Chapter 3.
A DEATH IN BOLTON
It had been just over six months since the death of both my parents at the hands of what had once been Dr. Allan Halsey, who had been brought back to a semblance of life through the reckless actions and research of Herbert West. I swore then in those horrid days that I would wreak vengeance on West, and I spent my nights studying, experimenting, understanding and then finally even surpassing West’s research into reanimation. As West had limited his experiments to men alone, his progress had been horrendously slow, hampered in part by my own not-infrequent sabotage of his work. In contrast, I had begun my work with rats, and such experiments, so many experiments, had moved my knowledge of reanimation beyond even West’s understanding, so much so that in my first attempt to use the reagent on a human I succeeded beyond anything West could have hoped for. Sadly, the subject, a child of just eight years, fell victim to a terminal malaise that seemed a common affliction of my rodent subjects, an affliction I had not yet been able to avoid.
As February had been bitterly cold, March was unseasonably warm, and I seized the opportunity such mild weather presented to make the trip from Arkham to Bolton to spy on West and, if possible, tamper with his laboratory and reagent. For the most part, the train trip was uneventful and the only thing worth noting was the presence on the train of a most curious individual. According to a helpful steward, the Negro was “Buck” Robinson, an amateur pugilist, and a magnificent specimen of a man, standing nearly seven feet tall and weighing in at over three hundred pounds. The train was crowded, and while many of the passengers were obviously afraid of the fighter, I held no such prejudices. When I asked if I could join him, he graciously adjusted his not inconsiderable frame to accommodate me.
He was a congenial fellow, and he had a way of speaking that was warm and inviting. His name was James Buchanan Robinson, named by his grandfather who had been an admirer of the president who had worked so hard to balance his desire to abolish slavery and maintain his Federalist views on the Constitution. Robinson, however, was not overly fond of his namesake; he had studied law and politics at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and greatly disagreed with how Buchanan had administered his presidency. The current Republican administration was, he felt, much more progressive, making great strides in curbing the power of corporations, while supporting unions and workers.
After nearly twenty minutes of conversation I suddenly smiled and let loose a little chuckle. I apologized, and explained that I was surprised that such a well-spoken and educated man would be involved in fisticuffs. Robinson nodded. In college he had run into money problems, and turned to fighting to pay the bills. After a half dozen fights, it became apparent that he had some aptitude. A promoter recruited him, dubbed him “The Harlem Smoke”—despite the fact that he was from Atlantic City—and when he was between semesters or on college breaks, he would schedule a few fights to earn some extra cash. It had been years since he had finished law school, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get out of the habit of picking up a fight every now or then. Not for the money, but for the thrill.
I shook my head and expressed my concerns, as a doctor, over the dangers of such a risky hobby, but Robinson just laughed. It was a hearty, belly-busting laugh that was loud and infectious. “Dr. Hartwell, by my estimates I’ve had over a hundred fights, and broken a dozen bones, including my jaw and cheek. A man named Towers brought his heel down on my left foot and broke all my toes. I’ve been hurt, I won’t deny it, but look at me; I’m big, with a reach and speed other men can’t match, and a punch like a sack full of bricks. Do not misunderstand me, sir, I’m just as human as the next man, but in the ring, when I go up against another fighter, I’m damn near invincible, immortal even.”
In Bolton, both I and Robinson disembarked the train and bade each other farewell. I trailed behind him, his massive stride quickly putting distance between the two of us. Outside Robinson was greeted by several well-dressed men who hustled him into a waiting car, while I continued by foot. Bolton is a lovely little town, and I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon browsing several shops and having a fine lunch of fresh fish and winter vegetables. From a local delicatessen I bought a selection of meats and cheeses, and by the early evening I had secreted myself and my supplies in the woods on the far side of the cemetery across from the house where West and Cain resided and worked.
As the night deepened, I moved from the woods through the crumbling monuments and neglected graves to my favorite vantage point beside a statue of a weeping angel. No sooner had I settled in when two burly figures walked somberly up to the house and sheepishly rapped on the front door. After a brief conversation between the occupants and the visitors, both West and Cain donned heavy coats and followed the two visitors down the road. Delighted at my good fortune, in moments I was at the back door, into the house and down the stairs to their secret laboratory.
After liberally contaminating the most recent batch of reagent, alternatively diluting some components while increasing the concentrations of others, I casually settled in to reading and copying portions of West’s journal and notes on his experiments. Thrilled was I to discover a number of facts, most notably that West was growing increasingly frustrated with his lack of consistent progress, for he wrote extensively on the failure to be able to obtain reproducible results. Indeed, West went so far as to speculate that Cain, despite his training, might be wholly incompetent, and the failure of the reagent to produce consistent results might be wholly attributable to Cain’s inability to properly prepare the mixture. At this I chuckled, knowing full well that his failures were the result not of Cain’s incompetence, but rather a product of my own deliberate interferences.
Furthermore, West confessed that he had lately become victim of a growing sense of preternatural dread, as if someone or something was following him, shadowing his every movement. It was, he wrote, as if a dark entity had begun plotting against him, aligning events and forces so that when the time came the strike would be swift, fatal and unstoppable. West traced such feelings back to his earliest experiments, prior to the fall of 1905, well before I began secretly hounding him. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if the dark entity that West felt was rallying against him was not in fact my own self.
After finishing with my amused investigation of West’s lamentations, I proceeded to copy his notes on new directions and changes to the reagent formula. While such misappropriations added little to my own knowledge, they were instructive in their own way, insuring that I would not repeat such errors. Similarly, when West had succeeded in some minor breakthrough, I was able to quickly envision how such a modification could be integrated into my own reanimation process, sometimes making vast prescient leaps beyond the current procedures either one of us were currently using. Indeed, had I not been so hell-bent for revenge, I might have considered revealing myself and collaborating with West, for such an arrangement would surely propel the progress of discovery to new rates of achievement.
Suddenly, my acts of scientific espionage were interrupted by the most disturbing of events. Though muffled by the walls and distance, I distinctly heard the sound of footsteps tramping through the gravel walkway. I had spent too much time reveling in my success and transcribing notes. West and Cain had returned and I was still inside the house! I made for the cellar door, intent on making my way to the nearby safety of the cemetery, but as soon as I mounted the stairs, I knew it was too late. Desperate, I plunged for the darkness underneath the stairs that led to the first floor of the house. There, crouching behind a blind of crates and tarps, I observed as West and his mealy assistant Cain came down into the laboratory with yet a third man between them.
As they came into the light I recognized the third man as the man on the train, the boxer James Buchanan Robinson. Apparently despite his assurances to the contrary, he had not been invincible. Listening to West and Cain talk, I learned that the referee was unable to maintain control of either fighter, and the unsanctioned match had degenerated into a bloody slugfest. Robinson had suffered massive head trauma from multiple blows delivered by his opponent long after he had collapsed onto the floor. Being an illegal fight, there was no doctor standing by, and Robinson had been motionless for more than an hour before West and Cain had arrived. That he was already dead was a stroke of luck for the two ghouls, and what was more, the owner of the seedy warehouse at which the fight had taken place, a man named Durden, had paid West fifty dollars to take care of the matter.
The thing that was once James Robinson was poured onto the exam table, which given his great size he immediately overflowed. The great man’s hands fell limply, his fingertips brushing back and forth across the cold concrete floor. I had never seen West work before, never seen how he treated his patients, his subjects, and the sight of it now was a revelation. Watching the man now, watching him move, prepare syringes, sterilize instruments and prepare for his experiment, I realized something about the man I had never known before. For all his knowledge, all his skill, all his mad genius, Herbert West was a horrible doctor. He was clumsy and unorganized, his technique was laughable and his methods crude. If it had not been for the tidy and meticulous ways of his assistant, nothing would have been done properly. Daniel Cain may have been a sniveling, sycophantic toady, but he was a competent doctor and understood the rules and limits of experimental design. West may have been a genius, but it was Cain that transformed that genius into brilliance and kept it on track. My analysis, my need for vengeance that had so focused on West, suddenly seemed so wrong. West was not to blame, at least not alone, and once more I swore vengeance against Herbert West and the unassuming Daniel Cain.
With all the skill of a butcher’s apprentice West went to work on his specimen. He and Cain were earnest in their work and watched with rapt attention for the first response from their subject, not knowing that my tampering had irrevocably destroyed any chance of Robinson reacting to their reagent. It took hours for the two to accept that Robinson was not going to respond. When they finally conceded and dragged their failure up the stairs and into the woods, I made my way cautiously up and out of the cellar. My first reaction was to flee down the road and into town, but something made me stop, and soon I was stalking through the woods watching as West and Cain buried Robinson in a shallow, leaf-covered grave.
I cannot remember how long I sat there in the woods staring at the place where Robinson was buried, but the sun rose and the birds were singing when I finally took action. I used my hands to clear away the leaves and loose dirt to reveal the cold still form of James Robinson. In death, the blood drained from him, his face destroyed by the fight, he was terrifying, almost inhuman. Grabbing him underneath the arms, I pulled with all my might and dragged the body out of the dank earth. As the light of the sun slowly filled the forest, I knew that the instrument of my vengeance was at hand.
From my coat pocket I pulled out the small leather kit that I carried for emergencies and removed the small, glowing vial that was secreted in the bottom. I carefully estimated my subject’s weight and then wracked my memory for the amount of contaminated reagent that West had already injected. Ultimately I filled the syringe with a volume that was as much guess work as it was science, and in a purposeful and direct act injected the dead body with my own superior reagent.
Afterwards, I fell back and watched as Robinson’s body rapidly responded to the reagent coursing through his body. Like my previous human subject, Robinson’s mouth opened wide and his screams filled the quiet forest. His body arched backwards, driving his head and heels into the frozen ground. Suddenly he was flapping about like a fish out of water. I winced as his hands beat against the frozen earth, and I heard the distinct crack of bones breaking. Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the convulsions ceased and the giant of a man slowly rose and, although unsteady, stood upright, staggering as he walked a few cautious steps.
I called out to him, called him by name, and he jerked his head and torso around to face me. His eyes were wild and filled with blood. Drool mixed with bile spilled uncontrollably from his mouth. His arms reached out and he lunged towards me, but only succeeded in falling pathetically to the ground. I knew then that I had failed, that my estimates of how much reagent to use in combination with the contaminated reagent had been woefully wrong. Watching what was once a man crawl about on the forest floor, I did what any man would do. I picked up a convenient branch and, raising it above my head, I prepared to put the poor thing out of its misery.
Tragically, I acted too slowly. For suddenly we were no longer alone, and I had no choice but to flee through the woods in terror. I did not stop running until I was safely at the station and onboard the train back to Arkham. In the car I hid in the lavatory, shattered, begging forgiveness for what I had done. Once again my desire for vengeance, my lack of caution and proper care, had ended horribly. The memory was more than I could bear, and try as I might, I could not stop the scene from being replayed over and over again.
The reanimation of James Buchanan Robinson had gone wrong, terribly wrong, and I stood above the poor man with a makeshift club ready to rectify my mistake and send him back into the oblivion he deserved. Yet as I readied the killing blow, a terrified voice broke the silence, a voice that was not Buck Robinson’s. Standing there at the edge of the clearing was a small child who couldn’t be more than five years of age. The boy was terrified and yelling, begging me not to do it, not to kill that man. He begged me, he begged me in the name of God not to kill that poor black man. I dropped the branch, and as I did the thing beneath me sprang forward, moving on all fours like a monstrous bear. The revenant, for surely that is what I had created, tore into the boy who released such a torrent of agonized vocalizations, that I clamped my hands about my ears and ran as fast as I could. I do not know what happened to the thing that had once been Robinson, but I know what happened to that little boy, for as I ran I turned back, and my last fleeting glimpse was of that giant of a man beating the bloody child with his own ersatz club; a club that was thin and pale and terminated in five delicate fingers.