The Horror Library - The Best in Horror Fiction

The Vessel
By Mark E Deloy

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William Atwood woke to the dim grey light of early morning and the mixed smells of body odor and stale cigarettes. He looked through the scratched crystal of his Timex and saw that it was four-thirty A.M. In a half an hour the homeless shelter's occupants would be waking up to a meal of either rubbery pancakes or runny eggs.

In his past life, he had been Professor Atwood, graduate of Cambridge University and head of the Genetics department for Inova Laboratory. That was before his obsession.

It started off innocently enough. Inova had begun researching the existence of the human soul to see if it had any relevance to their research on the human genome. In Atwood's opinion, it was just a morality safety net in case the creationists called them out on CNN or MSNBC.

Inova was a global leader in Genetic modification for the betterment of mankind. They were very close to being able to predict the genetic markers that made a person predisposed to violence or rage. It was a major breakthrough and would put to rest the nature versus nurture debate once and for all.

During the course of his research, Professor Atwood discovered what he believed to be proof of the existence of the human soul. What's more, he recorded the exact moment mortuary degravitation occurred, the exact point in time when the human body loses 32 grams of weight during death. He discovered this anomaly took place thirty-three seconds before the actual body expired.

Next, Atwood deduced that if the soul departed from the body at a certain time, then surely there must be a location on the physical body from where the intrinsic "personness" leaves behind its corporeal shell. He tried all types of machines to record an image of the departing soul, including a Aura Camera and a Astral Recorder, but nothing seemed to record anything.

Then one afternoon, while sitting beside a terminal cancer patient, Atwood witnessed what he had been searching for. He had rigged a mass spectromenter up to a digital camera and monitor. The result was a video image of a slithery blue light departing the man's abdomen just before death. Atwood repeated the experiment a dozen more times, all with the same result. Now, not only did he prove at least to himself, that man had a soul, but discovered it departed through the abdomen, just below the navel.

The next order of business was to try and capture the entity. He quit work at Inova, and got a private grant from a large and powerful church that wished to keep its anonymity. The money came quickly at first. Between his impeccable track record and his stellar education, religious groups were practically throwing money at him. He slept little and ate even less. The only thing that mattered now was the work. His long term goal was to capture the soul and prove to the world that it was indeed real.

Then his research assistant leaked his notes to the press. Overnight he was labeled a madman and dubbed a modern day Dr. Frankenstein. Donors said he had deceived them and made them believe he was doing God's work. His cash cows withered up and died almost overnight.

Using his savings, Atwood rented a private laboratory, hoping for the breakthrough that would put him back in the good graces of the scientific community.

He spent hundreds on test subjects, scouring the cancer wards and terminal wings for family members willing to make money off their dying loved ones. There were plenty of takers and plenty of those who just needed a little more convincing of the green persuasion.

He set up his equipment and waited sometimes for days or weeks for that one moment, thirty three seconds before death when he could try to catch the untouchable, capture the one thing men have been trying grasp since their creation. He met with failure after failure. He was having the same problem Edison did with the invention of the light-bulb; there was no medium which could hold the light.

He tried everything from vacuum sealed tubes to plastic Tupperware containers. Nothing could harness a human soul. He tried superheated mercury sealed globes and floating Lithium balloons, but the slithering, glowing light of existence seeped through every substance he could gather.

Soon the money ran out, and he was forced to ask old friends and colleges for loans. Eventually, both their money and their patience ran out. He lost the laboratory and his equipment. The only things that remained were his notes and his sanity. He tried to get another job, teaching or lecturing, but word had spread about his lunatic ravings, so his name was basically mud in the scientific community. He held a few odd jobs, but none of them made him enough money to rent an apartment or replace the car he had sold so many months ago.

He carried his voluminous writings in a large ragged binder which he clutched to his chest each night while sleeping. He figured when the harsh New York winter came, he could rip out pages and stuff them into his coat for warmth.

Atwood sat up on his cot and listened to the other residents waking up. The sounds of their hacks, coughs, and farts never failed to make him nauseous. He rolled off his canvas bed and went over to the job board. It contained a plethora of minimum wage positions and clinical research studies that paid twenty dollars a day. He knew better than to try those. He'd be damned if he was going to become somebody's Rhesus monkey.

He looked over towards the office and saw Gus, the shelter's coordinator, talking to a man in an expensive suit. Then Gus looked around the shelter for a minute, spotted Atwood, and waved him over.

"Shit," Atwood said to himself. "Probably another bill collector." But he sighed, and walked over to the man. Gus ambled away, probably to check and see how breakfast was coming.

"Morning," the man said. "Are you Professor William Atwood?"

"Depends who's asking."

The man stuck out a deerskin gloved hand.

"James Lightman. Can we talk outside?"

"Sure." Atwood said and followed him outside.

"I work for a company called Greenwood Consortium. We do, among other things, Bio engineering, and Genetic research. Much like the type of company you worked for in the past, but we are relatively new to the game."

"I've never heard of you." Atwood said, still wondering what this man wanted.

'We are working on a project that is quite delicate. This project is, at present, at a standstill."

Atwood nodded. He could relate.

"We are losing millions of dollars a day and will continue to do so until we can find a solution to our problem."

"So why don't you tell me what you need me for?"

"I have been authorized to offer you a position, Professor. The type of research we do requires a certain mindset, and both my employers and myself believe you possess the altitudinal constitution that we seek."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, that's so. I will be blunt professor. The Greenwood Consortium is attempting to produce the first human clone."

Attwood raised his eyebrows.

"Isn't that still illegal? I mean there is still a ban, right?"

"We believe success breeds acceptance. If we manufacture a viable human being, the government will have no other choice but to accept our research because that human clone will have human rights."

"So why do you need me?" Atwood asked.

"We have met with certain challenges throughout the course of our program. Challenges you may be able to help us with if you were so inclined."

"What sort of challenges?"

"In the course of our research, we have produced a cloned human embryo, brought it to full term, birthed it, and watched it live out the first three days of its miserable existence."

"What happened?"

"The children we created did indeed look human. In fact, they were beautiful, exact carbon copies of their mothers and fathers. But as they days went by, it was apparent that these children were dead husks. There was no emotion, no sparkle in their eyes, no real life, no—"

"No soul," Atwood finished.

"Exactly. Now you see why we need you."

"There is one problem with your little master plan. I never succeeded in capturing a human soul, and if I did, how would you insert it into a human embryo?"

"We can inject the soul into the mother's womb after you have retrieved it. I believe that if you can accomplish the recovery, then we can handle the delivery. We have faith in you Professor."

***

The next few weeks went by like a whirlwind. Atwood was given his own private laboratory, a virtually unlimited budget, and a three hundred thousand dollar salary. Not that he had time to spend it. He was in the lab night and day, taking quick cat naps and eating delivered Chinese and pizza. It felt terrific to be back in the lab again, to be working again.

Lightman showed him the video from the cloning trials, and it was apparent that the infants did indeed have something wrong with them. They were dull, slow things that only moved when they were given food or when a light was shined in their eyes.

Atwood thought it was strange how, when presented with a bright light, the infants reached towards the source as if trying to grasp the illumination itself. He wondered what had become of these manufactured children when they were no longer needed, but decided it was best not to ask.

Lightman also provided Atwood with a vast array of terminal patients. He chose not to ask about that either, although the men and women seemed to be very well taken care of. Atwood had a customized beeper that would go off when one of the patients began to go into cardiac arrest. It was morbid but effective. Lightman must have had a similar beeper, because he always showed up in ICU a minute after Atwood , taking notes and watching death claim another potential donor.

Atwood was having the same problems he did back at his own lab. The soul could not, or would not be contained. He tried every container imaginable. Since money was really no object now, he tried space age polymers, every type of metal that existed, liquid nitrogen encased lead crystal, even the halogen light tubes from the lights in his lab. None of them worked.

He became convinced that, any day, Lightman would come to him and tell him he was fired. But his boss seemed patient and gave him daily encouragement and support.

Then one morning Atwood's beeper went off at three thirty A.M. He shot out of bed. Surely this must be a sign. He rushed to the lab to gather his notes and his latest containment device made of glazed wood in the shape of a pyramid.

He met Lightman at the door to the patient's room. Atwood was surprised to see that he knew the man, had talked to him. He didn't usually have any contact with the patients until their deaths, but the old black man had stopped him and asked him for a cigarette last week as he was going to the bathroom; another sign.

The two had talked for the better part of twenty minutes about life and death. The patients had no idea why they were really here and their families were being paid a hundred dollars a day, but they seemed happy to sign the no life support waver and resign themselves to a relatively painless end.

The old man told Atwood he used to be a fisherman off the coast of New Orleans. He talked about his life on the Gulf and how much he loved the water.

At first Atwood resisted hearing about the man's sentimental recollections but found himself drawn into the former life of a simple fisherman. It was a nice break from work. After the story, he was sorry to see the man shuffle off to his next round of testing.

Now the fisherman was dying. His vitals were slowing, and his breathing was labored. The old man saw Atwood standing near his bed holding his large wooden pyramid. He smiled through his pain and pulled at Atwood's shirt sleeve for him to come closer.

As the professor leaned in, he could practically smell death surrounding thee old man. Giles whispered something that Atwood didn't hear right away. Then he said it again, a little bit louder and Atwood's eyes grew wide. All at once, he realized how stupid he had been. The answer was obvious. He had been searching for the perfect vessel in which to house a soul, when in reality, the perfect vessel had already been created.

Atwood grabbed Lightman by the shoulder and swung him around.

"Lightman, do you have any newborns in the lab?" Atwood asked, frantic now.

"Well, yes. One was born this afternoon, but he's just like all the others. He has no cognitive—"

"That doesn't matter. Go get him, and for God sakes, hurry!"

Five minutes later, Lightman came rushing back into the dying man's room. The nurses were trying to comfort Giles as much as possible. They had just started a morphine drip in his I.V.

The infant lolled lazily in Lightman's arms. Blue eyes focused on nothing, and his mouth hung open like a gaping wound.

"Give him to me. Quickly!" Atwood said.

Lightman handed the child over to him reluctantly. Atwood knew his eyes must be wild and his expression frantic, but he didn't care. This was the answer. He could feel it in his old bones.

He laid the infant on Giles Murphy's stomach and held him there. The child offered no resistance. His eyes had glazed over completely and rolled back in his head.

"Oh my dear God." Lightman whispered. He finally realized what Atwood was up to.

"Not yet," Atwood replied. "But soon my friend. Very soon."

They watched as Giles Murphy's breath grew more ragged and labored. His wrinkled skin was ashy, and his eyelids fluttered as he dreamed his final dream in this body.

The cameras and other equipment were focused on the child that sat on Murphy's stomach. Lightman sucked in breath, and Atwood knew his boss had just seen the soul leaving the old man's body and entering the infant.

The infant jerked under Atwood's hand, shivered slightly, became pale and grew cold. Atwood began to worry. Why would he grow cold? It's as if he is dying himself.

Then the baby started to heat up again. His skin regained some color. The shaking subsided. Giles Murphy's heart monitor flat-lined, and everyone in the room just listened to it. No one said a word. Then the baby cooed.

Atwood stared at the infant. It was as if someone had turned on some internal light. The child looked up at him and smiled, then gripped Atwood's finger in one tiny chubby hand and smiled.

He picked the baby up and pulled him to his chest, cradling the newborn who was now truly alive.

"We did it," Lightman said. "You did it. Atwood, you're a genius. You must tell me what the old man said to you."

Atwood just smiled and gently rocked the infant.

"He said, he wished that he was young again."

For the first time in a long time Atwood was truly glad to be alive.