Reanimators Page 5

  Over the course of the next several weeks, Peaslee and I met with a lawyer named Hand whom we retained to handle any legal issues that the family might face. The first such task was to set up a series of monetary trusts. Peaslee divided the family money into three parts. The first, and largest, was for the upkeep of the family itself—Peaslee’s spouse and three children. The second, and smallest, portion was set aside for the future education of the children. The third portion, which amounted to several thousand dollars, was developed into a trust with Peaslee and I as co-executors. Much of this was invested almost immediately in several newly formed companies including the Burmah Oil Company, Briggs and Stratton, and General Motors. Instructions were also made to invest in specific companies that were on the verge of forming, including the Converse Rubber Shoe Company and First Union Bank. The vast majority of these business ventures were newly forming, and I had strong concerns that Peaslee was taking huge risks in such unproven companies. Peaslee chuckled and reminded me that he was after all an economist: who would be more fit than he to make investment decisions?

  The month of July found Peaslee becoming more comfortable in his surroundings and confident in his ability to navigate the city on his own. He began a daily walk to the University Library and even began to attend seminars as well as a class on European history. His appearance in the outside world did not go unnoticed, and in September our little clinic began to receive visits from journalists, physicians, researchers and the curious, all desperate to speak to Peaslee, or, as The Arkham Advertiser had billed him, “The Man Who Forgot Himself”. While Peaslee met with as many visitors as he could, most were quickly dismissed. One exception to this was Travis Marriott of The Arkham Advertiser, who would visit almost weekly, and to whom Peaslee had promised to send regular accounts of his observations of the world when he began his travels in the spring.

  The other exception was a most curious visit of a wholly unique individual, of the most sober, almost dour, of appearances. He was an elderly gentleman, perhaps an octogenarian who, despite his age, spoke in a voice and language that was almost commanding in nature. He introduced himself as Ephraim Waite, and although he did not state it, I knew that he resided in Innsmouth, a nearby coastal village of ill-repute, as I had seen his name many times amongst both the incoming and outgoing mail. As with all of his visitors, Peaslee greeted the elderly man with a complete lack of visible emotion, though in this case I detected some level of nervous energy that was normally absent from his demeanor. Stranger still, Peaslee had always carried out his previous interviews and discussions in the parlor on the main floor. In this case the man was quickly whisked down the stairs to Peaslee’s make-do study, with the door closed quite purposely behind them.

  Peaslee never revealed the subject of their conversation to me. Thus my only knowledge of what was discussed for more than three hours was the fragments of sentences that wound their way up through the floorboards like whispers in the wind. Mentioned often was the small village of Dunwich, and a farmer who apparently dwelt there named Whateley. Both the village and the farmer were apparently held in contempt by Waite, though how he had been slighted was unclear. Much also was made of a foreigner who was apparently in league with Whateley; while invoked often, this man’s name remained unclear, although it was often associated with a place called Tunguska. I have no other substantive memories of that conversation. Whether that is because the conversation itself was unimportant, I failed to understand any other snippets of discussion, or my memory has faded through time, I cannot say. I do however know that the conversation itself set in motion a series of events that would forever change not only my life, but how I would view the entire world around me.

  One day, in the late afternoon, Peaslee bade farewell to his guests and immediately demanded that I arrange to meet with representatives from an engineering firm and a travel agency. I complied and placed several calls arranging appointments for the next day. At Botchner’s, a reputable agency used by University staff for both academic and personal excursions, Peaslee negotiated a complex itinerary beginning with his departure from Boston in early August. From this date he would travel extensively throughout Europe including visits to London, Paris, Madrid, Sicily, Rome, Venice and Hungary. His final stop in Europe in March of 1909 was to be Constantinople, from which he would make arrangements for travels into Asia, Africa or the Middle East. Peaslee’s travels included dates for lectures and courses at various universities and museums that were immutable and as such required a demanding schedule of trains, hired cars and the occasional boat. Additional expense was incurred when Peaslee revealed that he would be taking significant amounts of baggage with him. Such a revelation shocked me, for I recalled that the man had abandoned all but the essentials of his previous life. Peaslee explained that the majority of his baggage was to be cameras, surveying tools and specialized scientific equipment of his own design.

  It was the design and construction of this equipment that was to consume most of Peaslee’s remaining time. Entire days and vast quantities of nights were spent in consultation with engineers and metallurgists employed by the firm of Upton and Klein. Peaslee had paid the company a significant sum to have full run of the staff and facilities, including drafting staff, smelters and machine shops. Each day Peaslee would deliver to the drafting team rough sketches of an oddly shaped tool or part, while at the same time delivering the formula for the needed alloys to the metallurgists. By the afternoon of each day both teams would meet the machinists who would then begin the production of a dozen identical copies of the piece. Following the completion of each set, Peaslee would take his original sketch and the drafted versions and summarily destroy them in one of the kilns. Similarly, once manufacture was complete, the set of finished products was removed from the shop and never brought back again. Once, an enterprising draftsman recognized how two distinct pieces were related and casually made a sketch of the process of fitting them together, hypothesizing in the process the additional pieces needed to complete the attachment. On seeing the sketch, Peaslee immediately confiscated it, shredding hours worth of work into a metal bin before setting it ablaze right there in the drafting room. Peaslee then grabbed the man by his collar and hauled him out of the room, ordering him off of the project.

  All of this was done at a breakneck speed, so as to allow Peaslee to make his departure date of August the seventh. Peaslee made his departure, leaving for England on the White Star Line steamer Miskatonic, and I received my first letter from him toward the end of the month. In London, he had established himself in a small rooming house near the museum at which he was attending a series of lectures on evolutionary theory presented by disciples of Charles Darwin. In addition, he was spending much time studying at the museum itself and amongst a small group of occultists who had, he felt, just grazed some of the universal truths. Included with the letter were several photographs of Peaslee in the museum as well as two with a rather serious-looking gentleman wearing a strange triangular headdress bearing a radiant triangle. On the back of each photo Peaslee had written a brief description of the subject, though given the state of Peaslee’s handwriting I quickly abandoned all attempts to decipher such details. As requested, once I was finished with the letter I forwarded it on to Travis Marriott at The Arkham Advertiser. Days later I was shocked to open the paper and find one of the photos of Peaslee splashed across the local page beneath a banner that read UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR MEETS WITH WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD. The caption of the article identified the man in the strange headdress as none other than Aleister Crowley, a notorious hedonist and mystic who had on more than one occasion been at odds with authorities both religious and secular. Shocked and amused, I clipped the article, along with several other stories, and posted them to Peaslee’s address in London.

  The next letter arrived in mid-September and Peaslee was in Paris. He had been amused by Marriott’s article and promised to send even more inflammatory pictures when the opportunity arose. In the meanwhile, the
rooms he had rented in Montmartre were filled with the most eccentric of persons, including many Americans who had embraced the bohemian lifestyle of the area. Oddly, the enthusiasm the other American guests had for baseball had wormed its way into Peaslee’s brain. According to Peaslee, one of the other guests at the hotel had an uncanny ability to predict the outcome of various games. So accurate was the man that he had inspired Peaslee to request of me the placing of a small wager. Toward the end of the month, there was to be a baseball game in New York, and it was on this match that Peaslee wished for me to place a wager in the stunning amount of five hundred dollars. However, the wager was not that the favored New York Giants, nor that the opposing team, the Chicago Cubs, would win, but rather that the game would end in a draw.

  You can imagine the laughter when I met the small grey man who acted as a bookmaker to place that bet at odds of fifty to one, and you can imagine the outrage when he came to see me on September 24th. For against all odds, in the bottom of the ninth inning, with the score tied, with two outs, and runners at first and third, the most preposterous thing occurred. The next batter, Al Bridwell, produced a bouncing hit into center field and ran for first. In the meanwhile, Moose McCormick ran from third and easily beat the ball home. Thinking the game over and the national pennant won, Giants fans rushed the field and Fred Merkle tragically aborted his run from first to second and walked into the dugout. Realizing that Merkle had never touched second base, Cubs first baseman Frank Chance ran for second base and called for the ball. Once in possession, Chance got the attention of the nearest umpire and casually touched second base. The umpire, a man by the name of Hank O’Day, had no choice but to call Merkle out and nullify McCormick’s winning run. Unable to clear the field of thousands of fans, night fell and the game was called on account of darkness and officially declared a tie. Peaslee’s bet had netted him $25,000, and when I asked if I could place a second wager on the outcome of the World Series the little bookmaker walked away without a word.

  In late October Peaslee left Paris for Madrid, where he stayed till mid-November. In late December I received a letter from Sicily containing many photos and describing his journey in and around the island, including a climb up Mt. Stromboli, the active volcano just north of the island. In addition to the photos of his trip to the volcano, also included were images of Peaslee on a small trawler. Surrounding him on the expansive deck were a dozen identical mechanical devices the exact purpose of which I could not identify, but which were surely the specialized scientific equipment that Peaslee had spent so many days designing and manufacturing. In the background of the picture were several crates labeled DYNAMITE. Accompanying his letter was a notice to Botchner’s Travel Agency that a large quantity of his equipment had been lost during his work in the strait and that his future travels would not require any cargo beyond his few suitcases. Referring to the photo of Peaslee standing amidst those strange devices with their spiraled metallic cones, thick hexagonal shafts and oddly shaped gears, I could only guess how much such equipment could weigh, never mind what it could be used for. Struck by the photo, I removed it and placed it on my desk, and then, as was my habit, I casually placed the rest of Peaslee’s correspondence in another envelope and sent it on to The Arkham Advertiser.

  It was three days later, on the morning of December 29th, that I once again picked up the newspaper and found Peaslee in the headlines. This time the headline beneath the photo of Peaslee on Mount Stromboli read UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR FEARED LOST IN SICILIAN DISASTER. According to the post, in the early morning hours of the previous day a catastrophe had devastated the ancient city of Messina, destroying more than ninety percent of the buildings, including the venerable Cathedral of Messina, and killing an estimated one hundred thousand people. The earthquake and resulting tidal wave had originated just offshore in the small Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland. According to geologists, the area had been experiencing small tremors since December the tenth when a minor quake had been detected in the shallows of the strait. Prior to this event there had been no evidence or warning of impending seismic activity for many years.

  Out of either fear or dread, I threw the newspaper to the floor and dashed to my desk. There amidst the detritus of bills and correspondence lay the photo of Peaslee on the deck of the hired trawler, surrounded by that strange, suddenly ominous, equipment and the stacks of crates labeled dynamite. My hand trembling, I picked the image up and slowly flipped it over. In an instant dread filled my chest and I dropped the print as I panicked and fell to the floor. Crumpled on the carpet, I had no doubts that Peaslee, or the thing that now wore Peaslee’s face, was alive. No, there could be no doubt that Peaslee had left Messina and the island well before the devastation had been wrought. My anguish was not for that single man, nor was it for the tens of thousands that had been killed in that horrid catastrophe. My pain was self-directed pity, for it was apparent to me that I played no small part in this disaster. For it was I who had helped Peaslee with his financial affairs, it was I who allowed him to work with the engineers and draftsmen, and it was I who allowed him the freedom to travel from Arkham to Europe and Sicily. I did these things, so I am to blame as much as Peaslee for the deaths of all those people. For without me, Peaslee would have never been on that boat, a boat loaded with strange equipment which my friends at the university identify as a sort of geological boring drill, a boat loaded with dynamite, a boat in the photo on the back of which Peaslee had written In the Straits of Messina, December Tenth, 1908!

  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 benef
ited 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.