Chapter Text
It was a straight-forward case: get to the morgue, get the body, and bring it back. Simple as that. You’d gone on a hundred different removals before to a hundred different places — house calls, hospitals, nursing homes, scraping people up off the road, you name it and you’d done it, so something as simple as getting to a morgue would be easy.
Trying to navigate the Miskatonic University campus, however, proved to be a lot more difficult than you ever could have imagined. What you thought was the teaching hospital turned out to be the geology department, and then zoology; every wrong turn down each street corner and hallway led you deeper into the grounds and into a program even further removed from the need for a morgue. Even once you managed to find the School of Medicine, it took two security guards and a few generous students to convince you that no, this is a library, one which you certainly couldn’t just bring a mortuary stretcher into, and that the morgue was right over there.
A journey of what felt like hours finally ceased as you emerged from an elevator into a blindingly white and sterile hallway, stocked with a single security guard positioned outside of a single metal door. The beaded sweat in your hairline shriveled at the growing chill as you approached the guard’s desk. You could see now that the door was labeled “MORGUE”, the source of the cooling temperature and the spoils of your patience.
Before you could even speak up to state your business, the guard — “Mace”, you read on his nametag — looked up over the edge of his magazine.
“You here for the body?” Mace asked you, nonchalantly. The stretcher and the black clothing tended to give it away. “I heard to be expectin’ somebody to come and get her, a few hours ago.”
You nodded in response and apologized for your tardiness. Mace returned to his reading.
“Well, just let yourself in. Should be unlocked. I think there’s a class goin’ on right now, but I doubt you’d disturb ‘em, though.”
“Oh, it’s alright, I can wait until they’re finished,” you insisted, but Mace simply straightened out his magazine and continued to read, the pages echoing in the thin hallway.
The cool air from the morgue started to tempt your legs, sore from walking. To hell with it , you thought, I might as well get this over with, and entered the morgue with your cot in tow without another word to the security guard.
The primary room of the morgue was a clean suite that looked more like an operating room filled with dissection tables, medical equipment, chemicals, and students; all of whom turned in your direction as you entered. They stayed silent, but all looked curious at your intrusion.
From the table where a body laid looked a tall, thin man donned in blue protective gear.
“May I help you?” He asked after a beat of silence.
“Yes, I’m…” you introduced yourself. “I’m here with Thurston funeral home, to pick up a Mrs. Howards, I believe?”
The man thought for a moment, then smiled in revelation. “Oh, yes, I remember her now. She passed this morning, I believe. Why don’t you… Just have a seat, and I can assist you after the lesson is over? It shouldn’t be long.”
Before you could respond the man returned his attention to the cadaver before him, producing a scalpel in one hand and grabbing the head in his other. He began with a coronal incision along her scalp.
“Begin by cutting away enough of the fascia to get your fingers in… and then grasping, firmly, with both hands… you pull the skin forward, over the head. It’s very much like peeling a large orange.”
Many students in the class laughed, and you couldn’t help but find humor in the comparison.
You parked your cot by the door and searched for a seat, the only open one being a stool in the back row of students. Your body ached for a break and however much longer this class was you did not want to spend ti standing, so begrudgingly you approached the seat. One of the neighboring students instinctively moved over to allow you through, and you thanked him for it.
Your arrival was met with a collection of greetings, smiles, the typical hushed ‘how-are-you’s, and stares. There was a pocket of silence to your left, so you turned to see if anyone was there, which was when you made eye contact with another student; he was just looking at you, not speaking. Both of you diverted your gazes, his eyes falling to your nose while you paid attention to the pencil he twisted between his thin fingers.
From the short glimpse you caught of his face, you couldn’t deny that he was a handsome fellow. Dark brown hair, paired with similarly dark eyes hidden behind thin-framed glasses. His physique was thin itself, dressed in a neat black tie and white shirt tucked into just-as-neatly ironed black slacks, all of this veiled in a perfectly crisp lab coat. Perfectly shorn cheeks came equipped with dimples, laugh lines, and a beauty spot just superior to his right top lip.
He would make an amazing open casket, as long as you could recreate the glow of his skin with some heavy dyes.
The professor continued to speak, and your attention returned to him.
“Once the skull is plainly visible…” He grabbed a handheld saw and powered it on. “You take the bone saw… and you cut around the perimeter…”
The saw whirred as it easily cut through the bone.
“And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the human brain. Once the brain stem of an individual — I’m talking about the reticular activating system, heart regulation, respiratory center — once these activities cease, the brain can only last an additional six to twelve minutes. Six to twelve minutes. Until…”
The professor inserted a pair of long scissors beneath the brain and snipped, then brought out the brain into his hands, dura mater and all.
“Brain death brings out an irreversible conclusion.”
It looked as if the professor was glaring at you, until you realized that his attention was instead on the student to your left. The pencil in his hands continued to drum and twirl.
Suddenly, the pencil was raised and snapped in two, attracting the attention of the man’s classmates. He dropped the broken pieces into his coat pocket and produced a second pencil, twirling it just as he did the first; he did all this without daring to look away from the professor.
A few seconds passed before the professor sat the brain down and addressed the class directly.
“We all want to retain our personalities in some idyllic afterlife. We all pray for some miracle, some drug, potion, pill. Perhaps, though, it takes something else. Perhaps it takes desire, an obsessive desire. Perhaps it ta—”
Snap.
The second pencil cracked in two, and it was left on display in the air for a moment.
The professor spoke up once again, distemper evident in his voice.
“We will discuss the location of the will in the brain structure at another time… Mr. West, I suggest you get yourself a pen! Class dismissed.”
A majority of the class started to gather their belongings and head for the door, but Mr. West immediately stood and approached the autopsy table, confronting the taller professor.
“How can you teach such drivel? These people are here to learn and you’re closing their minds before they even have a chance!” He shouted. The other students stooped to watch and listen to the argument.
“What are you here for, Mr. West?” The professor retorted.
“You know you should have stolen more of Gruber’s ideas, then at least you’d have ideas!”
“Mr. West!... It is going to be a pleasure to fail you…”
With that, the professor turned and exited the morgue. A few students remained just to watch the aftershocks, but eventually all of them turned to leave save Mr. West and one other. The other man just looked at him with almost disbelief. Mr. West still stood, huffing angrily and acknowledged neither you nor his colleague.
Nervously, you broke the silence. “Well… So much for helping me out with Mrs. Howards, huh?”
No response, but the unnamed man did look at you now.
“I didn’t want his help anyway. Seems like a dick .”
The other man approached you now, switching from a shocked to a softer demeanor. “I can give you a hand, if you’d like,” he offered, and presented a literal hand in a display of friendliness. You nodded and thanked him, then followed him into the cooler.
“I would greatly appreciate that, Mr.…” You said and followed him around, reading the toe tags.
Holzman. Debois. Lowe.
“Cain. Daniel Cain. Dan,” the man responded. “And that was my, uh, friend, Herbert West. But I guess you learned his name already.
“Yeah. Hell of a first impression. So, who was the stickler?”
Holcomb. Filloon. Reed.
“A plagiarist! ” You heard Herbert yell from the main room. “A liar, and a moron! "
Dan looked embarrassed by his companion’s behavior, but again you couldn’t help but laugh at Herbert’s dedication to his field.
Pitzele. Draheim. Gordon. Howards.
Finally, you found her. Dan assisted in rolling the table back into the main room and positioned it by your cot. Herbert had remained unmoved in the center of the room, his face still as twisted in scorn as before. He only shifted out of the way to make room for the table once it threatened to bump into him.
When Herbert looked at you, though, every ounce of hatred seemed to melt and was replaced by interest and a blank stare. He approached the table beside you, nearly shoving Dan out of the way. Dan just stood back and watched Herbert work, but from the subtle shock in Dan’s face this behavior seemed out of character for him.
“You work with bodies often, I assume?” Herbert asked.
“Yes, I do. It’s almost like I get paid to do it,” you retorted. This earned another one of those cute half-smiles from Herbert. You abandoned his side and moved to the opposite side of the table, removing the cover from your cot and aligning it with the table. Herbert moved to stand directly across from you.
“Do you enjoy it? Or would you prefer the living?” He continued to ask questions.
“Oh, no. I vastly prefer the dead. No talkback, no fighting, no tears. Just a whole lot more blood, but it doesn’t really bother me… Would you?”
You patted the bare cot and motioned for Herbert to push.
“Oh. Of course.”
On the count of three and a good heave Mrs. Howards was transferred, and you and Herbert both strapped her down tightly.
You pushed the table back into the cooler, shut the door, got all your paperwork taken care of, and readied yourself to leave. All throughout this process, Herbert seemed to hover around you and ask questions while Dan let him take over the situation. He had crossed his arms and was just watching from afar, a bit baffled by the man’s sudden sociability.
You didn’t mind the company and you were grateful that someone was finally enthusiastic about helping you move a body around, compared to the little help you’d get elsewhere. On top of it all, it was Herbert West who was following you around; you could get used to his attention.
Herbert made it a point that he too specialized in death, but his studies revolved around defeating it. He talked on about how Dr. Hill — whose real name you finally learned — was incorrect about death’s irreversible nature. Modern medicine, he said, was far advanced enough to discover a way to retain and preserve life; it just took the right dedication and the right scientist to do it. You told Herbert how you loved those bad, old zombie flicks. The idea of resurrection was interesting, but one would need to take into account concepts like decomposition and the types of death. If you had a brain and no heart, you couldn’t circulate the blood; if you had a heart and no brain, there was no stimulation to make it beat. Herbert offered the idea that the will might not be so centralized in the brain as people like Dr. Hill would think. You had to cut him off before he started to rant too excitedly and told him that you really should get going now.
Herbert opened and held the door to the morgue as you exited.
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said, offering another smile, “and I do hope that we meet again.”
“As long as you keep hanging around dead people, then it’s a guarantee,” you returned, then looked to the other man.
“Mr. Cain,” you nodded at him. Dan waved back with a stifled smile.
“Mr. West,” you returned your attention to Herbert, and nodded again to him.
“Please, Herbert, ” he insisted, then shut the door behind you.
As soon as the door was shut, you heard conversation behind it. It was muffled through the metal, and you couldn’t quite make out the words, but it sounded like Herbert was leading yet again.
Oh, well. The ordeal took far longer than it should have, and you were just ready to get going back to work.
You took one step down the hallway and were immediately reminded of two things: you had long since forgotten where you were and had forgotten how much your feet were cramping from getting there.
~~~
When you finally got back to work, you were hounded for taking so long. When asked why, you chocked it all up to getting lost. That was mostly true; it wasn’t lying if you just happened to not mention that you spent some time getting hit on by a good-looking soon-to-be doctor.
In the process of sorting through your paperwork, you found a note that you hadn’t remembered grabbing. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and you couldn’t recognize the cardstock it was written on.
The note read:
APARTMENT TO SHARE!
3RD YEAR MEDICAL STUDENT
NEEDS ROOMATE
MUST BE QUIET * KEEP REGULAR HOURS
CONTACT:
[DAN CAIN
666 DARKMORE
555-8785]
Huh. That was convenient, if not a little weird. You meet Dan for the first time and he’s already offering lodging. How’d he know you were looking for a new place?