Herbert West - Reanimator by H.P.  Lovecraft. Read by Josh Greenwood.

Chapter 1. From the Dark.

Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college  and in after life, I can speak only with extreme  

terror. This terror is not due altogether to  the sinister manner of his recent disappearance,  

but was engendered by the whole nature of  his life-work, and first gained its acute  

form more than seventeen years ago, when  we were in the third year of our course  

at the Miskatonic University Medical School  in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder  

and diabolism of his experiments fascinated  me utterly, and I was his closest companion.  

Now that he is gone and the spell is  broken, the actual fear is greater.  

Memories and possibilities are  ever more hideous than realities. 

The first horrible incident of our acquaintance  was the greatest shock I ever experienced,  

and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it.  As I have said, it happened when we were in the  

medical school, where West had already made  himself notorious through his wild theories  

on the nature of death and the possibility  of overcoming it artificially. His views,  

which were widely ridiculed by the faculty and  his fellow-students, hinged on the essentially  

mechanistic nature of life; and concerned means  for operating the organic machinery of mankind  

by calculated chemical action after the failure  of natural processes. In his experiments with  

various animating solutions he had killed  and treated immense numbers of rabbits,  

guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he  had become the prime nuisance of the college.  

Several times he had actually obtained signs  of life in animals supposedly dead; in many  

cases violent signs; but he soon saw that the  perfection of this process, if indeed possible,  

would necessarily involve a lifetime of  research. It likewise became clear that,  

since the same solution never worked alike on  different organic species, he would require  

human subjects for further and more specialised  progress. It was here that he first came into  

conflict with the college authorities, and was  debarred from future experiments by no less a  

dignitary than the dean of the medical school  himself—the learned and benevolent Dr. Allan  

Halsey, whose work in behalf of the stricken  is recalled by every old resident of Arkham. 

I had always been exceptionally tolerant of  West's pursuits, and we frequently discussed  

his theories, whose ramifications and corollaries  were almost infinite. Holding with Haeckel that  

all life is a chemical and physical process,  and that the so-called “soul” is a myth,  

my friend believed that artificial reanimation of  the dead can depend only on the condition of the  

tissues; and that unless actual decomposition has  set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may  

with suitable measures be set going again in the  peculiar fashion known as life. That the psychic  

or intellectual life might be impaired by the  slight deterioration of sensitive brain-cells  

which even a short period of death would be apt to  cause, West fully realised. It had at first been  

his hope to find a reagent which would restore  vitality before the actual advent of death,  

and only repeated failures on animals had  shewn him that the natural and artificial  

life-motions were incompatible. He then  sought extreme freshness in his specimens,  

injecting his solutions into the blood  immediately after the extinction of life.  

It was this circumstance which made the professors  so carelessly sceptical, for they felt that true  

death had not occurred in any case. They did not  stop to view the matter closely and reasoningly. 

It was not long after the faculty had interdicted  his work that West confided to me his resolution  

to get fresh human bodies in some manner, and  continue in secret the experiments he could no  

longer perform openly. To hear him discussing  ways and means was rather ghastly, for at the  

college we had never procured anatomical specimens  ourselves. Whenever the morgue proved inadequate,  

two local negroes attended to this matter,  and they were seldom questioned. West was  

then a small, slender, spectacled youth with  delicate features, yellow hair, pale blue eyes,  

and a soft voice, and it was uncanny to hear him  dwelling on the relative merits of Christchurch  

Cemetery and the potter's field. We finally  decided on the potter's field, because practically  

every body in Christchurch was embalmed; a  thing of course ruinous to West's researches. 

I was by this time his active and enthralled  assistant, and helped him make all his decisions,  

not only concerning the source of bodies  but concerning a suitable place for our  

loathsome work. It was I who thought of the  deserted Chapman farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill,  

where we fitted up on the ground floor  an operating room and a laboratory,  

each with dark curtains to conceal our midnight  doings. The place was far from any road,  

and in sight of no other house, yet precautions  were none the less necessary; since rumours of  

strange lights, started by chance nocturnal  roamers, would soon bring disaster on our  

enterprise. It was agreed to call the whole thing  a chemical laboratory if discovery should occur.  

Gradually we equipped our sinister haunt of  science with materials either purchased in Boston  

or quietly borrowed from the college—materials  carefully made unrecognisable save to expert  

eyes—and provided spades and picks for the many  burials we should have to make in the cellar.  

At the college we used an incinerator,  but the apparatus was too costly for our  

unauthorised laboratory. Bodies were always  a nuisance—even the small guinea-pig bodies  

from the slight clandestine experiments  in West's room at the boarding-house. 

We followed the local death-notices like ghouls,  for our specimens demanded particular qualities.  

What we wanted were corpses interred soon after  death and without artificial preservation;  

preferably free from malforming disease,  and certainly with all organs present.  

Accident victims were our best hope. Not for  many weeks did we hear of anything suitable;  

though we talked with morgue and hospital  authorities, ostensibly in the college's interest,  

as often as we could without exciting suspicion.  We found that the college had first choice in  

every case, so that it might be necessary to  remain in Arkham during the summer, when only  

the limited summer-school classes were held. In  the end, though, luck favoured us; for one day  

we heard of an almost ideal case in the potter's  field; a brawny young workman drowned only the  

morning before in Sumner's Pond, and buried at  the town's expense without delay or embalming.  

That afternoon we found the new grave, and  determined to begin work soon after midnight. 

It was a repulsive task that we undertook in the  black small hours, even though we lacked at that  

time the special horror of graveyards which later  experiences brought to us. We carried spades and  

oil dark lanterns, for although electric  torches were then manufactured, they were  

not as satisfactory as the tungsten contrivances  of today. The process of unearthing was slow and  

sordid—it might have been gruesomely poetical if  we had been artists instead of scientists—and we  

were glad when our spades struck wood. When the  pine box was fully uncovered West scrambled down  

and removed the lid, dragging out and propping  up the contents. I reached down and hauled the  

contents out of the grave, and then both toiled  hard to restore the spot to its former appearance.  

The affair made us rather nervous, especially the  stiff form and vacant face of our first trophy,  

but we managed to remove all traces of our visit.  When we had patted down the last shovelful of  

earth we put the specimen in a canvas sack and set  out for the old Chapman place beyond Meadow Hill. 

On an improvised dissecting-table in the  old farmhouse, by the light of a powerful  

acetylene lamp, the specimen was not very  spectral looking. It had been a sturdy and  

apparently unimaginative youth of wholesome  plebeian type—large-framed, grey-eyed, and  

brown-haired—a sound animal without psychological  subtleties, and probably having vital processes of  

the simplest and healthiest sort. Now, with the  eyes closed, it looked more asleep than dead;  

though the expert test of my friend soon left  no doubt on that score. We had at last what West  

had always longed for—a real dead man of the ideal  kind, ready for the solution as prepared according  

to the most careful calculations and theories  for human use. The tension on our part became  

very great. We knew that there was scarcely  a chance for anything like complete success,  

and could not avoid hideous fears at possible  grotesque results of partial animation.  

Especially were we apprehensive concerning  the mind and impulses of the creature,  

since in the space following death some of  the more delicate cerebral cells might well  

have suffered deterioration. I, myself, still held  some curious notions about the traditional “soul”  

of man, and felt an awe at the secrets that  might be told by one returning from the dead.  

I wondered what sights this placid youth  might have seen in inaccessible spheres,  

and what he could relate if fully restored to  life. But my wonder was not overwhelming, since  

for the most part I shared the materialism of my  friend. He was calmer than I as he forced a large  

quantity of his fluid into a vein of the body's  arm, immediately binding the incision securely. 

The waiting was gruesome, but West never faltered.  Every now and then he applied his stethoscope to  

the specimen, and bore the negative results  philosophically. After about three-quarters  

of an hour without the least sign of life he  disappointedly pronounced the solution inadequate,  

but determined to make the most of his opportunity  and try one change in the formula before disposing  

of his ghastly prize. We had that afternoon dug  a grave in the cellar, and would have to fill it  

by dawn—for although we had fixed a lock on the  house we wished to shun even the remotest risk  

of a ghoulish discovery. Besides, the body would  not be even approximately fresh the next night.  

So taking the solitary acetylene lamp into the  adjacent laboratory, we left our silent guest  

on the slab in the dark, and bent every  energy to the mixing of a new solution;  

the weighing and measuring supervised  by West with an almost fanatical care. 

The awful event was very sudden, and wholly  unexpected. I was pouring something from one  

test-tube to another, and West was busy over  the alcohol blast-lamp which had to answer  

for a Bunsen burner in this gasless edifice, when  from the pitch-black room we had left there burst  

the most appalling and daemoniac succession  of cries that either of us had ever heard.  

Not more unutterable could have been the chaos  of hellish sound if the pit itself had opened to  

release the agony of the damned, for in one  inconceivable cacophony was centred all the  

supernal terror and unnatural despair of animate  nature. Human it could not have been—it is not  

in man to make such sounds—and without a thought  of our late employment or its possible discovery  

both West and I leaped to the nearest window  like stricken animals; overturning tubes, lamp,  

and retorts, and vaulting madly into the starred  abyss of the rural night. I think we screamed  

ourselves as we stumbled frantically toward the  town, though as we reached the outskirts we put on  

a semblance of restraint—just enough to seem like  belated revellers staggering home from a debauch. 

We did not separate, but managed to get to  West's room, where we whispered with the gas  

up until dawn. By then we had calmed ourselves  a little with rational theories and plans for  

investigation, so that we could sleep through  the day—classes being disregarded. But that  

evening two items in the paper, wholly unrelated,  made it again impossible for us to sleep. The old  

deserted Chapman house had inexplicably  burned to an amorphous heap of ashes;  

that we could understand because of the upset  lamp. Also, an attempt had been made to disturb  

a new grave in the potter's field, as if by  futile and spadeless clawing at the earth.  

That we could not understand, for we had  patted down the mould very carefully. 

And for seventeen years after that West  would look frequently over his shoulder,  

and complain of fancied footsteps  behind him. Now he has disappeared.

Chapter 2. The Plague-Daemon.

I shall never forget that hideous  summer sixteen years ago, when like  

a noxious afrite from the halls of Eblis  typhoid stalked leeringly through Arkham.  

It is by that satanic scourge that most recall  the year, for truly terror brooded with bat-wings  

over the piles of coffins in the tombs of  Christchurch Cemetery; yet for me there is  

a greater horror in that time—a horror known to  me alone now that Herbert West has disappeared. 

West and I were doing post-graduate work in  summer classes at the medical school of Miskatonic  

University, and my friend had attained a wide  notoriety because of his experiments leading  

toward the revivification of the dead. After  the scientific slaughter of uncounted small  

animals the freakish work had ostensibly stopped  by order of our sceptical dean, Dr. Allan Halsey;  

though West had continued to perform certain  secret tests in his dingy boarding-house room,  

and had on one terrible and unforgettable occasion  taken a human body from its grave in the potter's  

field to a deserted farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill. I was with him on that odious occasion,  

and saw him inject into the still veins the  elixir which he thought would to some extent  

restore life's chemical and physical  processes. It had ended horribly—in a  

delirium of fear which we gradually came to  attribute to our own overwrought nerves—and  

West had never afterward been able to shake off a  maddening sensation of being haunted and hunted.  

The body had not been quite fresh enough;  it is obvious that to restore normal mental  

attributes a body must be very fresh indeed; and  a burning of the old house had prevented us from  

burying the thing. It would have been better  if we could have known it was underground. 

After that experience West had dropped his  researches for some time; but as the zeal of the  

born scientist slowly returned, he again became  importunate with the college faculty, pleading  

for the use of the dissecting-room and of fresh  human specimens for the work he regarded as so  

overwhelmingly important. His pleas, however, were  wholly in vain; for the decision of Dr. Halsey was  

inflexible, and the other professors all endorsed  the verdict of their leader. In the radical theory  

of reanimation they saw nothing but the immature  vagaries of a youthful enthusiast whose slight  

form, yellow hair, spectacled blue eyes, and  soft voice gave no hint of the supernormal—almost  

diabolical—power of the cold brain within. I can  see him now as he was then—and I shiver. He grew  

sterner of face, but never elderly. And now Sefton  Asylum has had the mishap and West has vanished.