Re-Animator (15 page)

“Megan, you’d better take a look at this. I think we’ve got a problem.”

When the young woman didn’t answer, Cain looked up.

“Megan?”

There was a scream from the padded room, and, spotting the open door, he ran over. Swinging through, he saw the young woman holding her hands to her cheeks and gazing down at her father. There was a dumb expression on Dean Halsey’s face, and his head had been shaved to the middle. In the middle of his forehead was a large white bandage.

Cain’s spirits plummeted. “Oh, Christ.”

Moving Megan aside, he gently pulled up a corner of the bandage and studied the wound. Dean Halsey neither made a fuss nor acknowledged Cain’s presence in any way.

“Dan, what has Hill done to him?”

Cain didn’t answer. He simply examined the sutured hole and, after a long moment, replaced the bandage.

Rubbing the back of his neck as he rose, Cain said, “It looks like a laser drill.”

“Which means?”

“It means we’re too late,” he said gravely. “I’m afraid your father’s been lobotomized.”

Daniel Cain would remember Megan’s long, terrible scream for the rest of his life. And as he stood there trying desperately to calm the hysterical woman, he vowed one thing above all: somehow he would make Dr. Carl Hill remember it, too.

CHAPTER

10

“R
ufus, bless you—you’re worth more than all the bodies in China.”

West was hunched over the microscope, intently watching cells scraped from Cain’s cat. The cells were alive but oscillating violently.

“Reagent applied to brain tissue of thrice-dead cat,” he said, scribbling frantically in his notebook. “There’s apparently no limit to how often tissue can be reanimated, but the trauma increases geometrically with each application.” He laid his pen aside and scratched his chin. At once frustrating and intriguing was the drumming on the roof from a sudden downpour. He would have to ask Cain if Rufus had been afraid of the rain in life, if the cells themselves were shaking in part from some form of racial memory.

“Regardless”—he continued writing as he spoke—“there must be some kind of analgesic which won’t upset the reagent and can restore stability without suppressing natural functions. Or should I be looking in the other direction, exciting it to a degree where it has the power to control itself?”

“I’d try the latter,” said a sonorous voice from atop the basement steps. West spun and saw a vague figure standing in the dark hallway. “After all, it works on hyperactive children; it should work on a mere cell.”

“Who’s there?” West demanded, twisting the desk lamp toward the door. The cone of light revealed a dark, wet trenchcoat topped by the craggy features of Dr. Carl Hill. His face looked tired, and there was the hint of grayish stubble about his hollow cheeks. But his eyes were elated. West frowned. “What do
you
want?”

“I think you know the answer to that, Mr. West.” West braced himself, said nothing. “I want to know why Halsey’s heart fibrillates—”

“I don’t have to talk to you.”

“Why his pulse is erratic—”

“I told everything I know to the police.”

“Why he cries out in pain—”

West stood, his expression petulant. “You can
leave
now, Doctor!”

Hill came forward, dragging his finger idly down the long table. “I want to know why he does all of this, Mr. West, when we both know that he is quite . . . dead.”

West nervously adjusted his eyeglasses and turned his head away.

Hill bent the light into the room and looked around. “Hmm . . . interesting little laboratory you have here.” His eyes settled on the microscope, and he wiggled a scolding finger. “Ah, Mr. West, I recognize this—no doubt taken without the proper requisitions. But then, a young genius like you has no time for formalities. You had your eye on this microscope, on our chemicals and . . . more perishable supplies when you were back in Zurich. You didn’t come here to study, did you? You came to use the best-equipped labs in the most out-of-the-way school you could find. You came, in short, to be anonymous.”

“Yes, I came to be alone. Take your microscope and get out.”

Hill grinned. “Surely you don’t think I came for that?”

“Then what do you want?”

The surgeon rubbed his hands together. “First, to satisfy my curiosity. Were you sent here, Mr. West?”

“What?”

“Did someone give you a mission to plague me?”

West waved an index finger at the surgeon. “You’re being paranoid, Dr. Hill. Plaguing you was entirely my own idea.”

“In that case, to what end?”

“To protest what you are—a thief.”

Hill seemed saddened. “Then it
is
you, Mr. West. It’s not Willett or the Josephs or blind devotion to Gruber. This foolish hate . . . is yours.”

“Just as my research is mine, which is a boast you cannot make.”

The sadness became tinged with anger. He had to fight to keep it down. “You’re being petty, Mr. West. I’d hoped that if you were carrying someone else’s banner I could reason with you to lay it down, convince you to do your research under my auspices.”

“And have you steal from me as you stole from Professor Gruber? I was not born yesterday, Doctor.”

“Nor were you born wise, it seems. I can offer you my resources and complete privacy. You can accomplish twice as much as you are now.”

“I’m afraid you miss the point.”

“And
I’m
afraid”—Hill’s rage got the best of him—“that you miss
my
point, Mr. West. One way or the other I will have your discovery . . . whatever it is that gives the dead the appearance of life.”

West’s shoulders came back. Despite the accusations and insults, it was this which finally offended him.

“It is not the
appearance
of life, it
is
life. This is not magic!”

“Can you prove that?”

“If you need proof of my reagent’s power, put it on your next hamburger instead of catsup. The results will astonish you.”

Hill’s anger abated, the scientist once more in control. “Mere movement is not life. Halsey would not take food, and he battered himself without pain trying to reach Megan.”

“Which proves my point. He was responding to his daughter. The formula interprets and then recreates, exactly, each cell. What comes back to life is the subject as it was at the moment of death. Miss Halsey was on her father’s mind when he died, so she is on his mind now. Just as, if he were hungry before dying, Halsey would now take nourishment. Or if he’d been carnally aroused, his foremost priority would have been sexual in nature. I grant you, these are imperfect creatures, but they are not mere automatons. They are alive!” He added dryly, “As you say,
I
am a scientist.”

The insult did not go unnoticed. Hill’s mouth grew rigid. “I’ll have you locked up for a madman . . . or a murderer. You will do what I tell you to do!”

“I think not.”

Hill circled around West, his eyes burning, holding those of the young scientist. “To the contrary. Did you know, Mr. West, that before going to Switzerland I spent time in many other countries? And in India I met a man who taught me how to focus the mind to achieve any goal, physical or mental. That was what sent me on my quest for the will and the soul in the cerebral cortex.” West’s eyelids began to droop. “You see, Mr. West, by speeding up respiration and slowing all other movement, I can actually nourish that area in specific to boost my intellectual capacities briefly . . . to solve a problem . . . to operate with greater dexterity at a crucial moment . . . to force you to do what I bid.” Wavering where he stood, West took his notebook from the desk and handed it to Hill. Hill smiled. “You see, Mr. West? You may control the dead, but I can control the living. Soon I shall control both.”

The surgeon broke his stare, and West put his hand to his brow. Hill laid the book beneath the lamp and began to read. As he did so, his mouth widened.

“I see. Good God, I see. It
is
life!”

He turned the pages more rapidly, his finger leading his eyes down the center of each. “Genius, Mr. West! Your extension of that old fool Gruber’s work is really quite . . . brilliant!” He snapped the book shut and picked up a small vial of reagent. After studying it for a moment, he gestured toward the microscope. “Let us see my new serum at work, shall we?”

At once furious and impressed with what Hill had done, West thought feverishly while he did what he was told. He remembered the cat carcass, burying it in the yard that morning. He smiled to himself as he slipped a fresh slide into the microscope and used tweezers to take a new specimen of tissue from a soap dish marked “Arcane,” a disguised form of “Rufus Cain,” used to keep from upsetting his roommate.

“Dead cat tissue,” he announced, urging Hill to the binocular eyepiece as he picked up an eyedropper. “The reagent,” West said, applying the formula and backing slowly away.

Hill’s face exploded with delight. “Magnificent!”

West continued to step away, feeling behind him.

“This is miraculous!”

The youth felt the shovel’s stiff handle and wrapped his fingers around it.

“Yes, Mr. West. Yes! I will be famous!”

West brought the shovel around hard, flush against the side of Hill’s head. There was a loud snap, and Hill fell writhing to the floor.

“Yes,” West agreed, “you will be famous. But not for stealing my reagent!” He straddled Hill’s chest and stared into his pinched face. Lifting the shovel, he brought the blade down on his neck. Hill’s eyes went wide as blood poured freely from both sides of the wound and from his mouth. Mechanically, West raised the spade and brought it down again. This time he reached to the backbone; the third time he severed it completely. The head lolled to the side, stopping when the nose wedged against the floor; blood from the neck continued to wash over it like a fountain.

“There’s one problem laid to rest,” West remarked as he watched Hill’s hands and feet twitch for several seconds after decapitation. When they were still, he stood staring at the head for a long moment. Suddenly, he dashed over and, grabbing a handful of the surgeon’s blood-streaked hair, picked up the head. He plunked it into a dissecting pan, and the head rolled over; he righted it, but once again the head dropped to its side. Finally, West grabbed a memo spike from the desk and, setting it in the center of the tray, impaled the head upright.

“Stay, damn you,” he muttered as he sought the reagent. Filling the hypodermic, he jotted the amount in his notebook. “Parts . . . whole parts. I’ve done the brain, but never whole body parts.”

Injecting the head at the base of the skull, he hurried to the body. Squatting in the thick stream of blood still pumping from the neck, he emptied the remainder of the dose into the heart.

Sitting back on the stool, West tapped the pencil impatiently on Hill’s head while he waited. He checked his watch. Ten seconds, eleven, twelve—

The eyelids fluttered. Scribbling down the time, West looked back at the body. Nothing had happened. He looked back at the head, the glassy eyes now fully open.

“Wessssst!”

The voice was a sibilant, airy whisper, the cheeks filling and blowing puffs of air past the lips. West was astonished. Hill’s urge to speak transcended even the loss of his lungs and voicebox. He’d only been dead a half-minute; time did make all the difference in the world.

“Yes, Doctor, it’s Herbert West. What are you thinking?”

“Wessssst . . .”

“Yes?!”

“Wesssst . . . yoooou . . . basssstaaardd.”

The youth frowned. “Never mind that now! I take back what I said, you
are
a scientist! Now
help
me. What are your sensations, what are you feeling?”

Hill’s nostrils oozed blood into his trembling lips.

“Come . . . cloooooser.”

West readily obliged, and Hill’s glazed eyes rolled slowly to the left.

“Yes . . . what is it? Speak!”

Hill continued to stare as a pair of powerful hands clutched West’s head and drove his forehead hard into the table; with a small moan, the young man fell unconscious.

Something like a laugh slipped from between Hill’s pale lips as the body edged from behind West and gently removed its own head from the spike.

“Feeeels . . . bettttter . . .” Hill cooed, looking up at his own torso. There was a large clot atop the neck and glistening streams of blood down the front and arms of his overcoat. He felt all of the sensations the body experienced, yet he still felt oddly superior to it; proof, he thought, that the soul was indeed located entirely in the brain.

The body carefully cuddled him under its arm, from which vantage point Hill surveyed the room. He instructed his ambulatory half to collect the notebook and vials of reagent in the refrigerator, all of which were crammed hastily into the coat’s deep pockets.

“Go . . .” Hill said, looking toward the door, and the reanimated body obeyed, walking stiffly from the house and staying to the shadows just beyond the streetlamps.

Hill was delighted to find that he could direct the body’s every movement simply by thought, from changes in direction to using a sleeve to blot away the water splashed in its eye by a passing motorist. Though they shared no physical sensations, they shared that bond; and when they turned the corner and the wind knifed off the nearby Concord River, the body went so far as to hold the head close to keep it warm. Hill was touched by the gesture and could not help but wonder: if he decapitated other bodies and destroyed the heads, could he build an army of devoted slaves?

He would try it very soon. First, however, there was other business to which he must attend.

When he was a child, West once balanced volumes A through F of the
World Book
on his forehead. He did it to counteract the stiff neck he suffered from hours bent the other way, peering into his microscope. He awoke now feeling worse than he had then, with enormous pressure on his brow and a deadness in his ears, as if they were stuffed with cotton.

However, nothing compared with the sick horror he felt when he looked up and saw the empty dissecting pan. His glasses slipped off his nose, and he quickly rammed them back on. There was no doubt about it, the head was gone. He spun: so was Hill’s body. He looked to the left: so was the formula. He spun to the right: the refrigerator door was open, and the formula was gone from there as well. He rose on weak knees and staggered back, knocking over the stool.