Here comes the "grand conclusion" - KIDDING - of Herbert West, Re-Animator. But the story does NOT end with the tomb-legions taking away the parts of Herbert West's corpse with them, and his head by the headless Dr. Clapham-Lee. Barbara suffers more than she did in the past when her husband is taken from her, but the pain is short-lived when Dawn is in the picture - though the grief is still there. But for now, comes the climax for the mad scientist who tried to play God but didn't measure the consequences.

Chapter Eleven

The Tomb-Legions

Present Day

Dawn offered to clear the dishes, but I wanted to, since she was the guest, and this was going to be my home again. It felt alive to have someone else in my life again - mostly in this house. "That was great," she told me as she helped me clean up the kitchen. "So far, not bad of a first day back. At least, nothing bad happening," she added with a little smile. I laughed and agreed with her.

"Would you like a tour of the house?" I offered.

She nodded happily. "Beautiful, so far. This one and the outside hallway."

I showed her the sitting room and everything else on the first floor - but then near the back of the house, we got to a certain door which led downstairs to a certain room...and beside that wall was a window offering a view of the tombstones, in which my heart was seized by fear and forced me to turn away from it. I didn't want to look at it.

"Barbara, what's wrong?" My intern-daughter put her hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort me, but I jumped at the contact. I shook my head and told her nothing, but she didn't believe me. "That's where it happened, isn't it? Alright, let's get away from there." I was pleased she understood my state of mind, but another part nagged at my mind that I had to go down there and face IT, eventually.

I brought Dawn upstairs and showed her every room there was...and then we paused at the opened doorway into the study room. This room had dark mahogany panels of walls, Persian carpeting, and candelabra serving as the chandelier as well as a couple on the wall on either side of the framed portrait above the fireplace. Since returning from Flanders, Herbert and I bought this house where we would quietly retire to and spend the last of our days together, spend the evenings in this room when we weren't downstairs as always. For the next two years until his disappearance, we tried to mend our broken marriage until THEY came and parted us for the last time.

~o~

3 years ago

We left Flanders with haste, the fighting obviously not safe enough for us anymore. We returned to Bolton and to our old home, which felt so strange being back here. It was the same as we remembered it, but I wasn't sure if we could ever remain here now. This was where we first moved and the only home we ever lived since graduating and moving out here to start our practice. How long ago that was, and how times had changed drastically.

"It feels so...strange," Herbert murmured, being the first to enter. "A year ago we were in Canada, far out of the country, out of the state...out of this town. Now it's foreign to me. I feel like a new man."

I looked at him in surprise, shocked at hearing him say that for the first time. "I knew you weren't the same as you were so long ago," I said. "But I never thought I'd hear you say that."

He gave a slight smile. "Because I never noticed until now."

"Just like you never realized you wanted to finally start over fresh until then?" I challenged. "When you finally decided to try your new method with our friend, Eric, wherever he is now? Or if he actually died there." Thinking about Eric as well as mentioning him brought a pang in my body and heart when I realized the loss of another precious person in the world. I realized now that he was gone that I was officially alone, and Herbert was once more all I had. It was just as enormous as when I lost my mother, but that had been different. My onetime lover was gone - but that begged the question, since he was now nothing but a headless walking corpse: I wondered if he truly survived the collapse of our quarters. When I voiced my concerns to my husband, I was stunned by the response.

"If he has, then he's gained more power than the others before him. He shared our theories, and he's likely to come back someday. I wouldn't get too relaxed, my dear." For the first time in forever, I let myself be wrapped in his arms, and the first kiss in that same amount of time was tender and chaste, just a simple peck on the lips. Mine tingled at the sensations shooting through the nerves and down to where my breasts got the same reaction. Herbert actually meant it when he said he wanted to renew things; if there was a way I could try to do the same while we searched for a new place to live, it wouldn't be here any longer.

I welcomed Herbert back into the bed for a purpose which husband and wife knew too well for the first time in three years.

~o~

I couldn't say before that fantasy and reality were blurred, but I think it was the final night when my husband, Dr. Herbert West, disappeared a year ago. We were just patching things up, getting closer to each other again, even though he still continued his experiments in the basement, when the time finally came.

After all these years, obtaining fresh bodies had not changed a bit. Safe to say it was Herbert's moral undoing, because they were hard to get and their reactions were more murderous than ever. My husband's cool exterior and natural curiosity were also dwindling each day and being overtaken by fears, even when we talked about any subject which escaped when one of us couldn't kill it fast enough. The ones which were still fresh in our memories after sixteen years were the one whose fate we never learned - as well as the thing at the Sefton Asylum...but most of all, our headless old friend whom we never met again. The last and most latest of those three was what made the paranoia greater than ever before.

Herbert had proved that the body could exhibit part intelligence without the need of the brain, but he could never be sure as I that we were the only two to survive the bombing.

"It's been years," he said to me one day, "and the police have not caught on yet." He paused to take a few deep, shuddering breaths. "But I can't be too careful, remember?" I nodded, then kissing his cheek and nuzzling it for comfort, making him relaxed only to revert back later.

Herbert and I found a very elegant, old Victorian style estate in Boston, which lay not far south of Arkham. I thought it more grander than our last, and for the first time ever, Herbert expressed gratitude and made me smile - inwardly, I knew he was expecting more of a downstairs laboratory. Included was an incinerator for parts of bodies or whole ones, which was what we never had before, and I suppose I could breathe a sigh of relief. Even more, for Herbert namely for figurative and significant reasons, when the house had, behind it, one of the oldest burial grounds in the existence of Boston - our laboratory was connected to the tomb of the Averill's, which had first been placed in 1768. The tomb and the lab were kept separate by a wall structure of masonry, bared for the world to see, for those who came down to the cellar. To me, it was a symbol of supposed protection from whatever secrets we were supposed to leave undisturbed beneath the ground.

Herbert had been excited to try and uncover the secrets behind the wall which blocked them from centuries-old graves beneath the earth - before his words showed more than he let on. "But perhaps it's best to leave as it is. Digging up bodies now seems unlikely." I agreed with him, happy we were being on the same page again. He smiled down at me then. "I see my loving wife is finally with me again."

"With you now that you've decided to leave something 'holy' alone," I teased, nuzzling his nose with mine. He guffawed gently at my pun use.

"That's a very good one, Barbara dear." Looking up at him, he hadn't changed in sixteen years. His blue eyes were still cold as his air, his arrogance present, his exterior calm, and his face holding its aspect of youth which years and fears never seemed to change. He was handsome as ever, and I wondered if all these years were keeping him forever young.

Sometime in the summer, the end finally came for Herbert West.

It was actually the night of our eight-year wedding anniversary. I couldn't have been happier that he actually decided to do this for us both; I was changing into a black dress with short sleeves and a pleated skirt, the neckline bejeweled that I didn't need a necklace. I found Herbert in the dining room, where he prepared a fancy dinner of steak covered with balsamic tomatoes, the glasses filled with red wine. It was as though eight years of hell were beginning to jerk in another direction in a really small way.

I gasped at the opened box Herbert put in front of my face. The earrings and necklace were both unbroken circles of diamonds burning from their very centers with more fire than any other in existence. A silent message of burning love since the day we met. "Scientific symbol of everlasting love," Herbert whispered, his smile sweet and soft, no trace of ice or menace. Just the man I married eight years ago showing me he wanted to mend everything with me. I gave him a kiss in response instead of telling him the words directly.

He took me to bed after dinner where we made love and lit the fire more than before. It dawned on me that keeping the fire out that long meant the hotter it returned with a vengeance. We weren't even in the mood of going to sleep right away either, instead choosing to leave the bed and making way for the study for just us sitting by the fireplace and holding onto each other, no words spoken. The flames flickered gold and amber in the darkness of the room, helping with the mood. I felt my body getting lighter and lighter, wanting to fall asleep here in Herbert's arms...

And then it was ruined. "Oh, God, look at this!" Herbert was up in a flash, reaching over to the table between us in the loveseat and the fireplace, grabbing the newspaper which had the terrible title in which a nameless Titan claw grabbed at us with sixteen years' worth.

"'Sefton Asylum Suffers Horrific Tragedy'," I whispered as I leaned in to read the story with him.

Early this morning, at Sefton Asylum which rests not far from Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham, a fearsome incident occurred, stunning the neighborhood and baffling the police. A group of strange, unidentified men were reported to have approached the receptionist's desk - led by a man wearing a Canadian officer's uniform and accompanied by a larger man whose face seemed to have been halfway devoured by an unknown virus.

As for the leading man himself, he was, in the eyes of the witnesses who lived, a "menacing military figure who talked without moving his lips", and when the light fell on his handsome face, his flesh glazed like that of a dummy or any doll known, and his eyes looked like painted glass. Some nameless accident had befallen the man, who demanded the custody of the cannibal monster - who was reported to have resembled the late Dean Alan Halsey of Miskatonic Medical - who had been committed sixteen years prior. When he was refused, he let loose the signal which resulted in a riot that left blood on the floors and walls, beating and trampling anyone in their path. Four were dead, but the rest were injured and unconscious when they finally claimed prize of the creature. But before the police could arrive in time, the men and the claimed fugitive vanished without a trace.

The survivors who recalled the damage done swore to authorities that the attackers acted more like animals than humans, acting at the signal of the wax-faced, still unidentified man. From then on, the police are still investigating the deed.

I felt like I wanted to pass out. So it WAS him - he was back, with the help of the escaped subjects of ours, and they'd claimed the re-animated Dr. Halsey after all these years. I knew this was the moment of truth, and they would be coming here soon. "So, it's as we both feared," Herbert whispered. Looking up at him, I saw his face paler than normal, absolutely drained of blood. "Clapham-Lee is coming for us."

I knew we had to try to defend ourselves, but how could we when it was not only him, not only his brutish escort and the cannibal Halsey - but who knew how many others with them? We wouldn't stand a chance. But still, I had to try and do something. Leaving him, I began to check all the windows - we had an automatic, updated security system where we pressed a button and the steel curtain/doors would cover the glass - as well as make sure all the doors were locked. I wasn't sure if this would stop them, but it was worth a try. By the time I was finished, I returned to my husband, who was still sitting in the study room in a nearly paralyzed state. The story in the paper really did it to his poor mind. Sitting back beside him, I took his hand into mine, massaging it gently and tracing the soft gold band around his ring finger.

Nothing worked. Nothing got his attention. He remained that way up until midnight, when the doorbell finally rang, startling us both, but mostly him. He jumped up so fast he almost fell onto the table in front of us.

They were here.

"Herbert, please, be calm," I tried to assure him, but I was just as afraid as he was. Since I was an accomplice the whole time, I was ready to fight to the death, and if we lost, at least I'd die with the man I love than alone. He didn't respond. I turned behind me to grab the shotgun off the mantle and load it, but Herbert stopped me.

"There is no use of that now, darling," he said, voice devoid of any sort of emotion. After sixteen years, his condition was more ghastly; no longer was he the excited young man I first met in medical school. His sins had finally come back to take revenge, and he was about to pay the price for it. I was ready to join him, because I had a part in it. "It's the finish. We head to the basement, where all our life's work is held."

I seethed when I followed him downstairs to the laboratory, locking the door behind us because we both knew the tomb masonry wouldn't be touched - but how wrong we would be proven. I had put down the shotgun on the lab table and grabbed a bag of my own while he did the same. We grabbed as much of what we could - notes and all - and were prepared to leave when Herbert stopped and pointed out the falling plaster above where the tomb masonry was. I stayed by his side, not wanting to leave him alone in this. The door was locked upstairs, by my hand, and I regretted it now. I still don't know why I did that, but maybe instinct told me to.

A gush of wind, colder than winter itself, came from somewhere in the room. There were no windows in the basement, but then there was the masonry coming apart from the inside - brick by brick slowly removed, and more deathly cold wind filled the room, as well as the worst smell I'd ever caught with my nostrils in my entire life. The light went out, but we both could still see the outlines of the revealed tomb entrance - and a dull, bluish gray light from there - as well as the silent moving figures making way towards us. Herbert and I dropped the bags holding the work we spent our whole lives doing together, choosing to hold onto each other now. It seemed all that mattered now was the both of us together. The beings had outlines going from human to half-human, fractionally and NOT at all - these things were the results of the grisly life we made around us, of trial and error.

And in the lead was the man in the Canadian officer's uniform, behind him his malady-digested bodyguard. Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, his head long gone and replaced with a beautiful head made of wax.

"Barbara." His voice was the same as I remembered, but a much darker, unearthly tone that belonged to the damaged mind and ear's senses. Enough to prevent you from sleeping at night. "Hold her," he ordered the larger "man", who left him as he was and moved for my way. I tried to run or maybe stay beside Herbert, but the beast grabbed me by both arms and held me in place, tore me from Herbert's arms the same time as the others sprang forward and took him into their midst. He did not resist or say a word. I thought they would tear him to pieces because they were no more human; I also wondered how they could file so organized together, before the idea lit up in my frightened brain that Clapham-Lee had months of practice and gained more intelligence than he did in his previous life. But re-animation changed him altogether from the man I knew in younger days and my damaged married life.

A mistake I regret completely now, even more since I kept the secret of Eric and I together from Herbert.

Who was now carried overhead the group of monsters and into the vault of abomination, finally calling out my name to him as well as the three simple words we did not exchange often but knew too well: "Barbara...I love you!"

"I love you, too, Herbert!" I cried back, feeling myself shrink against my captor. As he disappeared, I saw the blue eyes behind the glasses blazing horribly with their first touch of frantic visible emotion - he was afraid of whatever fate was waiting for him in what would now be called his tomb.

So, there you go, everybody. The Re-Animator met his fate...but we are FAR from over. No spoilers, but read and find out! :D