Reanimatrix

by Pete Rawlik

  “Which was?”

  “The Phantom of Truth. The Pallid Mask. The Stranger.”

  “Death?” I offered.

  He laughed. “Bah! Death is just the end of flesh. Men have so many other things to be fearful of. We are cattle being led blindly to slaughter, but that slaughter is not our death. The King and his tattered robe dull our senses, and for that we are eternally grateful.”

  “I thought The King in Yellow was just a play.”

  “A sonnet, a play, an opera, these are just manifestations of his divine symphony, vehicles for his infectious melodies. We are his chorus and must learn his book, one way or the other.”

  “You are mad!” I whispered. I thought perhaps of turning back, of fetching the authorities, but I was driven by some strange force to follow him deeper into that chthonic pit.

  “Is it madness to speak the truth? Is it madness that the song remains the same? Our President Felix Faure thought so. He saw our performance, and died that same night. Come with me and I shall show you the truth, and then we shall see who is mad.”

  Down we went, further and further, and as we did Moncharmin continued to speak, but whether it was to me, or just to hear his voice, I was not sure. “The architect Garnier planned four basements, but the builder did more, many more. There are vast chambers that most never know of. They are used for storage, scene changes, and the like. One entire level houses the machinery that helps move the stage. Most people think there is only the one stage, but beneath that there are innumerable others. An entire separate production could take place in the under theatre, and those above would never know it.” His voice had become odd, almost theatrical. “There are so many stages; some of them have been completely forgotten.”

  We were deep when he finally stopped descending and instead led me down a hall and threw open yet another door. “Behold,” he proclaimed, “the 1899 production of The King in Yellow!”

  Beyond that door I saw things, things that should not have been possible, not in the twentieth century. I stood there entranced as the old man donned that aged costume, as he placed that crown of antlers upon his brow, as he rose into the air, into that darkened space amongst the rafters. He danced there and I recognized him as the character who had been excised from the photographs, and I knew that the actor who had played him had been Moncharmin himself!

  Even now, all these years later, I can still hear him reciting his lines with poise and bravado. “The Yellow King is dead,” he shouted, “and who shall take his place? Shall it be the White Queen, the Crimson Cardinal, the Black Man, or perhaps the Green? The White Knight still guards the gate, but the scion is already within the walls. The exile returns and he seeks his rightful throne!” He floated down and took his place amongst that horrific tableau. He was a maestro, a master puppeteer; he was the spring amidst clockwork bones and flesh. “Kneel before me,” he commanded. “Kneel before the Sepia Prince!”

  They say I went mad, that these things did not exist. The Parisian authorities deny all of it. There are no reports concerning what was down there, and the officers I knew to have been involved are now scattered across the country. They claim the fire, the one that three days later consumed that old rehearsal hall, was an accident, bad wiring, but I know better. What they couldn’t understand, what they couldn’t comprehend, they burned away.

  But I know what I saw, and I know what I did.

  Here is the truth. The old librarian floated there surrounded by his machine, a demonic construct of ropes and wire, of pulleys and desiccated corpses that danced to the sounds of an infernal barrel organ. He floated there, bearing the mantle of the upstart, the exile, the Sepia Prince. He was a terrible thing, the counter to the madness of the Yellow King, but just as mad. He floated there and demanded my allegiance, demanded that I take my place amongst those decayed and corrupted mannequins, demanded that I willingly accept him, and by doing so be corrupted by his dark influence.

  I did what I thought was right, what any true man would have done.

  I took my pistol from my jacket and I shot him. I shot him once, through his left eye. One shot was all that was needed.

  His death is well documented. They could not erase the truth of that. I have seen the report. My name is on it, they acknowledge that I shot the man. They say that none of this happened, but if that was true tell me why was I not charged? If I shot that man, and he was just that, a man, and not the Sepia Prince, why was I not charged? If I was mad, why was I not hauled away to the asylum?

  Sometimes I wish they had taken me to the madhouse. Then, at least, I could have had the illusion that I was mad. I could have let the tattered veil of the King in Yellow fall back across my eyes and be blind once more. Instead I see what others will not.

  The worst part is my dreams. Moncharmin lies on the floor dead. The others are there as well, dancing; their arms outstretched, begging me to join them, to take Moncharmin’s place.

  “Have you seen the Sepia Prince?” they cry out.

  “Yes,” I tell them. “Yes, I have!”

  Then I reach out for that pale brown coat, and the crown of horns. I reach for them with intent. And then I wake screaming.

  It is not the screaming which terrifies me. That I still scream at the offer gives me comfort, it tells me I am still a man. The night I no longer scream, when I no longer fear accepting the mantle of the Sepia Prince; that is what I fear the most.

  Not my screaming, but when my screaming stops.

  CHAPTER 3

  “The Ylourgne Accords”

  From the Journal of Robert Peaslee July 30 1919

  By early July, I was no longer in Paris. I wish I could say that I had finally given up on the city, or that it had given up on me, or that the local authorities had demanded that I be reassigned. None of that happened. The truth was that regardless of what I had seen, of the maddening things I had witnessed at Locus Solus and the Paris Opera House, I had remained mostly unaffected. My nervous condition seemed to be controllable, mostly through liberal administration of spirits. If my work suffered, my superiors said nothing. I did my job, insured the security of the delegates, and made sure that nothing unseemly happened to any of them. I assumed that on the day the treaty was signed my services would no longer be needed, the Major would pat me on the back and that I would soon be headed back to the States like so many of my fellow agents, like Chan, Charles, and Vargr.

  But Major Reid had other plans.

  There was a conference, a meeting of scientific minds to discuss how some of the recent advancements in medicine were going to be dealt with in the future. Like any such conference there were concerns, and while the French were in charge of overall security, each delegation, including those from the defeated Central Powers, was bringing its own protection. Our delegate, a man I had never met, had requested me personally. Despite how it was expressed, as a request, I really had no choice in the matter; I knew, as any good soldier did, that it was an order, no matter that it was framed in pleasantries.

  The meeting was to be held in the South-Central part of France, in the province of Averoigne, an area dominated by a dark virgin forest that few have penetrated. The territory is sparsely populated, with the only city being Vyones, the foundations of which had been first laid during the Dark Ages. Vyones would have been a scenic destination, but I was not to be so fortunate. The conference was to be held in the ruins of the ancient fortress Ylourgne, amidst crumbling walls and fallen masonry. The place had a weird reputation and the locals shunned it. There had been a catastrophe once, a horror that I could only find the vaguest of references to. The woods were said to have been haunted by werewolves and worse. There was a reference to the “Beast of Averoigne” which, right or wrong, I took to be another werewolf story not unlike the more recent tale of the Brotherhood of the Wolf which had plagued Gevaudan. The ancient, dark forest had done its best to reclaim the ruins of Ylourgne, but there were areas where nothing would grow, and only dead barren soil remained.

 
The French had found a use for such a place, and had already begun laying the foundations and earthwork for what would become the L’Ossuaire d’Ylourgne, a memorial cemetery for those who had fallen during the Great War, regardless of nationality. The work was being done primarily by a firm out of Paris, but with so many partners and sub-contractors it seemed like a veritable army of architects, masons, and carpenters had descended on that ancient site. It was an international call, a rallying cry for those who cared about such things, and it seemed the charitable and popular thing to donate to. Even my client, the enigmatic Meldrum Strange, had contributed to the building fund.

  Meldrum Strange was an affable man, rich would have been an understatement; he dealt in information by profession, but was also an industrialist. He was Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Morgan all rolled into one, with triple the ego to boot, but without the haughty superiority complex. On the drive through the countryside he actually talked with me, he had a deep melodious voice and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. As we conversed we discovered that we knew people in common. Strange had even studied briefly at Miskatonic University, where he had earned his undergraduate degree before moving on to study business abroad. He had a soft spot for Miskatonic and was proud that his son Hugo was studying medicine there. As affable as he was, Strange seemed tinged with regret. There was work to be done, important work, Strange was engaged in some great undertaking that he implied would be a boon to all men, but the President had asked him to attend this conference personally, and when the President asked you to do something, Strange suggested, it wasn’t really a request.

  “There are duties, responsibilities a man must accept,” Strange said, “regardless of his wants, no matter what they cost him professionally, or personally.” When he said that, I took it to heart, for it reminded me of my own sentiments, and I knew that this was a man worth knowing.

  The conference village, including a great reception hall, had been built in the last few months by the assembled legions of workmen who were now busy rebuilding the fortress, transforming it into a great memorial chapel. One day these outbuildings would serve as the offices and homes of the resident caretakers, but until then they would serve our purposes. The great hall had incorporated stones from the ruin itself and in the archway above the entrance was carved a phrase I supposed was meant to inspire unity amongst the fallen, the mourners, and even perhaps the delegates. It was written in medieval French but was easily translated as,

  THEY THAT COME HERE AS MANY

  SHALL GO FORTH AS ONE

  It was beneath this inspiring motto that dozens of delegates, professional diplomats, men of science, and even men of business gathered. Dr. Astrov had come from Russia, General Mazovia from the Polish Republic, Dr. Lorde and General Duval represented France, the Austrians had sent von Schelling and Dr. Miklos Sangre, while the British a man named Richard Steadman. The Germans had suffered during the war, many of their best and brightest had been lost or fled, the man they sent to represent their interests was known to everyone else as a cruel and vicious man, a criminal who would have been arrested had he not been traveling under diplomatic papers, Dr. Cornelius Kramm, whom the more sensational of journalists called “The Sculptor of Human Flesh.”

  When Strange saw Kramm he warned me to be wary of the man, but also to keep a close eye on him. “He’s a dangerous man, ambitious, manipulative. He ran his own crime syndicate in New York and Paris, The Red Hand. It took an entire team of adventurers to bring him and his brother down. He had been assumed dead.”

  “In my experience,” I declared, “dangerous men have a habit of not staying dead.”

  He looked at me incredulously, as if I had said the most important thing ever. “Do you know what this conference is about, Lt. Peaslee?”

  I shook my head, “I don’t have clearance for that.”

  He thumped me on the back as if we had been boyhood friends. “You have what clearance I say you have, and right now I need you to understand why we are here, what has happened, and what we hope to do about it.”

  It took me hours to read the files that Strange gave me, and even then I didn’t want to believe what they revealed, but I knew it to be true, I knew what could be done to the dead. It was possible to give the deceased a semblance of life, to give them motion and some sense of self. They could be given purpose, tasks, even played with. I know this because I had seen it done, not once but twice. Of the men described in the files I was familiar with one name, that of Doctor Herbert West, who had been involved with the events at Locus Solus. The files had a picture of West, a mousy man with a shock of blond hair. They had pictures of his colleagues as well, including the nondescript Daniel Cain and the stoic Canadian Major Sir Doctor Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, who had died tragically and then been victimized further by West himself. I stared at that photo of Clapham-Lee; his piercing eyes and strong nose seemed so familiar. I had seen this man before, but where I could not recall.

  The next day the purpose of the conference was made plain to me when General von Schelling opened up with a plea to the other delegates for a sense of human decency. “This science of reanimation, this thing that was released on the battlefields of Europe, we must put a stop to it. I do not deny that we ourselves are guilty of exploring the procedure. Our agents have obtained Herr Frankenstein’s notebooks; we have carried out our own experiments.” His voice became proud and frightened at the same time. “I tell you this path leads not only to abominations, but endangers the very balance of world power. If this technology were to fall into the hands of the Persians, Chinese, Japanese, or even one of our own rebellious colonies, it could be the end of European dominion of the globe, and could potentially cast us back into a new Dark Age.”

  This little speech set the delegates ablaze and the room exploded into a cacophony of accusations and excuses. The delegates quickly fell into old political alliances, and familiar lines were drawn. The chairman, General Duval, motioned for security to take action and several guards moved from their stations, their hands going for their guns.

  I tapped Strange on the shoulder and suggested we withdraw. Instead, Strange stood, slammed his fist onto the table, and bellowed out at the others. “Are you fools? Have the last few years of war taught you nothing? Millions lie dead and you still bicker. Your precious alliances and treaties have led you to war and the brink of destruction. Your nations lay wasted and your landscapes ruined and still you cling to old ideologies and familiar patterns. If we are to survive, as men, as nations, as a species, you must find a new way of thinking, for all our sakes.”

  The crowd was stunned into silence, and the room grew still. Duval raised a finger and his agents paused. Something electric was passing through the crowd, something contagious. I could see it in their eyes, and in the way they stood. They were ready, ready for change, they just needed a leader, someone to show them the way, a way forward. Was that man Strange? Looking at him as he stood there, the bulk of him, his great grey beard and powerful eyes, he was like some Old Testament prophet. He was Moses ready to lead his chosen people to the Promised Land.

  Then the lights went out.

  It took an hour for someone to find the fault. By that time the delegates had left the hall and wandered out into the gardens. Strange and I had taken refuge in the shade of an old oak. Together we watched as German Kramm and Austrian Sangre talked furtively. They kept looking over their shoulders like they were afraid of being watched, which of course they were. We ourselves did not go unnoticed and were soon joined by the French and British delegates, General Duval and Richard Steadman.

  “A rousing speech, Mr. Strange,” commented Steadman. He wore a tall, black hat, rectangular glasses, and an ascot to accent his suit. His hair was neat and blended into a thick dark beard. His voice was accented but not one I recognized; he was obviously a member of the Commonwealth but beyond that I knew nothing about his origins. “Tell me, do you think it will make a difference? Do you really think you can change human natu
re?”

  Meldrum Strange took a drag on his pipe. “Explain yourself, if you would?”

  “Our history, our legends, our myths, they all suggest that any time we develop a new technology, a new idea, a new invention, we tend to succumb to its most deleterious of effects or uses. Eve, Prometheus, Pandora. Innovations tend to have disastrous beginnings, and men never seem to learn, or change.”

  “I take your point, sir, which is why I intend to at least try. Would you have us do nothing, and let history run its course? Should we leave well enough alone?”

  Steadman made an odd noise that seemed to express his displeasure. “Would that Frankenstein, West, Cain, Hartwell, and Tsiang had left well enough alone.”

  Strange nodded. “You forget Clapham-Lee, Mr. Steadman; surely he was as much to blame as all the others?”

  The British delegate turned and walked away. “I assure you, Mr. Strange,” he called back, “Clapham-Lee has not been forgotten, least of all by me. But I do not blame him for any of this. He is as much a victim as anyone else.”

  Duval gave a strange little salute and said, “Be seeing you,” before trotting off after Steadman.

  That night, while Strange slept, I reviewed the files once more and familiarized myself with more of the men that were documented within. I had of course known about Victor Frankenstein, who had meddled with the dead in the 1790s, but I was not familiar with the exploits of his descendent Henry, or those of the mysterious Dr. Pretorius. Nor did I know about those other children of Frankenstein. As for the name Tsiang, it was in reference to an unfortunate event that had occurred on the Franco-Austrian front. Tsiang had been a priest of Siva who in his attempts to please the French had created undead soldiers, nearly invincible things that only stopped moving when the enemy forces reduced them to ash.