THE ASPHYX

In Victorian England, philanthropic scientist Sir Hugo Cunningham is a member of a parapsychological society that studies psychic phenomena. As part of their latest investigation, the men have been photographing individuals at the moment of death. The resultant photos depict a strange smudge hovering around the body. Though the society concludes that they have captured evidence of the soul escaping the body, Cunningham is skeptical.

At a riverside party to celebrate his son's engagement, Cunningham is making home movies with a camera of his own invention when his son and the son's fiancée are killed in a boating accident. When Cunningham views the film, he sees that not only has he captured the blur, but that it is moving towards his son, and not away from him. Cunningham concludes that the blur is not the soul but a force known as an "asphyx", a kind of personal Grim Reaper, told of in Greek mythology, which comes for every individual at the moment of their death.

While filming a public execution, Cunningham activates a spotlight that he has crafted using phosphorus beneath a drip irrigation valve. Viewing the film with his adopted son and daughter's hopeful husband to be, Giles, Cunningham sees that the condemned man's asphyx was briefly held suspended in the spotlight's beam. Cunningham theorises that some property of the energy released by the combination of phosphorus and water renders the asphyx immobile. If correct, this would mean that an asphyx could be trapped, and that an individual would be immortal so long as their asphyx remained imprisoned.

Cunningham and Giles capture the asphyx of a dying guinea pig and seal it in the family tomb. Seeing immortality in his grasp, Cunningham tasks Giles with helping him to capture his own asphyx. Cunningham commissions the construction of an impenetrable vault door on his family tomb; once he has captured his asphyx, Giles is under instruction to seal the asphyx inside, so that no one can ever set it free. Using an electric chair to slowly kill himself, Cunningham summons his own asphyx. However, Giles is only experienced in capturing an asphyx with two men, and is forced to rely on his fiancée (and adoptive sister), Christina, for assistance. Christina is horrified with the experiments, but agrees to participate when Cunningham tells her that he will give his blessing for the two to marry if they allow him to make them immortal.

Theorising that imminent death, and not actual death, will summon an asphyx, Cunningham places Christina on a guillotine operated by Giles. During the experiment, the guinea pig chews through a hose pumping water onto the phosphorus stones being used to capture the asphyx. The equipment malfunctions and Christina is decapitated. Despondent, Cunningham insists that Giles open the vault and free his asphyx. Giles agrees, on the condition that Cunningham first grant him immortality. In fact Giles no longer wishes to live without his fiancée and, unbeknownst to Cunningham, he sabotages the equipment. As Cunningham attempts to gas Giles to death to summon his asphyx, he realises the equipment is not working, turns off the gas and turns on the oxygen to save Giles. Giles strikes a match, causing an explosion that kills him and destroys all of the equipment required to capture asphyxes.

Although Giles left behind the combination to the vault on a slip of paper, Cunningham destroys it, resolving that his own immortality is God's punishment for the deaths of Giles and Christina. In a framing sequence set in the 1970s, an ancient, disfigured Cunningham roams the streets of London with the guinea pig. He wanders into the path of a car collision, which kills both of the drivers. A police officer responding to the scene is shocked to find that Cunningham, crushed beneath the two vehicles, is still alive.

Cunningham’s experiments to capture his own Asphyx result in tragedy, leading to the accidental death of Christina and the ultimate release of his Asphyx, nullifying his quest for immortality.

The ending underscores the dangers of tampering with the natural order and the limits of scientific ambition. Sir Hugo's pursuit of immortality brings irreversible loss, and the release of his Asphyx ultimately restores the balance he sought to disrupt, suggesting that some mysteries are best left unsolved.