In this retelling of "Beyond Re-Animator", which also happens to be my boyfriend's favorite out of all three movies, I've made Howard Phillips a woman. The character is now known as Heather Phillips. :) Her backstory is pretty much the same: as a young girl, her sister Emily is killed by one of Dr. Herbert West's zombies, which occurs the same night in the events of "Bride" and winds up getting our mad doctor behind bars for the next thirteen years of his life. Years later, Heather becomes a doctor at the prison where the man of her obsession is serving his sentence. Not only does she begin to learn about his ways of re-animating the dead, but they wind up falling in love. This was more challenging to do than the last two stories I've done, but as I always say, worth it.

Disclaimer: NONE of the story or bits from Lovecraft's story belongs to me, and none of the characters, though I struggled with that decision on femHoward, now Heather. XD Still don't know that.

Prologue

Uninvited Guest

"You're not scared, are you?"

"Scared?" the other girl repeated, her voice lower than the first, twisting a long strand of brown hair around her finger nervously. "Why should I be scared?" She visibly shivered despite her warm pink sweatshirt that read Angels Out, and her soft gray sweat shorts for the summer night air. Outside, the lightning flashed, followed by a crack of thunder.

The first who spoke, blonde hair shoulder-length over a coral-striped t-shirt and jeans, hair flashing red from the light breaking through their tent outside her home nearby – and right next to Christchurch Cemetery – gave her companion a little sinister smile, just wanting to play around with her, because that had been one of the many things she loved to do since they were younger than they were now. "Because we're next to a cemetery," she answered, followed by another crack of thunder that made her friend jump slightly.

"So?" her friend asked nervously.

"And because," the other girl, Heather, continued, "if anything were to happen, no one would ever hear a thing."

Her best friend since kindergarten, Bianca, chewed her lower lip nervously. "What could possibly happen?" was all she could get out.

Arkham, Massachusetts was full of terrifying tales told since the first World War, when injured soldiers would return home in states of dismemberment, as well as numerous stories that were too extensive in horror to admit reality and therefore became urban myth. Man lived on an island of ignorance and fear of the unknown. "Remember the guy they caught last year, the one who was killing kids?" A year ago, the papers of the Arkham Record detailed the reported sightings of a cannibalistic monster roaming about the university campus, killing and eating anything in its path, strewing Red Death in its wake.

"Yeah, what?"

"And you wanna know the worst part?"

Heather reached behind her then to pick up what had been among the trophies collected after feasting. Bianca eyed the gooey brown stuff in the jar. "What's that? Chocolate milk?"

Heather shook her head. "He cut off the parts and carried them around in a cooler...and ate them."

Her friend didn't buy it, as she was known to do, but that never stopped Heather. "You're making that up."

"Am not!" Heather returned. "My sister knows this guy who works for the paper. He told her." That guy happened to be Emily's boyfriend; her older sister was sixteen, only five years her senior and a star journalist in her high school. She unscrewed the lid of the jar. "And when the cops caught him, you know what the cooler was full of?"

The thing in the jar was an eyeball, and it worked on making Bianca cringe. "Oh, gross!" She scrunched her nose up, making Heather laugh that she'd fallen for one of her jokes once again.

"It's just a sheep's eye from the butcher shop," she assured her. That story of the cannibal serial killer is nothing but a covered up story to scare us kids. And obviously, Bianca knew that as well as she did. But also, in Arkham since it was in one of the New England colonial states, there was still the question about spiritual beliefs no matter how often your forefathers drilled into you that there was a God, heaven and hell. But Heather, since she wanted to be a doctor someday since her father was at the Miskatonic General Hospital, had some question to that based on what she heard that she mentioned next. "When you die, the last that you see stays on the back of your retina, kinda like a photograph." The retina was the inner part of the eye which was said to act as a camera.

"My grandma says the soul lives in the eyes," Bianca said, being one of those to follow the childhood beliefs and teachings.

Heather rolled her own eyes. "The soul is just an invention of primitive witch doctors." At the same time, she did jump with Bianca at a much louder flash of thunder and lightning. Oh, goodie, God's angry because I said the soul isn't real.

"Hey!" Bianca exclaimed, turning her head to her left. Then she leaned in and whispered much softly, "There's someone out there."

They got out of their tent, flashing their flashlights and seeing nothing. "There's no one out here," Heather said.

"There was," Bianca insisted. "I heard him."

How do you even know it was a "him"? Heather wanted to ask. Maybe it's just Emily deciding to call her boyfriend over to sneak out. Her sister was known to do that when their parents were away; in this case, they were. Mom and Dad were gone on a business trip together, her father on a board meeting that his wife had to go with him and leave Emily in charge.

The girls sneaked around the back of the house, their sneakers barely making noise in the grass. Heather was the first to make it to the back door when she noticed it was opened and turned to glare at Bianca. "You forgot to close it," she snapped.

"No, I didn't!" Bianca countered. "You were the last one..."

And then Heather looked down and saw the footprints. They weren't hers or her friend's; they were too large. Oh, no. Someone IS here. She quickly stepped in and shushed Bianca as they sneaked in, taking slow steps and looking around. Was it Rich, Em's boyfriend? His feet were near enough to match the size of those footprints outside. The house was dark and quiet - too dark and quiet. Heather could actually hear her heart racing as much as she felt it...

...and then she jumped and screamed with Bianca when they both came face-to-face with Emily. However, she was calmer than them, putting a hand to her forehead and laughing. "Jesus, what are you guys doing sneaking around like a couple of rats, huh?" She reached over and ruffled the younger sister's hair; she was blonde like Heather, but her locks were longer and thicker that she often kept half up with a barrette. They were different in choices of career fields in the future, but they were more like best friends instead of sisters; she, Heather and Bianca were like a team.

"We weren't sneaking around!" Heather protested, laughing with her. "We heard someone outside and thought you brought Rich home."

Emily's jaw dropped. "He won't be here tonight; he's working late."

Well, if those aren't Rich's footprints, then whose were they? "We saw some footprints outside and thought they were..." Heather started to say before she saw her sister's face change to fright, and screamed at something behind her. She spun around with Bianca and saw the man standing in the kitchen doorway. He struck a blow to Bianca's face and sent her down, paid her no more attention when she turned to crawl away and, hopefully, call the police.

Heather crawled away herself at the sight of the man; there was no way he could be with his jaw missing like that, and the deep growls he was making. The sight was horrible and nightmarish. Emily was still screaming when she turned and ran about the kitchen for a knife or something to protect herself and Heather. "Get back, you freak!" she screamed. "Get back!" By then she'd picked up the carving knife and jabbed it into his chest.

Heather had thought it would kill him because it was supposed to, but it didn't; it only made him angrier and grab her sister by the throat. "NO!" Heather cried, too paralyzed in fear to move and save her sister. "Emily!"

Six horrible, bone-crunching thuds to her ears – and the splattered red behind Emily's head on the painted white, brick pillar – as well as the rivers of red running down Emily's bare legs and dripping off her feet, finally burst her forward when the monster finally let her go. She held Emily close to her when pleading blue eyes like her own begged her to help her; what could she do as much as she wanted to?

And then she heard her dying sister's whispered words, "Don't...let me...go..."

A series of gunshots was heard, bringing her attention up to the policeman who had just come in and got the beastly man down; now Heather knew he was a zombie, from the movies and stories. But she'd been told over and over zombies didn't exist, and she'd seen so herself they did.

Then she noticed her sister wasn't breathing anymore. Her eyes were still opened, staring up at her. "Emily..." Now she was crying; she'd let her sister die and did nothing to save her. Her parents would be home in two days, and they would blame her for this. They would say that she was too scared to save her, and that was true. Staring down into blank eyes with her own flooding ones, Emily's last image was her own little sister too scared and helpless to stop the demon of hell.

"Emily...don't go..." she whimpered. "Come back..."

She tried to do CPR as her father had taught her, pushing down on Emily's chest as hard and fast as she could without breaking the bone, but it was too late, as the paramedics would later tell her. She remained that way, holding her sister's body until more police arrived to tear her away and take her outside, where Bianca was outside against the wall of the house. But Heather couldn't find it in herself to speak to her. Her mind was too full of everything she'd seen. By then, the ambulance arrived, but they were too late. The police did not make it in time to save her sister even though they were in time to stop the guy...whose body was still twitching. Her father called this cadaveric spasm, or post-mortem involuntary spasm, in which the body was known to twitch involuntarily after death, but this was more than a few moments.

Heather wandered about the area, her home next to the cemetery as previously mentioned. Police were closing off the area, and then she heard a couple officers near her talking about the local old mortuary housing a "mass carnage", and then the university hospital in which the Sefton ward had been the location of a terrible killing of orderlies and a few people in the wake. She didn't get the chance to listen when she saw two more coming near her towards the car...and a third man in between, handcuffed and struggling, growling at them to let him go.

"Hey, what did you do to that thing?" one of them sneered at the man, who was filthy as though he'd been underground, wearing a white shirt – there was blood covering his sleeves – and black pants, before he and his partner shoved him into the back of the car, his partner telling the mysterious person he had no rights, before slamming the door shut, both leaving the vehicle alone...and for Heather to see the face of the man in the back.

She wasn't able to determine age yet, but he was young, though much older than Emily had been, dark-haired and with glasses, his mouth in a thin line of anger. Then he turned his attention to the side and fixed his furious eyes on her. Heather stared back at him, assuming this strange guy had to be part of her sister's death. But he didn't even kill Emily! So what was the story?

She saw something beneath her eyesight and looked down to see a needle – a hypodermic needle she remembered seeing in the hospital, but the stuff it was filled with she didn't recognize. She knew it couldn't be something that any hospital would allow. Heather looked up from the needle on the ground to the man in the back of the police car, whose glasses glinted almost menacingly as his eyes. He gave her the chills, but not as bad as that zombie did.

At the same time, she picked up the mysterious green needle, she heard the siren blare as the car drove away, taking the creepy man with it. She watched it go, then briefly the strange green needle she decided to keep and try to study and understand in the future. What had took place tonight made her realize what happened to Emily she didn't want to anyone else. She tucked it away into her jeans and turned to walk away only to find herself face-to-face with another strange face.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Are you okay?" the man asked her, looking her over. She did the same to him; he was also young, handsome like a young girl would fall for, because she did think he was cute. He had thick brown hair, but he was a mess and covered in some blood, and dirty like the other guy in the police car.

"Uh, yeah," Heather lied, but he saw right through her.

"You don't look like it." Why was he talking to her? Her parents warned her about strangers, but this one seemed nice to her.

"My sister was killed." She sniffed. "Mom and Dad are going to blame me for not helping her; I know they will."

His face fell. "I'm sorry. My girlfriend and I went through some trouble tonight, too." He turned with her in time to see the stretcher where Emily's body was covered; blood was seeping through, and it made her sick. There was also another with the still-twitching zombie, which the man looked at with wide eyes. "That thing did it?"

Heather looked up at him in surprise. "How did you know?"

"Because I've seen these things around. But I tried to stop it." He sounded like he was guilty of a crime he didn't commit. "I've done...terrible things I'll never forget."

"Was that man in the police car in on this?" she pressed.

His eyes snapped back to her at that. "Yeah, he was." There was more than that, but Heather still didn't know his name.

"What's your name?"

He stared at her for a second before laughing. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Dan." He held his hand out for her to shake. "What's yours?"

"Heather."

"Well, Heather, looks like we both had one heck of a night." His hand was still holding hers, but it didn't scare her. "Listen, if you need me, I might still be here, and I can tell you're gonna be alone after this."

She frowned at him. "You lost someone before...Dan?"

He smiled sadly and nodded. "Yeah, almost a year ago. She was killed by one of..." He nodded at the closing ambulance to hide the twitching zombie from the rest of the world. "...those things. You really don't want to run into that like I did."

Heather had no idea what else he'd witnessed, but she was determined to find out as much as it scared her. And that man the police took away...she wanted to know more about him, whoever he was.

So yeps, Dan Cain is another main character of the story. :D Something you didn't see in the movie, other than hearing Dr. West tell his new apprentice that his "last partner turned State's evidence against me". Plus, while Howard Phillips was played by Irish actor Jason Barry, Heather Phillips is portrayed by the lovely Erin Richards (Gotham's Barbara Kean, Jim Gordon's fiancée). :)

Once again, inspiration from other stories, though I don't think as often as the last one.