Reanimatrix

by Pete Rawlik

  “Despite the observed and strange changes in the rabbits, we were thankful that our friend Jekyll was showing no such metamorphosis, at least not outwardly. Our concern over other changes increased suddenly after Higgins joined Moreau in examining the rabbits and recording their measurements. Higgins has an unusual habit of singing while he works—not any song in particular, but rather a spontaneous work created by his own mind concerning whatever is going on at the moment. In his style there was some semblance to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, such as HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. So complex were his spontaneous productions that they often contained not only lyrics, but also repetitive sections for a chorus. Higgins had this day composed an amusing refrain concerning the life of a laboratory assistant and was now into the fourth or so verse of the thing when he was suddenly joined by a chorus of tiny chirping voices. Voices that startled all of us, for it was apparent that the source was none other than the animals upon which we were preparing to experiment.

  “There, in that too-small cage, the poor creatures who had been subjected to an alien substance were swaying back and forth, singing in perfect harmony about the menial tasks that must be carried out in a laboratory, in perfect imitation of Higgins’s lyrical presentation. West and I were stunned, as was Higgins, and we ceased whatever tasks we were undertaking to appreciate the pure beauty of the sight and sound of what was occurring. Higgins softly suggested that what we were looking at was a form of mimicry, similar to what can be accomplished by some birds. I cast a dissenting glance in West’s direction, for as I listened I noted several slight variations amongst the lyrics originally sung by Higgins. It seemed to indicate some level of cognizance as well as a familiarity with the English language. Such things seemed improbable, but given that these very animals were now exhibiting bipedal motion, hand dexterity, and vocal repetition, how much of a stretch was the development of not only intelligence but language skills as well?

  “The question was never to be explored. Moreau was apparently unmoved by the entire display and continued with his work on trying to find a way to drive the gas out of the animals. While we were distracted, the eager vivisectionist had attached electrodes to the cage and with a flip of a single switch sent hundreds of volts of electricity surging through the cage and its inhabitants. The poor rabbits grew rigid for a moment and then seemed to vibrate to some strange frequency. Electricity arced between their ears and between rabbits and I could see thin wisps of smoke trailing into the air. Evangeline turned away and buried her face in my shoulder. There was a macabre grin on Moreau’s face, and he seemed to take some horrid satisfaction in the process. I motioned for him to stop, not out of compassion for the animals, but rather for fear that the treatment did not appear to be having an effect, and I did not want to kill all of our test subjects. Instead of turning the power off, Moreau gleefully adjusted it higher, causing the animals to vibrate even faster. The whole thing reached a fever-pitched crescendo when the mouths of the animals suddenly opened and the thick yellow gas began to disgorge. The strangely luminescent vapor poured out of the rabbits and seeped upward out of the cage and into the space above it.

  “The miasma hung there in the air, congealing, but at the same time tendrils of the material spun out in several directions, curling through the air like the tentacles of some deep-sea beast. After the last of it had left the cage Moreau turned off the power, letting the now tortured animals collapse to the ground in agony. Several were breathing rapidly, but all in all the beasts seemed to be relatively unharmed. Gently pulling Evangeline with me, I backed away from the strangely moving vapor and both Higgins and Moreau did the same. That the mass possessed some semblance of life and motor force seemed undeniable, for it continued to probe and pull itself through the air in defiance of all obstacles or breezes that plied the laboratory. Slowly, the thing drifted to a point above where poor Jekyll had been laid out. Thick, ropy masses roiled down and enveloped the prone man’s head. At first I thought that the mass was going to flow down into Jekyll, but it soon became apparent that the opposite was occurring; the free-floating vapor was actually drawing its other parts out of the infused man. Streamers of gas were flowing up through the air, and in response the mass was growing larger, nearly filling the space between the ceiling and the work area.

  “With a tremendous gasp Jekyll’s body arched up as the last of the alien creature vacated his system, and then collapsed back to the makeshift bed. From a distance we could see that his breathing was labored, but he seemed to be regaining consciousness. The gaseous entity continued to probe about, and I realized that it was looking for the pieces of itself that we had sealed in sapphire containers. Moreau called for me to open a window and I made my way to the far side of the room with my back against the wall. I struggled with the mechanism, which was stuck from years of disuse, but eventually the rust and grime came loose and the upper pane swung open with a wrenching creak.

  “Moreau had attached his electrodes to two metal rods, and using a pair of insulated gloves was carrying the charged poles raised in the air. He plunged one, then the other rod toward the alien fog, and then brought them closer to each other. The things sparked violently and the gaseous entity recoiled out of either fear or surprise. Moreau took a step forward and shifted the position of his rods, herding the radiant vapor toward the open window. The thing tried to move in another direction but Moreau anticipated each feint and countered it expertly. There was something graceful in his movements and attacks, something that reminded me of an expert with a rapier. He was so lithe on his feet, so sure of his movements, so daring in his attacks. Inevitably the extraterrestrial cloud had no choice but to ooze out the open window and into the open air outside.

  “All of us were outside and we watched as the thing floated above the university, moving slowly like a cloud, or a rather thick puff of smoke. Whatever it was, it seemed confused to be out in the open and soon the only motion it made was to move farther and farther into the sky. We watched it, watched as it slowly receded from the confines of the earth. It became small, miniscule, and then at last a single solitary pinprick that was swallowed up by the sky.

  “We thought the matter closed. Jekyll showed no indication that the intrusion or the removal of the strange gas had caused any permanent damage. He was, however, weak, and required the rest of the month to recover. The recovery process consumed most of Miss West’s time, for she spent all of her waking hours attending to his every need. Of the three remaining samples that we had encased in sapphire containers, we drew lots for their dispersal. Jekyll, Moreau, and Higgins each received one of the wire-wrapped stones. By the end of August it was clear that there was an intense bond between Jekyll and West, and we were all quite sure that Jekyll would make some change in his plans, either one way or another. Despite our confidence, none of us mentioned a word of it, and when we departed in early September, Evangeline West was not with us.

  It was on the fourth day out of port that a ruckus brought us to the forward deck. The passengers and many of the crew were looking skyward, shielding their eyes from the sun, for there in the sky was an object of significant magnitude. Of course it was not in the sky, but rather beyond our planet in the space between our atmosphere and the sun. Her Majesty’s astronomer has called it a comet, and the press christened it the Great Comet of 1882. In Cape Town the Chief Assistant applied a wide variety of filters to his instruments and photographed the thing as it passed in front of the sun and then beyond it before fading into the depths of the void. His observations, duly recorded, testify that the thing was radiant with a light unlike any he had ever seen before. But I, George Edward Rutherford, know that spectrum, and so do my colleagues Henry Higgins, John-Paul Moreau, and Evangeline West, for it was the same strange spectrum that had belonged to the radiant vapor that had issued forth from the mouth of Doctor Henry Jekyll so many days earlier.”

  When it became clear that Rutherford had finished his account, I consulted with Misters Banks and Darli
ng and we agreed that we needed to be direct. We thanked Dr. Rutherford for his time, and apologized for our brashness but requested that he be forthcoming concerning Jekyll’s relationship with Miss West. Was it possible that Jekyll had consummated the relationship, and that Evangeline West had given birth to Jekyll’s child?”

  At this Rutherford rose up out of his seat, donned his coat and hat, and made his way to the door, pausing only long enough to answer my question. “Evangeline West is the finest, smartest, and most outstanding woman I have ever met. If she has told you that she gave birth to the son of Henry Jekyll, there is no reason to doubt her.” He slammed the door as he left, and it was clear that his participation in our investigation was at an end.

  Despite the rather circuital response, I do believe that Rutherford has provided us with an answer, or at least one that would hold fast in a court of law. With your approval, I shall draw up papers legally recognizing the son of Evangeline West, born in Arkham, Massachusetts, in 1883, as the issue of Doctor Henry Jekyll, and therefore an heir to his estate. Based on my estimates there are sufficient funds to maintain both the mother and child in a comfortable state, and if carefully marshaled it is likely that the child will be able to attend university, perhaps even becoming as skilled a physician as his father.

  As for Jekyll’s pocket watch, the one with the sapphire fob, I shall place it in the firm’s vault at the Bank of England with instructions that it be released to the child when he reaches the age of majority, but not before. We may have been engaged by Dr. Henry Jekyll, but we must also serve his heir, and be sure that our young charge, Herbert West, reaches his full potential.

  Regards,

  Gabriel Utterson, Solicitor

  17 Tower Hill

  London, England

  5 November 1888

  CHAPTER 16

  “The Desires of Herbert West”

  From the Diary of Megan Halsey June 18 1926

  It was because of Aunt Amanda that I left Arkham in May, and drove south to a place where I could escape from her nagging voice and the incessant chatter of the household staff. The winter of 1925–26 had been particularly cold and long, with freezing temperatures still being recorded into March. April had warmed somewhat, but not enough to allow me to escape from the noisy chatterers that disturbed my own house. I had spent days in the university library, but there is only so much of that one can take, and so I decided to take my leave of the town, and summer elsewhere.

  Of course, I should have been searching for my mother, I had after all sworn to do so. Well, perhaps saying I had sworn to undertake that task is an exaggeration, I hadn’t even made a promise to undertake that task, indeed my mother’s letter had expressly asked me not to look for her. Yet that quest had come to consume me, to drive me, to motivate me to become what can only be described as a lady adventuress, though my actual adventures had been few. I was, if I do say so myself, an Irene Adler or Jane Porter still early in my career, still waiting for the events that would shape my future. That the quest for my mother had gone poorly could be said to have contributed to my melancholy and irritability. And so I made plans to escape, at least for the summer.

  I thought perhaps I would book passage on the Homeric and spend some time at sea, and then roaming the country lanes of Britain. When I mentioned this, dear Aunt Amanda scoffed and commented that whenever my mother became antsy she would take a place on Long Island in a little town called Blackstone Shoals. I had fond memories of the place, vague as they were. Some distant cousins had an ancestral home there and one of their offspring had once been a student of my father’s, and I can remember that he had been rather fond of my mother. Suddenly intrigued, I wrote asking if I could visit for a day or so. Imagine my delight and surprise when Doctor Maurice J. Xavier wrote back, saying that he remembered me with abject fondness. He suggested that instead of a day, I spend several weeks. He was organizing a symposium of sorts, one that would run for the latter part of May and into June, and hoped that I would come and help lighten the off hours with a feminine touch.

  And so toward the end of May I took the train from Arkham to Boston, and then from Boston to New York, with the final leg being from New York to Blackstone Shoals, where Doctor Xavier’s butler, Otto, was waiting to take me through winding roads of Long Island to the castle-like Cliff Manor, a moldering stone edifice straight out of some gothic novel. As its name implied, it sat on a ledge overlooking a small spit of ocean called Egg Bay. This charming little cove was framed by the entirely aptly named peninsulas of East Egg and West Egg, which despite sharing the sheltering harbor were two towns that wanted nothing whatsoever to do with each other. East Egg, it seems, was the home of old families, those with history and breeding, and of course deep pockets. West Egg was the territory of the nouveau-rich, upstart industrialists and people who were otherwise set apart, regardless of how much money they had. At least that’s how Otto told it. There had been some scandal a few years back, something concerning an attempt by a West Egger to steal the wife of a man across the bay. It had culminated in the death of a woman beneath the wheels of a speeding car. Her husband had sought revenge, and the man from West Egg had died in a flurry of bullets. No one on either side of the bay liked to talk about it, but the rest of the island from Queens to Amity Island did.

  Doctor Xavier and his daughter greeted me at the door. Joanne was a charming fourteen-year-old girl with freckles and pigtails, but as she spoke, I knew that she carried in her that same independent streak that burned within me, and that she was frightfully protective of her father. I casually inquired about her mother and to my embarrassment learned that she had succumbed to a fever of the brain several years back, leaving Xavier to care for his daughter as best he could. Watching how Xavier spoke and acted, concentrating solely on his work, I soon came to realize that while he may have been the adult, it was Joanne who was the parent, and it was she who did her best to look after her father.

  Xavier was hosting this symposium for the Kilaree Foundation, under the auspices of creating in New York a revolutionary new medical center. The Academy of Surgical Research would be the culmination of Xavier’s career, and provide him and his colleagues a chance to teach what they knew to the next generation of surgeons, all the while carrying out research on revolutionary techniques and procedures. As for the invited guests, they numbered in the dozens, and included Xavier’s assistant hematologist, Francis Flegg, the wheelchair-bound surgeon Harold Duke, his assistant, the biochemist Preston Wells, the neu-ro-physicist Edmund Rowitz, and Leslie Haines, whose specialty was the grafting of brain tissues.

  While all of these experts intrigued me, the most astonishing amongst them was a man I had already met, a man whom I thought I would never see again. I had met him in a gallery in Boston, the same gallery where I had met the artist Richard Upton Pickman, the man who had so influenced my appreciation of art and artists. Our encounter had been brief, but memorable, for he had almost instantly recognized my name; if not my face. That he was here with Xavier was not entirely unexpected; they had after all been classmates at Miskatonic, and both had studied under my father. But as Xavier had thrived both in Arkham and then in New York, his colleague had pursued less noticeable goals. Rumors had swirled amongst the professional circles of Arkham and most people were pleased that Doctor Herbert West had left Arkham and all of New England to take up residence in New York City.

  There had been rumors once that he had died; he had been missing for years, but I as much as anyone knew that such rumors met little. I recognized him immediately; it had been years since that day in Boston, but he hadn’t changed. He was still the same strangely attractive man, awkward in an endearing, if somewhat macabre way, with a mop of blond hair framing a gaunt face that tried unsuccessfully to hide behind a pair of wire-frame glasses.

  He recognized me as well, and took my hand and kissed it. “Miss Halsey-Griffith, it has been too long. When last we met you were but a slip of a girl, now look at you—a woman in the full blossom
of her youth.” I felt his hand in mine and I casually caressed the soft flesh that ran between his thumb and forefinger. Ever more forward than I should be, I kissed him on the cheek; he was oddly cool, almost cold, and in an instant I felt those old feelings, the ones that had stirred inside an infatuated schoolgirl, begin to rise up again, and I blushed at the thought that I might actually be able to consummate the fantasies of so many years ago. That night my sleep was restless, filled with thoughts and dreams of the most lurid and titillating kind.

  The next day was spent with Joanne and several of the other female guests, wives of various attendees, on the rocky beach that sat below Cliff Manor. It was a rather relaxing day of frolicking in the cool surf and sun. Xavier’s maid, Mamie, a young girl just a little older than Joanne, made sure that we had a steady supply of iced tea and lemonade. At noon she brought down a basket of fried chicken and some apple tarts. While we were devouring this feast, which was more than passable fare, we were visited by a gaggle of husbands who descended on us like geese in their suits and dress shoes, ostensibly to check on their wives, but I recognized the old tactic as an opportunity for the men to ogle the women in their bathing suits.

  Included in this was Doctor Haines, who took a moment to kneel down next to me and strike up a conversation about nothing in particular. To the casual observer it would have seemed that he was attempting to flirt with me, but as a trained expert in the art of seduction I knew this to be anything but the truth. He was speaking to me, but his eyes rarely made contact with mine, but instead were darting back and forth, lingering over the shapely legs and nape of the precocious Joanne Xavier. I was his unwitting accomplice, camouflage, as he all but salivated over the girl, who was little more than a child. It was all too lascivious for my tastes and I casually stood up and accidentally spilled my drink all over his tailored suit, sending him clomping back up the cliff-side stairs muttering to himself incoherently. Joanne laughed, and then apologized for being so cruel. I explained what had happened and that she should be careful around men like that, and then explained how to spot such deviants in the first place.