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When you tend a bar, you soon learn that the later it gets, the weirder it gets, and I have had my share of weirdoes. There was that vampire romance writer a few years back – a writer of vampire romances, not a romance writer who was a vampire – and then the guy who claimed he was a special ops agent fighting monsters, and of course, the old lady who drank absinthe and crocheted quotes from Nietzsche onto throw pillows.  Then there was this guy, our latest creeper, just before we got shut down.  He sat at the dark end of the bar, by himself.  He was tall and thin, with exaggerated features, what people used to call gaunt – a real Ichabod Crane type, but with this weird pot belly.  He was a quiet sort, nursing his third scotch as we approached the last call.  He hadn’t said anything about himself, didn’t really have to, the faded, crude tattoo of digits on his arm spoke volumes.  I had been in the business, and in this town long enough to know when to talk to people and when to leave them alone.  They all come around to talking, eventually.  It’s like a church confessional, with booze, and without the guilt.

Prologue:  The Madness of Herbert West

Madness is a terrible thing, and an even worse thing to be accused of, particularly if one knows for a certainty that one is truly not mad.  I suppose it is the nature of madness to deny being mad, but this was the situation in which my colleague Herbert West found himself.  I did what I could to defend him, but the military tribunal would hear none of it, and threatened me with arrest as well, suggesting that I may have not been a simple bystander, but rather a co-conspirator in the rampage that left one of our colleagues dead.