Mister Creecher

by Chris Priestley

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the guard. ‘It ain’t poison.’

  Creecher’s snarl remained in place.

  ‘Drink it!’ hissed the guard.

  The man with the bottle hesitated, but the guard nodded for him to carry on and, when he held the bottle to Creecher’s lips, the giant allowed the liquid to be poured down. A moment later he blinked once and then shifted his weight, shaking his head.

  ‘Just a little potion of my own devising,’ said the guard. ‘It will make you a little more obliging. Get him in the cart, men. Quick, quick. That’s right, put the sacking over him.’

  The guard let Billy go, shoving him to one side. He threw a purse at Billy’s feet, where the coins it contained spilled on to the dirt. Billy wiped the blood from his forehead with the back of his hand and cursed.

  ‘For your trouble,’ said the guard, laughing as he climbed in next to the driver.

  Billy looked up from the coins to see the cart rumbling away and Creecher staring out from under the sacking with a look of cold, murderous hatred.

  He walked over to a tree stump and sat down. The rain had stopped, but he was soaking wet and cold. He hung his head and closed his eyes. He sat there for a long time.

  Billy was free now. He could do what he liked. His life had been possessed by the giant for months, but now he was gone. Billy should never have become involved in his affairs in the first place. Creecher’s struggle was his own business. Whatever happened to him and Frankenstein was none of Billy’s concern. They could all rot for all he cared.

  He was sick of hearing how badly Creecher had been treated. Because he was one of a kind, he thought that his pain was unique. But Billy knew all too well what it was like to be ignored, shunned and despised.

  No – Billy should not feel bad about the giant. He ought to be happy: happy that he could do what he liked without fear of being throttled; happy that he was free again. And yet . . . Billy did not feel as happy as he thought he should. He was unable to shake off a growing sense of guilt, and it was not a feeling he was accustomed to.

  This guilt made him angry. He had done nothing wrong, after all. Creecher could hardly expect him to let someone blow his brains out. He had had no choice.

  But that thought only led inevitably to the memory of Creecher giving himself up. The giant had allowed himself to be taken to save Billy’s life. He had gone willingly, without a struggle.

  ‘I never asked you to!’ shouted Billy to the wind. ‘I don’t owe you nothing!’

  He shook his head. Why had Creecher done it? By the time the guard had shot Billy, the giant would have been on him, and Billy had no doubt at all that he would have killed any who had not the wit nor the wherewithal to escape. Creecher had put Billy’s life ahead of his own.

  But why? It didn’t make sense. He had made it plain enough that all he cared about was Frankenstein building him a mate.

  Billy returned to his lodgings, ignoring the disapproving looks he received from his landlord, and changed into dry clothes. He sat in front of his fire, staring into the flames. As his bones began to warm themselves, he became calmer.

  He looked into the fire glow, into the blurred brightness of the flickering flames, and images from the past weeks shimmered before his eyes.

  He seemed to see Creecher rise up and save him from Fletcher that first frosty night outside the bookshop. Then he looked again through the greasy window at Frankenstein in his blood-soaked laboratory, and saw Creecher rise once more from that open grave in the churchyard.

  These spectres of the past and others danced before his eyes, but the one that returned again and again was the vision of Creecher being led away in chains.

  ‘I don’t owe you nothing,’ said Billy quietly to himself.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  Billy edged his way along the side of the stables. It had been easy enough to find. The guard was too cocky and drunk to imagine he had be followed from the coaching inn.

  There was a half-moon, low in the sky. It gave Billy enough light to see where he was going without revealing his presence to anyone who might walk by.

  As he approached the corner of the stables, strange noises sounded from a nearby copse. Billy had no idea what they were, but they made him jittery. The countryside seemed to be alive with squawking and barking and twittering.

  He stepped behind the trunk of an ancient oak tree and felt his way cautiously round its massive girth, his hands rumbling over its cracked and weathered hide. Peering round, he saw a man sitting on a barrel outside the stable entrance, smoking a pipe, the red glow of it pulsing as he sucked.

  Billy waited patiently until the man got up to answer a call of nature, before slipping silently into the darkness that lay between him and Creecher’s prison.

  The stables were pitch-black at first, until Billy’s eyes grew a little accustomed and he saw that some light did seep through cracks in the shutters.

  ‘Pssst. Creecher?’ he whispered.

  There was a bearlike moan in response.

  ‘You . . . come to . . . gloat?’ said Creecher slowly from the shadows. His speech was slurred. ‘You . . . who . . . betrayed me.’

  ‘I didn’t betray you,’ said Billy. ‘Shhhh. What’s the matter with you? You sound drunk.’

  ‘Drugged,’ Creecher replied. ‘Why . . . why . . . are you . . . here?’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Billy. ‘I didn’t have to come here, you know.’

  ‘Then . . . why have you?’

  ‘Keep your voice down. I’ve come to get you out. After all, it was my fault – you being here. In a way.’

  Creecher growled.

  ‘He was going to blow my balls off!’ hissed Billy. ‘What was I expected to do?’

  ‘You got . . . your . . . reward,’ said Creecher.

  ‘Look, I never asked for the money, but I wasn’t about to give it back neither. I could have used it to get to London but I didn’t. I came here. Now do you want my help or not?’

  There was no response from Creecher and Billy took a deep breath and turned to walk away.

  ‘Oui. Yes. I want your help. I am –’

  ‘Shhh!’ said Billy. ‘There’s someone coming.’

  Billy scuttled clear of the building and hid outside, his eye pressed to a crack in the shutter. He saw two men enter the darkened ruin, like ink into filthy water.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ said a voice Billy recognised all too well. It was the guard from the coach.

  Creecher made no response.

  ‘No matter,’ said the guard. ‘No matter. We will soon go our separate ways, my giant friend. I am about to have a meeting with a learned gentleman with an interest in the natural sciences.’

  The guard and his partner chuckled. Billy frowned. Frankenstein? Had Frankenstein discovered that Creecher was here? Creecher groaned.

  ‘The gentleman concerned has a particular passion for anatomy. He’s not as interested as I am in your sparkling wit. But he was most intrigued when I told him how big you were. I explained that you’d been ill for quite some time, and he said, were that illness to reach a fatal conclusion, he would buy your body in the interests of science. There now, you ugly piece of meat,’ said the guard. ‘You’re going to make a contribution to mankind. You should be proud.’

  Creecher stirred in his chains.

  ‘Nothing to say?’ said the guard. ‘Never mind, never mind. Now drink this.’

  ‘No,’ said Creecher.

  The guard sighed.

  ‘Either you drink it or I take one of your eyes. It’s a shame to damage the goods, but I think you’ll still make a decent price.’

  Billy heard Creecher moan, and it was clear that the guard had given him the potion.

  ‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘That should keep you quiet for a few hours.’

  ‘I thought we were going to see if that Swiss fellow wanted him,’ said the other man.

  Swiss fellow. Billy’s ears pricked up at that. Was Frankenstein going to be offered his own crea
tion?

  ‘Nah,’ said the guard. ‘He only wants women, remember.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure that can be arranged.’ There was the sound of chuckling. ‘But what about our gigantic friend here?’

  ‘He ain’t going anywhere, not until I decide what to do with him,’ said the guard. ‘Don’t worry. Those chains would hold an elephant. Besides, that drug will knock him senseless. Come on – let’s get a drink.’

  The two men walked away and Billy left a long interval before going back to the stable door.

  ‘Creecher!’ he hissed. There was no response. ‘Creecher!’

  Billy entered the stables and felt his way over to where the giant sat draped in chains. The chains were certainly strong, but so confident were the men of Creecher’s inability to break them that they had fixed them to the ring set into the stone-flagged floor with rudimentary padlocks.

  ‘Creecher!’ whispered Billy again. The giant still made no sound.

  Billy opened the padlocks with ease. He had been able to pick more complex locks than this since he was eight or so. After loosening the locks from the ring on the floor, he traced them up to the manacles on Creecher’s legs.

  The locks on these were a little more testing, but Billy still had them open in a minute or two. After freeing Creecher’s legs, he traced another set of chains up to manacles on his wrists, which were in turn attached to the metal yoke around his neck.

  All the time he worked he kept saying Creecher’s name. Billy’s eyes had gradually become accustomed to the gloom, but it was still too dark to discern the giant’s features. He was simply a great black shape, silent and motionless as a coal heap.

  Finally, the last lock was picked and Billy could pull all the chains aside and fling them to the floor. As soon as he turned back to Creecher, an arm shot towards him and one of the giant’s huge hands closed around his throat.

  Billy gasped and struggled, beating the arm with all his might. It was only because the giant was drugged that he eventually loosed his grip, allowing Billy to scuttle quickly backwards out of reach.

  ‘It’s me, Billy, you madman!’ Billy hissed, rubbing his throat.

  ‘Bill-ly,’ repeated the giant sleepily.

  ‘Come on, we have to go. If they come back, we’re both dead men.’

  ‘Dead . . . men,’ said Creecher.

  ‘Oh God. Come on! You have to get up. You have to move.’

  ‘Move.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Billy. ‘Get up. Get up!’

  Just as it seemed the giant was never going to move at all, Creecher slowly began to stand. Billy thought it best to get out of the stable, just in case his confusion returned and he decided to grab Billy again.

  Billy stood in the track and watched the stable door, waiting for the giant to appear. The moon came out from behind clouds long enough to shed some dim light on the scene. Slowly Creecher shuffled out. He walked backwards at first, and then, as he reached the doorway, he turned and stared at Billy.

  The effect was horrible in that light. The drugs had made the giant’s face look even less animated than usual, his eyelids heavy, his gaunt head lolling. His arms hung limply at his sides.

  Creecher looked at Billy as if trying to register who, or even what, he was. His head tilted and he peered into the gloom. Then he raised his arms and moaned plaintively, feeling the air between them. It was a pathetic gesture, as though he were a small child, confused and looking for reassurance. Swallowing his fear, Billy stepped forward and took the giant by the hand.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’re all right. You’re safe. You’re with Billy now.’

  ‘Bill-ly,’ repeated the giant. ‘Friend.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy quietly. ‘Friend.’

  And he led the shuffling giant away along the dimly lit track.

  They found refuge in a copse of trees on the outskirts of the town. Billy was worried that passers-by might hear Creecher’s moaning as he tossed and turned in a drug-addled nightmare, shaking himself free of the opiate’s grip.

  The giant’s jet-black hair only served to exaggerate the awful pallor of his skin. But studying Creecher’s face for so long made Billy realise, for the first time, that there was nothing inherently ugly about the shape of it. In fact, though it took an effort of will to see it, the features were noble – handsome even. But the pleasing symmetry of Creecher’s face was not enough to mask the horror that lay behind it.

  While the giant writhed in his stupor, Billy forced himself to watch as the skin wrinkled and stretched over the barely concealed muscles of his face, as the thin black lips pulled back to reveal those brilliant white teeth and yellow-white gums, and as blood coursed visibly through a network of veins.

  Could Frankenstein really have made Creecher? It seemed impossible. Yet Billy could see that Creecher was not human – or at least not wholly so. He was not simply the victim of disease or an accident of birth. He was some other kind of being entirely. He was something new, something unnatural.

  But unnatural or not, Billy did sense humanity in Creecher. He was not some man-shaped thing. He had feelings and desires. He had a heart and, for all Billy knew, he had a soul as well.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  Creecher flailed about, fighting invisible demons, whimpering and crying – and, all that time, Billy stayed by his side, leaving him only when he slept soundly and then just to fetch water to feed the giant’s raging thirst.

  Often, Creecher would wake and immediately check for Billy’s presence. As soon as he saw that the boy was there, he would fall asleep once more, calm and content.

  Sometimes, when Billy was sure that the giant was fast asleep, he would creep close and lean his ear next to Creecher’s mouth, fascinated by his breathless, deathlike slumber.

  The only person Billy had ever looked after in his whole life was his mother when she had grown ill. But he had been too young to do anything but watch her die.

  Now Creecher really did need him. And Billy had never felt needed before. It was a good feeling. It felt like nothing Billy had previously experienced.

  He wondered if this was how Creecher had felt when he’d looked after Billy in the attic as Billy drifted in and out of his fever sleep.

  Once Creecher was revived, Billy led the way and they left all signs of Oxford behind them, crossing fields and meadows and heading into open countryside. Creecher’s movements were a little drunken at first and more than once he put an arm out for Billy to take. Eventually they ended up beside a canal.

  ‘I wonder which way’s north,’ said Billy.

  Creecher pointed along the canal.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Creecher shrugged.

  ‘I just do,’ he replied.

  Billy sighed and shook his head.

  ‘Look, there’s a boat. Can you row?’

  Creecher nodded. ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Come on, then, before anyone sees.’

  Creecher got into the boat and, after loosening the mooring rope and throwing it aboard, Billy climbed in after him. The giant began to row and the boat moved along the water as if powered by a steam engine.

  ‘Woo-hoo,’ cried Billy, waving at two children who stood staring in disbelief on the towpath.

  ‘Why do you ask which way is north?’ asked Creecher as he rowed.

  ‘Because that’s where we need to go. We need to head north,’ said Billy.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s where Frankenstein is headed. They’re travelling to Scotland.’

  ‘Scotland?’ said Creecher.

  ‘Yeah, they’re going to somewhere called Matlock first and then Cumberland and –’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ growled Creecher.

  Billy hesitated.

  ‘The landlord of their rooms in London,’ he said. ‘He gave me their – what do you call it? – their itinerary, didn’t he?’

  Creecher’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘And were you ever going to tell me?’ he asked.<
br />
  ‘Probably not,’ said Billy. ‘I don’t know. It just felt good to know something that you didn’t. You weren’t telling me anything back then.’

  Creecher took a deep breath and smiled.

  ‘No more secrets,’ he said.

  ‘Fine by me.’

  There was a silence while the two of them adjusted to the new footing their relationship seemed to have gained itself. Creecher suggested they make camp, and they pulled up at the side of the canal, near a ruined church. They walked across a field that bulged with the remains of a deserted village, the foundations lying under a blanket of grass, like a sleeping army.

  The church ruins provided shelter from a wind blowing in from the east. Billy helped Creecher gather some food, taking guidance from the giant on whether such and such a plant or berry was edible or not. Creecher made a fire and they sat down to eat the food they had gathered, Billy longing for some meat, but also proud that he had helped in the hunt.

  ‘So,’ said Billy. ‘Are you ever going to tell me anything else?’

  Creecher sat back.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About you,’ said Billy.

  ‘What is it you want to know?’ he asked.

  Billy did not know where to start.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Do you remember anything about how you . . . how you came to be alive?’

  Creecher shook his head. ‘Do you remember your birth?’ he asked.

  Billy saw his point.

  ‘When I try to recall those first moments, my mind is awash with confusion,’ said Creecher, frowning. ‘It is a whirlwind of sensations, of light, of sound. I felt hunger and thirst, I felt cold and afraid, without really knowing what hunger, thirst, coldness or fear actually were.

  ‘I discovered that I could move. My eyes were gradually able to focus and I could see my hands. I saw the fingers flex and then controlled the movement and became aware of that control.

  ‘I had been lying on a table of some kind – a fact I only discovered when I moved and fell on to the stone floor. Pain was my next lesson.