That night I had the most disturbing dream. In it I was hosting a dinner party for the most distinguished doctors and physiologists in the country. Everybody was absolutely spellbound by my conversation, and not a small amount of wine was flowing. At the height of the evening, just as I was entering a pleasant conversation with one of the doctors’ enchanting daughters, a bleached assemblage of bones descended the staircase and made its way to the punchbowl. “How do you do?,” spoke the skeleton with an airy wave to the entire room. “I am ze famous Ludwig Glauben.” It held up a glass of punch and made a toast “to science.” 

As it raised the glass to its teeth the liquid spilled through the jaw and splashed against the ribs and onto the floor. Women fainted, men rushed to the doors, and plates and glasses broke upon the floor. My dinner party was a complete failure.

In a fit of pique, I grabbed the intruder by the bony neck with both my hands and insulted it with numerous epithets. When I awoke, however, I had succeeded only in strangling my bedpost.

The next morning I dressed hurriedly and rushed into the study. There, amid open books and strewn papers, were Prof. Glauben’s mortal remains. The head looked up at me as I entered the room. “Guten Morgen. You slept vell, I hope?” It was then that I realized fully that this really was Prof. Glauben. His form was admittedly altered, but his personality was the same. He was still a man of science. He still cared for me; we were still friends. The potion had indeed preserved his soul, and is it not the soul only that is the object of our mutual affections? “Yes,” I lied with an embarrassed smile, “I slept well.

“Gut! Ve have much work ahead of us!”

For several months we continued the experiments within the privacy of my apartments. Prof. Glauben’s laboratory and equipment had been seized by the government upon his arrest, though I had been able to spirit most of his papers out of the university before his possessions were auctioned to pay his legal fees.

One of our greatest difficulties was keeping Prof. Glauben from being observed. My valet was given strict instructions not to enter my laboratory or my study, and visitors were barred from those rooms as well. We kept the shades tightly drawn and were careful to cover Prof. Glauben with heavy clothes whenever it was necessary for him to leave my home. We experienced a number of close calls, but no one, to my knowledge, discovered our secret.

One day in the early spring Prof. Glauben called me to the table where he had been treating some muscle tissue with a greenish liquid. “Venwick, vhat does you think vould happen if somebody observed my appearance?” I was surprised at this sudden and unanticipated question, but told him, quite unabashedly, about the dream I’d had on the first night he came to stay with me. “Ja, das it vhat I thought,” he murmured dolefully. “Das is vhat I thought….”

PART 7 WILL APPEAR ON MONDAY

Once I managed to pry off the coffin lid my heart sank. All that was left of the grave’s tenant was a skeleton; nothing else remained of the Professor.

I signed, leaned against my spade, and stared at the bones in the box. Something was peculiar about the moonlight-bathed figure. Yes, it was the position: Bodies are traditionally laid to rest with the arms at the sides, bent at the elbows, with the forearms crossed on the chest near the wrists. The palms rest face down on the chest.

This body was arranged differently, however. The arms were folded in a casual position with the forearms parallel over the chest, with each hand near the opposite elbow. The right index finger was touching the left bicep (or rather where the left bicep used to be). But wait: Did it move? Yes! The right index finger was tapping against the left arm! It was almost as if… as if…

“Mein Gott, Venwick, you are quite clumsy at your work! Vhy, it took you a full two hours to disinter mein coffin–und almost a quarter hour more just to get ze confounded lid off!” It was Prof. Glauben; there was no mistaking it. The voice, the way he mispronounced “Fenwick,” the ridiculous hand gestures…It was surely he.

“Vell, don’t just stand where–Help me out of here! I am most anxious to stretch mein legs again.” What could I do? I offered my hand, which he grabbed in a boney clutch, and I pulled him out of the rotting box. There I was, standing eye-to-socket with a skeleton. We stared at each other for some time in the stillness of the churchyard, and I imagined a smile spread across the skull.

A few minutes later we were walking along the deserted rural road back to my house. The skeleton put its arm around my shoulder as we walked and turned its head toward me. “You should be happy, mein boy! Ze formula vorked!” I stared at him, not knowing what to say. “Ze formula! Ze vun ve vere vorking on before I vas imprisoned!”

“But…but it killed the old bookkeeper,” I protested, wondering why I was arguing with this hideous form. “That’s why you’re–why you were–in prison!”

“Ah, zhis is true. But ze day before ze police took me away I did some research on zhat man. I just couldn’t believe ze formula had failed. As it turned out, he vas allergic to ze lactic complex ve used. If not for his allergy, he vould still be alive today–and a good many decades hence, I vould postulate.” 

“Then you drank the potion?” I asked.

“I drank ze position.”

“But you were buried,” I protested.

“Ach, an unfortunate complication. After drinking the potion I was taken to prison, where a sadistic guard beat me for what he considered to be my insolence. I knew that I was not long for this world, so I left you the message which you evidently were able to decode.”

“But the potion…” I spluttered.

“Ja, ze potion. It vorked–at least to ze degree it forced mein body to retain mein soul. You see, it can do nothing to prevent ze decaying of ze dead body. So I rotted though I remained very much alive spiritually, even mentally. My psyche remained mit mein body. On ze night zhat I died I was avare of men pulling ein sheet over mein head und carrying me to ze morgue. I had not yet grown sufficiently familiar vith mein new existence, however, und I could not make mein lips nor limbs operate. In fact it vas not until I had been in ze ground ein month zhat I vas able to shift mein position. Do you know what it is like to lay in ze same position for ein month?” I shook my head. “Vell, it is no bowl of roses I assure you.”

By now we had reached my apartments. I glanced at my pocket watch; it was half past two in the morning. I looked at Prof. Glauben’s skeleton, fumbled with my key, and opened the door. I searched for something to say.

“Vell, aren’t you going to invite me in?” demanded the specter.

“Invite you in?! What would my servant say?”

“Nothing. He is undoubtedly asleep at this hour. Besides, I vill need to catch up on your papers if I am to direct your further experiments. Ve must refine ze process to arrest decay.” A combination of fatigue, confusion, and obedience caused me to step aside. I gestured for him to enter, to which he obliged me with a bow as he entered my home.

I showed Prof. Glauben’s remains to my study, wished them a goodnight, and retired to my bedroom. Within half an hour I had fallen sound asleep, and within another hour I wished I hadn’t.

PART 6 WILL APPEAR ON FRIDAY

Before I knew it I was turning the calendar to another bleak November. It was just short of one year since the unfortunate bookkeeper’s death and Prof. Glauben’s subsequent conviction. So preoccupied had I been with my grim employment that I failed entirely to visit my mentor in prison. And while I faithfully continued the experiments, I must confess that my progress was despairingly slow. Prof. Glauben and I had been on the brink of success, but without his guidance I now felt hopelessly lost.

I therefore resolved finally to make a call at the penitentiary, hoping for a word of encouragement or an enlightened suggestion from my mentor. But when I arrived at the stark stone edifice and inquired of Ludwig Glauben, the duty officer informed me that he had died on December 21, just days after he had first arrived. My teacher and friend was dead! The cause of death was recorded as cardiac arrest, but surely there was more to the story. I felt profound sadness at his passing, anxiety about the loss of my teacher, and agonizing guilt for having neglected to visit him earlier.

The duty officer mentioned that the prison authorities had been unable to identify any next of kin, and that they still retained a small box with Prof Glauben’s few personal effects. He asked if I would like to have them. I answered in the affirmative and within 20 minutes I was riding home with a dusty pasteboard box on my lap.

The hackney deposited me back at my apartments near the university. Dusk was settling as I ascended the narrow stairway. The weather had turned frightfully dreary and cold, and the wind howled through the branches of the property’s ancient yew trees that endlessly grasped at passersby. I entered my rooms and reposed in front of the fire with the box. It contained a pair of gold spectacles, a malodorous briar pipe with deep tooth marks on the stem, a well-worn rosary, and a small, dog-eared journal. This last item I opened to a few pages at random, finding it was in essence a cross between a journal and commonplace book. Entries were recorded chronologically and included summaries of contemporary news, some chemical formulae, selected Bible passages, and other snippets of information. Most of the entries were in German, but the final entry, which was dated December 20th–the day before he died–was written hastily in English. It read thus:

You may think me mad, but I

must have more asparagus. I hope to

retrieve a small bunch from the commissary.

My mind and my

body demand it

immediately!

Had my friend and mentor succumbed to madness? These senseless ravings were incongruent with his customary enunciations. But while the words did not ring of his voice they clearly were of his hand. I searched the lines for meaning, and then somehow my eye glanced along the left edge of the page. At once it all became clear; Prof. Glauben’s mind had been sound when he wrote this. And he wrote it specifically for me. He had created a modified acrostic, delivering a message that employed the first word of each line:

You

Must

Retrieve

My

Body

Immediately!

Without hesitation I ran downstairs and out the front door, procured a spade from the garden shed, and hastily returned to the penitentiary, whose graveyard stood on a low hill behind its chapel. I held my dark lantern to a score of headstones before its weak light fell on the name I sought. After drawing a long breath, I threw down my coat and, with shaking hands, began to remove the moist earth from the rectangular plot in front of the granite grave marker. Down, down I dug, until at last I heard the hollow knock of my spade against the coffin. After a few more minutes I had cleared away the mouldy clay from the lid and was prepared to pry it from the box. I experienced trouble, however, in forcing the crowbar under the lid, and after fully 10 minutes of effort I threw down my tools in frustration.

I wiped my brow and stretched my neck, then gazed at the coffin. Although buried not even a year, rust streaked from the nail heads and mould had accumulated on the rotting wood. Surely there was no point of retrieving a body thus buried! But having come this far, I resolved to make one last attempt. I held the crowbar to the lid and swung the hammer with all my strength. The crowbar slid through my hand and under the lid, and decay instantly filled my nostrils.

PART 5 WILL APPEAR ON WEDNESDAY

In the course of the next several months I became increasingly involved in Prof. Glauben’s research efforts. I don’t think I became as obsessed as he with the goal of the experiments, but rather I developed an affection for the process. I viewed each individual experiment as an end unto itself, and reveled in the results for their own sake.

I must admit that I also was flattered by Prof. Glauben’s increasing reliance on my assistance, and I developed a not insignificant reputation within the university as a valuable research assistant. There occurred a commensurate decline in my baccalaureate studies (which putatively focused on politics), and by the end of my third year I formally reframed my course of study to physiology. The other faculty seemed skeptical of my association with Prof. Glauben, but they couldn’t fault my work.

Academics, however, held only minor interest to me. It was the research experiments that captured my imagination. I was engrossed in the laboratory most evenings, often working until midnight. Our labors steadily progressed, and by the winter of 18– we felt confident that our work was ready for the supreme test: Thus far we had kept alive sample tissues and small animals, but we were now ready to apply our method to a human being. Unfortunately, the experiment was a miserable failure, for, upon drinking the potion, our volunteer (an old retired bookkeeper) coughed, blinked rapidly, and fell face-first upon our credenza, dead, completely destroying two-thirds of our tea service.

Yet we would not be discouraged. It is true, of course, that Prof. Glauben was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for the unintentional manslaughter of the bookkeeper, but he insisted that I continue the experiments during his absence. For this purpose I set up a small laboratory in my apartments and secured for myself Prof. Glauben’s books and papers. Indeed, I had everything I needed except one vital component: a supply of cadavers.

For human bodies had become the primary vehicle of our experiments, indicating through their rate of decomposition the viability of the electrical life force that we managed to elicit. Thus cadavers served, in effect, as our litmus paper. Due to his esteemed position, Prof. Glauben had been able to secure an adequate supply of this litmus paper from the city morgue. But I, lacking suitable credentials, enjoyed no such access. In order to continue the experiments during the professor’s incarceration, therefore, I was forced to resort to grave robbing.

No doubt you find the idea of grave robbing to be revolting and immoral. Admittedly it’s not a topic for discussion among polite society. But I was able to justify my unpleasant work to myself, and perhaps I can alleviate some of your disgust as well. I reasoned thus: First, graverobbing is not actually robbery, for no one is being robbed. The former inhabitant of the body–the soul–has shed its earthly shell and has ascended to a place where a body is superfluous at best and downright burdensome at worst. The only ones being deprived of the body are the worms of the grave, and few of us have any particular concern for their diets.

Not only were the bodies I was disinterring unclaimed, but they were serving no good purpose. I, however, was putting them to productive use; surely positive utility is preferable to mindless waste.

Whether or not you now accept my justification, I was, at the time, convinced, and I proceeded with my work. Had I only foreseen where those accursed labors would lead!

PART 4 WILL APPEAR ON MONDAY

Prof Glauben’s personal laboratory was a cluttered and grotesque affair. A score of human skulls lined two shelves on the far wall, all seemingly staring at me with fixed grins when I entered the room. There were live brown rats in a cage, desiccated dead rats under a bell jar, and a dozen eyeballs floating in a formaldehyde bath. On the wall hung charts detailing human musculature and blood vessels. A fully articulated skeleton was suspended by a wire next to Prof. Glauben’s desk, on which various ledgers, journals, and reference books lay open at various angles. Somewhat incongruently a black and white cat that I later learned was named Helios slept on a pillow that lay in an open cabinet drawer.

Prof. Glauben was peering into a microscope when I entered, and I waited silently for him to finish.Though his back was to me, he somehow sensed my presence for he held up a hand in greeting and said “Velcome, my boy!” while still fixating on his microscope. After a few moments he scratched some words into a journal with a fountain pen and then finally stood and turned to me.

“I am eager to have your assistance, Venwick. There is much of great importance that ve shall accomplish together.” He held my two shoulders at arms length and looked me over, as though inspecting a sweater for moth holes. He smiled and released his grip. “Naturally, you will want to know on what ve shall be working. Please to sit down and relax, and I shall give you a toenail.”

“Do you mean thumbnail?” I asked hesitantly as I lowered myself into an armchair.

“Quite possibly. Your English idioms are so confounding.” Prof. Glauben resumed the seat behind his desk. “Venwick, I have spent zhe past several years isolating ein electrical impulse zhat appears to be present in all living beinks. I believe it is somehow connected with the animation–that it is a life impulse. Zhis life impulse fades as we age and disappears zhe moment we die.”

I nodded slowly, trying to convey that I followed him but not necessarily that I conceded his claims.

“Now, I suspect I am on the verge of discovering a way to preserve and sustain zhis life impulse chemically, which would mean…”

“Fame and riches?” I asked.

“I was going to say immortality, but it amounts to the same thing.”

I searched his face for a sign of humor, but he seemed to be in earnest.

“Zhis is what ve shall work on together. “

At that very moment a thunder crack from the worsening storm rattled the windows and frightened the cat. Prof. Glauben seemed not to notice, but I felt a deep sense of foreboding.

PART 3 WILL APPEAR ON FRIDAY