Chapter 6.
A RETURN TO BOLTON
It was early in 1909 when I received yet another letter from Peaslee. After the catastrophic events in Sicily, and my belief that Peaslee had somehow caused the deaths of nearly 100,000 people, I had come to dread any further involvement or communication with the man who had once been my friend and business partner, but who now seemed so inhumanely alien. The small packet of letters and photos had been posted from Constantinople, and included a summary of his time in Rome, as well as instructions for his agents at Botchner’s. In March he would depart for India where he would travel north to Nepal and spend some time in the Himalayas. In the summer he would travel to Hong Kong, from which he would travel throughout Asia until at least May of 1910. The address that he provided in Hong Kong I recognized as that of Dr. Hu, one of the many people he had extensively corresponded with.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, Peaslee’s Asian adventures were to mark a significant decrease in his correspondence, both in frequency and content. At first I took no notice of the lack of a regular missive, but as January turned to February and then to March I realized that a great burden had been lifted from my spirit, and the general malaise that I had been subjecting myself, Wilson, and our patients to, seemed to retreat. In April, I began a series of simple reanimation experiments, seeking to discover for myself the formula which Peaslee had hinted at by which death could be prevented outright, and although the experiments produced only negative results and my population of rats plummeted, it was fulfilling to once more be working towards some goal.
So content was I with my life and pursuits, that when in June, the inevitable package from Peaslee finally did arrive, it had virtually no impact on my mood whatsoever. Indeed, after skimming through his letters and photos relating his travels in the Himalayas, I forwarded them on to The Advertiser without delay. When a few days later the paper ran an article detailing how Peaslee had become only the second westerner to ever gain audience with the Dalai Lama of Tibet, the whole town became alive with tales of Peaslee’s adventures, and I was pressed by patients and friends for details, all of which I rebuked, saying that I would not betray the confidence of my patient.
There then came over my life a period of great calm during which I settled into a routine that focused on my own projects. As Peaslee had suggested when he had injected me with his variation on my formula, my need for sleep had decreased and my stamina had increased. Thus it seemed that my practice benefited from my increased time and energy. Soon even Dr. Wilson was commenting on the new sense of verve and dedication that filled my days.
Emboldened by my new outlook on life, I made a bold decision to once more pay a visit to my hated rivals Doctors West and Cain. It was not until mid-July that I found the time to take the short train ride from Arkham up to Bolton to spy on those I blamed for the death of my parents. Once there it was easy to once more secrete myself near the remote farmhouse that served as home to their practice and secret laboratory. It was not long before I learned that West was not in residence, and inquiries revealed that he had been away for several weeks, and was not expected back for several days. Thus I learned that Daniel Cain was alone in the remote farmhouse and therefore vulnerable. It was then that my furtive mind hatched a most devious plan.
Leaving the farmhouse in the late afternoon, I traveled to the far side of Bolton and quickly located a church where I introduced myself to the resident priest. Portraying myself as a man of pious faith, I pleaded with the aging and feeble clergyman to aid me in my quest for penance and charity. Who amongst his flock was both poor and sickly? The priest had no shortage of candidates and soon together we identified a family whose patriarch had recently suffered an accident at the mill and was now racked with pain and fever from the infected wound. I gave the priest a crisp twenty-dollar bill and made it clear that he was to use it to pay for the services of Dr. Cain that very evening.
I made haste back to the cemetery next to West’s house and waited for my plan to unfold. It was less than an hour later that a young man made his way down the rutted road and up the walkway to Cain’s office door. Moments later the young man reappeared with Cain in tow. Together they climbed into Cain’s automobile and soon motored out of sight, leaving only a cloud of dust hanging over the road to mark their passage. As the sputtering sound of the engine faded I slyly made my way from the graveyard to the back of the house.
I used the key I had stolen years ago to enter through the back door, and soon I was once more in the underground laboratory of my nemeses. West’s notebooks revealed substantial progress in his goal of reanimation, though it was apparent in his writings that West had become frustrated by a lack of experimental subjects which he amusingly called a “drought”. Experimenting instead with animals, West had hit upon a strategy of dividing his reagent into two parts. The first part consisted of a preservative that acted to halt the various processes of decay and place the body in a state of stasis. The second part of the reagent was comprised of three distinct components including a preservative counter-agent, a generous portion of the reanimation reagent, and a chemical stimulant designed to enhance the body’s own healing factors. It was a bold and brilliant strategy but one that West had yet little success with, and I could easily see why. West’s preservative was itself a problem, for while it acted to halt the processes of decay, it also served to halt normal biochemical processes, processes that had to be restarted, some simultaneously, some sequentially.
As I made my way back to Arkham, my mind was filled with new and exciting possibilities of the most macabre nature. Experiments that would horrify even the most seasoned of vivisectionists were outlined and quickly filed into the recesses of my mind. In retrospect, such thoughts and notions should have outraged my puritan sensibilities, but instead all these years later, I now find myself repulsed by the actions of a young doctor slowly being seduced by the false promises of a forbidden science, and becoming the exact thing he set out to destroy. For it was on that journey back to Arkham that I am certain that I abandoned my quest for vengeance against West and Cain, and decided to become not their nemesis, but their rival. I am sure that it was on that very train ride that I convinced myself that in the proper hands, in my hands, the science of reanimation had value and could be a boon to mankind. It was then that I accepted the inevitable and adopted the mantle of reanimator!