
At length he closed the book and laid his hands on the cover again. Then he looked up at me. To my surprise, he was grinning.
“You’ve looked in it. Oh yes, my boy, I can tell. I can tell that someone has looked. Not just you, but another, and he’s taken something away, too. It’s out in the world again, doing the Work. I can tell.”
I tried to reassure him that no one had taken anything from the book; that would not be allowed. But old Quarrington merely chuckled to himself and repeated, “It’s out there, working.” He said nothing more, except just as we were leaving the Administration Office he looked at me hard with eyes of a startling blue and said, “Be careful, young fellow, and tell your friend the same. Him especially. He’s not as tough as I once thought. You’re the tough one.”
On the final evening of the Open House, there was a reception in the Library’s main hall, hosted by Dr. Armitage. All members of the professional staff were expected to put in an appearance, circulate among the guests and “represent the Library in a favourable way.”
During a lull, I joined Alma near the refreshment tables. Like naughty children, we exchanged acerbic comments about the people with whom we had been chatting so earnestly a short time before.
Over Alma’s shoulder I could see a fairly large group arriving. “I think we must return to our labours,” I said.
“Bear up, Charles, only an hour more,” she replied, hurrying off toward a European-looking man who was greeting her as “My dear Miss Halsey.”
I might have paid more attention to this had I not heard my own name. It was West, accompanied by several men whom I had never seen before. The foremost of them was a sixtyish
individual who gave an impression of largeness, although it was a matter of breadth rather than height. He looked at me with rather prominent eyes, which, along with his wide, thin-lipped mouth, made me think of a toad.
“This must be young Mr. Milburn,” he said, advancing upon me.
“Yes, Father,” said West. “This is Charles Milburn. Charles, I would like you to meet my father, Hiram West.”
I murmured the appropriate words, allowing my hand to be crushed in the large bony one of West senior. In his father’s presence Herbert seemed curiously quelled, his mercurial quality unaccountably absent. Though as elegantly dressed as ever, beside his father he appeared younger and thinner than I remembered him. If I had not known otherwise I would have found it hard to believe that this pale, delicate young man had exhumed a corpse and returned it to life.
Hiram West, on the other hand, had an inexorable quality that assigned a place to everyone within conversational range and absorbed them into his entourage, willy-nilly. I could feel myself being swept along to an unknown destination, like a leaf which has landed in a swiftly flowing stream.
“It’s good to know that Herbert is making some friends and getting out a bit,” said West senior. “A young fellow like him shouldn’t shut himself up with a bunch of test tubes and chemicals all the time. I’m always telling him, ‘Herbert, you have to circulate!’ A doctor is just another kind of businessman, you know, and in business it’s who you know, not what you know, that counts. Now you’re a librarian, I hear…”
Without giving me time to reply he kept talking, until I found myself trying to explain to him what a cataloguer does, just as I had to his youngest son, months earlier. But this time I knew it was a lost cause. Hiram West cheerfully voiced opinions to the effect that the catalogue was a great thing, the Library was great, and Miskatonic U. was a great place. From time to time he would ask one of the other men in the group for affirmation, which would be promptly expressed by the individual addressed.
These men were of a type unknown to me. They were not working men, nor academics, nor businessmen in any sense of the word that I recognized. Perhaps they were lawyers, or perhaps only what Herbert had cryptically referred to as ‘cronies’ the first time we had gone to Da Vinci’s. West senior obviously preferred to travel with a shoal of these individuals in his wake, although their function was not immediately apparent to me. Apart from saying “Yes, Mr. West,” when required to, they were silent.
I was intrigued, and so had few objections when I was caught up in the West entourage as Hiram, expressing thanks and good will to Dr. Armitage, swept us all out of the Library. I managed to get close to Herbert, who looked at me apologetically.
“Sorry, Charles,” he said. “This wasn’t my idea. The Pater’s in one of his expansive moods. He’s decided to become a patron of higher learning, and has been getting acquainted with Miskatonic all week. Sometimes I think he doesn’t realize it’s not for sale. When I heard he was coming to the Library reception I thought I had better come along. He’s rather overwhelming when he’s onto something new.”
I was spared a reply by West senior issuing orders.
“All right, everyone! Supper time! They’ll be expecting us at Da Vinci’s. They’d better.” He laughed loudly. “Charles, you’ll join us, of course. Come along.”
He led us to a large black car. A chauffeur stood by holding the door for him. I slid into the other side with Herbert. The entourage climbed into two other cars parked nearby. One preceded us and the other followed as we set out.
While Herbert had been given a certain deference and a secluded corner table at Da Vinci’s, Hiram got the red carpet treatment, almost literally. The head waiter and some of his subordinates were lined up at the door as we filed in. He showed us to a group of tables, at which the cronies disposed themselves in some predetermined pattern. Hiram took a place at the centre, commanding Herbert to sit at his left, me at his right. I was the guest of honour, apparently, which made me nervous.
Drinks appeared as though by magic, followed by what could be described only as a feast, liberally accompanied by more drinks. My host exhorted me to partake freely.
My recent experience with elaborate dinners was limited, but those I had been invited to had generally included ladies. This one was unique in being an all-male event, which, to me, seemed unfinished, even crude. No one became disorderly, but it lacked grace.
Hiram West set the conversational topics and tone. While I knew that the matters talked about could be broadly described as ‘business,’ it was surprisingly difficult to determine just what the business was. Names and numbers were frequently mentioned, along with cryptic phrases.
Every now and then Hiram remembered my existence and made efforts to include me in the conversation. For the most part, these efforts were short lived and unsuccessful. Once, however, he asked me about my father.
“Milburn… That reminds me of something,” he said, looking at me closely. “Was your dad George Milburn?” On my replying that yes, he had been, Hiram said, “I knew your dad, boy, not well, but enough to say I’m sorry about what happened to him. A fellow can take only so much trouble at once, I guess.”
Soon after this, I lost the conversational thread once more. West senior and the cronies were engaged in an animated discussion about the fortunes of someone called Muggsy, or possibly Buggsy. I disengaged from the words, and fell to observing the men as they talked, gestured, lit cigars, drank. I could not see much of Herbert, seated as he was on the other side of his father, but I did not think he was taking part in the conversation either. In fact, at one point I was certain he was writing something or doing calculations in a notebook.
I began to wonder what it must have been like for him, growing up in his father’s house. It may have been rather like this dinner, womanless, rough-edged, with conversations made up of short, staccato sentences, like bursts of gunfire. And in the midst of the hurly-burly was the slight blond boy, going about his business with cool self-possession – reading the books in his father’s library, following a path that led to science, to medicine, finally to the Necronomicon and grave-robbing and a corpse stirring to life in a makeshift laboratory. I was growing tired, and already more than a little tipsy. I wondered whether it was pity I felt, or admiration.
My musings came to an end when I became aware that Hiram West was once more addressing me, “…should be a good one! What do you say, Charles?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. West, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Falling asleep, eh?” said Hiram. “You young fellows just don’t have any stamina! When I was your age I would have just been getting going. What I was asking you is if you’re interested in some sport tomorrow night.”
“Sport?” I asked. What could he mean? A football game, or hunting, or something else? Impatiently, he explained,
“Boxing! The fights! We’re bringing in some imported talent, all the way from New York City. It’s a chance for you college boys to see some real life for a change.”
I was about to make some excuse. Boxing, wrestling and all pugilistic sports had absolutely no interest for me. Just then, however, I saw Herbert looking at me from behind his father’s shoulder. Gone was the dim, bored look he had worn most of the evening. His face was animated, his eyes shining. Silently, his lips formed the words, “Say yes.”
“Well, Mr. West,” I said. “I’ve never seen a boxing match. It might be interesting. Thank you for inviting me.”
“’Might be interesting!’” roared Hiram, clapping me on the back. “Oh, it’ll be interesting, all right! Now, Herbert, what about you? I know you always say you don’t like the fights, but if Charlie here is going, how about it?” He turned to his son, who, I noticed, had quickly readjusted the expression on his face.
“All right, Father,” he said. “Just this once I’ll come, if only to make sure you don’t corrupt Charles. I don’t think he knows what he’s in for.”
“Good!” said Hiram. “Let’s meet a
t the Mermaid, on Water Street. We’ll go from there.”
Soon after this, Hiram called for the bill and his chauffeur, signalling that the evening was over. Herbert refused a ride for both of us, saying, “Charles and I will walk. It’s only a short way, and we young fellows need the exercise, to build up our stamina.”
When we were walking through the misty autumn night, West said, “Well, that’s the Pater. What do you think of him?”
“He seems very… convivial,” I said. “I suppose it’s being in business. All those deals to work out…”
“Convivial, nothing! He’s an old blowhard. All right, he does have a talent for deals, as you call them, but his veneer certainly is a coarse one. I don’t mind it, really; I’m used to it. But this has all worked out splendidly. I can feel it.”
He leaped up suddenly, laughing, caught at a branch overhead and broke off a twig. Landing, he ran ahead a few steps, executed a kind of pirouette and waited for me to catch up. Then he walked backwards for a while, facing me.
“You mean this boxing match?” I was feeling slow and stupid once more.
“Yes, of course!” said West. “Not that I give a damn for boxing. A complete waste of time, I figure. But it’s a violent sport, and sometimes people get badly hurt. Quite often, in fact. And sometimes they die.”
I was beginning to see what he was getting at. “You mean – a fresh corpse?”
“Exactly! As fresh as can be, barring I create one by killing someone – which would be absurd, don’t you think?” He was half-laughing, half-serious. This was the Herbert West I was used to, all right.
“But if someone gets hurt at one of these fights, don’t they just get taken to the hospital?”
“Not at all! The fights are illegal, you see. The city fathers of both Arkham and Bolton have decided to ban the practice of men getting together to bash at each other with bare fists, while other men watch them and lay bets on who gets beaten to a pulp first. It promotes decadence and disorder, they say, and maybe they’re right. In any case, the fights haven’t stopped, just gone underground – into someone’s old barn or similar place.”
“But your father talked as though he’d had something to do with organizing this one.”
“Oh, I think that’s quite likely,” said West. “Father’s moral code is a very practical one. If he can get away with a profit, it’s the right thing to do. He thinks of the law as a kind of obstacle course which only proves what a clever guy he is in the end.”
It occurred to me that in the way they regarded rules and authorities, at least, father and son were not so very different.
“So there’s a chance we’ll be doing another experiment tomorrow night?” I asked.
“There’s a chance. I would advise that you be prepared for it.”
Alma belonged to a small literary circle, comprised of younger faculty members and senior students at Miskatonic, mostly women. She had at one time suggested that I might like to join, so as to even up the gender imbalance a little. I had not been eager, being a determined non-joiner, but had not refused outright. As we descended the front steps of the Library, I remembered, too late, that this evening it was Alma’s turn to host a meeting of the circle, and that I had half-promised to attend.
“Just come and meet them,” she had cajoled me some weeks before. “You’ll find them a congenial group, I think. Serious, but not too highbrow.”
I had not wanted to refuse. At the very least, it would mean an evening in Alma’s company, which I found most congenial. I could let the literary discussion wash over me while I watched her bustle about, handing out tea cups and pithy comments. Now, of course, I had to tell her I could not come.
“You didn’t say anything about a prior commitment when I asked you, at least two weeks ago.”
“That’s because it isn’t prior. It’s just that I met West and his father at our reception last night, and West senior bullied me into coming along to some sort of dinner tonight. He’s very hard to resist.” I hoped that she would not ask me what I had done the previous night.
“Yes, I saw you being hustled along by him and his henchmen,” she said. “Well, Charles, you know what I think of the Wests. You don’t really know what you’re getting into.”
A part of me agreed entirely with this sentiment. But another part was full of a nervous excitement. Also, I was grateful that Alma seemed relatively unconcerned about my absence from her literary evening. I felt a sudden rush of confused tenderness toward her.
“Look, Alma,” I said, placing a hand briefly on her forearm. “I feel like a cad for missing your meeting. I know you wanted me there, and I appreciate that.”
She smiled, a little sadly, I thought. “It’s all right, Charles. Maybe next time.”
West and I had agreed to meet at his rooms early that evening, then to join the rest of the party at the Water Street tavern. On the way, he told me of the preparations he had made earlier that day, should we be in a position to do an experiment later that night.
“This time our venue will be one of the Medical School’s laboratories. I have free access now, as you know. It’ll be easier to deliver the goods there undetected than to my rooms. I think this time we shall be able to count on motor transport. Acme Corpse Specialists will be at our service,” he said, smiling. “You see, in the event that one of the participants is killed, the organizers are quite efficient in disposing of the corpse. There is always a vehicle of some sort available.
“There is one problem, however. Obviously, I couldn’t very well rig up restraints in the lab without someone noticing and reporting it to Halsey. So we’ll have to do without. That’s a little worrying, because men of the type we may be dealing with are given to violence, and would be more likely than most to react violently upon revivification. But it’s a risk we have to take.”
West certainly did not look anxious. He was as buoyant as I had ever seen him. Something of this mood communicated itself to me, and I felt an extra spring in my step and a quickening of the heart. As we bent our steps toward Water Street, we must have truly looked like what we were, and yet were not – two young men heading out for a night on the town, except that West carried a black bag of the type favoured by physicians on house calls. “Tools of the trade,” was his terse reply to my question about it.
I had never been to Water Street before, although I had heard quite a lot about it, much of it colourful, little of it good. After crossing the Miskatonic River we entered a different world. On one side of the street were the piers, docks and warehouses which were a product of Arkham’s seagoing mercantile history. On the far side were the railroad tracks. At the west end of Water Street was a cluster of taverns, bars and cheap eateries, most of which were already doing a roaring business on this Saturday evening. We could hear the tinkle of a piano being played in one establishment, hearty singing in another.
The Mermaid was one of the oldest taverns, harking back to Arkham’s earliest times. Part of it was built right over the river, on pilings. I had heard rumours that more than a few bodies had been given a quick exit by way of a trap-door in the floor.
As we entered the dimly-lit interior, which smelled of tobacco smoke, beer, ancient wood and tar, we found that Hiram West had preceded us. He was accompanied by only two men tonight, silent muscular individuals introduced as Jerry and Mike. It appeared that the three of them had already partaken of refreshment. Herbert and I declined, so when the others had emptied their glasses we were on our way.
Hiram led the way to a vehicle parked behind a nearby outbuilding. It was not the luxurious automobile we had used the previous night, but an odd-looking, boxy contraption, the rear of which seemed disproportionately tall.
“Ah, you brought the Clodhopper,” said Herbert, laughing. “Think it might come in handy?”
“Well, you never know,” replied his father. “The Clodhopper can handle anything we might have to deal with, and it doesn’t have ‘I’m a hearse’ written all over it.”
; “This is a vehicle used for economy-priced rural funerals,” explained Herbert. “Father had it made up specially some years ago. He needed something that could travel faster than horses and not get bogged down in the country roads.” He motioned me to climb into the rear seat. Hiram and Mike got in the front. Jerry drove.
The Clodhopper was surprisingly comfortable, despite its gloomy associations and bizarre appearance. “Extra springs,” Herbert explained. The seat he and I occupied was immediately in front of a space large enough to accommodate two old-fashioned coffins, or a single casket of the modern type.
We drove a long way through the night. I was never certain just where we went, but I think our direction was roughly north and west. Herbert and I did not speak; Hiram and the others carried on an intermittent conversation in low voices. Once or twice I glanced at my companion. He sat upright, staring straight ahead, his clear profile as though carved in silver. I could not begin to guess what he was thinking about.
After a longish interval, at least half an hour, and probably closer to forty-five minutes, we turned off on a narrow, bumpy road. Five minutes later the vehicle slowed and stopped. On getting out I could see the characteristic shape of a barn silhouetted against the starlit sky. Light leaked out through the open doors. A dozen or more vehicles of various types were parked around the open space before it. I could hear a murmur of many voices.
A couple of formidable looking men flanked the door. They appeared to recognize Hiram and his two companions, and ignored Herbert and me as we followed in their wake.
Inside, a surprisingly large and motley crowd was gathered. Most of the men were working-class types, both rural and urban, disposed in groups and knots on some crudely built bleachers which lined three sides of the building. Although the barn’s original tenants had been absent for a long time, there was a faint aroma of hay and manure, overlaid with tobacco smoke, beer and unwashed bodies. I could hear English spoken with a number of different accents, as well as Italian and what I assumed was Polish.
Hiram West led us toward some bleachers to the left of the roped-off area that occupied the middle of the barn. Here was a group of rather more prosperous looking men. Most were of the same type as Hiram and his cronies, dressed in good suits, but with neckties a little wider and cigars a little fatter than good taste dictated. There were also some who looked as though they might be members of Arkham’s or Bolton’s professional and business class. Farther back in the shadows I thought I saw a couple of professors from Miskatonic, behind a boisterous cluster of students.
Hiram engaged in loud conversation with some of the others. Two of the younger men in his group looked toward Herbert and me and nodded in apparent greeting. He acknowledged this, but made no move to go over to them. To my inquiring glance he said only, “My brothers.” I looked curiously at the pair. Now that I knew of their relationship, I could see a family resemblance to Hiram. The three projected an aura of self-confidence and control, tinged slightly with menace. I looked away before I could seem to be staring.
Herbert and I found seats in the third row from the front, near an aisle. I looked about me with interest. Herbert remained silent, still wearing the same closed, concentrated look I had observed on the drive from Arkham.
Finally there was a general move to find seats. By now the barn was full. Latecomers stood in a crowd just inside the doors, which had been pulled shut. Several beer barrels had been broached, and the contents were being distributed to customers by panting boys.
Suddenly a fellow in shirt sleeves, with a handlebar moustache, shouted, “All right, everyone, we’re ready to start! Last chance to place your bets!”
There was a flurry of last minute betting. Then, from the narrow aisle which divided the middle range of bleachers, the first pair of contestants emerged.
They were a couple of young working men, stripped down for the occasion to short pants. They were introduced as Stan Wozniak and Tony Abruzzo, to the roars of their compatriots and supporters in the crowd. With no further preliminaries the match began.
I was too naïve to recognize the vast difference between a properly conducted boxing match and this illegal, bare-knuckled fight. But it did not take long before I began to suspect that a wide gulf lay between the Marquis of Queensberry’s rules (of which I had heard a vague rumour) and the spectacle which unfolded before me.
After some preliminary circling and tentative jabs, the first blow was landed, I think by Abruzzo. I was surprised at the solid, meaty sound it made, and even more surprised by the visceral response in myself. Wozniak responded with a well-aimed punch of his own, and soon the combatants were exchanging volleys of blows. When blood began to flow the yells from the crowd grew louder, acquiring a certain savagery. The atmosphere thickened and grew faintly red before my eyes. Then the shouting seemed to recede and become fainter, until I could hear only the grunts and gasps of the combatants and the thunk of flesh-encased bone on bone. I realized I was shouting too, I know not what.
A light touch on my arm brought me to my senses. Of all the men in the place, only Herbert West retained a calm demeanour. Looking at his pale, composed features, I felt a rush of shame.
In the ring, a heavy blow to the side of the head by Wozniak had felled the Italian, Abruzzo. He lay on the floor, his head in a widening pool of blood. Wozniak was declared the victor, and raised his fists in a gesture that struck me as gratuitous. I could hear a clinking of coins as bets were paid up. Two men arrived with a stretcher and hauled away the unconscious Abruzzo. Fresh sawdust was spread over the bloody spot on the floor. Suddenly, I realized that West was no longer beside me. Looking around, I caught a glimpse of him vanishing down the aisle in the wake of the stretcher. I wanted to follow, but the next fight (between Johnny “Boomer” Smith and Rocky McHenry) was about to begin, and the narrow passageway was full of tough-looking men I did not want to try to displace.
Distracted by thoughts of what West might be doing, I paid little attention to the bout. Instead, I had a sudden vivid mental image of Alma’s sitting room, afloat on its sea of golden leaves. Alma, wearing a dress of sherry-coloured velvet, was leaning earnestly toward someone I could not see. Her lips moved, but I could not hear what she was saying. I thought it might have been, “Only now…”
West, bag in hand, emerged from the passageway. He returned to his seat, saying, “Abruzzo will be all right. It looked worse than it was. He’s regained consciousness. I sponged him off and stitched him up. Insane business, isn’t it?”
His manner was so disconcertingly cheerful in the raw atmosphere of the place that I could only stare at him. In the ring the second bout was coming to an end, “Boomer” Smith having conceded to his opponent before too much damage had been inflicted on his person.
Two or three more of these amateur engagements between local pugilists took place. None was as spectacularly violent as the first had been, and none affected me in that unsettling way. West began to look bored.
An intermission followed, the main purpose of which seemed to be to allow more time for bets to be placed and more beer to be sold. I bought some, since the heat of the place had made me thirsty. West declined. From the excitement around us I suspected the piece de resistance was about to take place.
I was right. The next bout featured the ‘imported talent’ Hiram West had mentioned the previous night. One was Buck Robinson, the “Harlem Smoke,” a large black man, and the other was “Kid” O’Brien, a hulking blond fellow with a nose so altered from its original shape by repeated abuse that it had assumed a most un-Hibernian hook.
I could see immediately that these two were professionals, if such a word can be used to describe individuals whose business was bare-fisted fighting. Their demeanour lacked the feverishness displayed by the amateurs. There was no rush to land blows helter-skelter.
From the first, I suspected that Robinson was the better of the two. He was faster, his footwork better, his feints more deceiving. O’Brien seemed always to be a shade late, a
nd was soon in a defensive position. Robinson began to make contact. Again I heard that unmistakable and somewhat disgusting meaty sound of flesh striking flesh, like something being beaten with a padded club.
Like the first, this became a bloody fight. Long after a regulated bout would have been stopped, this one went on and on, Robinson delivering blows all around O’Brien’s head. Again, I felt that involuntary savage response within myself, but it passed away quickly when O’Brien dropped to the blood-spattered sawdust and lay still.
This time, West did not wait until the man had been carried away, but leaped into the ring and bent over O’Brien. Despite a growing sickness inside me, I made myself push my way to the ropes. West was running his hands rapidly over the fighter’s head and chest, raising an eyelid to peer at the pupil, checking for respiration and pulse. To my astonishment, I heard him speak to one of the hangers-on in what sounded like Italian. He beckoned me over, saying, “Stay close by, Charles. We’ll be leaving soon.”
O’Brien was loaded onto the stretcher and carried out of the ring. “That one’s a goner,” someone said, and several times I heard the word morto. The one close look I had had at O’Brien’s face, pulped under the blood that covered most of it, had sickened me. I followed behind the stretcher as best I could, afraid of being left behind in this alien environment of blood and sawdust.
We left the barn by way of a rear door. The Wests’ hearse was parked outside. Jerry and Mike slid O’Brien’s lifeless form into the vehicle and closed the doors. Mike climbed into the driver’s seat, Jerry beside him, and I resumed my place in the back. West was the last to get in. A man who had been talking to him thrust his head into the door, speaking in rapid Italian, incomprehensible to me except for Dottore West. West said something to him and laughed. He pulled the door shut and we were off.
“Where’s your father?” I asked.
“Some of his associates are here. He’ll go back with them, or with my brothers.”
The return trip to Arkham was not nearly so long as the drive out had been. This puzzled me until I realized that on the outward way we must have followed a circuitous route to prevent us from finding the place again.
Once we were in Arkham, the driver turned off the headlights. Hiram West’s economy hearse ghosted along the streets to the Miskatonic campus. Following West’s directions, we came to a stop by a building I recognized as part of the Medical School. West jumped out of the vehicle and busied himself with unlocking a nearby door. I heard him giving instructions to Jerry and Mike. Soon they had O’Brien’s corpse loaded onto a kind of trolley that West must have had ready inside the door.
“Wait at the place I told you about, at Hangman’s Hill,” West said to the two men. “If I need you again tonight, I’ll send word.”
We went inside and West closed the door behind us. I heard the click of the mechanism and knew it had locked itself. As quietly as we could, we wheeled the gurney down a long corridor. West unlocked another door, marked Pathology Laboratory, and we entered.
West locked the door behind us and made sure the window blinds were closed before he turned on the lights. The room contained several laboratory benches equipped with microscopes and other apparatus. Shelves held glassware, and at one end of the room were ranks of cabinets. The most prominent features, however, were three large slab-like tables, faced with porcelain, whose surfaces were slightly depressed below a rim. They resembled very shallow sinks, complete with water taps and drains.
There was a plaque on the wall with words in Latin. Hic est locus ubi mors gaudet succurso vitae (This is the place where death rejoices to come to the aid of life). “What’s that about?” I asked West.
“Oh, all pathology labs and autopsy rooms have those,” he replied. “I suppose it’s meant to reassure those who must deal with corpses that there is a good reason for it. And in our case it’s entirely appropriate, isn’t it?
“Let’s put him on this table,” he continued. “You know the routine by now. Get his clothes off while I set up the equipment. Here, you’ll need this.” He tossed me a white coat. “Ready, Charles?”
We hoisted O’Brien onto the table. He was quite heavy; I knew I never would have been able to carry him as we had done Hocks, but his clothing, being minimal, was far easier to remove than Hocks’s had been. I could not help but note the extent of the man’s injuries. His nose was almost certainly broken again. There were numerous gashes on his cheeks and forehead, and his lips were completely lacerated. The flesh of his face was not blackened and swollen as I would have expected, possibly because death had occurred before this process could take place. His knuckles were split and a couple of his fingers stuck out at unnatural angles.
“Broken, of course,” said West, coming over with his apparatus and noticing my scrutiny of these injuries. “Bare-knuckle fighting is a brutal sport. That’s why it’s illegal. But in this case we’re the beneficiaries. Here, hang onto these tubes while I clamp this thing on. Notice how I’ve adapted it to this table. A little extracurricular project I’ve been engaged on these past few weeks.”
West polished his spectacles and began a detailed examination of the corpse, to make sure that no vital signs were present, he explained. He also collected blood samples, as he had with Hocks. While he was doing this, I asked if I could clean the blood from O’Brien’s face.
“Go ahead, if you like. Doesn’t bother me,” said West, with a shrug.
I fetched a basin of water and a cloth and wiped off most of the blood. Why did I do this, I wonder? For our former subject, Hocks, I had felt only repugnance. Certainly, I had no reason to regard this prizefighter with any sort of affection beyond the recognition of our common humanity. Perhaps it was because I had watched him receive the blows that had killed him, and had, despite myself, derived a certain dark pleasure from that spectacle. Perhaps it was simply that he, unlike Hocks, had not lain in the earth. Or perhaps it was because I considered him to be my experimental subject, as well as West’s. I fully intended to ask him my list of questions, should circumstances allow it. I had given this some thought on the dark roads to Arkham.
West straightened up from the notes he had been making and went to an inconspicuous cabinet in a corner. Finding yet another key in a large bunch he took from his pocket, he unlocked the cabinet and removed a flask of the violet-coloured liquid, and a syringe containing a colourless one. “Charles, note carefully where I put this,” he said, placing the syringe on the bench nearest the table where O’Brien lay. “If he should become uncontrollable, one of us will have to inject this. Right in the neck,” he said, indicating the spot. “No hesitation. All right, let’s get on with it.” Looking at my watch, I was surprised to see that it was only a little after midnight.
West picked up a scalpel and began the process of locating the blood vessels. This time I watched with interest rather than repugnance.
I stood by the pressure meter as fluid began to trickle into the corpse, and blood to trickle out. The pressure had not approached 200 before the fluid reservoir was nearly empty. West turned off the tap before air could enter the vein.
“Well, here we are again,” he said, smiling at me over the corpse. “Now we wait.” His words were spoken lightly, but I thought he looked a little anxious.
While we waited, we disassembled the equipment, cleaned it and locked it away in the cabinet from which he had taken the fluid. “Only I have a key to this one,” said West. “One of the first things I did here was change this lock.”
For the next half hour we carried on an intermittent conversation while West occasionally checked the corpse. His anxiety seemed to increase as the minutes went by, and soon communicated itself to me. To divert him, I asked, “Where did you learn to speak Italian, Herbert? That was quite a surprise to me.”
“Oh, it’s just Boston street Italian. I learned it from the kids in the neighbourhood. No quoting Dante for me, I’m afraid. But it comes in handy sometimes.” He said no more, and I wondered again about his
past. I found it hard to reconcile myself to the notion that Italian immigrants abounded in Back Bay, or that the Wests had ever lived in the North End. Clearly, something in his answer did not quite add up, but his manner discouraged me from questioning him further.
Twice while we waited he directed me to turn off the lights, unlock the door of the lab and listen in the corridor, to make sure no one was about. On the second of these occasions, I had just relocked the door when I was startled beyond words by a deep groan.
“Charles, the lights!” cried West. “He’s alive!”
My hand was shaking, but I managed to switch on the lights. Hurrying to the table, I could see that a change was taking place in O’Brien. Colour was flowing into his face, and a strange rapid vibration of the limbs began, growing stronger as I watched.
Muttering something about, “…spasms, must be stopped,” West found another syringe in a clutter of instruments, and quickly filled it from a bottle. He injected this fluid into the man’s arm, then listened intently to the heart. The trembling lessened, then stopped. Shortly afterward, O’Brien’s eyes, which had been moving rapidly from side to side beneath the closed lids, opened briefly, blinked, then closed again.
West ministered to the revivified man for the next half hour. For brief periods he was almost alert, then seemed to lose consciousness again. Occasionally a frown creased his forehead, and he groaned.
“Is he in pain, do you think?” I asked.
“I imagine he is,” West replied, “but I don’t want to risk giving him anything that might destabilize him.”
“Can I try to speak to him?”
“I don’t think you’ll have much luck. But we agreed that would be part of the experiment, so go ahead. Only one question, though. Pick your favourite.”
I had thought about this earlier. If I had only one question to ask a man who had returned from death, what would it be? “Where have you been?” seemed like the obvious one, but what if he answered, “A barn near Arkham”? West would find this amusing, but I would be disappointed. In the end I had decided on “Tell me what you remember.” This was open enough that it might elicit either trivia or great revelations. And once the subject had begun to speak, perhaps I could nudge his memories toward my area of interest.
I bent over Kid O’Brien, who was breathing heavily through his mouth. I could smell a dark foulness that I instantly thought of as the smell of death. If this was no longer a dead man, it was by only the smallest degree.
“Kid O’Brien,” I said. I wished I knew his real name. ‘Kid’ seemed unbearably flip in the circumstances, and ‘Mr. O’Brien’ absurdly formal. “Kid O’Brien, can you hear me?”
He groaned again. Then, in a faint, cracked voice he said, “Thirsty.” Of course he would be thirsty! I felt ashamed at not having thought of this before.
“Herbert, he wants water,” I said, looking around for him.
West came over with a beaker. It did not appear that O’Brien could sit up to drink, so he trickled small amounts between the mangled lips with a pipette. After a while O’Brien raised a hand and said,
“Okay. Where am I?”
“In a hospital,” West said. “Can you remember the fight?”
I was a little resentful at the way he had taken over the questioning, but listened with interest for O’Brien’s reply.
“Fight?” He sounded foggy. Desperate lest he lose consciousness again, I pressed forward.
“Do you remember anything at all? Tell me what you remember.”
“Robinson… ‘Harlem Smoke,’ hah!” He made a retching sound. “Goddamn nigger cheats… Went away… got away from the nigger. Went through that door…” He sighed, and air bubbled through his broken nose.
“What door, Kid?” I asked, excited. This sounded interesting. I looked up and met West’s eyes, amused and cynical. That annoyed me, and I pressed on. “Did you go through a door after Robinson knocked you out?”
“I went through!” suddenly roared O’Brien, sitting up. “It was great there! Peaceful. Warm. And you bastards made me come back!” He was almost sobbing now, but reached out with a muscular arm and grabbed West around the neck. “Got you!” he grunted. Twisting his body, he turned onto his side and held West in a kind of headlock. He bore down, pressing West’s neck against the edge of the table.
West clawed at the arm that held him, but with absolutely no effect. He was agile and strong for a man of his size, but no match for the prizefighter, even in the latter’s weakened state. His spectacles fell off and landed on the floor. His face grew flushed and his eyes bulged.
Fighting off the paralysis that threatened to render me useless, I reached over to the laboratory bench and snatched up the deadly syringe. I turned back to the table and approached O’Brien from behind. He was too intent on strangling my friend to take any notice of me. I leaned over his back and drove the needle hard into the side of his neck, then depressed the plunger.
I had plenty of time in the moments that followed to wonder what I would do if the stuff was ineffective. I had a vision of myself smashing the empty flask that stood nearby and trying to cut O’Brien’s throat with the broken glass, when he went limp. West, suddenly released, fell to the floor. For another heart-stopping moment I thought he was dead. Then he drew in a great shrieking breath, and another, and began to cough. I sat on the floor and held him while he coughed and wheezed for several minutes. Finally, he began to breathe more normally. His face was pale, except for two red patches on his cheekbones.
“Can you get up?” I asked. He seemed weak, and a huge wave of anxiety washed over me as I realized that if West was incapacitated, I was in charge of this mess.
“All right,” West whispered. “I’m all right, just can’t talk.” I helped him to his feet. O’Brien lay slumped half off the table. The syringe was still stuck in his neck. His face wore a snarl of rage.
West paid no attention to the body. He was obviously unsteady, half leaning against me. “I owe you my life, Charles,” he whispered. His eyes were wide and somehow uncomprehending. “I knew we needed restraints…” His voice trailed off, and I thought he was about to faint.
Just then I heard a door slam far away, and footsteps, faint but coming closer. Panic swept through me. Surely we were about to be discovered! One of us had to do something. No – West had to do something. Only he had any right to be here.
“Herbert,” I said, grasping his shoulders and shaking him. “Someone’s coming! You have to go out and stop whoever it is from coming in here.” I knew the door was locked, but if this was a night watchman, surely he would investigate a lab with lights on at this late hour? And he would have a key. “Go out and talk to him!”
West began to move toward the door. I was relieved to see that he seemed to be making an effort to pull himself together, but he still looked very shaky. It took several seconds of fumbling before he unlocked the door. He went into the corridor, closing the door behind him. I pressed my ear to it and listened.
“Is that you, Gibbs?” I heard him ask. To my relief, his voice, though hoarse, sounded nearly normal. “I was careless cooking up a batch of chemicals in the lab here, and got a lungful of fumes. Thought I’d die coughing.”
“Oh, so that was you, Mr. West,” said the watchman. “I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, but it sounded like trouble. You want to watch it with those chemicals, that’s for sure. Why are you in here working on Saturday night, anyway?”
“Work is its own reward,” said West. “Besides, I had something to do that couldn’t wait. I’m finished now, I’m glad to say, even though it almost finished me! I’ll be leaving in a little while, Gibbs, don’t worry.” I grinned with delight. This sounded more like the West I knew!
Gibbs bade West a surly goodnight and went back down the corridor, still grumbling, by the sound of it. West returned to the lab. He was still quite pale, and the flesh of his neck was bruised and swollen.
“We have to finish up here, Charles,” he said. “I’m not
in the best of shape. The main thing is to dispose of the body. You have to go and fetch Mike and Jerry. They should be at Hangman’s Hill. Take the route we used the night we dug up Hocks – down College, then along the brook. They should be parked behind some bushes just inside the graveyard.”
I took off my lab coat and put on my dark jacket. “Are you sure you’ll be all right alone, Herbert?” I asked. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m not, but I’ll be all right.” He pointed to O’Brien. “I’ll get this guy ready to go and meet you at the outside door in precisely…” he paused, looking at his watch, “twenty-five minutes, if you hurry but don’t run. Does that sound reasonable?”
I assured him that the time would be sufficient, and set my watch to the same time as his. I was about to leave the lab when West called me back.
“Take this along.” He took a pistol from his pocket and handed it to me. “Just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked. “How long have you been carrying that around?”
“I believe in being prepared,” he said, avoiding my eye.
“It’s Hocks, isn’t it?” I said. “You do think he might be looking for us, don’t you?”
“Not at all,” West said. “You’d better get going.”
Carefully, I slid the pistol into my pocket. “Where did you get it?” I asked.
He pushed me toward the door, not gently. “None of your business,” he said. “Twenty-five minutes, don’t forget.”
The corridor was dark and quiet. I had a momentary jolt of anxiety when I thought a key would be needed to open the outer door, but noticed a thumb-latch in time. The door locked behind me, and I set out into the night.
It was two o’clock on an October morning. The campus lay silent about me. I threaded my way through narrow passageways between buildings devoted to the pure and applied sciences. Soon I was on College Street, moving rapidly but without the kind of hurry that might attract attention.
I realized then that despite the lateness of the hour and the shocking events I had witnessed, I felt intensely alive and energized. Even the possibility of a lurking John Hocks did not trouble me. Tonight I had travelled in a hearse to an illegal event. I had seen men engage in brutal violence toward one another, and I had seen a man die. I had seen that same man return to life, and had spoken with him. I had saved my friend’s life. I had killed a man.
At this thought, I stopped moving. Yes, I had killed O’Brien. True, he had been not far from death anyway, but he had undoubtedly been alive when I shot the drug into his neck. But what else could I have done? O’Brien had not been amenable to reason, and I knew I could not have overpowered him physically. West would have been dead if I had tried any other means but the one I had used.
By this time I had reached Hangman’s Brook. As I made my way along the hummocky ground beside it, I became acutely aware of the night, its sounds and smells – the dark smell of water, the musky yet sharp odour of decaying leaves, overlaid with a faint whiff of wood smoke. Stars blazed cleanly in the black sky. I felt as though I could walk forever through this vast yet intimate darkness. But now I was approaching the graveyard. Crossing the rutted road, I passed a copse of large bushes, lilacs, I believed. On the other side of them was the Clodhopper.
I rapped at the driver’s side window. It opened a crack and Mike’s face looked out. By the faint light of a hooded lantern they had been playing some sort of card game. A bottle of liquor stood on the dashboard.
“Mr. West is ready for you now,” I said. “The same place as before.”
“And the other one too?” Mike asked, grinning.
“Yes, him too,” I replied, opening the back door and climbing in without waiting for an invitation or providing any explanation.
Evidently, Mike and Jerry did not need additional details. I had been endorsed, it seemed, by Hiram West the previous night. Now, to a very limited extent, I was his agent. This thought made me uneasy, as did the unaccustomed weight of the pistol in my pocket.
Minutes later, the Clodhopper pulled up to the door of the Medical School’s laboratory building. Checking my watch, I found it was just short of the twenty-five minutes West had specified.
“Wait here,” I said, and climbed out. Cautiously, I approached the door and knocked. To my relief, West opened it. Behind him I could see the gurney with O’Brien’s body on it. West had wrapped it in something, which on closer inspection proved to be a lab coat.
“After all, we want him to be decent for his last trip,” West said, with a smile I could only just make out. He sounded tired.
Jerry and Mike emerged from the hearse, and at West’s direction loaded the body back inside. “The usual treatment will be fine, Mike,” I heard West say. “No, I don’t need a lift. My rooms are close by here.”
Mike said something that sounded like, “Is he all in one piece or did you saw off a bit, Doc?” West made some joking reply, and we turned to go.
“What will they do with him?” I asked, as the hearse departed from view.
“West’s Funeral Home in Boston was the first to install a crematorium,” he said shortly. “It comes in handy at times.”
We said no more on the short walk to his rooms. At the door, I asked if he needed my help with anything else that night. He shook his head.
“No, Charles, I’m about done in. But come tomorrow afternoon, if you can. I’d like to review the whole situation.”
I agreed, and turned homeward.
The Friendship of Mortals Page 6