Dr. Frankenstein's Daughters

by Suzanne Weyn

  The food made us realize just how fatigued we were from the long, eventful day, but there was no obvious place to settle down. Furthermore, we needed to escape the roar of Uncle Ernest’s snores.

  In pursuit of sleep, Giselle and I climbed the stone stairs — perilously steep, winding, and slippery. On the second floor, we spied a room with a dusty purple velvet couch as its only piece of furniture. “You take it,” I offered. With a nod, Giselle stripped down to her muslin chemise, unbuttoned her ankle boots, unpinned her bun so that her hair tumbled to her shoulders, and curled up, drawing her fringed Indian-print shawl over her as a blanket.

  Continuing upward on my own, I found no other furnished room and so returned to the place where I’d discovered my father’s books. The room was still awash with soft light, and I guessed it was around seven or so in the evening. It might have been later. I can already tell that the strange brightness of the overly long days here makes it difficult to gauge time exactly. Hopefully with practice I will get better at it.

  Sitting with my back to the wall, I opened my father’s notebook to the place where I had left off reading. By this point in his journal, Victor Frankenstein was a new student at the University of Ingolstadt and wrote of his first days there. He attended lectures where the subject was how lifeless flesh could be animated. Some said it was sacrilege to even think of this, as only God could bring life. Other scholars argued that if God had not meant for mankind to uncover this secret, it would be unknowable.

  I am fascinated.

  Here is the kind of high-level intellectual, scientific endeavor that is closed to me due to my gender. Yet I am living it through my father’s words.

  I will continue to read on, though I am getting very tired.

  June 8

  Several hours ago I was awakened, still lying on the floor with my father’s notebook open on my lap. Darkness had finally filled the room, brightened only by a line of crystal moonlight shining through the narrow window.

  I felt disoriented, unsure of where I was. My eyes flitted across the room, searching for signs of my old bedroom in Ingolstadt. And then I remembered.

  I heard footsteps and the sound of a female voice murmuring. It came from out in the hallway and was getting nearer. Immediately I thought of what the Orkneyans had said about the castle — that someone was living in it, that they saw lights on at night.

  Gooseflesh spread across my body as I slowly rose to standing. With trembling hands, I reached down to unbuckle my boot and slipped one foot out, and then took off the other as well. The low, chunky heel of the boot was the only weapon at my disposal.

  The shuffling steps grew closer. I considered calling out for help but doubted my sleeping sister or uncle would hear me. I was two floors above them.

  I could hear the approaching voice more clearly now. Its tone was snarling and fitful.

  Lifting my boot high over my head, I braced, preparing to strike with the heel.

  Suddenly a moon-rimmed figure appeared in the doorway.

  “Giselle!” I cried.

  Heart pounding, I slumped with relief and lowered my arm.

  Giselle stood there dressed in her chemise, her shawl wrapped around her. Her lovely hair fell around her shoulders, glistening in the moonlight.

  “You scared me,” I scolded mildly, covering my pounding heart with my hand.

  Giselle did not answer me. Nor did she move.

  “I said you scared me,” I repeated.

  “Get away from me,” Giselle muttered in a dark, threatening tone. It was her own voice, but the menacing quality was one I had never heard from her. “I’m warning you,” she snarled.

  Not only was her manner of speech unfamiliar to me, but so was her posture. She hunched like a cornered animal, undecided whether to flee or attack.

  “It’s me, Ingrid,” I said, stepping forward and reaching toward her. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I must have fallen asleep while reading the —”

  “I TOLD YOU TO GET BACK!”

  Giselle had never shouted with such ferocity in all our lives. I leapt away from her, frightened that she might strike me.

  In the next moment, Giselle crumbled onto her knees. She began to make choking sounds and to gasp as though she couldn’t get enough air. Deep, wailing sobs engulfed her and shook her delicate frame. It was heartbreaking in its awfulness.

  Kneeling beside her, I attempted to console her by placing a tender hand on her back. She shook me off with a violent shudder.

  I turned to see Uncle Ernest shuffling down the hall toward us, a flickering lantern in his hand.

  Giselle’s head jerked up as the light hit her. Her face was awash in terror. “No!” she screamed, jumping to her feet. She shielded her face from the light and turned away as though its low heat were scorching her. “No!”

  “She’s asleep,” I told Uncle Ernest.

  Putting down his lantern, he did what I’ve been told never to do: He grabbed hold of Giselle and shook her. Giselle’s eyes widened with fear as though the very gates of Hell had opened in front of her and she was viewing its most inner spaces.

  Giselle shuddered from head to foot before she fell into a dead faint. Uncle Ernest scooped her up and turned to carry her down the hall, her nightgown trailing to the stone floor. “Bring the lantern,” he instructed, speaking to me from over his shoulder.

  Uncle Ernest returned Giselle to the bedroom where she had settled down for the night. After I was satisfied that her breathing was steady and untroubled, I covered her once more with her coat and shawl. Then I joined Uncle Ernest out in the hall.

  “Come downstairs with me for a while,” Uncle Ernest requested. “There are things I must tell you about Castle Frankenstein.”

  FROM THE DIARY OF

  GISELLE VON DER WIEN

  June 7? June 8?

  As I lay on my little couch in the dark, my eyes fluttered open and the blackness surrounding me was so impenetrable that at first I didn’t know where I was. An icy chill enfolded me and I was quaking to the depths of my being. The dark terrifies me and always has, ever since I was small. The idea of creatures moving in the blackness, creatures I cannot see, is too horrible to bear.

  Fighting down panic, I searched in the pocket of my coat and found the small tin of two-inch phosphorus-tipped sticks I’d purchased at the station when I’d changed trains in Paris. Extracting one stick and scratching it on the rough surface provided on the tin, I soon held a small flame against the dark. With my small halo of light, I discovered the barest nub of a candle in a corner on the floor and eagerly lit it.

  The cause of my jangled nerves was not only my fear of the dark but also the horrific nightmare that was slowly coming to my conscious memory. I shudder now to recount it, but do so in the hope that telling the tale will keep the dreadful scenario from returning when next I visit sleep.

  In my dream I was once more crossing the water with the disagreeable Captain Ramsay, who, in the dream, was much taller than in real life. His face became a horrible mask of hatred and he rose, abandoning his tiller, and began twisting my wrist, causing me to cry out with pain. While I struggled, the forceful wind beat furiously at the sails as the uncontrolled mast snapped around, about to hit us.

  The next thing I knew, I was blessedly awake. I heard Ingrid’s voice out in the hall in a hushed conversation with my uncle. Maybe the nightmare had caused me to cry out in my sleep and my cries had brought them to my door. The last words I heard my uncle utter as they retreated were Castle Frankenstein.

  My feet feel scuffed and in this last flickering of my candle I have just noticed they are dirty. Oh, dear. Have I been walking in my sleep again? I pray not, for this cursed condition has plagued me for a lifetime.

  With sleep will come renewed vigor. And so, Dear Diary, good-night. Wish me well that I do not return to the terrible world of nightmares.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF

  INGRID VON DER WIEN

  June 8 (continued)

  “What is i
t I should know about the castle?” I asked Uncle Ernest when we were down in the same first-floor room where we had established our inheritance earlier.

  He lit a gas lamp and set it on the table. The wind outside was so fierce that it whistled through the openings in the stone walls and rattled the partially open windows. From time to time breezes threatened to extinguish the flickering lamp, but the small wick fought valiantly and managed to stay lit.

  Uncle Ernest sat at the table and gestured for me to take the chair nearest to him. “This castle was built by the Viking Sweyn Asleifsson in eleven fifty-eight,” he began. “He used it as a place to rest when he wasn’t plundering the coast of Wales with his Viking crew.”

  “Eleven fifty-eight,” I echoed, impressed by its age. I had never dreamed the castle was that old. “Has it always been inhabited?”

  “No, there have been long periods when it lay empty, left to molder and decay. When my parents took it over, it was nearly overrun with vermin of every sort. But my mother, Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein, restored it beautifully. She entertained glamorous figures in the arts and sciences. It became a destination for anyone traveling through Europe.”

  “I imagine that’s what Giselle wants to do,” I confided.

  “Wonderful!” Uncle Ernest exclaimed. “Victor loved this place as a boy, which is why it was left to him while I was bequeathed other properties. It would have made him happy to know his daughters were restoring it.”

  “Giselle will be the one overseeing repairs and decoration,” I told him. “I am not useful in such things.”

  “It doesn’t matter which of you does it, just so long as it is accomplished. I would very much like to see the castle returned to its most glorious period. How merry and lively the place was then.” His smiling visage slowly darkened with worry. “But is the girl up to it? It’s quite the undertaking, and she already seems delicate.”

  I considered his concern before replying, for it was a valid one. “It might be just the thing for Giselle,” I speculated. I didn’t know if I was speaking the truth, or merely my hope for the truth.

  “I’m afraid you girls will not find much in the way of suitable beaux here on the island,” he said.

  “If I need to seek a husband, it may be that I will find one among the interesting people with whom Giselle intends to fill the castle,” I answered. In truth, though, I had more interesting things on my mind most of the time than snaring a husband. Marriage was Giselle’s aim. In her recent letters, she had mentioned a particular man she’d had on her mind. Her silence on the matter since her arrival was enough for me to know it had not worked out.

  “An excellent plan,” Uncle Ernest concurred. “I have known you only a short while, Ingrid, but I can see that you are of a quick mind, equal to your father’s. Not just any man will hold your attention, so it’s best if you find a young fellow of mental accomplishment.”

  I smiled at him. This sounded like an agreeable thing to me. A man with whom I could speak about the subjects that truly fascinated me would be a welcome companion. “For now, I want to read all of my father’s journals, which I have discovered in that top room where you found me,” I told Uncle Ernest. “That will be project enough for the time being.”

  “My brother’s journals?” Uncle Ernest asked, paling. “Niece, I would far sooner you destroyed them than read them.”

  “Why?”

  “My brother, your father, was an emotionally intense young man with a fevered intellect, and I fear the contents of those notebooks can only bring more questions of the sort that changed him, drove him mad. He left for university a passionate and rebellious boy. He loved fun and had friends before he went, but he returned utterly changed, wanting nothing to do with his family or former companions. He completely abandoned everything he once loved.”

  “The way he abandoned Ingrid and me?” I mentioned.

  “Yes, but you and your sister are not alone in this, dear girl. Upon his return from university, he was aloof with everyone.”

  “Could it be that he was devastated by the death of my mother?” I asked. It seemed a reasonable possibility. A young man in love whose wife had recently died giving birth to his daughters might easily be consumed by grief. It was a scenario I had played out many times in my head. It was the only thing that could make his absence in our lives excusable.

  “It is certainly possible. But there were other things,” Uncle Ernest said.

  “What sorts of things?” I was struck by the ominous tone of his voice.

  Uncle Ernest leaned in closer, and the flickering lamp threw wavering shadows across his serious, lined face. “There was a period of several years when Victor was no longer at university and we had no knowledge of his exact locations. What finally brought him home to Geneva was the tragic news that our youngest brother, William, a mere child, was found dead. Murdered. We had to send his dear friend Henry Clerval to search for him in order to summon him home.”

  “How terrible,” I sympathized. “Who killed William?”

  “Our household maid Justine hung for the crime, and for a while I believed that justice had been done.”

  “But you don’t think so anymore?”

  “Not long after the maid’s trial, Henry Clerval joined Victor on a tour of Europe. My brother said he needed a change of scenery to rest his mind. After they had toured the continent and England together, Victor requested that they go their separate ways, and Henry agreed. Victor came here to the castle while Henry went on to Ireland. While in Ireland, Henry was murdered.”

  I gasped. “Who murdered him?”

  “Victor was charged by the Irish court with his murder.”

  This was too much to bear. First, to find out my father was dead. Now, to find out he was a murderer.

  “Is that why he escaped to the Arctic?” I asked, barely able to contain the tremor in my voice.

  “No, that came later. He was acquitted of the crime, Ingrid. Your father was many things, but he was not a murderer. His alibi was that he was here, and people on the island confirmed it. But that was also when people became afraid of the place. Clearly my brother was going mad up here all alone. Who knows what horrific experiments he was undertaking?”

  “Have you read his journals, the ones I found upstairs?”

  Uncle Ernest shook his head. “I never knew of their existence until today. As you know, it’s been a long time since I’ve set foot here. I will confess I felt a selfish desire to leave the past alone.”

  “Perhaps, as I read through them, they will throw a light on his activities during that period.”

  “Is that really a good idea? I worry,” Uncle Ernest said, “about what impact reading the ravings of a madman will have on such a young and impressionable mind as yours, especially knowing that this unbalanced individual is your own father.”

  “Perhaps he was not as insane as you believe,” I suggested. “Genius can seem like lunacy to those of us who are too dull-witted to comprehend what the elevated mind perceives.”

  Grunting with disapproval, Uncle Ernest shook his head. “There is danger in an idea like that, Ingrid,” he warned. “That you would entertain such a thought enlarges my concerns about your inherited inclinations. A man such as me has not my brother’s brilliance, but I have had a good job, a wife who loved me well, and children now grown to capable adults. It has been a calm and orderly life that I have found most satisfying.”

  What he described seemed to me a life of utter boredom. But I was not so rude as to say so.

  “My brother, for all his genius, left behind him a trail of misery and murder,” Uncle Ernest added.

  “But he was acquitted of the murder,” I reminded him.

  Locking his hands together behind his head, Uncle Ernest leaned back in his chair and sighed. His pensive expression told me he was considering his next words.

  “I did not say he was a murderer,” Uncle Ernest began slowly, “but certainly death followed him. In a very short span of time our younger
brother lay slain, his best friend was murdered, and his second wife was killed.”

  “His second wife?” I asked. Was there no end to my father’s secrets?

  “Yes,” Uncle Ernest said. “Elizabeth. She was adopted and grew up in the house with us, but since she was not a blood relative, she and Victor were free to marry. They were engaged when he left for university, but gradually he stopped writing to her as he did all of us, even Henry, myself, and our father. I often wondered if the reason he never came back home was because he was avoiding her, and couldn’t stand to tell her he’d fallen in love with another.”

  “My mother?”

  “I imagine so. But after your mother died, some years passed and Elizabeth waited for Victor’s return with unbelievable commitment, and was rewarded — or so she thought — when he reappeared. As far as she knew, they were still engaged to be married. You must understand — none of us knew about you and your sister’s existence. That only came to light after his death, when his final wishes were revealed.”

  The possibilities suggested by this new information made my head spin. Did Victor refuse to acknowledge us because he didn’t want to tell his new wife that he had two living daughters? Once he remarried, had he intended to come claim us and have this Elizabeth raise us as a stepmother?

  Then I remembered what Uncle Ernest had said.

  His second wife was killed.

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “Murdered,” Uncle Ernest reported.

  “But how? Who?”

  “On her wedding night. Strangled in her bed by some mysterious intruder.” Ernest leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I remember that awful night so clearly. Victor was anxious the whole day, but I ascribed it to the wedding-day nerves of a groom. Now, in hindsight, it seems to me he had some foreboding of the calamity to come. When we discovered Elizabeth dead in her bed, he shouted, ‘The fiend! The monster!’ as though he knew — and had been expecting — her assailant.”