Herbert West: Reanimator

by H. P. Lovecraft

　　Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speakonly with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinistermanner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature ofhis life-work, and first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago,when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic UniversityMedical School in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of hisexperiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that heis gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories andpossibilities are ever more hideous than realities.The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock Iever experienced, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I havesaid, it happened when we were in the medical school1 where West had alreadymade himself notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and thepossibility of overcoming it artificially. His views, which were widelyridiculed by the faculty and by his fellow-students, hinged on the essentiallymechanistic nature of life; and concerned means for operating the organicmachinery of mankind by calculated chemical action after the failure of naturalprocesses. In his experiments with various animating solutions, he had killedand treated immense numbers of rabbits, guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys,till he had become the prime nuisance of the college. Several times he hadactually obtained signs of life in. animals supposedly dead; in many casesviolent sign5; but he soon saw that the perfection of his process, if indeedpossible, would necessarily involve a lifetime of research. It likewise becameclear that, since the same solution never worked alike on different organicspecies, he would require human subjects for further and more specialisedprogress. It was here that he first came into conflict with the collegeauthorities, and was debarred from future experiments by no less a dignitarythan the dean of the medical school himself -- the learned and benevolent Dr.Allan Halsey, whose work in behalf of the stricken is recalled by every oldresident of Arkham.I had always been exceptionally tolerant of Wests pursuits, and wefrequently discussed his theories, whose ramifications and corollaries werealmost infinite. Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physicalprocess, and that the so-called "soul" is a myth, my friend believed thatartificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of thetissues; and that unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fullyequipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in thepeculiar fashion known as life. That the psychic or intellectual life might beimpaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive brain-cells which even a shortperiod of death would be apt to cause, West fully realised. It had at first beenhis hope to find a reagent which would restore vitality before the actual adventof death, and only repeated failures on animals had shewn him that the naturaland artificial life-motions were incompatible. He then sought extreme freshnessin his specimens, injecting his solutions into the blood immediately after theextinction of life. It was this circumstance which made the professors socarelessly sceptical, for they felt that true death had not occurred in anycase. They did not stop to view the matter closely and reasoningly.It was not long after the faculty had interdicted his work that Westconfided to me his resolution to get fresh human bodies in some manner, andcontinue in secret the experiments he could no longer perform openly. To hearhim discussing ways and means was rather ghastly, for at the college we hadnever procured anatomical specimens ourselves. Whenever the morgue provedinadequate, two local negroes attended to this matter, and they were seldomquestioned. West was then a small, slender, spectacled youth with delicatefeatures, yellow hair, pale blue eyes, and a soft voice, and it was uncanny tohear him dwelling on the relative merits of Christchurch Cemetery and thepotters field. We finally decided on the potters field, because practicallyevery body in Christchurch was embalmed; a thing of course ruinous to Westsresearches.I was by this time his active and enthralled assistant, and helped him makeall his decisions, not only concerning the source of bodies but concerning asuitable place for our loathsome work. It was I who thought of the desertedChapman farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill, where we fitted up on the ground floor anoperating room and a laboratory, each with dark curtains to conceal our midnightdoings. The place was far from any road, and in sight of no other house, yetprecautions were none the less necessary; since rumours of strange lights,started by chance nocturnal roamers, would soon bring disaster on ourenterprise. It was agreed to call the whole thing a chemical laboratory ifdiscovery should occur. Gradually we equipped our sinister haunt of science withmaterials either purchased in Boston or quietly borrowed from the college --materials carefully made unrecognisable save to expert eyes -- and providedspades and picks for the many burials we should have to make in the cellar. Atthe college we used an incinerator, but the apparatus was too costly for ourunauthorised laboratory. Bodies were always a nuisance -- even the smallguinea-pig bodies from the slight clandestine experiments in Wests room at theboarding-house.We followed the local death-notices like ghouls, for our specimens demandedparticular qualities. What we wanted were corpses interred soon after death andwithout artificial preservation; preferably free from malforming disease, andcertainly with all organs present. Accident victims were our best hope. Not formany weeks did we hear of anything suitable; though we talked with morgue andhospital authorities, ostensibly in the colleges interest, as often as we couldwithout exciting suspicion. We found that the college had first choice in everycase, so that it might be necessary to remain in Arkham during the summer, whenonly the limited summer-school classes were held. In the end, though, luckfavoured us; for one day we heard of an almost ideal case in the potters field;a brawny young workman drowned only the morning before in Summers Pond, andburied at the towns expense without delay or embalming. That afternoon we foundthe new grave, and determined to begin work soon after midnight.It was a repulsive task that we undertook in the black small hours, eventhough we lacked at that time the special horror of graveyards which laterexperiences brought to us. We carried spades and oil dark lanterns, for althoughelectric torches were then manufactured, they were not as satisfactory as thetungsten contrivances of today. The process of unearthing was slow and sordid --it might have been gruesomely poetical if we had been artists instead ofscientists -- and we were glad when our spades struck wood. When the pine boxwas fully uncovered, West scrambled down and removed the lid, dragging out andpropping up the contents. I reached down and hauled the contents out of thegrave, and then both toiled hard to restore the spot to its former appearance.The affair made us rather nervous, especially the stiff form and vacant face ofour first trophy, but we managed to remove all traces of our visit. When we hadpatted down the last shovelful of earth, we- put the specimen in a canvas sackand set out for the old Chapman place beyoiid Meadow Hill.On an improvised dissecting-table in the old farmhouse, by the light of apowerful acetylene lamp, the specimen was not very spectral looking. It had beena sturdy and apparently unimaginative youth of wholesome plebeian type --large-framed, grey-eyed, and brown-haired -- a sound animal withoutpsychological subtleties, and probably having vital processes of the simplestand healthiest sort. Now, with the eyes closed, it looked more asleep than dead;though the expert test of my friend soon left no doubt on that score. We had atlast what West had always longed for -- a real dead man of the ideal kind, readyfor the solution as prepared according to the most careful calculations andtheories for human use. The tension on our part became very great. We knew thatthere was scarcely a chance for anything like complete success, and could notavoid hideous fears at possible grotesque results of partial animation.Especially were we apprehensive concerning the mind and impulses of thecreature, since in the space following death some of the more delicate cerebralcells might well have suffered deterioration. I, myself, still held some curiousnotions about the traditional "soul" of man, and felt an awe at the secrets thatmight be told by one returning from the dead. I wondered what sights this placidyouth might have seen in inaccessible spheres, and what he could relate if fullyrestored to life. But my wonder was not overwhelming, since for the most part Ishared the materialism of my friend. He was calmer than I as he forced a largequantity of his fluid into a vein of the bodys arm, immediately binding theincision securely.The waiting was gruesome, but West never faltered. Every now and then heapplied his stethoscope to the specimen, and bore the negative resultsphilosophically. After about three-quarters of an hour without the least sign oflife he disappointedly pronounced the solution inadequate, but determined tomake the most of his opportunity and try one change in the formula beforedisposing of his ghastly prize. We had that afternoon dug a grave in the cellar,and would have to fill it by dawn -- for although we had fixed a lock on thehouse, we wished to shun even the remotest risk of a ghoulish discovery.Besides, the body would not be even approximately fresh the next night. Sotaking the solitary acetylene lamp into the adjacent laboratory, we left oursilent guest on the slab in the dark, and bent every energy to the mixing of anew solution; the weighing and measuring supervised by West with an almostfanatical care.The awful event was very sudden, and wholly unexpected. I was pouringsomething from one test-tube to another, and West was busy over the alcoholblast-lamp which had to answer for a Bunsen burner in this gasless edifice, whenfrom the pitch-black room we had left there burst the most appalling anddaemoniac succession of cries that either of us had ever heard. Not moreunutterable could have been the chaos of hellish sound if the pit itself hadopened to release the agony of the damned, for in one inconceivable cacophonywas centered all the supernal terror and unnatural despair of animate nature.Human it could not have been -- it is not in man to make such sounds -- andwithout a thought of our late employment or its possible discovery, both Westand I leaped to the nearest window like stricken animals; overturning tubes,lamp, and retorts, and vaulting madly into the starred abyss of the rural night.I think we screamed ourselves as we stumbled frantically toward the town, thoughas we reached the outskirts we put on a semblance of restraint -- just enough toseem like belated revellers staggering home from a debauch.We did not separate, but managed to get to Wests room, where we whisperedwith the gas up until dawn. By then we had calmed ourselves a little withrational theories and plans for investigation, so that we could sleep throughthe day -- classes being disregarded. But that evening two items in the paper,wholly unrelated, made it again impossible for us to sleep. The old desertedChapman house had inexplicably burned to an amorphous heap of ashes; that wecould understand because of the upset lamp. Also, an attempt had been made todisturb a new grave in the potters field, as if by futile and spadeless clawingat the earth. That we could not understand, for we had patted down the mouldvery carefully.And for seventeen years after that West would look frequently over hisshoulder, and complain of fancied footsteps behind him. Now he has disappeared.II. The Plague-DaemonI shall never forget that hideous summer sixteen years ago, when like anoxious afrite from the halls of Eblis typhoid stalked leeringly through Arkham.It is by that satanic scourge that most recall the year, for truly terrorbrooded with bat-wings over the piles of coffins in the tombs of ChristchurchCemetery; yet for me there is a greater horror in that time -- a horror known tome alone now that Herbert West has disappeared.West and I were doing post-graduate work in summer classes at the medicalschool of Miskatonic University, and my friend had attained a wide notorietybecause of his experiments leading toward the revivification of the dead. Afterthe scientific slaughter of uncounted small animals the freakish work hadostensibly stopped by order of our sceptical dean, Dr. Allan Halsey; though Westhad continued to perform certain secret tests in his dingy boarding-house room,and had on one terrible and unforgettable occasion taken a human body from itsgrave in the potters field to a deserted farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill.I was with him on that odious occasion, and saw him inject into the stillveins the elixir which he thought would to some extent restore lifes chemicaland physical processes. It had ended horribly -- in a delirium of fear which wegradually came to attribute to our own overwrought nerves -- and West had neverafterward been able to shake off a maddening sensation of being haunted andhunted. The body had not been quite fresh enough; it is obvious that to restorenormal mental attributes a body must be very fresh indeed; and the burning ofthe old house had prevented us from burying the thing. It would have been betterif we could have known it was underground.After that experience West had dropped his researches for some time; but asthe zeal of the born scientist slowly returned, he again became importunate withthe college faculty, pleading for the use of the dissecting-room and of freshhuman specimens for the work he regarded as so overwhelmingly important. Hispleas, however, were wholly in vain; for the decision of Dr. Halsey wasinflexible, and the other professors all endorsed the verdict of their leader.In the radical theory of reanimation they saw nothing but the immature vagariesof a youthful enthusiast whose slight form, yellow hair, spectacled blue eyes,and soft voice gave no hint of the supernormal -- almost diabolical -- power ofthe cold brain within. I can see him now as he was then -- and I shiver. He grewsterner of face, but never elderly. And now Sefton Asylum has had the mishap andWest has vanished.West clashed disagreeably with Dr. Halsey near the end of our lastundergraduate term in a wordy dispute that did less credit to him than to thekindiy dean in point of courtesy. He felt that he was needlessly andirrationally retarded in a supremely great work; a work which he could of courseconduct to suit himself in later years, but which he wished to begin while stillpossessed of the exceptional facilities of the university. That thetradition-bound elders should ignore his singular results on animals, andpersist in their denial of the possibility of reanimation, was inexpressiblydisgusting and almost incomprehensible to a youth of Wests logical temperament.Only greater maturity could help him understand the chronic mental limitationsof the "professor-doctor" type -- the product of generations of patheticPuritanism; kindly, conscientious, and sometimes gentle and amiable, yet alwaysnarrow, intolerant, custom-ridden, and lacking in perspective. Age has morecharity for these incomplete yet high-souled characters, whose worst real viceis timidity, and who are ultimately punished by general ridicule for theirintellectual sins -- sins like Ptolemaism, Calvinism, anti-Darwinism,anti-Nietzscheism, and every sort of Sabbatarianism and sumptuary legislation.West, young despite his marvellous scientific acquirements, had scant patiencewith good Dr. Halsey and his erudite colleagues; and nursed an increasingresentment, coupled with a desire to prove his theories to these obtuse worthiesin some striking and dramatic fashion. Like most youths, he indulged inelaborate daydreams of revenge, triumph, and final magnanimous forgiveness.And then had come the scourge, grinning and lethal, from the nightmarecaverns of Tartarus. West and I had graduated about the time of its beginning,but had remained for additional work at the summer school, so that we were inArkham when it broke with full daemoniac fury upon the town. Though not as yetlicenced physicians, we now had our degrees, and were pressed frantically intopublic service as the numbers of the stricken grew. The situation was almostpast management, and deaths ensued too frequently for the local undertakersfully to handle. Burials without embalming were made in rapid succession, andeven the Christchurch Cemetery receiving tomb was crammed with coffins of theunembalmed dead. This circumstance was not without effect on West, who thoughtoften of the irony of the situation -- so many fresh specimens, yet none for hispersecuted researches! We were frightfully overworked, and the terrific mentaland nervous strain made my friend brood morbidly.But Wests gentle enemies were no less harassed with prostrating duties.College had all but closed, and every doctor of the medical faculty was helpingto fight the typhoid plague. Dr. Halsey in particular had distinguished himselfin sacrificing service, applying his extreme skill with whole-hearted energy tocases which many others shunned because of danger or apparent hopelessness.Before a month was over the fearless dean had become a popular hero, though heseemed unconscious of his fame as he struggled to keep from collapsing withphysical fatigue and nervous exhaustion. West could not withhold admiration forthe fortitude of his foe, but because of this was even more determined to proveto him the truth of his amazing doctrines. Taking advantage of thedisorganisation of both college work and municipal health regulations, hemanaged to get a recently deceased body smuggled into the universitydissecting-room one night, and in my presence injected a new modification of hissolution. The thing actually opened its eyes, but only stared at the ceilingwith a look of soul-petrifying horror before collapsing into an inertness fromwhich nothing could rouse it. West said it was not fresh enough -- the hotsummer air does not favour corpses. That time we were almost caught before weincinerated the thing, and West doubted the advisability of repeating his daringmisuse of the college laboratory.The peak of the epidemic was reached in August. West and I were almost dead,and Dr. Halsey did die on the 14th. The students all attended the hasty funeralon the 15th, and bought an impressive wreath, though the latter was quiteovershadowed by the tributes sent by wealthy Arkham citizens and by themunicipality itself. It was almost a public affair, for the dean had surely beena public benefactor. After the entombment we were all somewhat depressed, andspent the afternoon at the bar of the Commercial House; where West, thoughshaken by the death of his chief opponent, chilled the rest of us withreferences to his notorious theories. Most of the students went home, or tovarious duties, as the evening advanced; but West persuaded me to aid him in"making a night of it" Wests landlady saw us arrive at his room about two inthe morning, with a third man between us; and told her husband that we had allevidently dined and wined rather well.Apparently this acidulous matron was right; for about 3 a.m. the whole housewas aroused by cries coming from Wests room, where when they broke down thedoor, they found the two of us unconscious on the blood-stained carpet, beaten,scratched, and mauled, and with the broken remnants of Wests bottles andinstruments around us. Only an open window told what had become of ourassailant, and many wondered how he himself had fared after the terrific leapfrom the second story to the lawn which he must have made. There were somestrange garments in the room, but West upon regaining consciousness said theydid not belong to the stranger, but were specimens collected for bacteriologicalanalysis in the course of investigations on the transmission of germ diseases.He ordered them burnt as soon as possible in the capacious fireplace. To thepolice we both declared ignorance of our late companions identity. He was, Westnervously said, a congenial stranger whom we had met at some downtown bar ofuncertain location. We had all been rather jovial, and West and I did not wishto have our pugnacious companion hunted down.That same night saw the beginning of the second Arkham horror -- the horrorthat to me eclipsed the plague itself. Christ-church Cemetery was the scene of aterrible killing; a watchman having been clawed to death in a manner not onlytoo hideous for description, but raising a doubt as to the human agency of thedeed. The victim had been seen alive considerably after midnight -- the dawnrevealed the unutterable thing. The manager of a circus at the neighbouring townof Bolton was questioned, but he swore that no beast had at any time escapedfrom its cage. Those who found the body noted a trail of blood leading to thereceiving tomb, where a small pool of red lay on the concrete just outside thegate. A fainter trail led away toward the woods, but it soon gave out.The next night devils danced on the roofs of Arkham, and unnatural madnesshowled in the wind. Through the fevered town had crept a curse which some saidwas greater than the plague, and which some whispered was the embodieddaemon-soul of the plague itself. Eight houses were entered by a nameless thingwhich strewed red death in its wake -- in all, seventeen maimed and shapelessremnants of bodies were left behind by the voiceless, sadistic monster thatcrept abroad. A few persons had half seen it in the dark, and said it was whiteand like a malformed ape or anthropomorphic fiend. It had not left behind quiteall that it had attacked, for sometimes it had been hungry. The number it hadkilled was fourteen; three of the bodies had been in stricken homes and had notbeen alive.On the third night frantic bands of searchers, led by the police, capturedit in a house on Crane Street near the Miskatonic campus. They had organised thequest with care, keeping in touch by means of volunteer telephone stations, andwhen someone in the college district had reported hearing a scratching at ashuttered window, the net was quickly spread. On account of the general alarmand precautions, there were only two more victims, and the capture was effectedwithout major casualties. The thing was finally stopped by a bullet, though nota fatal one, and was rushed to the local hospital amidst universal excitementand loathing.For it had been a man. This much was clear despite the nauseous eyes, thevoiceless simianism, and the daemoniac savagery. They dressed its wound andcarted it to the asylum at Sefton, where it beat its head against the walls of apadded cell for sixteen years -- until the recent mishap, when it escaped undercircumstances that few like to mention. What had most disgusted the searchers ofArkham was the thing they noticed when the monsters face was cleaned -- themocking, unbelievable resemblance to a learned and self-sacrificing martyr whohad been entombed but three days before -- the late Dr. Allan Halsey, publicbenefactor and dean of the medical school of Miskatonic University.To the vanished Herbert West and to me the disgust and horror were supreme.I shudder tonight as I think of it; shudder even more than I did that morningwhen West muttered through his bandages, "Damn it, it wasnt quite freshenough!"III. Six Shots by MoonlightIt is uncommon to fire all six shots of a revolver with great suddennesswhen one would probably be sufficient, but many things in the life of HerbertWest were uncommon. It is, for instance, not often that a young physicianleaving college is obliged to conceal the principles which guide his selectionof a home and office, yet that was the case with Herbert West. When he and Iobtained our degrees at the medical school of Miskatonic University, and soughtto relieve our poverty by setting up as general practitioners, we took greatcare not to say that we chose our house because it was fairly well isolated, andas near as possible to the potters field.Reticence such as this is seldom without a cause, nor indeed was ours; forour requirements were those resulting from a life-work distinctly unpopular.Outwardly we were doctors only, but beneath the surface were aims of far greaterand more terrible moment -- for the essence of Herbert Wests existence was aquest amid black and forbidden realms of the unknown, in which he hoped touncover the secret of life and restore to perpetual animation the graveyardscold clay. Such a quest demands strange materials, among them fresh humanbodies; and in order to keep supplied with these indispensable things one mustlive quietly and not far from a place of informal interment.West and I had met in college, and I had been the only one to sympathisewith his hideous experiments. Gradually I had come to be his inseparableassistant, and now that we were out of college we had to keep together. It wasnot easy to find a good opening for two doctors in company, but finally theinfluence of the university secured us a practice in Bolton -- a factory townnear Arkham, the seat of the college. The Bolton Worsted Mills are the largestin the Miskatonic Valley, and their polyglot employees are never popular aspatients with the local physicians. We chose our house with the greatest care,seizing at last on a rather run-down cottage near the end of Pond Street; fivenumbers from the closest neighbour, and separated from the local potters fieldby only a stretch of meadow land, bisected by a narrow neck of the rather denseforest which lies to the north. The distance was greater than we wished, but wecould get no nearer house without going on the other side of the field, whollyout of the factory district. We were not much displeased, however, since therewere no people between us and our sinister source of supplies. The walk was atrifle long, but we could haul our silent specimens undisturbed.Our practice was surprisingly large from the very first -- large enough toplease most young doctors, and large enough to prove a bore and a burden tostudents whose real interest lay elsewhere. The mill-hands were of somewhatturbulent inclinations; and besides their many natural needs, their frequentclashes and stabbing affrays gave us plenty to do. But what actually absorbedour minds was the secret laboratory we had fitted up in the cellar -- thelaboratory with the long table under the electric lights, where in the smallhours of the morning we often injected Wests various solutions into the veinsof the things we dragged from the potters field. West was experimenting madlyto find something which would start mans vital motions anew after they had beenstopped by the thing we call death, but had encountered the most ghastlyobstacles. The solution had to be differently compounded for different types --what would serve for guinea-pigs would not serve for human beings, and differenthuman specimens required large modifications.The bodies had to be exceedingly fresh, or the slight decomposition of braintissue would render perfect reanimation impossible. Indeed, the greatest problemwas to get them fresh enough -- West had had horrible experiences during hissecret college researches with corpses of doubtful vintage. The results ofpartial or imperfect animation were much more hideous than were the totalfailures, and we both held fearsome recollections of such things. Ever since ourfirst daemoniac session in the deserted farmhouse on Meadow Hill in Arkham, wehad felt a brooding menace; and West, though a calm, blond, blue-eyed scientificautomaton in most respects, often confessed to a shuddering sensation ofstealthy pursuit. He half felt that he was followed -- a psychological delusionof shaken nerves, enhanced by the undeniably disturbing fact that at least oneof our reanimated specimens was still alive -- a frightful carnivorous thing ina padded cell at Sefton. Then there was another -- our first -- whose exact fatewe had never learned.We had fair luck with specimens in Bolton -- much better than in Arkham. Wehad not been settled a week before we got an accident victim on the very nightof burial, and made it open its eyes with an amazingly rational expressionbefore the solution failed. It had lost an arm -- if it had been a perfect bodywe might have succeeded better. Between then and the next January we securedthree more; one total failure, one case of marked muscular motion, and onerather shivery thing -- it rose of itself and uttered a sound. Then came aperiod when luck was poor; interments fell off, and those that did occur were ofspecimens either too diseased or too maimed for use. We kept track of all thedeaths and their circumstances with systematic care.One March night, however, we unexpectedly obtained a specimen which did notcome from the potters field. In Bolton the prevailing spirit of Puritanism hadoutlawed the sport of boxing -- with the usual result. Surreptitious andill-conducted bouts among the mill-workers were common, and occasionallyprofessional talent of low grade was imported. This late winter night there hadbeen such a match; evidently with disastrous results, since two timorous Poleshad come to us with incoherently whispered entreaties to attend to a very secretand desperate case. We followed them to an abandoned barn, where the remnants ofa crowd of frightened foreigners were watching a silent black form on the floor.The match had been between Kid OBrien -- a lubberly and now quaking youthwith a most un-Hibernian hooked nose -- and Buck Robinson, "The Harlem Smoke."The negro had been knocked out, and a moments examination shewed us that hewould permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, withabnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face thatconjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under aneerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life -- but the world holdsmany ugly things. Fear was upon the whole pitiful crowd, for they did not knowwhat the law would exact of them if the affair were not hushed up; and they weregrateful when West, in spite of my involuntary shudders, offered to get rid ofthe thing quietly -- for a purpose I knew too well.There was bright moonlight over the snowless landscape, but we dressed thething and carried it home between us through the deserted streets and meadows,as we had carried a similar thing one horrible night in Arkham. We approachedthe house from the field in the rear, took the specimen in the back door anddown the cellar stairs, and prepared it for the usual experiment. Our fear ofthe police was absurdly great, though we had timed our trip to avoid thesolitary patrolman of that section.The result was wearily anticlimactic. Ghastly as our prize appeared, it waswholly unresponsive to every solution we injected in its black arm; solutionsprepared from experience with white specimens only. So as the hour grewdangerously near to dawn, we did as we had done with the others -- dragged thething across the meadows to the neck of the woods near the potters field, andburied it there in the best sort of grave the frozen ground would furnish. Thegrave was not very deep, but fully as good as that of the previous specimen --the thing which had risen of itself and uttered a sound. In the light of ourdark lanterns we carefully covered it with leaves and dead vines, fairly certainthat the police would never find it in a forest so dim and dense.The next day I was increasingly apprehensive about the police, for a patientbrought rumours of a suspected fight and death. West had still another source ofworry, for he had been called in the afternoon to a case which ended verythreateningly. An Italian woman had become hysterical over her missing child --a lad of five who had strayed off early in the morning and failed to appear fordinner -- and had developed symptoms highly alarming in view of an always weakheart. It was a very foolish hysteria, for the boy had often run away before;but Italian peasants are exceedingly superstitious, and this woman seemed asmuch harassed by omens as by facts. About seven oclock in the evening she haddied, and her frantic husband had made a frightful scene in his efforts to killWest, whom he wildly blamed for not saving her life. Friends had held him whenhe drew a stiletto, but West departed amidst his inhuman shrieks, curses andoaths of vengeance. In his latest affliction the fellow seemed to have forgottenhis child, who was still missing as the night advanced. There was some talk ofsearching the woods, but most of the familys friends were busy with the deadwoman and the screaming man. Altogether, the nervous strain upon West must havebeen tremendous. Thoughts of the police and of the mad Italian both weighedheavily.We retired about eleven, but I did not sleep well. Bolton had a surprisinglygood police force for so small a town, and I could not help fearing the messwhich would ensue if the affair of the night before were ever tracked down. Itmight mean the end of all our local work -- and perhaps prison for both West andme. I did not like those rumours of a fight which were floating about. After theclock had struck three the moon shone in my eyes, but I turned over withoutrising to pull down the shade. Then came the steady rattling at the back door.I lay still and somewhat dazed, but before long heard Wests rap on my door.He was clad in dressing-gown and slippers, and had in his hands a revolver andan electric flashlight. From the revolver I knew that he was thinking more ofthe crazed Italian than of the police."Wed better both go," he whispered. "It wouldnt do not to answer itanyway, and it may be a patient -- it would be like one of those fools to trythe back door."So we both went down the stairs on tiptoe, with a fear partly justified andpartly that which comes only from the soul of the weird small hours. Therattling continued, growing somewhat louder. When we reached the door Icautiously unbolted it and threw it open, and as the moon streamed revealinglydown on the form silhouetted there, West did a peculiar thing. Despite theobvious danger of attracting notice and bringing down on our heads the dreadedpolice investigation -- a thing which after all was mercifully averted by therelative isolation of our cottage -- my friend suddenly, excitedly, andunnecessarily emptied all six chambers of his revolver into the nocturnalvisitor.For that visitor was neither Italian nor policeman. Looming hideouslyagainst the spectral moon was a gigantic misshapen thing not to be imagined savein nightmares -- a glassy-eyed, ink-black apparition nearly on all fours,covered with bits of mould, leaves, and vines, foul with caked blood, and havingbetween its glistening teeth a snow-white, terrible, cylindrical objectterminating in a tiny hand.IV. The Scream of the DeadThe scream of a dead man gave to me that acute and added horror of Dr.Herbert West which harassed the latter years of our companionship. It is naturalthat such a thing as a dead mans scream should give horror, for it isobviously, not a pleasing or ordinary occurrence; but I was used to similarexperiences, hence suffered on this occasion only because of a particularcircumstance. And, as I have implied, it was not of the dead man himself that Ibecame afraid.Herbert West, whose associate and assistant I was, possessed scientificinterests far beyond the usual routine of a village physician. That was why,when establishing his practice in Bolton, he had chosen an isolated house nearthe potters field. Briefly and brutally stated, Wests sole absorbing interestwas a secret study of the phenomena of life and its cessation, leading towardthe reanimation of the dead through injections of an excitant solution. For thisghastly experimenting it was necessary to have a constant supply of very freshhuman bodies; very fresh because even the least decay hopelessly damaged thebrain structure, and human because we found that the solution had to becompounded differently for different types of organisms. Scores of rabbits andguinea-pigs had been killed and treated, but their trail was a blind one. Westhad never fully succeeded because he had never been able to secure a corpsesufficiently fresh. What he wanted were bodies from which vitality had only justdeparted; bodies with every cell intact and capable of receiving again theimpulse toward that mode of motion called life. There was hope that this secondand artificial life might be made perpetual by repetitions of the injection, butwe had learned that an ordinary natural life would not respond to the action. Toestablish the artificial motion, natural life must be extinct -- the specimensmust be very fresh, but genuinely dead.The awesome quest had begun when West and I were students at the MiskatonicUniversity Medical School in Arkham, vividly conscious for the first time of thethoroughly mechanical nature of life. That was seven years before, but Westlooked scarcely a day older now -- he was small, blond, clean-shaven,soft-voiced, and spectacled, with only an occasional flash of a cold blue eye totell of the hardening and growing fanaticism of his character under the pressureof his terrible investigations. Our experiences had often been hideous in theextreme; the results of defective reanimation, when lumps of graveyard clay hadbeen galvanised into morbid, unnatural, and brainless motion by variousmodifications of the vital solution.One thing had uttered a nerve-shattering scream; another had risenviolently, beaten us both to unconsciousness, and run amuck in a shocking waybefore it could be placed behind asylum bars; still another, a loathsome Africanmonstrosity, had clawed out of its shallow grave and done a deed -- West had hadto shoot that object. We could not get bodies fresh enough to shew any trace ofreason when reanimated, so had perforce created nameless horrors. It wasdisturbing to think that one, perhaps two, of our monsters still lived -- thatthought haunted us shadowingly, till finally West disappeared under frightfulcircumstances. But at the time of the scream in the cellar laboratory of theisolated Bolton cottage, our fears were subordinate to our anxiety for extremelyfresh specimens. West was more avid than I, so that it almost seemed to me thathe looked half-covetously at any very healthy living physique.It was in July, 1910, that the bad luck regarding specimens began to turn. Ihad been on a long visit to my parents in Illinois, and upon my return foundWest in a state of singular elation. He had, he told me excitedly, in alllikelihood solved the problem of freshness through an approach from an entirelynew angle -- that of artificial preservation. I had known that he was working ona new and highly unusual embalming compound, and was not surprised that it hadturned Out well; but until he explained the details I was rather puzzled as tohow such a compound could help in our work, since the objectionable staleness ofthe specimens was largely due to delay occurring before we secured them. This, Inow saw, West had clearly recognised; creatuig his embalming compound for futurerather than immediate use, and trusting to fate to supply again some very recentand unburied corpse, as it had years before when we obtained the negro killed inthe Bolton prize-fight. At last fate had been kind, so that on this occasionthere lay in the secret cellar laboratory a corpse whose decay could not by anypossibility have begun. What would happen on reanimation, and whether we couldhope for a revival of mind and reason, West did not venture to predict. Theexperiment would be a landmark in our studies, and he had saved the new body formy return, so that both might share the spectacle in accustomed fashion.West told me how he had obtained the specimen. It had been a vigorous man; awell-dressed stranger just off the train on his way to transact some businesswith the Bolton Worsted Mills. The walk through the town had been long, and bythe time the traveller paused at our cottage to ask the way to the factories,his heart had become greatly overtaxed. He had refused a stimulant, and hadsuddenly dropped dead only a moment later. The body, as might be expected,seemed to West a heaven-sent gift. In his brief conversation the stranger hadmade it clear that he was unknown in Bolton, and a search of his pocketssubsequently revealed him to be one Robert Leavitt of St. Louis, apparentlywithout a family to make instant inquiries about his disappearance. If this mancould not be restored to life, no one would know of our experiment. We buriedour materials in a dense strip of woods between the house and the pottersfield. If, on the other hand, he could be restored, our fame would bebrilliantly and perpetually established. So without delay West had injected intothe bodys wrist the compound which would hold it fresh for use after myarrival. The matter of the presumably weak heart, which to my mind imperilledthe success of our experiment, did not appear to trouble West extensively. Hehoped at last to obtain what he had never obtained before -- a rekindled sparkof reason and perhaps a normal, living creature.So on the night of July 18, 1910, Herbert West and I stood in the cellarlaboratory and gazed at a white, silent figure beneath the dazzling arc-light.The embalming compound had worked uncannily well, for as I stared fascinatedlyat the sturdy frame which had lain two weeks without stiffening, I was moved toseek Wests assurance that the thing was really dead. This assurance he gavereadily enough; reminding me that the reanimating solution was never usedwithout careful tests as to life, since it could have, no effect if any of theoriginal vitality were present. As West proceeded to take preliminary steps, Iwas impressed by the vast intricacy of the new experiment; an intricacy so vastthat he could trust no hand less delicate than his own. Forbidding me to touchthe body, he first injected a drug in the wrist just beside the place his needlehad punctured when injecting the embalming compound. This, he said, was toneutralise the compound and release the system to a normal relaxation so thatthe reanimating solution might freely work when injected. Slightly later, when achange and a gentle tremor seemed to affect the dead limbs; West stuffed apillow-like object violently over the twitching face, not withdrawing it untilthe corpse appeared quiet and ready for our attempt at reanimation. The paleenthusiast now applied some last perfunctory tests for absolute lifelessness,withdrew satisfied, and finally injected into the left arm an accuratelymeasured amount of the vital elixir, prepared during the afternoon with agreater care than we had used since college days, when our feats were new andgroping. I cannot express the wild, breathless suspense with which we waited forresults on this first really fresh specimen -- the first we could reasonablyexpect to open its lips in rational speech, perhaps to tell of what it had seenbeyond the unfathomable abyss.West was a materialist, believing in no soul and attributing all the workingof consciousness to bodily phenomena; consequently he looked for no revelationof hideous secrets from gulfs and caverns beyond deaths barrier. I did notwholly disagree with him theoretically, yet held vague instinctive remnants ofthe primitive faith of my forefathers; so that I could not help eyeing thecorpse with a certain amount of awe and terrible expectation. Besides -- I couldnot extract from my memory that hideous, inhuman shriek we heard on the night wetried our first experiment in the deserted farmhouse at Arkham.Very little time had elapsed before I saw the attempt was not to be a totalfailure. A touch of colour came to cheeks hitherto chalk-white, and spread outunder the curiously ample stubble of sandy beard. West, who had his hand on thepulse of the left wrist, suddenly nodded significantly; and almostsimultaneously a mist appeared on the mirror inclined above the bodys mouth.There followed a few spasmodic muscular motions, and then an audible breathingand visible motion of the chest. I looked at the closed eyelids, and thought Idetected a quivering. Then the lids opened, shewing eyes which were grey, calm,and alive, but still unintelligent and not even curious.In a moment of fantastic whim I whispered questions to the reddening ears;questions of other worlds of which the memory might still be present. Subsequentterror drove them from my mind, but I think the last one, which I repeated, was:"Where have you been?" I do not yet know whether I was answered or not, for nosound came from the well-shaped mouth; but I do know that at that moment Ifirmly thought the thin lips moved silently, forming syllables which I wouldhave vocalised as "only now" if that phrase had possessed any sense orrelevancy. At that moment, as I say, I was elated with the conviction that theone great goal had been attained; and that for the first time a reanimatedcorpse had uttered distinct words impelled by actual reason. In the next momentthere was no doubt about the triumph; no doubt that the solution had trulyaccomplished, at least temporarily, its full mission of restoring rational andarticulate life to the dead. But in that triumph there came to me the greatestof all horrors -- not horror of the thing that spoke, but of the deed that I hadwitnessed and of the man with whom my professional fortunes were joined.For that very fresh body, at last writhing into full and terrifyingconsciousness with eyes dilated at the memory of its last scene on earth, threwout its frantic hands in a life and death struggle with the air, and suddenlycollapsing into a second and final dissolution from which there could be noreturn, screamed out the cry that will ring eternally in my aching brain:"Help! Keep off, you cursed little tow-head fiend -- keep that damned needleaway from me!"V. The Horror From the ShadowsMany men have related hideous things, not mentioned in print, which happenedon the battlefields of the Great War. Some of these things have made me faint,others have convulsed me with devastating nausea, while still others have mademe tremble and look behind me in the dark; yet despite the worst of them Ibelieve I can myself relate the most hideous thing of all -- the shocking, theunnatural, the unbelievable horror from the shadows.In 1915 I was a physician with the rank of First Lieutenant in a Canadianregiment in Flanders, one of many Americans to precede the government itselfinto the gigantic struggle. I had not entered the army on my own initiative, butrather as a natural result of the enlistment of the man whose indispensableassistant I was -- the celebrated Boston surgical specialist, Dr. Herbert West.Dr. West had been avid for a chance to serve as surgeon in a great war, and whenthe chance had come, he carried me with him almost against my will. There werereasons why I could have been glad to let the war separate us; reasons why Ifound the practice of medicine and the companionship of West more and moreirritating; but when he had gone to Ottawa and through a colleagues influencesecured a medical commission as Major, I could not resist the imperiouspersuasion of one determined that I should accompany him in my usual capacity. When I say that Dr. West was avid to serve in battle, I do not mean to implythat he was either naturally warlike or anxious for the safety of civilisation.Always an ice-cold intellectual machine; slight, blond, blue-eyed, andspectacled; I think he secretly sneered at my occasional martial enthusiasms andcensures of supine neutrality. There was, however, something he wanted inembattled Flanders; and in order to secure it had had to assume a militaryexterior. What he wanted was not a thing which many persons want, but somethingconnected with the peculiar branch of medical science which he had chosen quiteclandestinely to follow, and in which he had achieved amazing and occasionallyhideous results. It was, in fact, nothing more or less than an abundant supplyof freshly killed men in every stage of dismemberment.Herbert West needed fresh bodies because his life-work was the reanimationof the dead. This work was not known to the fashionable clientele who had soswiftly built up his fame after his arrival in Boston; but was only too wellknown to me, who had been his closest friend and sole assistant since the olddays in Miskatonic University Medical School at Arkham. It was in those collegedays that he had begun his terrible experiments, first on small animals and thenon human bodies shockingly obtained. There was a solution which he injected intothe veins of dead things, and if they were fresh enough they responded instrange ways. He had had much trouble in discovering the proper formula, foreach type of organism was found to need a stimulus especially adapted to it.Terror stalked him when he reflected on his partial failures; nameless thingsresulting from imperfect solutions or from bodies insufficiently fresh. Acertain number of these failures had remained alive -- one was in an asylumwhile others had vanished -- and as he thought of conceivable yet virtuallyimpossible eventualities he often shivered beneath his usual stolidity.West had soon learned that absolute freshness was the prime requisite foruseful specimens, and had accordingly resorted to frightful and unnaturalexpedients in body-snatching. In college, and during our early practice togetherin the factory town of Bolton, my attitude toward him had been largely one offascinated admiration; but as his boldness in methods grew, I began to develop agnawing fear. I did not like the way he looked at healthy living bodies; andthen there came a nightmarish session in the cellar laboratory when I learnedthat a certain specimen had been a living body when he secured it. That was thefirst time he had ever been able to revive the quality of rational thought in acorpse; and his success, obtained at such a loathsome cost, had completelyhardened him.Of his methods in the intervening five years I dare not speak. I was held tohim by sheer force of fear, and witnessed sights that no human tongue couldrepeat. Gradually I came to find Herbert West himself more horrible thananything he did -- that was when it dawned on me that his once normal scientificzeal for prolonging life had subtly degenerated into a mere morbid and ghoulishcuriosity and secret sense of charnel picturesqueness. His interest became ahellish and perverse addiction to the repellently and fiendishly abnormal; hegloated calmly over artificial monstrosities which would make most healthy mendrop dead from fright and disgust; he became, behind his pallid intellectuality,a fastidious Baudelaire of physical experiment -- a languid Elagabalus of thetombs.Dangers he met unflinchingly; crimes he committed unmoved. I think theclimax came when he had proved his point that rational life can be restored, andhad sought new worlds to conquer by experimenting on the reanimation of detachedparts of bodies. He had wild and original ideas on the independent vitalproperties of organic cells and nerve-tissue separated from naturalphysiological systems; and achieved some hideous preliminary results in the formof neverdying, artificially nourished tissue obtained from the nearly hatchedeggs of an indescribably tropical reptile. Two biological points he wasexceedingly anxious to settle -- first, whether any amount of consciousness andrational action be possible without the brain, proceeding from the spinal cordand various nerve-centres; and second, whether any kind of ethereal, intangiblerelation distinct from the material cells may exist to link the surgicallyseparated parts of what has previously been a single living organism. All thisresearch work required a prodigious supply of freshly slaughtered human flesh --and that was why Herbert West had entered the Great War.The phantasmal, unmentionable thing occurred one midnight late in March,1915, in a field hospital behind the lines of St. Eloi. I wonder even now if itcould have been other than a daemoniac dream of delirium. West had a privatelaboratory in an east room of the barn-like temporary edifice, assigned him onhis plea that he was devising new and radical methods for the treatment ofhitherto hopeless cases of maiming. There he worked like a butcher in the midstof his gory wares -- I could never get used to the levity with which he handledand classified certain things. At times he actually did perform marvels ofsurgery for the soldiers; but his chief delights were of a less public andphilanthropic kind, requiring many explanations of sounds which seemed peculiareven amidst that babel of the damned. Among these sounds were frequentrevolver-shots -- surely not uncommon on a battlefield, but distinctly uncommonin an hospital. Dr. Wests reanimated specimens were not meant for longexistence or a large audience. Besides human tissue, West employed much of thereptile embryo tissue which he had cultivated with such singular results. It wasbetter than human material for maintaining life in organless fragments, and thatwas now my friends chief activity. In a dark corner of the laboratory, over aqueer incubating burner, he kept a large covered vat full of this reptiliancell-matter; which multiplied and grew puffily and hideously.On the night of which I speak we had a splendid new specimen -- a man atonce physically powerful and of such high mentality that a sensitive nervoussystem was assured. It was rather ironic, for he was the officer who had helpedWest to his commission, and who was now to have been our associate. Moreover, hehad in the past secretly studied the theory of reanimation to some extent underWest. Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, D.S.O., was the greatest surgeon inour division, and had been hastily assigned to the St. Eloi sector when news ofthe heavy fighting reached headquarters. He had come in an aeroplane piloted bythe intrepid Lieut. Ronald Hill, only to be shot down when directly over hisdestination. The fall had been spectacular and awful; Hill was unrecognisableafterward, but the wreck yielded up the great surgeon in a nearly decapitatedbut otherwise intact condition. West had greedily seized the lifeless thingwhich had once been his friend and fellow-scholar; and I shuddered when hefinished severing the head, placed it in his hellish vat of pulpy reptile-tissueto preserve it for future experiments, and proceeded to treat the decapitatedbody .on the operating table. He injected new blood, joined certain veins,arteries, and nerves at the headless neck, and closed the ghastly aperture withengrafted skin from an unidentified specimen which had borne an officersuniform. I knew what he wanted -- to see if this highly organised body couldexhibit, without its head, any of the signs of mental life which haddistinguished Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee. Once a student of reanimation, thissilent trunk was now gruesomely called upon to exemplify it.I can still see Herbert West under the sinister electric light as heinjected his reanimating solution into the arm of the headless body. The scene Icannot describe -- I should faint if I tried it, for there is madness in a roomfull of classified charnel things, with blood and lesser human debris almostankle-deep on the slimy floor, and with hideous reptilian abnormalitiessprouting, bubbling, and baking over a winking bluish-green spectre of dim flamein a far corner of black shadows.The specimen, as West repeatedly observed, had a splendid nervous system.Much was expected of it; and as a few twitching motions began to appear, I couldsee the feverish interest on Wests face. He was ready, I think, to see proof ofhis increasingly strong opinion that consciousness, reason, and personality canexist independently of the brain -- that man has no central connective spirit,but is merely a machine of nervous matter, each section more or less complete initself. In one triumphant demonstration West was about to relegate the mysteryof life to the category of myth. The body now twitched more vigorously, andbeneath our avid eyes commenced to heave in a frightful way. The arms stirreddisquietingly, the legs drew up, and various muscles contracted in a repulsivekind of writhing. Then the headless thing threw out its arms in a gesture whichwas unmistakably one of desperation -- an intelligent desperation apparentlysufficient to prove every theory of Herbert West. Certainly, the nerves wererecalling the mans last act in life; the struggle to get free of the fallingaeroplane.What followed, I shall never positively know. It may have been wholly anhallucination from the shock caused at that instant by the sudden and completedestruction of the building in a cataclysm of German shell-fire -- who cangainsay it, since West and I were the only proved survivors? West liked to thinkthat before his recent disappearance, but there were times when he could not;for it was queer that we both had the same hallucination. The hideous occurrenceitself was very simple, notable only for what it implied.The body on the table had risen with a blind and terrible groping, and wehad heard a sound. I should not call that sound a voice, for it was too awful.And yet its timbre was not the most awful thing about it. Neither was itsmessage -- it had merely screamed, "Jump, Ronald, for Gods sake, jump!" Theawful thing was its source.For it had come from the large covered vat in that ghoulish corner ofcrawling black shadows.VI. The Tomb-LegionsWhen Dr. Herbert West disappeared a year ago, the Boston police questionedme closely. They suspected that I was holding something back, and perhapssuspected graver things; but I could not tell them the truth because they wouldnot have believed it. They knew, indeed, that West had been connected withactivities beyond the credence of ordinary men; for his hideous experiments inthe reanimation of dead bodies had long been too extensive to admit of perfectsecrecy; but the final soul-shattering catastrophe held elements of daemoniacphantasy which make even me doubt the reality of what I saw.I was Wests closest friend and only confidential assistant. We had metyears before, in medical school, and from the first I had shared his terribleresearches. He had slowly tried to perfect a solution which, injected into theveins of the newly deceased, would restore life; a labour demanding an abundanceof fresh corpses and therefore involving the most unnatural actions. Still moreshocking were the products of some of the experiments -- grisly masses of fleshthat had been dead, but that West waked to a blind, brainless, nauseousammation. These were the usual results, for in order to reawaken the mind it wasnecessary to have specimens so absolutely fresh that no decay could possiblyaffect the delicate brain-cells.This need for very fresh corpses had been Wests moral undoing. They werehard to get, and one awful day he had secured his specimen while it was stillalive and vigorous. A struggle, a needle, and a powerful alkaloid hadtransformed it to a very fresh corpse, and the experiment had succeeded for abrief and memorable moment; but West had emerged with a soul calloused andseared, and a hardened eye which sometimes glanced with a kind of hideous andcalculating appraisal at men of especially sensitive brain and especiallyvigorous physique. Toward the last I became acutely afraid of West, for he beganto look at me that way. People did not seem to notice his glances, but theynoticed my fear; and after his disappearance used that as a basis for someabsurd suspicions.West, in reality, was more afraid than I; for his abominable pursuitsentailed a life of furtiveness and dread of every shadow. Partly it was thepolice he feared; but sometimes his nervousness was deeper and more nebulous,touching on certain indescribable things into which he had injected a morbidlife, and from which he had not seen that life depart. He usually finished hisexperiments with a revolver, but a few times he had not been quick enough. Therewas that first specimen on whose rifled grave marks of clawing were later seen.There was also that Arkham professors body which had done cannibal thingsbefore it had been captured and thrust unidentified into a madhouse cell atSefton, where it beat the walls for sixteen years. Most of the other possiblysurviving results were things less easy to speak of -- for in later years Westsscientific zeal had degenerated to an unhealthy and fantastic mania, and he hadspent his chief skill in vitalising not entire human bodies but isolated partsof bodies, or parts joined to organic matter other -than human. It had becomefiendishly disgusting by the time he disappeared; many of the experiments couldnot even be hinted at in print. The Great War, through which both of us servedas surgeons, had intensified this side of West.In saying that Wests fear of his specimens was nebulous, I have in mindparticularly its complex nature. Part of it came merely from knowing of theexistence of such nameless monsters, while another part arose from apprehensionof the bodily harm they might under certain circumstances do him. Theirdisappearance added horror to the situation -- of them all, West knew thewhereabouts of only one, the pitiful asylum thing. Then there was a- more subtlefear -- a very fantastic sensation resulting from a curious experiment in theCanadian army in 1915. West, in the midst of a severe battle, had reanimatedMajor Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, D.S.O., a fellow-physician who knew abouthis experiments and could have duplicated them. The head had been removed, sothat the possibilities of quasi-intelligent life in the trunk might beinvestigated. Just as the building was wiped out by a German shell, there hadbeen a success. The trunk had moved intelligently; and, unbelievable to relate,we were both sickeningly sure that articulate sounds had come from the detachedhead as it lay in a shadowy corner of the laboratory. The shell had beenmerciful, in a way -- but West could never feel as certain as he wished, that wetwo were the only survivors. He used to make shuddering conjectures about thepossible actions of a headless physician with the power of reanimating the dead.Wests last quarters were in a venerable house of much elegance, overlookingone of the oldest burying-grounds in Boston. He had chosen the place for purelysymbolic and fantastically aesthetic reasons, since most of the interments wereof the colonial period and therefore of little use to a scientist seeking veryfresh bodies. The laboratory was in a sub-cellar secretly constructed byimported workmen, and contained a huge incinerator for the quiet and completedisposal of such bodies, or fragments and synthetic mockeries of bodies, asmight remain from the morbid experiments and unhallowed amusements of the owner.During the excavation of this cellar the workmen had struck some exceedinglyancient masonry; undoubtedly connected with the old burying-ground, yet far toodeep to correspond with any known sepulchre therein. After a number ofcalculations West decided that it represented some secret chamber beneath thetomb of the Averills, where the last interment had been made in 1768. I was withhim when he studied the nitrous, dripping walls laid bare by the spades andmattocks of the men, and was prepared for the gruesome thrill which would attendthe uncovering of centuried grave-secrets; but for the first time Wests newtimidity conquered his natural curiosity, and he betrayed his degenerating fibreby ordering the masonry left intact and plastered over. Thus it remained tillthat final hellish night; part of the walls of the secret laboratory. I speak ofWests decadence, but must add that it was a purely mental and intangible thing.Outwardly he was the same to the last -- calm, cold, slight, and yellow-haired,with spectacled blue eyes and a general aspect of youth which years and fearsseemed never to change. He seemed calm even when he thought of that clawed graveand looked over his shoulder; even when he thought of the carnivorous thing thatgnawed and pawed at Sefton bars.The end of Herbert West began one evening in our joint study when he wasdividing his curious glance between the newspaper and me. A strange headlineitem had struck at him from the crumpled pages, and a nameless titan claw hadseemed to reach down through sixteen years. Something fearsome and incrediblehad happened at Sefton Asylum fifty miles away, stunning the neighbourhood andbaffling the police. In the small hours of the morning a body of silent men hadentered the grounds, and their leader had aroused the attendants. He was amenacing military figure who talked without moving his lips and whose voiceseemed almost ventriloquially connected with an immense black case he carried.His expressionless face was handsome to the point of radiant beauty, but hadshocked the superintendent when the hall light fell on it -- for it was a waxface with eyes of painted glass. Some nameless accident had befallen this man. Alarger man guided his steps; a repellent hulk whose bluish face seemed halfeaten away by some unknown malady. The speaker had asked for the custody of thecannibal monster committed from Arkham sixteen years before; and upon beingrefused, gave a signal which precipitated a shocking riot. The fiends hadbeaten, trampled, and bitten every attendant who did not flee; killing four andfinally succeeding in the liberation of the monster. Those victims who couldrecall the event without hysteria swore that the creatures had acted less likemen than like unthinkable automata guided by the wax-faced leader. By the timehelp could be summoned, every trace of the men and of their mad charge hadvanished.From the hour of reading this item until midmght, West sat almost paralysed.At midnight the doorbell rang, startling him fearfully. All the servants wereasleep in the attic, so I answered the bell. As I have told the police, therewas no wagon in the street, but only a group of strange-looking figures bearinga large square box which they deposited in the hallway after one of them hadgrunted in a highly unnatural voice, "Express -- prepaid." They filed out of thehouse with a jerky tread, and as I watched them go I had an odd idea that theywere turning toward the ancient cemetery on which the back of the house abutted.When I slammed the door after them West came downstairs and looked at the box.It was about two feet square, and bore Wests correct name and present address.It also bore the inscription, "From Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, St. Eloi,Flanders." Six years before, in Flanders, a shelled hospital had fallen upon theheadless reanimated trunk of Dr. Clapham-Lee, and upon the detached head which-- perhaps -- had uttered articulate sounds.West was not even excited now. His condition was more ghastly. Quickly hesaid, "Its the finish -- but lets incinerate -- this." We carried the thingdown to the laboratory -- listening. I do not remember many particulars -- youcan imagine my state of mind -- but it is a vicious lie to say it was HerbertWests body which I put into the incinerator. We both inserted the wholeunopened wooden box, closed the door, and started the electricity. Nor did anysound come from the box, after all.It was West who first noticed the falling plaster on that part of the wallwhere the ancient tomb masonry had been covered up. I was going to run, but hestopped me. Then I saw a small black aperture, felt a ghoulish wind of ice, andsmelled the charnel bowels of a putrescent earth. There was no sound, but justthen the electric lights went out and I saw outlined against somephosphorescence of the nether world a horde of silent toiling things which onlyinsanity -- or worse -- could create. Their outlines were human, semi-human,fractionally human, and not human at all -- the horde was grotesquelyheterogeneous. They were removing the stones quietly, one by one, from thecenturied wall. And then, as the breach became large enough, they came out intothe laboratory in single file; led by a talking thing with a beautiful head madeof wax. A sort of mad-eyed monstrosity behind the leader seized on Herbert West.West did not resist or utter a sound. Then they all sprang at him and tore himto pieces before my eyes, bearing the fragments away into that subterraneanvault of fabulous abominations. Wests head was carried off by the wax-headedleader, who wore a Canadian officers uniform. As it disappeared I saw that theblue eyes behind the spectacles were hideously blazing with their first touch offrantic, visible emotion.Servants found me unconscious in the morning. West was gone. The incineratorcontained only unidentifiable ashes. Detectives have questioned me, but what canI say? The Sef ton tragedy they will not connect with West; not that, nor themen with the box, whose existence they deny. I told them of the vault, and theypointed to the unbroken plaster wall and laughed. So I told them no more. Theyimply that I am either a madman or a murderer -- probably I am mad. But I mightnot be mad if those accursed tomb-legions had not been so silent.