After quietly debating amongst themselves for a while, Victor and his father came to the conclusion that they would have to leave the three in the graveyard for the night.
"It's definitely not ideal," his father sighed, "but it's getting too late. If the town crier sees us coming out of here in the middle of the night, the whole town will know by morning."
The four other living present had stayed off to the sides with their heads hanging down in guilt. Once Toshiaki, Nassor, and Bob had discovered their experiments could talk, they seemed not so keen on the idea of keeping them anymore. It didn't help that George had been chastising them for the last ten minutes.
"Of all the nights, did you really have to pick the one when I play casino? I just know Frederick isn't going to get over the fact that I wasn't there. You know the dead remember these things? They'll not be forgotten when you end up down there…"
Mayhew shook his head at George's lecture. He and Arthur had been silently listening to the conversation between him and his father. Mayhew turned his attention back towards them.
"We don't mind staying here for the night Victor-"
"I do!" George interrupted.
"If anything, it is technically our fault the living ever had any interaction with our kind in the first place. Emily was the one who had come here and brought down one of you. Really none of this aftermath was from any wrongdoing on your part."
His father gave him a small smile. "Well, I can't let you take all the blame," he said, glancing down at Victor. "I perhaps shouldn't have told my son so much about the land down under. Guess I made it sound a little too appealing." He chuckled.
Victor frowned and kicked at the dirt.
"If there was a way for the living to get you all up here, I am certain that there is a way to get you back home. We'll come back for you as soon as possible. In the meantime Victor and I will think through any possible solutions. I can assure you that these three will not be bothering you anymore. Am I clear?" his father narrowed his eyes at the novice experimenters.
"Yes sir."
"Good. Now go back to your families and do not speak of this to anyone. In return, I too will not let any others know of your misdoings and we will find a way to right the wrongs you have done."
The three nodded and quickly stumbled their way out of view. Victor hoped the three really would keep their word and not cause any more trouble, but he admittedly had doubts. While he was amazed and felt at ease around his fathers friends from the other side, he worried if others found out about Sparky and the three living dead that they would be less than understanding. If the boys told on them, who would believe his father? Victor knew the town would rather take the sides of three stranger children than his family that had lived there for multiple generations.
"Father…if they tell anyone about Sparky, people are going to believe it was me who brought the others back from the dead."
His father looked over to him with sad eyes. "Unfortunately that would likely be the case but I'm hoping they were scared off enough to not tell. The quicker we can get them back to where they belong, the less proof there is that anything even happened in the first place."
A jolt of anxiety rushed through Victor's body as he processed another reality of the situation. "And Sparky?"
"Let's just focus on getting these three home first," he replied, looking away again.
Victor's heart sank slightly at his fathers avoidance of his question. He pushed the thought away and turned his attention to picking up the mess from the experiment the boys had left. It was a start at clearing the evidence.
"Lucas, come help me," Victor whispered. He was sure there wasn't anyone else around to hear them, but his growing fear around not knowing what to do and the town discovering everything made it impossible for his voice to reach anything above a whisper.
The three did their best to shove as many rods and gadgets the boys had placed around the graveyard into their pockets, pants, and coats, but in the end they had to hide a pile of remainders in the bushes to retrieve later.
"We'll be back right at dawn!" his father assured, trying to keep everything trapped and unquestionable in his coat.
"Ugh, bring a deck for us when you come back," George grumbled.
Arthur bonked him on the head with his hand. "They're helping us out. It's not their fault."
"It's not not in a way their fault either."
Arthur rolled his eyes and threw them an apologetic glance. "Just ignore him."
Victor, his father, and Lucas made their way to the edge of the forest. They kept themselves hidden amongst the trees while they glanced around for any signs of the town crier. Once his father decided that they were in the clear, they rushed across the bridge. They slowed down when they reached a place they deemed innocent enough to be seen in. They were lucky most people had turned in for the night, but Victor worried about how they would sneak back at dawn. He hoped his father had an idea on what to do before then, but he could tell he was just as unsure and worried as he was.
They parted ways from Lucas once they came upon his house. His father had to convince him that he didn't need to accompany them in the morning. Lucas obviously felt guilty and somewhat at fault for what had happened, and Victor couldn't help but want his friend with him when morning came. He did feel that Lucas was right in wanting to help fix the mess he had made, especially since it put Sparky in danger.
"The less people involved the better," his father explained to him as they made their way back home. "Lucas has no experience with this like you and I do. I would hate for him to get tied into all this if things become…more public. Their family has always stuck with us, even despite what everyone has said."
He was right, even if Victor did still feel a little hurt by what Lucas had done. Though he had apologized and shown he was on their side by willing to help them.
Once arriving back at the house, Victor raced to his room and let everything he had stuffed in his clothes drop to the floor. He had to start brainstorming ideas and roaming over everything he had learned since he had brought back Sparky. The men that had been brought had undergone the same process as Sparky, but unlike Sparky, their physical living status didn't remain. They were still "living" in the sense of moving and being mentally present, which relieved Victor. If they didn't require a heartbeat to exist in the land of the living, then surely Sparky also wouldn't need one either?
Sparky came bounding in the room and plopped down at Victor's feet. Victor could tell that he was low on energy and needed another charge. That in of itself proposed a new string of questions. Would the three from down below need to be charged as well? What would happen if Victor didn't charge Sparky? Victor had feared that he could die again, but maybe the charging was only necessary to keep Sparky's heart beating. The others completely lacked any signs of life, so possibly due to the workings of the Land of the Dead, it only took the initial big charge of electricity to keep them here.
In that case, how were they supposed to get the others back?
Victor shoved himself away from his desk and sighed in dual frustration and anxiousness. This seemed beyond the matters of science. If they were going to fix what had been done, Victor knew his fathers familiarity with the ways of the afterlife were most likely to hold the answers.
He headed out of his room and towards where he could faintly hear the voices of his parents. He stopped just outside the living room when he could make out what they were saying.
"This is just too much Victor. Oh, what are we to do? You know how quickly the town found out about you and- They're going to know all about this, you just know they will…We don't have anywhere else to go!"
"Shhh I know darling. But we can't undo what's been already done," his father sighed. "They haven't found out about Sparky yet. We can get this all sorted before they can even begin to suspect anything is amiss."
Victor heard his mother let out a shaky breath. "Alright. But how?"
"I don't know exactly how yet," his father glanced up and noticed him standing by the entryway in the shadows, "but I'm sure Victor and I will be able to figure it out."
Victor emerged from his spot. "I've gone through some hypotheses."
His mother gave him a gentle smile and reached out to cup both his and his fathers faces. "You two are both highly intelligent people. I trust you two to fix everything." She walked over to dim the lamp in the room and close the drapes.
His father turned to him and raised an eyebrow. He understood his father didn't want to worry his mother any further, and could tell that he wasn't so confident on how they were going to undo everything either. Victor shook his hand in a way to communicate that he had something they could go off of. His father gave a single nod in response.
"I think I will turn in for the night. We don't want anyone getting suspicious if they see us up this late. You know how they like to talk," his mother said as she started to head to the master bedroom. "I'll take Sparky with me to keep an eye on him."
Victor nodded. "Good idea."
With everything going on, Victor didn't want to worry about keeping Sparky safe and out of sight too. He wanted to make right what the three boys had done as soon as possible. Once that was dealt with, they could go back to just focusing on Sparky, happily living in secret like before.
He felt his chest tightening and anxiety squeezing into it, but he shook it away.
Once his mother and Sparky had retired for the night, Victor and his father took their place on the sofa to go over any and every idea that they could think of.
"So from what you're saying, your experiment simply revived them enough to be considered "living", but that only lasted a short time before their hearts stopped again, thus trapping them here?"
"Yes. I think they'd have to be brought back the same way you were brought back. Emily was able to "come back from the dead" or so to speak when you proposed over her grave, but she wasn't actually alive right?"
"No she was very much dead," his father replied. "I never really knew how she did it, I always figured that she had some sort of potion or something from Elder Gutknecht."
"Maybe...my experiment is a kind of mix of science and what Elder Gutknecht does," Victor pondered. "Because doctors try to revive patients whose hearts have stopped all the time but they…aren't like Sparky or the men in the forest."
"Hmm," his father rested his chin on his hand. "You know, everyone I saw in the Land of the Dead was either blue or completely skeletal."
"So…?"
"So maybe people don't immediately go to the Land of the Dead when they die, and that's why it's different. I know from Mayhews death that he got down there pretty quickly from the time he died, so maybe it's only a difference of a few hours or so, or depends on the type of death. Mayhew was left alone in the freezing cold."
Victor absorbed the words of what his father was saying. Sparky and the men had definitely been dead for more than a mere few hours before they were brought back…The men were most certainly dead, but it could be debated on whether Sparky was actually alive or not.
"I think…the experiment can make things more of a living dead than actually living. I have to charge Sparky to keep him functioning."
"The men might be able to do that as well if they were regularly getting charged by a large enough source. Sparky likely would stay here if his heart stopped, just like the men did," his father added.
"In that way…it's sort of like magic that they are able to stay here?"
"I would say so."
It was still hard for Victor to accept that there were things that couldn't be currently explained by science. Getting used to the idea that the supernatural and happenings that could be considered magical existed would take some time. He was glad his father was all too familiar with it, cause Victor was at a loss for how to tackle the situation now.
"I think I have an idea," his father broke the silence.
Victor's eyes shot up to look at his father.
"I don't think there's any way us up here can get them back down there. You can make the dead living again but how do you make the dead…dead? I think it's only the dead who can do that. We should send them a message to give to the Elder."
Victor reeled back. "Um…We can do that?"
"In theory," his father reached over to his book of notes and tore out a plain sheet of paper. "From what I could tell when I was down there, anything that was buried with the dead or was on the person when they died was also transported to the Land of the Dead with them. Emily had her wedding bouquet and Mayhew still had his pipe with him."
His father handed him the note he had jotted down on the paper to read.
"Are you saying we somehow place this in the grave of someone at their funeral?"
"We could hide it within some flowers that people throw in before the first shovel of dirt is tossed."
"But father, it'll take way too much time waiting for someone to die!" Victor exclaimed.
"Now of course while we wait we can try out some other-"
The loud sound of a bell echoing through the town interrupted them. Victor pulled the curtain back a crack to see people groggily step out of their homes or flick on a light by their windows.
"Hear ye, hear ye! Amelia Bennett unfortunately has passed at thirty-nine years old. She leaves behind her husband and two sons. Her funeral is scheduled to be held in a day's time," the town criers announcement rang through the night.
Victor couldn't believe their luck. He breathed a sigh of relief that made him feel a twinge of guilt. He shouldn't feel alleviated or lucky at someone's death. Though now knowing there was truly an afterlife, death didn't seem so bad.
"Father! We can send the message-," he stopped when he saw the horror-stricken expression on his fathers face.
"They're going to start clearing a place for the grave once the sun begins to rise! They'll find the men!"
Victor's face fell to match his fathers.
"We've got to get them out of there."