Herbert West—Reanimated

"Herbert West—Reanimated" is a Cthulhu Mythos round-robin published in the Roodmas 1989 edition of the Crypt of Cthulhu zine. It serves as a sequel of sorts to the H. P. Lovecraft short story "Herbert West—Reanimator".
==Synopsis==
The story is told in six chapters, each written by a different writer--until the last chapter, which is, like the first chapter, written by Robert M. Price.
===I. Charnel Secrets===
by Robert M. Price
Herbert West returns from the dead, his dismembered body having been stitched together and reanimated by his nemesis, Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee. More maniacal than ever, West embarks on a series of increasingly bizarre experiments, first recreating hybrid creatures from mythology, then temporarily transplanting West's brain into a mummy stolen from Miskatonic University's museum, thereby accessing the memories of a "hieratic sorcerer." He then travels to Egypt with a Miskatonic expedition to retrieve a hidden scroll from a tomb holding secrets of a pre-human civilization. Armed with knowledge from both the mummy and the scroll, West kills and reanimates his assistant (and or narrator), leaving him with "terrible scar tissue that runs down my face and neck."
=== II. The Body from the Bog===
by Peter H. Cannon
West and his assistant, now both reanimated, move to New York City's Greenwich Village, where they set up a practice "among the better-off artists and writers." (While there, they consult with Dr. Muñoz, "a gentlemanly recluse with a well-chilled laboratory near us on 11th Street,"This is the living dead character from H. P. Lovecraft's "Cool Air"--though in Lovecraft's story, his lab is on 14th Street. and meet with a Dr. Allen in Providence, who "promised to teach us miraculous preservation techniques" before disappearing.Dr. Allen was a pseudonym used by Joseph Curwen, a character brought back from the dead in Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.) West develops a belief in reincarnation, asserting that he has learned from his dreams that he had been "an aristocratic young Celt of the second or third century B.C. associated with a Druidic cult." When "Owlind Man," a preserved corpse from pre-Roman times is discovered in a bog near Anchester, England,This is the village near Exham Priory in Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls." West is convinced that this is his past self, and insists on breaking into the British Museum in order to reanimate this mummy. When injected with West's reagent, however, the mummy attacks West, even while informing him through a telepathic bond that his name is Trebor, he belonged to a secret cult of the Old Ones, and he thinks West is the high priest who arranged for his death. West realizes that he is not in fact Trebor's reincarnation, but rather the mummy had been projecting himself into West's dreams in order to trick him into reanimating him. After fighting off the mummy, which promptly dissolves, West loses consciousness, and is taken into custody by the museum's Dr. Richard Steadman--who turns out to be Clapham-Lee, West's nemesis, wearing a waxen mask.
===III. Tombstone Tribunal===
by Will Murray
Clapham-Lee takes West and his assistant to an ancient burial ground, where West's reanimated victims--including Buck Robinson and Robert Leavitt-- have been gathered to server as a grotesque jury of his peers to pass judgment on his crimes against humanity. He is found guilty and sentenced to death, the sentence to be carried out by the cannibalistic zombie Allan Halsey--who instead turns on Clapham-Lee and begins eating him. West and his assistant escape to a car--but instead of making a getaway, West turns back toward his undead pursuers so he can run over Clapham-Lee's head--along with the rest of his reanimated tribunal. West ends up being arrested by an English constable for desecrating the dead.
===IV. What Came up from the Cellar===
by Donald R. Burleson 
Acquitted at trial because no plausible scenario could be constructed to explain the forensic evidence, West and his assistant return to the United States, where they establish themselves in the town of New Boston, New Hampshire, with the help of fellow Miskatonic alum Berle Haisson and his Tibetan wife Mi-Ling--both of whom had been incarcerated in a home for the criminally insane. To prove that intelligence resides in even the most peripheral parts of the human body, West begins experimenting with reanimating phlegm and even his own vomit--resulting in semi-liquid version of himself that in effect swallows him, becoming "a new kind of parody of Herbert West," with "repellently liquescent eyes and chunky-looking skin," that "hum[s] with a curious sort of gurgle to itself" and "leav[es] a strange, sticky, wet little trail across the floorboards when he walks barefoot." 
=== V. Tears of the Dead===
by Charles Hoffman 
The assistant flees from the vomitous Herbert West to Baltimore, where he gets a job in a Salvation Army clinic. He is invited to join the practice of Dr. Julius Mapes, an elderly physician who also volunteers at the clinic. Using Mapes' laboratory, he is able to bring his reanimated bodily systems back to a semblance of natural life--all except his tear ducts, which still fail to function. When Mapes dies, West's former assistant inherits the practice, and spends years working as a family doctor. He meets Dr. Barbara Bishop, an attractive New England physician who is about 30 years old; she is "blonde and blue-eyed, with fair skin, a lithe but curvaceous figure, and a dazzling smile," has an "ingratiating wit" and brims with "youthful vitality." She knows the doctor from his work with West, and expresses admiration and eventually attraction. She suggests marriage, and the two have what seems to be a perfect romantic and professional partnership. Then on September 17, 1939--11 years after the doctor severed his ties with West--his marriage is revealed to be a sham. West's associates Berle and Mi-Ling Haisson show up, and Barbara reveals that she is actually West, who had much earlier taken over her body using "a technique of psychic mind transference perfected by an occultist named Ephraim Waite."From Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep." What's more, "Barbara" is pregnant--and plans to mold their son into an exact duplicate of West's original body, and transfer his consciousness into the child. West's assistant once again, he finds that his tear ducts once again work. 
===VI. The Corpse Spawn===
by Robert M. Price
The offspring of "Barbara" and the assistant is born. Over two years, "through a blasphemous series of grafts, surgical supplements, and infusions of certain unknown hormonal extracts," is grown into a fully adult duplicate of West, which West transfers his mind into--leaving Barbara a vacant shell. The assistant injects her with reagent, turning her into "a reanimated hulk motivated only by the dim instinct to kill." The assistant uses her to kill the Hiassons before putting her finally to rest. Then he at long last confronts West, who is reading "the Black Rituals of Koth-Serapis and the Papyrus of Nephren-Ka," and declaring that "Death is nothing! It was a bargain I made long ago...millennia ago, I mean!, with Sebek, and Bast, and the Faceless One." The assistant puts six shots from a revolver into West's body--but we learn in an epilogue that West lives on, having transferred his mind into his assistant's body at the moment of death. 
== Publication History==
After its debut in Crypt of Cthulhu, "Herbert West—Reanimated" was reprinted in the Chaosium anthology Legacy of the Reanimator in December 2015.
The story was followed by a sequel, a similar round-robin with (mostly) different Mythos writers, titled "Herbert West--Reincarnated." It appeared in the Hallowmass 2000 issue of Crypt of Cthulhu (#106).
==References==
Category:Donald R. Burleson works
Category:Robert M. Price works
Category:Peter Cannon works
Category:Charles Hoffman works
Category:Will Murray works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works