The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

  “I intended to go back to the waterhole tonight.”

  He shrugged.

  “That is not possible now.”

  “No, I guess not,” I said. I felt relieved about it. After I was feeling well would be time enough; I would be unable to observe properly in this weakened condition and would undoubtedly become more seriously ill. And, perhaps feeling a need for more justification than my own physical failure, I told myself that the creature might well have sensed my presence and be wary. It was far wiser to wait.

  I took two more pills, drank a glass of water, and slept more soundly.

  I felt better in the morning. I still had a slight fever, but my head was clear, the curious dichotomy of muddled reality and sharply focused details had ceased. I was able to walk around a bit in the afternoon and force down some food in the evening, and decided I had fallen to a chill rather than some disease. But I was still weak and dizzy, and there was no question of returning to the vigil that night. Gregorio saw that the delay disturbed me.

  “I could keep watch,” he said, dubiously.

  “No. That wouldn’t do any good. I’ll have to see this creature myself; you’ve already seen it.”

  “That is so,” he said, and celebrated his reprieve with a mug of pisco.

  I went to bed early and read, but found the strain of the kerosene lantern painful, the words blurred. I turned the light out and closed my eyes. I didn’t feel sleepy, but sleep crept over me in modulated waves. I remember feeling annoyed that I was wasting this opportunity, and blaming my weakness for hindering the investigation; telling myself that I had to find the creature while it was in the area, that there might never be another chance to find it. I was determined to return to the waterhole the next night.

  There was no need. It found us.

  XII

  I was awake and something was snarling outside the tent. It was the second time I’d been awakened by a sound in the night, but this time I didn’t hesitate – this snarling did not petrify me as that other terrible cry. I slid from the sleeping bag and grabbed the shotgun. My eyes felt too large for their sockets, my mouth was dry. The snarl came again and I could hear the horses screaming. I pushed the flap open and let the gun precede me from the tent. The fire was burning low, and it was dark beyond. Gregorio came from his tent standing straight, the rifle at his shoulder, his eyes wild in the glow of the fire. He turned toward the horses.

  The horses had gone mad. They were frantically milling about their enclosure. I moved to the side, to get a line of vision beyond the fire, and one of the horses leaped the rocks Gregorio had piled up. It was the grey. It charged towards me blindly and I flung myself to the side, heard the horse tear into my tent, saw the canvas flapping as I scrambled to my feet again. Another horse had attempted to leap the wide outer barrier and I heard its hooves clattering desperately for a footing, then saw it go down between the rocks, struggling to rise again. The other two horses were running in a mad circle around the enclosure, one after the other, following the circle. The second horse flashed past and I could see into the centre of the corral.

  Something crouched there.

  The firelight barely reached it, outlining it dimly against the barrier. It stood on four legs, but the shoulders were higher than the haunches, its weight on the hindquarters as it circled, turning with the horses. As I watched, it drew its arms upwards and coiled.

  “Something’s in with the horses!” I cried.

  And it moved. One arm swept out wide, hooking at a horse’s flank. The horse reared, forelegs pawing the air as it rose, rose too high and toppled over backwards. It blocked the creature from my sight. I had the shotgun up and, man or beast, I would have fired. But I couldn’t shoot without hitting the horse. Gregorio was frozen in position, the rifle levelled, his face grotesque. The horse flailed the air, fighting to get up, but the creature was on it, rending and tearing, its snarls muffled against the horse’s flesh.

  The shotgun boomed. It sounded unbelievably loud to my inflamed senses. I had discharged it into the air, whether by accident or design or instinct I don’t know, and the hollow blast bounced from the surrounding rocks as the pellets laced through the trees.

  The horse was up, bucking and rearing, and the creature turned toward me, squat and square, poised motionless for an instant. Then its long arms swung, knuckles brushing the ground, and I brought the shotgun down; for a moment I was looking at the creature down the barrels, my finger on the second trigger. I could have shot it then, but I was looking at its eyes. And it looked back at me, savage and fierce but also curious and startled by the sound. I couldn’t pull the trigger. The creature wheeled about, its great bulk pivoting with amazing speed, and moved toward the rock barrier. I followed it with the gun; saw it leap into the shadows; heard the report of Gregorio’s .303, sharp and crackling in contrast to the shotgun.

  The creature went down, howling, twisting in pain. Then it lunged up again. Gregorio worked the lever, the spent shell sparkled, spinning through the firelight. The creature was in the trees when we fired again, and I heard the slug smack against solid rock. We looked at each other. The creature was gone.

  Gregorio was holding the grey, one arm around its neck. He spoke softly and the horse lowered his head, trembling. The horse that had been attacked was dashing about the corral, white foam pouring from his mouth, lips curled back from square teeth. A great hunk had been torn from its flank and long gashes were open over its ribs. I saw that it was my horse, the one I’d ridden and become attached to, and felt my jaws tighten.

  I moved back to the wreckage of my tent. The poles were snapped, the canvas spread over the ground. I found my trousers amidst the debris and pulled them on. The horse that had fallen on the barrier was still struggling to rise, wedged between two smooth boulders, whimpering in pain.

  “Now you have seen it,” Gregorio said.

  I nodded.

  “That was how the dog died,” he said, with far more sadness than hatred. The grey’s head came up, ears pricked, and he whispered soothingly. The fourth horse moved toward him uncertainly, head turned, looking at his injured companion. I pulled the canvas from our supplies and found the box of shot-gun shells, broke the gun open and reloaded the right barrel, then stuffed shells in the pockets of my windbreaker. I felt no fear now. Action had dispensed with dread. I felt determined and angry, and had no doubts that I’d use the gun if I had to. I knew that, whatever the creature was, it was not human enough to command human rights. I was not much of a scientist at that moment, but perhaps more a man. The smell of gunpowder was sharp on the thick air, a few leaves fluttered down from the blasted branches overhead. I walked over to Gregorio.

  “You will go after it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It is wounded.”

  I nodded. Gregorio had hit it once, and there are few animals a .303 won’t bring down. I had no doubts that I could find it now.

  “Someone should stay with the horses,” Gregorio said.

  “Yes. You must stay.”

  “It may be waiting for you.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  Gregorio regarded me with Indian eyes. He wanted to be brave, and he was brave. The grey gelding was still trembling under his arm and he nodded. That was right, someone had to stay with the horses. But he lowered his head and didn’t watch me leave the camp.

  I could hear the horse screaming in the rocks behind me. When I’d passed, he turned a wide eye upwards. His foreleg was snapped and he was lodged helplessly, looking for help we could not give. I called Gregorio and went on. The crack of his rifle came through the trees and the horse stopped screaming. I felt a cruel satisfaction when I found a smear of blood marking the creature’s passage. It was large and dark in the light from my electric torch, and I didn’t think he’d be moving very fast.

  He wasn’t. When I had crossed the rocks I saw him lurching up the hill that led to the waterfall. When he’d attacked the horse, he had uncoiled like a steel spr
ing, fast and fluid, but he moved with a rolling, drunken gait now. His legs were short and crooked and he used his long arms for support as he ran. Perhaps his peculiar gait was not suited to travelling on open ground at the best of times, and the bullet had taken its toll of his strength.

  I moved to the right, towards the trees, so that I would be able to cut off any attempt to disappear into the bush where he could move so much more silently and faster than I. But he didn’t attempt that. He was following a straight course up the hill, as though not merely fleeing but moving towards a definite destination. I had the torch in my left hand and the shotgun cradled on my right arm. There was no need for stealth or caution as long as I kept him in sight, and I followed quickly. He was only three or four hundred yards in front of me, and I drew closer without great effort.

  He reached the top of the hill and paused, then turned and looked back at me. He was silhouetted against the sky and his eyes gathered the moonlight. I knew he had the vision of a night animal, and was thankful for my torch. He watched me for a few seconds, his heavy head turning from side to side, then wheeled and vanished over the crest. I began to run, wanting to keep him in sight, but not worried. I was familiar with this terrain, and knew that the second hill stretched on for a long distance, that he couldn’t possibly ascend it before I was over the first hill. I was breathing hard now, the soft earth sucking at my boots and slipping from under me, but I ran on and topped the rise.

  The creature was not in sight. There was a small pool of blood where he had paused and looked back, and a few scattered dark patches beyond, heading toward the waterfall. But he had vanished. The far hill stretched away, smooth and rolling, with no concealment. The trees to the right had been in sight as I climbed. Behind the waterfall, the cliff rose sheer and unscalable. There was nowhere he could have gone except to the waterfall, and I moved down, walking slowly and cautiously now, my thumb on the torch switch and my finger on the triggers.

  I came to the soft mud surrounding the pool and switched the torch on. A point of light reflected back from the cliff and I tensed, thinking it was those night-creature eyes, but it was only a smooth stone, polished by the waterfall. The beam played over the reeds and found nothing; then, at my feet, I found his prints. They were distinct and deep, moisture just beginning to seep in, the feet with wide angled toes and the impressions of his knuckles on either side. The tracks moved to the edge of the pool. I turned the light on the water, but the broken surface revealed nothing. Very slowly, I walked around the bank to the far side and inspected the ground. There were no prints emerging from there. The creature had gone into the pool and had not come out. And yet, it was not in the water. There could be only one explanation, and I let the light flood over the tumbling cataract. The cliff was perpendicular, grey stone, the water sparkled down, and there, just where they met, a narrow rim of blackness defied illumination.

  I walked up to the cliff, the water lapping at my feet, the gun level at my hip, and there I found the cave. It opened behind the waterfall, an aperture some three feet high, completely hidden in the light of day unless one stood against the cliff face. The pool was slightly higher than the cave floor, and the water ran inwards, several inches deep. There was a smear of red against the angle of rock.

  I had found far more than the creature’s waterhole, when I’d come to this cascade. I’d found its home.

  Did it take a greater courage than I’d ever known I possessed to enter that black cavern, or were my senses and emotions too numbed with fever and excitement to feel fear? I know that I went into the Stygian darkness without hesitation, and that I felt very little at all. I simply did it, without thought or doubt. The only sensation I was conscious of was the water rivetting my neck and back as I stopped under it, and then I was kneeling in the cave. The floor rose and the water penetrated only for a few yards. I shone the torch before me. It flowed well into the tunnel, but the blackness stretched on in the distance. It seemed interminable, and I had the sudden fear that it emerged again at some point and that the creature would escape me. The thought forced me on. I had to crawl for a few yards and then found it high enough to stand, crouching. It was narrow, my arms brushed against the sides, and it was straight. There was little danger. I had the torch and the gun and the creature could only come at me from the front. If I was forced to kill it, I would be able to. I didn’t want to, however. My anger at seeing my horse’s agony had lessened, I was more the scientist than the hunter once more. I determined that I would make every effort not to kill it; if I was forced to fire, my first blast would be aimed at its legs. But perhaps it was already dying, had crawled home to suffer its death throes alone. If that were true, it seemed brutal to pursue it, but there was no way to know, and I moved forward following the beam of light.

  The walls were slimy with greenish moss, cracked with numerous narrow fissures where the mountain had moved in ages past. It was very quiet. My heavy soled boots made no sound on the stone, and the drops of blood underfoot became fewer and farther apart. The cave widened gradually as I moved into the depths, fantastic formations of broken rock emerged from the walls, pillars and trellises jutted up and hung down from floor and ceiling. I approached them warily, but there was nothing waiting behind. The tunnel continued to follow a straight course and it seemed I’d been walking a long time.

  And then the light hit rock ahead, spreading out fluidly to both sides. I thought for an instant that I had come to a dead end, and then saw that the tunnel turned at right angles, a natural geometric angle following a fault in the solid stone. I approached the turning very slowly. If the creature were waiting for me, it would be here.

  I stopped a few feet from the turn; held the torch under the stock so that I had both hands on the gun and the light followed the line of the barrels, took a deep breath, braced myself, and stepped out wide of the corner in one long stride.

  I stopped dead.

  The creature was not waiting there. There was nothing there. Nothing but a green metal door . . .

  The door swung open, heavy on its hinges. Hubert Hodson said: “I expect you’d better come in.”

  XIII

  Hodson took the shotgun from me. I was too staggered to resist. I realized I’d passed completely under the mountain, and that we had inadvertently made our camp directly opposite Hodson’s house, separated by the unscalable cliff but connected via the tunnel through the rock; that the door he’d claimed led to a storeroom actually opened into the tunnel. I followed Hodson through the door, expecting to enter the laboratory, but in that respect I was wrong. There was a connecting chamber between, a small poorly lighted room with another green door in the opposite wall. That door was open and I could see the brightly illuminated laboratory beyond. Hodson closed the door behind us and turned the key. Heavy tumblers fell into place. He pushed me ahead of him, towards the laboratory.

  A low snarl sounded beside me. I wheeled about, pushing Hodson’s hand from my shoulder, tensed and then froze. The creature was in that room. It crouched in the corner, behind heavy steel bars, watching me with comprehension and hatred. All the details instantly impressed themselves on my consciousness as a whole, a single, startling tableau. The bars fitted into the wall on one side, and were hinged so that they could be swung open and closed again, forming a cage with three solid rock walls. The creature was in the cage, only a few feet from me, a grotesque caricature of man. Its chest was rounded, its shoulders stooped and heavy, its arms long. Short, coarse hair bristled on its body, but its face was smooth and brown, wide nostrils flaring and small eyes burning beneath a thick, ridged brow. I saw a dark, damp patch on its side, a few spatters of blood on the floor, and standing between us, one hand on the bars, stood the old crone. She had turned to look at me, and her eyes glowed with malevolence, with a hatred more intense and inhuman than that of the creature itself.

  The creature lunged at me. One huge hand tore at the bars and the steel sang with vibration. I started to shout a warning to the old woman, but it
was not after her. It ignored her. It reached out, groping for me through the bars, snarling with broad lips drawn back. I backed away and Hodson touched my shoulder.

  “Come. We mustn’t stay here. He knows you injured him and I wouldn’t trust even those steel bars if he goes berserk.”

  “The old woman – ”

  “She will be all right,” he said.

  He pushed me toward the laboratory. The snarling became less violent and I heard the old woman speaking in some strange language – speaking to the creature. And the second metal door clanged shut behind us.

  Hodson took me to the front room, motioned to a chair and began searching through a drawer. I saw him slip a hypodermic needle in his pocket.

  “You aren’t going to use that on it?” I asked.

  He nodded and brought out a large box of medicinal supplies.

  “A tranquillizer,” he said.

  “But it’ll tear you apart if you get near.”

  “The woman can manage it,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll be back when I’ve repaired the damage you’ve done.” He went back through the curtains. I sat down and waited.

  Hodson returned, his shirt sleeves rolled up, poured two large drinks and handed me one.

  “It wasn’t a serious wound,” he said. “He will live.”

  I nodded. Hodson sat down opposite me. The drink tasted strange on my dry tongue, and my fever was returning. There were so many things I wanted to ask, but I waited for Hodson to speak first.

  “So this is the proper study of man? To shoot man?”

  “Is it man?”

  “Assuredly.”

  “It attacked my camp. It was killing one of the horses. We had no choice.”

  He nodded.

  “Quite so,” he said. “That is man’s nature. To kill and to have no choice.” He shook his head wearily, then suddenly laughed.