Reanimators (30 page)

Of the events that followed, of Gilman’s dreams, of his ghostly encounters with Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin, of his involvement in the death of Ladislas Wolejko, and his own tragic death, I have little to add. Some have questioned my whereabouts on certain evenings, and in response to these inquiries I must admit that I was pursuing the course of research that I had begun so many months before in Kingsport. Though my investigation had yielded nothing more than rumor, innuendo and circumstantial evidence, I had, much like Deborah Zellaby, grown to suspect certain things about those early days of Arkham. It was not until that chance encounter in the library that my suspicions began to coalesce and provide a more concrete direction for my delving into history.

It was in April that I borrowed a car and drove madly back to Kingsport. At my request, my brother had dug through the family holdings and there hidden amongst things long forgotten he had found a portrait of the patriarch of the Elwood family, a man who had come to the village in 1691 as a pauper. That I and most of my family bore a resemblance to Thaddeus Elwood was never in doubt. This was not the revelation that my months of research had unveiled. For it was the second painting, the one that made little sense to be amongst our family possessions, that confirmed my worst fears. The painting was more than two hundred and fifty years old, and still bore a note stating that it had been commissioned by Roger Mason to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his business venture.

For in this painting of the Mason family, I could see the fine dark hair and dark violet eyes, the turn of the nose and chin and the high ridged cheeks that were the most notable features of the young Keziah Mason, features that were reflected in the painting of Thaddeus Elwood, who had once been named Thaddeus Burke. Features I knew well, for I could see them in the face of the monstrous thing we had seen in the library as it played at being human, and in the face of Brown Jenkin as it burrowed out of Walter Gilman’s chest and madly chattered at me. Features I madly see in every face around me. For there is I fear no choice but to accept the mathematical certainty that from those dozens of children that Keziah and her sisters brought into the world, those children that fled Arkham like rats in the night, who have had more than two centuries to establish themselves, to marry, and to raise children of their own. Children, with fine black hair and violet eyes, of which, madly I myself may be only one of thousands. “For the Black Goat Mother doth favor her servants with such fruitfulness that would shame even the most fertile of pestilent flies, breeding in the secret wounds of man’s misery and pain, like maggots in a slaughter yard.”

Chapter 25.

MONSTERS OF MISKATONIC

The last few hours of that dark morning still haunt my immediate memory. That it has been just days since my arrest on charges of murder seems incredulous, for the pages piled in front of me would seem to have been begun years ago. That my jailers periodically enter my cell to provide me with blank sheets, food and drink seems overly kind. On occasion there have been notes, signed by Dr. Dexter, asking for details concerning certain aspects of my research and formulae. I think perhaps they are trying to re-create my work. Given what has happened, I should try to stop them, but it all seems so pointless, they will find what they need one way or the other. The things that I have done will slow them down a bit, but it will not stop them from trying. Not even the horrors I left behind in St. Mary’s will defer them.

As I have previously written, the population of Miskatonic University, its students and teachers, had for the most part volunteered to aid in the recovery of Dunwich following the horror that had devastated that area. Only a scant few remained on campus, and those were mostly concentrated at the University teaching hospital. St. Mary’s had been cleared of most patients and only a skeleton crew of medical professionals and a few others remained behind. That night, the night of October thirtieth, only I, my young charge Frank Elwood, and three nurses were on staff, and the early evening had been uneventful, which given the torrential rains that were buffeting the area was somewhat surprising.

After midnight, in the small hours all that changed, and a deputy brought in three victims of a tragic car accident. Their injuries were all severe, and under normal circumstances they would have been fatal, but the Fisher triplets had been patients of mine, and had been subjected to my experiments in immunization against death using a reagent developed in part by Dr. Herbert West, but significantly modified by myself. The exposure of the triplets to the reagent was apparently keeping them from expiring, but there was also something else. All three showed the presence of an unusual cell in their blood, a cell that I had only ever seen in samples from Innsmouth, a cell that appeared to be responsible for generating a natural version of the life-sustaining reagent.

At first I thought that perhaps the Fishers, who had some family history in Innsmouth, had always possessed such a cellular component, but I quickly discounted such a possibility. I would have noticed such a foreign component during my initial examination. The source of the reanimating cell perplexed me, but I had had little time to ponder an alternative explanation. Young Elwood had burst into the room and announced the sudden death of Helena Armitage and then shoved a packet of his own writings into my hands.

The handwritten statement detailed certain facts that had been left out of previous accounts of the death of Elwood’s friend Walter Gilman. Elwood’s tale, which was the product of his own research, seemed to suggest through the linking of a variety of seemingly unrelated events and facts that something untoward had been occurring in Arkham during colonial times. Though to be honest, I found the idea that over the course of many years, a trio of midwives had systematically replaced the newborn infants of Arkham with their own spawn incredulous. It did however provide me with a possible explanation to my own conundrum.

The strange cells that had appeared in the blood of the Fishers may not have been present when I had examined them initially, but rather may have been triggered to develop as a response to my reagent. That the immune system could respond to a variety of foreign bodies was a well-established fact, and it seemed not unreasonable that my treatments may have perhaps activated some pre-existing component; a cell that naturally produced a version of the reanimating agent, but for some reason had been suppressed by millennia of evolution.

It was a radical theory, but one for which some evidence might well exist within the walls of the hospital itself. I drew my own blood, but as I had expected, there was no trace of the strange spindle-shaped cells to be found. Then, covertly, I took the light microscope up to where the body of Helena Armitage still lay. She was, as Elwood had said, dead, but her blood had yet to coagulate and under examination I confirmed what I had expected. The blood of Helena Armitage did indeed contain a number of the strange cells, though they were not in the numbers that had presented in the blood of the Fishers. Immediately my mind began to develop hypotheses concerning family ancestry as well as reagent dosage and periodic re-administration.

I had no opportunity to document my thoughts, for it was then that the screaming began. It was high-pitched and clearly that of the charge nurse who had helped me wheel in the Fishers. I dashed down the stairs and through a pair of double doors to find Nurse Clemens trapped behind the reception desk, desperately trying to fend off the menacing advances of a large man, half dressed and still dripping from the storm. He was grunting at her and flailing his arms wildly, trying to capture her in a kind of pathetic manner that had little chance of working save for if she were to suddenly panic. With each move Nurse Clemens made, her attacker mirrored it, and it was only when I reached down to pick up a chair to use as a weapon and cried out for him to stop, that he turned to acknowledge my presence. I gasped audibly, for I knew this man, had seen his visage more than I had wished to that evening, and he had no right to be stalking through the hospital after an innocent nurse. He had no right to do such a thing, save for the fact that I had allowed it, or at least made it possible. For the man was none other than Edward Fisher brought back from the dead by my own experiments in death and reanimation.

He charged me, and it was as if a great ape was leaping across the room to attack, and I instinctively thought of the thing that Allan Halsey had become so many years previously. I swung the chair and smashed it across his temple as he dove the last few feet toward me. Blood and teeth flew through the air leaving arcs of crimson on the walls and floor. Edward stumbled back to his feet and roared at me, blood and spittle dripping down his chin. His eyes had gone pale, and I knew then that there was no reason left at all in this creature that was once a man. I lifted up the chair and readied myself for the next attack. Edward crouched down and prepared to strike.

Both of us turned as Nurse Clemens began screaming once more. She was backing away, pointing toward the swinging doors that led to the procedure rooms, doors that had suddenly swung open and remained so. Each door presented a kind of doppelganger to the creature I was fighting, and I swear Edward grinned as the two things that bore his face came through the doors. Those doors swung back and forth, casting wild shadows across the room as Edward’s brothers Frederick and Godrick moved to join him. There was a noise from behind me. The doors I had come through had again swung open, and without thinking I swung the chair and smashed the figure that was behind me, sending him to the ground.

The victim of my assault had been the deputy who had brought the Fishers to the hospital, and behind him in the doorway was Frank Elwood. Like myself, they had come to investigate the screaming nurse, and instead fell victim to my panicked attack. The deputy tumbled to the floor, and his gun flew backwards, bouncing off of Elwood’s chest before impacting on the floor and sliding to a stop at my feet. Nurse Clemens stood frozen and I screamed at her to run. She stared dumbly at me and then back at the trio of undead that were whipping their heads back and forth between us. I threw the chair at them to get their attention, and shouted once more for the stunned nurse to run. As the chair was casually tossed aside, the woman found her senses and dashed out of the room, leaving only Elwood and myself to face off against the beasts.

I glanced sideways to speak to the young man, but somehow he was no longer where I thought he should be. Instead he was in front of me with the gun in his hand, pointing it at the Fishers. “Stay where you are,” he announced, “or so help me I’ll shoot.” The three paused at the sound of his voice, but it was only for a moment. The three things seemed intent on stalking forward, slowly, stealthily, but inevitably they moved toward us.

I put a hand on Elwood’s shoulder. “I don’t think they can understand you or the concept of a gun anymore. They’re animals, nothing more.” I cast a glance at the limp body of the deputy. “We need to get out of here.”

Elwood flexed his shoulder and knocked my hand away. He shook his head and in a firm voice he made his intentions clear. “No, Doctor. I’m through running and hiding. I let Walter tell me what to do, and I lost him. I didn’t kill him, but I could have saved him, could have gotten him out of that rat hole. Instead I let him die. If these things get loose they’ll kill people, maybe lots of people. I can’t let that happen.”

I took a step forward. “Frank, I really appreciate that, but I don’t think the gun is going to do much good. They’re already dead, at least as dead as they ever can be.”

There was an odd backward glance and then a sudden light filled his eyes. He sneered evilly and leveled the gun at one of the three monsters. “Now there’s a theory that needs to be tested,” and the sound of three shots filled the hall.

The heads of two of the things that had once been Fishers exploded, coating the third one with bits of brain and shattered skull. Their bodies collapsed to the floor, convulsing violently, but no longer a serious threat. The third one, who I still believed to be Edward, may not have understood the concept of a gun, but he sure enough saw the results. He leapt over the thrashing bodies of his brothers and in an instant was through the door that Nurse Clemens had herself escaped through.

Elwood cursed and dashed off after the escaping thing. I made to follow, but in the flashing light I caught sight of what was hidden in the corner. Clemens had not been Edward’s first victim. An orderly, whose name I knew only as Dennis, lay beaten and covered in blood behind the reception desk. He had, given the gaping wound around his neck, been bitten and his throat had been torn out by the deranged thing that had been Edward Fisher. I made to leave, and join Elwood in his pursuit of the Fisher-thing, but as I reached the door an unexpected thing happened. Dennis, the orderly who was clearly dead, moved. His fingers were vibrating madly in a spastic freakish manner that was so fast they blurred. The seizure traveled to his hands and arms, and then appeared in his legs. He bucked wildly against the floor as the convulsions took hold of his torso. It had been years since I had seen such a violent reaction, but I knew it for what it was. At the moment I had no explanation, only a desire to bring the horror to an end. In a daze I ran back into the procedure room and obtained the largest bone saw I could find. It gleamed silver in the light as I marched determinedly back to the hall. As I came around the reception desk, Dennis’ reanimated body sprang up and reached for me. I slashed purposefully and in one motion took the saw through the thing’s neck. The head fell, bounced against the top of the desk and then fell to the floor, coming to rest next to the body it had once crowned.

Reinvigorated, I careened through the doors and after Elwood and his monstrous quarry. A trail of blood and other fluids led up the main stairwell of the hospital. Based on the footprints that Elwood left behind smeared into the vile trail, he seemed to be not far behind the creature, but I had heard no further gunshots since the first two. I took the stairs by twos and threes, following the spatter past the second, then the third and up onto the fourth floor. There the tile and walls were smeared crimson as if the thing had stumbled or slid. I was grateful that this particular floor had been cleared of patients, but cursed the darkness that came with the lights being turned out.

I took a few cautious steps down the shrouded hall, but before I had gone ten paces it became apparent that the corridor was simply too dark for me to proceed safely. Blindly, I backed up and purposely pinned myself against the wall. “Elwood,” I whispered in desperation.

There was a sound like cloth tearing, and a sweet cloying smell like roses. Something moved behind me. I readied the bone saw, intent on lashing out blindly if I had to. A hand grabbed my wrist and pinned it against the wall. Another came out and covered my mouth just as I began to scream. “Shhhh,” whispered Elwood. “I think we have it trapped on this floor. All the windows are barred and the door at the other end is chained shut. Maybe we should hold him here and wait for help to arrive.”

I lowered his hand away from my mouth. “That might not be a good idea. I don’t know how but I think that this condition is infectious. The more people that we involve, the more likely that it will spread.”

Somewhere down the darkened hallway Edward Fisher smashed against the door and howled in pain and anger. Elwood dragged me slowly back toward the light. “I have an idea, but you have to trust me.”

With little choice in the matter I took the gun he was placing in my hand and followed him slowly back to the stairwell. “You do know how to use that?”

I nodded; my time in the war had served me well, and I knew how to handle a variety of firearms. “Take the gun and head down to the lobby. I’m going to try and lure him out to a spot where you can get a clear shot. You might only get one chance, so make sure you make it count.”

He barreled down the hallway screaming, while I went down the stairs leaping from landing to landing as fast as I could. I could hear both Edward and Elwood as they finally met and then careened down the hall, one in pursuit of the other. I stumbled down the last few stairs and slid into position.

I watched as three stories above me Elwood suddenly appeared on the landing. He cast a quick glance in my direction, and then let loose with a tremendous and frightening shriek. There echoed back a bone-chilling snarl and the sound of something large pounding down the hallway at breakneck speed. The building shook and once more there was that sound of tearing fabric. I yelled at Elwood to move but he was already gone, and in his place was suddenly the form of Edward Fisher. He seemed to float there for a second, and in that moment he seemed oddly graceful, almost serene, like a leaf drifting in the wind. Then that moment was gone and the creature was flailing, falling, crashing through the stairwell, bouncing off of hand rails and posts as the force of gravity accelerated him down and into the floor in front of me.