Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Tannenbaum next to him. The doctor was looking down on Irene Moore, shaking his head theatrically.

“Why don’t you sit in for me,” Tannenbaum said. “I’m busted. And there’s nothing you can do for this one.”

Sweeney shook his head in agreement, then leaned down and brought his mouth to Irene’s. Her lips were cold but smooth. He pulled some air in through his nose, pushed it out into the adjoining mouth. In response, he felt her tongue come to life and move against his own for a second, before continuing, pressing forward like a snake, until it touched the back of his throat and he began to choke. He jerked backward but she had her arms around his neck.

He swung his arm and broke her grip, fell to the floor, scrambled upright, and ran from the game room as the card players broke into hysterical laughter. He raced down corridors that merged into corridors. Took rights and lefts, vaulted more than one flight of stairs and didn’t manage to control the panic until he was entirely lost.

Eventually, he found himself at the top of the castle. The ceilings were lower here and the corridors shorter. He walked them, throwing open each door and poking his head inside each room to find a series of identical cells, stark chambers fixed under the eaves, each outfitted with only a coffinlike bed, a porcelain washbasin, and a matching pitcher. The cells looked out, through a chapel window of blue glass, onto an expanse of roaring ocean on one side of the hall, and the marshlands and swamps on the other.

Entering the last room, he knelt down before the window and drank from the pitcher. The water inside was warm and stale but he couldn’t get enough of it. He tipped the pitcher too quickly, spilling it down his chest. When he’d drained the last of the water, he dried his mouth with the hem of his shirt, unzipped his pants, and urinated into the basin.

On his way back out, he glanced at the bed and saw the book that was almost hidden beneath the pillow. He sat down and extracted it and found the final issue of Limbo. The issue that he and Danny had purchased on the day of the accident. The cover featured a jagged title balloon that screamed

“Freaks No More”

The End

of

Their Journey!

in scarlet lettering. The cover drawing depicted the troupe at the base of a towering cliff, looking up at the black iron castle of Dr. Fliess, the madman genius who had tracked them relentlessly.

Sweeney rolled the comic into a tube, tucked it in his back pocket and exited the cell. He moved to the last door at the end of the hall, put his hand on the knob and, in that instant, heard Danny’s laugh from inside. He turned the knob and pushed, found the door bolted and began to pound. And as he hammered his fist against the freezing slate of the door, Danny’s laughter turned to crying. And then to screaming.

Sweeney kicked at the door. Heaved his shoulder at the door. Began to yell for his son. His knuckles started to bleed. Something ruptured in his throat and his yell turned into a rasp. He got down on his back, stomped against the door with the bottoms of his feet. There was no give, no sense of progress.

He got to his knee and then stood, moved halfway down the corridor and ran at the door, threw his body into it, crashed and slumped, stunned. He sat up, blinked, brought a hand to his forehead and took it away bloody. He got back on his knees, put both hands on the doorknob and yelled, as loud as he could, for his boy.

Then he felt the knob turning in his hands and the door began to open and he was pulled into a dark room that he knew, at once, was cavernous. He felt the temperature change before his eyes could adjust. It was as warm as a sauna. He could hear waves crashing from an open window. He could hear the clink of metal against metal. But Danny’s screams had stopped.

The lights began to come up as someone on either side lifted him off the floor. He smelled perfume and coffee and salt air. He felt himself being lowered and relaxed into something plush. Felt something soft and damp against his wounded forehead. And then his vision was restored, though the light was cobalt blue and railroad lantern red. In the dimness, he could see Danny about ten feet away. The boy was lying on an operating table, his head on a thin pillow, his body covered up to the chin by a sheet that reflected the comic book colors of the room. The boy looked tired but his eyes were open and he was smiling at Sweeney.

Danny’s mouth opened and closed as if forming words, but no sound came from his lips. Sweeney tried to make out the words anyway.

“I knew you’d come,” he repeated to himself and started to slump a bit.

A hand pressed against his chest and pushed him back in his seat. He looked to his left to see Nadia Rey, dressed in her nurse’s whites, her hair pulled back and secured. He looked to his right and saw Alice Peck, in her three-quarter lab coat, with pearls around her throat and a stethoscope hanging from her neck.

Sweeney let his head loll back and touched glass. He sat up and surveyed the room and realized he was in the main turret at the top of the castle, a circular chamber, like the top of a lighthouse, with a peaked ceiling and narrow windows all around. He was on a section of the window seat that circled the room, which was, he now saw, a surgical theater. There were boxy metal carts everywhere, their tops covered in green sheets upon which rested all manner of bowls and basins, scalpels, scissors, chisels, retractors, bone saws, hypodermics, and roll after roll of cotton gauze.

A new kind of panic began to flood in and Sweeney attempted to get up, to go to Danny. But his legs couldn’t seem to bring him to standing and each time he tried, Nadia and Alice restrained him. They did so in a gentle and easy manner, with soft shushing and patting of arms and legs. But they kept him held in place.

Danny, watching his father struggle, gave another smile and mouthed what Sweeney took as, It’s okay, Dad.

And that was when Dr. Fliess appeared on the scene, as if out of nowhere. Suddenly he was standing on the far side of the operating table, his hands on the guardrail, lowering it. He was stationed halfway down the table, near Danny’s waist, wearing green surgical scrubs and latex gloves. To Sweeney, he looked as he’d been depicted in the various Limbo mediums — the comic books, trading cards, posters, TV cartoons, and films. He had the mad eyes that were somehow both bulging and beady. He had the terrible posture that made him seem humpbacked. He had the oversized ears that sprouted the wiry strands of white hair. But when he lowered the surgical mask, his face was that of Dr. Micah Peck.

He addressed Sweeney directly over his son.

“I’m honored to have an audience,” he said, “on a day that will live in medical history.”

Then he spoke to the two women in a sharp voice.

“Has the patient been prepped?” he snapped. “Where’s my assistant?”

Nadia and Alice leaned out from either side of Sweeney and looked at each other. But before they could answer, the room filled with the sound of heels on tile. And out of the darkness came Kerry, the lost wife and mother. She was dressed in scrubs, but unlike Dr. Peck’s, these were soiled. The front of her gown was saturated with blood. She ignored Danny and Peck and walked directly to Sweeney. She was carrying something in her arms.

When she reached her husband, she placed her burden in his lap. His legs and crotch began to burn and he made himself look down from Kerry’s face and saw a fetus, swathed in blood and afterbirth, squirming and making heavy, breathless sounds. Sweeney brought the fetus to his chest, saw that it wasn’t fully developed. Kerry took her husband’s face in her hands, wiped blood and tissue down his cheeks, and moved back to the surgical table to join Dr. Peck.