The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

Chapter 9 ~ Magnetron Ponders the Unthinkable

"I made the observation that his head was his most significant appendage, whereupon he replied dejectedly that he had become rather fond of all of his appendages."

Later that morning, I reluctantly bade Petión good-bye.  I begged him to stay, but he would not be deterred.  He was returning home—not to his hometown in Kenner, Louisiana, but to his birthplace in Haiti.  "It is a sad place these days," he said wistfully, "but it is my home."  It was a heart-rending departure, all the sadder as we had spent not nearly enough time getting reacquainted.

He confessed to me his utter amazement that the reanimation ceremony had been successful and offered a most extraordinary theory.  I questioned him exhaustively on the point, but the obscure conduit by which he had gained this unusual knowledge was sufficiently nebulous that he was unable to provide more specificity beyond his supernatural cognizance that Dr. Hogalum had not died of natural causes, as had been reported.  In fact, Petión felt that Dr. Hogalum's lwa, or spirit, had been infused with an exceptional resilience due to a profound displeasure at its corporeal vessel having been murdered!

As Petión's wagon made its way down Mugglesworth Hill into town, a brisk wind came up from the east, filling the air with autumn leaves and dust.  "Good-bye, old friend!"  I called out with as much warmth as I could muster, but my mind was then a frigid whirlwind of horror and bewilderment.

When I returned to my Masterstroke Mill, Dr. Hogalum's head—now ensconced upon a platform which I had constructed for this purpose—was convulsed with fury.  Several of Pung's cats had sneaked into the laboratory by their maddeningly undiscoverable route and had made great sport of the doctor's ears, nose, and facial hair.  He was undamaged, but demanded to know what had become of his body, and expressed a strong desire for clothing, though he was unable to account for the logic of this request.

I shooed away the cats and retrieved a top hat from my dressing room, placing it at a rakish angle on the doctor's crown.  I deliberated aloud as to the efficacy of a bow tie, but Dr. Hogalum cut me short with a volley of thorny questions.

"What has happened to me, Magnetron?  Where is my body?"

I gingerly addressed his recent expiration, and explained that his body had suffered a corresponding fate, buried headless as it was.  I commented in abstract on his subsequent reanimation and the stimulating venture I had planned for his revivified head.  I made every attempt to mollify him to the extent I might broach the topic of his murder without appearing insensitive to his current predicament, but he continued to pepper me with questions.

"I do not wish to appear ungrateful after having been raised from the dead," he said in a beleaguered tone, "but I must ask why you did not see fit to include my body in this enterprise!"  I made the observation that his head was his most significant appendage, whereupon he replied dejectedly that he had become rather fond of all of his appendages.

I did not wish to explain that an arithmetical miscalculation on my part regarding the mass of his body vis-à-vis certain physical laws had necessitated the admittedly gruesome measure, and I anticipated he would not be satisfied with my explanation anyway.  Therefore, I side-stepped the matter by responding simply that it was an unavoidable bit of hard cheese which was also quite irreversible.  He fell silent long enough for me to interject, "Petión has said you were murdered. Is this true?"

"Murdered?"  Hogalum was aghast at the mere suggestion, despite the fact that he was already dead.  "Certainly not, Magnetron!  I killed myself."