Reanimators

by Peter Rawlik

  With these words I recognized her immediately. “Lady de Chagny, your talent and fame are second only to your still-radiant beauty. Your likeness still hangs in one of the halls at the Paris Opera. We are at your service.”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly. “You are too kind. I have prepared a meal. Afterwards we shall show you the patient wards.”

  She led us out of the hall and into a once-grand formal dining room, now fallen into disrepair. The table had not been polished in years, and the chairs were threadbare with signs of dry rot. But the meal that Carnby served to us, a simple roasted pig with winter vegetables, was welcome after so many months in the trenches eating nothing but rations. The meal was accompanied with a bottle of house champagne, an extra dry rose that reminded me of the days of my youth, when my parents would host lavish parties on New Year’s Eve.

  After the meal the Lady de Chagny and Carnby took us to the wards. I was taken aback when Carnby unlocked a heavy oak door revealing a poorly lit stairway made of stone leading down into the bowels of the house. As we proceeded by torchlight, our hostess explained that the house had been built over the top of an ancient and vast series of catacombs that were used for a variety of purposes, including as storage for the vineyards and a refuge in times of trouble. Under the current state of war she had ordered them converted to a ward for injured soldiers.

  As she remarked on this last usage, we rounded a corner of the descending tunnel, passed through yet another door, and found ourselves viewing the most astounding of sights. The cavern before us was a large tunnel approximately thirty feet wide, twenty feet tall and stretching a good two hundred feet back. Light was provided by a series of ornate chandeliers hanging from hooks drilled into the ceiling, which illuminated what I can only describe as a makeshift hospital ward. Four rows of beds ran the length of the cavern, only a few of which were occupied by soldiers in various states of injury. Six women milled about tending to the wounded and discharging various other duties as if they were trained nurses in a city hospital. All in all it was a magnificent operation, though one could see the weaknesses that simply could not be overcome. There was a shortage of linens and of proper clothing. Many soldiers still were dressed in the tatters of their uniforms, which revealed them to be of a variety of nationalities, including French, British and Canadian. Actual medical supplies were lacking, and we could see that many of the patients were suffering from either infection or crippling pain.

  Though such conditions would normally lead to a cacophony of screaming, such cries were absent, replaced instead by the sound of a viol playing the most mesmerizing of melodies. It was a tune so hypnotic that it calmed even the most seriously injured patients. As we moved into the cavern I glanced upwards, following a wrought iron ladder set into the wall beside the entrance. There above the passageway, hidden behind a curtain, was a small alcove that was apparently the source of the music. Light from within the room cast shadows on the curtain and revealed the musician as he gracefully played his instrument. Never had I heard such music before, and I wondered aloud about the identity of the composer. The Lady de Chagny smiled and casually informed us that the piece was written by the violist’s father as part of an operatic masterpiece entitled Don Juan Triumphant.

  Without hesitation West and I began evaluating the conditions of the patients and the abilities of the ward itself. From what we could gather the majority of the patients had come from a single skirmish that had begun not far from the vineyards. A running battle, the injured had been left where they fell, and the Lady de Chagny, unable to tolerate the screams of the wounded, organized the staff and pulled the survivors from the fields. There was some talk amongst the staff and amongst those who were rescued concerning the equal treatment of enemy soldiers, but that was quickly squelched. Carnby was brutal in his reprimands and stressed to the wounded and caretakers alike that the Lady herself was not French and that accidents of nationality should not come to bear in determining who received aid and who was left to die. That was not to say that tensions did not run high, and all arms had been confiscated from both factions. The only things left for them to fight with were their minds, their hands, several decks of cards and a chess set.

  There were thirteen patients in the cavern, and while most were well on their way to recovering from minor wounds, some were not. Based on West’s assessment there were two legs and one arm that needed to be amputated as soon as possible. Additionally, there were numerous bones that needed to be set, and several infections that needed to be drained. Sadly, there were three cases that West saw no hope in wasting any effort on trying to save, including a poor soul who still had a bullet rattling around in his skull. West, with Carnby’s help, had these three moved to a different room, one with a strong door and medical restraints. I knew that West had identified them as potential subjects for his reanimation experiments.

  In a similar room, we constructed a surgery. Sadly, the equipment and supplies available to us were simply inadequate. Some resources had been liberated from abandoned field hospitals, but the supply of sulfa drugs, painkillers, and proper bandages was woefully low. When he inquired about anesthesia, the matron in charge pointed to a small cask of brandy and then laughed. West cursed and then made sure that his patient had three shots of the liquor before downing one himself and cutting off two of the young man’s gangrenous fingers.

  “Just remember,” lamented West, “this isn’t Hell.”

  I gagged as the man I was holding down vomited under the pain of having his leg re-broken. “No,” I said, “not Hell, but on a clear day I bet you can see it from here.”

  Working through the middle of December, West and I kept to a strict schedule of tending to the wounded. While such a routine left little time to strategize or experiment, West found a way to reorganize the makeshift staff and cavern, and created a small ward for the isolation of those patients that were beyond the hope of any normal medical practices. In this we were aided by Carnby, who we found to be an able assistant and particularly skilled in translating the languages of the soldiers that made up our patients. Born and raised in Oakland, California, Carnby was the minutes-older of twin brothers who had decided to dedicate their lives to the study of the occult. Helman Carnby had come to France several years ago to specifically visit and study the library at the Chateau d’Erlette. When the war broke out, he found himself unable to abandon the Lady de Chagny, and stayed on in her service, all the while studying the vast collection of grimoires and occult treatises.

  We were also assisted by one of our patients named August Dewart. This young Briton, whose bald head, flat nose and beard reminded us of a goat, had a significant amount of medical training, and despite the loss of a leg, was extremely helpful as a medical and surgical assistant. Roaming around the ward on a pair of crutches, he made sure that everyone was talked to at least once a day.

  As for our gracious hostess, we saw her often. Daily she would come down to the ward, climb the ladder to the curtained alcove and accompany her son’s playing with her prodigious vocal talents. While such performances were beautiful to listen to, there was such an undercurrent of sadness and despair to the Lady de Chagny’s voice and her son’s viol, that others and I were often moved to tears when they performed. During this entire period it was rare for us to catch even a glimpse of the virtuoso, and when we did see him, he always wore a matching set of a full crimson mask and gloves such that no flesh was ever seen.

  The impending holiday was apparently weighing heavily on the officers in charge of the front lines, for the number of new patients we received shrank to a mere trickle, and West and I found ourselves able to spend time in the laboratory and surgery that West had cobbled together. All three of our special patients had long since succumbed to their wounds, and all three had then been subjected to the reanimation reagent, though this was but the first stage in a new direction of research. Inspired by the Frankenstein journals and from several pieces of correspondence, we had taken it upon ourselves to purs
ue the possibility of using the reanimated as sources for the transplant of organs from one body to another. Our primary inspiration for this was letters from the New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies, who had left the battlefields and was fumbling his way toward actually being able to carry out skin grafts and facial reconstruction in the British Isles. Similarly, we received some notes from Doctors Alexis Carrel and Charles Guthrie, who had pioneered vascular transplants, and were kindred spirits, and their current work was just as inspiring. Carrel’s transplant work had won the Nobel Prize in 1912, and when he stopped in Arkham to lecture on the nature of cellular senescence, West and I were compelled to meet with him and demonstrate our reagent. Taking a small sample with him, Carrell began a most controversial experiment, in which he has for the decade since publicly sustained a culture of embryonic chicken cells using only a nutrient solution of his own devising. Similarly, Guthrie had also wandered down areas generally shunned by medical science. There was strong suspicion that the Nobel was awarded to Carrel over Guthrie not because he was the superior researcher, but rather because of Guthrie’s rather unorthodox and successful experiments with transplanting canine heads. Photographs of his two-headed animals, while fascinating to the medical community, were considered blasphemous monstrosities by conservative and unenlightened old men who held the reins of power and money.

  Yet it was from the genius of these men that we began to formulate our own plan to resolve the problem of organ transplant. Using our reagent to inhibit rejection, we experimented in the transfer of skin tissue from one patient to another, before moving on to the actual exchange of limbs and then finally organs. In the end we had no choice but to follow in Guthrie’s footsteps and remove one of our patient’s heads and then graft it to another body. Our experiments taught us much and soon we were discussing the possibility of transplanting limbs and organs from one of our reanimates to a living subject, and we both agreed that young Dewart would be our first patient.

  We made shadowy arrangements to carry out the surgery as soon as possible, but even as we girded ourselves for the extended surgery, we were accosted in the hall by Carnby, who sent word that the Lady de Chagny wanted to see us immediately in the great hall. With young Dewart already prepared, we left him on the table unconscious but secured to the table, instruments waiting.

  In the house above we were ushered into a magnificently apportioned study in which both the Lady de Chagny and her masked son awaited us. In her hand was our journal, the record of our experiments over the last several weeks. West started to protest, but I placed a hand on his shoulder and told him to wait.

  Once we were seated, Carnby began to speak. “As you may be aware, my lady, when she was much younger, was the victim of a most obsessive admirer. It was only through the heroic efforts of her fiancé, then the Vicomte de Chagny, that she was able to escape his unwanted attentions. Sadly, while she and Raoul escaped with their lives, the Vicomte’s brother was not as lucky. Raoul became the Comte, he and Christine were married, and soon after they welcomed a new life into the world.” As Carnby continued, the Lady lowered her eyes. “It was plain at his birth that the child was not Raoul’s, but rather that of Christine’s unwelcome admirer. Devastated by this betrayal, her husband banished the Lady and her child from the de Chagny household, and forced her to reside here. This is where she and her son have lived for the last thirty-four years; it has become their home, the only one the young master has ever known. The Lady cannot imagine how her son will fare when he is forced from this place.”

  “For what cause would the young man be forced from this house?” begged West.

  The Lady de Chagny rose and turned her back to us. “My husband is given to moods, Dr. West. I have over the last thirty years been able to assuage him, but I am not long for this world. My doctors tell me that I have a cancer growing inside me, that I have little time left. And while I go to my reward without regrets, I cannot allow my son to suffer the rage that will be inflicted upon him by the Comte once I am gone.” She turned toward us, eyes pleading. “He must be prepared for life outside these walls. We have been watching you for these last few weeks, and we have read your notes on your experiments. We think it may be possible that such procedures could be directed toward other kinds of conditions, congenital conditions. If my son is to survive in the world, he must be acceptable to it, his deformities must be made less pronounced. He must appear more human.”

  West rose, and I could see that he was prepared to reject her request. I knew his mind, and he had no reason to pursue such noble obligations as they in no way served his secret ambition. So rather than let West speak, I quickly spoke for both of us. “Lady de Chagny, you have been most hospitable, and we have abused your trust. If it is within our power to help your son, then we shall do so.”

  I waited briefly for someone else to speak, but then the Lady de Chagny motioned and her enrobed son rose up and stepped toward us. “Zann, would you show these doctors why we need their services.”

  If the music that the man produced was hauntingly beautiful, then the musician himself was hauntingly tragic. The man that stood before me as his robe, mask and gloves fell away would terrify the common man on the street. Skeletally thin, with no sign of body fat and little muscle, the virtuoso’s skin was yellow, translucent, almost parchment-like. He had no nose, only two large gapped slits that sat above a slashed, lipless mouth. His eyes were red on a yellow background, and deeply sunken. On top of his head there were only a few wisps of jet-black hair. Had I found this man in one of the trenches that I had so recently left, I would have thought him long dead from starvation and dehydration. That he resembled nothing so much as a walking skeleton does not do justice to the tragedy of the poor creature’s condition.

  I overheard West ask Carnby, “His name is Zann?”

  Carnby shook his head. “No, no. Zann is a pet name; it means ‘ornament’, for the way he used to cling to his mother’s leg as a child. His mother named him Erik, after his father.”

  I turned my attention back to my patient. “Erik.” I forced myself to adopt the mildest of manners with this patient. “Erik, my name is Dr. Cain, Daniel Cain; I would, with your permission, like to examine you.”

  The man-monster hesitated and then spoke. His voice was deep, full of inner darkness and mystery. “Dr. Cain,” each syllable was pronounced with intensity, “you will forgive me if I seem reticent. Since my birth I have been hidden from the world, a world that would fear and despise me, and a world that, given the opportunity, would kill me as it killed my father. I think therefore a moment of caution before exposing myself to anyone is prudent.”

  I took a step forward. “Erik, I find that position to be entirely logical, even admirable. But if you let me, I may be able to find a way to change that and make it so that you never have to live in fear again.”

  I spent the next three hours examining the poor creature. I poked and prodded, looked in his ears and his throat, took samples of his skin and his blood. I checked his reflexes, his heart rate, and blood pressure and flashed a light in his eyes and checked pupil response. What I found surprised me. Despite all of his physical deformities, Erik’s nervous system and constitution were remarkable. His strength and speed were preternatural. His senses, particularly his hearing, were highly acute. Furthermore, Erik’s ability to not only repeat but also perfectly mimic any sound using either his voice or his ever-present viol was simply uncanny. His instrument was like a part of him and he never set it down, and only paused in playing it when absolutely necessary. This made examining him both difficult but strangely enjoyable as well. The only person who seemed immune to Erik’s monstrous charms was my colleague Herbert West.

  It was then that the nagging thought that was scratching at the back of my skull burst out. I looked at my watch and cursed as I dashed out of the room. West and Carnby were on my heels, but sadly we were all too late. Poor Dewart, who had apparently awoken hours ago, had done what any man would have done. Unfortunately, in his
attempts to free himself from the table restraints, the entire apparatus had upended and tumbled down on to the poor man. Apparently unable to obtain any leverage with only one leg, he had slowly been smothered.

  As West and I attended to Dewart, Carnby ran off to inform the de Chagnys. In his absence we righted the table and repositioned Dewart, checking to make sure the straps were intact and tight. Then without an afterthought I lifted up the man’s head and West plunged a syringe full of our green bioluminescent reagent into the base of his skull. Laying his head back down, I took up my pocket watch and my notebook and observed the progression of our patient as our reagent began to work. As always, the first reaction was an uncontrolled spasm of the entire musculature sending the body bucking wildly against the restraints. This was followed by a sudden period of calm in which the eyes and indeed all of the senses suddenly began to work again, sending the patient into frantic hysteria as previously silent inputs suddenly overwhelmed the brain with massive amounts of information. As he laid there, eyes dashing about, Carnby, Lady de Chagny and Erik walked into the room. The timing was unfortunate, for it was at this moment that Dewart entered into the next phase of the reanimation process, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Erik had forgotten to don his mask. Dewart’s lungs began to work once more, and this, coupled with the sudden flood of sensory information to his brain, created an automatic response that we had seen time and time again. From Dewart’s lips issued the most horrid of sounds, a cry of anguish so terrible, so soul-wrenching, that both Erik and his mother began to weep.

  As Dewart collapsed into a heap of raving muscle, Erik turned to Carnby and spoke. “I thought you said he was dead?”

  Carnby was either too stunned or too confused to answer. Either way, West looked at the trio with that curious half-cocked head that indicated he couldn’t tell whether someone was joking or just being stupid. “He was dead!” shouted West as he straightened his coat and shirt. “I brought him back!”