The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum (The Magnetron Chronicles) (3 page)

“
Several hours later, Mrs. Mackenzie woke to hear a cacophony of drums and boisterous singing emanating from my Masterstroke Mill.”

I stood at the entrance, peering through the crystal windows and gauzy curtains, and was startled by a
rich, resonant voice responding from the outside. “Phinny!  It is I, Petión! Let me in, you crazy boy, before I am frozen stiff!”

A wave of good spirits flowed over me then, and I was again
innervated with fresh confidence. It was Amaud Petión, my oldest and dearest friend. I swung open the door and we exchanged ebullient pleasantries as all my dubieties of moments before wafted away on the warm breeze of Petión’s good company.

When I had returned to my home after the War Between the States had drawn to a close, my mind was blank of everything that had gone before my injury.
There were few individuals who had made an impression deep enough on my psyche that I could recall anything of them, and fewer still I remembered in any detail. One of these was my mother, who had raised me with her memorably fiery spirit. The other was Petión, a Haitian household servant who had lavished me with his peculiar brand of fatherliness after my own father was flogged to death by a mob of angry investors.

Petión seemed frail
now, but in good health, and his tolerance for liquor remained as outsized relative to his diminutive frame as was his great booming voice.  It was late, but we had much catching up to do and a well-stocked liquor cabinet to drain. We were both quite intoxicated, I on bourbon whiskey, and Petión on his rum, when I broached the ticklish subject which had prompted my invitation in the first place. I blurted my entire plan in abstraction, offering some detail as to his role in the undertaking.

“
I b’lieve you have taken leave of your senses, young man,” he replied with a sober expression on his face. “This is not a plan, but a badly crafted horror tale. I know enough only to tell you it cannot work!”

“
But are you not skilled in the
vodoun
arts?” I pressed.

“
Yes, I am a
houngan
, it is true, but I am no
bokor
, and I have never performed a reanimation ceremony. Besides, even a
zombi
needs a body, my boy. A
zombi
is a mindless thing, undead, without volition, you see? Now tell me, Phinny: Of what use is a mindless
head
?”

I continued my argument until within hours of daybreak, beseeching, imploring, pleading.
Petión was steadfast in his refusal, but I began to repeat a plaintive refrain until he could no longer resist. “Please, Petión! Will you not even make the attempt?”

Several hours later, Mrs.
Mackenzie woke to hear a cacophony of drums and boisterous singing emanating from my Masterstroke Mill. Undoubtedly, she was red-faced with anger as she flew down hallways under a full head of Scotch-Irish steam. However, when she entered the laboratory the color drained from her countenance, which thereupon took on an ashen quality. Before she could complete a proper genuflection, the poor woman was again rendered unconscious by what she saw.

“
Oh dear,” said Dr. Hogalum’s head. “She appears to have fainted!”

“
I made the observation that his head was his most significant appendage, whereupon he replied dejectedly that he had become rather fond of all of his appendages.”

Later that morning, I reluctantly bade Petión good-bye.
I begged him to stay, but he would not be deterred. He was returning home—not to his hometown in Kenner, Louisiana, but to his birthplace in Haiti. “It is a sad place these days,” he said wistfully, “but it is my home.” It was a heart-rending departure, all the sadder as we had spent not nearly enough time getting reacquainted.

He confessed to me his utter amazement that the reanimation ceremony had been successful and offered a most extraordinary theory.
I questioned him exhaustively on the point, but the obscure conduit by which he had gained this unusual knowledge was sufficiently nebulous that he was unable to provide more specificity beyond his supernatural cognizance that Dr. Hogalum had not died of natural causes, as had been reported. In fact, Petión felt that Dr. Hogalum’s
lwa
, or spirit, had been infused with an exceptional resilience due to a profound displeasure at its corporeal vessel having been murdered!

As Petión
’s wagon made its way down Mugglesworth Hill into town, a brisk wind came up from the east, filling the air with autumn leaves and dust. “Good-bye, old friend!” I called out with as much warmth as I could muster, but my mind was then a frigid whirlwind of horror and bewilderment.

When I returned to my Masterstroke Mill, Dr. Hogalum
’s head—now ensconced upon a platform which I had constructed for this purpose—was convulsed with fury. Several of Pung’s cats had sneaked into the laboratory by their maddeningly undiscoverable route and had made great sport of the doctor’s ears, nose, and facial hair. He was undamaged, but demanded to know what had become of his body, and expressed a strong desire for clothing, though he was unable to account for the logic of this request.

I shooed away the cats and retrieved a top hat from my dressing room, placing it at a rakish angle on the doctor
’s crown. I deliberated aloud as to the efficacy of a bow tie, but Dr. Hogalum cut me short with a volley of thorny questions.

“
What has happened to me, Magnetron? Where is my body?”

I gingerly addressed his recent expiration, and explained that his body had suffered a corresponding fate, buried headless as it was.
I commented in abstract on his subsequent reanimation and the stimulating venture I had planned for his revivified head. I made every attempt to mollify him to the extent I might broach the topic of his murder without appearing insensitive to his current predicament, but he continued to pepper me with questions.

“
I do not wish to appear ungrateful after having been raised from the dead,” he said in a beleaguered tone, “but I must ask why you did not see fit to include my body in this enterprise!” I made the observation that his head was his most significant appendage, whereupon he replied dejectedly that he had become rather fond of all of his appendages.

I did not wish to explain that an arithmetic
al miscalculation on my part regarding the mass of his body
vis-à-vis
certain physical laws had necessitated the admittedly gruesome measure, and I anticipated he would not be satisfied with my explanation anyway.  Therefore, I side-stepped the matter by responding simply that it was an unavoidable bit of hard cheese which was also quite irreversible.  He fell silent long enough for me to interject, “Petión has said you were murdered. Is this true?”

“
Murdered?” Hogalum was aghast at the mere suggestion, despite the fact that he was already dead. “Certainly not, Magnetron! I killed myself.”

“
I want you to explain in detail how it has come to pass that my severed head is now displayed in your laboratory, and I want you to do so now!”

Suicide?
The concept was too alien, and insufficiently buffered to gain entrance to my consciousness. I stammered like a dithering cretin for several interminable seconds until I was able to stammer a superfluous response: “K-k-k-illed yourself?”

“
Yes, yes, killed myself. It was an accident, of course.” Dr. Hogalum offered a brief and dispassionate account of his death occurring after ingesting a powerful medication of his own formulation. I absorbed little of the detail, so relieved was I to hear he had not purposely taken his own life.

But what of Petión
’s contention, that his spirit was profuse with the fervor of retribution?

“
Twaddle!” was Dr. Hogalum’s reply. “I had formulated a remedy potent enough to rid me of a pernicious case of cancer, but also so concentrated as to teeter on the brink of toxicity. Sadly, I miscalculated the dosage. So you see, your Petión fellow is mistaken, Magnetron, as are you if you think you can sidestep my line of questioning by initiating your own. I want you to explain in detail how it has come to pass that my severed head is now displayed in your laboratory, and I want you to do so now—without delay!”

I was quite unable to resist asking about his cancer
—an explosive and hitherto undisclosed confidence—but Dr. Hogalum once again arrogated control of the exchange, forcing me to apologize again for my circumlocution.

I attempted with some difficulty to untangle the intricate sequence of events.
“As my plan advanced,” I said at some point during my explanation, “I often felt as if I were in a complex labyrinth weighing innumerable options, each presenting itself unbidden. As one course of action proved untenable, another potentiality arose to take its place, and at length, I arrived at an end I had scarcely foreseen at the outset.  And yet, looking backward, I can see but one path back to my starting point.”

“
As is often the case,” concurred Dr. Hogalum, attempting rather ineffectively to nod his head. “Now, please confine yourself to the pith of this particular path. Precisely what have you planned for me that requires only my head?”

Dr. Hogalum ground his molars audibly as I described the brain
’s ability to direct the body with small electrical discharges which obliged muscles to contract. At length, I declared with some immodesty that I believed a human brain—with the appropriate bridging apparatus—could attain the capacity to control machinery directly, without any manual interaction.

“
Fascinating, Magnetron,” Dr. Hogalum mocked. “But what in blazes does this have to do with me?”

I strode toward my creation, which was concealed beneath an unremarkable sailcloth tarpaulin. 
“Behold!” I said, suddenly aware that I had spent a lifetime wanting for the opportunity to issue that very command. “I give you…” I intoned majestically, assuming a magnificent pose suitable to revealing my foremost invention.   I gave the release cord an efficient yank—thereby sundering an elaborate pulley system formerly affixed to a beam in the laboratory ceiling.

“
Behold!” said I again, tugging at the irksome tarpaulin fabric. “I give you…”  Struggling mightily, I finally managed to unveil my creation—a streamlined craft unlike any previously seen upon this Earth. “I give you… The
Caelestis
!”

“
When Dr. Hogalum had asked my name, the only word I could speak was ‘magnetron,’ a word I had heard in my afflicted dreams…”

Dr. Hogalum was uncharacteristically speechless, his jaw repeatedly dropping open and snapping shut.
For the first time I could remember, I had impressed him. “Magnificent, isn’t she?” I said, beaming with pride. He agreed emphatically and asked if the
Caelestis
was the product of my unusual gift. I shook my head, reminding the doctor that I considered it a curse, not a gift.

Let me explain:
In the course of one of the final battles of Chancellorsville, I received a bullet wound that pierced my brain and rendered me comatose for weeks. I should certainly have died from my injury, as I was left behind when General Hooker was forced to retreat under the acute duress of General Lee’s assault. As my comrades were repulsed to stronger defensive positions, I exhausted my last moments of consciousness dragging myself toward a nearby woody thicket.

I awoke weeks later in a clean bed under the care of Dr.
Hogalum, who had found me whilst searching for an errant golf ball and transported me to his home in a secluded area southeast of Charlottesville. I had a profound case of amnesia, and was also unable to speak intelligibly. When Dr. Hogalum asked my name, the only word I could speak was “magnetron,” a word I had heard in my afflicted dreams, a word whose precise meaning remains a mystery to me. It was many months later until I was reunited with my mother and came to know my true surname, Mugglesworth.

As alluded to earlier,
I arise nearly every morning intoxicated by visions of astonishing inventions from the future: telescope boxes that permit a viewer to observe events from every corner of the world; self-propelled carriages that permit the driver to go anywhere on land at speeds exceeding that of the fastest locomotive; tiny devices that permit the user to listen to perfectly faithful recordings of symphonies at the mere touch of a button.

For many years I have kept a tablet of writing paper at my bedside, so that I might record the workings of these inventions, but within a few moments I find myself gazing uncomprehending at meaningless scribbles.
I have been inspired by many of my sketches, and I have managed to support my household and unusual pursuits from the sale of my Vegetable-Musket, a device which eases the burden of many thousands of women by facilitating the slicing and dicing of fresh produce. On balance, though, my “gift” has been a source of profound frustration more so than inspiration.

Dr. Hogalum could remain silent only so long, and he soon began a series of probing questions appertaining to the
Caelestis
, which dazzled before us. I explained that I had developed an entirely new science which would permit him to pilot the craft with his mind. Merely by thinking a thing, it would be made to happen, whether it be altering speed or course or any such navigational task.

He was understandably thunderstruck, but regained his self-possession through the application of his remarkable intellect and acerbic tongue.
Indeed, these were the sole tools at his disposal, as even when I complied with his repeated demands for a pen, he could but stare down at it and curse in a most bombastic fashion.

We were engrossed in a difficult experiment with the Cerebral Harness when Mrs.
Mackenzie rapped on the laboratory door. I replaced Dr. Hogalum’s top hat and opened the door but she refused to enter, retreating a full ten feet from the doorway, so fearful was she of Dr. Hogalum’s partial presence. She remained at this distance and timidly announced a visitor: Constable Hawkshaw had come round to question me about a criminal act recently perpetrated—
in Virginia
!