The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

Chapter 8 ~ Magnetron Summons the Spirit

"Several hours later, Mrs. Mackenzie woke to hear a cacophony of drums and boisterous singing emanating from my Masterstroke Mill."

I stood at the entrance, peering through the crystal windows and gauzy curtains, and was startled by a rich, resonant voice responding from the outside.  "Phinny!  It is I, Petión!  Let me in, you crazy boy, before I am frozen stiff!"

A wave of good spirits flowed over me then, and I was again innervated with fresh confidence.  It was Amaud Petión, my oldest and dearest friend.  I swung open the door and we exchanged ebullient pleasantries as all my dubieties of moments before wafted away on the warm breeze of Petión's good company.

When I had returned to my home after the War Between the States had drawn to a close, my mind was blank of everything that had gone before my injury.  There were few individuals who had made an impression deep enough on my psyche that I could recall anything of them, and fewer still I remembered in any detail.  One of these was my mother, who had raised me with her memorably fiery spirit.  The other was Petión, a Haitian household servant who had lavished me with his peculiar brand of fatherliness after my own father was flogged to death by a mob of angry investors.

Petión seemed frail now, but in good health, and his tolerance for liquor remained as outsized relative to his diminutive frame as was his great booming voice.  It was late, but we had much catching up to do and a well-stocked liquor cabinet to drain.  We were both quite intoxicated, I on bourbon whiskey, and Petión on his rum, when I broached the ticklish subject which had prompted my invitation in the first place.  I blurted my entire plan in abstraction, offering some detail as to his role in the undertaking.

"I b'lieve you have taken leave of your senses, young man," he replied with a sober expression on his face.  "This is not a plan, but a badly crafted horror tale.  I know enough only to tell you it cannot work!"

"But are you not skilled in the vodoun arts?" I pressed.

"Yes, I am a houngan, it is true, but I am no bokor, and I have never performed a reanimation ceremony.  Besides, even a zombi needs a body, my boy.  A zombi is a mindless thing, undead, without volition, you see?  Now tell me, Phinny: Of what use is a mindless head?"

I continued my argument until within hours of daybreak, beseeching, imploring, pleading.  Petión was steadfast in his refusal, but I began to repeat a plaintive refrain until he could no longer resist.  "Please, Petión!  Will you not even make the attempt?"

Several hours later, Mrs. Mackenzie woke to hear a cacophony of drums and boisterous singing emanating from my Masterstroke Mill.  Undoubtedly, she was red-faced with anger as she flew down hallways under a full head of Scotch-Irish steam.  However, when she entered the laboratory the color drained from her countenance, which thereupon took on an ashen quality.  Before she could complete a proper genuflection, the poor woman was again rendered unconscious by what she saw.

"Oh dear," said Dr. Hogalum's head. "She appears to have fainted!"