Islands of the Gulf

Volume 1, The Journey

 

Part 1

Andre Boudreau

 

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

Lewis Carroll

 

 

Chapter 1

 

I’m not the kind of guy who sits down and writes his life story. Other people do it, and good luck to them. The Doctor, now, he’s got a story to tell, and I am happy to talk with him about old times if it helps him to remember things for his book. But me, Andre Boudreau, why should I do that? I’m the one who polishes his boots and sews on his buttons, and makes sure the coal is delivered on time. Someone has to do all that, and he’s lucky it’s me, because I am a man who can do what needs to be done.

A couple of weeks ago he comes to me and says, “Andre, I want you to write down all about your life, everything you can remember.”

I see a way to wiggle out of that. “But Doctor, you know I can’t remember much from before – "

“Yes, but you can remember what happened after that. I know, because I hear you yarning with the tradespeople. So just remember it all in order, and write it down.”

“Yarning’s different,” I say. “You don’t have to tell things in order. And you don’t have to tell the truth.”

He laughed at that. Oh, I know for sure he doesn’t always tell the truth. I had him there, all right. But he wasn’t about to give up on the idea.

“Well, at least start remembering. As for the writing down, it will have to be a collaborative effort. I can think of someone who could help you with that part. But you have to do your own remembering.”

“All right, Doctor. But don’t expect too much.”

He was right, there’s a hell of a lot stuffed into my brain. It’s like a trunk that’s been packed in a hurry by someone who doesn’t care. You pull on one thing and six others come flopping out.

I guess I’ve been thinking about trunks and packing because I just did a lot of that. A few weeks ago, the Doctor and I moved into this house, on College Hill, Providence, Rhode Island. There aren’t a lot of miles between here and Arkham, but there were for the Doctor and me, since we left there fourteen years ago, in 1923. A whole world of miles.

You could say we’ve both been to Hell and back. I didn’t see the Devil, but I think he did.

 

I don’t have memories of my childhood. My first memories are of blackness. I came out of blackness. I was a very small thing, a little spark in the blackness. That was all, for a long time.

Then I began to see. Only for short moments, like when there’s lightning at night. Except it was slow lightning. I’d open my eyes and see things, but I didn’t know what they were. Now I think they were the roof of a tent, the inside of a train, the ceiling of some building. A face. Another face. Faces coming and going. Sometimes I heard groans, screams, someone praying in words I couldn’t understand. Maybe it was me. I couldn’t feel anything, though. There was no pain. I wasn’t even cold. Then the darkness again, for I don’t know how long. It wasn’t really me who saw and heard these things, just a little part of me acting like a scout for the rest, which was back in the blackness, waiting for the scout to report so it could decide what to do next.

There was one picture clearer than the rest – I saw the angel of death standing before me. He was beautiful and terrible – all white and silver, with eyes like ice. He looked at me for a long time and said, “No. Not this one. He’s already dead.” So I thought, “There’s no need to hold on anymore,” and let myself slide back into the blackness. As I went I said goodbye to everything – my childhood, family, comrades, my newly hatched young man’s ambitions and lusts. I wasn’t going to go back to New Brunswick after the war to show them how things worked in the big world. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye Maman, Papa, Nicholas, Michel, Roger, Paulette, Marguerite, sweet little Louise. Goodbye, Grassadoo, goodbye Andre. Short but sweet, it was. Now it’s all gone.

I don’t know how long it lasted. I don't think I'll ever know. But it was nothing. There was no “I” any more. It’s like trying to think of what there was, before there was anything. Before God made the world there was nothing, they say. But there was – No, nothing. My mind can’t think this thing. So I say only: there was nothing.

Then, my first new memory. It was only a feeling. Hot, like fire. Fire was running all through me. I was a man made of fire and heat, my shape burning a hole in the nothing. A red mist swirled through my head and I could feel my heart pumping. No, being pumped, by something outside me. It was like a machine had taken over and was running me, running too hard and hot and jerky. It felt dangerous. It felt wrong. It was worse than dying. I was terribly afraid. Maybe I was in Hell and this would go on forever.

Then I opened my eyes. No, that wasn’t it. My eyes were opened, like somebody pulled a string. Light stabbed into my head, and the pain it made joined the heat in my body. I saw the angel again and thought, “I must be in Heaven. But why does everything hurt, and why am I so afraid?”

He was different now, not like the death angel I saw before. He was white and golden now. There was a brightness behind his head, and his strange bright eyes seemed to look right into my soul. I was still afraid, but I could feel his hands touching me, cooling the heat in my body. Then I was in a river, moving faster and faster. Was I going to drown? I didn’t care any more. It was too much trouble to care. I closed my eyes and gave up. If the angel wanted to, he would save me. If not, it didn’t matter.

 

There is a carved wooden angel in the church at Grassadoo, New Brunswick, where I was born. When I went back there in ’23, it was still there. I almost remembered it. When I saw it, I felt my breath go in sharp and I thought, “It’s Raphael!” That was my name for him. And my second thought was, “Yes, that’s why. That’s who he reminded me of.”

The carving was very old. It was made from a piece of wood from the beach, and its shape was made by the shape of the wood. So he had short hair, this angel, painted yellow, and a halo that the carver had made from a different piece of wood and stuck on with pegs. His wings were kind of small, but that didn’t matter, because they were the right shape, and he wasn’t going to fly anywhere. He had bright blue eyes, but the look in them wasn’t very angelic. Something about the way the carver had painted them made it look like the angel wanted to fight instead of praying and singing hymns.

One of my younger brothers told me that I used to tell him stories about that angel when we were boys. “You called him Raphael,” Michel told me. “And you said you used to argue with him in church.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with Michel about that. Who knows, maybe I did tell him those things. Michel said I told him I could hear the angel’s voice in my head. I would complain to him about things that made me mad, and he would help me.

“How did I say he helped me?” I asked.

“He would tell you the reasons for things. Like when Papa had to shoot your dog. Or when Maurice and Peter drowned in the big storm. You said that Raphael would say to you, ‘Are you going to lie down and die because of this, Andre? Because if you do I won’t be your friend anymore.’”

So what am I saying here? Yes, there is a wooden angel in the church at Grassadoo. Yes, I’m pretty sure I called him Raphael when I was a boy. And when I woke up again, in 1917, when I came out of the blackness, I thought I recognized him. I just kept looking at him, because that was all I could do. I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or why I was there. There was only him.

The strange heat was gone. I almost missed it, because now I could feel pain – four or five different kinds, if I thought about it, or I could just let them mix together into one big pain. I was afraid to move, because some of the pains felt dangerous, like they would get much worse if I gave them a reason to. I could feel liquids oozing out of me in places, soaking into the bedding and making cold spots. Was I still in the river? Maybe I was lying in mud on the shore. But no, there was a ceiling over me, so that couldn’t be it.

I looked at that ceiling for a long time. I got to know it really well, the colours, stripes, streaks and knots. It was made of corrugated iron laid on wooden beams. A bright shiny streak in the metal drew my eye. Nearby was a patch of rust that looked like a face with a beard, and a bunch of dark spots, like little black stars. One of the beams was light and plain, another had dark and light stripes, and a third one was all dark, with a couple of knots in it. I counted seven spider webs in the angles between the metal and the beams.

I looked at that ceiling until my eyes got tired and closed. I had a dream about sailing a little silver boat in the sky, with a man who had a bushy red beard.

When I woke up, it was dark. I started to get scared. And mad. Why was I all alone? I knew there was something wrong with me, even if I didn’t know what. I was thirsty and I had to piss. "Screw the pain," I thought, and turned my head so I could see more of the place. When I tried to get up I found out that my arms and ankles were held down with clamps. I couldn’t get loose, no matter how much I struggled. I felt my bladder let go and that’s when I started to yell, like a baby in his crib. I don’t know how long I yelled, but nobody came.

 

When I woke up again, someone was with me. There was still pain, but I could feel heat in the places that hurt –not the dangerous heat like before, but a good heat, as though something was working hard to fix my body. I wasn’t thirsty and the sheets were dry. “Someone is helping me,” I thought. “Maybe it’s the angel.”

He was still there, tucking the blankets around me, pulling them up to my chin. That was what woke me up.

I could see him better now, and I wondered – was this really the angel? I didn’t think angels wore clothes with buttons. And I didn’t think they ever got tired. This man was tired. I could see it in his eyes. That was another thing – his eyes weren’t blue, like Raphael’s, but grey, the colour of river ice before it melts in spring.

He must have seen me looking at him, and he spoke to me for the first time.

“You’re going to live, I think. I wasn’t sure at first, but it’s been twelve hours now. The hemorrhaging has stopped and you’re a little stronger. Tomorrow I’ll move you to a place where you can be looked after properly. Can you speak? What’s your name? Can you tell me that?”

I couldn’t say a thing. I had forgotten how to talk. I could understand his words, but I didn’t know how to make any myself. And my name? I didn’t know that either, and that scared me all over again. He must have seen that, because he touched my shoulder and said,

“Never mind. It’s too early for that. Enough that you’re alive. Don’t worry, I’ll look after you. I want you to live. You’ll be the tenth – one of a select company. Go to sleep now. I’ll be back later.”

I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to think about all this. I would be the tenth what? What was wrong with me? Who was he? And who was I? But I felt a little bee sting in my arm, and then I was sliding asleep.

This time I dreamt that I was on a train, going up a mountain. Part of me was trying to enjoy the trip, but another part kept wondering what would happen when I got to the top. Would the train go roaring down the other side? It went slower and slower. Then there was a jolt and a shake, and I was flying. I woke up, and it was morning, and all the birds were singing.

 

*******

 

Notes from the Case-Book of Herbert West.

 

August 16, 1917, 2:20 a.m.

Subject #17.8.5R (non-experimental)

 

Subject was dead approx. 6 hours. Time between administration of fluid and revivification: 95 minutes. Time elapsed since revivification: 12 hours.

Vital signs: respiration normal; heart rate, 70; blood pressure, 120/60.

General appearance: good.

Injuries: trauma of lower left abdomen, right thigh and left arm. No broken bones. No foreign matter left in wounds. Instilled regenerating substance. Installed drains. Subject stabilized. No further loss of fluids.

Prognosis: excellent.

Cognitive abilities: unknown as yet; subject unable to speak.

 

*******

 

When I opened my eyes again, I knew I was somewhere else. The light was different – daylight, not lamplight like before. I was in a big bright room with windows. And other people. I could see the end of a metal bed, past where my feet were. In the distance, another bed. Grey blankets. I turned my head one way and the other. More metal beds and grey blankets, and in each bed, a man. “Hospital,” I thought. Then, “What’s a hospital? Why did I think that? Who are all these men? Who am I?”

There were people moving around the room. Women, dressed in blue and white. “Mothers,” I thought. But where was he? “I’ll be back.” That was what he’d said. But now I was somewhere else. Would he be able to find me? That was very important. So when one of the mothers came close to me I raised my hand and tried to grab her sleeve.

“Ou est Monsieur L’Ange?” I asked. My voice felt rusty, and she didn’t seem to have heard me, so I said it again, trying hard to talk louder. She turned and bent over me.

“She isn’t a mother at all,” I thought. “She’s too young.” I could see smooth brown hair under the veil she wore. “So she’s a nun,” I thought. Then, “What’s a nun?” Her eyes were light brown, with little green flecks.

“Oh, you can speak now,” she said. “That’s good. I’ll tell Major West. He specially asked us to tell him when you started to talk.”

Of course she spoke in English, and even though I could understand her, I couldn’t answer in English, only in French. “Qui est Major West?” I asked. But she was gone.

When he came, he spoke French to me. At first I couldn’t understand him, because of his strange accent. Plus I had just woken up from a long sleep, so I was feeling stupid. I asked him the first thing that popped into my fuzzy head.

“Is your name Raphael?”

He smiled. “No. My name is Herbert West. I’m your doctor. And you, it seems, are Andre Boudreau, from Grassadoo, New Brunswick.”

He tripped over “Grassadoo,” just enough to make me smile too and nearly forget that the name Andre Boudreau didn’t mean a thing to me. He might have been introducing a stranger.

“If you say so,” I said. “I don’t know who I am. Or where I am. Or anything.”

“It’s all right, Andre,” he said. “You’re perfectly safe with me. I’ll help you get better. So don’t worry.” He touched my shoulder and smiled. And I stopped being scared and went back to sleep.

That was the first time I had this dream: a rutted country road, curving around the side of a hill, and a girl running along it, crying. The girl is my sister, Marguerite, carrying a bundle of food from our mother. “Maman said that no child of hers would ever leave her house hungry.” So sad, her little face was, so sad.

 

*******

 

Notes from the Case Book

 

August 28, 1917

Subject #17.8.5R (Andre Boudreau)

 

Subject appears to be a complete amnesiac. Cognitive abilities may be normal. Speaks English and French (New Brunswick dialect? Odd pronunciation). Short term memory good. Retains knowledge of concepts – hospital, war, army, etc. – but no specifics about himself.

Physical condition improving rapidly. All wounds nearly healed.

Must find reason to keep him here. Amnesia might preclude return to action – verify. Is he a tabula rasa? Experiments with his mental development might prove interesting.

 

*******

 

For six weeks, my home was Ward 11 in the No. 1 Canadian General, in Etaples, France. Six weeks was much longer than most fellows stayed there. It was a surgical ward, and the usual thing was for a guy to be there only until he was a little bit better or dead.

“I suppose you’ll be leaving us soon, Andre,” said the young nurse who had spoken to me on my first day. “You’re doing so well.” Marie, her name was. I liked her. By this time I knew most of the nurses. Some I knew just by their last name: Sister Pringle, Sister Wright, Sister Bowker, Matron Merriweather. But some of them told me their first names – Kate, Jean, Sally. And Marie. By now I knew they weren’t nuns. “Sister” is what nurses are called, for some reason. And since we were in the army, they were all Lieutenants and the Matron was a Captain. It took me a long time to get all that straight.

By that time I’d memorized my own name and rank: Corporal Andre Boudreau, 236^th New Brunswickers. I could come out with that pretty as you please, when I had to. But I might as well have been singing Frere Jacques or some other song, for all it meant anything to me.

“Well, I don’t know, Marie,” I said. “Maybe, but I hope not. I am just used to all you Lieutenants bossing me around. It would be too hard for me to get along with a bunch of new ones.” I tried to make a joke of it, but I was worried. I knew there was something different about me. Everyone else had other people somewhere, that they talked about all the time – mothers, sisters, brothers, wives. Everyone knew where they belonged. But I didn’t. All I had was his words: You are perfectly safe with me.

One day he came over to me and said, “Andre, when I come to see you later, along with some other men, I want you to keep absolutely silent. Do you understand? Not a word. You’d better pretend to be asleep, but whatever you do, don’t look at them like you’re looking at me right now, for God’s sake. Try to look stupid.”

Before I could say a word, he went over to one of the other beds, saying, “Good morning, Matthews. You look much better today.”

By now we talked mostly English. It came back to me pretty quick once I started. The thing that got me going was the Doctor’s way of speaking French. It sounded so funny – not just a little bit funny, like a fellow from Quebec I met in the ward, but really funny. I guess it was his American accent. I never heard a Yankee trying to talk French before, and my God it gave me a good reason to remember my English.

Later that day he came back, along with two other men, officers. They all wore uniforms, not white doctor coats. Remembering what he said, I made a point to look sleepy and stupid. I didn’t say anything, not even when one of them asked me how I was feeling.

The Doctor did most of the talking, explaining to them what was wrong with me and how he had fixed it. A lot of it I couldn’t understand then, about drainage and debridement and secondary infections and stuff like that. Then he said,

“And of course he’ll never be suitable for active service again, you understand.”

One of the others, a man with a face that reminded me of a cod fish, it was so cold and grey, said, “I don’t follow you, West. Once the wounds have finished healing he should be right as a trivet, from what you’ve told us.”

“Exactly,” said the Doctor. “He’ll have about as much intelligence as a trivet too. Do you really want a fellow like that fighting the war? He’ll be a burden to his comrades and probably cause some unnecessary deaths.”

“Well then,” said another man, a young, hairy one who looked like a fox, “why not send him to Ramsgate, with the other shell-shock cases? If they have room, that is. Sometimes I think every other Canadian develops this condition.”

“Did I say anything about shell-shock?” asked the Doctor. “This man is cognitively impaired, to the extent that he should not be returned to the field. I suspect permanent brain damage, so shipping him off to Ramsgate won’t do him any good. By far the most efficient course of action would be to leave him here in my care until his wounds heal. Then I’ll make a final assessment of his mental capabilities, and recommend a course of action.”

The cod fish spoke again. “That’s not your job, West. Your job is to patch ‘em up and move ‘em out. Once they’re out of immediate danger, they don’t belong here. We can’t have you running your own convalescent ward, you know. And you’re a surgeon, not a psychiatrist, so your assessment of someone’s mental abilities is of no more use than any civilian’s.”

I opened my eyes a crack and yawned, as if I was just waking up. The Doctor turned and faced the man who looked like a cod fish. Even then, I knew what it felt like when he looked at you hard like that, and I felt a bit sorry for Monsieur La Morue.

“Sir,” the Doctor said, “I don’t believe I’ve made myself clear. This man is mid-way through a course of treatment that will make the difference between a productive life as a civilian or the life of a permanent invalid, a drain on the state and his family. He must remain here. If you require another opinion besides mine, I would refer you to General Clapham-Lee.”

That seemed to do it for the cod fish – what the Doctor said, or maybe just the name at the end. Soon after, they all went away. I lay there and wondered what was going on.

Whether General Clapham-Lee (whoever he was) pulled a string, or because of something else, I wasn’t inspected again. In fact, it seemed to be all right that Ward 11 became my home for a while.

When I was better, I helped out around the place. There were lots of times when they needed extra help. Mostly I carried things from one place to the next, but when everyone else was busy with a new bunch of wounded men, I did other things too, like feed guys who couldn’t do it themselves, or even help the nurses with dressings. I don’t know if this was the Doctor’s idea or if it just happened. I guess maybe once the nurses saw I was better, they figured I might as well do something useful. Well, I was happy to do it. It kept me from thinking too much about the big black hole where my memories should have been. As for the Doctor, he was pleased as the punch.

“Excellent,” he would say, when he heard about my latest trick. “It’s the best thing for him at this stage.”

I still didn’t know who I was. Oh yes, the Doctor and others kept calling me Andre Boudreau, and I learned pretty fast to answer to that name, and to give it when asked. But there was nothing behind it. I might as well have been a parrot. The same when someone would ask me, “And where are you from?” I’d come up with, “Grassadoo, New Brunswick, Canada,” smart as you please, but if they’d asked me how the air smelled there in spring, or what kinds of birds there were, or flowers, or what my father did for a living, I wouldn’t have a thing to say. Talking to people was like walking on a tightrope in the dark, so sometimes I just wouldn’t talk. I’d pretend I couldn’t speak English, or had become a deaf-dumb. I got good at listening, though.

 

There was a corner outside the back door of the ward that was out of the wind. Someone had put a couple of chairs out there. The day was a little cold, but not raining, so that’s where we were one day in September.

“What’s wrong with me, Doctor?” I asked. “My body is almost healed now. You know that. But I can’t remember anything from before.”

“You were wounded on the fifteenth of August,” he said, “in the battle for Hill 70.” He smiled. “More like a pimple on someone’s backside than a real hill, I understand, but it was important, so you men were sent to take it. The stretcher-bearers picked you up by Cite St. Emile, near the ruins of Lens. You were nearly dead.”

“But I’m not now,” I said.

“No.” Another smile, like he had a joke with himself.

“But I can’t remember anything about what you told me just now! Not that hill, or a battle or anything else.”

“You’re an amnesiac, Andre,” he said. “The injury you sustained damaged your brain. That’s why you can’t remember your past. Not much is known about these things. Some amnesiacs regain their memories, or part of them. Sometimes they never do. It’s too soon to tell with you, but it’s clear that you can learn things and remember what has happened to you since your – since you were wounded.”

That was true, all right. Nearly every day he asked me questions, fast, like gunshots – what was his name, how old was I, what ward was I in, what were the nurses’ names, which doctor had red hair, when were meals served? He was happy when I got the right answers, and wrote about it in his notebook. He also wrote down other things about me, after he listened to my heart and breathing, looked into my eyes, and all that.

But that wasn’t what was really bothering me. “Doctor,” I said, “I don’t understand what made me forget everything. I never got shot in the head. It was my leg and my side and other places that were hurt. Not my head. So how did my brain get damaged? Does this mean I’m a… nerve case?” Nerve cases were bad news. No one seemed to think that anything good could happen to a guy who was a nerve case. Fellows who had lost arms or legs were sent home to their families. (But of course, I didn’t have a family, did I? Not one I knew about, anyway.) But nerve cases went somewhere else. “Oh, he’ll be sent to Ramsgate,” the nurses would say about some poor sap who didn’t talk, just sat there staring into space, drooling. And I always thought, the way they said it, that I sure didn't want to go there.

“Doctor,” I said again, “tell me what really happened to me. I know I’m different, but I don’t know why. Please tell me.”

“You are certainly coming along, Andre,” he said. “Faster than I expected. I didn’t think you would ask these questions so soon. Well, I suppose you must know the truth eventually. The injury to your brain was not the result of an external wound. It was because you were dead. For several hours. You were dead until I brought you back to life, and during that time some parts of your brain were damaged.”

“You brought me back to life?” I said, slowly.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling. “When you were brought in, all of us surgeons had our hands full, so no one could deal with you right away. But I could tell you wanted to live more than any of the others, and that you were a strong man. I said to myself – I will take him next. But by the time I was free, you were dead. I remembered how much you wanted to live, so later I found you in the morgue and brought you back to life.”

“I didn’t know that could be done,” I said. “Is it something new?”

“Something new,” he said, laughing. “Very new, and only I know how to do it. You’re a lucky man, Andre Boudreau.”

“Maybe I am.” I still couldn’t believe what he had told me. “I was really dead?”

“You were really dead, Andre. For nearly six hours. And now you’re alive.”

“Can you do that to anyone? You can bring any dead person back to life? Like Jesus?” I looked at him as though it was the first time I’d seen him. In the daylight there didn’t seem to be anything that strange about him. He was still a young man, older than me, I figured, but not much. He wasn’t much taller than me, either, and I am a short fellow. Where I come from he would have been described by some as a pretty boy, with his yellow hair and nice-looking face – the kind of boy that mothers like to baby a little longer than their other sons. He usually wore eyeglasses, but when he didn’t, you could see that he had long eyelashes, almost like a girl’s. But the eyes that went with them were like nobody else’s I have ever seen. Grey eyes, like ice. I thought, "These eyes could look at anything and not blink. These eyes could look inside me, maybe, and find who I really am." But he was answering my question.

“No, Andre, I can’t bring every dead person back to life. They can’t have been dead very long, for one thing. And even when they come back to life, things aren’t always as they should be. So I’m not really like Jesus.” He smiled to himself again. “But in your case I’m very pleased with the results.”

He pulled out his watch. “I have to go now, but before I do, I want to say two things. Two important things.” He looked right in my eyes, and I felt as though I had been backed up to the wall behind me and held there by force. “First, don’t worry about anything. I will look after you. Second, don’t say anything to anyone about this. The first depends on the second, you see. If you say anything at all, to anyone, I will let you go into the world just as you are, alone. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Doctor,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on his. I almost did it, too. Next thing I knew, he was gone.

I didn’t say anything to anyone. I didn’t even want to. For one thing, I wasn’t sure I believed him. For another, I knew I had to stay with him, and I was pretty sure he was serious when he said he would cut me loose if I talked. I had to stay with him because he knew more about me than anyone. The hospital was part of the war, and the war was always changing, and would end some day. Everyone was hoping it would end soon. When it did, where would I go? Grassadoo, New Brunswick? To me, those were just sounds, with nothing behind them. But he was real. And he could do things no one else could. I thought maybe he was the only person who could help me find myself.

 

Chapter 2

 

A few weeks later, the Doctor must have thought that enough time had passed to see if I would blab or not. When I didn’t, he got on with his plan for me. By that time I was in such good shape it didn’t make sense to keep me on in a ward full of very sick men. Even though I was still a patient, for the past couple of weeks I was more like an orderly. The nurses ordered me around, all right. I scrubbed floors, emptied bed pans, lugged baskets full of laundry, anything I was told.

“If you’re going to do menial work, Andre,” said the Doctor, “you may as well do it officially, for me. From now on, you’ll be my batman. I’ve made all the arrangements. You’ll be on the record as returned to active service, but you’re not going back into combat. Private John Spillane, my current batman, will finally get a chance to cover himself with glory in the field of battle.”

I managed to talk with Marie before I left the ward. Marie Clelland, her name was. I still remember it. “I’ll miss you, Andre,” she said, “but it’s not as though you’re going away. The M.O.’s quarters aren’t that far away, and you won’t be on duty all the time. Maybe I’ll see you.”

She smiled at me, a little shy. I was wearing my new uniform and felt happy and a little funny too.

“I’d like that, Marie,” I said. And I did see her again, too. But that’s not really part of this story.

Later, I went to the mess where the M.O.’s batmen ate, along with the orderlies and other fellows who worked in the hospital. The man who was showing me around introduced me to some other guys. One of them jumped up, came over to me and pumped my hand up and down.

“Well, well, Andre Boudreau,” he said. “Glad to know you. You’re the boy who’s letting me get out of this place. Cripes, I’ll be glad to have the smell of Clorox behind me for good! I can finally be a soldier, not a scrub woman. The Huns better look out, for they’ll have John Spillane to deal with now!” He was still pumping my hand. I pulled it away before he could hurt it and said,

“John Spillane? I’ve heard that name before. From Major West. Do you know him?”

“Do I know him? Boy, I know all about him! Don’t you get it? You’re my replacement. For the past year I’ve been his batman, and now it’s going to be you, you lucky devil.”

He sat me down and poured me a cup of coffee as black as tar from an enamel jug. “Better have milk in that, boy,” he said. “Takes the edge off. You don’t want to get sick, your first day and all.”

He was a skinny guy with red hair and blue eyes that stuck out of his face and made him look like he was always excited about something, which wasn’t exactly wrong. He talked fast, with an accent I’d never heard before. So I asked him where he came from. That’s how I got to know a lot more about Private John Spillane than I ever wanted to.

“I’m from St. John’s, Newfoundland,” he began. “Born in Shoe Cove. I joined the Canadian Army right after Beaumont Hamel. I heard they didn’t always use the colonials to take the edge off the enemy, the way the Brits do. They took me, all right. I was a live one, ready to go, eh? Just like they took our Dr. Iceberg, for all he’s a Yankee.”

“Dr. Iceberg?” I asked. “You mean Major West?”

“Damn right, but he don’t insist on Major. Rank isn’t important to him, or Army rules, or who sucks up to who. That’s one of the good things about him.”

“But why do you call him Iceberg?”

“Well, there’s two ways to explain that.” He stopped talking and lit up a short black pipe before going on. “Most people say it’s because he’s cold, like ice. Well, I think that’s wrong. It’s for sure that when he doesn’t have time for you he lets you know it, but he can be a great talker, just the same. OK, he talks to you, mostly, not with you, if you get my meaning, but he does talk. I figured out the way to deal with him is hop to it and do what you’re told, but ask a few questions while you’re at it, even argue a bit. That’s if you know what you’re talking about. He has no time for stupid questions, that’s for sure. You’ll know you’ve put your foot in it, Andre my boy, if the Iceberg gives you one of those ball-freezing looks and says, ‘A moment’s thought will show you how unnecessary that question was.’”

He was good at sounding like other people, John Spillane was. His Newfoundland accent changed to Yankee, and I almost thought it was the Doctor talking. Then I started to laugh.

“Ha! I see you know what I mean.” Spillane was laughing too. “I only did it once, I can tell you. After that I checked with myself before I said anything to him, and we got along fine.”

“And the other reason?”

“Other reason? Oh, why he’s the Iceberg – well, because there’s more to him than you can see, that’s why. Have you ever seen an iceberg, Andre?”

Had I? I didn’t know. I shook my head.

“Well, where I come from we see ‘em all the time. Big buggers, too, like castles made of ice. But the thing is – the part you see is only the very top. Under the water, there’s way more – eight or nine castles all stuck together, maybe. And that’s the way it is with Dr. West. Most people think he’s just a little stuck-up Yankee bastard who happens to be really good with a knife and has no time for anyone who doesn’t need cutting up. But they’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I think he’s got his own reasons for things. Not the usual kinds of reasons. Like being in the Army. Figure – he’s an American, but he joins the Canadian Army. Why? Well, maybe just because the American Army was sitting on its ass while all of us were getting ours shot off, starting in ’14. But like I just told you, the usual Army stuff, like being called Sir, and getting saluted, and wearing a uniform with all those extra badges and things on it – well, he doesn’t give a damn about that. Oh, he always looks pressed and polished – that’s part of his game, all right. Don’t I know it too, seeing as I was the sap who did all the pressing and polishing. But it’s just a game to him. So he’s here for some other reason. I figure it’s ‘cause here he’s got a chance to do some really fancy surgery. Probably way more than he was doing in that place he comes from – somewhere in the Boston States. See, I think working on all these soldiers is practice for him, so he can be really good at the doctoring game when he goes home. And that’s not all.”

He leaned closer to me and spoke more quietly. “No, I figure he’s got another reason for being here, something he doesn’t want anyone to know about.”

“So how do you know about it? Did he tell you?”

“Ah, Andre my boy, I can see you don’t mean that. You’re pretty quick, for a boy who was nearly dead a couple of months ago. No, he didn’t tell me. It’s just that I figured out he wasn’t spending his free time the way most of the officers do – drinking and telling each other lies in the Officers’ Club, or going off to Paris-Plage for a bit of fun. Oh, he does that too, or something like it. You’ll hear all kinds of stories. But lots of times he’d just disappear for hours. All night, sometimes. And he’d turn up next day looking, well, not hung over – I know what that looks like, no question. No, he’d look… wrung out, somehow, like he’d been rasseling with something all night. Lucky for him he needs less sleep than most. Four hours, five at most. It’s hard to catch him napping.

“Anyway, I just got curious. I mean, what’s there to do around here? Except the obvious, and he wasn’t doing that. And whatever it was, it was close by the hospital. He’d just reappear, like, when it was time for him to go on duty. Dependable that way, he is. So one time I thought I’d follow him. I kept a sharp lookout and slipped out after him, but not too quick. He made a beeline for all those storage huts behind the hospital. You don’t know them? Well, there’s the wards, then the living quarters, then the morgue – dead quarters, you might say. Behind that there’s a whole bunch of storage huts, where supplies are kept, and stuff packed away that’s broken or no one needs, or God knows what. There’s a regular maze of alleys in between the huts, and that’s where I made my mistake. I went around a corner a little too quick and he spotted me. He turns around and comes over to me.

“‘And where might you be going, Private Spillane?’ he asks, and he don’t look friendly at all. And he usually calls me John. ‘Is there a fire somewhere?’

“‘No Sir,’ I says. ‘I was just out for a walk, you see – ’

“‘I doubt that, John Spillane,’ he says. He grabs one of my arms and starts to march me along the way we’d come from. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice. Stay away from this area. That’s an order.’

“Well, that was a surprise. He didn’t usually give orders. ‘Yes, Sir,’ was all I could say to that.

“By this time we’re nearly back to the hospital area, and he lets me go, with a little shove. ‘Good night, John,’ he says, and be damned if he doesn’t go back to where we’d come from, but I didn’t have the guts to follow him again. I was still curious as hell, but Mrs. Spillane’s son John wasn’t born yesterday, and I could tell he meant what he said. So I didn’t go back. But that’s what I mean when I say there’s more to the Iceberg than you can see.”

“So what do you think he’s up to?”

“No idea. But something big, and something secret. Maybe you’ll find out, eh?”

I tried to smile, to show him I didn’t take all this too seriously. How could I tell if any of it was true? But it got me thinking, and I didn’t want to talk about what I was thinking. Instead I asked, “What’s it like, working for him? You have to hop to it, you say?”

“Damn right! Do it fast and do it right. He likes his water hot and his razors extra sharp. And everything polished until you can see your face in it. He does the basic stuff for himself, though – shaving, dressing, all that. Now some of these officers, from what I hear, they’d get their poor batman to wipe their arse, just because they’ve got one. Batman, that is.” He grinned. “But he’s not like that. You don’t have to salute every time you turn around, and most of the time he’d rather you called him Dr. West and not Sir. But don’t even try to give him burnt toast. He’ll throw it back at you. Well, I guess because it was the third time that week. And no stupid questions. Remember all that and you’ll be fine. Well, it’s been a treat talking with you, Andre. Good-bye and good luck.”

“Good luck to you, John Spillane,” I said, holding out my hand and getting ready for him to use it like a pump handle. “And thank you.”

I never did find out what happened to Spillane. Maybe he made it back to Newfoundland, or maybe he died somewhere in France. I don’t know. I thought about him now and then, and told myself I should ask the Doctor if he knew anything. But I never did.

 

*******

 

Notes from the Case Book

 

Oct. 14, 1917

Subject #17.8.5R (A. Boudreau)

 

Subject completely recovered physically. Has regained strength and agility. Cognitive abilities excellent, but he has no memories. He is a tabula rasa. This is an excellent opportunity to observe a revivified subject in the long term, and to experiment with certain subtleties, e.g., does he possess what is commonly called a conscience?

 

*******

 

A short time after I began to work for the Doctor, something happened. I’d been reading the Doctor’s notebooks between jobs. I couldn’t understand everything, but some of it was so interesting I forgot all about the time going by until my stomach started rumbling. The food in our mess wasn’t that good, but I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like my body meant to build itself up, using whatever was handy.

I put the notebook away and was about to leave, when I heard someone coming into the other room. It was the Doctor, which was a surprise. He never came to his quarters in the middle of the day. There was someone with him, a taller fellow with dark hair. By now I could tell more about ranks, and this was a big one. So I decided to keep quiet.

The Doctor said, “Since you insist on having this discussion now, this is the only possible place. I can’t spare the time to go anywhere else. I can’t spare the time at all, for that matter, but – "

“Never mind that, West,” said the other one, and I could tell he was English, not Canadian. “You will spare the time when I say so.”

“You are very autocratic suddenly, Eric,” said the Doctor. His voice was a bit quieter than before, and there was something about it that made my skin go prickly.

“I’m not here to play games,” said the Englishman. “I want results and I want them now. You’ve been leading me on for too long with nothing to show for it.”

“'There is none so blind as he that will not see,'” said the Doctor. “You’ve seen many of my patients. You’ve been able to compare them with similar cases handled by others. Are these not results? What more do you want?”

“I want to know how you achieved those results. The precise amounts, the exact procedures. You know damned well what I’m talking about, West!”

“Eric, when we began this enterprise, I understood that it was to be a scientific collaboration. A collaboration involves equal contributions by both parties. Unfortunately, it seems that all the scientific contributions have been made by me. Until I see indications that you’re a true participant in this effort, there’s little incentive for me to hand over the particulars.”

I could tell that the Englishman was getting mad. His voice got louder. “You know damned well what my contributions have been, West! You wouldn’t have been able to make a move without me pulling strings for you every step of the way. You’d still be at St. Eloi, or dishonourably discharged! And anyway, you can stop pretending to be the impartial scientist. I’ve been having you watched, these last few months, and I know that science is only a pretext for you.”

“I’m not certain I understand you.” By now the Doctor’s voice was so quiet I could hardly hear him. The other fellow talked more quietly too, but in a heavy way. He was facing in my direction, while the Doctor had his back to me.

“The morgue, West. You’ve been seen there more times than is exactly healthy for a surgeon whose primary concern should be the welfare of the living. And at least once you’ve been seen transporting what appeared to be a corpse to that private laboratory of yours. Misuse and mutilation of dead bodies is a serious offence. And I can think of some even less savoury possibilities. What do you say now?”

“I say that you and your informants, whoever they are, certainly have lively imaginations. If I had more time at my disposal I would be interested to hear more of these lurid tales, but – ”

“Listen to me, West!” The English voice got louder again, and I had an idea its owner had taken a step closer to the Doctor. “May I remind you that your position is a precarious one and that to maintain it you depend upon me. If you persist in reneging on your part of our agreement, I will speak to certain persons. I know more about you than you realize. I will give them information that they will not be able to ignore, no matter how brilliant a surgeon you are. And I will not raise a finger to protect you when investigations begin into your conduct. Quite the contrary. Now, I’ve given you fair warning, and this is your last chance to cooperate.”

“Very well, Eric,” said the Doctor. “You’ve made yourself perfectly clear. But before we discuss terms and particulars, allow me to give you a demonstration of my methods, in my private laboratory. You will find them exceedingly interesting, I think. Would tonight be convenient for you? We can meet at – midnight, say? I think that would be appropriate.”

“Is this another of your diversions, West? Because if that’s all it is, I’m not interested.”

“Diversions? What an odd choice of word. No, Eric, I’m not engaged in diversions. The techniques I’m prepared to demonstrate will address some of the concerns which you seem to think are so pressing, that’s all. Results, if you will. So – you know where to find me, and when. Now I really must go.”

He must have pushed past the fellow and left. I heard the door close and the Englishman said, to himself I guess, “Damn that bastard!” The door opened and closed again, and I was alone. I missed lunch after all, but I wasn’t worried about that, because I was too busy trying to figure out all the stuff I had just heard.

 

I didn’t see the Doctor again until late that night, or I guess early next morning. I must have been asleep for a while when I heard him come in. It couldn’t have been a very hard sleep, because I was wide awake right away. I jumped into my clothes, flattened down my hair with my hands, and went to see if he needed anything. Sometimes, when he came in late after a heavy night, he would ask me to make him some tea. When it was ready he would tell me to have some too, and he would talk. To me, not with me, like John Spillane said, but talk he would. He’d tell about the men he’d worked on that night, the things he’d had to do to them, how many had died, how many looked like living ‘til morning. I think he forgot I didn’t know anything about surgery, but I guess he had to say these things to someone, and I figured it was part of my job to listen.

That night he didn’t ask for tea. “Andre, it’s good of you to get up. Thank you.” Then he started walking around the room. That was a bit of a trick, because it was a very small room. Suddenly he stopped and asked, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“I guess I must have. When I was a soldier. Before. But I can’t remember.”

“Of course not.” He combed his hair with his fingers, the way I did when I got up. “How could I have forgotten that?” He began walking around again.

Then he asked, “What was it like, when you were dead?”

“It was like... nothing. It was black. Just nothing. Or maybe I don’t remember. Coming back, that was bad. I was afraid. But after, it got better. When you helped me.”

I thought I knew what was wrong, and I thought I could help. “Did one of them die, Doctor? Because you made a little mistake, maybe? But for you it must be easier, no? Because you could bring him back, like you did with me, and fix him up.”

He laughed at that. He stopped walking and looked at me, and laughed. “It’s not exactly like that. Well, in a way it is. Yes, you could say I made a mistake. Several mistakes. But I think I know how to correct them. Tell me, Andre, what’s it like, not to remember anything? Is it worse than being dead?”

I thought about this for a while. I wasn’t used to talking about these things, and it took me a while to get it all sorted out. I thought about my life and the little things that made me happy – fellows laughing and talking in the mess hall, the taste of hot food and hot tea, how good it was to go to sleep, the sounds of birds singing, watching a pretty sunset, talking to Marie… “I am afraid, when I think about how I am so alone. Memories, that seems to be what holds a person to other people, and I don’t have a lot of those. But… I think it’s better to be alive.”

“Why?” He was looking at me hard.

“Because every day there are good things. I can think about them before I go to sleep. And someday I’ll have a lot of memories, because I can remember all the good things that happened since you brought me back.”

“But if you couldn’t remember, from one day to the next? If every day was like the first one? What about that?”

“I don’t know, Doctor. I can’t think how that would be. Maybe not so good. Maybe dead would be better than that.”

He sent me to get some hot water and began to get ready for bed. When I was going out I heard him say to himself, “Better than dead would be too good for him. Cutting all connections, that’s the ticket. Can it be done so precisely, though? But of course the essential one is that of recognition.”

The next day, the Doctor told me he had a new memory exercise for me. He took some things out of a case and put them on the table. “I want to see if you can learn to recognize these objects and their names, Andre,” he said. “The test will be whether you can hand me the correct one when I ask for it. And I want to see how quickly you can learn, so we will do the test tomorrow night.”

For half an hour he told me the names and made me say them after him: scalpel, small forceps, large forceps, retractor, cannula, clamp, dermatome, hemostat, snipper, snarple, quiddger. Names like that. Even after all these years, I can remember them (well, most of them) and the things they stood for. Steel instruments with sharp points and edges. Tools for slicing and peeling, taking apart and putting back together, but not for vegetables or wood or machines, but bodies. When I think about them, it brings back memories of the things I saw him do. He was like a magician in those days.

The rest of that day, and all of the next, I studied the things every chance I got. The Doctor gave me a folded paper that had the names written out on one side, and pictures of the things on the folded-over side, so I could check how I was doing. By the end of the second day I had it perfect. I could tell all the names without a mistake. I was pretty happy with myself and hoped he would come soon and do the test, before I forgot anything.

But he didn’t come. Supper was over in all the messes, and fellows were sitting around talking, like they always did.

“I guess the M.O.s are all run off their feet tonight,” said one. “Lots of convoys coming in and all the operating rooms busy. They’re at it again out there – another big push by bloody Ypres. Some place called Passchendaele. Sounds like it’s a real slaughter.”

So that’s where he is, I thought. Well, the test would wait. I thought about the men who were getting killed and hurt out there. Men like I was once.

Someone else piped up. “What’s all this about one of the bigwigs going missing? Clapham-Lee – no one’s seen him for days, I heard.”

“Probably ran away. Can’t stand the sight of mud and blood,” growled a third guy, one who wanted everybody to think he’d seen it all.

“Not this guy. He never sees ‘em ‘til they’ve been cleaned up, if at all. He’s a General. An administrator. I bet it’s got something to do with that fight he had the other day with Iceberg West. You know anything about that, Boudreau?

“Clapham-Lee?” I asked. “Who’s he? I don’t know anybody like that. And Major West, he doesn’t tell me all those things.”

“Brigadier-General Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee,” said the first guy, like he was singing something. “D.S.O., yet. What a mouthful, eh? There’s quite a stink about him taking off, it seems. So what with this and that, our betters have their hands full tonight.”

I didn’t say any more, just let them yap. I was busy thinking. Eric. Yes, that was the name. But whatever this was about, it was the Doctor’s business. And then I thought, "Like me."

 

I was sleeping hard this time, and he had to shake me. “Come on, Andre,” he said. “Wake up and sharpen your wits. Didn’t I say we would do the test tonight? Well, now is the time.”

I sat up and looked at him. I could see from his face that he was tired, maybe exhausted. So I asked, “Now, Doctor? But it’s late. It’s – ”

“It’s after two o’clock in the bloody morning. But this can’t wait, and tomorrow for me will be like today, or worse. So the sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll finish.”

“But if it’s just a test for my memory, it can wait, can’t it? I don’t mind. You should get some sleep, Doctor.”

“Oh, this will test your memory, all right. And it’s more important than sleep.” He poured water into a basin. “Wash up and get dressed. Lots of soap. Hurry up.”

What could I do, except what he told me? I washed fast and got into my clothes. By the time I was done, the Doctor was ready to go out again. He handed me my coat. “Now come on, and don’t make any noise!”

He led the way out of the building. It was very dark but he didn’t use a light. We didn’t go toward the hospital but in the other direction. Past the morgue, to where the storage huts were. He knew his way through the narrow alleys, all right, just like he’d been there lots of times. He walked fast, and I had to hustle to keep up.

After a while, the Doctor stopped by a hut that looked just like all the others. We were quite a ways from the hospital. There was no one around and it was really dark, with clouds hanging low from the sky. I could hear heavy guns firing, a long way off. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. “Quickly!” he whispered, almost pushing me inside. Once we were both in he closed the door and put on a light.

It was a small place, just a single room maybe twenty feet square. There was a little stove in one corner, and it was going, because the room was warm. A kettle on the stove was steaming. There were shelves with all sorts of things I’d never seen before – glass things, and bottles and jars full of different coloured stuff. The one little window was covered with black cloth. A bright light hung over a table in the middle of the room. On the table was something covered with a blanket. It looked like a body.

“Who’s that, Doctor?” I asked. “Why is he here? Is he dead?”

“Too many questions!” he said, taking off his coat. “We have no time to waste. See that basin? Pour some of that boiling water into it. We need it good and hot, like for shaving. Get on with it, man.”

Well, we both stripped down to our shirtsleeves and washed up again. We washed like the Mother of God herself was going to inspect our hands to see if they were really clean. Then we put on some white clothes that were hanging up close by. I didn’t know what was going on, but I did what I was told. The only thing that made me a bit nervous was the fellow on the table. The Doctor had taken the blanket off him, leaving him covered with a sheet up to his neck. I realized he wasn’t dead after all, because I could see him breathing.

When we were finally finished washing and dressing, the Doctor went over to the guy and called me over. “All right, Andre. Here’s your chance to show me how good your memory is. Here are the instruments, on this tray. Stand here by me, and give me the correct ones when I ask for them.” He poured some red stuff from a bottle onto a pad of cloth and rubbed that man’s face with it, all over, like he was going to get inspected too. Then the Doctor said, “Scalpel, please, Andre,” and my eye went to the right thing on the tray, and my hand went after it.

He never did tell me what he was doing. All I knew was that the man lay on the table like he was asleep, while the Doctor cut his face. He cut in many places. He took things out and put things in. Time went by – three hours, maybe four. I kept my mind on my business and handed him the right thing every time. It was interesting. All the snipping and stitching he did made me think of sewing, except for the blood.

He didn’t talk much, until right at the end. By that time, there were lines of stitches all over the man’s face. “He will have a new face now, Andre,” the Doctor said. “You and I have made it for him. What do you think of that?”

“It is very good, Doctor,” I said. “But why did he need a new face? He already had one. I saw it.”

He gave me a funny look. “You might say he had outlived the old one. Now go and fetch those blankets, and make sure there’s lots of boiling water. Use it to clean the instruments while I attend to our patient.” He smiled at me. “You’ve done very well Andre. You’ve more than passed the test. Hold up a little longer and you’ll be able to get some sleep.”

Once the instruments were clean, he didn’t seem to need my help anymore and I figured he didn’t want me getting in the way. I was tired so I sat down on the only chair in the place. After a minute or two, I leaned back and looked up at the ceiling and nearly shouted at what I saw – corrugated iron on wooden beams, with a long scratch in the metal and a patch of rust. One of the beams was plain light-coloured wood, another had light and dark stripes, the third was dark and knotted.

The last thing the Doctor did before we left was to fasten metal clamps on the man’s wrists and ankles. They held him onto the table, flat on his back. “Why do you do that?” I asked.

“So he won’t do any damage to himself,” said the Doctor. “He’ll be all right for a while. Let's go.”

But I wasn’t ready. “The spider webs are gone,” I said, pointing at the ceiling. “There were seven of them. I counted them over and over.”

He stopped and looked at me, one arm in a coat sleeve. “Yes. I thought they gave the place an air of slovenliness. So you’ve realized where you are, have you? I suppose you could say you were born here.”

“Him too?” I pointed at the man on the table.

“Him too. Not only that, he has acquired a whole new persona here.”

“Did you tie me down like that too? So I wouldn’t hurt myself?” I remembered the feeling of not being able to move.

“Of course. Cruel, perhaps, but necessary. And it was for only a short time. Do you have any other questions?”

“What did you do to him, Doctor?”

“Tonight? A rhinoplasty, a blepharoplasty and some adjustments to the zygomaticomaxillary region. Or you might describe it as a radical hubrectomy, perhaps, but that remains to be seen. Come along, Andre.”

 

*******

 

Notes from the Case Book

 

Nov. 5, 1917

Subject #17.8.15R (A.B.)

 

Subject performed splendidly, assisting with a complex procedure that required alertness and exercise of memory. What is especially gratifying is that he appears to be untroubled by excessive scruples and only a little by curiosity.

 

Subject #17.11.3R (E.C.L.)

 

Subject is doing as well as can be expected. Incisions healing well. Unable to articulate. Mental capacity limited. Must be kept in isolation until permanence of these conditions can be verified.

 

*******

 

The next several weeks, the weeks of Passchendaele, were hard for the Doctor, as they were for all of us. The convoys of wounded were never-ending. In some ways those were good weeks for me. I was always busy, and I saw Marie more often than usual.

But when I had time, I thought about that night. There were two questions I couldn’t answer and couldn’t get rid of. They bothered me, like a job I’d left unfinished. One: who was that man? Two: why didn’t the Doctor move him to the hospital, where it would be so much easier to look after him?

Finally, I asked. The Doctor didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “He was like you, Andre. He was dead, and I made him live again. But something went wrong. He didn’t just lose his memory. He lost his mind. I don’t want people to know that because it would give some of them a reason to stop me from doing this – bringing the dead back. So I changed the way he looks. I’m very good at that. No one will recognize him now. No one will know where he came from. In a few more days I will take him to the hospital. After a while he’ll be sent to England to recover. Don’t worry about him. As to who he was, that cannot make a particle of difference to you, so don’t bother asking.”

“I see,” I said. “You are very clever, Doctor.”

“Yes, I am.” He smiled and put one of his hands on my shoulder, and I felt something like the good warmth when he was healing me after I came back from being dead. “And you, Andre,” he said, “you are clever too. What are you going to do, now that you know about this?”

“Nothing,” I answered, looking at him straight.

“Good.” He hit my arm, just lightly, not to hurt. “I knew I could rely on you. You are a good man, Andre Boudreau.”

“I am your man, Doctor,” I said.

 

The rest of the War went by pretty fast. For us in the hospital it was like this: a few days or weeks of quiet, then a big rush of convoys, over and over again. It didn’t matter where the men came from, they all needed the same things from us. The battles were just names, not even places on a map, not for me – Amiens, Drocourt-Queant, Canal du Nord, Cambrais, Mons. The names changed, but the wounds were the same, the Doctor said. Then in November, a year after we gave that man his new face, it was over.

The Doctor had been with the Canadian Army since 1914. Now he wanted to go home. Before the end of November, he told me to pack up all his gear, because he was supposed to leave on one of the hospital ships going to Portland, Maine, early in December.

“From Portland it’s not so very far to Arkham, where I live,” he said. “For me it’s a very good arrangement. And now, Andre, we have something to decide, you and I. Do you want to go home?”

“Home? You mean, to New Brunswick?” I asked, feeling stupid.

“Yes, of course. To Grassadoo. That’s your home, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but…” I didn’t know what to say, so I looked at the floor. Raising my head, I saw my own long face in a mirror on the wall. I didn’t want to look at that, so I looked at the Doctor instead. He was waiting for me to say something, and I thought he felt sorry for me.

“Doctor,” I said, “I don’t have a home. Yes, there in New Brunswick, at Grassadoo, I guess there are people who know me, people who are my family. But I don’t know them. I am scared to go back there. They would… know more about me than I do, and they might… take me over. I don’t think they would understand how it is with me. They might think I should be the way I was before, and maybe I can’t do that. So no, I don’t want to go home, not until I know who I am. But I don’t know where else to go, either.”

I couldn’t help thinking about Marie. She’d come running over to me, a couple of days after the Armistice, all happy because she’d gotten a letter from her fiancé, a soldier. He was safe, she said, her eyes shining like stars, and soon they’d be together. “Oh, I’m so happy, Andre, I could just kiss everyone in the world!” And she did kiss me, and I said I was very happy for her, but inside me it was like when a big cloud comes and covers up the sun.

“Just as I thought,” the Doctor said. “Andre, I have a proposition for you. If you like, you can come with me to Arkham and work for me. The work would be similar to what you’ve been doing this past year, only a little more interesting, perhaps. Less brass to polish, for one thing.” He laughed. “You've done so well here, I don’t believe I could manage without you now. You will have room and board, of course, as well as a salary. We’ll work that out later. And should you want to go back to New Brunswick, or anywhere else, for that matter, all you need to do is give me a month’s notice. Arkham isn’t a bad place to live – a pleasant place, really. The climate can be a little trying, at times, but… And I’m not such a bad sort to work for, eh? So what do you say?”

I looked at him. I could not speak. Since the Armistice, and especially since he’d told me he was getting ready to leave, I had been afraid. I knew I had to make some plans of my own, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think myself into the world beyond the No. 1 Canadian General Hospital. And now this. I was like a man who falls into a well, and just before he sinks someone throws him a rope. I grabbed it with both hands.

“Doctor, thank you,” I said. “I would be happy to work for you, yes, very happy, even if it’s Hell you live in, not Arkham, Massachusetts.”

He laughed again, and held out his hand. “Splendid! I think it's a good solution – for both of us.” When I shook his hand, I remembered that hot feeling I had, coming out of the darkness – was it really the darkness of death? Had this man really brought me back from that? First he gave me life, and now he would give me a living.

I will work for him, I thought. That is what I want. I don’t know who I am. By myself, I am lost and weak. But he has a power. I don’t know what sort of a power it is, but it will hold me up until I am stronger. Yes, and maybe someday I can help him.

 

Chapter 3

 

On the ship there wasn’t much for me to do. The Doctor had some sick men to look after, but most of them weren’t very sick, and they were all happy to be going home for Christmas. I was jealous of them when I heard them talking about that – the “folks” who were waiting for them, and the good times they expected to have. I was happier after we docked and went our separate ways – they back to Canada, the Doctor and I to Arkham.

We had a long train ride from Portland, and it was dark when we got to the station. A friend of the Doctor’s was waiting for him and drove us to his house. I didn’t see much of the place that first night – only that it was a big house, and that he lived on the second floor.

I was happy in Arkham. If I’d had my way, we would never have left.

 

The Doctor’s house was on Boundary Street, near the west edge of the town, close to the hospital and the University. On the first floor were his offices, along with the main kitchen and storage rooms. His living quarters and my room were on the second floor. Above was the attic. In the cellar there was a room with the furnace, another one full of wine, and – but I won’t talk about that yet.

Each room had its own feeling, like the entrance hall with its dark wood paneling and the biggest mirror I ever saw. The parlour was a big room with white walls and a lot of chairs and little tables and a cabinet full of bottles and glasses. There were fancy lamps, silver candlesticks, crystal ornaments, a piano, and special windows with coloured glass. There was a mirror here too, but it wasn’t like the entrance hall one. I could see my face in it, but it looked funny, like I was underwater. When I asked the Doctor why he kept it, he said, “Because I think it’s interesting. Sometimes one needs a mirror that shows things as they are not.”

The dining room was the most beautiful. It had pictures painted on the walls, of grass and flowers. The furniture was pretty, light coloured, not like all the dark wood in the parlour. Next to it was the upper kitchen, with a thing called a dumb waiter that Mrs. Fisk and I used to send things up from the main kitchen and back down again.

Mrs. Adele Fisk was the Doctor’s housekeeper. When I started to go out and deal with people in Arkham, I could tell that they were very happy to see me – no, not Andre Boudreau, but Dr. West’s man.

Mrs. Fisk explained this when I told her. “Of course they like to deal with him! He always pays his bills – right away, too. Has he ever been late with your salary, or mine? Dr. West is a wealthy man, no question about that.”

“Where did his money come from?” I wanted to know as much about him as I could, but I didn’t ask him things like that.

“His father left him a lot when he died,” Mrs. Fisk said. “Where he got it, I don’t know, so don’t ask me. He was a big businessman in Boston. Some say not a very honest man, but don’t ask me about that either.”

It didn’t take me long to get used to my new job. It wasn’t too different from the old one, except that I didn’t wear a uniform and didn’t have to salute. When I forgot and did that, the Doctor laughed. “You’re not in the army any more, Andre,” he said. But I still had to work quick and sharp.

Mrs. Fisk didn’t come until nine o’clock, so I made toast and coffee and brought them to the Doctor’s study at seven o’clock. Very hot coffee, and toast that wasn’t burnt, even a little bit.

Most mornings he went to the hospital first thing. Some days he came back early to see patients in his office on the first floor. Other days he was at the University, and went out three or four evenings a week. He was an important person in Arkham, I could see that.

Sometimes he took me along when he went to other places, like Boston and New York City. I liked that especially when we drove the Hispano-Suiza.

The Hispano-Suiza! It was a wonderful car – H6B model, 1919, the first car I ever got to know, and I’ll never forget her. I am still sorry he had to leave her behind when we left Arkham for good.

Part of my job was to see that the Hispano was kept in good running order. The Doctor hired a mechanic to work on her, a fellow called Joe Hodges, who ran a garage in Arkham. When he first saw the Hispano, he said, “A French car! Well, I’ll be damned! And you’re Andre, you say? Andre Boudreau? Did you come with the car? Maybe you know how she works, because I sure don’t.”

That was how we got to be friends, Joe and me, when I helped him figure out how the Hispano worked. It was like I had a feel for it, somehow. Joe said I was a mechanical whiz. The Doctor said I was “an idiot savant of the machine.” Idiot, that’s not so good, but I know savant. That means a wise man, so I think it comes out to the same thing as a mechanical whiz. I can figure out what’s wrong with almost any machine just by looking it over and listening to it. But the Doctor’s Hispano was the first one, and I still miss her.

He let me drive her sometimes when we went out of town and he had to read or write something on the way. I was a pretty good driver, but didn’t go as fast as him.

Looking after the Doctor’s clothes took up a lot of my time. My God, that man had a lot of clothes! I was always busy brushing and pressing, sewing on buttons and mending, taking things to his Arkham tailor for adjustments, and to the laundry, of course. Then there were boots and shoes to polish, moth balls to replenish, and so on. The Doctor was one of the best-dressed men in Arkham, so all my work paid off, I guess.

Chauffeur, mechanic, butler, valet, that was me, a little bit of all those. And more.

Sometimes the Doctor invited his friends to dinner. Mrs. Fisk and I would hustle around, cleaning and polishing, bringing in extra food and the right wines from the cellar. Mrs. Fisk stayed late to do the cooking and I would get dressed up to greet the guests and serve the meal. First I had to learn how to do all that, of course. They don’t teach you those fancy things in the mess tents, believe me. The Doctor and Mrs. Fisk, they showed me how – which side to pass the plates from, how to pour wine, how to do things for the guests without bothering them. The Doctor was just as tickled when I learned all this as he was back in the War, when I passed his memory tests. “Now you have another set of skills to add to your repertoire, Andre,” he said.

I liked those dinners. I liked to see people come to his house and fill up the empty rooms, eat, drink and enjoy themselves. Most of them were doctors and Professors from the University. Only a few times there were ladies too. I think it was because with ladies there, the Doctor couldn’t get them all arguing, except he called it “debating.” Ladies aren’t supposed to argue, except for Mrs. Fisk, but then, she wasn’t a regular lady. After they had enough to drink, someone would play the piano and the rest would sing. There was one fellow called Dr. Billington who could play some lively tunes. Listening to them, I would almost remember something – something from Before. Before I died, I mean.

The Doctor had one friend who wasn’t like the rest. His name was Charles Milburn. He was a librarian at the University, and was the one who met us at the train station when we came to Arkham after the War. I didn’t get a good look at him then, but I did soon after, lots of times, because he visited a lot.

He was a skinny guy, taller than the Doctor, and… dégingandé, you would say in French. He was younger too, by a couple of years (Mrs. Fisk told me), but I wouldn’t have guessed that. I didn’t think he was very healthy, because he limped a bit and wore spectacles with thick glass. Maybe he didn’t have much money. At first, I thought he was an old friend the Doctor knew when they were both children, and that’s why he was nice to him, but when I said something about that, the Doctor looked surprised.

“Now where would you get that idea? Charles and I both grew up in Boston, but he was Beacon Hill old money and I was Back Bay nouveau riche, and if you don’t know the difference, there’s no point in my explaining it. Don’t worry yourself with these details.” So I didn’t ask any more, but I still wondered about Mr. Charles Milburn.

A couple of times a month, the two of them would spend the whole evening in the Doctor’s sitting room or study, talking and drinking. I don’t know what it was they talked about. Sometimes it was serious, other times they’d laugh and Mr. Milburn would play the piano. I don’t think he played very well. It was hard to tell, because he didn’t play tunes like Dr. Billington did. Mostly it was gloomy-sounding stuff, or maybe he was just making sounds, not music. But the Doctor didn’t seem to mind. He’d lie on the sofa and listen, or walk around the room and talk about something. Mr. Milburn wouldn’t say much, just keep plonking away. I guess that’s how it is when people are old friends.

On these evenings the Doctor would sometimes ask me to pour him a glass of the absinthe he’d brought back from France, mixed with water. Maybe that made it taste better. I tried a bit once, and My God it was bitter. He didn’t drink very much of it (and no wonder).

Mr. Milburn didn’t drink absinthe, but he did like Scotch whiskey.

You will ask, maybe, What about you, Andre? Didn’t you have any friends, there in Arkham? Well, I did. Besides Joe Hodges the mechanic and Jim Arnott the gardener, I got to know all kinds of people. The Doctor gave me a day and an evening off every week, so I got out a bit. I was pretty well-dressed, too. The Doctor paid me well, and I thought he would want me to be a credit to him.

I met some nice young ladies, too, who thought that Andre Boudreau, Dr. West’s man, wasn’t a bad fellow. But that isn’t really part of this story.

 

One evening the Doctor said, “Andre, I need your help with something. Come with me.”

I followed him down to the cellar. He went over to some shelves that held wine bottles lying on their sides, and moved the whole thing, bottles and all. Now I know about the hidden latch, but I didn’t then. Behind the shelves was a door. The Doctor unlocked it and waved at me to follow him.

There was a big room behind the door, full of all kinds of things. Some of them I had seen before – in the storage hut behind the hospital at Etaples, where the Doctor cut that man’s face and I helped him. In the middle of the room was a big table, and on the table lay a dead body.

I had not seen such a thing since we were in France, so I was a bit surprised. I knew the Doctor worked with sick people and figured some of them died, so maybe he decided to bring one of those home so he could work on it there. “How did he get here?” I asked.

“Never mind that,” said the Doctor, but I remembered a black car I saw in front of the house the night before, very late. “I want to show you something, Andre. I think you’ll find it interesting, for personal reasons, if nothing else.”

There was a thing attached to the table – glass bottles with rubber tubes coming out of them, dials and taps and something that looked like a pump.

“Watch,” said the Doctor. He picked up an instrument. It’s a scalpel, I remembered. He made a little cut in the man’s neck and put a long needle into the place where he’d cut. Then he did the same thing to a spot on the fellow’s groin. He fastened rubber tubes to both the needles. Then he picked up a bottle full of a purple liquid and poured it into one of the bottles attached to the machine. He twisted some knobs and began to work the pump. The purple liquid went into the man’s neck and blood came out of the place where his leg joined on to the rest of him. When all the purple stuff was gone, the Doctor stopped the pump and turned off the taps.

“In one hour,” he said, “this man will be alive.”

“Alive?” I asked. “How could that be? He has been dead a long time, I think.” To me, the guy looked very dead. His body was yellow-grey, his face shrunken, his mouth open in an ugly way.

“Yes, he has been dead for some time. Longer than you were, so I don’t expect him to turn out like you. But he will be alive, after a fashion.”

“Is this what you did to me? To bring me back?”

“Yes, Andre,” he said. “Exactly this.”

And that’s how it was. I saw it myself. Less than an hour later, the fellow groaned and would have sat up if not for the clamps on his arms and legs. His eyes rolled, his mouth opened and closed, but he didn’t talk. Couldn’t, I thought. Looking at him, I felt funny. Was that how I’d looked? Because it wasn’t a pretty sight.

“Can I give him some water?” I asked. I knew the man was terribly thirsty. My body remembered that.

“I’ll do it,” said the Doctor. “Great care is needed at first, so as not to overwhelm the mechanism.”

“He must be frightened, Doctor, like I was.”

The Doctor looked up, holding a pipette in his hand, and gave me one of those freezing looks. “This specimen is incapable of fear, I assure you. He isn’t like you were. The time elapsed between death and revivification is the determining factor.” Then he bent over the man and used the pipette to dribble a liquid into his mouth.

He listened to the man’s heart and wrote down some notes. After a while, I asked, “What are you going to do with him?” I wondered if he thought I wasn’t doing my job quick enough, and this fellow would be my helper. I hoped not, because I didn’t think he would be much help.

“I could do a number of things,” he answered. “Here, Andre, you have a living body, a body which, with the proper treatment, will function for a while. A few days, certainly, maybe a few weeks. But this man, whoever he was before he died, no longer exists in the world. The world knows him only as dead, so this is only a body, not a person. I could do many things with it. At present, I want to determine the consequences of removing a certain organ and replacing it with a substance of my own devising. And I need you to help me do that.”

I did help him. That was only the first time. In the next four and a half years I helped him many times. Some of the things we did frightened me, and I asked myself why I was doing them, but I knew that the Doctor always had good reasons for what he did, and I was the Doctor’s man. Always when one of those dead bodies came back to life, I hoped they would not be frightened. Those were the worst ones; the ones that the Doctor called “incapable of rational thought” were not so bad, but I wondered about them too, whether they knew what was happening to them.

Sometimes he talked while he worked. I think this was the way he talked to his students at the University, when he showed them how to do things. But not the things he showed me, of course. For those, I was his only student.

“Flesh is a plastic material,” I remember him saying. “It can be sculpted to any shape, provided the supporting structures permit it. The skin is a many-layered organ that can be peeled and sectioned and transferred from one place to another with wonderful effect. Other organs too, may be relocated and modified, with the proper techniques.”

Another time he said, “All cells arise from the same basic substance. There is a point in the development of an organism when everything is possible. At this stage it is a substance of pure potential. I have found a way to make something that resembles this substance. When I have perfected it, the limits of what can be done with human material recede to the far horizons of possibility.”

Only he could do these things, for sure. There was nothing he couldn’t do, wouldn’t do, in those years. I can’t even begin to guess what he might have done, might have made, if his troubles hadn’t come when they did. He was wonderful, and maybe terrible too, in a way. Sometimes, there in the laboratory, I could feel a power coming from him. It was like the time when I was walking across an open space in Arkham and lightning struck a flagpole nearby. But that was over right away. With him, the feeling went on and on.

It would take too long to tell all the things I saw him do. So I will tell only one.

One time I asked him, “Doctor, can you make a man?”

“No,” he said. “At least, not yet. Not from the elements, if that’s what you mean. But I can make one man into another, perhaps.”

He could, too. I know, because I saw him do it. I saw him make a man into himself.

It was in the late winter of 1923, just before the Doctor changed. “I need you in the lab tonight, Andre,” he said, right after supper. I knew what that meant. When he wanted me to run the machine that made the purple stuff, he would say, “You’ll be busy in the lab tonight.” When he said, “I need you,” it meant that we would be working on a body.

This body belonged to a young man, not very tall, not very big. He had brown hair and a bloody hole in the lower part of his abdomen.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“A little skirmish in the streets of Boston. He was shot and bled to death. That’s a bad place to take a bullet. But I thought he’d be useful.”

He didn’t say much while we did the things to bring the fellow back to life. When his face was alive again, I noticed something. “He looks like you,” I said. “If his hair was different, and his nose was a bit shorter…”

“So you see it too,” the Doctor said, smiling. “I admit that’s what made me notice him, there in the mortuary.”

Three days later, we did the first operation. Then a few more over the next couple of weeks. When the fellow finally healed up, I thought one more time what a magician the Doctor was. Because the man in the Annexe looked just like him now. He had changed the shape of the nose, the way the flesh was around the eyes, the curve of the chin. He had taken away the brown hair (and the scalp too, of course), and put on some almost the same colour as his own. Lying there before me was Dr. Herbert West. And as I looked at him, he came into the room and smiled at me.

“Well, what do you think?”

“C'est merveilleux, Doctor,” I said. “But what are you going to do with him? Send him to those meetings you don’t like?” I was thinking of the boring meetings he complained about sometimes.

He laughed. “A good idea, but I hardly think he would do me credit. He’d be worse than inarticulate, as you know.” I did know. Cleaning up his messes had been part of my job for weeks.

“Actually,” the Doctor continued, “I am going to dispatch him. And now is as good a time as any.” He went into the main laboratory and came back with a syringe.

“Wait, Doctor!” I couldn’t help it; my mouth opened and said this thing. “After all the work we’ve done on him? And I think maybe he’s just starting to learn things.”

The Doctor’s eyes got that icy look. “A scientist avoids becoming emotionally attached to his experimental subjects, Andre.” He bent over the man, and my God, it was like he was looking in a mirror. It made me shiver to look. When the man saw him, he opened his mouth and made one of those noises that sounded like a question. He tried to touch the Doctor’s face, and maybe tried to smile too. I’d noticed him doing that lately, and thought it was a good thing. But I wasn’t a scientist.

The Doctor slapped the fellow’s hand away and said something like, “That’s enough out of you, Francis.” Maybe that was his name; I didn’t know. He stuck the needle into the guy’s neck and pressed the plunger. The man twitched a couple of times and lay still. I knew he was dead again. Dispatch – I knew what that meant, all right.

Later that day, I helped the Doctor embalm the body. The last thing we did was dress it in one of the Doctor’s suits, a navy blue one. He looked pretty good, red necktie and all.

“He can stay here until he’s needed,” said the Doctor, as we got ready to leave the Annexe.

“What will you need him for?” I asked. “Now that he’s dead.”

The Doctor looked right at me, hard and seriously. “Some day I may need to be dead. Remember what I told you when you first started helping me here – that a dead man no longer exists in the world? Well, one day I may need not to exist. So he will be me, dead. Remember that.”

He didn’t say any more then, and I didn’t ask, but I hoped that Francis, if that was his name, didn’t mind being dispatched so he could help the Doctor. The Doctor made many sick people well again, and he told me many times that the subjects couldn’t feel anything. But that man Francis worried me, and I was glad I never had to go into the Annexe.

 

One evening in March, soon after the Doctor made that man look like himself, Mr. Charles Milburn came to see him. He didn’t stay very long, and after he left the Doctor came to me and said, “Until I tell you otherwise, please do not admit Mr. Milburn to the house. If he comes, tell him I am not available.”

I could tell this was not one of the things I could ask him about, but I wondered. Over the years I had changed my mind about Mr. Milburn. When I first met him, I thought he might be a man without much money who tried to be friends with the Doctor because he was rich. But now I didn’t think so any more. Now I thought he really was the Doctor’s good friend, even though I didn’t know him very well. Mr. Milburn didn’t seem to care that he wore the same suits year after year, or that he lived in some rented rooms on College Street. All right, he liked Mrs. Fisk’s good cooking, and the Doctor’s Scotch whiskey, but why not? I could see what he really wanted was to talk to him, and even more, to listen. And all that talking, it seemed to be good for the Doctor. I even thought maybe he told Mr. Milburn a little bit about those things he could do, that nobody else could. So it bothered me that the Doctor was angry with his old friend and would not want to see him any more.

The next couple of months, I could see there was something wrong with the Doctor. He didn’t eat much and started to get skinny. He didn’t sleep much either. Some nights he didn’t sleep at all and spent a lot of time in the laboratory, doing things he didn’t tell me about.

He went out one morning very early, without saying anything to me, and didn’t come home that evening. I was thinking that some emergency had happened and he was at the hospital. Maybe he had to go out of town. But no, the Hispano was in the garage. And if he’d taken her out I would have known. So maybe an emergency in Arkham… But when he finally came home, close to three o’clock in the morning, I knew the only emergency was inside of him.

He never looked so bad, never, not even in the War, when sometimes he worked for two or even three days straight. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was messed up. The look in his eyes scared me. It scared me even more when, instead of, “Hello Andre,” he said, “What are you staring at? Don’t even think about asking me some stupid question. I’m at war again, Andre. Remember that, and stay out of my way.” He went into his bedroom, and when I tried to follow him, to help him, he slammed the door in my face.

I stood by the door for a while because I didn't know what else to do. Then I heard him talking. It sounded like he was arguing with someone who wasn’t there. “That’s it, exactly. They wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me, so where’s the wrong? Pain? Pain is nothing. Not for these things. A mere twanging of the nerves. There are a dozen ways to deal with it.”

I went to my room and had a talk with myself.

“Andre, mon vieux,” I said, “the Doctor’s in trouble. You don’t know what it is, but you’ve got to help him. Because you’re his man, and without him you’re no one’s man.” That sounded good to me, but there were two things wrong with it. One, I didn’t know what the trouble was, and two, I didn’t know what the hell I could do about it.

The next morning, he was still asleep when Mrs. Fisk came. I told her a bit about what happened the night before. “What’s bothering him? Do you know?”

She looked worried. “Not really, Andre. I’ve heard he’s in some kind of trouble over there.” She waved her hand toward the University and hospital. “But I don’t know anything for sure.”

When he came downstairs a little later, he said "Good morning" to Mrs. Fisk and me, and asked for some breakfast, but when I put it in front of him he hardly ate anything. Then he jumped up and said he was going out, but that we should expect him home for supper.

I saw him to the door, to make sure he really was all right. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Andre, I apologize for my rudeness to you last night,” he said quietly. “Please forgive me.”

I didn’t know what to say. “It’s all right, Doctor. You know I am here to help you. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

 

The next few weeks were normal, or almost. I was beginning to think that whatever was bothering the Doctor was over, when he called me into his study one evening.

“Andre,” he said, “sit down and listen, because I’m about to tell you something important. I’m in trouble. Serious trouble. No, you can’t do anything about it. It goes back to the War, and before that, even. Keep your wits about you and remember what I’m about to say.

“It’s likely that soon I will have to leave Arkham and go somewhere else to live. I have been preparing for this and will need your help. The most important thing now is this: if you are ever told, by anyone, that I am dead, ask them how I died. If they tell you that it was a brain aneurysm – remember that word, aneurysm – you will know that it is not true. I won’t be dead, I’ll be in the laboratory, and I will desperately need your help. Ask to see my body. You will be shown my double. You know what he looks like, you know what he is wearing. That will be a proof for you. As soon as you can without being seen by anyone, go to the lab. I may be very weak, and generally in bad shape. Your job then will be to help me to the secret room down there. You remember – I showed it to you once. After you’ve done that, you will have to prepare for our departure.”

He told me more, many things I don’t need to tell about now, and gave me a paper with everything written down so I wouldn’t forget. He made me swear not to tell. When he had finished, I tried a question.

“Why, Doctor? Why is this happening?”

He looked impatient. “It’s too complicated to explain, but it has to do with my work. My real work, about which you know a good deal. There are people who think that what I do in the lab below is wrong and that I should be stopped from doing it. Needless to say, I do not agree with this opinion. But the stakes are high enough now that my best course of action by far is to cut my losses and run.”

Well, soon after that, the Doctor and I began to get rid of things from the laboratory. We burned a lot of them in the incinerator. Others we smashed and buried in the cellar. One night we lugged an operating table and the machine for making the revivifying fluid to a railroad bridge over the Miskatonic River ten miles west of Arkham, and sunk them in the deepest place.

That was a scary trip. The Hispano-Suiza was not meant to carry freight, not at all, but we packed the things into her back seat and covered them with a tarp. There was a moon, but it was a windy night, and clouds made it dark a lot of the time, like when we were carrying the heavy operating table out onto the bridge. Once I slipped and almost went into the river with the table, but the Doctor grabbed me just in time. I was happy to get home, I tell you!

He had some of the things from his apartment shipped to a warehouse in Boston – the ornaments from the sitting room, the paintings by his friend Dixon Taylor, his piano and some other furniture. The house began to look bare and sad. But in most ways the Doctor carried on as usual. He took a couple of extra trips to Boston, and maybe wrote more letters, but I began to hope again that things would get better.

I was wrong, of course. One morning in July he called me into his study and handed me a heavy case.

“Andre,” he said, “get ready for a trip to Boston. You leave on the afternoon train.” He told me where to go and what to do with the papers in the case – take these to Such and Such Bank, to Mr. So and So, and take others to Mr. Somebody Else at a firm of lawyers. Then come back on the four o’clock train that afternoon. He gave me money for the train fare and hotel.

“Why do I have to go today?” I asked. “It will not take so long, what you want me to do. Those people will expect me tomorrow morning. Why should I go now and stay overnight, when I could get there in time on the eight o’clock train tomorrow morning?”

He sighed. “Andre, I am not asking you to go today. I am telling you. And I do not need to explain why.”

“But Doctor, it is only because I think I should be here, with you.”

“You will be here, with me, tomorrow afternoon. Now go and get ready. Oh, on the way to the station, will you please stop by at Mr. Milburn’s place and ask him to join me for supper tonight, at seven. So you see, I will not be alone.”

“All right, I go now.” Still, I did not want to do it.

“Good luck, Andre,” he said, “and thank you for your loyalty.” He looked at me hard, and it seemed like he wanted to say something else, but he just touched my arm the way he did sometimes, and turned away.

“Good-bye, Doctor.”

On the way to the station, I stopped at Mr. Milburn’s place, like the Doctor asked me to. Mr. Milburn looked like he was just getting up, or maybe just going to bed. I couldn’t tell which, but I could tell for sure he’d been drinking by the smell of old beer around him. I thought, “Poor Doctor, if this is the friend who is supposed to help him!”

My business in Boston the next day went fast, just like I knew it would. The men I had to see knew I was coming, and why. I guess the Doctor had talked with them on the telephone. I was all finished by noon and didn't bother with lunch but went straight to the station and got on the one o’clock train. I was back in Arkham just after two, more worried than ever, even though I had no more reason than when I left the day before. All the way home I looked for things to be different. Every time I met someone I expected to hear that something bad had happened. But everything looked the same, until I rushed up the front walk and went to open the door. It was locked. That wasn’t right. Not on a Wednesday afternoon. Even if the Doctor wasn’t in his office, where was Mrs. Fisk? I rang the bell, and when no one answered, I got my key out of my pocket and unlocked the door.

Inside, I heard someone running. Mr. Charles Milburn came out of the back hallway, the one that led to the cellar stairs.

“Mr. Milburn!” I said. “What are you doing here? Where is the Doctor?”

His face had worried crinkles, but he tried hard to smooth them out before he said anything. “Andre, I have some bad news for you, I’m afraid. Dr. West died early this morning.”

I felt as though someone had hit me hard enough to knock the breath out of me. “He is dead?” I said, feeling stupid. Then I remembered. I looked Mr. Milburn straight in the face. “How did it happen?”

“It was something called a brain aneurysm. A blood vessel bursts in the brain. It can happen unexpectedly, and is nearly always fatal.”

So that was it. What next? Oh yes. “May I see him?” I asked. “To say goodbye, you know.”

We went up to his bedroom. A body lay on the bed. But not the Doctor. I could tell right away that it was the double. Navy blue suit, red necktie. All right. It was all I could do not to run down to the laboratory right away. But I had to keep the secret. So I tried to pretend that it really was the Doctor, and stood there trying to look sad instead of scared while thinking how to make Mr. Milburn go away. But before I could think of anything, the doorbell rang. There were two men who told me they were from the funeral home, and had come to pick up the body. They asked for Mr. Milburn, so I showed them upstairs, and while the three of them were talking, I slipped down to the cellar.

Both of the doors were closed, but not locked. He lay on a table, like all those bodies we had worked on together, covered with a sheet. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing. I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him a little. “Doctor,” I said, “it’s me, Andre. What’s wrong? What happened to you?”

He opened his eyes. “Charles?” he said, his voice thick and slow. “Why are you still here?”

“Not Charles, Andre. Doctor, what happened?”

“Oh, Andre. Where’s Charles?’

“He’s upstairs,” I said. “Talking with some men. They think you’re dead.”

“Good,” he said. His voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper. I thought he must be very weak. “I am dead.”

“No you’re not,” I said. “Not while I’m here.”

I almost had to carry him, but it was only a short way to the secret room. I had a little bit of trouble remembering which of the wall-panels was actually the door. Inside, I helped him into the bed and covered him with blankets. Pulling them up to his chin, I saw stitches on one side of his neck.

“Doctor!” I said, shocked. “What is that on your neck? What did he do to you?” A thing I had never thought before jumped into my mind.

“Later…” he said. “Water, please.”

I was ashamed, because I knew how thirsty he was. I poured water into a glass and helped him drink it.

“Thank you, Andre,” he said. “Sleep now.” He was already mostly asleep. I stood and looked at him a while and wondered.

“What happened to you, Doctor?” I whispered again, even though I knew he wouldn’t answer. And anyway, I thought I knew.

I hurried up the back stairs to find Mr. Milburn. I had some questions for him. He had been in the laboratory when I came back from Boston, I was sure about that. If he had done something to the Doctor, I wanted to know what it was.

The Doctor’s bedroom was empty. The body was gone, and so were the undertaker’s men, and so was Mr. Milburn. He wasn’t anywhere in the Doctor’s apartment. I ran down the main stairs and looked out of the front door. The hearse was going around the corner, onto College Street. Could Mr. Milburn have gone with them? Suddenly I didn’t care any more. All that mattered was the Doctor and what he had asked me to do. I went back into the house and found the paper he gave me with instructions for the trip I had never really thought we would take.

 

That’s when we started travelling. That night. Or early next morning, if you want the exact truth. While I was getting ready to go, I kept running down to the secret room to check on him. He was no worse, and seemed to get stronger as the night went by. Once I said that maybe it would be better if he was in his own bed upstairs, and that I could help him get up there. But he said no, there was no point in either of us wasting our energy that way. That got me worried again. He never thought about wasting energy. He’d run up and down all those stairs in his house ten times a day without thinking. So that meant he was really weak. And we were supposed to walk to Kingsport?

Well, we did walk. We got going before dawn. He was all jumpy to start. “There’s no point in waiting. Once it’s light I’d have to stay holed up here all day. And even though this room is well hidden, I still feel like a rat in a trap. So let’s go.”

We left through the back door and along a little path that went through the bushes that Jim Arnott wanted to turn into a garden. I thought of Jim and all my other friends in Arkham. Would I ever see them again? Then I felt ashamed, to be thinking about me when this man who gave my life back to me needed my help.

This was the start of a hard time for me. All those months, I was looking after him, sometimes more, sometimes less. I had to be thinking all the time – what next? Where do we go now? How do I do this? Before, ever since I first saw him in that hut by the No. 1 General Hospital, he was the one who made the plans, figured things out, gave the orders. I just had to listen and do what he told me. I was his man, Dr. West’s servant. Now Dr. West was gone, and I had to figure out how to get this sick, weak man to New York City. All right, I had the Doctor’s instructions that he wrote down for me, but they didn’t answer all my questions.

But I did it. The first part – walking to Kingsport – that was the hardest. Ten miles, but it seemed like a hundred. The first night we made only a couple of miles, just enough to get out of Arkham. I decided we would hide until it got dark, in a little hollow where a field ended by a patch of trees, about a quarter-mile from the Arkham-Kingsport Road. I hoped it would be good enough, because the Doctor couldn’t go much farther. I settled him on some dry grass, gave him some water and covered him up with my coat. Then I sat down to watch.

He slept all day. Late in the afternoon, I made him sit up and eat something. He didn’t want it, I could see, but knew he had to keep his strength up. By the time it was getting dark, we were ready to start again.

We made it to Kingsport by morning, even though he walked like he was sleeping. When we stopped to rest he’d fall hard asleep, and I had the devil of a time waking him up again. Sometimes he called me Charles and once he started trying to explain why he had to take Andre with him instead. It made no sense, and listening to it got me upset. I liked it better when he stopped talking, and even more when I finally saw the lights of Kingsport at the bottom of the last hill.

I had a bit of trouble finding us a place to stay. There aren’t any hotels in Kingsport, just boarding houses, and some people rent out rooms in the summer. The Doctor’s notes said to go to one particular boarding house, but I couldn’t remember how to find it and he was no help. Finally I had to ask someone on the street. The fellow who ran the place was just getting up and didn’t expect two guests so early in the morning. I told him we’d walked from Bolton the night before.

“Arkham not good enough for you, eh?” He might have been smiling when he said that, but he didn’t do a good job of it. “Your friend here looks sick,” he said. “You sure he isn’t about to croak? It’s bad luck for a house, to have someone die in it.”

The Doctor surprised me then. He could still do that. “I assure you, I’m not about to die,” he said, smiling in that way that makes you feel lucky to see it. “I’m just… a little under the weather. Nothing that a few days’ rest can’t cure. And I hope you can supply that.”

The fellow changed his tune then, especially when the Doctor paid for the first night in advance, with some extra, “for the inconvenience of our early arrival.” The guy showed us to a room at the far end of the house, with a view of the water. I was glad to see it was pretty clean. I got the Doctor settled in bed and went out to get a feel of the town.

 

I wasn’t gone very long, maybe an hour. When I got back, he was sleeping. I was sorting through the stuff we’d brought with us and trying to figure out how much food we would need, when suddenly I heard him talking, the way people talk when they’re asleep.

“No, Jerry,” he said, “don’t let him! Please, no! Let go of me!” Then he screamed. That scared me, but I went over to him. He was awake by then, shaking and soaked in sweat. I told him he’d had a bad dream and settled him down again.

A while later, it happened again, but this time he didn’t scream. “No more of this, Eric,” he said. “For you, it’s finished.” He made a noise like a laugh, and woke up.

“What’s the matter, Doctor?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Andre. It’s just… dreams. Bear with me, if you can.”

Well, it was hard to bear with him. The whole time we were in Kingsport, he hardly slept more than a couple of hours before he woke up yelling or afraid. I gave up trying to sleep. The cot I was using was shaky and had one slat that pressed into me no matter how I lay. In the end I just sat up and looked out the window. Maybe I dozed a bit in between his nightmares.

I stopped listening to what he said. Most of it made no sense anyway. “My will. It’s by my will. Now.” A little while later he was awake again. “Where is it?” he asked, like he was talking to someone inside of him. “I killed it, didn’t I?”

With all this, the three days and nights we spent in Kingsport were more like a fight than a rest. I bought food and other stuff for our trip and found a skipper to take us to Boston. On our last day in Kingsport, the Doctor seemed a bit stronger, so we went for a little walk along the shore. I tried to tell myself he’d be all right, but underneath I was thinking that he walked like an old man.

Later, when the sun was starting to go down, we sailed for Boston. I tell you, I was glad to leave Kingsport behind. A pretty place, and we were safe there, but my God, I bet his nightmares still haunt that room we stayed in.

Well, to make a long story shorter, we finally got to New York City. No one recognized us. Of course, we were careful. The Doctor wore a hat that covered his hair and his eyes, and we didn’t do anything to make people look at us. When we were finally settled in a little hotel on Manhattan Island, I thought I could relax. I hoped the Doctor would be more like his old self. He’d tell me what to do, and I’d do it.

 

*******

 

Notes from the Case Book

 

August 16, 1923

Subject #23.07.26R (non-experimental – or entirely? Francis Dexter)

 

Resp. 30; pulse 55; b.p. 120/80 [etc.]

Subject making progress. Physical state approaching pre-mortem normal. Mental state dubious: memory lapses, irrational thinking, excessive apprehension. Prognosis: fair.

N.B. Cardialgia; probable cause, sensitization of the c. muscles as a secondary effect of the excitant substances and glucose deprivation. Uncertain why this effect did not manifest for several days, @ time of departure from K-port.

Another peculiar thing: subject appears to be left-handed.

 

*******

 

Things were better in New York, but only a little bit. We lived in a nice suite of rooms. The hotel was quiet and clean. Most of the other people that lived there were quiet too, and didn’t seem to notice us. I soon got to know my way around.

But I couldn’t help thinking about how different it was in Arkham. The biggest difference was that now the Doctor didn’t have much to do. Not like at home, where he was always coming and going, always busy. I guess that’s why he spent so much time learning how to write with his left hand.

In New York, he was nobody. I guess that’s how he wanted it. “The metropolis is the best place in which to hide,” he told me. “No one notices one pebble among millions.” But I wanted to say, “You are not just another pebble, Doctor, no matter how much you want to be one. You have to be what you are, or – ” Or what? I figured we would find out, sooner or later.

 

*******

 

From the Diary of Francis Dexter

September 7, 1923

 

There is so much about which Herbert West knows nothing. He knows about measuring and recording numbers. He knows the significance of the heightened pulse, of slowed respiration, the evidence of inflammation. But beyond the physical he knows nothing. He thinks only in terms of hypothesis and experiment. When things became complicated, his only solution was one of dihydromorphinone. Herbert West went into the black room. But who came out? Did anyone come out?

This is what it has been like, these six weeks since the ultimate experiment. I do not know who I am. It’s not amnesia, like Andre’s. I remember my past (most of it anyway). I remember that final morning, the light falling so pure and clear through the white curtains of my bedroom. I had to force myself to disengage from the world. I had to flog myself into my death, like driving a horse over a cliff. Charles, that poor fool, saw nothing of this. Ironically, I underestimated my own influence over him. At that moment, if he had insisted, had taken the syringe from me, he might have broken my resolve. But I had convinced him that I was taking the only possible course of action. He stood there with that stricken look on his face, watching me, the way a bird is said to watch the serpent, while I stuck in the needle and injected the drug. Then the black room, and beyond.

But that is done. That deed is done. Now what? Now there is only this – I am a man who is alive, but who has destroyed the substance of his life. I was a respected surgeon, a specialist, a professor. I gave where I wanted and took away likewise. What made me lose my nerve? I should have told them – Investigate all you like! You won’t find anything with which to charge me. Even Charles could see that. He had more respect for my ability to evade, to deceive, than I did myself. What made me take the road that led to this living death?

Herbert West does not exist any more. And who is Francis Dexter? A nobody. A tabula rasa. That is what, in my ignorance, I told Charles I wanted to be. Now I am. When Quarrington asked me, “What is your greatest fear?” I, telling the truth for once, said, “Losing myself.” Well, it has happened. In trying to escape the loss of self I thought would result from the prying of others into my life, I have indeed lost myself. I have only the barest scraps from which to make a new self. But I am not twenty years old any more, full of raw, undiluted, unquestioning energy. I am nearly thirty-seven and prey to irrational notions. Worse, I don’t altogether know what knowledge I might have left behind forever, there in the black chamber, and I am afraid to find out. My body is different –left-handedness appears to be permanent – so it is logical to expect cognitive changes as well.

Andre. So much now depends on a once-dead, now revivified Acadian peasant, from a village so remote it seems mythical. Grassadoo, New Brunswick, for God’s sake. Havre-Grace-a-Dieu. Its original name was evident, even to a Yankee ear. He is quite competent, but will he be able to compensate for my deficiencies, some of which are as yet unrevealed? One great flaw is his utter inability to visualize the future, to plan ahead. It must be because he has no reference point, no past. And I find this in myself too, now. If I am to rely on him, is there any way to improve his functioning? Is there some stimulus I can apply? He became quite animated on our sea journey from KP to Boston. I could swear he has some experience with boats. So – a longer journey? Where to? We can’t get to St. Louis by sea, and I’m not sure I want to go there yet anyway. So it must be north or south along this coast. South is – Florida, the Gulf, Panama. Why there? No reason. North is – Boston, Kingsport, Arkham. Places longed-for but impossible now. And north even more? Maine, Canada, New Brunswick. Yes, New Brunswick. Grassadoo. That would be a stimulus, all right.

Grace a Dieu.

 

Chapter 4

 

A couple of months after we arrived in New York City, the Doctor came back from somewhere all excited.

“Good news, Andre,” he said. “We’ll be leaving New York in two weeks. And you will be surprised and delighted when you hear where we’re going.”

Back to Arkham! I thought, even though I knew it couldn’t be true. “I can’t guess, Doctor,” I said. “You must tell me.”

“To New Brunswick. To Grassadoo. Your home, Andre. I think it’s time, don’t you?”

I tried to hide how disappointed I was. All along, I’d been thinking, “Good, he’s getting to be like himself again. Maybe we’ll be living well again soon.” But now, all I could think was that even though he was stronger and getting out more, he was doing things that maybe didn’t make sense.

“I don’t know about that, Doctor. Arkham was my home, and yours too. Why do you want to go to Grassadoo?”

He gave me a look. For a second, it was a real Herbert West look, just like in the old days. “I think perhaps it might bring back some of your old memories. If that happens, I think you will find that your life is… better. And I must admit, I would find that journey easier than the other one I have in mind.”

“You mean, to St. Louis? Doctor, where is St. Louis and why do we have to go there?” I hoped that would get his mind off New Brunswick.

He combed his hair with his fingers, something he did when he was bothered. “St. Louis is to the west, quite a long ways, on the Mississippi River. As to why I must go there, it’s a matter of… business. An old debt. Not any concern of yours, by the way. But that’s for later. I want to get used to travelling first, and I think New Brunswick is as good a destination as any. Andre, aren’t you at all curious about your family? Don’t you want to find out where you come from?”

I thought hard for a minute. Thinking about those things made my head hurt, but I made myself do it. I tried to tell him the truth.

“Yes, I would like to know. But it would be better to know first, then to go there. You see, if I just go, it will be like… like jumping into deep water without knowing if I can swim. By the time I find out I can’t it might be too late. Do you see what I mean?”

He smiled. “I think I know what you’re getting at. You’re afraid that those people, who may seem like complete strangers, will overwhelm you before you get a chance to size them up. Yes, I can see that would cause you some apprehension. But consider – you’ll be able to provide a diversion, give them something else to think about while you find your bearings.”

“A diversion? What would that be, Doctor?”

“Me, of course. Your benefactor and employer, Dr. Francis Dexter, late of Boston. Everyone will be so busy looking at him they won’t be able to overwhelm you. Think that might work?”

He was so pleased with this idea, almost like a child, that I had to laugh. For the first time in months I really did feel like laughing. “All right, Doctor,” I said. “We will try it. We will go to Grassadoo. But you must be a really good… diversion for me.”

“Oh I will be,” he said, laughing too, which was good to see. “You’ll be quite amazed.”

I was amazed, in the next two weeks, at how busy he was, and how happy he seemed. It was almost like the old days, except that instead of bringing dead people back to life and doing experiments on them, he was making arrangements for our trip. I had jobs to do too – packing our stuff into a couple of trunks and some suitcases. We left Arkham with just what we could carry on our backs (and he couldn’t carry much then, let me tell you). Now we had all this luggage. His books nearly filled one trunk, his clothes the other one.

We sailed out of New York Harbour at the end of October, on a steamer bound for Montreal and St. John. Looking back at the city as it grew smaller and smaller behind us, I felt like I was leaving home, not going there. It wasn't just America I was leaving, but a life that had been very good for almost five years.

I stayed on the deck until I couldn’t see the statue’s torch any more. Then I went to our cabin, to make sure that everything there was the way it should be.

 

*******

 

Notes from the Case-Book

 

Oct. 30, 1923

Subject# 23.07.26 (F.D.)

 

Subject much improved. Physical state nearly normal, mental state better. Prognosis: good. Exception: recurring cardialgia. Suspect damage to the heart, but not certain of its long-term effects, or reversibility.

 

*******

 

After the first days, I began to be happier. Maybe it was the clean air and the sea all around. Maybe it was knowing that I was going somewhere, even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there.

We had pretty good weather for the time of year – heavy swells and dying winds from a hurricane that had passed by the week before. I spent a lot of time on deck, watching the sea and sky and talking with some of the sailors, fellows from Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. It reminded me a bit of the War, hearing them talk, their accents and the words they used. And something else too. Something still in the shadows.

When we went ashore at St. John, I began to get nervous, but the Doctor had everything all worked out. First we took a train to Moncton. From there most of our baggage went on to Riviere du Portage without us, to be picked up later. Ourselves, we went to Shediac, on the coast, where we hung around the waterfront, looking for a man with a boat to take us north.

“If you want to go north up the coast,” people told us, “the best way is by train, from Moncton. Slow but not bad. Why do you want to go by sea, this time of year?”

“I am determined to go by sea,” said the Doctor. And he kept asking, and didn’t listen to me when I said that the train would be okay with me. Finally, we found a fellow who said he’d take us to Hell if that was what we wanted, as long as we paid him enough.

“Hell is a little farther than we had intended to go,” said the Doctor, laughing, “but as close as possible to Riviere du Portage would be splendid. As for payment, I am sure we can come to terms.”

They talked some more, and the guy (whose looks I didn’t like at all) said he could take us as far as Richibucto, which made me wonder where he thought Hell was. I had a feeling his price was too high, but the Doctor didn’t listen to me. One good thing was that we were able to leave almost right away.

“You got lucky,” said our skipper, a stringy guy who needed to shave. “Another two hours and I would have been gone. Bob Ramsey doesn’t miss his tide.”

I was glad we had almost no baggage, because the boat (called something like Belle of Shediac, although maybe not), was mostly full already. There were lots of crates and bundles. It was hard to say what was in them, but the crates made clinking sounds and some of the bundles had lots of lumps.

“You have quite a cargo,” said the Doctor.

“I do,” said Ramsey. “You fellows are just the icing on the cake, you might say.” He didn’t say what the cake was made of, and I didn’t ask. With the load there wasn’t a lot of freeboard, and I hoped we wouldn’t get any bad weather.

Well, the trip took the rest of the day and most of the night. We had light winds, light but steady, and Ramsey worked hard to get the most out of them. Close to morning, fog rolled over us, but that didn’t worry the skipper. When I said I could work the foghorn, he just laughed.

“Don’t own a such a thing. Why would I? I know my way around here blindfolded. And anyway, most times it’s better if they don’t know you’re coming.”

Ramsey didn’t talk much. When we were on the wharf at Richibucto, and he was putting the Doctor’s money in his pocket, that was the only time he asked us anything. “On holiday, are you?” I thought he’d spent most of the trip trying to figure out who we were and what we were up to.

“I want to experience the beauties of this coast and compare them to New England, where I come from,” said the Doctor. “So I suppose you could say I’m on holiday, yes.”

“Well, enjoy yourself, then,” said the skipper, and walked away, down the wharf.

We did this sort of thing at least two more times. From Richibucto to Baie Ste-Anne, and then to Grassadoo. In Baie Ste-Anne I had to do the talking, because no one spoke English or understood the Doctor’s French. This was the first time I could remember that I met people who talked French the way I do. It made me feel funny, good and bad at the same time. A couple of times I saw the Doctor looking at me the way he did when he was asking me questions and making notes, over in France. Or like when he was working on one of his experiments.

So finally there we were, crossing Miramichi Bay in a boat called the Evangeline II, that must have been used for fishing most of the time, which you could tell for sure by the smell. Her skipper chewed tobacco all the time, and spat farther than anyone I ever knew. In between spits, he talked a lot, mostly to me. I guess he figured I was a local, or close. It was a good thing he didn’t ask me any questions. He didn’t seem to want a lot of answers, because he had them already, I guess. He talked and talked – about fish, weather, boats, women, his sons, dogs, guns, and on and on. I couldn’t understand everything he said, partly because he talked so fast, and partly because of the tobacco chewing. But it didn’t matter. All I had to do was nod my head every now and then. After a while I didn’t even do that, just let his talk run over me like rain.

Because something was happening to me. The sea was getting choppy, with a brisk offshore breeze. The sun was beginning to go down, and it was in my eyes when I looked at the land. So I couldn’t see very well. But I knew things just the same. I knew the names of the little rocky islands – hell, I knew they were islands, and not just parts of the mainland. I knew the currents, knew just when the skipper would change course, before he made any move to do it. One time I found myself asking, “Do you think we’ve cleared Pointe des Roches?” What a surprise for me, when the guy said, not “What the heck are you talking about?” but, “Just going by it now. You from around here?”

And I answered, “Yes. From Grassadoo. I grew up there, but I haven’t been back since the War.”

“They’ll be glad to see you then,” was all he said. And through all of this, the Doctor said nothing at all, just sat there watching me like he was taking notes.

 

We anchored in the estuary of the little Muskigoo River. Our skipper waved his arm until a couple of fellows launched a boat and rowed out to meet us.

“I have someone here who’s coming home,” he yelled, ruining my idea to get there without making a fuss, so I could look things over before anyone knew me. “It’s – What’s your name, anyway?”

I didn’t say anything, partly because I didn’t want to, but also because I was looking around and feeling dizzy.

“His name is Andre Boudreau,” said the Doctor, just when the fellows in the rowboat pulled up alongside of us. “He’s finally come back from the War.”

The guys in the boat looked at each other. “Boudreau?” one of them asked. “Andre? Andre a Joseph?” asked the other. Then they both looked at me.

“Yes,” I said, hardly knowing I was talking. “Andre a Joseph.” I was looking at what was in front of me – the shining water of the little river in which our boat was anchored, the banks rising up to where I could just see some roofs and the steeple of a church. Closer were some wooden docks and wharves and sheds. There were fishing nets spread out to dry. A few gulls stood around, watching. Later I was happy I was able to look at all this while it was still quiet, because that was the last peaceful moment for quite a while.

“They’ll be glad to see you.” That was what the Doctor would call an understatement.

The Doctor and the skipper handed our bags to the fellows in the boat. They reached for my hands and helped me into the boat like I was a king coming for a visit.

“My God, it is Andre Boudreau,” one of them said.

Then the other one, “They all talk about you as though you’re dead.”

“Not all,” said the first one. “Some are still waiting for him, maybe.” And he winked at me.

I figured the Doctor wasn’t being a very good diversion, like he promised back in New York, and I decided I’d better say something.

“I didn’t come by myself. This is the gentleman I work for. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here at all.”

They looked up at him where he stood on the narrow deck of the Evangeline II, holding onto the shrouds with one hand. He was wearing a nice suit, one of the new ones he’d bought in New York, and looked as happy as he did when a subject came back to life quicker than he’d hoped.

“I am honoured to be present at Mr. Boudreau’s homecoming,” he said in French.

“You are welcome, sir,” one of them said. “Any friend of Andre Boudreau’s will be welcome here at Grassadoo.” And he helped the Doctor into the boat as carefully as he’d helped me.

Our skipper looked as though he wanted to stay because he figured something big was about to happen, but the tide was turning and he had urgent business in Tracadie. So he took his pay, wished us luck and got his sails up again. Soon he was heading out to sea. Part of me wished I was going with him.

By the time we landed on shore, there was a big crowd. That’s the way it is in these little places – everyone knows when something is happening. It didn’t take long before they knew what. I heard my name passed along from mouth to ear, and saw a couple of boys running hard toward the houses, so I figured the news was on its way.

In the short time before a crowd of people gathered around us, the Doctor came close to me and said, “Not a word to anyone about revivification, Andre. Neither yours nor mine. I am your benefactor, but all I did was heal your wounds in the War. And I’m a doctor from Boston – Boston, not Arkham – who has decided he wants to see the world. That’s all.”

I looked in his eyes to show that I heard him. “Not a word, Doctor,” I said. “You can be sure of that.”

Then things got busy. Men milled around us, talking and slapping me on the back, asking me questions I couldn’t answer. I felt as though I had fallen in a river. But I didn’t have to worry about drowning. The crowd held me up and moved me forward.

By the time we got to the main street of the village, someone had brought a car. “Climb in, and I’ll take you to Joseph’s place!” called the big man at the wheel. “My God, Andre, I never thought I’d see you again. Your mother and father will be waiting.” The car was a large touring sedan, of a make I didn’t know. It must have been the best car in Grassadoo, but it wasn’t as good as the Doctor’s Hispano, and I could tell by the sound that the tappets needed adjusting.

As I climbed in the car, it hit me – any of these people could be my uncles, brothers, cousins, aunts. And here I was, about as able to know them as a turnip would be. Everything was a blur, fuzzy around the edges, and I couldn’t look at anyone or anything long enough to tell if I could remember it.

When we were rolling along the main street, with the crowd coming behind us, the Doctor said to the driver, “Allow me to introduce myself, Monsieur. I am Dr. Francis Dexter, from Boston.”

“And I am Roger Landry, a cousin of Andre here,” said the man, shaking the Doctor’s hand.

“While we have a moment, there’s something I must tell you,” said the Doctor. “I was M. Boudreau’s doctor after he was wounded in the Great War. I must warn you – he may have a little trouble remembering things at first. He could remember nothing at all for a long time after his injuries. Now, after many years of treatment, he has made some progress. But it is necessary that his family knows this, so they don’t expect too much of him for a while.”

“Ah,” said Landry, “I wondered, when I saw him. You can be sure I will tell them, Dr. Dexter.” Then he looked at me and smiled. “Eh, Andre, such a lot of commotion! I bet you’re wishing you had not come. But it’s too late now. Grassadoo will have such a day as it hasn’t seen in years. Day, nothing! Hell, it’ll be a month, at least. Here we are.”

We turned off the road and crossed a small bridge. I found myself thinking, “Well, the creek’s still there, but where did all these trees come from?” Then I realized what was happening, and it stopped. I didn’t have much time to think about it, or anything else, because we were coming into an open space with buildings on three sides. “The dooryard, they would call this, in New England,” I thought. The car stopped in front of a white house with red trim, roofed with shingles that had turned silvery grey. Two great big granite stones had been made into steps for the front door, and on one of them stood a man, my father. In the doorway of the house was a woman, my mother.

Did I just know this, or did I remember? So long now I have tried to figure that out. All I can say is: I don’t know. Maybe if I had been brought to that place without knowing it was my home, without knowing that those people must be my people, I would have had a real remembering. Or maybe not. But the way it was, I knew already. My mind said: This is the house you were born in, and these are your parents. And I said back to it: Yes, this is how it looks, this is how they look. But was that remembering, or something else? I don’t know.

 

They swept me in, they hugged and kissed me, they nearly buried me in welcomes. Us, I should say, because they treated the Doctor like he was my brother. Especially when I told them (and it was true, of course) that he had saved my life in the War, and had done much good to me ever since.

After the first excitement was over, there was lots of talking. Everyone wanted to tell me my story. How I left home and broke my family’s heart. How all of my letters (All? How many did I write?) were passed from hand to hand and read to pieces. Alas, they were ruined when Henry a Alex, that fool, took them on his boat and let them get wet. How my family’s heart was broken again when the telegram came from the Army, saying I was dead. How my mother had never quite given up on me, and she was right, wasn’t she, because here I was, alive and well.

I’m pretty sure that Roger Landry told my parents about my amnesia and I know the Doctor explained things to them too. But I don’t think all my brothers and sisters really understood, never mind all the uncles, aunts, and many, many cousins. The thing was, they didn’t really want to listen to me as much as they wanted to tell me things. Just like they wanted to sit me down and fill me up with food and drink and music. It was like that – they wanted to tell me everything they thought I should know, to make me a part of them again.

All the celebrations, all the parties, I can mix them together in my mind, into one memory. They had just finished celebrating the harvest not long before we showed up, but everyone was ready to celebrate all over again, because of me. “It’s lucky you came home at this time of year, Andre,” said my father. “We just killed the pig, the barns and pantries are full, and we have time for some fun.” And when I happened to say that the Doctor’s birthday was at the beginning of November, it just made for sure that there would be a party.

People weren’t invited, they just showed up. All of them. There were no place cards, no formal table settings, like at the Doctor’s dinners in Arkham. There was no butler and no servants at the guests’ elbows. But there was a lot of good food, drinking and laughing, and instead of being host and servant, the Doctor and I were the most important guests.

And there was music. Fiddles, mostly, and singing, but also pipes and accordions and a guitar, played by a fellow they said was my cousin (but then who wasn’t?). The music burst out like steam from a boiling kettle and went on all night long. There was lots to drink, but I didn’t get really drunk, with all the playing and dancing and talking. I’ve been around the world and seen all sorts of places, but I don’t think anyone can throw a party like the Acadians.

I found out something else at this party, about me. Someone put a fiddle in my hands, and said, “Hey Andre, you were pretty good, before you went away. Let’s see if you can still play.” I almost gave it back, but I’d had just enough of my mother’s good beer that I didn’t care if I made a fool of myself. So I stuck the fiddle under my chin and began to play! Yes, play! This came to me like lightning. Something took over my hands and they made music. Luckily, the watching part of me wasn’t looking (sleeping off the beer, probably), so I was able to keep going. I played Le corbeau dans le cage, a couple of gigues and steppettes, and I don’t know what else. It was like finding a new person inside me, one I didn’t know was there.

When I finished playing, everyone yelled and clapped. At the back of the room, near the door, I saw the Doctor. He was clapping too, and looked as happy as when one of his experiments worked out better than he expected.

 

*******

 

Notes from the Diary of Francis Dexter

 

Grassadoo, N.B.

December 1, 1923.

 

We have been here more than a month and I feel astonishingly welcome. Perhaps more so even than Andre, for all that he is the prodigal returned.

This is something I never expected. Why should these people, who are by no means wealthy, take into their home an unknown quantity such as I? Well, I suppose because I saved one of their sons from death (to an extent they would not be able to comprehend, even if they knew the truth). Andre has rather let himself go with praising me and my abilities, barely stopping short of the truth. I have had to speak sternly to him about that more than once.

What about that unknown quantity, then? What is it exactly that Joseph and Isabelle Boudreau have welcomed under their roof? A mostly Yankee, one-quarter Italian physician, ex-surgeon, ex-professor, ex-murderer and one-time revivifier of the dead, who would have a price on his head, were he not effectively dead himself in his former place of residence. A near-fugitive living under an assumed name (one to which he does have a right, however). A man who killed himself and lay dead until he was returned to life by the mercy of his good friend. What is the state of this individual?

Health, Physical: fairly good. Most of the aftereffects of death have disappeared in the past 5 months. The exception is an angina-like pain. Cannot identify a pattern of circumstances under which it occurs. Not necessarily induced by physical exertion, viz. while Andre was fiddling at that mad revel, but also while thinking about Arkham, and when Andre and I visited the primitive little church here. It may be due to a degenerative condition of the heart muscle, resulting from death or the stresses of revivification.

Health, Mental: dubious. Subject cannot concentrate on anything with the intensity required to achieve positive results. Frequent distractions by extraneous thoughts. Possible cognitive lacunae.

Finances: good, but only with careful management. Some income-generating activity will be required, if only to accustom oneself to such a situation.

Talents: unknown. Subject has not practiced medicine for 6 months. Effect of sinistrality unknown. Other valuable skills and knowledge possibly lost during the period of death.

 

*******

 

Some of my sisters and brothers had left my parents’ house since the War, for homes of their own, so there was enough room for the Doctor and me. I moved back into my old room at the top of the house, under the eaves. When I went to bed there the first night, lying under the low ceiling, covered by a feather quilt between sheets that smelled of lavender, I felt that I really was home, even though at the same time everything seemed new.

My parents were ready to give the Doctor the best room in the house, but he argued them out of that. I wondered how he would like living in a farmhouse, because it wasn’t anything like his nice rooms in Arkham, but he didn’t complain.

“You’d hardly know that Dr. Dexter was here sometimes,” my mother said. “He’s so quiet, comes and goes like a shadow. And you’d never guess he was a professor and all those things you said, Andre. People like that you don’t want in the kitchen, but this one, he knows his way around.”

She was talking about the times when he helped out with cooking – peeling apples, getting mushrooms ready for drying, or cleaning and skinning rabbits. “He was so fast with those rabbits,” said my mother, laughing. “And when I said so, oh, what did he say? ‘A knowledge of anatomy can be very helpful in the kitchen, Madame.’”

At first I worried a bit about what would he think of Acadian foods. So often it was what we call “des patates pis des harengs” – potatoes and herrings. Almost everything was grown on the farm or brought from the sea. I soon got used to fricots, poutine rapee, and bouillon au maquereau. I guess my stomach remembered what my head had forgotten. There was always enough for everyone, and it was cooked as well as my mother and sisters could do, which was pretty well. But it wasn’t the fancy seven-course dinners that Mrs. Fisk had served up to the Doctor’s guests in Arkham, and it wasn’t the Italian dishes he liked to cook himself. But the Doctor didn’t mind. My mother said to me, “That doctor of yours, Andre, he’s always in the kitchen. He follows me around, asking questions. ‘What kind of fish is that, Madame Boudreau? Show me how you cook it, please.’ Any other man I would chase away, but he knows what he’s talking about. Is he really a doctor?”

So they found him an easy guest, my parents did. And him? Did he peel apples and dress rabbits because he liked doing that, or because he was bored? But I told myself – he wanted to come here, and if he didn’t like it he would leave.

And what about me? Well, I worked. After the big welcome home, I had to pitch in and help. No one asked, but I knew. That was when I did my real remembering. Maybe I couldn’t keep all my cousins’ names straight (or even my brothers’, if I tell the truth), but I knew how to milk a cow, how to sharpen a scythe, how to repair harness. I would take the things into my hands, the scythe and the whetstone, the awl and the leather, the teats of the cow, and somehow my hands would know what to do with them. Just like the fiddle. It was wonderful and frightening at the same time. And every week the Doctor would ask me questions about these things, and make his notes.

I think something like that happened to him too. A few weeks before Christmas, my father, the Doctor and I were in the orchard, looking over the trees and deciding which ones were too old and should be cut down. Two guys came running over, puffing hard.

“They’ve brought Alain Richard back from the sea,” one of them said. “He’s hurt bad, got a cable around his leg, almost cut it off. There’s no time to take him to Riviere du Portage. Do you think your doctor friend here can help?”

The Doctor answered the man himself, in French.

“Of course I’ll come,” he said. “Andre, fetch my instrument case, please, while I get myself ready.” Soon the four of us were hurrying out of the house. I wondered if it bothered him that he hadn’t done any doctoring for months. But I couldn’t tell.

There was a bunch of men standing around one of the fish sheds. “They took him in there,” said someone, pointing.

They’d laid the fellow on one of the long tables. The place looked pretty clean, luckily, and I could see a kettle boiling on the stove.

The Doctor looked quickly around and began giving orders. “Someone fetch that boiling water and a basin,” he said. “Andre, prepare the instruments, please.” While two of the men scrubbed a table with soap and hot water, the Doctor took off his jacket, washed his hands and arms and put on a white coat he took from his bag. When I came over with the instruments, he was talking to the patient.

Alain Richard was just a young guy, maybe twenty, his eyes big with pain and fear. No wonder, with that piece of thin steel cable wrapped tightly around his leg. It had cut in, right through his pants. There wasn’t much blood, which showed just how tight that cable was.

“I need someone to interpret,” said the Doctor. “He doesn’t seem to understand my French.”

I thought that was pretty likely. “Which of you knows this fellow?” I asked the guys that were standing around. “Are any of his friends here, or his brothers? It’s important that he understands what the Doctor tells him.”

A dark scowling guy came over. “I’m his brother. Tell me what you want him to know.”

“I’m glad to meet you,” said the Doctor. “My name is Francis Dexter. And you?”

“Claude Richard. And he’s Alain.”

“Yes. Now we know each other. Tell Alain, please, that I can remove that wire. Tell him it will be all right.”

“Will it?” Claude Richard’s black eyes looked hard at the Doctor, as though he thought he might be lying. The Doctor looked straight back at him and said, “Yes it will, if the fellows who brought me here got their facts straight about how long it’s been since the injury. Now, let’s get on with it.”

Claude bent over his brother and said something. After a bit Alain seemed a little calmer. I laid out the instruments on a clean cloth.

The Doctor began by cutting off the man’s boot and taking off the woolen sock (knitted by the guy’s mother or sweetheart, I figured). The foot looked bad, swollen and purple. There is no way he can save this, I thought. Alain Richard’s dancing days are finished. Then I remembered some of the things I’d seen the Doctor do. But that was before. And I noticed he used his left hand for things he used to do with his right. That made me nervous but I figured I’d better not start talking about it while we were working on Richard.

“Come here please, Claude,” said the Doctor. “It’s not as bad as it looks, but getting that thing off and cleaning the wound will cause him a great deal of pain. I’ll give him something that will make him feel it less, but it will take a little time to work. Tell him that, will you?”

Again a low murmuring, brother to brother. Then Alain piped up, loud, “No! No! I don’t want to go to sleep! He might cut it off, and I won’t even know!” He began to sit up, his eyes bulging.

The Doctor put his hands on Alain’s shoulders and pressed him back on the table. He took both the man’s hands in his own and bent over him. “The pain will be bad,” he said, talking slowly, so the guy could understand (maybe). “But you’ll be all right. I won’t cut off your leg. I promise you that.” He looked up at Claude and said, “Hold his hands. Hold them tight. Tell him it’s all right if he has to yell. But don’t let him thrash around.”

Then he turned back to me and said, “All right, Andre.” And we got started.

I guess it didn’t take very long. But it seemed like a long time, especially after the guy began to yell. I could tell he didn’t want to. It was like the yells were ripped out of him. Some of the men who had been watching shook their heads and went outside. That was bad, but the Doctor just ignored it and went on working.

He unwrapped the cable and carefully picked out the shreds of cloth from the wound. Fresh blood ran out of the long curving ditch the wire had dug in the man’s flesh. “It’s the return of circulation that makes it so painful,” said the Doctor to me, quietly. “Until now the foot was numb. But I’m fairly certain he’ll escape gangrene. And the bones are intact.”

I remembered something. “What about the regenerator?” I asked.

He looked at me sharply. “The regenerator? I can’t – don’t do that any more.”

“So how do you know that it will heal up all right?”

He gave me one of those looks. “I’ve used the proper techniques. And in any case, it isn’t necessary here. The wound is clean. It will heal quite well on its own.”

It took another hour before everything was done. The long wound was sewed up and a nice clean dressing wrapped around the leg. Alain Richard was growing sleepy from an injection of morphine and the Doctor and I cleaned up and packed the instruments back in the bag. The Doctor asked some of the men to move the patient to his father’s house. They used a plank for a stretcher to carry him to someone’s car. We went along to make sure that the job was done right. Soon Alain was in the best bed at home. The Doctor told his family that he would be back that evening and again the next day. Then we went home. I thought he looked tired, but like a man who has been working hard at something he likes to do.

Alain Richard got better, just like the Doctor said he would. When he knew he wouldn’t lose his foot after all, he didn’t make a fuss about the dressing changes. In fact, he said how bad he felt about yelling and being afraid.

“Never mind,” said the Doctor. “It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard a man yelling in pain. And you had a lot to yell about.”

He wouldn’t take any money from the Richard family, even though they tried to make him. “Consider it part of what I owe to the people of Grassadoo,” was all he would say.

 

*******

 

From the Diary

February 17, 1924

 

Alain Richard came by today, with a wood carving he made while he was recovering – a dolphin carved out of some hard wood, polished and smooth. It is beautiful. And his leg is beautiful too, because it is completely healed. So I am still a doctor, it seems.

Even more so because since his accident I have begun to attract a clientele, whether I want one or not. Poor Mme. Boudreau has let me turn her storage room into a surgery and her back porch into a waiting room. Worse, she and her daughters must take turns being nurse-receptionist. But it may be that they secretly enjoy the excitement and (dare I say it?) the prestige of being associated with le médecin Dexter.

And do I enjoy it? I have to say yes. It reminds me of my first practice in Arkham. Most of my patients there were rural or working class types from Bolton and the surrounding district. And here I don’t need to find corpses to revivify or engage in skirmishes with the worthies of Miskatonic. Unlike Herbert West, I can actually get to know my patients a little. This must, therefore, be a facsimile of normal life, such as it is in rural Nouveau Brunswick.

The only nuisance is this recurring angina, or whatever it is. Cardialgia, I prefer to call it, because it doesn’t fit the clinical pattern for angina. Heart action and blood pressure are within normal parameters. I get plenty of exercise, walking to the village and back, and visiting patients in outlying farms. The pain does not accompany physical exertion, that’s the strange thing.

Andre seems to have successfully reentered the parental home, but I cannot say that he is entirely content. He has not spoken to me about it, however, and I have so far not asked. Life is good here, if simple and culturally circumscribed. My last months in Arkham seem like a long nightmare by comparison.

 

*******

 

So for the next year and more, Grassadoo had its own doctor. Not just any doctor, either, but the famous surgeon Dr. Herbert West of Arkham (only no one knew that, of course, except him and me). He set up his surgery in a funny little room near the back porch. My mother used the porch to store things that needed to be out of the weather, but not too warm. It had windows on two sides, so in spring it was a kind of greenhouse for her little plants. In the fall she kept some apples and potatoes there, so she didn’t have to run down to the root cellar every time she needed a few of them. When I think about those days, I remember the sweet smell of apples, and the earthy one of potatoes.

People still used their home remedies, and the local midwives kept delivering babies, but if anyone was badly sick, Dr. Dexter was called. Word spread as far as Riviere du Portage, and beyond. Other doctors in the area began to ask him about things they weren’t sure how to handle.

Folks told stories about him. Some of them were just the truth dressed up to make it more interesting – how he sewed someone’s fingers back on (or even a whole hand!), how he took one look at somebody and knew their appendix was about to burst (and took it out blindfolded, no doubt), how he cured a fever that was about to kill a widow’s only son, just by putting his hand on the boy’s head. And so on. Some of them trotted out old stories about left-handed people having powers to heal. When I heard those I almost told them he wasn’t always like that, but stopped myself in time. A few of the stories were different – not stories, even, just… sentences. Someone would tell about how the Doctor had set a broken limb, or sewed up a bad cut, or helped out with a hard birth. And then they would say, almost like they’d just thought of it, something like, “He has good hands, that doctor,” or, “When he touched me, right away I knew I would get better.” I heard things like this enough times, and from all kinds of people, that I began to wonder, and asked him about them.

“They’re not miracles, Andre,” he said. “Just the correct techniques and medicines administered at the correct time.”

“But you can do things no one else can,” I said. “I know it, so I figured you’ve started doing them again. Or different ones.”

“No. Not any more. Now I use only the methods and materials available to any well-trained physician.”

“Why would you stop revivifying?” I asked him. “And making the regenerator? Wasn’t that a very good thing?”

“I thought so, once. Now I’m not so sure.”

“But without it I wouldn’t be here. And neither would you. So – ”

“Andre, you must learn not to ask questions about these things. I don’t want to talk about them. I’ve finished with revivifying and regenerating. I have my reasons, but I don’t quite understand them myself, and certainly not enough to discuss them with you.”

Well, that was that. I knew better than to keep asking questions. But I didn’t stop wondering, especially when some bad things happened. Like when my father cut himself on a dirty old harrow, and the wound took a long time to heal, even though the Doctor looked after it. Or when Roger Landry died, choked by gas while helping a neighbour to dig a well. I couldn’t help it then. My mouth opened and words came out even though I knew I should have kept them inside.

“Roger was what you would have called a ‘perfect subject.’ You could have revivified him easy.”

“Andre, you know damned well I don’t have the means to hand. I don’t have the apparatus or the materials to make the fluid. So no, I couldn’t have revivified Roger, no more than the man in the moon could do it.”

“But if you had those things, you could have. I know it.” I liked Roger. He was a good guy, and had a wife and four children, quite young. So my tongue ran away with me.

The Doctor got really mad at me then. Maybe with himself too. “Andre,” he said, “you are not to speak of these things again. All that is a closed book for me. If you’re so keen on revivifying, go ahead and do it yourself. God knows you spent enough time making the fluid and the regenerator, back in Arkham. So feel free. But don’t talk to me about it again.”

I had already thought about that, believe it or not. Enough to know I couldn’t do it. Yes, I made lots of that stuff in Arkham, but I always worked from some instructions he wrote down for me. I hadn’t thought to take them with me when we left. Anyway, I never knew the right names of all the things I used, the liquids and the powders. They were just numbers and letters. B2, G27, Z99, like that. He told me they had real names but I didn’t need to know them. So I couldn’t go and buy them for myself, even if I knew where.

But it still bothered me, like a prickle in my shirt. Here was a man who knew how to make dead people alive again, who could use bodies like a potter uses clay, and now he was saying, “Oh, I’ve decided not to do that any more, but I can’t tell you why.” I couldn’t understand it.

The other thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was how much I wanted to go away. A couple of times the Doctor went to Moncton, and once to Halifax. “I must have the correct tools and materials,” he said. “And no, I don’t need you to come with me. You’re needed more on the farm.”

I was, and I was beginning to get fed up with it. Six months after we got to Grassadoo, it was for me the way it must have been like when I was young. The farm work made me tired and bored. Fishing made me tired and bored and cold and wet too. I didn’t want to be a farmer and I didn’t want to be a fisherman. My relatives and the other folks were good people. I knew that, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with them, doing the things they thought were so important. It still bothered me that they remembered me from when I was a boy, but I couldn’t remember them. I wanted to find a place where I could be myself, with people that knew less about me than I did.

On top of all this, there were plans to get me married. One thing everyone told me about was how I’d been courting a young lady before I’d gone away. Well, when I was gone, she married someone else. I met her and her husband after I came back, but I sure didn’t remember her. She could have been anybody. (I still remembered Marie, though, from the No. 1 Hospital at Etaples). She and her husband seemed happy enough, or as happy as anyone could be, working a rocky little farm and raising five children. So no harm done, I figured. But now that I was back, everyone thought I should find myself a wife. And there were lots of people ready to help me out with that.

Not that I wanted to stay away from women. I could see their pretty faces as well as anyone (and better than some). I just wanted to decide for myself, without a lot of advice and winking and dirty jokes from my brothers and cousins. And my mother, telling me I wasn’t getting any younger, as though anyone was.

With all this stuff, and with work and talk and weather and all the things that happen once a year, like Christmas and Chandeleur, and Fete des Neiges, it was soon a year since the Doctor and I came to Grassadoo. When a big chunk of the second year was gone and it was 1925, I knew I had to go soon, alone or not.

One day I asked the Doctor to come for a walk with me. Things were different between us now. I didn’t work for him any more. He was a guest in my father’s house (although he’d talked my parents into taking some money from him by this time, “to help with the expenses of the practice”). So we were more like friends, and I thought I could say things to him I couldn’t have before.

We went into the church and sat in a pew at the back. It was quiet and clean, with the statues making a bit of colour. But you didn’t have to look very hard to see that it was a place that poor people had made for themselves from the things they had on hand. Raphael the angel looked down on us from his old place to one side of the altar. I still thought he looked pissed off. He looked the way I felt.

“I don’t know how you can be so happy here, Doctor,” I said. “I am thinking I must go away soon, or go crazy.”

“But why?” he asked, looking at me like he was surprised. “It’s so beautiful, and so peaceful. And there’s always plenty to do.”

“That’s all right for you, maybe. You like your work, but I don’t like mine. And the family… They want to get me married.”

He laughed. “Poor Andre. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except I don’t want to. Not yet. And not someone that’s been picked out for me. I want to see more of the world first, instead of getting tied down to a wife and children and a farm or a boat. And anyway, before you laugh too much, the ladies have plans for you too.”

“What do you mean? What ladies?” Ha, I had him now, I thought.

“My mother and aunts and their friends. I’ve heard them talking about what a shame it is that poor Dr. Dexter is all alone in the world, and how a good wife is just what he needs.” I looked at him sideways. He wasn’t smiling any more.

“And have you heard… are there any… interested parties?”

“Oh yes! My Tante Aurore, for one.” Now he looked really scared. Tante Aurore was a widow. She ran her dead husband’s farm with the help of a bunch of farm hands who were all scared of her. “She has a beautiful house going to waste, she says. And as for you, well, she says you aren’t a very big fellow, but she’s sure you are… plein de vigueur.”

“You aren’t serious, Andre? Surely you’re making all this up?”

“Not all of it,” I said, starting to laugh. “But I’m not going to tell you which parts are which.” Of course, I knew he wanted to stay a bachelor. And I knew why, too, but that was his private business. Still, I wanted to tease him, after all that stuff about how he was so happy in Grassadoo, while I couldn’t stand the place.

“I have every regard for your Tante Aurore,” he said. “She’s a most admirable woman. But I’m not a marrying man, and that’s that.”

“Well, you have all the ladies of Grassadoo wanting to turn you into one, whether you like it or not. But what about St. Louis? You said before you have to go there. So when?”

“When I’m ready, Andre. St. Louis will still be there in a few months. Or a few years.” But he didn’t sound so sure of himself any more.

 

Chapter 5

 

In the end we stayed until the fall. I never did find out exactly what made the Doctor decide that Grassadoo, New Brunswick wasn’t the place where he wanted to settle down and spend the rest of his life. Maybe it was those ladies, or maybe he realized that he couldn’t do the kind of doctoring he wanted to there. I think he was worried about that; maybe he thought that dying and coming back to life might have rubbed out too many of the things he knew. When he saw that he was still able to cure sicknesses and fix wounds, he felt stronger in himself and decided he wanted to be the same kind of doctor he was back in Arkham. And I could say Amen to that, let me tell you. I would rather be that man’s servant for the rest of my life than wear myself out ploughing the rocky fields around Grassadoo, or risking my neck in a leaky boat to catch fish that seemed to be worth less every year.

Anyway, by the time it was summer again, I thought something was up. My mother saw it too. “Andre,” she said one day, “I think Dr. Dexter is thinking about leaving us.”

I shrugged. “Well, Maman, it’s up to him, isn’t it? He wants to see the world, he told me so. And Maman, I have to tell you, when he goes, I am going with him, if he wants me to.”

You would have thought I’d said I was going to cut my own throat. For the next two months, almost to the day we left, I had to explain almost every day why I had to go, and listen to everyone tell me why I shouldn’t. It must have been just like when I joined the Army. I heard everything from how it would kill my mother (it didn’t), be the ruin of my father (not yet) and break the hearts of lots of young women (about this I can’t say).

The only thing that worried me was whether the Doctor would want me to go. If he didn’t, I was in trouble. But in the end he asked me himself.

“I need someone who can deal with a variety of situations, as I know you can. I will pay you too, although less well than before. I must live more economically now. But I think you will be able to send something to your parents, to compensate them for the loss of your labour. What do you say?”

“I say I will go with you, Doctor. Just like I said I would go to Hell with you, or Arkham.”

He smiled. “Well, this time our road may very well lead us to Hell, for all I know, before it ever leads to Arkham again. I’m glad you’ll be with me, Andre. We leave for Montreal in a fortnight’s time.”

 

*******

 

From the Diary

September 25, 1925

 

The eve of our departure from Grassadoo. I am sorry to leave this place, where I found an unexpected welcome and a degree of contentment, but it is necessary.

I am a physician, not a ‘medicine man.’ But that is what I would become if I stayed here, ministering to these credulous peasants. I have always considered quacks and mountebanks to be villains, perpetrating their mumbo jumbo on unsuspecting victims. But when one hears over and over again, for no scientific reason, that one has worked miracles, has made pain and injury vanish simply by laying on one’s hands, it is tempting to yield, to participate in and so to perpetuate the delusion. But not for me. Not yet. So it’s good-bye to Grassadoo and back to the road.

And the road must lead to St. Louis. Otherwise, the destruction of my old life makes no sense. I convinced myself that passing through death would show me the right road to take, so this must be it. (Why do I hear Herbert West laughing at me as I write this?) In any case, it will be only an episode. First St. Louis, then some civilized place where I can establish a niche for myself. If nothing else, this New Brunswick sojourn has shown me that I am still competent (despite that sinister development) and not a bad diagnostician. Moreover, I have developed a facility for talking to patients, something I did not bother with before. So it can be done. But where? New York would be the obvious place, but I do not like New York. I am too irredeemable a Yankee to consider either the South or the West. Ah well, first St. Louis, then we’ll see.

Andre has developed beautifully here. He has developed a good deal of discontent, too. It is obvious that the work of a farmer or fisherman does not suit him. But I have watched him do that work, and find a place in this community and a new confidence in himself. I think he will be a good companion, especially since in addition to his new talents, he appears to retain his unquestioning loyalty.

I myself am as well as can be expected. This year and a half in the country, with good (if coarse) food and a certain amount of physical activity, has been most beneficial. But what about that recurring pain? Yes, I know that Halifax specialist (McIntosh) told me there is nothing wrong with my heart. “You have the heart of a 25-year-old man, Dr. Dexter,” he said. “The body is full of unexplained pains that mean nothing. Are you sure you’re not in love, man?” Idiot. I suppose that was his idea of a joke. Love is not a physiological phenomenon, in any case, but an illusion of the mind. But this pain is yet another inexplicable detail for which I have no patience.

 

*******

 

We took a train to Montreal and another one to St. Louis. It was a long trip. There wasn’t much for me to do, just sit and look out the window. I saw trees and fields and farms and towns. Sometimes rivers and big cities. Then more trees and fields and farms. The land got flatter and there was more sky.

I was both happy and sad. I had gotten away from Grassadoo, but I missed my people. I was with the Doctor, but I didn’t know what we were going to do. I figured I better not let him know about all that, considering that he thought I could deal with “a variety of situations.” Well, I didn’t have any idea what that might mean, but I thought I had better be ready for anything.

Himself, he wasn’t so good. He couldn’t settle down – looked out the window one minute, tried to read, then gave up and threw down the newspaper and looked out the window again. Sometimes he slept, but not good sleeps. I was afraid he’d start having nightmares again, like in Kingsport, but he didn’t.

One time he asked me, “And how do you feel, Andre, now that you know where you came from?”

I thought for a bit. “Well, I feel I belong somewhere now, even if I don’t want to be there. Now I know there are people who know my name and my face, and if I ever go back they’d say, ‘Welcome home, Andre.’”

“Ah. You feel connected. Is that it?”

“Connected. Yes, maybe you could say that.” Except I wouldn’t, not me; that was one of his words. “What about you, Doctor?”

He smiled, but in a sad way. “Unlike you, I feel less connected every day. I have freed myself of my name, my profession, the place where I lived and the family I thought was mine. You are the only thing that connects me to any of that now, Andre. Without you I would probably float away into space. But now I think it’s time for lunch. Nothing like your mother’s fricots, but it might keep me from vanishing, at least.”

Not long after this we got to St. Louis. It was a big city full of its own business, and didn’t care about the two of us at all. We got rooms in a good hotel not far from the railroad station. I unpacked some of our things and wondered when “the business” would start.

Over supper, the Doctor told me a bit more about it. “Not long before the War,” he said, “I incurred a… debt of honour involving a fellow from this city. He is dead, unfortunately, but I have intended for some time to find his people and repay them.”

“For what?” I was curious. “What kind of a debt of honour was it?” I made a bet with myself that he wouldn’t really answer this question, and I was right.

“Oh, the usual kind.” He waved a hand. “You know – an injury, an injustice. The details don’t matter. The first thing I must do is look up some people.” He took a notebook from his pocket. “Mr. Carl Leavitt and his sister Doris Potts. Before we left New York I made some inquiries. Of course, that was two years ago, but it gives me a place to begin. We will call on Mr. Leavitt tomorrow and proceed from there.”

“But what are we going to do, exactly? And will you be Francis Dexter or Her – ?”

The look he gave me told me to shut up. “No, Andre,” he said. “Not that name. Its owner is dead, remember, as much in St. Louis as in Arkham. While we are here, I am Lawrence Devereaux, representative of a New York insurance company. You see, the late Robert Leavitt – that was his name, by the way – had a policy with my company, but we were unaware of his death until recently, and it took a while to track down his surviving relatives.”

“A while. How long was it?”

He looked a little bothered. “Eleven years, actually. Look, don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be offering these people money. Cash, quite a generous amount. They won’t be too particular about the details when they see that, I guarantee it. That will be it. Then good-bye to St. Louis. I don’t much like the look of the place. Or the smell, for that matter – beer, hogs and river mud. The sooner we return to civilized places the better. I have been thinking that it might be as well to travel in Europe for a while, take the Grand Tour. Then try our chances in New England again. The funds might stretch that far. How does that sound, Andre?”

I made a smile and some noises that sounded like I thought it was a great idea. But there were things about it I didn’t like. This was the first time he’d said anything about going to Europe, or that his money needed stretching. Still, I had to figure he knew what he was doing, didn’t I? “Well, Doctor,” I said, “let’s get the business done here and then we’ll see.”

“Exactly. Now let’s go back to the hotel and see what it can supply in the way of baths and beds.”

 

Mr. Carl Leavitt was dead, we found out next morning. And his sister, Mrs. Potts, was a very old lady, nearly deaf. It took a long time to get anything from her, but finally she told us she’d never known Robert Leavitt.

“He was Paul’s boy, I think,” she said. “Paul, my cousin. They lived over the other side of town.” She waved a hand. “We never saw them much. They were kind of funny folks, my Dad said. But I’m pretty sure Paul had a son called Robert. And I think he was the one that disappeared on some trip back East. Before the War, you say?”

It was a lot slower than that, talking to Mrs. Potts. She said a lot, but didn’t tell much, if you know what I mean. She said everything two or three different ways that all boiled down to the same thing when you thought about it. And of course the Doctor had to ask his questions just as many times, because she couldn’t hear. “You have to speak up, young man.” She must have said that a couple dozen times. The Doctor was very polite, but it got to me. There wasn’t much for me to do, so I just sat and looked around the room and wondered why there were little lace cloths everywhere – on the tables, on the backs of all the chairs, on the fireplace mantel, even pinned to the walls. The place looked like a snowstorm had hit, but it was hot and stuffy too. I was glad when we were outside again.

“Well, Andre,” said the Doctor “that was tedious but necessary. It seems that we must track down Mr. Paul Leavitt instead.”

There was no one called Paul Leavitt in the St. Louis telephone directory. I was afraid that we would have to go back to Mrs. Potts, but the Doctor said, “No, I think that lady has furnished us with as much information as she was able to. There are only six other Leavitts listed here. Surely at least one of them will be related to Paul, or to Robert himself, for that matter.”

He went to the telephone and began to talk. On the second try he got lucky (if you could put it that way, considering what happened). He made some notes and said he would be there that afternoon.

“Paul is no more,” he said, after hanging up the telephone, “but I just spoke with Paul’s other son, Robert’s brother, a fellow named Grover Leavitt. He will do. Very soon, our business here will be settled. Grover lives near St. Louis University, it seems, judging from the map.”

We took a taxi to Grover Leavitt’s house. It was in a place with lots of little old houses that looked like the people that lived in them didn’t like them very much. Paint was starting to peel and the gardens were overgrown or messy. The cars in the streets were old and unhappy. If they had been horses, they would have been skinny, with bald spots and sore feet.

The taxi stopped in front of a house that was a bit bigger than the ones around it, but looked like it was ashamed of itself and trying to hide in the bushes. “Here you are,” said the driver.

The Doctor asked him to wait. For a minute we stood and looked at the place. It didn’t get better. A couple of windows were cracked and the lace curtains looked like they might have holes. But I figured someone was trying to keep things nice, because there were pots of red flowers on either side of the steps, and even though the door needed painting, the brass knocker was shiny.

The Doctor’s knock sounded very loud, but for a long time no one came. He was about to knock again, when the door opened. A woman stood there, so skinny she looked like she might break. She held out a hand. “Mr. Devereaux? I’m Mary Leavitt. Mr. Leavitt is in his study.”

I was surprised because I thought she was the housekeeper. The Doctor told her I was “my associate, Mr. Lalonde.” When I shook her hand, I saw that her skin was rough and red.

This is a house that gets cleaned a lot, I thought, as we went into the parlour. It smelled of floor wax and lemon oil. But cleaning couldn’t hide the cracks in the plaster and the thin spots in the carpets and upholstery. Vases full of old dried flowers made the place look gloomy. Mrs. Leavitt excused herself and went to tell her husband we were there. The Doctor and I sat down on a couple of creaky chairs. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I couldn’t help noticing how wrong he looked in this over-scrubbed, sad room. He was wearing one of his New York suits, his shoes were shiny, his hair was clean and shiny, his spectacles were shiny and he looked like a new penny in a handful of pebbles and broken glass.

I heard a voice, coming closer. It didn’t sound happy. Then its owner came into the room. Grover Leavitt.

His face looked like a piece of splintered wood held together with wire, because of his steel-rimmed spectacles and a deep crease that started at the bridge of his nose and ended half way up his forehead. He wasn’t happy to see us.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Leavitt,” said the Doctor, standing up and holding out his hand. “I am Lawrence Devereaux, Excelsior Life Insurance Company, and this is my associate, Mr. Lalonde.”

Leavitt didn’t really shake hands with him, just touched and dropped. He didn’t bother even that much with me, just nodded. “Well, Mr. Devereaux,” he said, “since you’re here, suppose you come into my study and tell me what this is all about. Mary!” he yelled. “Bring us some coffee!”

We followed him into a room that looked like – I don’t know how to say – a graveyard for books and papers, or maybe a morgue. There was dust on everything. Some of the papers were yellow and curling up. Piles of books stood around on the floor. I wondered if Mr. Leavitt sat in his office waiting to see which one would fall over first. The curtains, which were partly closed, had an extra curtain of cobwebs and dust over them. I didn’t think Mrs. Leavitt was ever allowed in there to clean.

Mr. Leavitt sat down on a chair in front of the desk. I noticed a little clear space there, maybe one foot square. In it sat a bottle, a cup and a folded up newspaper. I figured it was that day’s paper, because it wasn’t dusty or even a little bit yellow. He waved us to a couple of chairs. One had a pile of magazines on it and the other one a box full of little books. Dusty, of course. “Just put that stuff on the floor,” he said. I did that, and I got out my handkerchief and wiped the chair seats. I didn’t want the Doctor getting his nice suit dusty, or me either.

“So what’s all this about, Mr. Devereaux? Why would a fine fellow like you come all the way to St. Louis to see me?”

“You had a brother, Robert Leavitt, is that not so?” the Doctor asked.

“You know that. I told you that when you telephoned yesterday. What about him?”

“The Excelsior Life Insurance Company has been trying to trace Robert Leavitt’s family since we became aware of his death, some years ago.”

Mr. Leavitt interrupted. “Disappearance, not death. Robert went to New England in 1914 and never came back. But he never turned up dead, either.”

“Exactly,” said the Doctor. “Which is why this has taken so long. Seven years after he was reported missing he was declared dead. And it took a further two or three years before we became aware of that fact. I was assigned to locate Mr. Leavitt’s survivors and to settle the matter of his insurance policy.”

“What insurance policy?”

“The one that Mr. Robert Leavitt took out with us in 1910. He paid the premiums faithfully until 1914. By the terms of that policy, after his death the balance goes to the declared beneficiary, who in this case is Mr. Leavitt’s nearest surviving relative, namely yourself.”

“Now why would Robert take out an insurance policy?” asked Mr. Leavitt. “You tell me that.” I thought if he frowned any harder he’d hurt himself.

“I have no idea, Mr. Leavitt,” said the Doctor. “All I know is that he did and that I am now in the position to deliver a substantial sum of money into your hands.”

Just then there was a little knock at the door. “Come on in, Mary,” said Mr. Leavitt, loud, like he was mad. “Don’t bother with all that fuss of yours.”

I got up and opened the door for her, thinking she might be bringing the coffee. I was right. She was holding a heavy tray and looked at me like she was relieved. There was no room to put the tray down anywhere, though. I took the cups and handed one to the Doctor. He didn’t like milk or sugar in coffee, but I did. I took my time getting them, too. I didn’t like Mr. Grover Leavitt, and didn’t care if he knew it.

“So how much is this substantial sum?” asked Mr. Leavitt, not even looking at his wife. There was a plate of cookies on the tray, and I figured she wanted to do something with it. “I can take those, Mrs. Leavitt,” I said, trying to help.

“Oh for God’s sake, Mary, we don’t need all that stuff!” said her husband. “We’re busy here. Just get out!”

The Doctor didn't wait for Mrs. Leavitt to go. “The amount in question is one thousand, seven hundred and eighty dollars. I have it here, Mr. Leavitt. All I need is your signature on this – ”

There was a big crash. Mary Leavitt dropped the tray, cookie plate, cream pitcher, sugar bowl, spoons and all, and fell on the floor after them.

Quick as anything, the Doctor went to her and began feeling her pulse. I picked up the crockery and put it on the tray. The sugar bowl was broken, and there was a pile of sugar on the carpet, mixed with milk and broken cookies. “Andre, help me please,” said the Doctor. “Mr. Leavitt, I would like to move Mrs. Leavitt to a place where she can rest comfortably. I think she’ll be all right, but she should lie down for a while.”

Mrs. Leavitt was beginning to come around. Her eyes were open, but she had a lost look on her face, and I couldn’t tell if she knew what was going on.

“Says who?” asked Grover Leavitt. “What would you know about what’s good for my wife?”

“I’m a – Well, Mr. Leavitt, it seems like common sense, when you consider she just fainted, but of course you should telephone your doctor immediately. In the meantime, Mr. Lalonde and I will move her to a sofa.”

We carried the woman into the parlour and laid her on the sofa. I could hear Mr. Leavitt talking on the telephone.

“Stay with her, Andre, while I get some water,” said the Doctor. He went into the hallway.

Mary Leavitt was looking at me. Suddenly she grabbed my arm. Her face got all red and there was a look in her eyes like some of the bodies had when the Doctor and I brought them back to life. “That money was for me!” she whispered. “It had to be. Robert was so kind to me. That must have been his way of helping me. Oh, if only he hadn’t gone away! My life has been so… you can’t imagine.”

The Doctor came back just then, with Mr. Leavitt after him. He helped Mrs. Leavitt sit up and gave her a glass of water. “Here, you, get away from her,” said Mr. Leavitt, almost pushing him away. “She doesn’t need any fancy man from New York to help her drink that. She’ll be all right.”

The Doctor looked at him. “Mr. Leavitt, I can see that this is not the best time to continue our business. We will come back tomorrow, if that’s convenient. I sincerely hope you will be feeling better by then, Mrs. Leavitt.”

“Oh she’ll be all right. Doc Pearson’s on his way. Now, about that cash – ”