I. From The Dark
Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after
life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether
to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered
by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its acute form more
than seventeen years ago, when we were in the third year of our course
at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. While he was with
me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly,
and I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken,
the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous
than realities.
The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the
greatest shock I ever experienced, and it is only with reluctance that
I repeat it. As I have said, it happened when we were in the medical school
where West had already made himself notorious through his wild theories
on the nature of death and the possibility of overcoming it artificially.
His views, which were widely ridiculed by the faculty and by his fellow-students,
hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature of life; and concerned means
for operating the organic machinery of mankind by calculated chemical action
after the failure of natural processes. In his experiments with various
animating solutions, he had killed and treated immense numbers of rabbits,
guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he had become the prime nuisance
of the college. Several times he had actually obtained signs of life in
animals supposedly dead; in many cases violent signs but he soon saw that
the perfection of his process, if indeed possible, would necessarily involve
a lifetime of research. It likewise became clear that, since the same solution
never worked alike on different organic species, he would
require human subjects for further and more specialised
progress. It was here that he first came into conflict with the college
authorities, and was debarred from future experiments by no less a dignitary
than the dean of the medical school himself -- the learned and benevolent
Dr. Allan Halsey, whose work in behalf of the stricken is recalled by every
old resident of Arkham.
I had always been exceptionally tolerant of West's pursuits,
and we frequently discussed his theories, whose ramifications and corollaries
were almost infinite. Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical
and physical process, and that the so-called "soul" is a myth, my friend
believed that artificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the
condition of the tissues; and that unless actual decomposition has set
in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set
going again in the peculiar fashion known as life. That the psychic or
intellectual life might be impaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive
brain-cells which even a short period of death would be apt to cause, West
fully realised. It had at first been his hope to find a reagent which would
restore vitality before the actual advent of death, and only repeated failures
on animals had shewn him that the natural and artificial life-motions were
incompatible. He then sought extreme freshness in his specimens, injecting
his solutions into the blood immediately after the extinction of life.
It was this circumstance which made the professors so carelessly sceptical,
for they felt that true death had not occurred in any case. They did not
stop to view the matter closely and reasoningly.
It was not long after the faculty had interdicted his
work that West confided to me his resolution to get fresh human bodies
in some manner, and continue in secret the experiments he could no longer
perform openly. To hear him discussing ways and means was rather ghastly,
for at the college we had never procured anatomical specimens ourselves.
Whenever the morgue proved inadequate, two local negroes attended to this
matter, and they were seldom questioned. West was then a small, slender,
spectacled youth with delicate features, yellow hair, pale blue eyes, and
a soft voice, and it was uncanny to hear him dwelling on the relative merits
of Christchurch Cemetery and the potter's field. We finally decided on
the potter's field, because practically every body in Christchurch was
embalmed; a thing of course ruinous to West's researches.
I was by this time his active and enthralled assistant,
and helped him make all his decisions, not only concerning the source of
bodies but concerning a suitable place for our loathsome work. It was I
who thought of the deserted Chapman farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill, where
we fitted up on the ground floor an operating room and a laboratory, each
with dark curtains to conceal our midnight doings. The place was far from
any road, and in sight of no other house, yet precautions were none the
less necessary; since rumours of strange lights, started by chance nocturnal
roamers, would soon bring disaster on our enterprise. It was agreed to
call the whole thing a chemical laboratory if discovery should occur. Gradually
we equipped our sinister haunt of science with materials either purchased
in Boston or quietly borrowed from the college -- materials carefully made
unrecognisable save to expert eyes -- and provided spades and picks for
the many burials we should have to make in the cellar. At the college we
used an incinerator, but the apparatus was too costly for our unauthorised
laboratory. Bodies were always a nuisance -- even the small guinea-pig
bodies from the slight clandestine experiments in West's room at the boarding-house.
We followed the local death-notices like ghouls, for our
specimens demanded particular qualities. What we wanted were corpses interred
soon after death and without artificial preservation; preferably free from
malforming disease, and certainly with all organs present. Accident victims
were our best hope. Not for many weeks did we hear of anything suitable;
though we talked with morgue and hospital authorities, ostensibly in the
college's interest, as often as we could without exciting suspicion. We
found that the college had first choice in every case, so that it might
be necessary to remain in Arkham during the summer, when only the limited
summer-school classes were held. In the end, though, luck favoured us;
for one day we heard of an almost ideal case in the potter's field; a brawny
young workman drowned only the morning before in Summer's Pond, and buried
at the town's expense without delay or embalming. That afternoon we found
the new grave, and determined to begin work soon after midnight.
It was a repulsive task that we undertook in the black
small hours, even though we lacked at that time the special horror of graveyards
which later experiences brought to us. We carried spades and oil dark lanterns,
for although electric torches were then manufactured, they were not as
satisfactory as the tungsten contrivances of today. The process of unearthing
was slow and sordid -- it might have been gruesomely poetical if we had
been artists instead of scientists -- and we were glad when our spades
struck wood. When the pine box was fully uncovered, West scrambled down
and removed the lid, dragging out and propping up the contents. I reached
down and hauled the contents out of the grave, and then both toiled hard
to restore the spot to its former appearance. The affair made us rather
nervous, especially the stiff form and vacant face of our first trophy,
but we managed to remove all traces of our visit. When we had patted down
the last shovelful of earth, we put the specimen in a canvas sack and set
out for the old Chapman place beyond Meadow Hill.
On an improvised dissecting-table in the old farmhouse,
by the light of a powerful acetylene lamp, the specimen was not very spectral
looking. It had been a sturdy and apparently unimaginative youth of wholesome
plebeian type -- large-framed, grey-eyed, and brown-haired -- a sound animal
without psychological subtleties, and probably having vital processes of
the simplest and healthiest sort. Now, with the eyes closed, it looked
more asleep than dead; though the expert test of my friend soon left no
doubt on that score. We had at last what West had always longed for --
a real dead man of the ideal kind, ready for the solution as prepared according
to the most careful calculations and theories for human use. The tension
on our part became very great. We knew that there was scarcely a chance
for anything like complete success, and could not avoid hideous fears at
possible grotesque results of partial animation. Especially were we apprehensive
concerning the mind and impulses of the creature, since in the space following
death some of the more delicate cerebral cells might well have suffered
deterioration. I, myself, still held some
curious notions about the traditional "soul" of man,
and felt an awe at the secrets that might be told by one returning from
the dead. I wondered what sights this placid youth might have seen in inaccessible
spheres, and what he could relate if fully restored to life. But my wonder
was not overwhelming, since for the most part I shared the materialism
of my friend. He was calmer than I as he forced a large quantity of his
fluid into a vein of the body's arm, immediately binding the incision securely.
The waiting was gruesome, but West never faltered. Every
now and then he applied his stethoscope to the specimen, and bore the negative
results philosophically. After about three-quarters of an hour without
the least sign of life he disappointedly pronounced the solution inadequate,
but determined to make the most of his opportunity and try one change in
the formula before disposing of his ghastly prize. We had that afternoon
dug a grave in the cellar, and would have to fill it by dawn -- for although
we had fixed a lock on the house, we wished to shun even the remotest risk
of a ghoulish discovery. Besides, the body would not be even approximately
fresh the next night. So taking the solitary acetylene lamp into the adjacent
laboratory, we left our silent guest on the slab in the dark, and bent
every energy to the mixing of a new solution; the weighing and measuring
supervised by West with an almost fanatical care.
The awful event was very sudden, and wholly unexpected.
I was pouring something from one test-tube to another, and West was busy
over the alcohol blast-lamp which had to answer for a Bunsen burner in
this gasless edifice, when from the pitch-black room we had left there
burst the most appalling and daemoniac succession of cries that either
of us had ever heard. Not more unutterable could have been the chaos of
hellish sound if the pit itself had opened to release the agony of the
damned, for in one inconceivable cacophony was centered all the supernal
terror and unnatural despair of animate nature. Human it could not have
been -- it is not in man to make such sounds -- and without a thought of
our late employment or its possible discovery, both West and I leaped to
the nearest window like stricken animals; overturning tubes, lamp, and
retorts, and vaulting madly into the starred abyss of the rural night.
I think we screamed ourselves as we stumbled frantically toward the town,
though as we reached the outskirts we put on a semblance of restraint --
just enough to seem like belated revellers staggering home from a debauch.
We did not separate, but managed to get to West's room,
where we whispered with the gas up until dawn. By then we had calmed ourselves
a little with rational theories and plans for investigation, so that we
could sleep through the day -- classes being disregarded. But that evening
two items in the paper, wholly unrelated, made it again impossible for
us to sleep. The old deserted Chapman house had inexplicably burned to
an amorphous heap of ashes; that we could understand because of the upset
lamp. Also, an attempt had been made to disturb a new grave in the potter's
field, as if by futile and spadeless clawing at the earth. That we could
not understand, for we had patted down the mould very carefully.
And for seventeen years after that West would look frequently
over his shoulder, and complain of fancied footsteps behind him. Now he
has disappeared.
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