Formaldehyde

That guy there, he‘s been comin’ here every day for the last week, ain’t he?” Cillian looked sternly at the guy, as if looking harder would tell him more about what he was up to. He pulled so hard on his cigarette, I thought it might burn all the way through by the end of his next thought. “What do you think, Eoghan?” He looked at me.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Nice coat. Doesn’t look rich, though. Bit tattered.”

“Been talkin’ to the foreman a lot,” Tadhg said.

One week ago, this guy showed up at the docks. Middle-aged, somewhat fat and with a big mustache. Dressed like a gentleman at first glance, though his coat was a bit shabby and frayed at the hem and his hat looked like it was dragged through the mud. Had us load a dozen crates into his truck. He wanted to see that we did it right. Frail stuff and dangerous too, he said. Nothing too out of the ordinary. But then he started coming back on the days after. Just looking around, doing nothing in particular. Started talking to the foreman as well. They seemed to be getting along.

“Alright, lads. Break’s up,” the foreman shouted. Cillian spat out his cigarette and we turned to get back to hauling crates. “Boyle, you come here, though,” he called looking at Tadhg. “Good luck,” Cillian said to him.

We watched Tadhg shuffle towards the foreman, a big bulky guy, and our visitor, who almost vanished in his shadow. They stood together and talked. “What do you think they talkin’ about?” Cillian asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we broke something and now he’s lookin’ for a culprit.”

“What do you think was in those boxes. He was goin’ on about that, wasn’t he. Like, ‘careful, careful, don’t move ‘em too much.’” Cillian wiped sweat off his dirty forehead and looked over at the group. “Maybe he’s a watchmaker. Or one of them glasses makers. Look at those pieces. Big as windowpanes, almost.”

“Didn’t know you lived in a leipreachán’s hut.” Cillian didn’t respond, which is how I knew that he had calmed down.

We brought some crates in from a Caribbean trader and when we came out again, Tadhg, the foreman and the other man weren’t there anymore.

“You think they’ve gone to the precinct house already?” asked Cillian. He wasn’t married and I think we were the only people he really had; I understood why he was worried about Tadhg.

“I don’t think the foreman would have gone with, if that’s where they went,” I said. “And he probably would’ve called the guards, while he was at it. See some asses beaten.”

Cillian grunted. “I’m sure we’ll see him tomorrow.”

We did see Tadhg the day after and he didn’t look like he spent the night in a police cell. “What’ve you been up to? Had a nice chat with the foreman’s ass?” asked Rob. He was a brash guy and he didn’t particularly like the Irish, which was unfortunate for a dockhand. Tadhg didn’t even react to him.

When we were all outside he started telling us what happened. “That guy’s a doctor. From Germany, apparently. He was just getting all his equipment and other stuff from Europe delivered.”

“Did you break something or why’d he want to talk to you. The foreman didn’t set you up or anything, did he?” Cillian asked.

“No, no. He gave me a job. He’s been telling me, the German guy, Schleyer he’s called – he’s been looking for people here on the docks ‘cause he needs an assistant, someone to do some boring labor for him. Pays well though. Under-the-counter, of course, but money’s money.”

“What’d he have you do? Don’t know why a doctor would hire dockhands and not some studied guys,” I asked. We’re working a lot of hours on the dock and so the pay had to be quite good for Tadhg to do work on the side as well.

“Ach, just piddling about, really. Moving boxes and stuff and unpacking. Said he’d let me work for him again if I wanted to. Always needs assistance, is what he said. And he pays good money for what little he has me do.” Tadhg had a sly look in his green eyes. “I’ll pay for a round this week, lads.”

“He still looks creepy to me,” Cillian said and I had to agree with him. Something about his tattered clothes.

“Yeah well, I’m still goin’,” Tadhg. “Foreman said he’d let me off early, too. Probably got some money from the doctor to borrow his men.”

Sure enough, at four Tadhg went to change and went off to the doctor. He had told us that he had a place not far from the harbor. And for the following weeks he went there every other day. “It pays good money, Eoghan,” he said repeatedly. I know he and his wife Aoife were expecting another child and they could use any help they got.

“He’s been sending me on errands lately,” Tadhg told us on our lunch break “I’m going to every chemist and apothecary in the borough and buying up stuff from them. Formalyde or something. You wouldn’t believe how bad this stuff smells. It really knocks the wind out of you, just lifting up the stopper for a second. He’s puttin’ dead animals in it to preserve ‘em. Evil looking stuff.” It didn’t seem to dampen his appetite at all, though.

A few days later he had more news. “I’m gonna see the world, boys. Or Boston, at least. The doctor wants me to take the train to Massachusetts and get a delivery from a friend for him there. I’m goin’ on Monday; just so you know when I don’t show up next week.”

“I don’t know what to think of it, Eoghan,” Cillian told me later on, when Tadhg had gone to the doctor’s house. “The guy didn’t really look like a doctor and now he’s sending Tadhg all over the country like a pageboy.”

“Well, he wants to,” I said. “And he does look a lot better, less stressed. The extra pay seems to do him good.” Cillian didn’t say anything.

On Monday, like he said, Tadhg didn’t show up. Neither did he on Tuesday or Wednesday or the rest of the week. On Friday night, when Cillian and I went down to the pub as usual, he seemed worried about Tadhg. “See? He said he was only going to Boston to get something and now he’s not back in five days. That German’s got him running away.”

“He wouldn’t just run away like that, with Aoife and everything.” I wanted to calm him, but I was a bit worried myself. Tadhg was an upstanding guy, he loved his wife and kids and he wouldn’t just run away like that, not even for money, I don’t think.

I left Cillian at the pub early and decided to stop by Tadhg’s place on my way home to the wife. He had one room in a big brick building, like most of us. I knocked on the door and Aoife opened it with wide eyes and a look I didn’t know how to interpret, though it was far from relief. “Eoghan. What are you doin’ here?” she asked. She and Tadhg both came from Ireland and we mostly talked Irish with each other.

“I wanted to see if Tadhg has come home. He didn’t come to work the whole week. Told us he was gone, but not how long.”

“No, he hasn’t come yet. He didn’t tell me how long either and now I don’t know what to do. It’s because of that German. He’s been bringing back money from working for him, but he’s always coming home late and exhausted. And now he’s not even come back.” She looked more worried than upset, but I didn’t really know how to help her.

“Don’t worry, Aoife. I’ll… I’ll see what I can do, alright?”

“Thank you.” With that I left the place and went to my own family. I told Eithne over supper how Tadhg hadn’t come back yet and how distraught Aoife seemed. “I think I’ll see what that German doctor was up to. Tadhg had told me where his house was. Maybe I’ll go there tomorrow after work.”

“Don’t put yourself in danger, dear,” Eithne said. “That doctor man doesn’t really seem like a saint, if he let Tadhg play around with these chemicals. It just sounds sketchy to go around the harbor looking for workhorse for your private games.” She was right, like most days, but still: Tadhg was my friend and countryman.

I didn’t have to search for the doctor myself, however. The next day he was back at the harbor. Cillian seemed a bit hungover and wasn’t even in the mood to complain about him coming here again. The doctor was strolling around and talking with the foreman, just like he was a month ago. Tadhg, however, was nowhere to be seen. I resolved to talk to the foreman about this later. He was the one who allowed Tadhg to take time off to work for the German and he seemed pretty unbothered by him not showing up; he had to know something.

During our lunch break, an Italian docker came over to us and made my plans obsolete. “McElroy, the foreman wants you,” he said. I gave the rest of my lunch to Cillian and went to the foreman’s station.

He was still talking to the German man. They expected me. “This is Owen McElroy,” the foreman said to the German. “He’s a pretty reliable one.”

The man reached out to shake my hand. “Frederick Schleyer is my name. I’m searching for an assistant to help in my laboratory.”

Now that I got a closer look at the German, I understood why Cillian was creeped out by him. His coat looked fine from afar, but it was tattered and patched in places. The shirt he wore under it was stained bloody around the top of the collar. His face was thick and puffed up, his cheeks pockmarked. He had a big grey mustache that looked like the tail of a cat laid across his face.

“Didn’t you already have an assistant, sir?” I asked, trying to sound polite.

“Yes, he was also from here. Thomas Boyle; he was very good, reliable too. But he hasn’t returned from a trip I sent him on.” He didn’t sound too sad about this. “You understand, I teach at a university, but I am afraid I do not have very much money to hire professionals for my private studies. But you harbor workers, you are very good at the work I need and I am willing to pay you good money.”

“What is it that you need help with, sir?”

“Oh, nothing big. Just errands or helping me with some busywork. Nothing that needs a lot of knowledge. And I pay you thrice as much per hour as your foreman here.”

“I’ll even let you get off here earlier, if you need to,” the foreman added.

I didn’t like the prospect of working for this guy, but I saw no other way. If I wanted to get more information on what happened to Tadhg, working for him and spending more time with him seemed like the way to go about it. “Sure, sir. I’d be happy to. When can I start, sir?” I said.

“See, he’s a good one, I told you, Fred,” the foreman said laughing.

“You can start next week, if you want to,” the doctor said. He told me his address and told me to show up right after the foreman let me go.

Cillian wasn’t happy with my decision. “Have you gone mad? You can’t go work for this Kraut! Who knows what he did to Tadhg.” I’ve never seen him this lively in all the time I knew him.

“Oh, shut ‘yer mouth,” I told him off. “You’re acting as if he’s killed Tadhg. We don’t know what he’s up to. Maybe Tadhg’s just late. Anyway, I’ll try to find out more about this guy’s business. I’ll even buy you a beer from the money if you shut up.” I knew I was being harsh but in truth I was scared too. It’s not too uncommon that an Irishman goes missing and nothing happens about it. The police certainly don’t care. And the foreman seemed to know about what was going on as well. I even asked him about Tadhg at the end of the shift and he just said that he hasn’t shown up and was looking for a replacement. He simply didn’t care.

I didn’t tell Eithne about my new job, only that I’d have to work late a few evenings. I didn’t want her to worry too much; she was under enough stress with her sewing job and keeping house.

On Monday, I was let go early and made my way to Doctor Schleyer’s house. I felt guilty leaving all my fellow workers behind, but I had to do something; there was still no word from Tadhg after a full week.

The doctor had a small house on a quiet, rundown street. It was one of a few residential houses on the street, the rest was warehouses or shops. It was next to an empty storage building and a metalworker. I knocked on the door and waited for a few minutes. There weren’t any people walking by, nor any carts; an odd place for a professor to live. I knocked again and this time he opened the door. “Ah, Mister Owen, no? Please, come in,” he said and stepped aside.

His home was dark and musty. If not for the clothes hanging in the hallway and a handful of lights, you could have thought the place was deserted. He showed me into his workroom immediately. It was a big square room with only one window, though the blinds were closed. The walls were lined with shelves, which held all kinds of bottles and flasks. Lots of chemicals with complicated labels which I didn’t understand and some with a big symbol on them, which I did. Some contained animals like mice or snakes floating in a clear liquid. Others just some swimming bloody shapes, which I took to be organs. Under the window was a big metal table and a sink. He let me look around for a moment, before telling me more. “You see, I like to preserve animals and body parts. I teach anatomy at the university, so this is useful for demonstrations. But I also like to do it out of curiosity. I mostly need some help cleaning out the collection and maybe transferring some older specimens.”

He told me which shelves to look through and what to do and then he mostly left me to work on my own while he did something else around the house. I cleaned the jars, made new labels to replace the old fading ones, and transferred some organs to new liquid after he showed me how. Tadhg was right about the smell: it was unbearable, even with the window open. The doctor let me tie a cloth around my nose and mouth, but that could only do so much. After four hours of this, he gave me a handful of dollar bills and let me go home. Eithne wasn’t happy with me working longer, but I think she saw the money, because she didn’t mind anymore when I worked for the doctor again on Wednesday.

This went on for a few weeks like this. Doctor Schleyer had a large collection of specimen; he showed me even more shelves in an adjacent room, which I also helped sort out. After I had worked there for two weeks, he asked me if I wanted something to drink after finishing up work. I was parched, so I was glad, even though I wouldn’t have drunk anything from his house under normal circumstances. Blame it on the fumes. We sat down in his little kitchen and he poured me some tea.

“You are doing very good,” he said. “You haven’t worked with these kinds of specimens before, have you?”

“No, I haven’t,” I told him. “I’ve done labor all my life, mostly as a docker.”

“Would you like to know more? I mean about the work I do. You must want to know how to preserve animals and not just transfer them into new bottles, no?”

I was, I must admit, curious, however morbid it was. I also had ulterior motives. “Sure. It’s interesting work and you pay very well, if I can be honest.”

He laughed at that. “Yes, I will always pay for good workers. Maybe next week I can show you more.”

After I had finished my tea, he led me to the front door. Before leaving, I turned around and asked him, “What happened to the other docker you hired? Boyle?”

“Oh yes, he. I sent him to Boston to pick up a specimen from a colleague. He didn’t come back. I guess he must’ve run off with it. Shame, he was a competent man.”

I feigned understanding and bade him goodnight. I wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t a lot I could do right now; Tadhg was still gone with no signs as to where he went except his connection to the doctor. I checked in on Aoife once a week and she didn’t know anything either. I left her half the money I made from my evening job, but of course that couldn’t replace her husband.

The next week, the doctor showed me another room in his house. “These are my special specimens. They are directly tied to my research.” He took down a jar and placed it on a small table. The jar contained a small brown mouse, but it wasn’t filled with the same clear liquid as the others. “This mouse is specially prepared. The other specimens, which you handled, were all dead, but this one isn’t, not exactly. Hand me that lamp.” He pointed at a big tube lying on the top shelf. I handed it to him. He fumbled with a little lever on the side and soon a bright warm light shone from the end of it. He put his hand on it.

“Look at the eyes of the mouse,” he told me. The mouse was really tiny, only about two inches from head to toe, with a much longer tail curled below it. Its eyes were as small as pin heads and entirely black. He pointed the light at the mouse and released his hand. As soon as the light hit the little rodent, its black pupils shrank to the size of a grains of sand. “This is a reflex that many animals have to light, including humans. It only works if they have a functioning nervous system, though.”

“So it’s still alive?” I asked.

“Maybe. Most of its bodily functions still work. I replaced its blood with a special solution of formaldehyde and some other substances. It completely paralyzes the mouse but keeps its vital organs functioning. It still has a heartbeat, although it is very slow. They need to be kept in this special nutrient solution or else they die. I can show you how to replace it.”

He showed me how to prepare the solution and went into more detail on the process of preserving living specimen. I didn’t understand half of what he told me, didn’t know if the animals were still alive or not. Still, I helped him and he passed me an extra note per day. He had all kinds of animals in this room: mice and rats, snakes, frogs, even a small cat. Even their organs. “The process is largely the same for organs,” he explained, “although the composition of the fluid changes. They need to be taken out shortly after death, or else they will have deteriorated too much.”

We worked together like this for about a month. Sometimes he offered me tea and we sat down in his kitchen to talk. He didn’t have a wife, spent much of his time at university or in his laboratory and didn’t do much outside of his work. “I am very invested in this research,” he explained, “and this place offers me a lot of freedom, which I didn’t have back then.” I didn’t know what he meant by “this place”, whether it was America or this deserted neighborhood.

I didn’t ask him about Tadhg and he didn’t say anything either. At this point, I began to develop a hunch, though, and I intended to pursue it. During tea I asked him, “Have you ever preserved human organs? Studying human anatomy and all.”

He became quiet at this, or rather calm. He put down his cup and looked at the wall. “I have,” he said. “It is not as… well developed as it is for animals. There is still a lot of research to be done, which is difficult, you understand?”

I nodded. “Not a lot of willing participants, I’d wager.”

“No, no. A lot more difficult than mice.” He became quiet again and tense. “Let me show you something.” He got up and went into the hall. I followed him to a door at the far end, which I hadn’t been in. He unlocked it with a key from his pocket and opened it. He went down a narrow staircase to the basement. I followed him down. It was damp, even more so than the house. Organs looked down at me from shelves. These were obviously human. Livers, hearts, eyes, kidneys and brains. He stood under the electric lamp, which cast weird shadows across his face. “These are taken mostly from the university hospital. People who died but were mostly healthy, which means accidents, mostly.”

He let me take a look around the room. The hearts were still beating, slowly, only five or six times per minute maybe, but they were, all at different rates. I covered up a jar with an eyeball in it and quickly pulled my hand away and the pupil shrank just like with the mouse. I had a queer feeling in my stomach. These were mostly taken from accidents.

“Over here,” he said. He stood at the end of a room, next to a large tank which was placed on a table. The tank was about six feet long and had a glass top, through which I could see what looked like bundles of string coming from a brain. “What do you think this is?” he asked me.

“I don’t know.” I stared at it, tried to make sense of it. I could see a brain and eyeballs and spine and it looked vaguely human-shaped. The bundles, looked almost like hair. “It’s human.”

“It's a human,” he corrected. “A human nervous system, to be precise, extracted by hand and preserved with formaldehyde solution. Fully responsive, if you want to see.”

I didn’t. It felt like my stomach was turning over inside me. I needed to get out. “I’m sorry, I think the fumes are makin’ me dizzy.” With that I rushed out of the basement and out the front door, where I emptied my stomach into the bushes.

The doctor found me hunched over on the stairs. He patted me on the shoulder. “It’s alright,” he said. “You can go home now and we’ll go back to preserving mice next time.” I took the money out of his hand and turned around without saying another word. I was glad that Eithne was asleep when I came home that night; I couldn’t have talked to her after this.

I went back to work the day after, but I still didn’t feel alright. Cillian didn’t like me working for Doctor Schleyer and he had made it known to me these past few weeks. When I showed up that morning, he saw my face and went, “Have the chemicals caught up with ya?” I didn’t want to trouble him, though, so I told him that it was just a little mishap last night, nothing to worry about.

I didn’t go back that day; I couldn’t stomach it. When my shift was over, the foreman approached me. “McElroy,” he said, “shouldn’t you be somewhere else?”

I was scrambling for an excuse. “I was feelin’ a bit sickly,” was the only thing I could come up with on the spot.

“Then don’t come here. Can’t have you making the others sick as well.” He left it at that; he doesn’t care that much about our wellbeing.

I walked home. It had been a week already since I had last stopped by Tadhg’s place to visit Aoife. My legs took me there without thinking. I stood before the door of their apartment. I could hear Aoife talking to the kids. I didn’t knock. I couldn’t, not without having anymore news of Tadhg, not with having run away from the only lead I had. It was foolish, but I couldn’t give up on Tadhg. So, I turned around and went to the only place I thought I could find an answer.

The street in front of the doctor’s house was completely deserted and so dark that you could barely see anything, if not for the contours of the buildings against the sky. I approached his house, next to the metalworker. There were no lights visible from the outside, but then he kept most of his window blinds closed. It was well past ten, so I figured he must be asleep. Still, I stood listening in front of his door for a few minutes, straining to hear anything. I looked through the keyhole but couldn’t see any light. After I was reasonably sure that he wasn’t walking around inside, I took out a small pocket knife and used it to force open the door, trying not to make too much noise in the process.

Inside, I felt my way along the hallway. I’d walked along it dozens of times at this point and counted the steps toward the basement door. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. In total darkness, I pried it open too. I closed the door behind me and slowly walked down the stairs, testing each step, being extra careful on the ones that I knew were creaky. I felt around the wall and switched on the electric light. It illuminated the room with a slight hum, casting stark shadows on the wall behind the jars. Everything was still.

My legs were getting weaker. I didn’t want to look at the thing in the tank again, but I had to. Putting one foot in front of the other, I made my way over to the table. It was still there, unchanged from the image that had seared itself into my memory. A human brain and eyeballs with hundreds of hair-like nerves spread out below it, suspended in liquid.

I bent over the tank, my nose almost touching the glass. The liquid was almost clear, with just a light brown tinge to it. The thing wasn’t moving at all. No signs that it was alive in any way; no way to find out who it was. I looked at the brain, a weird gelatinous mass of worms, grey and pink like old meat. The eyes were covered in tiny red veins and that’s when I saw it: green pupils. Green like the meadows around Cork. Irish green.

I stepped back. Tadhg wasn’t in Boston, but in this basement; neither alive nor dead. Shocked, my mind was whirling. I made my way back out, closed the doors behind me, not even making sure to be quiet. When I reached the street, I began to run. I felt my lungs burning up, my head emptying. I had to catch my breath before I could enter our home. I was sweating, though I didn’t think it was just from having run there. I had to do something, though I didn’t know what.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I crawled out of bed before Eithne woke up and left for work early. I needed to clear my mind and hailing cargo was the best way to do that. I avoided Cillian all day. I didn’t know what to talk to him about. At four, I clocked out and went to the doctor’s house. I didn’t know how, but I needed to confront him, get some sort of explanation.

He opened the door and greeted me like normal. He was very understanding, when I told him that I was sick last time and directed me into the preparation room. We started working on animals like before. We had a live mouse strapped to the table. He had two syringes put into it; one with which to draw out the blood and one to put in the solution at the same time. The mouse twitched during the procedure, but after it was completely stiff. “Would this work on humans as well?” I asked nonchalantly.

He paused for a second. “It has not been done yet,” he said.

“But have you tried?”

He kept on working on the mouse, putting it into the jar filled with nutrient solution.

Later, we sat down for tea, like nothing happened. Doctor Schleyer got up, saying, “I have to get some sugar. I will be back in a minute.” I was left in the kitchen, staring into my teacup.

I was at a dead end. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go to the police, I couldn’t go to Aoife and I didn’t know how to confront the doctor. I stood up, intent on leaving right now and putting this all behind me. When I turned around, Doctor Schleyer stood in the doorway holding a metal pipe in his hand. He must have hit me over the head because I don’t remember anything that happened after this.

When I woke up, I was down in the basement. My arms and legs were tied to a chair. He had spread out a bunch of equipment throughout the basement room. In front of me was a large tub of the same kind which contained Tadhg’s remains. He was mixing some bottles of solution. “You asked if this preservation also worked on humans,” he said. “Your friend asked the same thing.”

I tried to get out of the restraints, but I felt sluggish; he must have drugged me as well. “Don’t worry, I think it will be over quick. I don’t think you will feel much after this.” He came over to me and started inserting needles into my arms, one left and one right. “You saw how quickly it worked on the mice.”

He started drawing blood from the left arm, while feeding the formaldehyde solution into the right. It felt like fire flowing through my arm and into my body. I wanted to scream but couldn’t even open my mouth. My fingers were getting stiff, then the rest of the arm. Soon, I could not feel anything in my lower body. I passed out from the pain.

I woke up some time later. I looked through a pane of glass at the single light bulb in the basement, though everything was blurry. I could not move my eyes nor my head nor body. I didn’t hear. I didn’t feel. I’ve had plenty of time to think about everything that happened these past few months. I’m sorry Eithne. I’m sorry Tadhg and Aoife. Lying in my liquid grave, I hope I will die soon, but I don’t think luck is on my side.