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First of the Immortals - 4. A Man Condemned
Characters: Narrator, West
Word count: ~6800
Warnings: Medical horror, violence, all that good stuff.
Notes: It's over! And I'm ... actually pretty pleased with it! (I kind of want to do a big rambly postmortem on this my longest and most involved fanfiction to date, but that would probably be a bit too self-indulgent and not very interesting. But oh my god, the death puns I could make. The death puns I have, in fact, already made.)
Really did not anticipate last year that I'd ever write Lovecraft fanfiction. Really did not anticipate that I would do it twice.
I do not know what I expected to find in West's secret laboratory. But at the same time, I wonder that I can have been so surprised to encounter what I did. I had a certain and terrible knowledge of the man's capabilities, and suspicions of things even worse. How could I still have the capacity to be appalled at anything I might find?
And yet I hesitated before the door, and even when I had opened it I nearly closed it again and walked away at the first murmurings of sound from within. I feared this last secret might shatter my mind, in the same manner my body and spirit had been broken - and perhaps more than that, I feared that West would then reconstruct me afterward, with only fleeting nightmarish memories of what I had perceived.
I had known, certainly, that there would be humans in this lab. I had not known in what state I would find them, whether alive or dead - or otherwise. I do not say whether the tortured babel rolling forth from within West's most private laboratory confirmed the worst of my fears only because I cannot say with confidence which of my fears were the worst. There were men in there, or what remained of men, with enough sense to breathe and to attempt to speak. I believed the speech they attempted was English, but they succeeded only in a bastardized word here or there, two or three voices tripping incoherently over each other. In my horror I fell to intense deliberation, wondering if I should turn back. I believe the best part of a minute elapsed before I made my decision. I cannot help now but stop to consider how different my present circumstances would be if I had chosen differently.
The first room I entered was at first glance nondescript, to anyone as accustomed to West's habits as was I. There was no sign of the sources of the awful moaning; they must lie behind the second door at the end of the room.
For some time I only stood in the threshold, observing and bracing myself to breach the next chamber. Then I stopped and caught my breath. This room was not typical of the recent West, after all, but of an earlier incarnation. Herbert West in this day and age was not so scrupulously tidy; from his original precise and almost geometric organization of every cabinet and work bench he had devolved into something more idiosyncratic, and at the time of my death I would have characterized his preferred working environment as cluttered, verging at times upon unsanitary. He had returned somewhat to old habits since my death and return - for reasons I had not examined, only looking on the change with approval and relief - but this room in all its whitewashed sterility spoke of a more complete return to form, and for some reason the thought chilled me.
A simple laboratory notebook lay on a table on the far wall. I had tucked into my pocket a copy of each of West's ciphers I had managed to crack - but upon opening the book I found this one was in plain English. I supposed West must have been confident none could ever breach this sanctum - or perhaps he had intended one day to share these findings with me.
I discarded that thought immediately as inconceivable. More likely he only made his notes under such great pressure of time that he had no opportunity to cipher them. Observations of living creatures were often so.
At the phrase - living creatures - I became aware once again of the murmur beyond the door, and a shudder of revulsion passed over my scalp. I endeavored to ignore the sound as I began to read West's notes. For all I knew, he might soon come to discover me, so I began from the most recent page, hoping the newest information might be the most pertinent to what took place here.
3d trial no evident deterioration; performance of cognitive tests comparable to baseline. Agitation however noted in all subjects. Some vocal stereotypy; subj. 202 repeats "Please, I have a wife and child," verbatim, several times an hour from the moment I enter until lights out; uncertain what effect subj. expects this to have; continue to monitor. Behavior repeated sans evident objective suggests unsound mind. Postpone 4th trial.
A line was skipped, I assumed to indicate the passage of a day, then West continued:
Terminated 202. Personally irritating. Sowing disquiet among other subjects. 4th trial suspended indefinitely. Need new volunteers to confirm findings. Recalculate for larger sample size. Require another 4 vol. reagent.
After another blank line, the account went on:
Terminated 201 and 203 for excess lacrimation.
This, then, was what the heightened manufacture of reagent had been for - a battery of further human test subjects secreted away on the property. And in this vague allusion to third and fourth trials I thought I saw the shadow of what West had done to me. Did he take all of them out to the river to drown them, I wondered, or had he resorted to a neater method of murder? Something that would not require exposing them to the light of day, and potentially to my inquiring eyes, would no doubt have suited him better.
I could easily have spent the remainder of the day poring over that appalling book. I could no doubt have pried the answers I sought from West's sparse prose, given time. But of time I knew not how much I had. I realized as well that the longer I lingered here, the less likely I should ever muster the nerve to investigate the voices I heard beyond the door, which despite my fear I knew to be a moral imperative. There were people locked away in this dungeon of science; people who had suffered and died horribly for West's cause, and found that even death permitted no release. I should learn as much as I could of West's experiments and then, if it were in my power, I should free these wretched souls.
And West himself - I supposed I would deal with him after. I closed the book and put it back exactly where I had found it, so that my subterfuge need not be exposed immediately, and braced myself to open the door.
This was another white and Spartan room, the far wall lined with empty tables. It was not as clean as the entryway; there were faint spatters of old blood on the wall in places, corresponding to where the heads of the tables had touched them. I thought of Subjects 201 through 203 and shuddered. When a body was intended for reanimation, one must take pains to keep it intact - but if it were to be terminated, there was no need of preserving the brains, and I had no doubt West's trusted revolver had come into play. A merciful end for the sufferer, surely, but a cataclysm for his nearest neighbors. Seeing now how closely together the tables were arranged, I could not wonder that those flanking the first victim had gone mad.
If indeed they had. "Excess lacrimation" was hardly conclusive proof in the circumstances. West had, as ever, no conception of appropriate human behavior. I rather thought, for his crimes against me and these poor strangers, that I should kill him.
I had made this resolution even before I permitted myself to look at the greatest horror this room contained. I have said that the tables were bare. Three of them were not.
One of the men had gone watchful and silent upon my entry; one muttered curses and other fragments of the most incoherent and debased strain of English; the last thrashed against his restraints and attempted to negotiate, in full voice, for his release. All were strapped down securely; all had had their shirts cut open; and from the left side of each chest emerged the bloody stem of a catheter. West had no doubt placed these for expediency's sake, so the reagent or any other drug could be injected directly into the heart. He must know, surely, the dangers of such a procedure - but I supposed in the face of a drug that could reverse death they must seem trifling. The site of insertion was, in one subject, severely bruised and showing the yellowish ooze of infection. This would be resolved when he died and the reagent restored him to life. It would not matter in the long term. The man would be in agony.
My initial revulsion was so great that it was some time longer before I realized a further point of commonality between all these unfortunates. With shaking hands I went to each in turn and granted a peaceful death, pumping into their hearts a dose of barbital from which they would not wake. I could not let them return to society with what they knew, but I could not let them suffer, and by the time West arrived with his reagent they would be too far gone to return to life.
But even when this merciful work was done, the sound of human voices had not ceased. I saw another door.
There were more men in the second room, in no better condition than the first, but one crucial difference made them even more horrifying to me. Nauseated with revulsion and pity, I did not tarry here any longer than need be, nor did I make eye contact or speak to the creatures on the tables. I killed them, quietly, and hurried out. My fingers were weak and fumbling as I struggled to secure each door behind me on my way out; by the time I emerged onto the grass of the lawn the weakness of terror had spread to my legs and I could hardly manage to stand. I stumbled a few paces to the nearest tree and there stopped, bracing myself against its trunk until perhaps I should find the strength to go on.
But go on to what? Could I flee? If I confronted West, could I truly overpower him? I doubted both propositions; though I was the larger and the stronger of us, I was much discomposed by what I had seen, and my friend - my tormentor - the lunatic to whom I had shackled my adult years - had never suffered the burden of scruples, and carried a gun besides. Undecided, I only stood in the shade and shivered, while my mind's eye presented me in perfect detail all that I had recently seen.
The men in the first room had all been small; I estimated none of the three stood above five feet, seven inches, and would readily assume the same of the dead men. That they were all thin I might have attributed to West's probable failure to feed them (what need, when a death by starvation was reversible?), but they had shared as well a slightness of skeleton that suggested slenderness even in health. I supposed, if one needed to kidnap anyone, those with smaller frames must be easier to transport and conceal, and I could not imagine West personally wrangling a larger specimen. I had found it chilling that they were all blond and blue-eyed, and all possessed a delicacy of feature bordering on the fey, but with a sample of only three this could still be a coincidence. Perhaps the dead men had possessed a different physiognomy. I could not prove otherwise.
But the second room abolished all my doubt, and all my hope with it. I had opened the second door to behold ten men bound and bruised, hideous glass stalks protruding from their chests, and at the sight of me their anguished vocalizations redoubled in fervor. As the first battery of subjects had borne a strange resemblance to West, every one of these wretches looked like me.
I returned in haste to my storage closet bedroom, cleaned my hands, and took up the adventure novel I had used as a shield for all these past weeks. I thought again that I should have changed it out for another by now, but this was no time to find a replacement. I only lay down on the bare mattress, held the book's pages open before my face, and wondered how I could best overpower West. The gun, I thought, presented the greatest obstacle. If only I could somehow separate him from it, I should have him at my mercy.
I did not know what I would do then - only that mercy as such was unlikely to factor in.
He returned within half an hour, and I could not doubt that he had seen his subjects first. He showed no suspicion toward me, but he was more than commonly pale and much disheveled, as any man might be who had just made a futile attempt to dispose of far too many bodies. There was blood on his hands, and in his hair where he had pushed his fingers through it. The state of his coat was yet more lamentable.
"Was your errand a success?" I asked him, and in part the question was guided by genuine curiosity. Indeed I did not know what hideous business had driven him from the house that day.
For a moment he looked as though he did not understand me. "My… errand. Yes. It was - most informative, if nothing else. Get a shovel and meet me outside; we have work to do."
He would, I supposed, want to hide the bodies, and few better methods suggested themselves than hiding these anonymous remains among the dead throngs of the potter's field. But remembering what had happened the last time, I did not want to go back there. Even if he did not yet suspect what I'd done, it was no stretch of the imagination to think he would kill me again and put me under the earth with his other victims.
Perhaps he wouldn't even kill me before he buried me. Perhaps he would want to know to what extent the slow crush of live burial could be reversed by his goddamned reagent. Perhaps -
"Well, hurry up," he said.
I looked at him over the top of the book, thinking. As noted, I was stronger than him. Moreover, he was disinclined to shoot me, preferring to conduct his homicides by less invasive methods where possible. If he were to learn of my actions in the laboratory, he would likely lose that reservation. Therefore, if I wished to defeat him, I was best assured of success if I attacked here and now.
But these sensible conclusions found a counterpoint in some more bestial part of my nature: I wanted him to know I had done it. I wanted him, before he died, to suffer.
West stared at me and fidgeted irritably while I entertained these conflicting impulses. At last I elected to bide my time, obtained the requested shovel, and followed him out.
As we walked toward the nightmarish dungeon of science I had so recently left, he said, "There is something you need to see."
I had entertained the notion of clubbing him with the shovel, but now I relaxed my grip; I wondered what he made of my handiwork or how he might choose to explain it. I realized I did not know what purpose underlay the experiment I'd sabotaged - and while that knowledge would never expiate West, nor render his means any less monstrous, I could have my answers now or not at all.
Thus I did not bash his brains out on the spot. I only asked "What is it?"
"The ideal drug," said West, "must have two properties. First, efficacy: it must accomplish its intended purpose. The reagent, as you yourself can attest, does this."
"And the other property?"
"Unintended effects must be minimal; if they cannot be eliminated altogether, they should be easy to monitor and control. That is to say that - insofar as is practical - this ideal drug must be safe." We had arrived at the cellar door. "This becomes more relevant if the substance is administered chronically. The risks are additive over time." He stared up at me intently. "At the time of your death, I was reasonably certain I could reanimate you without causing other untoward changes. But it occurred to me that you would inevitably die again, necessitating a second use of the reagent… a third…" He made gestures of infinite contempt for the very idea of dying; a bored condemnation of the frailty of flesh. "And so on."
I began to glimpse the outline of his mad plan. I nearly asked him if this was why he had killed me, but decided not to tip my hand. This speech of his besides held me in a sort of horrified fascination.
"You recall, I am sure, a certain unpleasant business wherein a dead madman expressed an interest in devouring us," said West.
"I don't know for certain. To which dead madman are you referring?"
"You aren't funny," he snapped. Then he looked down, frowning. After a moment's thought, he said, "The third one."
Guilelessly as I could manage, I asked, "Do you mean Halsey?"
"You know who I mean!" His voice was, momentarily, so pressurized and shrill that it might have etched glass. He paused and re-settled his glasses. "At any rate," he went on more calmly, "where a single injection of the reagent does not produce that result, I couldn't discount the possibility that such a syndrome would manifest after multiple doses. Hence I've been conducting the little confirmatory test I am about to show you. Leave the shovel here."
A "little confirmatory test," I thought, should not have such a stupendous death toll.
I deposited the shovel on the grass. West had me lever open the cellar door, led me down the stairs and unlocked the first test chamber. Two of the bodies were as I had left them. It appeared that a panicked West had tried to move the third; it lay on the floor at an odd angle, with a startling amount of postmortem injury to the face.
"I found a number of healthy subjects," said West, "and, with an eye to potential effects on personality or cognition, I've -"
"Killed them and brought them back."
"Precisely. Results were… inconclusive tending to positive for the first two rounds. There were alterations, but none of a violent nature. But the third…" He waved a despairing hand at the wreckage of human life. "Today - four days after the third injection - I returned to find them all dead."
He turned to me. "This has disturbing implications for your condition. Naturally I intend to make adjustments to the reagent and run the experiment again, but as matters stand, if you were to suffer another collapse like the first, I could make no guarantees." He shook his head. "I didn't intend to tell you about this until I had favorable results. But now - well, we have several bodies to dispose, and then there's the matter of finding replacement subjects. I will…" He swallowed, and his eyes darted away briefly before re-centering on me. "I need your help."
I stared down at him - a murderer, a monster, and fully prepared to do it all again - and for all that such a contemptible creature, so weak, so small.
I told him, "Then you shouldn't have killed me."
"What?"
"There's no need for the pretense, West. I remember all of it. I always have."
His eyes widened. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"The stream," I said. "You drowned me there."
"Don't be absurd," he said, but took a step back all the same. His brow furrowed. "The only thing that happened at the stream was you making an ass of yourself. I'll admit I had, and have, very little sympathy for such scenes, but to say I would kill you for it is hyperbolic."
I took a step closer. "You beat me to death with a shovel. Is it the same one I left upstairs? Did you find that amusing, thinking I wouldn't remember?"
He shook his head. His spectacles slid down his nose. "You're talking complete nonsense -"
I continued my advance until, having hit the wall, he could retreat no further. "Strangled me," I said, "poisoned me, stabbed me, drained all my blood -"
"Listen to me -"
I slammed my fist into the wall beside his head; he winced and fell silent, trembling slightly. "West," I said quietly, "when I died for the first time, can you swear to me that you didn't know why? Or was it your doing even then?"
"Of course I didn't know! I still don't! You're insane to even suggest -" He stopped, his eyes going unfocused. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. "My god. Have I been wrong all this time?"
"In murdering your only friend? Yes, I daresay you have."
"I've never killed you." His unsteady gaze wandered slowly back up to my face. "That would be self-defeating. But I think it's too late." He shook himself. "Tell me. What proof do you have of my guilt?"
"I remember it. What proof do you have that you're innocent?"
"Look at yourself. No lasting injuries -"
"The reanimation process would reverse some damage -"
"Some, not all. There would still be some sign -"
"You were too careful to leave a mark I could see. You got rid of all the mirrors!"
"I got rid of the mirrors," West said flatly, "because, in case you went the way of previous subjects, I didn't want you armed."
"With a mirror?"
"Mirrors are easily shattered, and then you could conceal a piece somewhere on your person and wait for your opportunity. I am not an idiot."
"Neither am I. You admit to all these other murders" - I looked back at the three men behind us. I had killed them most recently, but he had done it first - "and you think I'll believe you hesitated over mine?"
He adjusted his glasses indignantly. "It was not murder, it was research, and rather costly and strenuous research I undertook for your sake. If this is the gratitude I can expect for my pains, don't think I'll -"
"If it was for my sake, then why did the first six subjects all look like you?"
He opened his mouth as if to retort, but then froze. After a few seconds he said, "There are only three in this room." I did not answer. "You've been here before." I held my silence, watching the realization break over him. "You - you wouldn't have - of course you wouldn't be stupid enough to sabotage your own interests." But I continued to stare at him, and he at me, and I could see the precise moment that certainty left him. "Would you?"
"I freed them," I told him calmly, "from the same unending torment you inflicted on me."
"No," he whispered.
I leaned in close over him. In the end he was a frail and frightened thing, and I could not understand now how I had allowed him so much power. "And now I'm going to free myself."
He reached for his gun, but I had expected that, and reacted no less quickly. I forced his hand back down before he could bring it up to fire. He braced his back against the wall and kicked at the inside of my knee. My leg crumpled beneath me, pitching me forward - I had intended to drive an elbow into his throat, but unbalanced as I was, I only hit the wall. Pain shot up my arm, but I could spare no attention for that now, as with my other hand I was still struggling with West for control of the gun.
It went off, with a sound nearly thunderous in that confined space. The recoil broke West's tenuous grip. I jerked the weapon away from him, and only once this was done did I become aware of the hot stinging line down my side, traced by the bullet that must have grazed me.
West collapsed to the floor. Despite the pain I made myself straighten, deliberately broke the revolver open and shook out the remaining bullets. These I put into my pocket. I did not know yet what I meant to do with him, but so clean a death - so much quicker than any of those he had granted me - did not feel appropriate. For the time being I only stood over him and looked down, feeling a cold pride at the terror so plain on his face.
"You say you remember me killing you," he said. His voice was high and strained, the words coming almost too quickly for comprehension. "But think. What reason would I have to do that? To jeopardize everything I've tried to achieve?"
At length I said, "Precisely what was it you were trying to achieve?"
For a moment his fear was punctured by indignation. He ceased cowering, glared up at me, and snapped, "We were going to live forever, you imbecile! And you've ruined it! How can you possibly be so stupid? We'd have had all eternity to do as we pleased. We could have known everything, lived like the ancient philosopher-kings - don't you understand? The instant either of us died, the other could bring him back, forever. We'd never have to -"
"I see," I said. "Tell me something, West. Have we ever been friends? Or is it only that your grand vision called for someone else to hold the syringe?"
He began shaking again; the fervor left him. He lowered his gaze. "I didn't kill you. That should be answer enough." He smiled strangely. "It would have been fascinating, too. That was a real sacrifice."
"But you did kill me."
"I have a theory," said West, after a long silence. He still would not look up, instead staring fixedly at my shoes. "It is not one that I like. But perhaps… the reagent's actions on the brain… were not eliminated. Maybe I only managed to make them more insidious."
"What?"
"I submit that you have been hallucinating," he said. "All this trouble I went to to ensure your safety - all for nothing. All too late." He shook his head and issued a tense, mirthless laugh. "It was over from the moment you woke. From the first and only injection I gave you, the reagent has already sent you mad."
I did not believe him. Even if my body bore no such testament, I remembered each wound he had given me. I remembered the demoniac light in his eyes. I could not have imagined such horrors. I did not feel that I was mad.
"If you will allow me to leave this laboratory alive," said West, "I swear to you we need never cross paths again. I won't look for you. Make what you can of your new life. I will" - he swallowed hard, and then a second time - "I will start from scratch, somewhere far away from here."
"'From scratch,'" I repeated.
"Yes. I think I can learn to make do without an assistant. I'll need to reformulate - and much larger sample sizes, yes, not to mention a more robust -"
I looked over my shoulder at the corpses behind me, and at the door behind which lay so many more. "You would do this again," I said.
"Not precisely this experiment, no. This was - your death presented an extenuating circumstance. I can probably afford to be more discreet, without…"
"You would take strangers from their homes -"
"In point of fact, they came here themselves." That familiar air of self-satisfaction briefly shone through. "I placed a classified advertisement, and -"
"And that was why you wouldn't let me see the newspapers?"
"As I said, I intended to tell you myself once there was a favorable result."
A favorable result, I thought, of killing me and all these men? No. Herbert West must not go free, and he must not repeat these little trials of his here or anywhere else. And he must pay.
In a flash of inspiration I realized how this could best be accomplished. Without taking my eyes off him, I edged sideways until I reached the table where West had kept his implements and prepared doses of the reagent for his subjects. I sorted through the small collection of bottles on it until I found one with a likely-looking label, and after a moment retrieved from beneath the table the syringe I had used to carry out my act of mercy. West watched me do this; no part of him moved save his eyes.
I pressed these articles upon him. "Sedate yourself."
He nearly dropped them, so great was the shaking in his hands. "What?"
I drew out his gun and the ammunition and loaded precisely one bullet into place. "If your wish to leave this place alive is in earnest, kindly inject yourself. I believe you know how. Two hours of immobility should be enough."
"I don't -"
I pulled back the hammer and took deliberate aim between his eyes. He rolled up his sleeve, withdrew a volume from the bottle, and injected it into his arm without further ado. I did not take the gun off him; we simply stared at each other in motionless silence until the drug took hold. Being a small man, West responded quickly - it was only a minute or two before the expected lassitude began to creep over him. His eyes drifted closed. "I trusted you," he said petulantly. "Or… nearly enough…" Before much longer he slumped down like a boneless thing.
I waited for him to go still, then checked his pockets in case there was some trick waiting for me. Upon finding only scraps of paper bearing fragments of his peculiar shorthand, I slung his inert form over my shoulder and left the laboratory.
Had I always had such strength? I wondered. Or was this the reagent in action?
It hardly mattered. I stowed West in my erstwhile bedroom and locked it tightly, knowing it could not be opened from within. In case he woke before my return, I could simply have the gun ready before I entered. In the meantime, I had preparations to make.
But my caution was not needed; West had yet to awaken when I returned. I sat down next to him and kept watch for the return of consciousness. My plan must not proceed until I knew he was lucid.
When his eyes opened at last they were wide, unfocused, glazed with a vague fear; when they fell upon me his expression became one of relief. Moments later that, too, passed, but this time the horror that took its place was quite specific.
"Hello, West," I said.
"I don't understand. I thought you would kill me." I didn't answer. "And yet it seems you've changed your mind - why?"
I told him, "I haven't."
We sat in silence some while longer as he fumbled with this apparent contradiction and the lingering effects of the drug on his thoughts. Finally he asked me, "What will you do?"
I had spent quite some time, as I doused the laboratory in volatile chemicals and arranged the materials for a quick and violent fire, deliberating precisely how I should dispose of him. Having hit upon a plan I had then debated - as I struck a lucifer match on the edge of a table and threw it into a heap of papers awash in shimmering fumes - how much of it I should tell him, and how much leave him to work out for himself.
The consideration that ultimately decided me was this: if I told him nothing, I risked not being present when he realized. And so at length I said, "I will give you your eternal life." The expression on his face rewarded my decision. Of course, this disclosure also cost me any element of surprise - but so much stronger was I than this pathetic child-sized creature that it little mattered.
I could not, though it would have pleased me, recreate exactly the murder he had visited upon Robert Leavitt of St. Louis - the first man I knew him to have killed. I could at least do this: shove him onto the bed, place a pillow over his face and bear down until he ceased thrashing.
As his hands finally stopped clawing for purchase I wondered idly why he had never killed me in this fashion, whether in fact or in my dreams.
Once satisfied, I removed the pillow from his face and examined my work. He was not breathing, and the blotchy spots of color that the struggle had brought to his face were beginning to recede. It was not on the whole a face of peaceful repose, as I was most glad to note. The frame of his glasses had broken under the pressure, which I had not thought of; but the lenses were intact, so that he would still be able to see. This would become important in coming hours.
I was not yet ready for him, but the reagent took time to wreak its changes upon the body, and a prompt injection made all the difference. I regarded the syringe in silence a few moments before I drove the needle into his flesh, examining the greenish liquid he believed had driven me mad.
I did not know if this were true or not; what truly mattered was that he seemed to believe it.
With the reanimation process beginning, there was little time left to me. Once more I shouldered the burden of his body, now providing even less resistance than before, and brought him outside. I had previously brought out here the chains with which he had first bound me to my bed upon my revival. I wound these around him to secure him to a tree facing the property, with an unobstructed view of the acrid chemical smoke arising from his laboratory - his life's work, and the work of my death. It was my wish that he should awaken to this vista and know that everything was gone, and believe that, with the reagent now in his veins, his mind would soon shatter such that he could never start anew.
I returned briefly to the house to place a phone call. I told the operator of a suspected fire, of a dark and oily smog rising above the trees outside of town. Perhaps I had heard voices crying out from that direction, I said, but with the wind being inconstant I was not certain. Despite further questioning, I insisted I dared not speculate whether the hubbub originated at the home of that strange doctor; I disclaimed knowledge of any such person.
Someone would be sent. They would have difficulty quelling a fire of this nature, I knew, but I dared not give any specific instructions for subduing it. This would only reveal that my knowledge of the thing was more complete than I pretended, and my own actions over the years stood up to inquiry little better than West's.
Only after disconnecting did it occur to me that it did not matter what crimes I was known or suspected to have a part in. But there was no time to correct my oversight now. I told myself the operator would have relayed the information incorrectly at any rate, and on my way out induced the stove to explode.
The fire would die eventually, regardless. And West should be collected and shut away in an asylum for the rest of his immortal years. Perhaps he and Halsey would cross paths again. I regretted that I would never see such a thing transpire.
I thought of the monster we had made of the old Dean. I should have severed ties with West then. I should have known no good would come.
As I crossed the lawn back to West, I wondered whether he was telling the truth of my death. But it should not make a difference even so. Suppose he had not killed me personally; he had still filled a laboratory with victims in my name. He was in no way innocent, and had not been in some time. He must suffer for it. It should not matter if he had never raised a hand to harm me; the scales weighed heavily enough against him that a difference of one soul could not signify.
And yet I wondered still. In truth I continue to wonder, prodding at the speculation as at a loose tooth, but my decision cannot be taken back now.
I came at last to the tree I had bound him to. Circulation had returned, and as my feet cracked the dry autumn grass on approach his eyelids began to flutter.
"Welcome back," I said. "Do you understand how you got here?" For it would mean nothing, or less than nothing, if he did not.
He turned toward my voice, and then toward the fire; he tried to approach the laboratory, to salvage something or put a stop to the blaze, but found the chains arresting him. At this his eyes went wild; he struggled like a mindless beast to escape the slaughter that had already occurred. The chains held fast, and even by going completely limp he was unable to slip out from beneath them.
"In case you don't, allow me to explain -"
"No need," he said.
I smiled. "I thought not. Then you know that the reagent -"
"I know!" He redoubled his struggle, but again found no escape. Breathless, he turned to me. "You needn't - I can't - we can fix this. The reagent madness is probably reversible - at least treatable - we can make that our next project. Just let me go and recover some things from the lab. I'll set this right. We can be as we were - as we should have been -"
I said nothing. West made another futile pull at the chains. "It'd be simplicity itself," he said, a wheedling note entering his voice, "testing a drug on the criminally insane; no one cares what happens to them. And supposing the treatment worked and we did reform them into productive members of society, well! It would be for their own good! Isn't that the kind of thing you like? Doing things for other people's good? Whatever misguided sentiment led you to sabotage my work, surely it would have no objections - you're a scientist, aren't you? You'll release me, and you won't flinch at what's necessary -"
He had said two things in this time that, for my purposes, were entirely true. First: no one cared what happened to madmen and murderers. Second: I would not flinch.
At last, in the face of my continued silence, West went quite still. "You fool," he said, and no more.
I observed him dispassionately, and after a moment leaned forward and spoke quietly into his ear: "The subject shows excess lacrimation. Perhaps it should be terminated."
"I was only trying to save you."
"You were only trying to save yourself."
"Both of us, then."
I could not help but sneer at him. At length I said, "Help will come for you, though not help that you will like." I stood back. "We're finished, West. I have no further business with you."
"Yes," he said, "I thought the cold-blooded murder actually made that point quite well -"
I turned and began to walk away, toward the fire.
I will reach it soon. I can feel the heat on my face; the thick smoke stings my lungs. This is my last revenge. I intend for West to see me die. I suppose even with my destruction and that of all his apparatus, his chemical stocks, and his notes - I suppose if he is ever free again he could reverse-engineer the reagent from his own blood.
But of course I doubt very much that he will ever leave Sefton Asylum under his own power, or long retain his reason.
We understood so little, all along, of what the reagent could do. I begin to suspect my reanimated body has enhanced tolerances against certain environmental strain. Though the heat does not feel unbearable to me, the fluid in my eyeballs is beginning to steam.
I turn and look back, while the power of sight remains to me, at Herbert West. And I salute him, one monster to another.