They found the body of Johnny Pearl hanging from the stout limb of a cottonwood tree. The tree was within sight of the homestead’s front yard. Though the dead man was not visible from the cabin, the lynched man’s final view from his unenviable vantage had been of his home ablaze and his wife’s mutilated carcass. However, what made Mirablis cry out in outrage was the sight of a large crow perched atop the hanged man’s head, its inky claws buried deep in his scalp.
“Pompey! Get that wretched thing off him!”
Producing a slingshot from his back pocket, the mute quickly snatched up a small rock from the ground and sent the missile flying at the bird. The crow abandoned its grisly perch with an angry caw. Mirablis positioned himself directly under the hanged man’s feet, peering up into his distorted face.
“We’re in luck, Pompey! The scavengers didn’t get too much of a head start. It’s a good thing winter’s on its way—the flies should be mostly inactive by now, so there won’t be much in the way of infestation to worry about.” The old man laughed and held up a shaking hand. “Look at me, Pompey! I’m trembling like a school girl!” Mirablis’s giddy smile was quickly replaced by a grimmer manner. “Go fetch Sasquatch! We’ll need him to transport our new friend here into the pouch. I’ll stay here and play scarecrow until your return.”
Pompey nodded and hurried back to the wagon. He rapped his knuckles loudly on its wooden side. After a moment, the tailgate dropped open and the canvas flaps that covered the rear were thrown back, and something that once was a man emerged into the cold light of a September afternoon on the high plains.
The thing was tall and not exactly put together the way a human is supposed to look. Its left arm was shorter than the right—or was it that the right arm was longer than the left? The legs seemed to be equally mismatched, with one foot severely pigeon-toed while the other pointed straight. Scars of various lengths and widths crisscrossed the creature’s exposed flesh, giving it the appearance of a walking crazy quilt.
Though it was naked save for a leather loincloth, and was lean as a winter wolf, the creature did not seem to notice the chill wind blowing from the mountains. Besides its one garment and the color of its skin, the only other telltale sign that the creature called Sasquatch had once been an American Indian was its long black hair, which hung loose down its back.
Sasquatch watched Pompey’s hands as the Negro spoke in the sign language of the plains people, then nodded. He then turned and reached into the wagon, pulling out a seven-foot-long homemade ladder as if it weighed no more than a child’s toy.
Mirablis rubbed his hands together anxiously as he paced back and forth beneath the swaying body of the hanged man. He brightened immediately upon spotting Pompey approaching with the ladder. A few steps behind the mute shambled the figure of
Sasquatch, the leather pouch folded under his shorter left arm, the cask of elixir under the longer right arm.
“We must hurry!” Mirablis said breathily. Though the weather was somewhat brisk, he mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief. “We were exceptionally fortunate this time, as I believe our friend here has been inconvenienced less than twelve hours. But time is still of the essence!”
Pompey placed the ladder against the cottonwood and began to climb, while Mirablis supervised Sasquatch as he unrolled the pouch. It was made of oiled cloth and resembled nothing so much as a wineskin, except that it was six feet long and three feet wide. At one end was a huge stopper fashioned from wood wrapped in treated leather.
Pompey made a grunting noise, signaling the others that he was ready. Sasquatch moved to position himself directly under the swaying feet of the hanged man. After a few slices from Pompey’s buck knife, the body dropped from the tree like strange fruit, directly into Sasquatch’s waiting arms. With surprising grace and gentleness for a creature of such ungainly appearance, Sasquatch laid the corpse on the ground at Mirablis’s feet and proceeded to undress it.
The old man studied the body with a critical eye, then nodded his head and smiled. “This is even better than I hoped!” he said, pointing to the corpse’s livid but otherwise unmarked flesh. “From all outward appearances, our friend here was in exemplary physical condition before he was so rudely inconvenienced.” Mirablis waved his cane in warning as Pompey began to pry off the noose cinched into the dead man’s neck. “Leave that for later! It is too deeply embedded in the flesh to be removed on the scene.”
Having finished his inspection, Mirablis stepped back and motioned for his servants to proceed with their duties. While Pompey held the neck of the giant flask upright, Sasquatch slid the body through the man-sized opening as easily as a mother might put a sleepy child to bed.
Once the body was fully inside the pouch, the plug was put in place, and then driven home by Sasquatch with one swift rap from a cooper’s mallet. At the top of the plug was a hole the width of a man’s finger, down which Pompey ran one end of a length of canvas tubing. The other end was attached to a spigot at the bottom of the cask of elixir. With a turn of the spigot, the elixir flowed through the tubing and into the watertight container.
While they waited for the pouch to fill, Sasquatch moved the wagon closer to the scene and made a fire, over which he warmed a small bucket of tar. When the pouch was filled enough that it sloshed upon Mirablis nudging it with his cane, the tubing was removed and the hole sealed with the hot tar. As Pompey disconnected the spigot, a small amount of viscous greenish yellow fluid spurted forth onto the ground.
“Careful, fool!” Mirablis snapped, bringing his cane down on the mute’s shoulder with surprising force. Pompey did not even flinch. “My elixir is far too valuable to waste on worms!” The old man looked around, frowning. “Where in the name of Perdition did Sasquatch get off to?”
Pompey pointed in the direction of the ruined cabin. The patchwork creature was kneeling beside the dead woman, making passes with his mismatched hands over the body. Part of Sasquatch had been a shaman, but just how much of him Mirablis wasn’t sure. As a man of science, Mirablis tended to dismiss such silliness. But he had to admit he found some aspects of the medicine man within his servant useful, so he allowed him his superstitions. After all, revived from the dead or not, he was still a red savage.
“Sasquatch! It’s time to go!” Mirablis shouted, “Our new friend needs to get situated!”
Muttering under his breath about heathen tomfoolery, the old man returned to where Pompey was standing guard over the pouch. A few seconds later, Sasquatch reappeared and lifted it and placed it in the back of the wagon as easily as a farmer hefting a ten-pound sack of seed. After making sure the container and its occupant were firmly secured, Sasquatch crawled back into rear of the wagon, closing the tailgate behind him.
Mirablis paused to glance up at the sky as Pompey helped him back onto the driver’s box. “It’ll be dark soon. We better get out while the getting’s good, my friends,” he observed. “The less time spent at the scene of a crime, the better—whether it’s of our making or not. Still, not a bad day’s work, if I don’t say so myself.”
Chapter Five
The covered wagon traveled for three days and nights without pause. On the morning of the fourth day, Mirablis and his peculiar entourage arrived at their destination, hidden within the forbidding wilderness of the Grand Tetons; from a distance, I looked like nothing more than a cabin pressed close against the side of a foothill. But what appeared to be an isolated shack was actually camouflage for the entrance to a large cavern.
The cabin’s furnishings were exceptionally modest. Indeed, the only evidence that someone other than a mountain man lived there was the walnut and glass bookcase in the corner crammed full of medical texts and other, more arcane volumes, written in German, Latin and Greek.
The door set in the back wall of the cabin opened onto the cave. The cave extended far into the hillside and had natural ventilation, a floor that was relatively level and access to an underground spring. Mirablis was not the first to have found it advantageous, j
udging from the flint arrow heads and broken bowls they’d found scattered among the stalagmites.
When Mirablis accidentally stumbled across the cave years ago, he realized it would be the perfect location for his experiments. He had grown weary of spending so much of his time and energy looking over his shoulder. He could no longer count how many times he had been on the verge of a major breakthrough, only to abandon his laboratory because of some snooping neighbor or meddling constable.
He had learned from poor Viktor’s hapless example never to arouse the scrutiny of outsiders—and to always erase his mistakes before they could call attention to themselves. Now, for the first time in fifty years, Mirablis was free to continue his work without fear of discovery and censure—and what progress he had made!
It was here, hidden from the prying eyes of a distrustful and ignorant public, that Mirablis worked to free mankind from the inconvenience of mortality. There was no doubt in his mind that in the centuries to come, this wretched hovel would be made into a shrine greater than those in Rome, Bethlehem or Mecca. A shrine dedicated to the genius that struggled so mightily in order that mankind might know Life Without End.
But those days were yet to come, and he still had much to do before they would arrive.
While he had far surpassed his notorious colleague, Mirablis had yet to produce a suitable enough subject that would allow him to unveil his discovery to the world at large. With something as profoundly earthshaking as the death of Death, one had to be absolutely perfect, or it was all for naught. Viktor had proven that, if nothing else.
While Pompey unharnessed the wagon and Sasquatch unloaded their new friend, Mirablis busied himself by starting a fire in the cabin’s potbellied stove. While neither Pompey nor Sasquatch seemed to notice the cold, the same could not be said for their master.
“Wait, you heathen fool!” Mirablis shouted irritably as Sasquatch lurched toward the cave entrance with his precious burden. “You might be able to see in the dark, but I require light!”
Sasquatch came to a halt and glanced over his crooked shoulder at Mirablis. In the dim light, the whites of the Indian’s eyes glowed with a pale greenish yellow luminescence. The patched-together Indian waited patiently as his creator fumbled with an oil lantern and a box of brimstones.
Pompey stepped unhesitatingly into the stygian darkness of the cavern, the lantern held in one hand while he led his elderly master with the other. The floor of the cavern sloped gently beneath their feet for a few steps, and then leveled out again. As Pompey lifted his arm higher, the light from the lantern struck the glass walls of the tank.
At first glance, it resembled nothing so much as an oversized aquarium. It stood on long, ornate copper legs, the feet of which resembled the claws of lions, and had a burnished lid held in place by tension screws. It was four feet wide, ten feet deep and seven feet long, with side panels made from a greenish-colored glass several inches thick. Through this glass could be glimpsed gallons of the good doctor’s special elixir. Along one side of the tank was a raised wooden platform, atop which was situated what passed for Mirablis’ operating theater.
While Pompey hurried about lighting crude pitch torches in order to provide more light, Sasquatch stumped its graceless way up the thirteen stairs that lead to the gallows-like platform, then carefully placed his burden onto the operating table. He then loosened the tension screws holding the lid in place and lifted it using a block and tackle.
Once the lid was removed, an elaborate cat’s cradle of leather straps was visible just below the surface of the viscous fluid. Pompey then removed the plug with a chisel and, with a practiced movement, Sasquatch expertly decanted the contents of the pouch into the tank.
The body of the hanged man landed in the cradle of leather strips with all the grace of a dead mackerel striking the dock.
For a man several days dead, his color was surprisingly good, and his flesh was pliant. Using a winch attached to the side of tank, Pompey cranked the cradle closer to the surface. Upon putting on a pair of canvas gloves, the mute arranged the corpse’s tangled limbs so they were in a rough semblance of natural rest.
“Don’t touch that!” Mirablis snapped as his servant tested the cinch on the noose. “I don’t need you accidentally damaging the poor bastard’s voice box anymore than it has been already!”
Mirablis looked over the edge of the tank from his perch atop his stepladder. He had abandoned the lantern in favor of a miner’s headlamp, its wavering candlelight reflected and intensified by the mirror directly behind it. After slipping on a pair of gloves, the doctor gently palpitated the dead man’s throat, and then smiled. “Good! Our friend is merely inconvenienced by a broken neck, not a shattered larynx or crushed windpipe. Whoever handled the lynching knew what they were doing, that much is for certain.”
Mirablis produced a scalpel from his pocket and quickly sliced through the rope. With a disgusted snort, he tossed the severed noose onto the floor of the platform, where it lay like a perverse umbilical cord. “Now … let’s see about that eye,” he muttered, turning the damaged portion of the corpse’s face toward the light.
The head lolled like a rag doll’s on its snapped neck. Mirablis frowned at the punctured eyeball and exposed optic muscles and clucked his tongue in mock reproof. “I’m afraid it will have to go, my friend! But I believe I have a suitable replacement in stock—although I’m not certain as to its color. Still—beggars can not be choosers, eh?”
Chuckling to himself over that particular witticism, Mirablis stepped down from his ladder and motioned for his servants to reseal the tank.
“There is much to be done before we can revive our new friend. But first, I must avail myself of a nap and a hot meal! Would it not have been better for God to have slept before Creation, rather than after, Pompey?” Mirablis yawned, massaging his lower back. “Think of all the trouble that would have been avoided!”
Pompey merely grunted as he helped his aged master down the stairs of the platform. If there was anything to be read in the silent Negro’s eyes, their phosphorescent glow obscured it.
Chapter Six
Mirablis prepared for the revivification of his newest subject as he always did: by going over his notes and journals—an those of his dear colleague, destroyed so long ago by the forces he sought to control. There was a great deal of inspiration to be found in Viktor’s writings. But Mirablis had learned as much—if not more—from his friend’s failures than he did his successes.
Poor Viktor. He had indeed been brilliant—his mind shining like a star in the wilderness. In the decades since his death, Mirablis had yet to find another man with which he could discourse as an equal. However, Viktor’s one failing was his tendency to fixate simply on achieving a goal. He was never good at making contingency plans in case things did not quite work out as he had hoped. And in the end, his myopic optimism cost him dearly.
Of course, Mirablis was far more forgiving of Viktor’s faults now that he was dead. During his life, these differences eventually lead to their falling out. But that was all so long ago, so far away. What were such petty jealousies and disagreements now? Viktor may have realized his goal first, but it was Mirablis who had refined it—and repeated it—and one day soon he would be able to restore his old friend’s reputation to the honor it once knew.
He had no doubt that the accounts of his late friend’s experiments and his subsequent bad end were grossly inaccurate, if not actually fashioned out of whole cloth, in an attempt to feed the overheated imaginations of shopkeepers’ daughters. It galled him to think that all of his friend and mentor’s hard work had come to was a slander on the family name and fodder for a thrill-mongering, ill-born wife of a decadent poet.
But enough of that foolishness. He had more weighty duties to attend to. Mirablis pushed himself away from the table and shuffled over to the sea chest he kept under his bed. He groaned aloud as he bent on arthritic knees and opened the lid, revealing an array of sealed jars of varying sizes and shap
es. After a quick inventory, he chose a smallish jar containing a pair of eyes, then closed the lid.
Mirablis moved far more spryly now that he was home. Traveling took a serious toll on his aged system, affecting everything from his sleep to his digestion. Unfortunately, there was no way he could continue his work without leaving the security and familiarity of his sanctum. He certainly couldn’t send Pompey and Sasquatch out into the world unsupervised. The very thought was enough to give him the shivers.
He opened the second door of the cabin and crossed the threshold into his subterranean kingdom. The interior of the cavern was now illuminated by strategically placed torches and lanterns, revealing a series of ropes stretched between the outcroppings of rock that served as guideposts in case of blackouts. From where he stood, Mirablis could see Pompey and Sasquatch preparing the operating platform for surgery. The tank had been unsealed, its lid dangling from the block and tackle rigged above it from a gibbet-like support.
Upon noticing Mirablis’s approach, Pompey put aside the straight razor he had been using to shave the corpse’s head and hurried down the steps to escort his aged master onto the platform. As he was helped into his surgical gown, Mirablis scanned the body laid out before him on the operating table with a discerning eye.
Despite being dead for nearly a week, the cadaver was in wondrous shape, thanks largely to the elixir re-vitae. The limbs were still supple, the muscles pliant, yet not softened by decay. If not for the grotesquely unnatural angle of his head, the hanged man could easily be mistaken for asleep. Mirablis clucked his tongue upon seeing a darkish fluid seeping from the body’s mouth and nose. He made a mental note to drain the bowels in order to prevent the subject from inhaling his own filth upon revival.
He squeezed and flexed the corpse’s arms and legs to make sure there was no muscular decay or contraction in the limbs, then moved the arms so that they hung over the ends of the table, allowing the blood to drain into the vessels and expand them as much as possible. He then took a small wooden headrest and placed it under the back of the subject’s skull so that the head was elevated above the chest, to avoid discoloration in the head and neck tissues.
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