The Head of Antonio Scarpa

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The man who lit it turned to survey the room and began to clear it of debris. The candle protested, guttering. As the man pulled a rickety table to the middle of the room, it almost went out. The man stopped and looked at it, but under his gaze, the flame burned straight and clean. As his activities resumed, the candle flickered again, but without conviction.

The figure muttered to himself, occasionally chuckling at an inner scenario. He was a bulky man, with thinning hair, and a habit of touching a place between his eyes as if to push up glasses which were not there. Incongruously, he wore dress slacks and a polo shirt. Placing two canvas sacks on the table, he pushed two chairs against the wall and rested a backpack on one of the chairs. As he rummaged through it, removing various smaller bags, one of the sacks on the table began to leak a liquid that pooled on the uneven table and after a few minutes began to plink slowly onto the floor.

The sound eventually pierced his awareness and he pushed the offending sack to a different corner of the table. Another minute passed, the liquid pooled again, followed the tilt of the table and was again dripping from along the same trajectory as before. This time, it went unnoticed.

The man searched more fiercely in his pack and with a final exclamation of annoyance stood up. Leaving the door ajar, he slipped once more into the woods. He was gone for hours. The candle burned serenely. The plink, plink of the falling liquid lent a hypnotic effect to the atmosphere, if there had been a consciousness to witness it. The moon just rising over the forest was only a sliver but the faint light created shadows within shadows. In the cabin, the only illumination came from the solitary candle but it was enough. The space was small.

When the man returned, he was gleeful. Over his shoulder was draped a long form which convulsed like an enormous caterpillar as it entered the cabin. He dropped it on the threshold with a grunt, and dragged it the rest of the way into the cabin. Upon hitting the ground, it became a seething squirming mass. It kicked and pushed his way into a corner, a thin, young man bound at ankles and wrists. Duct tape sealed his mouth.

His captor went over to the bags on the table, and after wiping the surface with his coat sleeve, he carefully undid one of the sacks. As the material fell away, the bound youth convulsed, trying to constrict further into the corner. It was a head, slightly desiccated, but with its features still discernible. Wispy white hair and mutton chops framed a gnome-like visage. One eye drooped and the teeth and jawline jutted beneath a swollen nose.

The man was stroking the head, crooning at it. “It’s OK, my friend. It was an uncomfortable trip but we have almost reached the end.”

He turned a sly smile at the frightened form in the corner. “His name is Antonio Scarpa. I stole him from the University of Padua.” He touched the forehead gently and bent down to kiss it. “He is a great, great man. Technically, he died in 1832."

Chuckling, he fingered a hair strand, "October 31st, no less, although that would have meant nothing to the Italians in 1832. He’s been preserved for almost two hundred years, waiting for me.” He stepped back to study the head. Its eyes stared off blankly in the direction of the candle.

“He needs a platform,” the man said suddenly and left the cabin. Taken by surprise at the abrupt departure, the person on the floor wasted a precious minute staring at the disembodied head on the table. With the other man gone and nobody but the gagged man in the room, the drip was clearly audible. The young man’s face swiveled in its direction but nothing could be seen but a faint falling movement in the shadows. His face finally turned to the door which was partly open, and he suddenly erupted into motion. Frantically kicking and rolling, he had almost made his way to the entrance when it opened fully and the other was back, a thick branch in his hand.

“What? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Pushing his captive with his foot, he brought the youth to the table’s leg, retrieved duct tape from his pack, and taped him to it. When he was securely bound, the older man turned to his pack and rummaged through it to remove a small ax.

The youth tied to the table pulled his knees up sharply, rattling the table. Above him the other sack shifted in the turmoil and the liquid began to creep along a different pathway.

The big man chuckled again. He took a long look around the cabin and moved around the table, near the back wall. Kneeling down, he began to hew at the floorboards. When the floor was breached, he chopped away at the soil beneath. Eventually, he picked up the heavy branch he had retrieved from the wood, and inserted it in the hole, backfilling it as he went. He whittled at the top of the post with the ax and then reverently, he picked up the head. Beneath the neck was a flat base with an interior impression which he carefully placed on the top of the post.

Now the man’s head and the disembodied head were at the same height. The man seemed pleased. In the uncertain candlelight, the preserved visage seemed to alternate between a leer and a grimace.

The man glanced down at the youth tied to the table leg.

“You probably want to know what I am doing. No, wait, your intellectual curiosity wouldn’t extend that far. You want to know what I will be doing with you, in particular, don’t you. Well, I can tell you. But are you worth telling?”

He contemplated the man on the floor, then swiftly reached down and tore off the tape. The captive winched, but as it dawned on him that his voice was freed, he began to shout, escalating to various screaming pitches. The other man, annoyed, reached for the roll of tape and tore off a piece to retape the mouth. The youth stopped. The man put the tape down.

“It won’t do you any good to make a racket like that. My family has owned this property, three hundred acres, mind you, for a long time and the cabin is in the center. Besides which, it has a reputation of being haunted. Yes, really, it just shows you the type of superstitious dolts that live around here. It was nothing really. My grandfather and I, we had a bond. Scarpa, too, would have understood. We need to know things, and in the process of knowing, pain is not relevant, although it can be strident in expression. In any case, no one comes here. You won’t be heard.

As he was speaking, the liquid on the table, traveling its new path along the tilted surface began to drip off the edge, landing on the head of the bound figure. He felt it and tried to move his head out of the way but the liquid slid over the brown curls, dripped thickly down his cheek, over his lip and into his mouth. He spat it out.

“Ugh. What is that?”

“Blood,” said the man with a dismissive shrug.

The captive could smell it now, the thick, metallic tang of it. His stomach heaved. He tried to reposition himself but the best he could do was to let the drip hit his shoulder and run down his arm where it dampened the tape and made it sticky around his wrists.

The older man paid no attention. He dragged one of the chairs, that he had pushed against the wall, to the center of the room and sat on it to ease the conversation with his audience on the floor. “Antonio Scarpa, whose head you are honored to gaze upon, was the greatest anatomist and neurologist who ever lived. Dozens of body parts are named after him.” The man stopped and studied the face that now looked down on both of them. “He was not well liked. People defaced his statue after his death, but I sometimes wonder if that’s why he wasn’t “properly” buried. They removed his head plus other body parts that interest me less. That head’s been preserved for almost two hundred years. The opportunities that decision presents are incalculable.

He reached up to stroke the hair on the head that wobbled on the post. “He knew his own worth and refused to hide it. Total dedication to the truth. He destroyed anyone who tried to confront him. There is a nobility about his adherence to truth, bugger the consequences. Nothing stood in its way. Back then, before anesthesia, in order to save lives and add to anatomical knowledge, of course, they had to cut into living things. Animals, of course, but human beings , too, even children and babies.”

“Darwin, as famous as he is, was a true coward. Honestly, it makes me ill, the way people idolize him while Scarpa is almost forgotten except among the practitioners in his own field. Darwin, the weak, irresolute creature that he was, left medical school because, in the nature of his studies, he watched a child being operated on. Perhaps the child was screaming without the benefit of anything to numb its experience, although I doubt it, they had gags back then, too, but the point being, how can a man like that be a harbinger of truth? No, no, to Scarpa, all that was irrelevant, it might even have become pleasant, that happens, you know, but it also meant he was a great man, above all others. He refused to let anything stop him, not even screams.” He gave the young man a sharp look, "Screams can be annoying."

He turned from gazing at the head on the post and looked down at the man on the floor. “I, too, am an anatomist. I, too, am as great as Scarpa. And it is I, who will, reconstitute his brain. You are gaping, my young friend, but it is true. I have done it with mice. I have done it with monkeys. I can do it for Scarpa."

“I needed another brain though, one recently dead, and lo,” he reached for the other sack and pulled it off. A head rolled out and tangled itself in its long black hair. The man picked it up, smoothed hair away from its face and held it so the bound man could see it.

“Her name is Professor Andrea O’Donnell, Professor of Chemistry. Take a good look, my young thief. Your fates are inextricably aligned.”

The captive recoiled. And then he looked more closely. “Shit. She’s hot.”

The man put the head back on the table and wiped his hands on a cloth. “Yes, it’s a pity, but I did not really care who I used. I rigged an electrical current in the lab next to mine. When the electricity in my lab flickered, I knew I had caught my mouse. It could have been half a dozen other people, but she happened to be the one working late that night. The most beautiful member of the collegiate membership, and surprisingly, her rise through the ranks may not have been based on her looks. She had a string of rather prestigious awards and publications to her name. But no matter, she serves a higher purpose now."

“After the electricity flickered, I entered the chemistry lab and spent most of the night carefully removing her head. It was done before morning. She, her head, I mean, I had no use for the rest of her, she joined Antonio in the trunk of my car and I reached here by nightfall."

“This is simplistic. You would not understand the detailed version but basically, I’m going to ligature her neurons to his, and yours to both of theirs, and through use of the countercurrent in the power of your freshly dying brain and her freshly dead one, I am going to reinvigorate his synapses and he’ll be able to speak again. Of course, it will be Italian speech, but no matter, I have brushed up."

The young man who had been squirming in an attempt to loosen his bonds, suddenly grew very still, “Wait, what? What are you going to do?”

“Oh, you heard me. I don’t need to repeat it.”

“You’re insane, man. What you’re saying doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Oh, it does, I assure you, but you won’t be able to grasp or appreciate my skill at being able to do it. And I am very skillful. Just getting Scarpa’s stolen head into this country required a great deal of cleverness.”

“It’s murder, you moron. You’re going to die by electrocution or lethal injection or whatever they do. That-that university has to know it was you.

“Oh, they will probably guess correctly, yes.”

“So why make it worse by killing me?

The man stopped arranging the table and turned to look down at his captive. “Your logic and level of understanding is abysmal,” he said flatly. “Speaking of stupidity, I am curious. Why were you sleeping in my car? I appreciate it, of course. It was a piece of luck for me. I went to retrieve my microdissection kit and there you were sleeping like a baby in the back seat, a gift for me. I thought I was going to have to pick someone from the town.”

The young man grew frantic again, “Dude! Look, I am sorry. I was just lost! I’ve been lost for days. Did a little heroin with a little tequila with my friends and when I came out of it, they were gone, and I couldn't find my way back. And it’s been days! And there was your car. Doors unlocked. And dry. These trees get so goddamned damp at night.”

More relaxed now, the young man’s tone changed, “You, dude, are nuttier than a box of peanut brittle,” he chuckled. “The mad scientist routine is really good; but I just don’t believe it. That’s murder, for fuck’s sake, that you were talking about; but I don’t believe for a moment that you actually did something like that. And that thing you said you’re going to do to a 200-year-old head. No way. I’m not a neuro-bio-nerd, or whatever you are, but it’s obvious, none of that could possibly work. You’re having me on. Those heads are some sort of props from a ghoul shop. I bet my friends paid you to pull this stunt. It had me going for a while. It’s really good.”

His captor didn’t answer. He was busy setting up the table. A strong smell of rubbing alcohol permeated the cabin.

The youth lapsed into silence. Finally, he said, “It’s not a joke, is it?”

“No,” the man replied absently.

“Nothing I say will change your mind?”

“No.”

The bound man began to scream, “You loon, absolute fucking nutcase, horrible, hideous, old freak - “

The older man calmly placed tape over the contorted mouth. There was a frantic scuffling movement, a squelch and a small whistling sound, like a breeze through subterranean caverns. The large man murmured to himself as he worked. The moon inched its way across the sky and the night grew darker. Occasionally, he emitted a low chuckle. Eventually, the plink, plink was joined by a twin sound, duplink, duplink.

Plink, duplink, plink, duplink.

The candle guttered and went out. Thrown unceremoniously into darkness, the space seemed shocked. The man standing at the table cursed and moved towards the window and the offending candle, but as he turned, he slid on the liquid on the floor and his feet shot out from under him. A heavy thwack shook the cabin as his head hit the floor.

Silence settled. Even the drip was muted as it fell on the body on the floor. After pooling below the man’s Adam's apple, the blood leaked sideways down his neck and joined another pool made by the decapitated corpse in the corner.

Outside the cabin, the sliver of the moon made its way across the sky and was about to dip below the trees. Its light briefly touched on the candle stub on the ledge; the smoke from its extinguishment long since dissipated into the cabin’s atmosphere which was still thick with the scents of rubbing alcohol, blood and a fading fear. At long last, the crescent moon disappeared below the trees. The black interior to the cabin was absolute.

A small smack severed the silence, followed by a raspy cough, so dry that the dead leaves in the corner of the cabin crackled.

Finally, a voice, querulous with age, came out of the dark, “Dove . . . sone? . . .C'è . . . . nessuno?”