by Suzanne Weyn
“Look! Here is the key Uncle Ernest meant!” she cried triumphantly, pointing at a nearly identical key hanging on a nail just outside the door. Taking down the key, I placed it in Ingrid’s hand beside the one she’d gotten from Riff. The only difference was a nick chipped into the metal of the key from Riff.
We gazed at each other uncertainly and then cautiously descended the steps into the blackness of the pantry. Holding hands, we tried to stay within the halo of the light from the lantern, which tossed eerie forms on the wall. We shivered as our own shadows formed giant ghostly images.
“Go all the way to the back wall,” Ingrid instructed me, her voice tense with excitement.
A small white mouse scurried across my boot, causing me to scream and jump, knocking Ingrid to the side.
“Hold your light up. See where it runs!” she ordered.
Doing as she commanded, my gaze followed the mouse until it disappeared into the ground under a door in front of us. We quickly made our way to it and felt for the lock, which Ingrid immediately attempted to unlock with the key not containing the nick.
Ingrid pushed the door and it creaked open, presenting to us a room of even more impenetrable blackness, colder than the pantry. Holding the oil lamp high, I saw empty crates that must have once held carrots, potatoes, turnips, and the like. The little mouse that had just startled me appeared once more, appraising us on two legs from the top of a container, his pink nose twitching. In the next moment, he leapt away, disappearing into the wall behind him.
Ingrid sprang away from me and dashed to the far wall, pounding on it.
“Have you gone mad?” I demanded, hurrying to her side. “What are you doing?”
“Listen, Giselle! Listen!” She pounded hard on the wall. “Listen to the echo. The space beyond this wall is hollow. There’s no rock or wood behind it.”
Ingrid searched the wall with her eyes and hands as I held the lamp high over my head to throw the maximum light. I searched along with her until my eyes caught sight of a thick iron plate just at the edge of the light.
“There!” I said.
Ingrid held both keys into the light, selected the nicked key, and, with trembling hands, inserted it into the lock. She looked at me, her eyes wide and bright with the thrill of possibly entering an unknown space.
“What do you think is behind the door?” she asked.
The images of insects, snakes, bats, and all manner of rodents flooded my mind, along with the even more horrifying images of human skeletons and ghostly apparitions. And a person. I had such a strong sense that there could be someone waiting there. Waiting to hurt us.
“There’s only one light,” I said, unable to push my irrational thoughts aside. A film of cold sweat was crawling across my skin as my pulse quickened, prompted by the mere idea of being left in this lightless place by myself. I gripped Ingrid’s arm. “Please, let’s go back. I read once of a castle that had an underground tunnel that was actually a labyrinth. Only the initiated few could find their way through, and everyone else who entered it was instantly confused and perished there in the darkness.” I could not imagine any death that could be more horrible than to wander endlessly in a lightless maze.
“Stay here with the lamp and I will be right back.”
“You won’t be able to see. What good is it if you can’t see?”
“I can feel along the walls,” Ingrid insisted. “I just want to know how big of a space it is and how far back it goes.”
“I can’t go with you,” I confessed. “I want to, but I can’t. I have too much terror of the dark.”
“You’ve already come this far,” she pointed out.
It was true, but the way ahead was utterly lacking in even the dimmest glimmer. To me it seemed so deep and fathomless I was sure anything that entered would surely be swallowed up.
“I can’t go any farther,” I said, choking out the words.
“Can you stay here and hold the light?” Ingrid asked.
“Yes. I think I can,” I said with a quivering voice — how I despised myself for being so abject! But there was no choice, my terror was too overpowering. It was something in my blood, in my bones. “Please don’t go!”
“I’ll be very quick,” Ingrid promised. Still in the lamp’s glow, she found the wall of the interior room, which appeared to be a long tunnel approximately the width and height of a large grown man.
A grown man.
I watched, trembling, as Ingrid moved down the length of the tunnel, lifting the lantern ever higher to throw a longer circle of light into the empty space. Then, all at once, she was gone.
The flame of the lamp flickered and my heart skipped with panic. And then I heard it. A footstep. It was a man’s heavy tread against the stone floor, in tandem with an acrid odor.
“Who’s there?” I whispered.
No one answered, but now I could hear breathing. I thought to call for Ingrid, but I did not want to make it known that she was even there.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
A man’s hand darted into the light, pulling the lantern from me. I felt the hot oil splatter against my cheek as he dashed it against the wall, plunging us into blackness.
Then the hand gripped me, swinging me against the wall.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF
INGRID VDW FRANKENSTEIN
July 3, 1815
A most remarkable yet disturbing day. I am overwhelmed with emotion. Frightened … yet exhilarated beyond my wildest imaginings. Bold plans whirl in my head. Dread fear enfolds me.
First let me tell you that I have come across a tunnel behind the root cellar. Poor brave Giselle is so troubled by the dark that I had to leave her behind before entering.
I told myself she would be all right there with the lantern. And so I made my way into the tunnel, feeling along the cold stone walls. Slowly my eyes must have dilated to their full potential because I began to discern where the wall and floor met. It’s strange to think how much light exists even in the densest blackness. I am thankful for this small measure of vision, otherwise I would surely have plummeted down the wide stairway that opened before me.
It was with a pounding heart that I proceeded onto the spiral steps. I hugged the wall, terrified that I might fall over the outer edge of the steps or slip down them. I seemed to descend for a very long time. After a while, I became disoriented, starting to fear that this was some sort of bottomless stairwell that would never end.
I thought of turning back, but this worsened my condition. Above me I could see nothing, nor anything below. I seemed to hang in a lightless void. All sense of dimension was lost.
For a long while I existed within the most profound stillness I have ever experienced. For the first time ever I realized how accustomed one becomes to the ambient noises all about — the sounds of birds and insects, of the passing air and the rustle of leaves, of all sorts of background hum. But now I was overcome with a terrifying silence. Was I deep underwater? I had to be.
Continuing on in the dark and quiet, I became unnerved. I was thankful to have my hand on the cold, wet wall. It was my only anchor to the tangible world.
After a while I became aware of a pounding, a roaring. Was it machinery? No. I had heard it before, but couldn’t place what was causing the sound.
Then it came to me. It was the surf crashing all around.
Oddly, this steady noise helped me to reorient, and mitigated the sensation of floating in nothingness. I was at the bottom of the incline now, and in a new, long tunnel. I inched along as a soft glimmer of light from below began to peel back the darkness. Its glow increased steadily until I could see what was at the end of the tunnel.
At first I could scarcely believe what my eyes were reporting. So unbelievable was the sight before me that I began to suspect I was asleep, dreaming.
The cavernous room at the bottom of the stairs was equipped with scientific materials of every description. Two surgical beds with leather constraints dangling from the sides sa
t side by side. A long table was jammed with glass beakers, curling tubes, burners, plates, cups, mortar and pestle sets, and other items I couldn’t even name. Four large drums were coiled in copper wire that reached all the way up to the towering ceiling, from which the light was fighting its way in.
A gasp of realization shook me.
I knew what I had come upon.
This was my father’s laboratory!
Hurrying into the center of it, I examined everything I could find in the dim light. There were surgical scalpels of every description, razor sharp and gleaming. Gauze wrapping and stitching string were in good supply. Labeled jars sat on shelves and in them were specimens of human body organs. Everything was there from a jarred pituitary gland to a full toenail floating in some preserving fluid.
As I surveyed this morbid and sometimes grisly collection with fascination, I came upon a bottom shelf holding three thick, wide albums, much like a portfolio of work an artist might keep. Each was tied closed with string and heavily dust covered. Clearing them caused me to cough and sneeze.
Avidly, I opened the first to an anatomical sketch of sorts. The man it portrayed was pulled apart as though some powerful magnet had yanked his limbs away from one another. Under the drawing, words were scrawled in a handwriting that had become familiar to me over the course of the last weeks. My father’s hand.
A body may be assembled as easily as it is disassembled. But what is the animating force?
Alchemy?
Voltage?
Divinity?
Had Victor Frankenstein’s great experiment — the one that drove him mad — been the creation of a living human being? What audacity! What vision!
In sketch after sketch, notation upon notation, he detailed how he’d done it. With the help of men like the unsavory Gallagher, he’d assembled all the human parts he needed and had sewn them together like a tailor assembling an elaborate garment of several layers.
He wrote of how it laid there, a lifeless corpse, as experiment after experiment failed to animate it. He soaked his creature in electrolytic metal-infused baths, hoping in vain that it would stir. He wrapped metal wire around its arms and legs and fed current through it until its nails blackened and its hair fried. He was increasingly anguished by it all.
Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime.
My father was conflicted about his creation. He described him as having yellow skin, lustrous black and flowing hair, and teeth of a pearly whiteness. He tells that the creature had watery eyes, that seemed almost the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and black lips.
But he carried on relentlessly with his efforts to bring the creature to life.
And then at last he struck upon the idea of elevating his creation in the middle of a lightning storm.
All the elements came together that night.
The creature trembled to life.
With a deep intake of breath, I absorbed the impact of what I had just read. My father had brought to life a man of his own creation. Astonishing!
I was confused, though. All his notes indicated that this had taken place at a laboratory in Ingolstadt. What, then, was this laboratory?
Gazing upward, I saw the light filtering through a sort of hatch-way. The wires from the copper-wrapped drums also extended up through the sides of the hatch. Where did they lead? Were they conductors of electricity?
It was suddenly clear to me. This was an attempt to re-create the laboratory at Ingolstadt. I remembered the tales the Orkneyans told of lights flashing and strange sounds emanating from the castle. Victor Frankenstein had come here six years after his original experiment to …
Do what?
Make more people?
A race of new people?
A very high ladder led to the ceiling, and so I began to climb it. At the top, I was able to knock back the hatch with one hand while clinging to the ladder with the other. Sunlight attacked my eyes so fiercely that I turned away as my ears filled with the crash of surf. I made my way onto a simple platform that jutted from the wall. From there I could climb upward.
I emerged into a small one-room cottage. The windows were without glass. Rocks, seaweed, and even small animal skeletons littered the splintered planks of the rough wood on the floor. The thatch of the roof was nearly gone. Pieces of it were strewn on the floor. The copper wires from below extended to the opened roof of this hut, ending in two coils wrapped around an exposed supporting roof beam.
The moment I stepped outside and surveyed my surroundings, I knew exactly where I was. This was the hut on the small stone island out in the sea, the one with the abandoned hovel. Who would ever have imagined that the shed was really the roof of an elaborate and sophisticated underground laboratory?
Tumultuous waves crashed onto the rocks, spraying the bottom of my billowing dress. I yanked loose the ribbons that held my braid to let the wind rip the weave apart until my curls were tangling on the currents of air. Exhilarated as never before in my life, I was transformed. Seventeen years have passed since my father attempted his first experiments. Tremendous strides have been made in science. With his notes and drawings to guide me, I can take his work further than he ever dreamed.
Soon, though, my elation gave way to guilty shame. I had left Giselle awaiting me in the dark tunnel!
And then I spied her, standing up on the edge of the cliff. Her clothing was torn.
I waved to her but she didn’t seem to notice me.
“Giselle!” I shouted, waving broadly. The wind carried my voice out to sea.
A warped and rickety rowboat had been pulled ashore by the back of the wrecked hut, its paddles stowed. What luck! It would bring me home without having to find my way back through the frightening tunnel.
It took all my strength to shove the rowboat from the rocks. It bobbed against the sea, threatening to float off with each crash of a passing current. Unable to swim, I hesitated. What if I was thrown back into the swirling sea? It would be the certain end of me. Which was worse, my terror of the ocean or the endless silent tunnel?
Glancing up, I watched the torn strips of Giselle’s ripped clothing flapping in the wind. Her disheveled hair whirled around her head.
Taking the rowboat would bring me to her much more quickly than groping blindly through the tunnel.
Steeling my nerves, I threw myself into the rocking boat. I fumbled with the splintered oars and rowed over the chopping waves. Water crashed over the sides, soaking me again and again. It burned my eyes and left the taste of salt on my tongue.
When finally — with immeasurable relief — I made it within a yard of the shore, I slid out onto the craggy bottom and dragged the boat in. Sitting a moment, I wrung out my sodden skirt.
I sat only a moment, knowing I must reach Giselle. I rose but could see no way up the steep cliff.
The clatter of hooves made me turn. Walter was riding toward me.
“Are you all right?” he asked, coming to a halt alongside me.
“Yes! Quite all right!” I said. “But can you tell me how to get up the cliff? I must get to my sister, who is above us and in some distress.”
He extended a hand, which I clasped with both of my own. In an instant he’d drawn me up and I sat in front of him in his saddle. Before I could say a word, we were riding through the surf and up a winding path that led back toward the castle. When we reached Giselle, he stayed mounted while guiding me down to the ground.
Giselle ran to me, throwing herself into my arms, sobbing. “You’re safe! Thank heavens!”
“What happened, Giselle?” I cried.
“There’s something in that tunnel! It attacked me!”
“Did you see it?”
“No!”
“Was it human or animal?”
“I don’t know. Human, I think.”
�
��How did you escape?”
“I fought! I fought for my life! It was horrible, Ingrid! I was so scared. But I fought and I got away.”
She laid her head on my shoulder and sobbed, her body trembling. Glancing at Walter, I tried to ascertain his reaction to all this.
He didn’t even notice me. He was transfixed by Giselle, staring at her as though she were the loveliest woman he had ever seen.
FROM THE DIARY OF
BARONESS GISELLE FRANKENSTEIN
July 4, 1815
Ingrid has told me that the tunnel she traveled down comes up at the hovel out on Sweyn Holm, the tiny, rugged island off the shore beneath our castle. I believe her but have no desire to see it for myself, as the idea of the dark and narrowness of a tunnel fills me with terror. She has sworn me to secrecy. She claims she will keep all the inner doors locked so that no one may enter the castle from the island. It will be her own refuge.
But where is my refuge?
I don’t want to think about what happened, or write about what happened. I must put it out of my mind, if I am to go on. It was so terrifying that I can’t bear to remember it.
“You should not be in that tunnel,” I warned her this evening. “Something is there.”
“You must not say anything — if you do, everyone will know about the passage. If we must talk to police, say you were attacked in the pantry or the root cellar,” she begged.
I don’t want scandal surrounding the castle. Nothing must soil this event that I’m working so assiduously to make the social event that all of Europe will be talking about. It will be our introduction to high society and the exciting world of the most fashionable and interesting friends.
I will not jeopardize that.