Reanimator
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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Herbert West, re animator. But H. P. Lovecraft, Chapter four. The Scream of the Dead. The scream of the Dead Man gave to me that a cute and added horror Dr Herbert West, which harassed the latter years of our companionship. It is natural that such a thing as a dead man scream should give more what is obviously not a pleasing or ordinary occurrence. But I was used a similar experiences and suffered on this occasion on Lee because of a particular circumstance and as I have implied, was not of the dead man himself, that I became afraid. Herbert West, who's associate and assistant. I was possessed scientific interests far beyond the usual routine of a village physician. That was why, when establishing is practicing Bolt, he had shows in an isolated house near the Potter's field briefly and brutally stated West Seoul Absorbing interest was a secret study of the phenomena of life in a cessation leading toward the reanimation of the dead through injections of an acceptance solution. But this ghastly experimenting it was necessary to have a constant supply of very fresh human bodies, very fresh, because even the least K hopelessly damaged the brain structure and human because we found that the solution had to be compounded differently for different types of organisms. Scores of rabbits and guinea pigs have been killed in treated, but their trail was a blind one. West had never fully succeeded because he had never been able to secure a corpse sufficiently fresh what he wanted, or bodies from which vitality had only just apart bodies with every cell intact and capable of receiving again the impulse toward that mode of motion called life. There was hope that this second and artificial life might be made perpetual by repetitions of the injection. But we had learned that an ordinary natural life would not respond to the action to establish the artificial motion. Natural life must be extinct. Specimen must be very fresh, genuinely dead. The awesome quest had begun when West and I were students of the Miska Tonic University Medical School in Arkham, vividly conscious for the first time of the thoroughly mechanical nature of life. That was seven years before. But West looks scarcely a day older now small, blond, clean shaven, soft voiced and spectacled, with only an occasional flash of a cold blue. I tell of the hardening and growing fanaticism of his character under the pressure of his terrible investigations, experiences had often been hideous in the extreme results of defective reanimation, when lumps of graveyard clay have been galvanised into morbid, unnatural and brainless motion. Various modifications of the vital solution. One thing and under the nerve shattering scream, another had risen violently, beaten US books to unconsciousness and ran amok in a shocking way before it could be placed behind asylum bars. Still another load is an African monstrosity had clawed out of its shallow grave and done a deed West had to shoot. That object could not get bodies freshen up to shoe any trace of reason when we animated, so had perforce created nameless horrors. It was disturbing to think that one, perhaps to a bomb monster still lived. That thought haunted a shadowing Lee to finally, West disappeared under frightful circumstances. But at the time of the Scream in the cellar laboratory of the isolated Bolton Cottage, our fears were subordinate to our anxiety for extremely fresh specimens. West was more avid than I, so that it almost seemed to me that he looked half come piteously at any very healthy living physique. It was in July 1910 that the bad luck guarding specimens began to turn. I have been on a long visit to my parents in Illinois and upon my return, found West in a state of singular relation. He had, he told me excitedly, in all likelihood, solved the problem of freshness through an approach from an entirely new angle, that of artificial preservation. I had known that he was working on a new and highly unusual embalming compound, was not surprised and it turned out well. But until he explained the details, I was rather puzzled as to how such a compound could help in our work, says the objection I'll staleness of the specimens was largely due to delay occurring before we secure this. I now saw West had clearly recognized treating his embalming compound for future rather than immediate use and trusting to fate to supply again some very recent and unburied corpse, as it had years before, when we obtained the ***** killed in the Bolton Price fight. At last, fate had been kind so that on this occasion there lay in the secret cell in laboratory, a corpse whose decay could not buy any possibility have begun what would happen on reanimation and whether we could hope for revival of mind. Reason Western, not venture to predict experiment would be a landmark in our studies, and he had saved the new body for my return so that both might share the spectacle in accustomed to fashion, West told me how he had obtained this person. It had been a vigorous man. Well dressed stranger just stopped the train on his way to transact some business with the Bolton Worsted Mills. The walk through the town have been long, and by the time the traveler pause at our cottage to ask the way to the factories, his heart had become greatly overtaxed. You refuse a stimulant and have suddenly dropped dead only a moment later. The body, as might be expected, seemed to West a heaven sent a gift. In his brief conversation, the stranger had made it clear that he was unknown in Bolton, and a search of his pocket subsequently revealed him to be one Robert Levitt of ST Louis, apparently without a family to make instant enquiries about a disappearance. If this man could not be restored to life. No one would know of our experiment. We buried our materials in a dense strip of words between the house and the potter's field. If, on the other hand, could be restored, our fame would be brilliantly and perpetually established. So without delay, West had injected into the bodies. Rest the compound, which would hold it fresh for use after my arrival. The matter of the presumably weak heart which to my mind imperil the success of our experiment, did not appear to trouble West extensively, he hoped would last obtain what he had never obtained before, rekindled spark of reason and perhaps a normal living creature. So on the night of July 18th 1910 Herbert West and I stood in the cellar laboratory and gaze at a white silent figure beneath the dazzling ArcLight. The in bowling compound had worked uncannily well foreign. As I stared, fascinated Lee at the study frame, which had lain two weeks without stiffening, I was moved to seaQuest assurance that nothing was really dead. This assurance he *** readily enough, reminding me that the re animating solution was never used, that careful tests as to life, since it would have no effective and in the original vitality were present. As a West proceeded to take preliminary steps. I was impressed by the vast intricacy of the new experiments and intricacy so vast that he could not trust no hand less delicate than his own, forbidding me to touch the body. He first injected a drug in the wrist just beside the place his needle had punctured when injecting the embalming come. This, he said, was to neutralize the compound and release the system tau a normal real accusation so that the remaining animating solution might freely work when injected slightly later, when a change in a gentle trimmer seemed to affect the dead limbs west stuff the pillow like object violently over the twitching face, not withdrawing it until the corpse appeared quite unready for attempting. Reanimation pale enthusiast now applied some last perfunctory tests for absolute lifelessness, withdrew, satisfied and finally injected into the left arm and accurately measured amount of the vital elixir prepared during the afternoon with a greater care than we had used since college days when our feats were new When groping, express the wild, breathless suspense with which we waited for the results on this first really fresh specimen. First, we could reasonably expect to open its lips and rational speech. Perhaps a tell of what it had seen. Beyond the unfathomable abyss, West was a materialist, believing no soul and attributing all the work of consciousness to bodily phenomena. Consequently, he looked for no revelations of hideous secrets from adults and cabins beyond death's barrier. I did not wholly disagree with him, theoretically yet held a vague, instinctive remnants of the primitive faith of my forefathers so that I could not help eyeing the corpse with a certain amount of on terrible expecting. Besides, I cannot extract from my memory that hideous, inhuman shriek we heard on the night we tried our first experiment on deserted farmhouse at Arkham. Very little time had elapsed before I saw the attempt was not to be a total failure. A touch of color came to the cheeks and the two chalk white and spread out under the curiously ample stubble of a sandy beard west, who had had his hand on the pulse of the left wrist. Suddenly not insignificantly and almost simultaneously Ah, mist appeared on the mirror, inclined above the body's mouth. There followed a few spasmodic muscular emotions and then an audible, breathing, invisible motion of the chest. I looked at the closed eyelids and thought I detected a quivering. Then the lids opened, shooing eyes, which were grey, calm and alive but still unintelligent, not even curious. In a moment of Fantastic Win, I whispered questions to the reddening tears, questions of other worlds of which the memory might still be present. Subsequent terror drove them from my mind, but I think the last one, which I repeated, was, Where have you been? Not yet know whether I was answered or not, for no sound came from the well shaped mouth. But I do know that at that moment I firmly thought the thin lips moved silently, forming syllables. I would have vocalized as only now that phrase had possessed any sense of relevance. At that moment, as they say, I was inundated with the conviction that the one great goal had been attained and that for the first time, a reanimated corpse at utter, distinct words impelled by actual reason. Next moment, there was no doubt about the triumph, no doubt that the solution had truly accomplished, at least temporarily. It's full mission of restoring rational and articulate life to the dead. But in that I am there came to me the greatest of all or not, or of the thing that spoke, but of the dean that I had witnessed. And the man with whom my professional fortunes were joined for that very fresh body at last, writhing into fool and terrifying consciousness with eyes dilated at the memory of its last seen on earth throughout its frantic hands in a life and death struggle with the air and suddenly collapsing into a second and final dissolution which there could be no return screamed out the cry that will ring eternally in my aching brain. Help! Keep off you curson! Don't tow headed Feen. Keep that damn needle away from me!