Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft (27 page)

“I can’t imagine what help I could be,” said Dr. Balsamo.

“Oh, I imagine you know. You have certainly been avoiding me.”

“Please forgive my manners. Would you like a brandy? Or should I have Walter bring us some coffee? No? Well, by all means take a seat.”

“Are you going to admit to avoiding me? I have motored in from Bolton three other times.”

“Of course I will admit it. I do avoid new people, new ideas, and shiny new things. Do you know the poet Lawrence Binyon?”

“As I have said, I have little time for the arts.”

“Binyon and I are working on a new translation of the
Commedia.
The other day he said to me, ‘Alberto, Slowness is Beauty!’”

“That is a literary point of view. I practice medicine. I want to save the lives of my patients as quickly as possible.”

“Then what can you possibly want of a professor of Renaissance poetry? Eh, Dr. West?”

“I am looking into Italian history, just past the Renaissance, and I think you may the man to help me.”

“I am a rather middling historian, Dr. West. Perhaps Dr. Flowers is the man you seek.”

“What do you know about Luigi Galvani?”

“Oh, I see. You want my father, Dr. Vico Balsamo. He wrote a short book on Luigi Galvani. I am sad to say my father has passed on.”

“I suspect your father may have told you some interesting things.”

“Too interesting for his book? Perhaps my father thought many strange things, but he was a good academic and never published speculation.”

“Could you let me in on your father’s speculations? I think I can put some of Galvani’s ideas to better use in my laboratory than using them to titillate the reading public. Besides, perhaps I can offer you some of the benefits of my research.”

“I will tell you what I know, Dr. West. But you must promise not to tarnish my father’s name.”

“Excellent. Well, for starters, is it true that Galvani explained his theories to Mary Shelley?”

“It wasn’t Galvani. It was nephew, Giovanni Aldini, who took Galvani’s experiment to the next level. Galvani was happy enough to touch a severed frog leg to Volta’s pile and demonstrate the twitch to other physicians and scholars. His nephew was the showman. At first he used the heads of newly slaughtered sheep. He would apply as much current as he could and the bloody heads would stick their tongues out or snap their teeth. And Aldini didn’t like scientific lecture halls. He liked theater. He liked paying audiences and women who swooned. Of course, sheep became commonplace. Many traveling ‘electricians’ were shocking sheep into movement. So Aldini took the performance to a more grotesque state.”

“In 1803 he set up shop at Newgate Prison. A recently hanged murderer named George Foster was taken from the gallows and transported to the College of Surgeons. Aldini applied the current, and George’s purple face grimaced; he shook on the slab and even threw punches in the air as Aldini hit him with shock after shock. Some newspapers claimed later that Aldini had raised the dead. Of course, the College of Surgeons distanced itself from the affair. It reacted as though its reputation had been sullied.”

“That is always the way of the medical establishment. You can offer them anything, even life-in-death itself, and they act like scared old women,” said Dr. West.

Balsamo paused and looked at the nervous young man sitting on the edge of the overstuffed chair. Balsamo’s guests usually sat back in the chair, sipped their coffee and tea, and carefully chose their words. He hesitated a moment and began telling the rest of the story in a more subdued tone, which caused West to sit even further at the end of the chair. Balsamo couldn’t help smiling, wondering if the young man would fall out of the chair altogether.

“What I am about to tell you is not part of the official story. It is not in my father’s book, and I will ask that you do not attribute it to me. It is not the sort of story that complements a Yale professorship. Aldini declared that he would indeed raise the dead, not merely make them twitch and clutch at things. Aldini began to look for darker sciences.”

“Alchemy?” asked Dr. West scornfully.

“There are many chemical procedures that were learned from the experiments of the alchemists. But Aldini sought something a bit more troublesome. Europe has always had rumors of a cult of men who revivify the dead. It is said to be a profitable line of work. Imagine what crime-haunted Italy might be like if no one could take their secrets safely to the grave. Imagine what might be gained by the blackmailer. Or even simple items that the dead had left unattended to—like telling the living relatives about the secret store of gold behind the painting, or the plate buried near the well. Dr. West, Aldini was interested in necromancy. He didn’t assume that such grave-robbing miracles were the result of demons—but what if the preparation of certain herbs combined with the stimulation of the nerves of a sufficiently horrible incantation could do the trick? So he sought out a sorcerer. Such things were easy to do in those days. Sorcerers made the headlines, as it were.”

“They still do,” said Dr. West. “Madame Blavatsky was a darling of the idiot press, and I am sure that we have someone similar in our midst right now if we choose to look for such charlatans.”

“The man whom Aldini sought out was no charlatan. He was Count Alessandro di Cagliostro—a man who had obtained initiation into a secret Egyptian brotherhood, the
Figli del Faraone Nero,
who had methods of making mummies speak their age-old secrets to modern men. These fearsome fellows had chosen the Count to act as a spy and agitator throughout Europe. They had reasons for wanting to overthrow the French government, for example. I am sure that you have heard of the affair of the Diamond Necklace. But they had further plans for the Count. He was going to play a key role in summoning some sort of demon from the darkness between the stars. In one sense the Count was to gain powers far beyond mortal ken, but on the other hand he would be a slave to that power. Imagine if you held in your hands the means to destroy the world. Every moment of every day all you could think of is ‘Should I?’ ‘Shouldn’t I?’”

“And your father discovered all this?”

“He found the diary of the Count while researching Galvani and the other vitalists. It was the Shelley connection, as you have guessed. Mary Shelley had read Count Cagliostro’s diary before she wrote her novel
Frankenstein.
My father had found some of her notes, but they could not be verified and I am sure that you understand, given the rather strange notions that the diary must have contained, why he left out certain things.”

“But I don’t understand the link between Aldini and Cagliostro,” said Dr. West.

“By the time Aldini had found the Count, the latter wanted a way to escape from the
Figli—
and Aldini promised him a way out. Cagliostro had done the Brotherhood’s dirty work by opening lodges of ‘Egyptian Freemasonry’ in Russia, France, and England. It was part of the Brotherhood’s mad scheme. You see, they believed that they had access to the master plan of the world—a series of paintings under the tomb of a certain pharaoh. At that time they thought they could gain great temporal power by making sure that all the events depicted in the paintings came to pass. They would initiate young men with an unhealthy interest in the Black Arts and have them carry out schemes to move the pawns of history across the chessboard of time. Have you never noticed how many magicians such as Dr. John Dee are spies? It was not a matter of coincidence.”

“At that time? You think this brotherhood still exists?”

“They had knowledge of the future. Eventually they learned that they need do little and the horrid scenes painted by the slaves of the Black Pharaoh would simply unfurl. They grew tired of making money because of foreknowledge, and simply became slaves to the onrushing future. Or so my father believed.”

“He didn’t tell you to contact these men, I suppose?”

“Good Lord, man, why would anyone want to know men mad with fatalism?”

“The Egyptians knew many things about restoring life. I have heard that even some of their composite mummies actually walked.”

“You have heard correctly; Cagliostro mentions this in his diary. He has a horrific account of seeing a truly huge monster; I imagine it still lives imprisoned with the pharaohs. I have no doubt, Dr. West, that if you journeyed to Cairo, you could meet the Sons of the Black Pharaoh; its Italian branch no longer remains. But I am wandering from my story. Aldini had a foolproof plan. If Cagliostro would provide him with the elixir the Brotherhood used to make the mummies speak and the incantation called
Coming Forth by Night,
he would fake the Count’s death. The Count had grown fearful of the demon the Brotherhood wanted him to summon. His diary mentioned the terrible sounds of twin pipers of no human sort, and his fear of the terrible Eye of the creature. He was grasping at straws, and a confidence man like Aldini had him—as you Americans say—‘by the short hairs.’ He gave the recipe to Aldini. It was composed of lunar kyphi, an incense made of twenty-eight herbs and a heavy metal that caused flesh to wither—I suspect uranium—dissolved in wine from the Oasis of Kharga. It was ridiculously expensive to compound, but Aldini told the Count no potion, no escape.

“After Aldini had made his first batch, he told his plan to the Count. He would give the Count a drug that produced a deathlike slumber. The Count’s servants would call him as a physician. He would arrive, revive the Count, and take him to Barbados. It seems that Signor Aldini was an admirer of Shakespeare in that his little plot had equal parts from
Romeo and Juliet
and
The Tempest.
The Count was a bit of a showman himself. He arranged for a huge dinner in Naples. He wanted his demise to be witnessed by several dozen nobles, priests, wealthy townsfolk, artists, and musicians. The British ambassador came, a cardinal from Rome, a mathematician visiting from Greece. It was a gala affair with music, wine, and feasting. We Italians know how to throw a party. That was why we conquered the world, you know, so we could have the best of everything for our tables.”

“I never made it to Italy when I was in the Army, but the restaurants in Paris were a great contrast to New England boiled dinners!” laughed Dr. West.

“The Count placed the poison in his wine glass. He toasted the Pope’s health and fell forward dead. But the Count had not counted on one thing: he had not realized that Aldini had planned to make his death so real. Aldini had simply killed him. When he arrived at the residence, Cagliostro’s body was cold, there was no pulse, a mirror held to the nostrils provided no telltale signs of life. He loaded the body in a wagon and ran to a secret villa. He knew he had to keep the body from the hands of the Brotherhood. There he drained half of the Count’s blood and restored it with the elixir, attached his electrodes to the pale flesh, and read the fateful words. He hit the switch as he called on Nyarlathotep. The Count’s limbs twitched, the eyes fluttered, and the mix of ancient sorcery and modern science awakened him.”

“How can you know these things? The Count couldn’t have recorded them in his diary.”

“The Count didn’t record his own reanimation, that is true. But he helped Aldini over the months that followed. At first he was unwilling, but he was afraid that the Brotherhood might track him down and that he would eventually be one of their undead slaves working beneath Egyptian necropolises. Besides, he was attracted to the unknown. When he was alive, he had borne the fearful initiations of the Brotherhood. He wasn’t exactly the same sort of being as before. His body breathed, his heart pumped the strange mixture through his limbs, but with a slow beat. He was much cooler to the touch, and the inner fires of emotion had cooled a great deal.”

“Did hatred leave him? Did he hold grudges?”

“That’s an odd question. He recorded in his diary that he could be moved by three things. The first was fear. He would act in self-interest. He assumed that his undying state would not cling to his pseudo-life, but found the elixir made him very protective of his false life. Secondly, he was moved by love. We Italians after all are the race of Casanova. Lastly, hatred moved him. His hatred for the Brotherhood coursed in his veins, an undying fire of equal parts of venom and pain.”

“Did he hate Aldini for what he had done to him?”

“At first he did; but he came to realize that by Aldini’s machinations he had escaped the Brotherhood and that perhaps he would have a long existence.”

“So there is hope then.”

“What do you mean, hope?”

“That the reanimated might come to forgive, even love the doctor that called them back to life.” Dr. West trembled as he spoke. Dr. Balsamo regarded him with awe—a certain suspicion beginning to arise.

“I may have bad news for you, Dr. West. The Count knew about the process and he longed to escape a dreadful fate. If Aldini had not intervened, the Brotherhood was going to use the Count in a horrible way. He was destined to become the living vehicle of Nyarlathotep. Whatever strange fate Aldini had given him, it was preferable to the horrors that awaited him. Aldini was his savior—maybe not a truthful savior, but a savior.”

“So the others, the other reanimated men—what became of them?”

“For the most part they did not return to life in as conscious a form as the Count had. Perhaps his occult training made his will stronger, more coherent. They were ruled by fear and anger. Aldini simply dispatched most of them. Fire, acid, dismemberment were effective.”

“Most of them?”

“You must understand that he and the Count were working by themselves. Some of the reanimated men were very strong. Like the reaction that fear causes.”

“Adrenalin. Yes, I’ve observed it.”

“They broke free from the doctor’s laboratory. They raged into the countryside. There is much Italian folk-belief in such things, so the country people feared the walking dead.”