"I will not leave you until I have seen you hanged." - Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
—Braintree, Massachusetts. September 2003—
The night-air was cool, but not cold, and the tall elm trees strategically placed in every well-tended green lawn moved sinuously in the light breeze of the early fall evening. Despite himself, Herbert West found that he was impressed by the clear night and the quiet of the affluent suburban neighborhood, lit by the deliberate splotches of streetlamps luminescing yellow and overseen by an uneven gibbous moon. Though he'd come with the intention of exacting a violent revenge he'd been nursing for nearly thirteen years, he couldn't help being slightly awed by the success of his former partner. But of course, every one of Daniel Cain's triumphs—his employment as a senior member of the thoracic surgical team at Massachusetts General, his comfortable and highly modern-styled home in an obviously expensive suburb of Boston, his year-old BMW which sat unassumingly in the driveway, sleek and mockingly silent—were also all fuel for Herbert's anger, which had already been honed by his long-stewing acidic feelings of resentment and jealousy.
Still, these emotions were mere footnotes to the feelings of betrayal that had kept him vindictive company during his years in prison. He had never suspected that Daniel could have been capable of such a direct initiative against him, against the work he'd always seen as being of the utmost importance to both of them, and had felt nauseated in the same way that another person might have at the knowledge of an adulterous lover. But Herbert had, for a long time, focused his anger on the perceived slight of his research and what he had come to regard as his shared life life's work. That Dan had been free to have a career and, surely, a sickeningly loving family while Herbert had suffered slow suffocation during his imprisonment was a secondary insult compared to the persecution of the greatest development in medical science.
Herbert lurked in the shadows that pooled at the foot of Dan's driveway, struck by a frustratingly unidentifiable sense of inherent wrongness in the setting; the house was far darker than he felt it should have been, and he could see only one room on the ground floor that was lit. After years of planning the specifics of a variety of retaliations, he was irritated to find that he wasn't entirely sure how execute the approach. He craned his neck to one side, trying to peer around the garage to the backyard in the weary hope that there might have been an errant lapse in security—say, an open window or a screen door left unlatched—that could have allowed him to enter the house without initially disturbing any of its occupants. But the carelessness of summer had clearly passed, and the house's many orifices appeared to be shut tightly against the anticipation of the cold.
Scowling, Herbert turned back to the front of the house and stared thoughtfully at the shallow bank of the front steps. He could wait, of course, now that he had found where Daniel was living and working; he could always accost him at some later date, outside of his home if necessary. Then again, that course of action ran the risk of catching the attention of local police, as did any degree of breaking and entering, and he had no intention of going back to prison for the merest sake of trying to get even with Dan Cain. He rolled his shoulders, wincing slightly at the uncomfortable pops in his aching joints, and shifted the large leather medical case he carried from one hand to the other as he thought idly about just walking up and knocking on the door. The past several days had been, while exhilarating for him as he realized the reality of his reclaimed freedoms, enormously stressful as well with the constant state of alertness need to remain a free man under an assumed identity. He needed to rest, to bring together the tatters of his thoughts and ideas into something more coherent and cohesive. Frustration and fatigue were beginning to cloud his judgment and he knew he was running out of money and options.
Under normal circumstances, he knew his pride would never allow for such a compromise of his convictions; but of course, the circumstances were far from normal. Perhaps, though, he thought, it was time to allow survival—maybe even subterfuge—to take precedence over pride. It wouldn't have been the first time. And, though he hated to admit it, Dan was the only link he had to the life he had lived before prison. He let out a deep sigh of exasperated resignation, tightened his grip on the handle of his bag, and set off toward the front steps, cutting across the lawn and nimbly side-stepping a concealed sprinkler. When he reached the door, he rapped sharply on it with his knuckles and then stood back to await an answer; he was barely aware of the tingling of anticipation in his fingertips or the shiver that ran down his spine as he heard footsteps followed by the crisp clicks of locks being turned.
The heavy oak door was tugged inward, and a tall, thin figure appeared, silhouetted by the light coming from the hallway.
"Oh… it's you."
—Not far from Arkham State Penitentiary, four days earlier—
He was very careful to keep to the back roads and alleys and to stay in the darkest pools of shadow whenever possible, hiding in the small, darkened shelters of closed storefronts or even behind a nearby dumpster whenever another person approached on the sidewalk. He moved like small mouse moves around a large, lazy cat that may or may not have gathered enough energy to pay attention to the smaller, weaker creature. But still, once he reached Arkham's dilapidated strip mall, he knew that he would have to either acquire some new clothes or risk being almost certainly being noticed. He slunk behind one of the stores, leaned against a huge metal dumpster that had the words "CARDBOARD ONLY" stenciled on one side and began to consider the situation he was in.
After more than thirteen years of prison, the knowledge that he was free, unwatched, and staring up at the night sky for the first time in years thrilled him in a way that he never would have been able to explain to another person. But, for the moment, he reveled in his solitude, and in the peaceful quiet around him. The sound of cars on the road had dulled to a low, continuous roar that was almost soothing. The stores that made up the strip mall were beginning to close for the night, and the occasional human voice that came out of the darkness seemed far away and inconsequential. He took a deep breath and set down the bag he had carried with him out of the penitentiary; his shirt, formerly clean and white and smartly starched, had become soaked with his sweat around the collar, down the back, and beneath the arms, and the front was tacky with the blood that had been splashed on him during the gruesome prison riot. He held the wet fabric of his shirt away from his skin with a small grimace of disgust.
It was not just the blood that would make going out into public problematic, he realized abruptly. While he had several changes of clothing in his bag, his face was still well-known and vilified in Arkham and the neighboring towns; if he ventured out into the town dressed as he always did, without making any attempt to obscure or alter his appearance in any way, he would run a far greater chance of being recognized and arrested again. And, he reflected bitterly, he had no intention of ever going back to prison, no matter what the circumstances.
Brandy Powell sighed, cracked her chewing gum, and turned the page of the book she was reading, a cheesy true crime novel called The Strangest Crimes of New England that she'd found amid the stacks of junk in the thrift store. She didn't really like reading all that much, but there wasn't really anything else for her to do between customers once she had finished slogging through her homework. Bob Reed, the thrift store manager, had decided that they'd start staying open until ten at night to try to attract money-conscious customers away from Wal-Mart and the other discount stores that had popped up, putting more and more of the small businesses of Arkham out of business. Still, she thought that staying open later was just a lot of wasted effort; hardly anyone ever came in between eight o'clock and nine forty-five when she started to close things down.
She glanced at the clock before tackling the next page of gory description and sensationalized eyewitness reports. It wasn't even nine-thirty yet. She tapped her long fingernails on the Formica countertop, wishing yet again that there was someone who worked evenings besides Walter, the dorky guy who took inventory in the back.
Suddenly the bell over the door rang and Brandy looked up, startled. The man who'd come into the store was short and thin and walked with a weird sort of self-confidence that she found, frankly, creepy. Even worse, though, was the glassy look in his eyes coupled with the dark red stains on the front of his otherwise formal white shirt.
"Oh my god, is everything all right?" she asked shrilly. Her voice caused him to jump slightly, and she immediately cringed and began to apologize. "I'm really sorry… um, is there anything I can do for you?"
The man shook his head and smiled vaguely. "No, no." He waved his hand in a placating gesture, and Brandy saw that his hand was wrapped in a dingy bandage. "I just, ah, cut myself changing a tire." He glanced down at the bloodstains on his shirt and spread his hands apologetically. "And, unfortunately, the airport lost my luggage, so…"
"Oh!" Brandy pointed toward the back of the store with her free hand. "Sure, sure. Well, the men's clothes are just back there."
"Thank you." She watched as he strolled casually between the shelves of toys and the slightly haphazard piles of furniture, making his way back to the racks of clothing that lined the far wall. She was struck by an odd feeling of recognition, as if she should have known who he was, but still couldn't place his face. Was he a teacher, maybe, at the elementary school or middle school? No, he'd said that the airport lost his luggage, so he'd probably come in from out-of-state. Was he famous somehow? She stared after him unashamedly, watching as he pulled an old, shapeless flannel button-up off the rack. He sure didn't look famous….
With a shrug, Brandy went back to her book. She was currently on the chapter about the local Miskatonic Massacre, and despite herself she was starting to feel a little freaked out. After all, the fact that it had happened in Arkham, not even a mile from her house, made reading about it even crazier. She was actually kind of glad that she wasn't old enough to remember the panic that had come over their little town; having to hear about it from her parents was more than enough for her, thanks so much. She paused, holding her place with one finger, and flipped through the pages until she found the next chapter. Just as she'd suspected, they'd followed up their account of the Miskatonic Massacre with a description of the Arkham Tragedy. Brady made a face. It was just too gross! And, all right, a little creepy too, but honestly… did anybody actually believe all that crap about severed arms and legs moving around on their own? She sure didn't.
"Good book?" The man set down a bundle of clothing beside the cash register, and Brandy gave a little gasp of surprise.
"Oh, geez… I'm sorry, I almost forgot about you." The man gave her a placid smile that only made her feel more uneasy. She glanced down at the book she was holding as it finally registered that he had asked her a question. "It's, um, kinda trashy actually."
"It looks it."
"Yeah, I'm only reading it 'cause I'm bored and there's nothing else to do." She set it down, suddenly embarrassed. "So… are you all set then?"
"Yes, I think so."
Brandy punched the amounts on the different tags into the register. He was buying a sweater, the flannel shirt she'd seen him looking at, a white t-shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans stained with splotches of white paint, a Red Sox baseball cap, and a pair of sneakers. "Huh… I guess you really did lose all your clothes, then?" She joked lamely, feeling more than a little self-conscious under the man's impassive stare.
"Hmm."
"Okaaaaaay… well, your total comes to $15.86." He handed her a twenty dollar bill and, when she dropped his change into his outstretched hand, their fingers brushed and she felt a sudden shudder dance up and down her spine; his skin felt cold and clammy against hers, and the sensation involuntarily summoned images of limbs writhing of their own accord across the cold tile floor of the Miskatonic morgue. Hurriedly, she snatched her hand back and bagged his purchases, pushing the plastic bag across the small countertop rather than handing it to him.
"Thank you," he said, weaving the fingers of his good hand through the loops of the handles. "Enjoy your book."
"Uh, yeah. Sure." Brandy watched as the strange man picked up his purchases and left the store. "Man… so weird." She murmured as he disappeared around the corner. "I am never, ever taking the evening shift again."
Herbert West hurried around to the back of the strip mall where he'd left his bag and other belongings. Quickly, he unwrapped the strip of fabric he'd twisted around his hand and dropped it on the ground. He changed into the clothes he'd just bought as quickly as he could, frowning at the odd, uncomfortable feeling of the scratchy, unfamiliar feel of the different fabrics. As he knelt down to tie the laces of the sneakers, he reflected upon how amusing the stupidity of human beings could be.
The girl in the thrift store was a perfect example of how almost all people were utterly oblivious to their surroundings; there she had been, reading a book with his picture on the cover, and still he was sure that she hadn't had the slightest idea to connect the man standing in front of her to the ghoulish horror she was reading about. He let out a small chuckle as he tugged the baseball cap down so that the bill cast a low shadow over his eyes. It was all too perfect… so perfect, in fact, that it almost made him wonder why he'd bothered to get himself a disguise at all. Still, it was far better to be safe than to run the risk of having a policeman beat the odds and pick him out of a crowd.
He stood, brushed off his knees, and dug in the pockets of the pair of trousers he'd just taken off, retrieving the roll of bills he had taken from the unfortunate Dr. Phillips and stuffing it into the front pocket of his new blue jeans. Then, he rolled his trousers up along with his necktie and shoes and pushed them into his black bag; he balled up his soiled shirt and put it into the plastic bag from the thrift store along with his faux bandage. With a jaunty, tuneless whistle, he scooped up the black medical bag filled with his clothes and bottles of reagent and started off away from the strip mall, swinging the plastic bag from his wrist and into a dumpster as he passed.
There was so much he had to do.
—Arkham courthouse, Arkham, Massachusetts. January, 1990—
"I'm really sorry it happened like this, Herbert. But I just got tired of… you know." Dan raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. Herbert snorted, and drummed his fingers impatiently on the glass partition. They spoke through a metal grille that had been inserted at approximately mouth-level, making the small security cubicle seem like a perversion of the classic Catholic confessional.
"You always were a terrible assistant," he said, avoiding Dan's plaintive stare. He felt Dan should have been angrier, more frustrated, or even subtly gloating about his good fortune in receiving a grant of immunity in exchange for delivering Herbert West unto the district attorney. But Dan was simply sad, even excessively apologetic; it grated infuriatingly on Herbert's already taut nerves.
"I just want to have a normal life," Dan whispered in response.
"Oh, Daniel," Herbert sneered, "How typical of you. All you ever wanted from the world was mediocrity."
Dan shrugged. "Maybe. And maybe it's too bad that you…" He coughed nervously and hesitated a moment, distracted by the ferocity of Herbert's glare. "That you never bothered to understand that."
"Understand?" Herbert hissed incredulously, his brows knitting together with intense restrained anger. "What is there to understand? That you are willing to throw away everything we've worked for—"
"No, no, that isn't what I said." Dan shook his head. "That isn't even what this is about." Beneath his heavy eyebrows, Dan's eyes abruptly lost their apologetic creases. "Herbert, my god… were you ever planning on growing up?"
"What kind of idiotic question is that?"
"Yeah. I guess I should have expected that sort of a response from you." Dan looked down at his hands as Herbert brushed an imaginary piece of lint from his shirtfront. "I should have known that you honestly thought you could spend the rest of your existence playing with people's lives—"
"How dare you say that when you know I—" Dan's voice rose and cut Herbert off before he could launch into a full-blown self-righteous tirade.
"Playing with people's lives—and deaths—and you just expected me to always go along with it, like I was just like you." Dan's lips were set in a tight, straight line. "But I'm not like you." Herbert snorted inelegantly in response. "I'm not. And I can't keep living this isolated life just because there's a miniscule possibility that we might someday find some way to make the reagent work."
Herbert clucked his tongue derisively. "What an emotional little speech, Daniel." He narrowed his eyes. "And I guess you feel you can't go to prison either, but it's perfectly all right if I do?"
Dan shrugged. "I'm sorry. I never expected it to end this way."
"Oh. Didn't you?"
—Braintree, Massachusetts. September 2003—
"So… they let you out already?" Dan slouched against the doorjamb, regarding Herbert listlessly over the rim of a half-filled wineglass.
Herbert stood still for a moment, somewhat miffed by Dan's unceremonious reception but loath to reveal that he had been caught at all off balance. "No," he replied simply.
"Well…" Dan pursed his lips thoughtfully as he stared disconcertingly over Herbert's left shoulder, the specifics of his features obscured by the sharp, deep shadows that fell over his face. "Come in if you want, I guess." Then, to Herbert's surprise, Dan turned around and went back inside, leaving the door open and Herbert on the front step.
"Not exactly the welcome I'd been expecting," Herbert muttered to himself as he stepped into Dan's house, conscientiously closing the door behind him. He followed the sound of Dan's footsteps through the foyer and into the living room, stopping beside the arm of a tasteful blue sofa that was in complete opposition with the quality of the furniture Herbert remember sharing with Dan years ago. The other furniture in the room was sparse—some shelves, an end table and a coffee table, a floor lamp, and what appeared to be a drinks cabinet—while most of his apparent possessions seemed to be books, aside from a television set, a DVD and videocassette player, and an accompanying shelf of movies in both formats. Herbert examined the room with an air of leisurely nosiness while Dan padded heavily over to an open bottle of wine that had been left on the coffee table and topped off his glass.
When Dan finally turned to face him, Herbert was surprised by how old and worn he looked; his cheeks were sunken and hollow, his eyes were dull, his skin was waxy and sallow, and there were streaks of grey in his dark hair. Moreover, beneath his bland and solemnly casual sweater and khaki slacks, he was obviously too thin, and the bones of his wrists stood out in sharp relief. Herbert's eyes flickered momentarily to the glass of wine Dan held. "So if they didn't let you out, what'd you do?" He avoided Herbert's eyes. "Break out?"
"Broadly speaking," Herbert answered primly and then added. "It was a fairly publicized incident. I'm surprised you weren't already aware of it."
Dan waved one hand lackadaisically. "I don't really follow the news anymore."
"Too depressing for you?" Herbert quipped sharply, but Dan didn't rise to the bait. With a barely concealed sigh of contempt, he changed topics. "I did expect that you would have a happy little family here," he sneered.
"Herbert," Dan's voice was nearly a whine as he half-sat, half-fell into an overstuffed armchair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Herbert, what do you want?"
His voice was so plaintive that it startled Herbert into that same slightly sweaty impulse for honesty that had overtaken him on Dan's doorstep. "Revenge," he said simply, and his pride was slightly wounded by the harsh little giggle Dan choked out. He shifted his weight subtly from one foot to the other, suddenly uncomfortable and unsure of himself in a way he'd rarely experienced and had always fought furiously to suppress.
"Really?" Dan grinned. "Revenge?" He took a sip of his wine and grinned disarmingly. "Oh, Herbert," the name snapped from between his teeth like the snag of a rubber band, "Are you going to kill me?"
"Possibly," Herbert said, his voice brittle with the control of a punctured ego. Dan eyed him curiously.
"And are you going to bring me back afterward?" He asked, resting his chin in the palm of one hand. Herbert shrugged noncommittally.
"Possibly," he repeated. Dan raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"You don't know yet?"
Herbert frowned. "I didn't say that."
"I suppose," Dan drawled, idly running his fingertip around the lip of his glass and causing it to sing its one, tuneless note, "that you could kill me a hundred times if you really wanted to." He paused to take a sip. "Is that what you were planning?"
"Would it cause you the most pain?" Herbert asked tartly. Dan reacted to the question with a humorless little chuckle, which caused Herbert to bristle further.
Dan caught the look on Herbert's face and returned it. He held Herbert's gaze as he set his glass down on the coffee table and leaned forward slightly, resting his knees on his thighs. "So… what if I were to call the police?" He asked; the implied threat was all too obvious.
"It wouldn't do much good," Herbert frowned at Dan as his eyes flickered between the other man and the telephone sitting on the end table. "They think I'm dead."
"They what?" Dan's mouth gaped open incredulously. "You can't be serious… you actually faked your own death to get out of prison?"
"Well, it's not as if I planned things to go that way." Herbert grimaced slightly. "Honestly, Dan, I didn't set out to engineer the whole thing."
Dan let his head drop into his hands. "The police are going to show up here, aren't they?" Herbert rolled his eyes as Dan mumbled rhetorically. "Wherever you go, there's always trouble."
"Oh, please. Spare me your melodrama." Herbert reached into his bag and pulled out a thick sheaf of newspaper pages, collected from a variety of different publications. "Here. Educate yourself." He tossed the small bundle down onto the coffee table, and Dan reached out tentatively, picked up the top paper, and began to read.
"You—you caused a prison riot!" He exclaimed after a moment's skimming.
"Well… not intentionally."
Dan stared up at Herbert, his eyes wide and slightly distant. "A prison riot. You actually managed to cause a prison riot." He ran a hand through his hair and bit his lower lip. "They're going to come after you. They are, and this'll be one of the first places they look. And they'll come here and think I'm helping you and then all this will just start all over again because—"
"Dan, you idiot, you just don't listen," Herbert growled as he snatched the newspaper from Dan's hand, flipped through it irritably, tossed it aside when he didn't see what he was looking for, and plucked another paper from the pile to repeat the process. "They think I'm dead. What part of this don't you understand?"
"How?" Dan asked, his own voice rising to match Herbert's. "How is that possible?"
"Ah-ha!" Herbert brandished the newspaper excitedly, folding it over to expose an article on one of the inner pages. He stuck it directly under Dan's nose with a triumphant smirk. "Read that."
Warily, Dan took the newspaper from Herbert and read the headline: "Carnage of Prison Riot Leads Investigators to Believe Missing Prisoners Deceased." His voice trailed off as he began to read the article. Herbert hovered over him impatiently, waiting for Dan to finish. "Huh. They actually mention you by name." Dan's eyes flickered up to meet Herbert's. "They really think you're dead?"
"Absolutely." Herbert nodded as he allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smile. "And I suppose I have mostly the horrendously inefficient security personnel at Arkham Penitentiary to thank for that. It was disgustingly easy to slip by them with the riot going full tilt."
While Herbert took the opportunity to gloat over the details of his escape, Dan continued to skim through the various newspaper articles, his expression becoming more and more downcast as he learned about the bloody riots that Herbert had been thoroughly embroiled in at the Arkham State Penitentiary. While Herbert's somewhat lurid account began to come to a close, Dan fiddled with the stack of newspaper pages, folding them and sorting them and waiting for Herbert to fall silent. "So…" he said quietly once Herbert had tired of the sound of his own voice. "You were, ah, 'experimenting' again, weren't you?"
"Well… yes, of course. I never stopped." Herbert looked stricken. "But was my work with the reagent actually the cause of the riot? Of course it wasn't." He bristled slightly. "It may have exacerbated the situation, I'll grant you that, but—"
Dan snorted, interrupting Herbert's excuses. "No. It was the cause. You and your morbid…" He slashed his hand through the air in a violent gesture. "You and your morbid bullshit. Always causing it." He picked up his wineglass again and took a deep, almost frantic gulp. "I can't even believe you're here, after everything you put me through. What do you actually want, anyway?"
Herbert pursed his lips and glared sullenly at Dan. "Just what I told you: revenge."
"Oh, please. That's even more bullshit than your experiments!" Dan let loose a high-pitched, wild-sounding giggle. "If you'd wanted revenge, you wouldn't have actually come here to tell me so." He shook his head. "You just want to… to gloat, or to see make me feel guilty or something. You just want to wring every ounce of schadenfreude out of me that you possibly can." He raised his eyebrows at Herbert. "Am I right?"
Herbert looked away; his expression was sour and twisted. "Actually, I'm here because I need someplace to stay." Dan stared at him, but said nothing. "Temporarily," Herbert clarified hastily. "Obviously I'm currently in an awkward position when it comes to obtaining things like housing…"
Dan shook his head slowly, dumbfounded. "You've got to be kidding me." Herbert didn't reply. "You actually expect me to let you stay here?"
"Why not? Afraid I'll disturb your family?"
Dan laughed hoarsely. "Disturb my family? Are you blind or are you stupid?" He made a sweeping gesture, indicating his nearly empty living room. "I've been divorced for three years and my son spends every other week with me... and most of the time he's in school. Seriously, who would you be disturbing?"
"Then what?" Herbert asked, his impatience growing.
"You came in here and said you wanted to get revenge on me!"
"And you just made it perfectly clear that you don't believe I'm capable of doing any such thing."
"Yeah, but…" Dan sighed. "This is like the wolf trying to get the three little pigs to let him inside. And I don't like it."
Herbert gathered the newspapers on the table and knelt down beside his bag as he began to tuck them away. "Very well, then. But I think you're missing the perfect opportunity for surveillance."
Dan cocked his head to one side. "'Surveillance?'"
"Oh, indeed." Herbert stood stiffly. "Think about it, Daniel. Toss me out now and you'll never know where I am or what I'm planning… until, of course, I come back a second time and take exactly what I want from you." A shiver crept down Dan's spine; Herbert's voice was steady and serious and menacing in a way it had not been before. "Allow me to stay for as long as I need to, and during that time you will know everything you care to know about my movements, my habits, my goals and plans. Anything you find noteworthy or useful, you'll be able to find out." He shrugged. "It is, after all, your house."
Dan hesitated. He still found the idea of allowing Herbert to stay with him to be more than a little repugnant, and yet Herbert's argument made sense: he could either unleash Herbert West back onto the great, wide world, spitting mad and with an enormous chip on his shoulder, or he could become Herbert's surrogate jailer. Both possibilities filled him with uncomfortable feelings of trepidation and fear of all that could possibly go wrong in either situation. He gnawed his lower lip and stared into space as he thought it over. "Look, I… I just don't know…"
"Danny," Herbert's voice was suddenly soft and compelling; Dan looked up at him, surprised at the sudden change. "Keep in mind that, because of you, I spent more than thirteen years in prison. Don't you think that the least you could do is give me a place to stay for the next few days?"
Guilt and shame surged in Dan, colliding with his anger and his nervousness and easily suppressing them. The guilt was almost soothing, it was so familiar. Herbert's voice might have been soft, but his eyes were sharp and unyielding; they plainly said, "You owe me." And Dan realized—as a feeling of heavy physical weight seemed to settle over him, causing the muscles of his abdomen to knot with the tension as goosebumps broke out along his arms—that he did owe Herbert, had owed him since the trial.
He let out a sigh as he stood from his chair and turned his back to Herbert. "All right. I guess you can stay."