Since Herbert West is alive and well, he reveals to Barbara what happened while he was imprisoned by their headless former friend. And what Clapham-Lee plans next - plus some renewed heated arguing in which a certain long-buried secret is revealed. :O

Chapter Thirteen

Morning After Argument

My body felt warm and alive again, and I believe I slept much better than I did in a long time. When I opened my eyes to morning light, it was about eight in the morning; Mrs. Jensen said she wouldn't come until ten, but I still had to get up. When I sat up, I noticed the bed was empty save for myself. Looking around for my husband, I was about to call his name when I spotted him sitting in the armchair beside the fireplace. He was staring ahead at nothing in particular, and upon sensing that I was awake now, he turned his attention to me now. "Didn't you sleep last night?" I asked, climbing out of bed and ready for a shower.

He shook his head. "I don't sleep anymore. And I don't eat much anymore, either."

I was still as nude as he was when I walked over to him and knelt before him. It was just the two of us, and we both knew each other's bodies so well we didn't care about exposure. "Herbert, please tell me before she comes. What did he do to you?"

He frowned. "'She'?" he repeated.

"Mrs. Jensen," I clarified.

"Ah." He laughed, but it wasn't humorous. "Should have guessed. Buying this place again after what happened. To think it would be through her again."

I nodded, though judging by the tone I knew well, he had been keeping tabs on me this whole time. "So, you knew about this. And you know I've been back in Arkham, and I currently teach classes at our alma mater, and my intern..."

Herbert nodded, too, reaching over to brush some strands of my hair out of my face. "She made you happy; she's the child we couldn't have." His whole face became crestfallen. "I still feel terrible about the..." He trailed off, but I knew he was referring to the second miscarriage which sealed it all. "I tried making it up to you after that." I stood up and leaned to kiss him briefly before going to the closet.

"You still didn't answer my question."

"Ah, yes. Well, the night our old friend and his followers came for me, they carried me through the caverns beneath the earth. I suppose you could call it the literal form of Hell," he answered with a slight laugh, his eyes suddenly flashing when he saw me pick out a fiesta-red keyhole neck dress that looked like it was made for dancing, which faded as he continued his story. "Everything was so cold and smelling extremely putrid; you'd think I was used to those things, given the times we handled the bodies."

"You did most of that yourself," I corrected, waving my finger at him.

Herbert snorted. "You still haven't changed your view about the experiments with various parts, I see."

I sat down at the foot of the bed and raised both my eyebrows at him. "If you hadn't done that - most of all, took Eric's head - he and those things wouldn't have torn us apart."

"But we also got far as to prove that rational thought existed without - "

"I stopped the experiments after you were gone," I interrupted. "I gave it all up completely because it ruined my life. OUR lives."

He stood from the chair then and towered over me. "You gave up," he stated, emotionlessly so I couldn't read him at all. "I knew you would. Once I was gone, you wanted to get on with your life."

I felt like I'd been smacked in the face when he accused me of giving up everything we had. "I may have given up this sick work, because we were going nowhere, but that didn't mean I gave up on you," I returned. "He took you somewhere no one would find you. He took the work, too."

"Indeed," Herbert spat, lowering his eyes. "That's why he's kept me imprisoned with him. For a week, beneath the Averill's tomb, he kept me naked and suspended by chains, depriving me of food and water - what use would the dead have of those things, anyway? I hung there, starved and dehydrated, knowing I was dying and feared it because that was why I tried to defeat my enemy once and for all. I was barely aware of much of anything else before the seventh and final day when Clapham-Lee came to me with a syringe of re-agent."

I knew where he was going with this; my brain was telling me to hurry to the bathroom now and clean before Mrs. Jensen came, but my feet remained glued to the floor as my husband detailed the days of his capture and suspension before he was near death when... "He gave you your own medicine. He gave you life when you were getting close instead of when the exact moment came."

His chilling smile was back. "He did. Proved a new idea for me...if only it were easy to obtain a dying person when they near it." His smile faded then. "But I don't see that happening. A year of incarceration has forced me to rethink everything over, and what he forced me to do in the event of time. That is why I am here."

I could feel my spine chilling again. Eric had my husband in his clutches for the past year, had the work in his possession...so I knew he was planning something. "What is he planning?" I asked, feeling like I was so long ago every time during an experiment and after.

Before he could answer, the doorbell rang. "Damn it! She's here." She was here so soon! I hurriedly threw the dress on and brushed my hair, not caring about a shower until she was gone. It was barely half past eight, and Mrs. Jensen had a habit of being early sometimes. I should have expected it. "Hide in the closet until she's gone," I told my husband before leaving.

Mrs. Jensen looked me over with a scrutinizing eye when I answered. "Oh, fired up, eh? Never thought I'd see the bereaved widow in such a state after a single day. It's unlikely." Her gaze traveled back up to my face when I stepped aside to let her in. "Not to mention you look different."

I gave her a calm smile, though I was fuming internally as much as the color of my dress. "I feel different. Like a new woman. Staying here WAS a good idea after all." Staying here, resulting in a late night reunion with my husband, but there was still the matter of settling scores with our old friend. "Now, the papers?" I asked the agent, wanting to get this over with now so I could return to Herbert and hear more on Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee.

~o~

She left before ten o'clock, and I was left alone once again. This time I didn't feel hollow like I did yesterday. I had come here to find closure and had done so in the most unusual way unimagined. After closing the door, I turned behind me to look at the carved staircase where Herbert was still waiting for me upstairs. I was happy he remained there the whole time, but what do you expect after being dead/missing for a year?

He was laying on the bed, legs crossed and one hand behind his head while the other lay over his abdomen. I thought him so irresistible I wanted a repeat of last night, but first I needed to head out to town to get him some clothes. He couldn't just walk around the house nude as the day he was born the whole time. He'd suffered enough in the last year. "I'm going out," I told him.

"To where?" he asked with some boredom.

"Get you something to wear."

He laughed, now humorous. "After a year, I finally get my manhood back. Not that I've had any since Clapham-Lee stripped me of it," he muttered, turning his face away from me, away from the door to his left. He then rolled over onto his side, back facing the door, and I glimpsed his delicately arched back and firm rear end I remember fondling a few times and he would growl that I was debasing him.

I returned not long after with a light blue collared shirt, black tie, slacks and shoes. I just wanted Herbert to feel like himself again, and when I brought them home, he was in the kitchen, exploring the house to try and get used to his surroundings again, and his eyes which matched the shirt lit up. "Honey, you shouldn't have." I turned my face away so he could get dressed. "Why are you turning away from me? It's not like my body is a stranger to your eyes, you know."

"You're right." I turned back to him, and by that time, he was slipping on his shirt and buttoning it up. As I watched, I just remembered he never answered my question. "Herbert, you never directly said what he's planning to do with what used to be our work."

"Hmm." He turned to face me all the way, leaning into the kitchen counter, looking off to the side with the look on his face that said he was trying to put it the best way he could. "After I was revived, he informed me that I was better useful than dead, so I did the deed of going out to get him the freshest head I could find, and I got him the head of an executed murderer. I thought it would insult him as much as I thought it was fun, but he gave no complaints, just so long as he wanted a head in place of the one I took from him."

So he got some head again. The joke would have been funny if talking about it wasn't. "So he's back to himself, but he's not happy with what happened to him," I stated, obviously, "but what does this have to do with me now?"

"The fact that you and him had gotten to be so much closer than you should have been one certain night."

I stiffened. Oh, good God, there was THAT form of the past coming back. And they said keeping a secret that long meant the harder and louder it blew up. I braced myself. "What's the use, then, in keeping this from you?" I answered, seeing the venom in his whole face. "The night you killed Leavitt and brought him back, I didn't go to a motel. I believe what I'm going to say next should mirror whatever Eric told you."

His voice turned into a beastly snarl, matching his features. "You beguiled and deceived me. My wife whom I took vows with, gave my life and everything to work side by side with - even for one night - spent the night in the bed with another man. None other than our associate and your old friend from school." He let loose another laugh, choked up and furious. Hurt worse than he had ever been. Now the secret I kept so long from him was out and it would surely make things worse between us now. What an idiot I was.

"I'm sorry, Herbert," I said. Those words never simply did it any good, but they were out anyways. Good way to spend the morning after our reunion, I thought sarcastically.

He exploded. "SORRY?!" He rounded on me from facing the counter. "You were unfaithful to me with the man who took me away, starved me to death and gave me a dose of my own re-agent, and sorry is all you can say?!"

"Because you weren't the man I was in love with, in case you forgot then!" I returned, the heated fury of that night coming back with a vengeance. "I couldn't stand you that night, so I went to Eric because he was the last form of human contact I could grasp. "Eric made me feel better, but that was the first and only time it was us together. It was one night but didn't mean the same as I feel for you."

Herbert sneered at me. "You call love keeping secrets?"

"Just as you kept the secret of Robert Leavitt from me!"

"Oh, and we're still going on about this? That was the first and only time I killed a man." He groaned and threw his hands over his head. "I thought we put this business behind us a long time ago."

"So, it would be stupid to ask if you - "

Herbert held up his hand. "Stop right there. And yes, I'm mad. Correction: I'm heartbroken that you kept this from me." His face had been harder than the Statue of Liberty before it softened like the sea in its calmest form. "But...I still love you despite it. I understand why you did it, and we both made mistakes. And yet in spite of everything, we've made our marriage work until...that night," he finished hesitantly.

Of all the things, I wasn't expecting this. Guilty or not, I'd deserved the verbal treatment for betraying my vows to him. But Herbert was always so easy to forgive, or at least try to get me to do the same when for a woman, it was never that easy. He was looking at me and smiling, waiting for my answer. "Yes, you're right." I was walking towards him, ready to embrace him when the phone on the kitchen counter frightened us both - me mostly. I answered it. "Hello?" I had no idea who could have gotten this number; I'd made arrangements ahead of time to have a new one installed, so nobody but Dawn had this.

"Barbara, I'm in trouble!"

I looked up at Herbert frantically. His eyes narrowed dangerously as he leaned in so we both shared the phone together. "Dawn, what's going on?" I demanded, before I heard a crackle, and a familiar demonic voice I hadn't heard since one year before.

"Hello, Barbara. Long time no hear."

"Eric," I said, terrified now. "What are you doing to her?"

He laughed cruelly and maniacally. "Nothing yet, but I know he's with you. But you won't find us anywhere in Boston or Arkham; I'm surprised he hasn't gotten to telling you about this yet. I took the girl far from here, where we can be away from the town's eye and make the exchange."

"What exchange?" I said, gritting my teeth in infuriation. "Eric, I know you hate my husband for what he did to you, but..."

He interrupted me. "Of course, I hate him, sweetheart," he hissed. "Just as I hate you more for so much as being married to that son of a bitch who took my head from me. Dealing with the devil, and look what he did to me. I paid him back then, and now I get my chance a year later." I was about to say more before he went on. "Now, you know where we might be. We've gone back to the place where it all began, but not in the place my old head was taken. Another spot more isolated, so go beyond the boundaries of Flanders. Just like you both went beyond the boundaries of science."

The line went dead then. I stared at it in horror. He had Dawn. He had her, the work still, perhaps an army of the re-animated waiting...and wanted an exchange for WHAT? I looked up when Herbert broke the silence as though reading my mind.

"That was what I tried to tell you, Barbara. He has Dawn because he wants you. He always wanted you."

Oops, yeah, Dawn's kidnapped and Clapham-Lee wants Barbara. The work isn't important, but her. Kinda similar to the movie, but I thought it suitable. :)