A Tale Of Dexter Irwin

There was an occurrence only three nights past that put my soul on ice. Not an incident of mine but of someone previously unknown to me. He had revealed in due coarse a personal portrait of unfathomable and objectionably gloomy form so incomprehensibly mysterious that it terrified me to the base of my now jaundiced spine. It is also the reason as for why today I find myself hiding in the dark damp recesses of my mind, apprehensive in respect to the contemplation of returning into the populated sunlight.

I sat upon a stone bench surrounded by the vibrant park-like grounds of the university campus, a student of contemporary religion, as well as carrying a minor quite adeptly in courses of philosophy and modern social hierarchy commonly referred to as social studies. There was a blistering Indian summer heat blazing into the back of my tender Caucasian neck, yet my insatiable thirst for educational stimulation kept my workbooks open within my hands. Stooping from where I sat, I reached into my bag and retrieved a pen, preparing to begin my regimental litany of impromptu spontaneous studying which I performed judiciously every day like clockwork for the past three and a half years when I sensed rather than felt a supplemental weight affixed to the searing air beside me.

Turning, I saw a short round-faced young man of no more than twenty-five years sitting there; expressionless. His vibrant green hunter eyes wild and inconstant never seemed to focus on one particular thing, yet contained an inexplicable concentration. He had short, thick oily black hair and wore wire-rimmed spectacles of the coke bottle variety; dense lenses oozing out of thin frames. He was sweating a lot even for this unnatural arid temperature and his breath was quick and sharp. After an exchange of the usual conversational formalities, I had learned his name to be Dexter Irwin, a science student here at the university. He had a history of constantly being an oddity even among his fellow scholars and in his own words he described himself as a man who dares to dream and defy reality. A sentiment the bulk of the masses would like to believe they shared, but the conviction and manner in his elocution made it painfully obvious that the masses fell far short of their claims to true defiance, which in truth was possessed by and was indeed a somewhat unnerving reality belonging only to Dexter Irwin.

We talked nonsensically for a determined short while of his studies and his pointed interests, and I do not lie when I say that I was intrigued at what he relayed to me regarding his and his family’s exploits:

His grandfather, Dr. Fredrick Irwin had been a leading explorer in his day. He had ventured out into the deep Congo, seeking out the traditions and demigods of hidden tribes. Dexter’s father, Hershel Irwin some time in October of 1971 had received a letter of Dr Irwin’s’ sketchy demise and so his Grandfather was consequently never known personally by young Dexter Irwin. In the communication presented to the Irwin family were vague details concerning the “unidentifiable and suspect disappearance of Dr. F. D. Irwin,” telling of how the great silence within his company of six men (excluding the doctor himself) pointed to a mutinous plot of murder, and that the disloyal comrades were feeling the guilty repercussions of such a duplicitous act and now refused to impart any information as to the body’s whereabouts to the authorities. The truth of it was never known, and so there shall be no slander or conjecture speculated here, but the chances of an insurrection within the small group was highly improbable compared to the apparent barbarity of the secret tribes, which the aged voyager had written about in many of his journals. The clans he went to scrutinize (also noted copiously in his diaries) were idol worshiping and united spiritual social clusters of overpoweringly religious zeal.

The events surrounding the death of Dexter’s father, the aforementioned Hershel Irwin, were abundantly less suspicious. He had been killed when a storm had loosed itself upon the house where Dexter had spent his childhood. A striking bolt of electricity had shot down from the dark threatening clouds overhead and turned the house almost instantly into a fiery inferno. His father had died somewhere within millimeters of the source of that blaze.

From the age of eleven, Dexter had spent the majority of his youth in the custody of his uncle, his father’s first choice of guardian. A stern faced, god-fearing man who fastidiously chastised Dexter for every wrong footstep. He forbade the readings of certain texts, including the surviving remnants of his grandfather’s writings, most of which had burned in the fire at Dexter’s previous home, the place of his father’s untimely and untidy demise. Uncle Irwin was a good man at heart, and he kept a good living as a farmer, but the harsh restrictions he imposed upon Dexter had most certainly resulted in a specific and ominous consequence upon his bright nephew.

I discovered I had begun to form an uneasy connection to this unusual man and his history, and after scrutinizing a surmountable sum of profound interest marked in my increasingly curious eyes, he invited me to witness the results of some of his more recent studies, to which I keenly agreed.

Dexter’s house was situated unobtrusively upon a quiet prominence some miles away from the busy noise infected city, within a small familial suburb where everyone knew everyone else. Except that nobody seemed to know or recognize Dexter Irwin. He passed through the community without receiving a single sociable glance or so much as an offering or ambiguous murmuring of greeting as even strangers passing by are often known to do in such casual easy going neighborhoods.

It was from first glance that the somewhat dilapidated building of archaic design offered its ominous profile, which was leant a peculiar aura from the evening’s autumn orange sky, and yet this modest home was strangely welcoming and amiable in it’s simplicity. Within the confines of Dexter’s suburban cookie cutter structure were the usual happenings of any accommodation: a neglected kitchen where hung all manner of grimy pots and pans along two of the three door-less walls. A forgotten refrigerator was humming furiously in one corner with the door slightly ajar. I watched the light bulb which had previously illuminated the inside of the chilly appliance to reveal various aged cold cuts and other less identifiable food matter, stutter a moment and then extinguished itself completely as if much too embarrassingly mortified to reveal it’s meager content to a stranger. In the other corner stood a breach into the pantry, whose floorboards creaked and complained as it was attacked by the slightest of our dual approaching steps coming from the still-open front door, which led to this dim culinary juncture.

Continuing on into a small living room, I saw that there was not much need for furnishings when one lived as alone and excluded as Dexter Irwin did. It contained only a worn-out scruffy old colonial style couch that had broken through its fabric and now displayed discolored yellow padding here and there, and a tiny television set sat alone on a fragile three legged table standing slightly apart from the wall, unplugged and gloomily covered in dust, disgust and self loathing.

Dexter led me hastily through that cheerless room and to the stairwell, which we passed moving instead through a heavy ancient and groaning door opening out to a passage that descended by means of some wormed and squeaking wooden steps into a mottled, strangely scented cellar spotted with what could only be described as threateningly active culture specimens of unknown origin. Dexter’s lumbering pace grew to be more eager then, if I remember accurately, for I vaguely but certainly recall the haunting rhythmical sound of his soft shoes upon the steps as he moved downwards in front of me.

He explained as we descended deeper into the basement, that he was most proud of his off-site research and efforts. Ambling almost casually through the darkened shadows of the house’s underbelly, Dexter found a frayed cord, which he gently pulled and we suddenly became flooded by a powerful sallow radiance, which came from a single hi intensity bulb hung from the ceiling. Upon my first glance, it was evident that Dexter spent most of his time in his prized basement; for the neglect and decaying final phase of dilapidation the rest of the home seemed plagued by were not apparent here.The sterile conduct of his work beneath the house was emphasized by the hygienic purity of everything I encountered. His (what he had called previously) “laboratory” was a hospitable clean room, and I might have taken some pleasure in naming it a sanctuary for respite from the chaotic world, had it not been for the blasphemous impiety of the wickedly sterile confines.

The walls were layered in a multitude of shiny instruments, some delicate and some verging on bludgeoning armaments, many mounted on frames like cherished prized quarry of a lengthy hunt. A large desk spanned one side of the room and was covered in loose-yellowed mature papers and documents, all bearing the insignia of one Dr. F. D. Irwin. Searching through them, I came across one, which caught my eye with dreadfully ardent attention. It was dated October 30th 1971, and read:

The indigenous and innate prejudices of these tribal people are amazing even to me. I have tried and succeeded in communicating with the man who I have assumed to be the chief, and am beginning to understand their ways of life more straightforwardly. Their abundance of idolatry for their Nature-Deities has led me to believe that even a classification as Pagan would be too much of an underestimation for me to consider.

And one from the following day:

My guides and workers have left me. During the night they ran, I heard the breaking of sticks and massive rustlings of leaves too late as they disappeared. I had noticed a strange behavioral pattern as of late; they seemed to gravitate more towards escape than faith and loyalty in me, ever since I had achieved a thriving contact with the people hidden in the trees.

There was not an entry for the first day of November, but there was an item dated November 2nd, 1971. It read:

By what merciless Gods do these people worship? Their rich and callous treatment leads me only to reinforce an already long-standing stereotype. Yesterday, I saw a rite of ancient alacrity, and it had disturbed me greatly, for they held me as I watched, seeking some sort of wicked approval. They had strapped a young pregnant woman, arms and legs, to a pole on either side with ropy vines, and driven these into the mud beside a nearby riverbank. Squirming and writhing in fearful terror, she had her baby by the way of a sharpened stone slicing into her belly. The infant, slick with blood was drowned instantly within the mired sludge at its mother’s feet, she was then beheaded and dissected, her body parts subsequently impaled upon ceremonial spears held by her brothers and sisters.

I will lavish no more detail than this, for that shocking scene which made me gag then vomit, would surely do so once more should I recollect it more intensely.

Leafing through the nearby papers, I discovered the missing entry from November the 1st:

They marked me today, a simple slash upon my palm. I presume it to be some kind of clannish symbol, though I have seen no other living soul bear it as well. They seem to see me as an ally now, after I had exposed to them some various marvels from our western worlds, to which they reacted at first frightened, then curious, then they gasped with wonder as if those marvels were great enchantments. My acceptance is made apparent by my being the first to taste from each meat that has just come from the bounty of a recent hunting trek, and the numerous trinkets and charms given to me by the village’s women.Perhaps they see me as some sort of hero or champion, or even, in my narcissistic way, as another God.“Look, here,” whispered Dexter’s stark accent, which disturbed me from my reading. I am almost glad that it did, for the other two entries which followed the account of the ritual on November 2nd would surely be far less pleasant than I deeply feared. He stood at an extra desk, which was on the opposite side of the room to me. It was covered with a long white cloth, beneath which were the disinfected metallic curves and protrusions familiar to any medical student or coroner.

Dexter Irwin pulled the fabric back and revealed a face I had seen just recently. It was in the local newspaper a few days past, one George Thurman, a retired blue-collar professional who had died in a hospital some days ago. I had read his inconsequential name with usual remote neutrality, as I did with most of the obituary records, but I remembered his picture well. It was a photograph displaying the man in the latter stages of his life, bearing a gentle smile and vibrant eyes. Now laid out the victim of a stroke upon a scientist’s table. Dexter explained that his “subject” (as he so sickeningly described it) had been covertly retrieved from a nearby cemetery the night before, and had been unceremoniously hauled back here to his laboratory with neither consent nor hindrance.

My stillness was powerfully mysterious and inexplicable, yet grim silence it was all that came from me. Perhaps I was shocked by his grandfather’s accounts, or maybe I was appalled at the way in which Dexter Irwin so fervently illustrated his ideas and tactics for his latest subject, or even as it has faintly crossed my mind recently as I have been hiding so fixedly within my thoughts, my silence was due to a morbid interest and stupefaction in this student’s supplementary learning. Of what it was that kept me quiet, I cannot or dare not say. But silent I was, even so.

Dexter commenced in applying liquids and viscous gels to the body of George Thurman, energetically smearing them with a heinous exuberance. He placed on the body, some strange utensils of which their sinister function was just as foreign to me as their shape and design. He bade me watch closely while he “defended his Father's honor” by completing the studies of which Hershel Irwin so ardently loved and pursued until that fateful night when God's own thunderbolt brought his diabolical research to an immediate and terminal disruption.” Having been previously banefully fixated upon the letters and memoirs of the late Dr. Irwin, I had just then noticed the antiseptic luminance of the room retract and fade and that there were a selection of levers, pedals and switches nearby. Dexter had quietly stridden purposefully over to these protrusions and was now initiating a service, which had become so systematic and encoded upon his brain that no dim or no light could ever befall him as an obstacle. He was ceremonious in methodically pulling, pushing and twisting at the machine as if he conducted an invisible archaic orchestra the likes of which were just as unfamiliar yet anomalous as his practice.

Then the voltage deprived muted light from the single bulb dimmed even further. It flickered violently as strange electricity surged powerful throughout the dank cellar. The ozone blue of the voltage that flowed through odd equipment illuminated Dexter maniacally beneath his fingers and toward the contraptions he had placed upon the specimen which he so treasured. It lasted only a short moment and then the pandemonium turned to quiet. The hushed echo of my accelerated heartbeat hammered a deafening rage at my ribcage, and threatened to burst out pitilessly from witnessing this following scene.

The deceased body of George Thurman twitched and thrashed fanatically, grasping at something unseen in the air. His vivid blue eyes snapped suddenly open, as if he had never died. They bore a knowledge of which I fervently wished to have no part, and I fled the house of the mad scientist Dexter Irwin, replaying the sight of the demented scholar clutching his reanimated cadaver by the dirty and sullied collar, shaking it fiercely and yelling, “Tell me what you saw! Tell me what lies beyond death!”