by Jay Lake
Useless hopes sprang through his mind. Perhaps she would be placed in a cart, whole and secure, ready to be buried in honor at the base of the Tree of Life. Maybe he would prepare her body for its heavenly journey to the gods’ very throne room. Anything, besides the obvious. Anything. Anything!
His hands were put to work—hacking, hammering, slicing. His body heeded none of his heart’s resistance. He could not shut his eyes to pulling out her hair; he could not look away as clothes were torn off, or entrails were removed, or as he plucked out her lolling, pleading eyes. He could not shut his eyelids, could not even be blinded by tears.
Next there came a man in the thrown-together fatigues of the Eglantran Partisans. Timo was likewise made to eviscerate this body, by whose side he may have fought only a day before. More and more it seemed that culpability and ethnicity played little part in who came under the mechanical men’s knives. They arrived bloody and torn: old men and young women; the crippled, the lame and the poor; those on the verge of death and those who had hardly started life. He wondered what purpose this served, how heaven was made greater or Eglantra freer by this.
Timo barely noticed as he and the other mechanized men leapt into the fountain and cleansed themselves of their grizzly duty. He formed into rank and marched in unison with the others. He replayed in his mind again and again the expression on the girl’s face, the clink! of the partisan’s medals as his uniform dropped to the floor, the way an old man’s muscles fell away at a single swipe. Timo alone was aware of what had happened. Timo alone felt bitter and horrified. Timo, in the midst of the mechanical horde, was truly, hopelessly alone.
They came to a mess hall where other mechanical men slopped raw, indeterminate pieces of meat on their plates. They ate without utensils. Timo nearly bit his tongue off trying to spit out the vile morsels, but his will failed against the machinery; it could somehow even force him to swallow and hold down the putrid food.
They washed their hands and faces after the meal, and lurched into another room where piles of baggy grey cloaks lay scattered. He had one picked up and thrown over himself, and proceeded in line to the next task.
Through thin, unlit hallways they traveled, passing stairwells and alleys, sometimes moving under grates where light trickled through. As they came out of one alley, however, the musty air of the dark passages gave way to a cornucopia of aromas. He glanced up, and just beyond the edge of his hood, he could see the flying lamps circling tree roots. They were in the majestic bazaar. The right direction here could lead to freedom. But how would Timo get there? He jerked against the machinery in his legs, but like all efforts prior, it only brought agony. In a few short moments, he was descending into another dank crevice. Freedom, and the hope for freedom, slipped away with the dazzling lights.
They emerged from their tunnels to echoes of raucous mirth, and glistening mirrors magnifying the light of floating orbs and dropping it onto a pit in the midst of an arena. Root-columns rose up from the bowled spectator terraces to support the curved ceiling. Devilish totems were carved into the columns, and they leered towards the arena floor. A crowd of similar diversity to the bazaar’s filled the seats. Booths circled the lowest terraces around the arena The mechanized men went through narrow aisles to get to the front rows. Inside the booths’ vibrant, embellished coverings, Messengers reclined at banquet tables. They dressed not in the simple, pure garments Timo had grown accustomed to seeing, but in ornate costumes, trimmed with gold and rich embroidery, dyed in arrays of colors and patterns. Jewelry hung around their necks, off their ears, on their fingers. Each Messenger wore enough in riches to ransom a kingdom. The dim, pigmented light of orbs floating over each booth cast a fantastic aura around the arena’s occupants.
Timo moved past rows of booths before stopping. The machinery over his body brought him to a particularly garish table, sheltered beneath a red booth, with green and blue lights floating over it. There sat his lady with the Red Messenger, Garum.
“Here he is now, milady,” Garum said, raising his voice over the din, “and working perfectly.”
The lady smiled. “Are you ready to serve your gods, Timo Malthusset?”
Garum lifted up a metal, rectangular box lined with glowing crystals. He pressed a few keys and turned a dial. Timo’s jaw fell loose.
“I repeat my question,” the lady said, “are you ready?”
Timo looked upon her with lidless torment in his eyes. “Why are we butchering the Eglantran dead?”
“What happened to your soldierly resolve?” she asked.
“Why my people…your people?”
The lady’s face grew sterner. “My people, indeed.”
Garum laughed.
“Is this heaven or hell?” Timo asked.
“Neither,” she said.
“Where are the gods? Are they even here?”
“Garum, silence him.”
The Red Messenger maneuvered his switches, and Timo’s mouth tightened shut in a spasm of pain.
The lady turned to Garum. “Your work on him is impressive.”
“You speak too well, milady,” he responded. “Living bodies are much easier on the machinery than decaying, cobbled together ones. My only regret is that we couldn’t test this sooner.”
“You believe the Hermangens would volunteer for such modifications?”
“How could they refuse since the tides have turned against them?”
The lady smiled, then turned to Timo. “Here is our order,” she said, handing him a perforated piece of paper. “Move along.”
Timo was forced back into the tunnel whence he emerged, and driven into another path. He fed the paper to a hole in the wall, then queued up with other mechanical men. One by one, the top most crystal on a servant’s head would glow blue, and they would saunter further down the tunnel. Timo’s time came when he felt a slight burning sensation atop his scalp. The machinery pushed him on.
He came to a bar loaded with trays of fruit, wine and meat. The food had an inescapable smell; a sour, waxy oeuvre that Timo found familiar and unsettling.
Timo watched with horror as he walked up to the lady’s tray. His neck tore against the bolts inside it as he tried to avert his eyes, but there was no resisting the gears’ instruction. On a silver bier lay the Eglantran girl, quartered, roasted, and stuffed with glazed fruits. Her skin was scorched, her body twisted, and in her mouth was a cannonball. She still wore the same empty, shocked expression.
Timo returned with the Lady’s order and set it before her. “Stand at ready,” she said; Timo walked to the edge of the booth and turned stiff.
“Garum,” said the Lady, “I believe he wishes to speak. Let him.”
The Red Messenger saw to it. Timo whimpered “You… children? Why?”
“The young ones have a unique tenderness.”
Timo took panic breaths and tried to form a cohesive thought. “You betrayed us… You… I thought we were your chosen?”
“We choose whoever will serve us, or whatever can feed us. If things continue as they have for so long, we shall never grow hungry, nor want for amusements, nor lack for servants. And we have Garum’s ingenuity to thank.” The Lady smiled at Garum, who bowed his head slightly as he raised a glass of too-red wine to his lips.
Timo choked on sobs. His face twisted into a look of dismay and rage. He envisioned every hope and dream he believed in lying on a metal slab, his own hands guiding the knives and cleavers that tore it to shreds.
“It appears he has nothing left to say,” the Lady noted.
Timo’s jaw clamped, and he stood still for the rest of the evening. What passed for entertainment among his captors mostly involved coercing people—Eglantran, Hermangen, others beyond his ken; it was quite inclusive—into obscene acts with one another, or subjecting them to unfair, brutal battles with monsters twice their size. Timo’s rage dwindled into acceptance; acceptance led to despair.
Timo cleaned up after the sport was over, then made his way back through the tunnels
with the others. He glimpsed once more the bazaar where he first entered this twisted domain. He wanted to plot, but the pain and confusion of the day flayed what coherence he could muster.
The mechanical men threw their cloaks into carts, defecated into a massive pit, and then lined up together and packed themselves back into the warehouse. The gate closed. The crystals on their heads turned off. Timo couldn’t sleep, couldn’t scream, but could only stand there with the metal bracing his body in pain and the smell of decay punching his nostrils as rest evaded his bruised psyche.
Hours later, the crystals flickered once more. Timo felt burning over his skin. The gate opened. It all started once more.
* * * *
Timo forgot sunlight. He forgot the sound of rifles, the smell of grass, the feel of wind and rain. Rancor and confusion flooded his mind. The best feeling he could manage was numbness, and this only in rare moments before falling asleep.
In the meantime his body had adjusted. He had learned how to sleep despite the pain of memory and brass pins plunging into him. His skin grew hard over the places where flesh and metal met. It seemed like the mechanisms and his body had finally come to an understanding—they no longer afflicted him with pain, and he no longer attempted to disobey them. He discovered in the meantime that he could even shift his balance if he wanted, rocking back and forth on his heels and what-not. It was not a substantial movement, but Timo would entertain himself with it from time to time. It was freedom of a sort.
He often wondered whether Eglantra had received its independence, or if his surviving family members mourned him, or if his little brother had joined the partisans in a quest for vengeance and honor. He also wondered about the Hermangens, if they were turning the war around with their new brass soldiers. The bodies that he processed gave him no insights. Eglantrans, Hermangens—they all came in good numbers, and in due time.
He still served the Lady regularly, not only at the arena, but also as her beast of burden when she shopped through the bazaar, and at times as her servant in private quarters, tending to menial tasks at parties and balls, receiving glimpses of the privileges he thought would become his own. All told, however, waiting on the Lady was the least odious of his duties, and provided his mind with the few moments of clarity it could find.
It was while attending the lady one night in the arena that he decided to amuse himself in order to take his thoughts off the parade of grotesqueries marching down below. He leaned slightly forward then backward, relishing the remains of his free will, and a question occurred to him—what would happen if he were to fall backwards, and shatter the crystals on his head? Would he die? Would the messengers kill him? Would he be frozen in a crippled armature until Garum fixed him again? Or would something else occur?
The slate-black creature with no eyes was the main attraction that night. It appeared regularly in the arena, a special terror that elicited gouts of laughter from the Messengers as it teased and tortured its victims. At the moment, it circled a group of huddled children on the arena floor.
Timo stood just outside the Lady’s booth, in a line of hunched figures waiting in the shadows. The mechanical men were generally hidden from those they served until they were called upon. Without fear of giving himself away, Timo experimentally shifted his weight.
The Messengers laughed as the creature’s saliva dripped over a little boy.
Timo rocked back and forth on his ankles. He even rocked backwards far enough to catch a glimpse of the ceiling. Nothing stirred around him. In the midst of the Messengers’ bloody mirth, he had found the perfect cover.
Backward, forward, each time finding it a little more difficult to balance. He tried to twist himself oh-so slightly, to angle himself into the root column nearby.
He rocked forward and saw the no-eyed creature hover over the children. A gasp went through the crowd. The moment of silence made Timo lose his concentration as he went back.
A snarl ripped through the air. Timo lost his balance and fell.
As Timo’s head smashed against the rootwork, the Messengers screamed in delight. The uproar muted the jarring crack of shattering crystals.
It felt like a bomb went off in his head. A bright flash, then darkness descended upon him. His senses coalesced. He felt as though thrown from one end of the arena to the other and back down again. Hair stood on its end at the back of his neck. His head throbbed. As the arena’s ceiling and the trunk of the root column came back into focus, he lifted a wire-wrapped hand and rubbed it over his face. Then he stopped in mid motion and realized what had happened.
He flexed his fingers, moved his arm up and down, and then slowly rose to his legs. He threw an experimental punch—every ounce of the power the mechanisms had given him remained. He stood up and swiveled around to check on the booths nearby—they were all taken with the performance on the arena floor, where the no-eyed creature howled over the remains of its victims. The Messengers reveled in the massacre.
Timo crept behind the Lady’s booth. He knew who sat in there, and where. A couple of suitors to her right, Garum to her left, closest to Timo. The Red Messenger lay within arm’s reach.
As a gray specter, Timo shuffled next to where Garum reclined. No one asked questions. No one noticed. Mechanical men came in and out of the booths at the whim of anybody who wanted them, so why would anyone suspect that no one had called for Timo? It wasn’t until Timo stopped next to Garum that they questioned it.
“Oh,” said the Red Messenger, “do I need to fix you?”
In a movement too fast for Timo to see, metal-wrapped knuckles connected with the front of Garum’s face. Timo’s arm and fist became the mystic weapon he used against his enemies. The force of the blow carried power behind it stronger than flesh. It cracked Garum’s face and head in half. Bone and cartilage mashed together and thrust themselves into the back of his head. Lumped blood spewed like a bullet’s exit wound behind him. It spouted onto the Lady, whose white and blue dress was suddenly dyed maroon and scarlet.
The other Messengers in the booth turned and gasped at the sight. Timo was already reaching over to the Lady. She backed up, scrambling onto her suitors, but the machine made Timo strong and fast. His fingers wrapped around her throat, and he pulled her back to him.
“I am not,” Timo hissed, “your people!”
He threw a punch into her abdomen. Blood and just-chewed flesh spewed up from her mouth. Cries rose from the other two. The Lady tried to whisper an incantation and began making signs with her fingers. Timo threw her to the floor, grabbed her hands, and crushed them like dried twigs. She let out an unnatural scream that turned every eye in the arena toward her and Timo. The soldier looked up and relished the moment, smiling, then throwing a kick into her side. He felt her bones and insides crumple around his foot. Her cry ended. Timo grabbed her face and tore off flesh, scraped into bone, smashed eyes and mouth and nose until the Lady’s former beauty was stripped away to a gory, writhing mess. He threw her down one last time and stomped on her throat, feeling windpipe and bone snap underneath. Then Timo leapt into a sprint and darted for the tunnels which he had come to know so well. The arena behind him sat in awed silence.
His path stood clear of mechanical men, and he ran with speed unmatched. Knowing every inch of the pathways, he went up, down, and through the alleys, and feared no reprisal. The dark was his world. The machinery made him a warrior without peer. In a few moments everything had changed. Timo dared to hope.
At last he burst from the alley into the bazaar. His cowl had blown back to reveal the brass skullcap, and the wires and gears stretching out of his neck. Some of the merchants turned to wonder at the man, but Timo did not return them their awe. He shot through the crowd, knocking away all types of creatures and men. A few Messengers even tried to step in his way. They made arcane gestures as Timo approached, but his speed cut short their spells. Timo roared and kicked at the enslavers, the eaters of men, and kept going on towards the tunnel.
He ran up the spirale
d passageway, charging blindly and crashing into the walls. Panic pushed him upward through the darkness, until a dim light shined. He burst forth from the tunnel and into the forest. He ran with great strides, looking backwards only a few times to make certain he was free from pursuit.
It took him hours to clear the woods. Night fell as he ran. When the forest disappeared behind him, he forced himself on. When the strength of his mechanical legs gave out, Timo finally collapsed amidst the grass of an unfamiliar plain. The stars shined once more above him, but in foreign shapes now. He saw no sign of the lands he knew, but at least no pursuers followed. The cold of the night set in. He was alone, bereft of duties, friendless, turned into an abomination by his own aspirations.
All he treasured before had turned to refuse in the Messengers’ tunnels. All he was had been reduced to machinery, misery, and neglect. His breaths calmed down. His heart slowed. He thought as he lied there about all that had brought him to the strange patch of land.
He savored little as he realized that knowing the truth had made him the most miserable and wretched creature in the world. The wind blew past his face. He covered his eyes with his bloodstained hands, breathed the free air, and wept.
HERBERT WEST: REANIMATOR, by H. P. Lovecraft
Part I
Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago, when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.