Lynch (6 page)

“
Johnny!
” Someone was calling his name. Someone whose voice he'd thought was stilled forever. “Johnny! Over here!”

Katie waved at him from halfway across the barn, hopping up and down to get his attention. Pearl ran to his wife and snatched her up in his arms, twirling her about so fiercely Katie's feet left the ground.

“I missed you
so
much, Katie!” he said, though he could not remember how long it had been since he last laid eyes on his wife. Had it been weeks? Months? Seconds?

“I missed you too, Johnny.” She smiled in return, her gaze fixed on a point just beyond his shoulder. “We
all
did.”

He turned to follow the direction of her gaze. Behind him stood his parents and younger brother. They looked exactly as he remembered last seeing them, the day he marched off to join his regiment. He opened his mouth to say how glad he was to see them, how much he had missed them, how sorry he was for not being there when they needed him most, but all that came out was a whispered, “
Mama?
”

Mrs. Pearl held out her hands to her eldest child, her eyes shining with tears of joy. “Oh, Johnny—I knew you'd make it.”

He made a soft sobbing noise as he took his mother's hands in his, covering the palms with kisses.

“It's good that you could make it, son,” Mr. Pearl said, squeezing his son's shoulder. “We're proud of you, Johnny.” His father stepped forward and pulled him into his arms, kissing his cheek as he had the day Johnny went off to war. He was relieved to discover his father still smelled of his favorite pipe tobacco and penny licorice. “Always
have
been, always
will
be.”

“Hey, Johnny.”

He looked down at his younger brother, forever frozen at ten years old. “Hey, Tommy,” he smiled in return, his hand dropping onto the boy's curly head.

Tommy frowned and cocked his head to one side. “How come you look different, Johnny?”

“It's been a long time since you last saw me, Tommy,” Pearl explained gently.

“That's okay,” Tommy replied, beaming up at his older brother. “Even though you look different, I still knew it was you.”

“Come, Johnny,” Katie said, holding out her arms to her husband. “Come dance with me.”

He smiled as he remembered how they used to dance to keep warm during the long, cold winter nights, their only music Katie's sweet voice lifted in song and the howling of the wind in the eaves. As his arm closed about her waist, he felt something grab hold of his suspenders and yank. He frowned and glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one hovering behind him, trying to cut in. He shrugged and turned back to face his wife, pulling Katie closer. There was a second, stronger tug—but this time it pulled him backward several feet, wrenching him free of his wife's embrace.

“Johnny!”

He threw himself forward, doing his best to fight against whatever it was that was pulling him away. Katie grabbed his outstretched hand and tried to keep him from slipping any further, but it was no use. It felt as if someone was pulling him by the hair at the back of his head. Even though his feet were motionless, he continued to slide backward, like an iron filing dragged by a magnet.

As the other guests turned to stare in amazement, the barn doors flew open with a loud crash, revealing a white void beyond their threshold. There was a sound like a great wind roaring. With one final, mighty tug, Johnny Pearl was yanked off his feet and sent flying into the emptiness.

The last thing he saw as he was sucked into the maelstrom at the heart of nothing was Katie leaning out over the threshold, her hand still outstretched in a vain attempt to stop what was happening.

“
I'll wait for you, Johnny
—!” she called after him. “
No matter what
—
I'll be waiting!
”

And then the barn doors slammed shut.

Everything was blurry, and his left eye ached as if it had been yanked out of his head and stuck back in again. He coughed fitfully, expelling a lung-full of thick, foul-tasting liquid. Though his eyes rolled in their sockets like greased marbles, he was somehow aware of others standing over him. He tried to follow the ill-defined blobs that bobbed in and out of his impaired field of vision, but it was difficult to move his head. All he could make out was that one of the persons leaning over him was male and seemed to be very old. Suddenly the sound cut in, loud enough to make him wince.

“—neck brace. I repeat—don't try to move your head just yet. Do you understand what I'm saying?” Mirablis froze as the subject opened its mouth to reply. He glanced anxiously at Pompey, who showed him the revolver was ready, just in case.

But instead of screaming and clawing at his own flesh, the hanged man whispered one word—“
Why?
”—then lapsed once more into unconsciousness.

Mirablis grinned and shook his fists in the face of God. “
Yes!
” he shouted. “At long last—I've beaten you at your own game, Jehovah!” Still giddy with triumph, he motioned for his servant to put away the revolver. “I must enter all this into my journals while it is all still fresh in my mind! See that our new friend is made as comfortable as possible, and alert me the moment he begins to show signs of emerging from dormancy!”

As the old man headed down the platform steps, he paused halfway, tapping his lower lip thoughtfully. “It occurs to me that it is time I picked a name for our new friend. He needs to be called
something
, doesn't he? And it is only fitting that
I
name my creation, don't you agree?” His wrinkled brow creased even further, and a mischievous light dawned in his eyes. “Ah! Now I have it! I'll call him—Lynch!”

Chapter Nine

The darkness flowed over him, pouring in through the openings in his skull to flood his being from the inside out, like ink in a bottle. Then, in the very heart of the darkness there emerged a light—at first dim, then gradually growing in intensity, until I made his eyes swim with tears.

“Excellent!” said a voice from somewhere behind the light. As the candle was moved away, an old man's wrinkled face emerged from the half-world of shadows. “I was afraid the tear duct might have been damaged during the replacement, but that appears not to be the case,” the ancient stranger said as he returned the candle to the miner's lamp he wore strapped to his head.

A Negro male with salt and pepper hair loomed suddenly into view. There was something peculiar about the black man's appearance, though he couldn't quite place it at first. Then he realized what it was: The whites of his eyes were glowing.

“Wh-where—?” he whispered hoarsely. His throat ached as if it had been cleaned with a curry comb.

“You needn't worry, Mr. Lynch. You're amongst friends now.”

He frowned. “Lynch?”

“Yes. That's your name. Don't you remember?”

Though his mind was a jumble of pictures, voices and places, none of them in order, what the old man claimed didn't sound right to him. But he said nothing. It was easier simply to accept what he was being told than question it. If the old man said his name was Lynch, then that was who he was.

He tried to turn his head to get a better look at his surroundings but met with resistance. Confused, he reached for his collarbone and encountered metal and leather.

The old man read the consternation on his face and patted his hand. “Don't worry, it's merely for … cosmetic purposes,” he said gently.

“What—what happened?”

The old man's eyes narrowed. “Do you not remember?”

“N-no.”

“You've been away for awhile, my dear boy, but now you're back.”

“I want to sit up,” he said, his tone urgent.

“Very well. Pompey, help Mr. Lynch up.” The old man moved aside, watching his patient's movements with the same appraising stare a horse breeder gives a new born colt.

From what Lynch could see, they were in a cave that had been retrofitted for human habitation. Mixed in with the more mundane pieces of furniture, such as a table and chairs, were items of such an arcane nature it was hard to tell if they were medical instruments or art objects. After taking in his surroundings, he turned his body slightly toward the old man.

“Who are you?” he rasped.

“I am Doctor Anton Mirablis, late of the Academy of Sciences, former physician to His Excellency, Napoleon I, and graduate of the University of Vienna—”

“You a sawbones?”

Mirablis winced slightly. “In so many words—yes.”

“What's wrong with my neck, Doc?”

In way of a reply, Mirablis picked up a silver-chased hand mirror from the nearby table and held it so that it reflected Lynch's body from the torso on up. The face that looked back at him was his own, yet not his. His head and face were as hairless as those of a newborn babe. There was new scarring about his bright blue left eye—which stood in extreme contrast to the brown eye on his right. The brace that supported his upper neck extended from just below his chin to his shoulders and looked like a cross between a medieval torture device and a corset. After a long moment, Lynch finally turned his gaze back to Mirablis.

“You said I've been away. Where was that?”

“Where no one need ever go again,” the old man replied.

It really wasn't that difficult for Lynch to accept the fact that he had died and been brought back to life by this kindly old man with the long white hair and slight European accent. It did bother him, however, that he could not remember much about the life he had lead before his death, even though Dr. Mirablis had assured him that such memory loss—he called it “amnesia”—was not uncommon in connection with electrical shocks.

It had been three days since he had been delivered from the artificial womb of the tank, and Lynch was now able to move about without Pompey being there to make sure he didn't fall. It had taken him a while to grow accustomed to the neck brace—especially how it necessitated that he turn his entire body if he wished to look to either side—but it soon became second nature to him. Mirablis was pleased by how quickly he had adapted to the situation.

Lynch sat in a chair as the old man poked and prodded him and hit his knee with a little toy tomahawk-looking hammer.

Every so often he would mutter to himself and scribble something down in a big leather-bound book on the table.

“How am I doin', Doc?”

“Your progress is most exceptional, my dear boy!” he replied. “Your recovery following revivification is much swifter than those of either Pompey or Sasquatch.”

Noticing how Lynch shifted uneasily upon the mention of the patchwork creature's name, Mirablis simply laughed and shook his head. “You should not be afraid of poor Sasquatch!” he chided. “He cannot help being as I have made him. And, in a way, you owe him a debt of gratitude.”

“What do you mean?”

“Though I devised the method that brought you back—it was Sasquatch who provided the energy to rekindle your spark of life.”

“How can that be?” Lynch frowned, even more baffled than before.

“I, myself, have seen Sasquatch summon the lightning the way a country gentleman might whistle up his hounds. It has proven most advantageous for my work to be able to summon the celestial fire at my whim, rather than waiting for an opportune thunderstorm. It is amazing that such a creature composed of illiterate savages, little removed from their prehistoric ancestors, should hold such awesome power, is it not? But then again—is it any more amazing that the dead rise from their graves? But enough about Sasquatch!” Mirablis produced a small, smooth rock from the pocket of his waistcoat, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you see this stone, Lynch? In a moment, I'm going to let it drop. I want you to grab it before it strikes the ground while looking straight ahead. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Lynch replied, his gaze automatically fixing on the other man's eyes.

“Very good.” To the old man's surprise, no sooner had his fingers loosened their grip on the stone then Lynch's hand snatched it away. Indeed, the movement was so quick, a casual viewer might have thought the younger man had simply grabbed the stone out of his hand.

“Amazing! Truly amazing!” Mirablis said, mopping his wrinkled brow with a handkerchief. “Such reflexes—!”

“It wasn't just reflexes,” Lynch said matter-of-factly. “I knew when you were going to drop it.”

The doctor lifted an eyebrow. “How so?”

“I looked at your eyes. A split second before you let go, I saw the corner of your eyes tighten and your pupil contract.

That's when I knew to make my move.”

Mirablis stopped daubing his brow. “Most extraordinary. How did you
know
to look for these signs, dear boy?”

Lynch shrugged as best he could while wearing a neck brace. “I just did. Do you think it's something I learned back when I was alive the first time, Doc?”

“It's possible,” Mirablis said absently. The old man took Lynch's hands and opened them, staring at the palms as if they held some mystery within their lines. “But I did not expect such an instinctual response from a man of your background.…”

“Background?”

“You were a settler … a farmer,” Mirablis said cautiously. “You were killed by Indians. Do you remember?”

There was a faraway look in Lynch's brown eye, while the blue remained disturbingly clear. “I remember a cabin. And something about Injuns. But everything else is foggy.”

“You memory might come back, or it might not return at all. But in case you do not reclaim your lost memories—do not dwell overmuch on it, my friend. In many ways, the life that was once yours is no more an integral part of your new existence than a cocoon is to the butterfly.

“You are of a new breed—
Homo Mirablis
. I hope you don't think me too forward for naming your species after myself. You are stronger now, possessed of a stamina beyond that of mortal men. You can withstand incredible physical stress and trauma without registering a moment's pain. You need little more than an hour's sleep a day, and to eat only once or twice a month. Your eyesight is as sharp as that of a cat. No matter if it is the dead of winter or the height of summer, weather means nothing to your physical comfort. Disease, old age, infirmity … these things no longer hold meaning for you. You are free to pursue all your dreams, all your ambitions without fear or distraction.”