Daniel Cain would be home for a full two days of which he would eat home made food that not even Herbert's cuisine could match for it was made out of love and was made for him. He would go down to the field and play with his youngest sister and youngest brother. Their idea of play of course was toppling over the six foot two giant of a man that was their brother. Their efforts were at times fruitless as Daniel Cain had gotten used to the force of dead people clawing at him in last stitch movements of their half lives. When this would happen Meg would come running from behind and jump onto the back of her lover, and finally would the eldest brother whom they all miss fall, and allow the youngest of them to get their chance to take him down. And as Daniel began to speak with his step-father, the eldest sister would sit at the stairs in watch. And the Mother asked the eldest son of his teachings, of the things he had seen at school and when his residency was coming up, and how he was growing. And so did Daniel sometimes leave to play once more and take the kids to school, Meg was left with the Mother, and did they learn of each other's love for that man one called counterpart and the other son.
Herbert West all the while, finally getting the strength in his arms began to do push ups within his room under his sick guise to bring back his strength. He heard the laughter of Daniel and his entire family and he wished Daniel would come and ask him how he was. He wondered when he felt well for the first time since his rebirth if he should go down and talk to any of those people below him, but he felt not yet, not there, work was not yet finished, not enough knowledge was known. He felt there would be another time to try again. The Sister would come now and again to check in on him, the young girl, just a few years younger than her older brother, about to set out from this home. She was sweet Herbert decided, her intentions were good.
He woke up to that cross of that Messiah and there was something in him that was bothered by it.
"You can tell me anything you know." Said the Sister to the Brother. "Like old times. When Dad died."
"You have no idea." He told her.
And Daniel, tall as he was, leaned on his younger sister who was much shorter than he. On the roof near dusk he'd sit there with her each day, because they had done it all their lives together. He leaned there and he smiled like he knew something she didn't, which there was a lot of things he knew that she didn't, but she didn't know which thing he knew but she didn't know this time. He thought it was funny, that he knew the boundaries of life and death, and he wasn't going to tell her.
"I think I'm going to marry Meg." He told her, instead.
"That's cool." She said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Cool."
"How's your Herbert friend?"
"I don't know. I never do."
"He seems…uh…"
"Exactly. He seems nothing."
And so did this happy family eventually part, with many goodbyes and a Mother's blessings. Meg was hugged and kissed and said goodbye to by this family, and Daniel was hardly let go. Herbert was told to come back next time feeling better. The brothers and sisters nearly cried at the parting of the loved one knowing they will be parted again by the sister. And the Sister with a heavy heart sighed and waved, and hoped for the best. She knew better than anyone there Daniel was keeping something from them all, something horrible, and dark, and she hoped wherever he was off to next he'd leave those things behind.
But somehow she knew that was not going to happen.
--------------------
They were heading north to where Herbert once lived and from where he once ran from. Daniel was surprised as Herbert was walking well again and was able to stay active for a day. It wasn't too far from Daniel's home, which he left with desires of returning. He found it funny they lived so close together.
"What if we bumped into each other?" Daniel mused. "I use to come up here for summer camp."
"Oh that'd be weird." Meg spoke up.
"I did not go to summer camp." Herbert told.
"Oh yeah, that's what I thought. In fact it'd be weird if you had." Daniel smiled.
The landscape hardly changed, the growing towns just became smaller, and the trees became thicker along with the hills larger. The horizon was becoming all too familiar for Herbert West who stared out the window, he found it rather unsettling but in the end ignored it.
No one mentioned his father, instead ask if there was anything to do at the town. Herbert dismissed their excitement and told that it was merely a town, nothing special about it. He said there were places to go eat, restaurants, movie theater, a mall complex, but nothing out of the normal and the standard. He finished by saying he didn't plan on staying that long anyway.
But by the early afternoon they finally came upon it, and Herbert West was most uncomfortable. He recognized with precise encounters places he had been, trees he had hidden behind to dissect animals, traps he had set to capture those said animals, and escape routes he had planned to get around that man he called Father. Finally Daniel was asking for directions to the specific house, wondering if they should perhaps go to the City Hall first to claim the house. Herbert only wanted to avoid the house for as long as possible and suggested the City Hall, where there was an hour of waiting and clearing of identity, and even so when they gave him the key to the house they claimed their business was not yet done and they will make an appointment with him perhaps some time later.
And even after that Herbert West did not want to go home.
They passed by the hospital, and Herbert West yelled at them to stop.
"It was my real home." He explained.
Herbert was silent and his motivations for coming to the hospital were unclear, but Daniel went with him, and Meg went with Daniel. Herbert walked in a faster pace than they and walked ahead of them in search of what he wanted.
The hospital had changed, he was proud to say it seemed up to date with the latest in facilities. He entered the hallways with ease and knew exactly where he was going. He went down into the Emergency Room, passing by closed doors knowing that he was once always welcomed. He passed by the familiar smell of this particular section of the hospital. The smell that was mixed with chaos and death. He knew this smell all to well, he knew death as if it were his lover, his Meg. He knew death's scent, and feel, her touch, and her stubbornness and bitterness. He felt her there, only slightly, as if she were asleep. He walked down the main hallway, hearing the phones ringing and all sorts of alarms that were new to him but he knew their meaning from his own residency. He was passed by, by people in rushes, hurrying along attempting to save lives just like he was. Their faces were not familiar to him then, not yet. He passed the dead and the dying, and the ones that wished they were dead, and the ones that only looked like they were dead. He saw those patients even behind those doors he knew them, the old, and the young, people in dire need of help, who may die.
In that moment he was suddenly reminded why he had started his work in the first place.
"Herbert?" Came a voice.
He turned to his side, and he knew the face. He had seen it a long time ago, when she was much younger, and shorter. She had grown, like he had since they had last seen each other. He could see now she was a doctor, like her mother. Her skin was fine and pale, a good and sweet color that required the smallest amount of make up. Her hair was long and probably the most blonde color he had seen. And her eyes, they were blue and green but centered around the pupil they were brown, a fascinating amount of color pigmintation that even he knew was quite lovely. Her name was Amanda Leary, and she was probably the only girl he ever talked to when he was a child. He knew her immediately, recognized that face even aged, he knew who she was. He doesn't forget faces.
She lowered her head, afraid she had made a mistake, but looked up at him nonetheless with her eyes alone.
"Is that you, Herbert?" She asked.
"Amanda." He nodded.
"Herbert!"
She smiled and quickly hugged him, too quickly for him to stop her. She wrapped her arms around his and he was within her grip and powerless. He did not force her off for he told himself, she was not a dead woman trying to kill him, she was just a confused girl. Though the sight of all this made Meg and Daniel laugh, and gave Daniel the greatest hope that perhaps he wasn't the first friend Herbert ever had.
Her hug ended and she still smiled up at him.
"What are you doing here?" She asked.
She barely recognized him physically, but she knew that strange stare that seemed to be there and not there, and seemed to see everything and nothing all at the same time. She knew those thick rimmed glasses, and that perfect stature. She knew that lack of a smile and a look of complete and utter focus.
"I am here to claim my house." He said.
"Oh!" She looked suddenly incredibly sad. "Your father, I'm so…I'm so sorry…"
He stopped her and didn't even give her an explanation, at the moment he had not come for her, she was nothing but a distraction then. He did not come for chit chat, small talk that Daniel and Meg constantly did. He nodded and began walking away.
"Are you a doctor now?" She asked, walking with him.
"Yes." He told her.
"I knew it, you went to Europe for that didn't you?"
He nodded to her.
"What was that like?" She asked him.
Herbert began walking faster and away from her, then suddenly her beeper began to ring, and she looked to her waist to read it. She looked up at him with disappointment. Then she smiled.
"Would you like to help me, Dr. West?"
---------------
He would have said no if it were anything but this. Even if it was a man about to die, he would not have helped, because he knew he would have failed. He would had said no to a brain surgery, to a mending of a broken bone. He would have said no to everything except this. He rushed in, quickly introduced Daniel to Amanda and told him what they were about to do.
Now he was between a woman's legs and she was screaming, breathing, and pushing. They dressed him up quickly in something sterile, the nurses there knew him immediately as Amanda had, he had the same face, perhaps only slightly aged, and they knew him, and trusted him. So he sat there, Daniel over his shoulder telling the woman to breath, and to push, and to think of the smile she was going to see on her newborn baby's face. Meg stood outside, with a smile on her face, proud of her lover.
Herbert did not say anything as he held his arms out ready to catch this new life. He had done this many times before in his past. The nurses knew him, they knew he'd come to them with bruises and cuts that he claimed were from his experiments, which only half were. They knew he wasn't getting the proper education to be a doctor as so they taught him as much as they could. He was fifteen when he first helped a newborn life come into this world, he was sixteen when he could do it all by himself. He was fascinated by birth, it was taking a sac, a bag of flesh and bone and somehow giving it life. It was amazing to him how at once was but a few cells big was actually new life. Life, life he sought so much for, there, within someone else, growing, preparing for the world. It seemed so logical that the life women passed onto their children could be somehow found, and even perhaps taken by the women for their own. He wondered in his own fantasy, if women could only become immortal by conceiving children then taking their own fetus' life. It was merely a musing idea, nothing more.
Herbert West loved birthing children, he loved bringing them out from their lifeless vessels into the world. If it was anything else he would have said no.
The head peaks out and then hands that cover the eyes, and he sets it in his hands and with that the life is out. The child instinctively grabs to whatever it can, looks up, and with a hit begins to cry.
Herbert West holds in his hands what could be debated as being purely life. He doubts a newborn has the practice to have thought, or self awareness, all they are, are bodies of life, and that is all.
And that is beautiful enough.
"It's a girl!" Daniel smiled, as the father cut the cord, and Herbert handed it to Daniel to take away.
The first moment was all that mattered for him.
And the nurses, their aged faces, he saw them then, the people he knew, the people he grew up with. The women and men who snuck him medical books and supplies, and taught him their definition of life and death, and how to avoid death and bring someone back from it through electrical shock. He knew them well, he was grateful to them, for they allowed him to progress severely in his work. He saw their faces and new their lives were coming to an end, for it had left their faces and their eyes, and they had entered the second end of their lives.
They smiled at him, and hugged him as if they really knew him, but they didn't. He knew all he was to them was that quiet young boy who was dedicated and curious and polite, and the boy that left them for Europe and better things. They didn't know, they didn't know, and yet they acted so much like they did. This was not the love he sought, not the same Daniel had with his family. This was false love, built on assumptions that they all had previous relationships with each other.
He didn't come for this.
But he smiled for them, because he knew this was normal. He congratulated the new mother, and looked upon the child for the last time.
He left before Amanda could say anything to him. She watched as he passed her and she attempted to speak up, to tell him not to go, not this time, not again. But she closed her mouth and watched as he took off his gown and bloody gloves and walked off.
Daniel introduced himself to everyone, as the friend of their Herbert West who they crafted into a fine doctor that was accepted overseas. He shook their hands and explained he met Herbert in college and now they were doing their residency together, and they asked what Herbert had done all these years, and Daniel replied he had saved many people lives. Daniel then asked where he had went, and they said he left, the lad always does that, quiet as a mouse, no one ever notices until he's already gone.
What a good boy.
"You knew Herbert?" Daniel smiled at Amanda as she had just finished watching Herbert leave.
"Oh…oh yeah, we were…" She laughs. "Well we knew each other. My mother would teach us how to be doctors." She looks to her mother, aged, and currently examining the newborn. "He was a really quiet kid." She said. "I had to do all the talking."
"I know." Daniel rolls his eyes.
"He's doing good?"
"Oh yeah, he's great."
Daniel smiles and she smiles.
"Do…do you know where he went?" Daniel asks.
She shakes her head.
Daniel walks out with sweet goodbyes and congratulations to the family. He goes to Meg and tells her he's going to get Herbert, that she could go wait in the car if she liked, she shakes her head and says she's going to go with him, because she's been waiting in the car metaphorically for too long. This was supposed to be over, they were supposed to be able to be together. So he smiled and held her hand.
"I think I know where he went." He said.
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Thirty-two. He counted thirty-two bodies. John Does, Men, Women, Children, he sat with them on an empty table that he could smell death on. They were covered but he knew the face of death all too well, and he knew what they looked like. He could smell how old they were in death, how long they had been down there, and he knew what those bodies would have looked like if he taken their covers from them. But he sat and looked over them as if they were about to move and bow to him, for he was like them, he died, and was reborn.
It reminded him he had died.
He sat and looked at them and pictured himself in their state, and he wondered, he wondered why it did not happen. He was thankful, but he just wondered why. He checked his hands and wondered if they were in a state of immortality if the serum had taken a permanent effect or if it was just a small revival. He did not know, he was going to find out, he was going to progress his work from there.
He was never going to end up here, with these people, within the morgue, at the bottom of the hospital where no one goes or no one thinks about.
He was never going to die. It was fact.
It was then he heard the door open, and he knew who it was, because he knew, he would know where he was. Daniel stepped with Meg who had her mouth covered from shock. She looked to Daniel and tugged on his arm, and he nodded, she stepped in after him.
Herbert looked over at Daniel from across the room and the aisles of dead, and Daniel slowly made his way over to him, looking mournfully at these complete strangers.
"Is this where you got the idea?" Daniel asked. "To bring back the dead?"
"Yes. I saw a man die when I was eight." Herbert told him. "Here in this hospital, I know the exact room, and he sat on this exact table in death. Suicide, he had jumped and broken his spinal cord, blood was flooding the brain, and it was too bruised to ever function properly." He says his voice distant. "I snuck in and I watched, in the panic no one noticed me. He did not give me the idea however, children always believe they are going to live forever."
Herbert looked up.
"But it is the first time I saw my enemy in action, defeat a man, and several doctors working faster than Dr. Hill even wishes." Herbert explained.
Daniel gave a grin.
"I got a taste of death, and it mocked me with its rather impressive entrance. It showed me how brittle we are, and how easily broken."
Daniel had met Herbert West a long time ago, back when he had no place to stay and he slept in the morgue among the dead. It was there Daniel offered his house to share, and all this began.
"Did you sleep down here too?" Daniel asked.
"In secret sometimes." Herbert nodded.
"I met Amanda."
"Her mother forced us to 'play' together. She did most of the playing I assure you." Herbert explained.
"She likes you."
"Does she?"
"Yeah."
"What a shame for her."
"Aw come on, Herbert you died, maybe you should start living. She'd put up with you."
"Her judgment in character is severely flawed, thus I will not trust her."
Then Herbert titled his head and jumped down. He went to the right corner wall and began banging his hand on the green tiles. He got down his knees and put his ear to the wall and then tapped slowly on a tile. He put his fingernails over its edge and he pulled out its face, revealing a hollow space. Herbert gave a grin and for a brief moment enjoyment. Meg was standing back with a distance between she and Daniel and Herbert and all the bodies, but for that moment even she began to walk closer to see what was there.
Herbert reached into the hollow part of the wall and pulled out a dusty plastic bag. He walked over to the table and laid it out, reaching into the bag and pulling out a folded piece of paper.
"What's that?" Daniel asked, pointing to the bag.
"My first experiment." Herbert grinned.
Daniel could not see, but it was a rat who had decomposed nearly entirely by now, but at one time in its life it was being given open heart surgery by a young Herbert West with little army knives and methods he had only known by memory from observation. Herbert had attempted to bring it back through electric shock from a few D batteries.
Herbert unfolded the paper and handed it to Daniel.
He then placed the rat back into the hollow spot and covered it as if he had never even returned.
Meg came over to read the note. It was an aged paper and written in pencil the sentence had been somewhat smeared and faded, but the words will still there and still could be read. He lowered it for her to be able to read, and they saw a gateway into the beginning of all this.
"Death Will Die, Herbert West, age 11." It said with his signature.
"Let us go." Herbert said and began to walk out.
It was then Daniel Cain realized all this did not begin when he met Herbert, instead Daniel had entered this whole thing at its end, it began much sooner, and in a much more lonesome manner.
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Herbert West's home was a small thing. It did look nice and cozy, but it was small and had been cleaned by the city. Within nothing had been touched and instead covered in plastic. Daniel watched with careful stepped noting everything that could have possibly started Herbert West on his journey through death.
It was late, Herbert told them, he was tired, the sun was gone, it was time they slept. He allowed them his parents' bedroom to sleep, and out of courtesy the two only cuddled. And he went to his room, which Daniel found incredibly dull for a child's room, white walls with mere furniture and nothing more.
But further questions could be answered only in the morning.
What no one knew at the time was that their arrival was most anticipated. As soon as Herbert West stepped on the grounds that was his home, it knew he was here. It knew West's footsteps and it knew how he put more weight on his heel than he should, and he knew that light step Herbert attempted to complete with each moment. It knew he was here, and it had been waiting for such a long time. And so did it watch the boy and his friends, if they could be called friends. Did it watch and feel as he moved along the town, from the Hall to the Hospital where it knew the boy had spent much of his life. And it knew, it was time, for the boy had left it, and he had returned an entirely knew and different. For the boy's step was different, it was heavier, it was tired from the running he had done from the dead, and the bodies he had to carry. The boy left it, and he had returned beaten by the world and it knew, it was time, after so long it was time.
It was time it met the boy for the first time in decades.
The boy slept. The young lad had warn himself out, overestimated how well he had gotten since his rebirth, always a common mistake amongst the youth. Constantly do they overestimate their standards, constantly do they think they can go on forever and ever. Never do they look back at what they've done, and see their faults and their endpoints. Never do they take a step back and see life for what it is. They can't even understand it. Even this young boy by the name of Herbert West, his youth betrays him, wisdom has escaped him, even he knows not the fundalmentals of life and death. Young little Re-animator, he has only scratched the surface. There is so much more for him to take, so much more for him to see. The bigger picture, it takes more than one lifetime to even guess at what it is.
And so it sent his toy to go and seek out the young boy, the young Re-animator and deliver a message.
The toy came in the form of an eyeball.
It came from the creek of the basement door, rolled in through a small hole. Then it unwrapped its optic nerve, forming them into strands that became its legs. It was a long and elegant creatures with those thin pieces of muscle, made to send electric signals to the brain to give off sight. It was graceful and gentle in its step as it rose up the stairs with speed like a spider who had crawled those walls all its life. It knew where it was going, whom it was supposed to go and meet, what message it was meant to carry. It knew the boy's time had come, a meeting was now necessary. For years he grew and then he left, and upon his return it was time. The boy was to become a man, the Re-animator was to truly defeat his mortal enemy named sweet lady death.
It crept under the door and was opened to the rest of the world. It crept along the wooden floors, going once more up stairs to the second floors. It went passed a door and peered in to see Meg and Daniel, and then it moved on, to the room it knew he would be in.
Herbert West slept a deep sleep of which he had not experienced enough off. He slept on his side with his back to the door and his face to the moonlight of his open window. He shook in his sleep in a fit of a dream that shook him off from his depths and gave him some awareness of the waking world.
He heard scurrying and believed it to be a rat.
But then he heard a banging noise against wood and he opened his eyes. There he saw a sihoulette of something in the moonlight, his eyes betrayed him, they needed the aid of glasses. He went and reached for his desk putting them on to see what it was that had awaken him.
And when he saw it he was horrified.
He stared at the eye and the eye stared back at him. It titled itself as if giving off a curious sense, then rose itself by its optic nerve to get a better look at Herbert. He could see even in the darkness the pupil grow and shrink and the eye bent down still looking at him.
He thought it was a sick joke of some sort. That someone knew about him and what he had done, he thought someone had done this to toy with him, to show him he was about to be exposed. Already Herbert was rushed and guessing where it was this man was hiding, and what he could do to deny his involvement with death. Someone had done this, someone was toying with him. Someone was laughing at him, someone had found his serum, someone had found the entrance to the graveyard from their home, the ashes of failed experiments, something and followed them there.
He was going to kill them, whoever it was, and bring him back and release him into the world to get run over by a car or something.
Then after a moment of examining the eye crawled down to the bed and to the floor, and began to walk off.
Herbert followed it of course. Realizing that it could not have been his, for it was much more advanced than he ever thought possible. It seemed to possess some sort of higher thought, even though it somehow lacked a brain. It had much more control over its movement, it was smooth, and in control, and its nerves that acted as legs danced with each step.
No, this was an improvement on him, and perhaps thus a mockery of his entire life.
But then Herbert began wondering, who on Earth could possess better skill than he, and have followed him all this way to know where he was to mock him now at the middle of the night? It made no sense.
But he followed the eye and slowly realized its intentions. For it went into the basement and went into the locked iron door, and peeked out one last time, even waving at him with one nerve before it finally left him.
Herbert stood at the entrance of the basement, and he knew. It was a message, and the message was that someone else was here, and it was time they met.
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Next Chapter coming soon.
The Keeper and Re-animator of the eye will be investigated by Herbert as tensions with Meg begin and Daniel can't help wonder who was it that killed Herbert's father?