Mister Creecher

by Chris Priestley

  Creecher nodded.

  ‘It makes sense,’ he said. ‘This is a place of great learning. He will perhaps gain some knowledge that will help him in his work. I want to see this warehouse for myself.’

  ‘What? I thought you didn’t want him disturbed. If he –’

  ‘I just need to see with my own eyes, mon ami,’ Creecher broke in. ‘I have waited so long.’

  Billy sighed.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said.

  They entered the streets of Oxford as night took full grip of the city. As they walked past a church, Billy called for Creecher to stop.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Creecher.

  ‘Nature calls,’ said Billy, climbing over the wall.

  ‘In a graveyard? Have you no respect for the dead?’

  ‘No, not especially,’ Billy whispered from behind the wall. ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead, ain’t you? I don’t think they’ll mind . . . Hang on – what’s going on over there?’

  ‘What is it?’ said Creecher, climbing the wall.

  ‘Down!’

  Creecher did not move. Billy grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him towards the tombstone he was sheltering behind.

  ‘What is it?’ Creecher asked again.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ said Billy. ‘Resurrectionists.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Bodysnatchers,’ Billy explained.

  The silence that followed this word seemed to last for an age. A flood of images raced through Billy’s mind; the view of Frankenstein amid the bloody machinery of his work, the face of the hanged girl, the glint of yellow light that tripped along the saw’s teeth.

  He took another peek round the headstone. Two men stood a little way off, looking into an open grave, their forms lit by lantern glow from inside the pit. Billy could see the flickering shadows of a third man, who must have already climbed down to open the coffin.

  He took a deep breath and motioned to Creecher to leave the graveyard. Then, rising silently and keeping low behind the headstones, he made his way to the gate. But when he turned round, expecting to see Creecher behind him, he saw instead the giant’s silhouette against the blue-black sky.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Billy whispered, retracing his steps. ‘Get down.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Creecher replied, striding towards the resurrectionists without turning round.

  Billy caught up with him just as one of the men spotted the giant and shouted to his colleagues. But a heartbeat later, Creecher had grabbed him, and Billy heard the snap of the man’s neck and the crunch of broken skull as his body was tossed aside to hit a stone cross.

  One of the other men hit Creecher a mighty blow across the shoulder with a shovel, but the giant shrugged it off without breaking his stride, pulled the shovel from his grip and swung it at the retreating figure. The blade smacked into the man’s spine, making him howl in agony.

  The howl did not last long, however, as Creecher was on him in a flash, picking him up and hurling him, face first, into the railings. The man fell and did not stir.

  Billy saw the body of the buried corpse, lying like a discarded puppet, the shroud smeared with blood, its flesh pale and smooth as though it had never seen the light of day, like the worms that it would feed.

  The only man left now was the one in the grave itself. Lamplight shone up, illuminating his face, and Billy could see fear and anger fighting for control.

  The man pulled a pistol from the waistband of his trousers, cocked it and pointed it at Creecher.

  ‘I’ll send you back to hell, you devil!’

  He fired. The flash lit the place for a split second, like a bolt of lightning. Creecher staggered backwards, put a hand to his shoulder and inspected the blood. Then he looked back at the man and smiled. Then he jumped into the grave.

  Billy turned away and wished he didn’t have to hear the man’s last agonised sounds. When all was silent, he glanced back and saw the resurrectionist crumpled like a doll, his face rammed into the mud wall. Creecher was standing in the grave beside him, his head and shoulders visible above the edge. The lantern in the pit lit his features from below and cast a long, eerie shadow up the gravestone behind him.

  There was something so horrible about the image that Billy took two steps back, and the effect was only made more disquieting as Creecher slowly heaved himself out to stand, beshadowed and backlit, by the open grave, as though resurrected at the Day of Judgement.

  ‘Come on,’ said Billy. ‘That shot must have been heard. We shouldn’t be found here.’

  They left the churchyard and walked away towards the centre of town. Billy could not bring himself to look at the giant. The sight of him climbing out of that grave was still lodged in his mind.

  ‘You are angry with me?’ said Creecher.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Billy muttered.

  ‘You feel sorry for them? For the grave-robbers.’

  ‘No, I just . . . We could have just gone.’

  ‘Those men rob the dead of their peace,’ said Creecher. ‘I hate them.’

  ‘You’re mad, you know that, don’t you? Where do you think Frankenstein got his bodies from? How do you think he does that filthy work you seem so keen for him to do? How do you think he . . .’ Billy tailed off.

  Creecher scowled.

  ‘Yes – I know,’ he said after a few moments. ‘You are right, of course. It is just that sometimes . . . sometimes I wish that I had never lived.’

  He looked at Billy, his mournful eyes sparkling.

  ‘It is mad, you are right. But I did not ask to be brought into being. These people – they and Frankenstein – have no right to do what they do. I need them and yet I hate them all the more for needing them. Does that make sense?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Billy. ‘Maybe.’

  Creecher looked at the ground for a long time and then back at Billy. He wore the expression of a petulant child.

  ‘I saw you get hit,’ said Billy. ‘Don’t you feel pain?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Creecher replied quietly. ‘I feel pain. Sometimes it seems like it is all I feel.’

  ‘Then how can you stand it?’

  ‘Because I am also strong, mon ami.’

  Creecher gave him a bitter smile and sat down and pulled his coat from his shoulder. His shirt was red with blood.

  ‘Nasty,’ said Billy.

  ‘Yes, my friend. I bleed like any ordinary man. You have a knife?’

  Billy nodded.

  ‘Yeah. What of it?’

  ‘The ball is in my shoulder,’ said Creecher matter-of-factly. ‘You must get it out.’

  ‘What? I ain’t doing that! You need a doctor or something.’

  ‘I cannot go to a surgeon. Look at me. No – you must do it.’

  Billy took a deep breath and closed his eyes tightly.

  ‘Why did you have to tell me how sensitive you were?’ he said, as he took his knife out. ‘You could have said you didn’t feel any pain.’

  Creecher smiled at him.

  ‘It will be fine, Billy,’ he said. ‘Quickly now.’

  Billy gulped and leaned forward. The ball had hit the muscle of Creecher’s shoulder and lodged there. He looked at the wound and swallowed hard. Although it bled like any wound, it looked more like a damaged piece of meat, as if it was a side of pork which had been struck instead of human flesh.

  Billy put the tip of the blade into the wound and almost immediately he felt it touch the metal of the ball. Clenching his teeth so tightly he thought they might shatter, he slid the knife under the ball and jerked his wrist, flicking the ball out.

  Creecher took a long breath and clicked his neck noisily. Then he shrugged his coat back over his shoulder.

  ‘That ain’t the end of it,’ said Billy. ‘Blood’s going to get poisoned. That shoulder’s going to rot, mark my words. I’ve seen it happen.’

  Creecher shook his head and stood up.

  ‘Not to me,’ he said.

  Billy fro
wned at the giant, who was already walking away.

  ‘How come?’ he asked, catching up.

  ‘My body does not allow it,’ Creecher replied flatly.

  Billy raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What? You’re immune, are you?’

  ‘I do not get infections of any kind.’

  ‘But you must do,’ said Billy. ‘Everyone does.’

  Creecher shook his head.

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘All things shun me,’ said Creecher. ‘Even disease. It is because of that I need a mate –’

  ‘Shut up!’ hissed Billy, putting his hands over his ears. He kicked out at a nearby wall, wincing as his toes hit the stone. ‘This whole thing is crazy! Me. You. All of this. I’m risking my life with you around, and as soon as Frankenstein builds you your mate, you’ll dump me, won’t you? Won’t you?’

  ‘Billy –’

  ‘I don’t hear you denying it!’

  Creecher reached out, but Billy stepped back.

  ‘Perhaps I should get Frankenstein to build me a mate, eh?’

  ‘We are friends,’ said Creecher. ‘That is also important to me.’

  ‘For now,’ Billy replied.

  ‘But listen –’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ said Billy, and he walked away towards his lodging house.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  Billy went to bed in a bad mood and woke with the selfsame scowl etched on his face the next morning. He got up and got dressed, and stomped outside into a day as gloomy as his mood.

  He was cross with himself as much as anything else. What was he doing? What was he thinking of, leaving London to wander across England with this murderous giant?

  Creecher’s obsession made him dangerous company. He didn’t care about Billy. All he cared about was getting his mate. Nothing else truly mattered. Billy had left London in the full knowledge that Creecher’s whole purpose in being in this country was to ensure that Frankenstein kept his promise. It was not as if the giant had lied to him or tricked him.

  Creecher wanted a mate and he wasn’t going to rest until he had one. And then he was going to take her to the wilds of South America and that was that. They would raise a hideous pack of monsterlings and Billy would be forgotten about.

  He couldn’t help but be repulsed by the idea of that grotesque family. He thought he had accepted Creecher as a kind of human, but realised now that this acceptance could only go so far. A female version of the giant was bad enough, but the idea that they would breed more of their kind . . .

  And Billy was going to get cast aside while these abominations created a whole race of monsters. The two things seem to merge in his mind – the pain of being discarded and his disgust at the notion of Creecher’s monstrous progeny.

  It was time for him to start looking out for himself again. Creecher was going his way and Billy needed to go another. He was alone. He had always been alone. Nothing had changed. Not really.

  Yet he felt strangely affected by the mix of emotions rising up in him and, try as he might, he could not altogether ignore it. Billy had never felt important to anyone but his mother, and he had believed himself to be important to Creecher. He had believed that they were important to each other. He felt a wave of pain surge through him like a bolt of electricity.

  As a distraction, he picked up a copy of the local paper someone had left on a bench. Leafing through it, something caught his eye. There was a report about highwaymen on the London road. He was in the paper! He was famous!

  Billy read on excitedly, a grin across his face. But that grin soon disappeared as a thunderous scowl moved in to replace it.

  ‘What?’ growled Billy. ‘It was me who did all the talking!’

  Apart from a brief mention that he had an accomplice with him, the newspaper had devoted the whole piece to Creecher, telling its readers that the man was a giant with a London accent, who kissed all the ladies before he robbed them.

  There weren’t even any ladies! Billy thought angrily, screwing up the paper and tossing it on to the pavement, which was starting to spot with raindrops. He walked away down an alleyway, muttering to himself.

  ‘Hey, you!’ someone called from behind him. The voice was vaguely familiar.

  When Billy looked round he saw the guard from the coach striding towards him with a group of men. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself surrounded and staring down the barrel of a cocked pistol.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Billy, with as much bravado as he could muster. ‘Leaving me in the road wasn’t enough for you?’

  ‘Where is he?’ shouted the guard above the noise of the rain hammering against the cobbles. Billy could taste the gin on his breath.

  ‘Who?’

  The pistol was rammed forward, cracking against Billy’s skull and making him wince.

  ‘Don’t play with me, boy!’ hissed the guard.

  Billy wiped away the blood that had begun to trickle between his eyebrows.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ the guard went on. ‘I thought you might show up and then, when I heard about the giant highwayman – well, I knew it must be you. I asked around and found out you’d been in the Blind Dog, looking for a fence.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want your French friend,’ snapped the guard. ‘He lost me my job. He owes me some money, he does. And I aim to get it. So where is he?’

  He pointed the pistol at Billy’s face. His hand was shaking so much Billy was sure that he was going to squeeze the trigger, whether he meant to or not.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Billy. ‘The giant. Yeah. I know who you mean. But I don’t know where he is, I swear.’

  ‘Then that’s bad luck for you.’

  ‘Wait! Wait! All right. I’ll tell you.’

  The guard smiled and put the pistol down. He looked round at his comrades and grinned. He turned back to Billy and hit him hard in the stomach, making him double up in pain.

  ‘Lie to me again and I’ll kill you,’ he snarled. ‘Now take us to him.’

  ‘Take you there?’ said Billy.

  ‘That’s right. What? Do you think I’d just take your word for it?’

  Billy was shoved back down the alleyway to where a cart was waiting in the road. The guard told him to get up at the front and the rest of the men climbed in the back.

  As Billy took his seat he could see that the cart was full of chains and manacles.

  ‘You’re going to take us to him and you’re going to persuade him to come quietly,’ said the guard.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Billy.

  ‘I don’t see that you’ve got much choice. Although I suppose we could just kill you here and take our chances with the giant . . .’

  The guard sat alongside him and rested the barrel of his pistol in Billy’s lap, leaning forward to whisper in his ear.

  ‘The first time you play me false I’m going to blow your balls off.’

  ‘Look, he’s nothing to me,’ said Billy. ‘He made me go with him. You’ve seen what he’s like. I couldn’t do anything else.’

  ‘Is that why you stood in the way when I was going to shoot him?’ said the guard, as the driver flicked the reins. ‘Now, which way?’

  Billy nodded ahead.

  ‘He’s in a barn just out of town. But you ain’t going to get those on him. Do you think he’s going to let you? And he ain’t going to be scared of that neither.’ Billy looked down at the pistol.

  ‘Let us worry about that, lad.’

  In no time at all they were rumbling down the track that led towards the barn.

  ‘He’s going to kill all of you,’ Billy said, his voice quivering with the motion of the cart. ‘And then he’s going to kill me for bringing you here.’

  ‘Is that the place?’ said the guard.

  Billy nodded sullenly. His mouth felt dry, his palms clammy. He did not know what was going to happen in the next moments, but he was sure it was not going
to be good. The driver pulled on the reins.

  ‘Get out,’ said the guard, shoving Billy in the ribs with the pistol.

  When they had advanced a few yards towards the barn, he told Billy to stop and then pressed the pistol against the side of Billy’s head.

  ‘Call him out,’ he hissed.

  ‘Creecher!’

  There was no response.

  ‘Again!’ said the guard.

  ‘Creecher!’ repeated Billy, more loudly this time.

  Still nothing stirred. The guard twisted the barrel against Billy’s scalp.

  ‘Come out of there, you filthy troll – unless you want your little friend here to have his head blown off!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t make me ask again!’

  After a short pause, Creecher emerged from the barn. He had to stoop to get through the door and stood, head bowed, staring at the guard with cold fury in his shadowed eyes. There was a general groan of fear and wonder from the assembly.

  ‘Finlay – get the chains.’

  Creecher growled and clenched his hands into mighty fists and started towards the guard, who didn’t even flinch.

  ‘One step closer and I blow this boy’s brains out.’

  ‘Balls one minute, brains the next,’ said Billy. ‘Make your bleedin’ mind up.’

  ‘Shut up,’ snarled the guard.

  Creecher growled like an angry dog and Billy shut his eyes and waited for the pistol blast. But when he opened his eyes again, to his amazement, Creecher was standing still.

  ‘Now you’re going to let these fellows put some jewellery on your foul carcass and you ain’t going to lift a finger to stop them. Cos if you do, this boy’s meat – understood?’

  Billy could not believe it when Creecher simply nodded in response. The men moved forward gingerly, but gained in confidence as, first, manacles were locked round the giant’s ankles, and then his wrists. A great belt was tied around his middle and chains from his wrists and ankles were locked to loops along its length. Finally, a metal collar was placed around Creecher’s neck and chains attached from loops on this to further loops on the belt.

  All through the process, Creecher gazed directly at Billy and never once looked away.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the guard. ‘Give him the drink.’

  A man advanced towards Creecher, holding a small bottle. Creecher pulled back his thin black lips and bared his teeth in a snarl.