Now that Meg and Herbert are back at the hospital of their memories, Herbert is more than eager to take his experiments to the next level, but Meg is plunging further into her grief over the love of her life, not that anyone can blame her...and what doesn't help it much is the fact she has a new patient who resembles that certain someone. And Herbert finds something familiar that sets his whole plan into motion. ;D

Chapter Nine

Remains of the Night

She survived the wound in her side, and she would have died of infection from the filth-encrusted weapon if Herbert's miraculous hands had not nurtured her back to health on the way home. Meg had been bedridden the whole time, her recovery taking up to two weeks even during the time she and Herbert stayed in a motel near the hospital – the very same hospital where the memories resided.

The very same hospital where she had gone to school.

The very same hospital of the college where her father had been dean.

The very same hospital where his life was taken.

The very same hospital where her life was changed forever.

And above all...the very same hospital where the massacre took place. A year and one month passed since then, and the case was closed.

But not to Meg Halsey. And certainly not to Herbert West. Both of them were the only proven survivors.

It was nearly the end of November, and by then, they were both one year short of graduating. They weren't yet licensed doctors, but they had their degrees obtained early. Before taking off for Peru, Meg had decided to sell the house that her father had once owned, where she'd been born and grown up and had become hers after his death. It broke her heart to do so, but like the hospital, that place bore too many memories and too many demons she could not face. She and Herbert sold it for a good profit, the option available in her father's trust to put it up for sale. Their new residence was an old Gothic-Victorian-inspired structure of much darker elegance in color scheme and atmosphere, chosen by Herbert specifically for reasons of isolation from curious eyes and privacy for his secret life's work, and overlooked the old burial ground. The place had once been a mortuary, standing strong for the last twenty years, and happened to have an embalming room below the first floor, becoming Herbert's laboratory. He had no use for the rest of the house, leaving it all to the comforts of home for Meg.

This morning she would be performing surgery on one of the patients which had been handed to her since their return. He was barely thirty years old and in an extremely terminal state. Learning his name – Daniel Adams – she'd sucked in a breath because of the name which belonged to another she lost so long ago...and upon seeing his face for the first time – he looks just like him. The fragile young man lay in his bed asleep, wanting to do so forever because he felt his life slowly leaving him, but at the same time, he wanted to continue living because he was not ready to leave. He shouldn't, Meg thought with fierce determination.

"Morning, Daniel," she said softly, turning the light on just as he was waking up. Surgery was part of the routine now that he was confined to a hospital bed. He had no family to take care of him, and his girlfriend had bailed on him out of cowardice, which made her furious. She sat down on his right side of the bed, halfway facing him but turned her body around enough. "How's the star patient?" she asked in a slightly teasing tone.

He managed a weak smile. "Good, Doctor." His voice was hoarse and thick with sleep. His face was a robust kind of average skin tone, save for the bags under his eyes, but the rest of his once-toned body bore the symptoms of skin stretching over the bones and a darker yellow color. As it appeared, his head was the only part of him that wasn't sick, as he told her once.

His eyes fell onto the gurney that came into the room, pushed in by a fellow nurse and colleague, Shelley. Herbert was in the room, too; he was in charge of coordinating with pathology about Daniel's biopsy. Pathology run by the dim-witted Dr. Wilbur Graves, who was also in charge of the remains from the night of the Miskatonic Massacre, informed by Herbert. The man had aptitude when it came to the condition of tissue cells and organs, but in truth, he possessed no better mind than Dr. Hill's.

"I'm scared," Daniel croaked, his voice threatening tears and it sickened him that his condition made him so weak. But Meg smiled and held his hand. When she did, she felt a jolt of electricity shoot through her hand. Looking at him again, she saw more and more of Dan every day, and for that, she made the promise.

"Don't worry. Surgery's routine. I'll be taking real good care of you." When she helped Herbert and Nurse Shelley get him onto the gurney, she felt her heart break when she felt the knobs of his spine and the protruding bones, resulting from weight loss. He gave her one last desperate look, silently begging her to pray for him; she smiled again and ran her palm down the side of his face for one last act of comfort before watching him get led away.

Herbert had been staring at him the whole time, with the same casual, calculating face she knew too well, turning away, at last, to look over his chart one more time. "He's not an experiment," she reminded him firmly.

"He's terminal," Herbert stated flatly, not looking up.

"He's a patient!" And a human being who needs compassion, not cold clinical judgment!

He looked up at her finally, eyes hard as stone. "He could still be of use to us, Meg."

She thought her nails would pierce the skin of her palm enough to draw blood. "Not us...you. I'm a doctor." Who actually treats the patients as human beings instead of objects.

"Who will be a scientist," he returned, beholding her with a look that could kill the black mamba. She scowled and walked away from him; she didn't need his shit right now. A patient needed her; she could vent her frustrations later.

~o~

Meg had the nerve to talk him down. She watched him too much and knew him too much, but he also knew her too much. Consider us even, he thought as he waited until she was gone to the operating room to handle Mr. Adams. He didn't miss how she would constantly stay by her patient's side for an extended period of time, always conversing with him and talking to him as though she'd known him forever. At first, Herbert didn't know why, before he looked at the man's face more closely...

He reminds her of Dan. It's no wonder. It made him even more jealous to know that, much less dwell on it. He was infuriated to no end.

The bumbling pathologist Dr. Graves was nowhere to be found, and neither was his equally idiotic assistant whom he placed in charge of incinerating any bodies which were too maimed or diseased to be given to their loved ones. After the morgue had been reconstructed, the incinerator had been brought in as a new addition to the disposal of "trashed cadavers", but besides that, Graves had his personal storage space in his classroom which served as the "autopsy room"...which housed exactly what he was looking for, which was not only several body parts he would keep and study on his own time sometimes ultimately leading to months of dead ends.

The remains of the night of the massacre.

Since moving into their new house, Herbert spared no time to test out the iguana from Peru. Meg had been bedridden in their motel and therefore, he couldn't show her his enthusiasm with what he knew was the missing piece of the puzzle. The soldier specimens in South America had been a success if not devoid of animalistic behavior which hadn't changed at all. Too many variables, Meg had said, and he was for once agreeing with her on this part. Which had taken them both to the next step of creating new life.

He didn't know how much longer until Graves would be back, but he knew he couldn't waste any time. He had told Meg earlier that morning they would have a new body to test, but she couldn't know just yet that a whole body would be a departure. So far a complete corpse hadn't been qualified with success. Dr. Hill had been the inspiration for this.

"Yes," he almost moaned in delight when he saw the rows of shelves lined with the yellow tape for police investigation. Several body parts were wrapped in plastic and tagged with the names of the people they once belonged to, as well as identification numbers and the correct titles of the parts. "Mm-hmm," Herbert would say occasionally as he sorted through, finding none that interested him so far, none that were what he was looking for...

...until at long last, he found one promising enough. Snatching it up and cradling it in both hands for a few moments, Herbert took in the sight and feel of the organ. It was a heart, still warm and firm despite being long removed from its owner. But it was not only its purpose that made it so special and attractive enough to serve as the center point of his new purpose but the name on the tag in Graves' rushed, capitalized but otherwise clear handwriting: CAIN, DANIEL

His own heart stopped in its tracks. Daniel's heart.

Oh, the wonder. Daniel Cain's organs had been given for donation after his body had been cremated; his urn as well as Dr. Alan Halsey's were resting on the fireplace mantle of the mortuary which was now his and Meg's home. But not this one. Holding the heart in his hands, he tried his hardest not to crush it as the thought consumed him:

We will create new life. And this is the key. This was – is – the key to Meg's own heart.

With that, he put the heart of Dan Cain into his lab coat pocket, stuffing it as far as it could go so nobody would notice anything suspicious. He knew Dr. Graves noticed parts missing since he and Megan returned, but the idiot wouldn't report it to the police out of his own fear. Even if someone did contact the authorities, then he would be forced to put the brave boy mask on before he cracked in the event of time. Now that Herbert had what he wanted, he was prepared to leave not long before something peculiar caught his eye. Well, I'll be damned!

None other than the head of the man whose head he took off, whose head was lost over the dean's beautiful daughter who already belonged to another man. The one whose heart rested patiently in his pocket. And whose woman was now his. "Dr. Hill," he stated disbelievingly. "How did you get back here?" He'd witnessed his skull get crushed by Halsey's bare hands and thrown out of the morgue. He'd have been nothing but smashed as a baked apple by now. Yet here he was. Perhaps he somehow...restored himself? The thought made Herbert laugh. "Well...well, well." The head was laying on its side, and he reached to fix it in an upright position, smiling the whole time. This was going to be fun, and he would leave with a proud beam very soon.

"What do you think of the location of the will in the brain now, Dr. Hill?" he asked smoothly. The head's wide eyes stared back at him, not responding, not that he expected an answer. But he could picture Hill saying something along the lines of "You bastard" from that opened mouth. He was enjoying every bit of this. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

Getting his head from his body had been nothing short of delicious as the meals Meg cooked for them both. Hill had been a snake split in half only to continue living; though the difference between a live snake and Herbert's re-agent was that it was the latter who brought the dead man back to life separately. Yet he could still talk and function without a physical connection. "Actually," Herbert continued, "you've been quite useful to me. You've helped me prove that consciousness resides in every part of the body."

He sneered at the man's delusions of fame and glory. He lacked the genius and originality Herbert did, same with Gruber. In the end, though, it was the man of true intelligence who won the fight. "You had such pretensions of grandeur, you pompous plagiarist," he spat at the disembodied head, thinking suddenly how symbolic it was along with the heart of Meg's dead boyfriend. Hill has no real brain, and he went in over his head for Meg. And Dan losing his heart TO Meg. Both of these men over the woman who I...

He paused his train of thought right there, his smile growing over the head before him, resting on the shelf and wrapped in plastic. Just a remain of the night like everything else around him. "But look at you now: you're nothing but a dead...head." He picked up a severed hand he found on the shelf beneath and whacked the head back down on its side. He tilted his head in that direction, regarding it one last time.

"A no-body!" He burst into a fit of giggles and went on his way then, making sure to leave the autopsy room's door cracked as he left it but shut the classroom all the way. Nobody had seen him go in, and no one saw him leave. Or so he hoped.

That one scene where he mocks Hill's head still makes me ROTFL to this day. XD