The Monsters We Deserve

by Marcus Sedgwick

  ‘Yes,’ Mary is saying, ‘the very first adaptation of my book; on stage, which I myself saw in 1823; and already this mistaken notion about what my story actually is.’

  ‘How so?’ I ask.

  ‘The very title of the piece tells you all you need to know: it is called Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein.’

  ‘Playing God, again,’ I say. ‘Playing God settles your fate. A bad one.’

  ‘Quite,’ Mary says.

  ‘But, if I remember rightly from the biographies, you did not entirely hate this play.’

  She fixes me with a look and I see a glimpse of her fifty-three-year-old self from her previous visit.

  ‘Indeed. But in time I have come to learn that by then, my creation was already out of my hands. From its origin, the meaning I wanted people to take from the book was missed, while these other messages were set in its place. And you know, maybe even I did not know what my book really meant. Not till later, long after it was out in the world.’

  That makes sense to me. Sometimes we write and we know what we do. But mostly, I suspect, we don’t. Mary stands, and takes a slow turn around the table while she speaks, her fingers trailing in the dust on the table top, the lace on the hem of her dress sweeping the boards. I notice her footsteps make no sound; no trace appears of her fingertips in the dust.

  ‘People say it is about the dangers of playing God. This is not true. Nowhere in the text will you find words denouncing Victor’s attempts to create life. People say it is about the dangers of modern science. Yet nowhere in the text will you find this idea to be reinforced – the only thing criticised is that Victor gets his science wrong with his misshapen, hideous being, not that he erred by attempting his experiment in the first instance.’

  I follow Mary as she turns behind my back, then catch her as she comes into my sight again.

  ‘And so?’ I ask. ‘The real meaning of the book?’

  ‘Why, you have already given it, just a few moments ago.’

  I understand.

  ‘We are responsible for our creations.’

  ‘Exactly correct. This is what Victor’s true crime is; not that he creates a man, but that, having created one, he does not care for what he has created. He finds it ugly and repulsive. He shuns it just as people, throughout history, have shunned the poor, or the leper, or the deformed. Thus, rejected and abandoned, the creature learns the evil ways of man rather than the noble ones. And that is how a monster is born.’

  She stands in front of me for a moment, then resumes her tour around the table, into the darkness, behind my back, round again. Each time she turns behind me, I expect her to vanish. She is as silent as an empty room, she may already have gone.

  But she speaks.

  ‘It is a book about motherhood. More generally, parenthood. It is about abandonment. The crime of forsaking our offspring. Bringing someone into the world and then casting them adrift. That is the true horror of my book.’

  I remember Mary’s story a little further. I remember her children.

  At the time her book was published, she had lost one baby, a girl, premature at seven months, dying a few days into life. A short time later, Percy and she named their second child William.

  I have always found it remarkable … No, I have always found it truly terrifying that, knowing what pain it is to lose a child, she then gave the name of William to Victor’s baby brother in her novel, and made him the first victim of the monster’s hands. What folly! Or what bravery! Or maybe some awful scratching mischief, as when you do something you know it would be better not to do; like sliding a fingernail under a scab … I have written some horror in my time, yet I could never name a murdered child after one of my children, for fear of hexing them. Of course, nothing would happen. Nothing. Probably. But what if it did? What if it did?

  I wonder what Mary came to feel about it; given that, eighteen months after the publication of her book, her own William, her real son, was to die, at less than four years of age. Mary would be a mother again; in all three of her four children would die. Motherhood, parenthood, she’s right. That’s what Frankenstein is about; and when we give birth to something, well, shouldn’t we love them and care for them whether they live to be a hundred, or die a few days out from the womb?

  I watch her as she walks around me, and I know that she knows all this, even though, at the age she has chosen to appear to me, William’s death has not yet happened. I know this because, as I wonder these things, she answers me.

  ‘No, I would not name another ill-starred character after my child, were I have to have my chances over again.’

  She pauses.

  ‘So, you are going to assist me, are you not?’

  *

  I hate this book. I wanted to destroy it, for all its flaws and snobbery, I wanted to pour scorn on it. But she’s right, I am going to help her, for she wrote something powerful that was taken out of her hands the moment it was born, through which her own meaning has been lost.

  Therefore, I have nothing to do, but stand, put my hand out as she offers me hers, and I say, ‘Yes.’

  Our skin touches, for a second, maybe two, as we seal our deal, and I wonder if the skin I am touching is alive or dead and I wonder whether I am still alive, or dead.

  She smiles, briefly, and bids me sit down in the chair again.

  She retakes her seat.

  The light from the lamp flickers and glows and her face is not the face of a long dead woman but a girl of little more than teenage years. Thus it is disconcerting when she slides open the drawer, and lifts out the key, with the label.

  ‘You know where this belongs now?’

  ‘The cellar of Le Piège, I presume.’

  ‘And you know what is in there?’

  I swallow.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You must not let him out. Not yet. Not as he is. At the moment, at the moment, there is the monster that everyone imagines my creature to be. He must not go out into the world again in this form. You have to recreate him. That is your task. You have to stay here and recreate him as he originally was. Not evil, but innocent. A blank canvas, on to which the best of human life might have been bestowed. This is your chance.’

  ‘How? Do you mean I am to rewrite your book?’

  Once more she stands and circles me.

  ‘I … I am not sure how it can be done. That is for you to decide. I have faith. You have to find a way to recreate my book, if not rewrite it. But there is one matter above all else …’

  ‘Yes?’

  She turns behind me, out of sight in the murky room.

  ‘You must have people understand this: that we are responsible for what we create.’

  ‘But, I cannot … I mean, I don’t know if it’s even possible to—’

  I stop.

  I stop, because she has gone, and I am talking to the dark, empty air. The lantern burns. The snow falls.

  monster (n.)

  early 14c., “malformed animal or human, creature afflicted with a birth defect”

  from Old French monstre, mostre “monster, monstrosity” (12c.)

  and directly from Latin monstrum “divine omen, portent, sign; abnormal shape; monster, monstrosity”

  figuratively “repulsive character, object of dread, awful deed, abomination”

  from root of monere “to admonish, warn”

  from proto-Indo-European *moneyo-, suffixed (causative) form of root *men- “to think”

  To think.

  Monster means to think.

  A monster means to think.

  So all our thoughts are monsters?

  Trapped.

  Unable to leave, unable to write. For how can I possibly achieve what she wants me to achieve? I find I want to help her, I do. But it’s an impossible task, isn’t it? To change the past?

  Maybe. Maybe not. History can be rewritten. That happens sometimes; when one ideology supplants another, when what were the facts are re-cast, discarded and remade, for ‘n
ew’ facts. That is why books get burned, by those who would rewrite not just history, but an entire culture. And now Mary wants me to burn her book. So it can be remade, and yet, as I said, books cannot be burned, as long as they are alive in one person’s memory. Yet perhaps there is a slim chance that I can do what she wants me to. And if I can, I want to, for I see now why I need to myself. I have to believe we can be something other than the thing we have created, and in order to believe it, I need to see it happen.

  I presume I am out of time, now. I mean, outside of time. That nothing can touch me, and that nothing can get to me.

  *

  I do not stay in the hidden floor of the house, but return to the living room where the fire burns.

  Through the grimy window I can just see the ghosts of falling flakes, still unhurried, still steady and strong.

  *

  If I am outside of time, I wonder whether the snow will fall forever, entombing me in a white mountain, of purity and silence. Will food keep appearing in my cupboards? Will that final bottle of wine I have been saving continually reappear on the worktop, even though I may drain it dry every night? Will there even be night and day, or just this one infinite night of snowfall?

  It seems probable. It seems probable in the way that Victor and his monster chase each other across the Arctic wastes at the end of the novel, even though, as Victor dies, the creature announces he will travel on till he finds a place to build a funeral pyre and throw himself into the flames.

  Victor did not die. The creature did not immolate himself. Both still live in the pages of Mary’s book and in our minds, locked in an eternal duel for mastery over the other. That is the power of the book. Immortality, for better, or worse. It is majestic, in its way, this immortality. And powerful. Once a story is started, once a lie is told, it is very difficult to un-tell it, and yet this is what Mary would have me do.

  I …

  I must find a way, then, to—

  I must find a way to do what must be done. So I …

  When a writer sets out to create something new, when she, or he, makes a monster, does—

  Does it mean that when a writer makes a monster, who is the … that is, when a writer makes, makes, a monster, does he or she …?

  Settle. I need to settle for a while, and I have time if I am out of time. All the time I need. I could let days pass and maybe just breathe once, or twice. I could let the moon calendar itself through the sky and put just one word on paper. Then cross it out again. I have time.

  Calm yourself.

  Here’s the thing. When a writer makes a monster, who is the real monster? The monster, or the writer who made it? I start to move to something here, and I – I move to my desk, and bring my things over. To work.

  I must settle to this work. Of creating a monster. No! Of recreating a creature in its true image. A man. Just a simple man, born not exactly as a baby, but certainly like a child, ready to learn, ready to absorb whatever is put before it. A creature that could be the best of us, not the worst.

  Where to start?

  I remember that there was that time …

  No. That’s not—

  Here’s another thought. Mary knows. Mary knows what I did. My book. Not hers. The thing that drives me crazy, if I let it (and I often do).

  She knows, she knew. She knew from the start what I did, she knew everything about me, more than anyone, more than me myself, and while outside the snow falls, inside I am taken back to the time I wrote that book, and I shudder.

  Maybe what I did was not so bad, not by some people’s standards. I did not murder anyone. I did not hurt anyone but myself, and another writer, a man long gone into history. But what I did has hurt me more than I could have believed at the time. I was not to know that that book, that book, would be the one to bring me money, and the modest fame of the writer. Of all the others, I could say volumes, but there they sat on the warehouse shelves, boxed, while the book that made me the writer I am – the book that created me, flew out of bookshops as fast as they could print it.

  And what was it I did?

  I stole.

  I stole something – I stole the plot for the book. And why? Not even because I couldn’t come up with one, not because I had writer’s block, not because I was unable to sort out events of my own making. Why then? For a joke. For a piece of arrogance that easily matches anything Mary put in her novel. The arrogant belief that people are so ill-read these days that I could steal the plot of a classic novel, and no one would know. I chose a book, a famous book, the sort that everyone says they’ve read because they ‘know they’re supposed to’.

  But haven’t.

  Not you, o my publisher.

  Not the editors who worked on the book.

  Not my agent, not the critics, not the reviewers, and not the readers. That was my arrogant claim, and you know? I was proved right. All along the way, I expected to be caught, and with every gate that the book passed through undetected, the harder it was to confess. And then the book was being published, and the rest, well, you know the rest.

  So my success is a lie. It’s based on a theft. And it leaves me hollow, and wondering if I have any right to call my success by that name at all.

  We are responsible for our creations.

  And our creations end up creating us, in return. Create a lie, and you become one.

  *

  I know I—

  I ought to. I mean, I ought to make …

  There’s snow falling. And I see that time has unravelled to the point at which it is without meaning. Did I leave the lantern alight downstairs? I can’t remember and I know I ought to check, but the door to the stairs is shut tight.

  Won’t open.

  I put my hand in my pocket and snow is falling and the key is not in my pocket. The key is not in any of my pockets because the key is in the drawer of the small round table downstairs in the hidden rooms. I will need that key. I will need that key, but only when the creature has been re-cast.

  I have to—

  There’s a sound now. And I know what it is. Breathing. It’s breathing, breathing and I feel the push and squeeze of a fingertip and a thumb on my throat. My throat, emptying, no, my mind is not coping with—

  I wake with a start, I fall asleep by the fire.

  Cold.

  The fire is cold. I light it. I sense the smell of something, something mineral and long dead. Or living still? And something is nearby, not inside the house. But nearby, something is very close, breathing, breathing, breathing. Then.

  Stops.

  And then. I search.

  I see myself searching.

  Writing.

  Doing.

  Being.

  Being very little more than nothing as time winds out and then I hear that breathing again, right outside, right outside the damn door. There is the smell of gas. A shadow is thrown across my mind. I run.

  Run.

  No, walk, torch, and then throwing the door wide there’s the snow falling; the night, the trees, and the snow is very thick upon the ground and in the snow is a trail; footprints.

  The snow is transforming the forest, transforming the world. Somewhere in the night the stag stands under the boughs of a pine, the burden of its antlers weighing it down but when the winter comes it will lose them, transformed to something new. A different kind of beast then? No. No, the animal remains.

  Still, footprints.

  Footprints.

  Stare at them.

  Up to the door, fresh; you can see the crispness of their outline already softening with the falling snow. Someone was here, right here, a moment ago. Calling. To me. I know I can do nothing but follow. Such an overwhelming call. I tremble as I get ready, hands shaking, skin crawling, my heart thumps.

  The torch.

  Coat, big coat.

  Boots.

  Gloves, I will need gloves.

  And the torch, the torch, I shake it, and go out into the night.

  Footprints deep, knee-dee
p.

  And it’s slow but I follow them, alongside them, making my way, I have to follow. The torchlight flashes white crystals into my path, diamonds on the snow (remember that?) diamonds, millions of beautiful and worthless diamonds that lead me up, away from the house, towards the centre of the world, the very centre of the triangle, I know where that is now, it’s the trap ahead of me, but I have to see who it is who’s leading me there, I have to move fast in the thick snow.

  Away. House behind, forest ahead.

  I push on. Breathing, breathing.

  Minute after minute now. Panting. The gloves are loose and I stop to pull them and snow from the branch of a tree falls down my neck, and I stagger on, on.

  Then.

  There it is. The trap. Waiting.

  Piège.

  It’s hunkered (and why is that word any better?) into the deepening snow, and the footprints lead up and up towards it, and I know I must hurry, because that thing must not be let out again, not as it is. I see that now. Mary is right. Mary, my Mary. We are both as trapped as each other. I cannot hate her book any more. Her tale, her fairy tale. I can only pity it as I pity myself, with my own cheap deceptions. And I pity her too, with her cry for a better ending to her fairy tale.

  Floundering. Falling. Falling again. Towards the trap, and the opening in the side, still clear enough of snow to make my way under and then …

  Breathing. I can hear it, from the other side of the cellar door, breathing so slow.

  Deep.

  Heavy.

  Fingertip and thumb tighten on my windpipe and I can only hear the breathing, I check the door is shut, shut tight. Tight. It’s shut tight. Good.

  But things unloosen. I’m hanging on for dear life on the side of the dark mountain and here I am in the centre of the world, in the middle of nowhere, and on the other side of an ageing piece of wood is a monster, breathing.

  It’s hard. So very difficult. I see … No, I don’t see anything but the snow, triangles, and feel the house around me, and beyond the door …