Without saying a word, the man turned and headed back into the stream and crossed back the same way that he had come. Within a minute, he was back across the stream and walking into the woods on the other side, his large and mystifying bulk disappearing as quickly as he had arrived.
Mary grabbed the shoe and sprinted towards her house, eager to tell of the sight she had just witnessed. As she entered, shoeless and sockless, her stepmother yelled at her for not being ready, but Mary ran right past her to find her father and sister.
She found them in her father’s study getting ready to leave and enthusiastically told them her story. Her father, being somewhat of a writer himself, laughed at the imagination of his youngest, while her sister didn’t pay complete attention as she busied herself getting ready for their trip into town. When she got done, her father patted her on the head and told her to get her shoes back on and to meet them out front while he pulled the carriage around. Mary then turned to her sister and asked, “Fanny, you believe me, don’t you?”
“Little Mary, you have a much more active imagination than me. I just don’t know where you come up with this stuff. I’m sure one day you’ll be writing stories alongside father, too. Now please hurry so we can get into town before it’s too late. I want to get to Mr. Frankenstein’s bakery before he’s sold out of all the good breads. Besides, I also heard that the Shelley’s will be there tonight, too, and that their eldest boy is a charmer.” Fanny then rushed out to meet the carriage.
Mary sat down and quickly put her shoes back on while she stewed over the fact they hadn’t believed her tale. She muttered under her breath a few words in defiance of the snub. But she just kept repeating one set of words over and over in a condescending tone until she finally headed out the door herself. “Mr. Frankenstein’s Bakery, Mr. Frankenstein’s Bakery.”
Epilogue 2
Epilogue Chapter 2
An Excerpt, Translated From Mercer’s Journal
Dated In The Year of Our Lord, May of 1346
The process of sewing the parts back together gets tougher the longer the subject has been dead.
I have found that the first two hours is the most opportune time to perform that step. I have my third specimen done and ready for the final stage of the experiment, and will detail the previous steps in a later chapter, if I am successful. I have already performed this on two prior subjects, meeting with failure on both attempts. Nonetheless, I think that was due to the way I administered our blood of life to them. I thought it would work if I performed it in the same manner we create a consort, but found that with the heart not pumping, the blood couldn’t get dispersed throughout the body to bring them back. This time I will administer the blood to a fresh heart, still warm from the cavity of a human. The regenerative aspect of our blood should activate the heart to beat, and allow the healing to take place.
The fact that the majority of the subject’s brain has been removed should allow complete control over it. I am now going to procure the living heart from a captive human and will afterwards report the results.
Success!
The subject is starting to heal before my eyes. The chest cavity is closing up from where I had it flayed wide open to allow me to administer my blood directly into the heart. The seams on the left arm, where I’d sewn together two separate limbs, are closing around the stitches, and I witnessed eye movement underneath its lids just moments ago.
I will update as the process continues.
Four hours have passed and the subject is starting to respond to touch. I pressed its flesh with a hot needle, and it moved away from it. All the seams have closed up, leaving only minor scarring.
Time will tell how much further it will progress.
Six hours and I have much success to report. The subject is sitting up and listening to my commands. Its brain is primitive, almost childlike. It hasn’t spoken yet, and probably won’t, not with the front part of its brain removed, but it does understand my directives.
I wonder if I might have removed too much or not enough brain. That will be a work in progress, finding the right amount.
Eight hours, and with the sun soon to rise, I will be testing its ability to survive where we cannot. After that, I will rest and then continue more tests tomorrow night.
Twenty hours after reviving the subject and it is still alive. I commanded it to sit outside all day while I rested, and upon waking, found it still there. It follows every command I give without question, even when I told it to hold its hand in a fire. It will take me a few more days of examination, but I have a feeling that I’ve cracked the code to bringing back dead tissue to life. At the very least, it will provide us with a willing servant and protector, but, as I perfect the method, could yield even more potential benefits in the future.
This might also be what we need to help combat the spreading vermin across Europe, but with that, more tests are needed to see if it is—unlike us—resistant to the scourge.
They are both products of our blood and like us, are undead again.
About the Author
Happily shackled for twenty-two years, G.P. Ferrell currently lives in Tallahassee with his wife Sam, and his three children: Casey, Zoey, and Bryce.
Aside from being an avid outdoor lover, he has always had a passion for storytelling. Every year at his kids’ birthday parties he would sit around a bonfire and entertain his children and their guests for hours, telling fantastic story after story.
If it was near Halloween, he would tell scary ghost or monster stories, if camping, stories about the woods and made-up creatures based loosely on previous monsters of myth, all in order to send the kids off to their tents, jumping at every twig that would snap.
Regardless of how scary the tales, the kids always came back for more, and every year more kids would show up at the parties to hear more of his tales.
Sometimes his tales were fantasy-related and would get the kids to look at something common around them in a new light. But no matter the subject or time of year, he could always come up with something to entertain his guests.
In the process of writing his stories, he has come to truly love the time and labor poured into each one.
He constantly tells everyone who asks how his authoring career is going: “I’m not an author, I’m a storyteller.”
Despite seeing his byline on the cover of his first book changed that fact, he will continue, in his own mind, to always first and foremost, be a storyteller.
“If you do what you love to do for a living, you will never truly work a day in your life.” —G.P. Ferrell
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Juggernaut (Humanity's Hope Book 2) Page 26