by Alex Archer
No one seemed to notice Roux as he moved around in the background. He was only a servant, after all, barely worth their attention.
Roux rather enjoyed the anonymity and did his best to preserve it.
In the hours when they languished, half in sleep usually, he had even risked reading one of their diaries, thumbing quickly through the pages to be sure that neither he, Garin nor the cook were ever mentioned. It was as if the young men and women enjoying their decadent summer by the lake were running the household without any assistance. All they seemed to be concerned about was ensuring there was a never-ending supply of wine and brandy, not where it actually came from or how it got to the house. Such trifles were irrelevant to their way of thinking.
The rain came almost every day, robbing them of the summer they had expected.
Despite the size of the great house, it quickly became stiflingly claustrophobic. More than once the poet lamented that the very walls were closing in on them with every passing hour. He postured and preened, a goblet never far from his hand. He reclined on the arms of the great upholstery, holding forth on this virtue or that sin, positing the impossibility of immortality and the inevitability of the end. Always that, always obsessed with the end. That there was nothing beyond the now. The five of them bickered, deliberately launching barbs that would sting and prick and linger. On the third night one of them came up with a notion that should keep them amused.
“We should each create our own ghost story,” Byron said. “A story that will chill the very bones of our audience. And when we are finished we must read our creations to the others.”
“We shall need an arbiter, shall we not? Someone to decide which is the best and most chilling?” Polidori noted.
“We shall let Roux decide,” Mary proclaimed.
“It’s a competition?” Claire clapped. “But who is Roux?”
Roux said nothing. Three days and only one of them even knew his name.
He waited for the young Mary to point him out.
She was aware of the working of the household—the only one of her group who did. Roux suspected that she even knew about Garin and the cook stealing every moment they could to spend alone in one of the unoccupied rooms. Roux inclined his head slightly, and smiled in acknowledgment.
“As you wish,” he said.
“In that case,” Byron grinned ruefully and said, “we are all agreed. Now, I believe your first duty—and most vital task—as judge of this great literary competition is to supply us with wine.”
The declaration was enough to bring a cheer from Polidori and a round of applause that echoed to the high ceilings of the room. To be brutally honest, Roux wanted no part of their great ideas, but he was more than happy to play along with them while it suited him. He fetched enough wine from the cellar to see them through the night, then left them to their amusements.
The night was falling and with it the rage of the storm increased.
Maybe they would work on their stories, Roux thought, or perhaps more likely they would drink and talk until the morning or unconsciousness, whichever came first.
There was no sign that the rain was likely to abate.
Roux kept to himself.
As well as wine, there was enough bread, cheese and fruit to keep them satisfied should hunger cravings stir. If they wanted more, they could wake Garin and the cook. There was nothing left to keep Roux from his bed, and so he retired to his room and settled down for the night.
His candle burned slowly as he read one of the books that adorned the shelves in the chamber. Eventually he grew tired, set the volume down and listened for a short while to the sound of the rain hammering against the windows. The ill-fitting glass rattled in the frame, allowing a draft to waft the curtains gently back and forth, creating the illusion of someone standing behind them.
Despite the tricks of his mind, Roux soon drifted into a deep sleep that was shattered by the sound of a scream.
He dressed quickly and raced down the winding staircase to find them all standing around the window in the room where he had left them. Each one stared out into the darkness. Lightning flashed. He saw what had frightened one of the women. It was a face. The face of a man that was somehow not a man. It was a tragic and yet brutal visage staring in at them.
“What deviltry is this?” Byron demanded, as if he expected someone else in the room to offer up the answer his rational mind was searching for. Polidori tried to speak, but was no more capable of giving a solution than any of the others.
Another lightning flash slashed across the deep night, but this time the image was gone.
“No doubt it was merely your ugly reflection in the glass,” Shelley suggested with a wry smile.
“Nonsense,” Mary replied, intent on peering out into the night. “I saw someone out there. We have to see if he’s all right.”
“I saw him as well, a monstrous thing he was. Surely not a man at all. You cannot let that monster in here,” Claire said. “For the love of all things holy, make sure that all the doors and windows are bolted. He was a thing of hell itself.” She clutched on to Byron’s arm, but he showed no sign of wanting to comfort her.
“If you will permit it, I will go and check,” Roux said to Byron. “If it is some poor wretch from the village lost in this storm, I will make sure that he gets home safely.”
“And if it is not?” Claire asked.
“Then I will deal with him appropriately, miss. On that you have my word.”
“Good man,” Byron said, a sardonic smile on his lips as he assayed a bow in Roux’s direction.
There was obvious relief among the gathering, save for Mary herself, who seemed more fascinated than fearful at whatever she had seen out there. As ever with the rich, they felt the undercurrent of need, but none of them wanted to be the one to see it done. Roux taking control meant that they could once more lounge back in their seats, lifting their glasses, and simply forget that there might ever have been a man on the other side of the window. Something was being done, and all was right with the world once more.
Before venturing outside Roux retrieved his sword and his greatcoat.
While he had no idea of what he had seen through the window, he knew that it was not his reflection. He was also certain that it was not some lost villager. A poor soul with such a monstrous visage would be well known in the vicinity even if he hid himself away, fearful of being cast out as a demon, or tortured like some devil. People had ever thus been cruel and fearful of difference and things they did not understand.
Roux could not shake the feeling that he had seen something unearthly.
“Garin,” he shouted, banging on the door of the cook’s bedroom, earning grunts and grumbles from his young protégé. He had been of two minds about summoning the man, but if it was going to come to blows out there, Garin’s sword would be invaluable. Besides, two sets of eyes hunting the intruder were always going to be better than one.
When Garin emerged he was already half-dressed, sword in one hand and the rest of his clothes in the other.
“What’s the ruckus?” Garin demanded, far from happy to have been dragged from his pit.
“You did not hear the scream?” Roux asked.
“This place is full of screams, old man, especially in there.” He hooked a thumb back over his shoulder toward the bed where the cook was wantonly sprawled out. “Am I supposed to react to all of them?”
“On with your trews and boots, man. We need to be out there before the thing escapes.”
“Thing? I don’t like that choice of word.”
“An intruder.”
“Inside the house?”
“The grounds. One of the women saw him through the window.”
“The cause of the scream?”
“Indeed.”
“Surely it’s just some poor wretch lost in the storm?”
“That was my first thought,” Roux said. “But then I saw him.”
Garin grinned ferociously. “You always save
the best part until last, old man. What are we waiting for?” Garin asked with his hand on the door, ready to head out into the raging elements looking every bit as fearsome as the storm itself.
“You don’t want a coat?”
“Who wears a coat for fighting?” Garin pulled the door open, filling the hallway with the squall of wind and rain. Roux buttoned up his own coat, ready to follow the younger man out into the night, fist wrapped around the hilt of his sword.
On nights like these he could easily believe once more in heaven and hell even if his own passage into either had been long denied him.
They plunged into the storm, battered and bullied by the elements.
Lightning flashed, lighting up the sky. The willows cast shadows that crept stealthily down to the water’s edge. The silver fork was reflected in the ripples of the storm-tossed lake, chasing across the surface toward the shore. The rowboat bobbed and pulled at its moorings, trying to break free as it filled with rain.
Roux shielded his eyes against the deluge, scanning the lawn as another fork of lightning split the sky, seventeen tines spearing toward the earth.
“This really isn’t the weather to be waving a giant lightning conductor around,” Garin shouted above a crash of thunder that shook the firmament. His eyes were manic. Garin was more alive than he had been in months. He was enjoying himself. He raised his sword to the sky as though daring some unseen god to strike him down. The lightning when it came was answered by a shrieking tear of wood as it ripped into one of the trees no more than two hundred yards from where they stood. The thrill of electricity from the strike tore the sword from his hand and sent Roux staggering backward. The impact, even at that distance, was akin to a punishing fist.
Garin’s laughter rolled with the thunder that followed.
Gasping, Roux straightened and looked back toward the house.
The orange light of the fire blazing inside silhouetted one of the women, Mary, as she stood lonely vigil at the window.
There was no sign of the creature.
15
“Hold on a second, let me get this straight, Roux. You’re telling me you and Garin were there when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein?”
“Polidori wrote his story, The Vampyre, too,” the old man agreed.
“That’s insane. I keep forgetting…”
“That I’m older than the hills?”
Annja offered a wry smile. “You can’t leave it like that. What about the face at the window? You found out what it was, didn’t you? That’s how it links to what’s happening here.” Her mind raced to its own conclusions, not waiting for Roux to finish his incredible tale.
“Not that night, but it was the beginning for me, how I was drawn into what is now legend. We spent the next couple of hours out there in the storm, looking desperately for the intruder, but there was no sign of him anywhere around the house or in any of the outbuildings. Soaked to the skin, we had returned, but rather than appeased, the women would not rest. Fear had wormed its way into them. So, to do our best to calm them we searched the house from top to bottom to make sure that the intruder had not found its way inside while we hunted it out there. Claire was convinced that they were all going to be murdered in their beds.” Roux smiled almost fondly at the memory, which struck Annja as odd, until he finished the thought. “After we came back inside Garin just flopped down amid them, so easy and natural, so absolutely one of them, they welcomed him into their number without ever realizing it was happening. He’s got quite a way with people when he sets his mind to it.”
“It’s a gift,” Annja agreed, thinking of the waitress and now the doctor and how it had taken less than five minutes in his presence to succumb to his charms. If he could bottle whatever it was about him that made Garin quintessentially Garin, he’d be an even richer man.
She knew the story of that summer in the Villa Diodati and how that group of people had challenged one another to come up with ghost stories; everyone had heard it in some form or other even if they didn’t realize it. But in all the time she’d known him Roux had never mentioned that he was there. It was incredible to think he’d been there at the birth of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, one of the first truly famous monsters that has endured so many years later. But that was Roux all over. He had been to so many places, seen so many things, lived so many lifetimes, that he couldn’t possibly have told her even a quarter of the things he’d seen and done. “How does it connect?”
“All in good time, dear heart. I didn’t see or hear anything about the thing for some days after. It made a great impression on young Mary, though. That much was obvious. She used it as inspiration for her story. The rain kept coming, thunderclouds so dark they succeeded in transforming day to night. No one left the house. Those who worked on their stories looked up from their pages, constantly scribbling.
“The day stretched into night and out the other side. Nothing seemed to change. On the third day the rain stopped; sunlight breaking through the thick cloud layer and spearing down in bright beams that seemed to scatter a wealth of gold across the lawn. At last we ventured out of the house. It was only then that we learned of the killings.”
16
It was the first time they had seen the sun for days.
The ground was sodden underfoot. Pools of rainwater gathered on the lawn. The lake had burst its banks, spreading out across the muddy slopes where the earth simply couldn’t soak up the downpour fast enough. The soil sucked at his boots with every step. The sky was full of thick banks of cloud, but every now and then they parted just long enough to allow the sun to come streaming through. Its heat caught them unawares.
Roux was glad to be out in the open.
He strode around the curve of the lake, luxuriating in the fresh air as it cleared the cobwebs from his mind. It made a refreshing change to be haunted by the echo of his own footsteps as he paced the corridors of the Villa Diodati.
The village was a good thirty minutes’ brisk walk away.
Garin walked arm in arm with the cook, moving even slower than the gaggle of giggling guests from the villa led by Byron, who was once more acting as if he were lord of the manor. Roux resisted the urge to hold back and play subservient, and lengthened his stride.
He reached the village several minutes before the others.
That meant that he was the first to hear the news that there had been two murders in the past three days, covered by the storms, and that the bodies had only just been discovered now that the awful weather had abated.
“Who were they? The victims?” Roux asked the shopkeeper, who was more than happy to share the shocking news with anyone who passed the front of his premises.
“Strangers,” he said meaningfully. “Seems the poor souls were seeking out shelter but found more than they bargained for there near the woods.”
Strangers murdered in and around the same woods that separated the Villa Diodati from the village? “We saw a stranger up at the villa a couple of nights ago,” Roux said, adding to the gossip at the shopkeeper’s disposal. “Is there any way I could see the bodies?”
“Why ever would you want to do something so macabre?”
“Ah, merely to ease my own guilt should it turn out he proves to be one of them. You understand, I am sure—it would be most awful to contemplate that someone lost their life because I turned him away.”
If the shopkeeper doubted his explanation, he didn’t voice those doubts. “Of course. I understand completely. The curse of being a good man.” He nodded. “They have been laid out in the church and will remain there until they can receive a good Christian burial. There did not seem to be anywhere more appropriate.”
The rest of the party was still way down the street.
Roux nodded, expecting the man to make the other obvious connection: that if their nocturnal visitor was not among their number, then surely Roux had encountered their killer.
The shopkeeper was clearly torn. By accompanying Roux to the church, he might learn even mo
re twists to the story that so fascinated him, or perhaps he would earn some coin from the purses of the wealthy strangers walking toward his premises if he stayed. In the end greed won out. “The church will be open now. I’m sure the priest will be looking over the bodies. Tell him you have spoken to me and—” he leaned forward conspiratorially “—be sure to return to let me know how you get on, won’t you?”
“I will,” Roux said, though he had no intention of doing so. The gossip would find its own method of multiplying without his help. Soon enough it would fill the entire village.
He crossed the quiet square to the doors of the church, which were open to welcome the congregation, and entered. The priest knelt in front of the altar, offering a prayer for the two corpses that were stretched out on boards before him. The arm of one of the dead hung free, almost touching the floor. The priest did not move from his prayer at the sound of Roux’s approach, though Roux made no effort to hide his footsteps. When he was almost beside him, Roux cleared his throat. The priest finished the final imprecations to the Lord, his Master, and rose, brushing down his robes as he turned to face his visitor.
“Can I help you?” the priest asked.
Roux offered him the same story he had given the shopkeeper. Skeptical, the priest reluctantly agreed to allow him a look beneath the shrouds. With the utmost respect, Roux peeled back the layer of cloth that separated the living from the dead. He looked down at the corpses, studying their features. There was no doubt in his mind. There was no way that either of these men could have been the near-featureless hulk he had seen through the window. Armed with that knowledge, he knew the reality was that he had almost certainly seen their killer.