The Resurrectionists

by Michael Patrick Hicks

  Silence stretched briefly over the three men as a tavern maid set out bowls of stew and bread before them, along with a glass of wheat-colored ale for Hereford.

  “Are the preparations for tonight completed?” Bayley asked.

  Hereford studied the older man’s face, nodding around a mouthful of potato and rich gravy. “They are.”

  The tavern was filled with noisy chatter and the occasional boisterous shouts, but the men leaned close, both to hear one another and to keep their conversation private.

  “My associates will meet us at the hospital later this evening,” Hereford said. “We can begin shortly thereafter.”

  “Excellent,” Bayley said as his son-in-law offered a wolfish smile.

  Although Bayley had been a Loyalist and Hereford on the side of the Americans, their practice of medicine united them, as did the practice of older, more arcane activities and the witnessing of events that defied understanding of the natural state of affairs. Bayley had seen similar entities on the battlefield—flashes of unnatural smoke preying with odd devotion upon the dying.

  Bayley had sought to reignite the interest of the creature—or creatures, as was perhaps more apt, in Hereford’s opinion—by experimenting on captured wounded soldiers. He would cut into them with varying degrees of savagery and perform unnecessary amputations. One imprisoned colonial soldier had been reduced to little more than a torso, head, and a collection of stumps where all of his limbs had been methodically excised. The wounds had turned gangrenous, and as the fever consumed him, Bayley sought still to drive more agony into the man and rejuvenate the smoky spirit. He’d plucked the man’s eyes from his skull, ripped loose the man’s tongue, and peeled away his lips beneath a scalpel’s edge. Some claimed that Bayley’s experiments would have made the Christ-followers of the Spanish Inquisition seem tame in comparison. With no regard toward his conscious or immortal soul, Bayley eviscerated, maimed, mutilated, murdered, and burned scores of men in pursuit of a mystic sight, all the while proclaiming the advancement of the physic and the pursuit of study.

  As Hereford became acquainted with Bayley during their lectures at New York Hospital, the men danced around their history and wartime accounts. By then, Hereford had heard many of the rumors that dogged Bayley, and he’d chalked much of it up to grandiose imagination of his young students and the gossiping of their less-proficient fellow lecturers. Then, after being steeled by much brandy and warmed by Bayley’s company, he spoke for the first time to any living man of the formless, stygian creature he had witnessed several years prior. Bayley had listened patiently, his face betraying signs of neither skepticism nor even faint interest. Hereford drunkenly rambled, confessing of his own depraved experiments on wounded soldiers, his enthusiasm to inflict suffering driven by curiosity over the creature.

  Bayley said nothing, and as Hereford’s words died off, the weight of quietude settled between them. Then Bayley stood from his chair and silently left Hereford to his drunken stupor. Prior to his next lecture, Hereford arrived at the hospital to find Bayley waiting for him with an item wrapped in black cloth.

  “What is this?” Hereford asked upon receiving the item from the good doctor.

  “Read it,” Bayley said. In his eyes lived a spark of encouragement, and as he stared at Hereford, the younger man felt the heaviness of scrutiny—and danger. “See me when you are finished. I believe we should talk more.”

  With that, Bayley again left him. Hereford’s students began arriving, and he tucked the package away, forgetting about it until his return home later that evening. Sitting in the lantern glow of his parlor, brandy in hand, he unwrapped the silk cloth to reveal a leather book bound by a well-worn leather strap and secured by a metal clasp. There was no title on the front or along the spine, but a richly ornate frontispiece indicated the tome was titled Al Azif, authored by Abd al-Hazred.

  The thin onionskin pages inside bore a litany of characters that Hereford could not discern, along with loose leaves of notes he recognized as Classical and Romantic languages. The book’s spine was deformed by the bulge of added, unbound material, and as he thumbed through the collection of papers, he saw fragments of Greek, Latin, and French translations, all in distinctly different handwriting. Even the material, apparent age, and thickness of the additional pages varied. The tome itself smelled faintly of smoke, and he noticed streaks of ash across the rough uncut edges of paper, as well as dark copper spots dotting a number of the pages. He leafed through the book, examining the package as a whole, eventually finding snippets of English translations scattered throughout. Although he could read Latin easily enough, the English segments were far easier to discern.

  One sheaf had been, seemingly, hastily torn. The handwritten English was sloppy and rushed, the ink smeared about the letters. He had noticed the couplet appear several times throughout Al Azif, mostly in Greek and Latin, but this was the first instance of its appearance in his own native tongue:

  That is not dead which can eternal lie.

  And with strange aeons even death may die.

  A dark, foul sensation trickled down his spine. Hereford continued reading, the hairs along the back of his neck rising with the chill, his thighs damp and cool with sweat beneath the leather book pressing against his pants. The candle beside him flickered, sucking at the air with a breathy whoosh.

  Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them…

  They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them.

  The Old Ones? he thought. A curious phrase, but more captivating was the semblance, or perhaps lack thereof, that such a creature displayed. Immediately, he recalled the ethereal figures lurking among the scores of bodies littering a bloodstained battlefield.

  If the snatches of cursive ink he read weren’t sinister enough, the accompanying imagery beneath the blackletter script was far more perverse. The illustrations were crude and depicted a number of tortuous scenarios. In some, women, pain clearly etched into their faces, were flayed alive, great swatches of skin peeled away to reveal the purple mess beneath. Others showed men whose skin bulged in disturbing provinces, as if the internal organs were seeking escape. Tentacles coiled around the human figures, ensnaring them in unnaturally long and barbed appendages that threaded through the bodies of men, women, and children. One image showed, with grotesque flair, a woman whose features were contorted in beautiful agony, her fingers dug deeply into the skin of her belly to pry apart the flesh, exposing her abdominal cavity. Inside was a fungal mass whose gossamer limbs slithered around various organs, ensnaring them in a mossy web. The foreign entity was all black eyes and toothy mouths, dozens of them across the surface of the eukaryotic creature.

  A scream very nearly ejected from his mouth as he turned the page and came face-to-face with the bloodcurdling image of an ancient figure the author had identified as Baen’sollogotgartha. Thickly muscled, the gargantuan was a mass of long limbs and ropy feelers, its oversized mouth lurking behind a cage of bone and set beneath spiderlike eyes.

  Hereford’s unease grew deeper as he paged through the grimoire. The candle sputtered, flickered, then sparked back to life with a dull roar. He felt as if he were being watched, and a knot of panic bloomed within him. Succumbing to the sensation, he cast a look over his shoulder toward the darkened recesses of his house. He saw nothing. He swallowed but breathed somewhat easier. Even as he turned his attention back to the book, he swore he could feel the weight of scrutiny, the press of
foreign eyes heavy upon his back. His clothes and the flesh beneath them suddenly felt quite ill-fitting.

  Fire wheezed and crackled beside him, startling him, and he slammed the tome shut. As he stood, he felt a muscular lash slide swiftly across the back of his knees as it darted upward, between his legs. His scrotum shriveled at the sudden contact. He spun, nearly tripping over the blanket at his feet, his heart racing. He was alone, and yet his senses told him otherwise. The Old Ones were there, in his home, in the space between. And they were calling to him.

  He snatched up the candle, spilling hot wax across the top of his hand in his haste, and whirled, aiming the light at the shadows as if he could forcefully repel the darkness. The dim illumination revealed nothing. Nothing at all. Slowly, his galloping heart grew restive as his body relaxed, the cold sweat that had broken out leaving him chilly.

  You fool, he cursed. He wiped at the sweat along his brow, no longer feeling so superstitious or cowardly as he began to realize he was fully alone. His home, as it so often was, remained empty.

  Completing the circuit around the room, ferreting out the shadows cohabitating his study, he made to exit the room and proceed to bed. As he passed his chair, though, his eyes fell upon Al Azif once again. The book was open and had fallen to a page depicting a familiar scene. He could tell immediately that the artist was not Abd al-Hazred, for the picture was of finer quality, its strokes more assured. The image detailed a cratered field of corpses, hundreds of them, thousands even. Limbs askew, the bodies were piled one atop another. Shadowy creatures lurked over the remains, feeding. In the center of it stood a solitary man, his mouth opened in wonder… and fear. Hereford recognized the improbability, the impossibility, of his own face there, and shaken, he snapped the book shut once more and hurriedly buckled the straps through the metal clasps.

  Like a child, he retreated to his bedroom and the safety and surety of his blankets. Despite his exhaustion, he failed to sleep, intent on watching the shadows instead. His mind raced, unwilling and unable to slow as a hundred thousand questions occupied his focus.

  Fear and excitement intermingled, and he knew he must speak with Bayley forthwith.

  The following morning, he steeled himself as his knuckles rapped upon the front door of Bayley’s home, the thick grimoire clutched between his opposite arm and rib cage.

  “Thinnies,” Bayley said once Hereford had unloaded upon him the prior evening’s events.

  Blowing across the top of his teacup, Hereford arched his eyebrows in confusion. “Pardon?”

  “Thinnies,” Bayley said again, his meaning still quite unclear to the lost and bewildered Hereford.

  Bayley sipped tea, casting a glance toward the study’s entrance. The doors were still closed, and his new wife, Charlotte, had gone into the city. “The spaces in between,” he said. “The barriers that separate us from the Old Ones. They are very thin, these metaphysical walls, and yet they keep at bay entire dimensions, whole worlds, and the gods themselves. They can be eroded, though… or torn down altogether.”

  Hereford blanched, his hand shaking and rattling the china he held, nearly spilling the tea upon the floor. “You’re saying one of these… these ‘thinnies’ are in my home?”

  Bayley chuckled, a good-natured growl. “You must expand your mind, my good doctor. No, the thinnies are not in your home. Or at least not in the way you suspect. Rather, they are everywhere, sir, everywhere. The gods have turned their attention toward us once more. We have made them take notice, I suspect.”

  “How so?” Hereford asked.

  “They are capricious, violent beasts, much like mankind itself. We have baited the water with fresh blood and drawn their attention. Now they will return to take back what is rightfully theirs.”

  “How do we stop them?” Hereford asked immediately.

  Bayley stood, settling his teacup on the table beside his wingback chair. He put his hands on either of his companion’s shoulders, demanding the doctor look up toward him to meet his eyes. “We do not. We cannot. They have revealed themselves to you and me—and a few others, I admit—and it is time to embrace their notice. We serve them. We must serve them.”

  Hereford struggled to retain his calm. Bayley’s eyes were wide and wild, fevered with the burning fire of a true believer. Hereford himself was a believer. Regardless of how strongly his rational mind protested the acceptance of and acquiescence toward such insanity, after the preceding night, how could he not believe? He had been touched—and touched in his most private of areas, at that—by the mystical, otherworldly Old Ones. He had borne witness to the impossible, first in the aftermath of battle and again in his own study the prior night, and it had sought him in return.

  With one shaking hand, Hereford raised the tea to his lips and drank. After a deep breath, he willed himself to meet Bayley’s eyes once more, the older man standing above him still.

  “How do we help them?” he asked.

  A slow smile crossed Bayley’s lips, and his eyes closed as he knelt closer, and in a strangely intimate gesture, he pressed his forehead to Hereford’s. He rested his head against his companion’s for a long moment, as if savoring the company, before speaking again. “Blood. Blood draws them forth. And death.”

  “Yes,” Hereford whispered, recalling his time as a battlefield medic. He could remember with diamond clarity the stench of dead men, the swampy, oppressive heat tanged by blood and offal. He could hear the men scream, bite blocks clenched between their teeth, as jagged saws pulped flesh and bit into bone. He watched a man’s blood soak a stained tourniquet, his own erection growing as he operated upon the soldier, willing the black velvet fog to embrace the struggling, wounded man.

  “This war for independence,” Bayley began, “and the sins that have built this foundling nation have a toll. Always, there is a toll. So, so much blood was loosed upon the earth. Between your wars and your slavers’ whips, this infantile nation breeds blood and begets violence. It was ignorant to think such a thing could go unnoticed. We laid out a buffet, and Old Ones ate and ate, and we left them starved for more. They are here, and they are demanding.”

  “These thinnies,” Hereford said. “They are more like doors than walls, then?”

  Bayley nodded. “We must open them.”

  “How?”

  “Suffering,” Bayley said, as if it were obvious. “Suffering is always the key.”

  Burke and Moreland were late. After nearly half an hour, Bayley and Post began to grow impatient.

  “Where are they?” Post complained.

  “They’ll be here,” Hereford assured them. He had been working with the two resurrectionists for nearly a year, and they had performed well in the past.

  “They must’ve caught a live one,” Hicks said, with the usual impertinence of his youth and a gleaming smile set upon his wet lips.

  Bayley shot the boy a look, bristling at the young man’s cocky impishness, and bristling even further as John Hicks, Jr. smirked in return. Bayley’s gloved hands curled into fists. Hereford put a hand on the older man’s shoulder, encouraging him to remain calm. Then he pointed away from the hospital, toward a well-worn path and the hint of movement in the stygian darkness.

  “There,” he said, and Bayley followed the length of Hereford’s pointing finger.

  “Well, it’s about time.” Bayley sighed heavily, adjusting his thick black outer coat against the wind. After a moment, as if thinking better of continuing to linger in the cold, he turned on his heels and strode back into New York Hospital.

  The hospital had housed British troops throughout the war for independence but had sat vacant since their surrender of New York. Much of the building was in disrepair, with only Bayley, Post, Hereford, and a few others occupying it with any degree of regularity to deliver their lectures to students of the physic.

  Hicks breathed into his cupped hands, warming them with the hot air he was so fond of perniciously blowing. He gingerly danced from foot to foot, his cheeks, nose, and ears a brigh
t scarlet. “Jay-sus! Could they walk the least bit slower?”

  Hereford ignored him, even as the shared laughter from Burke and Moreland reached them. He wondered if they had heard Hicks’s complaining and were perhaps lollygagging in an effort to further irritate the man-child. If they wanted Hicks’s animus, they were welcome to it. Should they become too much of a bother for Bayley and a few other members of their small, tight circle… well, that was not likely to end well for Burke and Moreland. Both men were apt to spill their lifeblood through razor-slit throats in a darkened alley.

  The resurrectionists took their time, but as they neared, Hereford could begin making out the bundle the larger man carried over his shoulder. Burke’s arm was wrapped around a pair of long, slender legs clothed in torn hosiery, his fingers pressed into a shapely thigh just beneath the nicely rounded mound of the woman’s skirted rump. Hereford could not discern any other features beyond leg and ass, but he still felt a familiar stirring at the approaching display.

  The woman, he knew, was another one of the city’s many prostitutes. Burke and Moreland often found such subjects when a living body was demanded of them, and they had proved themselves capable of meeting whatever Hereford demanded, corpses or otherwise.

  “Take her,” Hereford said, grabbing Hicks by the arm and shoving him toward the resurrectionists. As the boy took possession of the woman, Hereford reached into his trousers to fish out payment. In the moonlight, he caught sight of long brunette hair and a round, puckish face. She had pretty lips and high cheekbones. A lovely specimen, indeed.

  Burke and Moreland stomped away, back into the cover of night. Hereford retrieved his medical bag from the ground and turned into the hospital. Hicks followed, grunting beneath the load.