If anyone remembers part four, "The Scream of the Dead", you're in for Barbara cracking at the most terrible deed she's witnessed her husband commit.

Chapter Nine

The Scream of the Dead

5 years ago

To hear a dead man or woman scream is natural to be afraid of, but since three years before and suffering two losses in my body, it wasn't the dead that scared me now.

Herbert and I had been married for three years now, but we were drifting further apart. We still worked together, but we barely touched or looked each other in the eyes, barely exchanged words not related to work. It was like we were complete strangers, or maybe it was a sign that living with him was a bad idea that I should have realized a long time ago. I tried living a normal life with him other than re-animation of the dead, but the miscarriages were proof that it was impossible. Just being bound to him had costed me everything I loved: my mother and what should have been the children Herbert and I were supposed to have.

After the second miscarriage, it was discovered by Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee that I wouldn't be able to have another child because of so much damage to my inner abdomen. To learn the news from my high school crush was great to my heart and my empty womb, and Herbert had been there for me the whole time, but he wouldn't understand because of obvious reasons. He wasn't grieving the same way I was that we couldn't have children. I'd thought about adopting - a suggestion from Eric to us both - but it wasn't the same as having your own. And I think Herbert decided no children was necessary after all; he never said it aloud, but I knew it. My heart broke at this when the man I loved and married, followed his every footstep, was changing so much on me.

In terms of our work, Herbert's difficulty level of obtaining the freshest human bodies was on the highest level than ever. They were hard to get, and he discovered some time ago that he wanted a body in which life had just left it, but I wondered how on earth we could ever manage that. We had never been beyond hearing the first word of a body being buried, and by then the freshness level was below zero.

But then it all changed by July of 2010, which was the turning point of my fear for my own husband.

I was away on a conference in Boston for the last two weeks, finding the peace very comforting, but I was returning to everything hellish. I began to see it hellish with what began in the basement I came home to. Dressed casually - I had a day off of rest before returning to the hospital - in a sweater and glittering butterfly-printed jeans, I came home to my husband at the front door, face alight with elation, and I knew it wasn't just the sight of me. "What have you done while I was away?" I asked suspiciously.

"Remember the embalming compound I was telling you about?"

"Of course." He'd told me in a phone call that he'd been working on a new compound which could help with the problem of freshness, which baffled me because the tissues deteriorated before we could obtain the specimen. Zinc chloride-based compounds existed for embalming of dead flesh, first developed in 1848.

"I have created it in the event of your absence, my dear," he said as he led me to the basement; I dropped my bags off at the bottom of the stairs on the way. "At first, I planned to save it after you returned, but luck blessed me again. I have our man waiting for you." His blue eyes gleamed enthusiastically. "You'll be very happy."

If only that were true. I hadn't been that much happy for years. He had gotten a new body without going to the potter's field like we did the boxer Robinson years ago; at least it saved us the trouble of digging up the prize from the ground. The man was of middle years, pale and bearing a sandy stubble, unmoving and almost wax-looking because of preservation. I thought it remarkable, however Herbert did this. For some years now, my husband and I had been wanting to do what we never did before: revive at least a spark of reason in the subject. "How did you get him?" I asked, standing at the foot of the table.

He shrugged casually. "He had stopped by the house the day before, asked me for directions to the old mills still running. So I told him, but before he could leave, his heart began to give out, so I brought him in for a stimulant for it, but he was dead on the floor before I could give it." His mouth twitched, which I found really suspicious. "I saved him just for you. How about that? He might be the answer; he might just very well come back with full reason unlike the others before him!"

For a moment, I thought he might be right now. The man hadn't been dead that long, and he didn't seem to have any family to ask about his whereabouts. "His name, where he's from?" I pried.

"Robert Leavitt, from St. Louis, Missouri. And no, he's not married, from what I looked into him. And if we bring him back, we'll finally be famous," Herbert said, coming up to me and grasping my forearms in his hands, almost bruising me. He wasn't intending to harm me, but to try and get me to agree. I nodded hastily, inwardly nervous of the unknown as always. Ideas and visions of me and my husband gathering our newfound fame of ultimately cheating death...

"Barbara! Pay attention," Herbert snapped, getting my attention. "Here it comes now."

The compound had worked, preventing the body from stiffening. I watched as Herbert took small, delicate steps in this new version of our experiment. It seemed that he didn't trust me with his newfound discovery, so I was infuriated that he didn't trust me, his own wife and science partner. After that, it seemed he wouldn't trust me anymore than I trusted him. I watched in silence as he picked up the head and injected a needle filled with a clear substance I couldn't recognize from where I was. "To neutralize the compound, relax the body so I can administer the re-agent," Herbert explained to me, and after performance, he let the head rest against the table.

I had been expecting the body to be wholly unmoving, but the limbs were trembling. I held my breath, my heart rapidly picking up when the truth began to come to light, but I couldn't acknowledge it at the moment because Herbert then stuffed a cloth over the face, not removing it until the corpse was dead as it should be, before turning behind him to pick up the syringe of re-agent. He had actually checked the heart with a stethoscope and the eye pupils before pronouncing it necessary to give the final result. "He's dead now." The air was stiff with waiting; I wondered if the man had seen God and heaven before returning to Earth alive and well, though Herbert wouldn't, because he was the same as ever in not believing in the afterlife. But I also worried that perhaps reason couldn't be restored, that this one wouldn't speak normal words, maybe scream in wordless agony like the first.

I had been watching the face the whole time, catching the faintest rise of color to the pale cheeks. It was working! I hurried over and checked the pulse, nodding to my husband who joined on the other side, pressing the stethoscope once more to the chest and detecting an obvious heartbeat. Following were a few twitching of muscles in the arms, and then finally the lids opened, showing blue-gray eyes which were vibrant with life, but nowhere near intelligent as we expected. "Herbert...?" I asked softly.

He held up a finger to silence me. "Sssh."

I ignored him and leaned over when I saw the lips moving, but I wasn't a lip-reader, so therefore I couldn't understand what he was trying to say. "Where were you?" I asked gently, hoping some baby talk would start it; Herbert rolled his eyes but said nothing.

And then I was stunned by WORDS from the man: "Only now..."

I frowned. What did that mean? Did he actually go to heaven, or was he simply here all this time but in darkness, renouncing the beliefs in God and all he stood for? Either way, the man had truly spoken, and we'd restored reason and life to him!

But I should have anticipated that the triumph would not last long.

I watched with the man I married three years ago as our specimen's eyes widened, the pupils dilated, as he shakily rose up when he remembered what happened to him long before now, then threw his arms out as though trying to fight something - or someone - off, screaming the words which I would never forget:

"Help! Keep off, you cursed little tow-headed fiend! Keep that damned needle away from me!"

He collapsed back onto the table, laying inert once more and would remain so. Staring at the corpse in horror, I finally found it in me to tear my wet eyes from it to the man I had been chained to for the last twelve years. I found the courage even though I wasn't really feeling it to speak the truth.

"You killed him, Herbert."

He looked calmly from the body to me. His face overall was blank, devoid of any emotion. "We needed a fresh specimen. You know how hard they are to come by, Barbara. The moment he entered our house as I told you, his heart began to fail, but I didn't really offer a stimulant. I had a sedative by which he freaked out even though I didn't tell him what it was really. He apparently had a fear of needles, given he had a small history of ever going to doctors all his life." A smile finally graced the mouth which I used to love to kiss but now couldn't stand right now. "He was perfect."

"You're a monster," I spat out, making him laugh.

"Would a monster really fit my description? I didn't kill him for the sake of his own life. He had no family, no one who cares about him, and did I not make it clear that the body has to be very fresh and genuinely dead?" His eyes were cold and hard as steel now, darkened with a madness that began to scare me into wanting to leave his presence. "A cause is at hand, Barbara. Whether you like this or not."

I backed away finally, shaking my head. "What's happened to you? What happened to the man I love? The man who wanted to cure death only to take a life? Herbert, you're a doctor like I am! I never thought I'd see you resort to murder."

He growled and took a couple steps forward, towering over me. "You dare question my sanity, wife?" he snarled.

"I'm questioning both that AND your morals," I challenged. "You're not the man I fell in love with, wanted to put an end to the disease called death. You took a life now just as you took life from me."

Herbert stared at me for a moment before bursting out into cold, heartless laughter. "I took life from you? What exactly are you talking about? You willingly chose to be my assistant and my wife."

"I'm talking about both the miscarriages!" I burst out. "The first time wasn't your fault, I know that, but the second was the result of that monster of yours! You said you were sorry, but are you sorry about the fact that you promised we'd have children only to find out that it's impossible? Now do you see what I mean? You took life from me!" I glared up at him, clenching my fists and drawing blood with my nails. I felt it drip from my palm and barely heard it hit the floor. "Now you took it beyond that." I nodded to the dead businessman on our table. "Get rid of him yourself. I'm not staying here tonight. I'll check into a motel for the night."

I was up the stairs when he mocked me. "Oh, you think running away solves your problems?"

I paused and turned back to glare at him. "It won't," I answered, "but it gives me great peace to be away from you."

~o~

Present Day

"Would you like me to come over there?" Dawn asked me, snapping me out of my reverie. I quickly answered her.

"Oh, well, I was planning to have today alone," I answered, "but I suppose I could use the pleasure of your company."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes."

I hung up and looked around the house. There was nothing much to do, because a housekeeper had taken care of everything for me before I arrived. Mrs. Jensen might be old and critical, but at least she took matters into her own hands to have the house ready for my return to the past. I decided to cook dinner for Dawn and I when she returned, settling on prepping steak soaked with a special homemade butter of my own making. Exactly twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang, startling me out of my skin. I don't know why I was so scared, but perhaps it was because of being back in this place again that the littlest of things scared me when they shouldn't.

Dawn was twenty-one years old, with long platinum blonde hair in cascading ringlets, her eyes blue and piercing as the sky, and had plump rosy lips. She reminded me of Sleeping Beauty...but also a little bit of my husband, though not possessing his cold demeanor and arrogance. She was lively in a kaleidoscope-printed dress and jewelry clustered with blues and greens. "Glad I'm here?" she asked coyly, stepping in and taking in the elegant surroundings. "Very nice, but I still don't understand why you insisted on moving back here, after..."

"Closure, as I told you," I interrupted her gently, leading her into the kitchen. "I don't sleep at night anymore, remembering it all like it was yesterday. I have to put it all behind me." However, the longer I was here and the more I remembered all those years which led me here, sitting down now with my intern-daughter to have dinner with her, I knew it wouldn't be an easy process.

Dawn praised the great food before hooking me with her blue orbs. "But being married to a man who started trying to stop death only to move onto body parts in the war isn't going to be easy to get over," she said, reading my mind. "Seventeen years of it all, as you said. That's not simple to let go of." Her hand came to hold mine. "Just like it's never easy to forget your first...crush. Those feelings never die, either."

I nodded numbly. "I know. Believe me, I know." For her to bring up my past with Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee made me feel a tinge of regret both good and bad. I looked down at the steak on my plate I'd cut open and saw a little trace of blood. Medium rare, as we both liked it. But the blood brought me back to the battlefields of Flanders three years before.

Ouch, yep, things are worse than ever. :( If anyone knows the obvious, it should be clear WHERE Barbara is really going. For those who don't, find out in the next chapter! R and R, as usual!

For anyone who likes Dawn Ryder, she's going to play an important part much later.

For anyone who wants to learn more about zinc-based chloride compounds, the information is true about their first year of development, and feel free to look up more. :)