The Frankenstein Journals

by Scott Sonneborn

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FEET FIRST

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  I FOR AN EYE

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  BORRRRING. That’s how I’d describe the first 13 years of my life. Don’t get me wrong . . . living at Mr. Shelley’s Orphanage for Lost and Neglected Children® wasn’t ALWAYS bad. But, more often than not, life was just a big ol’ heaping helping of boredom.

  Thankfully, Year #14 made up for it all. Which is why I’m writing this journal. Because Year #14 needs to be remembered (or at least not forgotten).

  So, in case you were wondering, my future self, here’s what you looked like then . . .

  Hmm . . . you know, looking back, I can kind of see why I never got adopted. I suppose I made an odd first impression. Something about me just doesn’t quite match. Or, actually, a lot of things don’t:

  1. My right eye is blue and my left is green.

  2. I have short fingers on one hand and giant ones on the other.

  3. One leg is longer than the other.

  4. My feet are way too big for my legs (not to mention two completely different sizes!).

  Sure, not everyone noticed these “qualities” the first time they saw me. But anyone who spent time with me, like say, trying to decide if they wanted to take me home, saw them eventually.

  Growing up at Mr. Shelley’s Orphanage for Lost and Neglected Children®, I thought a lot about getting a family. I used to daydream all the time that somewhere out there I had the HUGEST family in the world. But Mr. Shelley, the orphanage director, never figured out who left me behind. Mr. Shelley always told me that he found me lying on a blanket in a box.

  He called me John Doe . . . J.D. for short.

  Although I wasn’t the greatest orphan, Mr. Shelley would be the first to tell you that he wasn’t the greatest orphanage director. For example, I was the ONE AND ONLY orphan at Mr. Shelley’s orphanage. The place wasn’t exactly what you’d call successful.

  In fact, the place was GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!

  One day, Mr. Shelley got a letter. The power company said they’d be shutting off the power sometime in the next 24 hours.

  And that’s when this monster mystery started . . .

  “That’ll do it,” said Mr. Shelley from inside his office. “I guess this is the last time I’ll see this place. Or it would be, if I could see anything with the lights shut off!”

  I went into his office and handed him a flashlight.

  “Thank you, J.D.,” said Mr. Shelley. “I really don’t know what I’d do without you. But I suppose I am about to find out.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better director, J.D.,” he said, the corners of each eye sprouting a tear. “Sorry I couldn’t find you a family. Sorry I failed at yet another business and can’t repay my brother-in-law the money he loaned me to open this orphanage. Sorry I have to move to Las Vegas and work in his ice cream truck to pay back what I owe.”

  Mr. Shelley shivered at the thought.

  “Don’t panic, sir,” I told him. “I’ll figure something out. I promise.”

  “You always say that,” said Mr. Shelley. “And you always do it, too. Without you, this orphanage would have gone out of business a long time ago. I always said you were my right-hand man.”

  He had always said that. I had always thought that was weird, since my LEFT hand is way bigger and stronger than my RIGHT.

  “You were the one keeping this place afloat,” he continued. “I was just holding you back. It’s probably better for you that we go our separate ways. But before we do . . .”

  Mr. Shelley used the flashlight to find a box under his desk.

  “The bank is going to repossess the building and everything in it. We’re only allowed to take our personal stuff. This is yours,” Mr. Shelley said, putting the box on his desk. “This is the box I found you in outside the orphanage.”

  The only thing inside the box was a blanket.

  “You were lying on that when I found you at the door,” said Mr. Shelley proudly. “You never forget your first orphan. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  I couldn’t say I remembered that, but then, I was just a baby. I picked up the blanket to take a closer look. The blanket reeked of must and dust.

  I let out a sneeze.

  “Oh my!” exclaimed Mr. Shelley.

  “It’s no big deal,” I shrugged. “Just my allergies.”

  But Mr. Shelley wasn’t looking at me. He was gaping at the bottom of the box. Underneath where the blanket had been was a book.

  “Well, what do you know about that!” exclaimed Mr. Shelley. “I never even thought to look under the blanket.” Then he sighed. “Shows you what a bad orphanage director I was.”

  I opened the book. It was a journal (kind of like the one I’m writing in now). Only someone had already filled all the pages of this one. And as I flipped through them, a photograph fell out. It must have been stuck in between the pages. I picked it up.

  It was a photo of a baby being held by . . . FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER!

  Not that there’s anything strange about that. I had seen plenty of photos of Frankenstein’s Monster.

  A while ago, maybe ten years — or no, I think it was almost fifteen years ago — Frankenstein’s Monster made a BIG SPLASH before disappearing without a trace. No one had seen or heard from him since.

  From what I remembered reading about him, Frankenstein’s Monster hadn’t been a bad sort of monster. (Not like the Mummy — that guy left a big mess in the middle of town a couple years ago!)

  On the back of the photo was a note:

  I looked at the baby again. Even though he couldn’t have been more than a couple months old, I could see that one of the baby’s legs was shorter than the other. His left hand was way bigger than his right. And he had one green eye and one blue one.

  That baby was me! HOLY CRUD . . .

  WELL, THAT EXPLAINED A LOT!!

  Like why one of my eyes was blue and the other bright green. Why one hand was huge with long fingers, the other small with short, stubby ones. Why both my feet were way too big for my legs.

  They all came from different parts of different people that went into my father!!

  It was a lot to take in all at once. For thirteen years, I never knew anything about my family.

  And now . . .

  It was kind of like discovering your dad was a king or a famous rock star. Only mine was a monSTAR!

  But it gave me an idea.

  I had always dreamed of having a big family. Sure, my dad was gone. And I didn’t even know if I ever had a mom. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have a family out there. Parts from dozens of people went into my dad. All those people were a part of him, and he passed their hands, feet, eyes, and hands to me.

  Which meant the people who went into him were kind of related to me. I figured those people were probably all dead. (At least, I hoped they had been dead before their legs, arms, and feet were taken from them to make my dad!)

  But those people whose parts went into my dad . . . they probably had relatives who were still alive. I was related to them too. They were my cousins!

  Which meant, somew
here out there, the thing I’d spent years daydreaming about was actually true! I had a MONSTER family! A family made up of the descendants of the dozens of people whose parts made up Frankenstein’s Monster.

  All I had to do was track down where each part of my dad came from to find them!

  I said all that to Mr. Shelley as we stood there in his office, looking at Dr. Frankenstein’s journal with the flashlight.

  The journal was hundreds of pages of notes, scribbles, drawings, and maps. It didn’t have an index, or a glossary, or whatever else you call those parts of books that tell you where to find what you’re looking for inside.

  I had no idea where to start.

  “How about at the beginning?” suggested Mr. Shelley, pointing to the cover.

  First thing the next morning, Mr. Shelley dropped me off on his way to Las Vegas. He had been very relieved I had somewhere to go. Mr. Shelley’s brother-in-law had insisted there was room in his ice cream truck for only one more, and Mr. Shelley didn’t want to argue with him. I couldn’t blame him. From what I had overheard of their phone conversations, his brother-in-law sounded pretty tough for an ice cream man.

  I said goodbye and thanked Mr. Shelley for everything, including the ride.

  Having lived my whole life in the same room at Mr. Shelley’s Orphanage for Lost and Neglected Children®, I didn’t have a lot of experience finding my way to new places.

  After Mr. Shelley drove off, I forgot to breathe for a minute. What if this didn’t work? What if I never found my family? What if they didn’t want me to find them? What if they were happy without me? And how could an orphanage director leave a kid behind without even waiting to see what happened to me?

  Actually, the answer to the last question was pretty obvious. Mr. Shelley never was a very good orphanage director.

  “Don’t panic,” I told myself, like I’d told Mr. Shelley a thousand times. “I’ll figure something out.”

  I double-checked the address to make sure I had it right. But I already knew I did. Every house on the block looked the same. Except this one.

  This one looked like a HAUNTED CASTLE.

  I knocked on the door. A minute later, a voice came from inside: “Yes?”

  “Um . . . is this the Frankenstein residence?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as nervous as I was.

  “Yes,” answered a muffled voice through the door.

  Would Dr. Frankenstein be some kind of scary mad scientist with wild hair? Or a nice old man who wanted to help me?

  As the door began to open, I tried to be ready for anyone or ANYTHING.

  I totally wasn’t ready for what I finally saw.

  Holding the door open was a GIRL, maybe three or four years older than me. “This better be important,” she said. “You’re interrupting a moment of brilliant insight.”

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say.

  I had been expecting some ancient scientist, not a teenage girl. It didn’t help that she was kind of cute, too.

  “Okay then,” she said, starting to shut the door.

  “Wait!” I said. “I’m here to see Dr. Frankenstein.”

  That got her to stop closing the door slowly.

  Instead, she slammed it shut — WHAM-O!!

  “No one by that name lives here!” she shouted through the thick door.

  “But, but —” I pleaded. “You said this was the Frankenstein residence!”

  She opened the door a crack.

  “I must have misheard you,” she said, looking down her nose. “This door is very thick. I thought you said the Fran Kenstein residence.”

  “Right,” I nodded. “Frankenstein.”

  The name made her shudder. “No,” she said, annoyed. “Fran Kenstein. My name is Frances Kenstein. There is no Frankenstein here!”

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say again.

  I felt like someone had jumped on my stomach and pushed all the air out.

  If this was a dead end, I didn’t know where to look next.

  “Are you ill?” she asked. “Something about you looks a little . . . off.”

  “Oh, no, that’s just me,” I said. “I get my looks from my dad,” I added proudly.

  “I must have made a mistake,” I told her, picking up my bag to go. Although I had no idea where I’d go. “It’s just, I found this journal, and it said —”

  I reached into my bag, past my own journal, and pulled out Dr. Frankenstein’s.

  As soon as I did, her eyes lit up. Like there was a glittery flashlight inside each one.

  They actually kind of sparkled. (Give me a break. I said she was cute, didn’t I?)

  “Why didn’t you say so!” she exclaimed as she grabbed my big left hand and dragged me inside the house. “Come in!”

  It was the FIRST TIME I had ever held hands with a girl.

  Fran sat me down in her kitchen and offered me anything I wanted in her fridge. When I opened it, the only thing I saw inside was big ol’ bowl of GUACAMOLE.

  “Sorry if I was rude before,” she said as she placed the bowl of green stuff in front of me. I was hungry, but I wasn’t sure how to eat it. There didn’t seem to be any chips.

  “Dr. Frankenstein was my father,” she told me. “But I’m so sick of hearing his name. I’m tired of people comparing me to him. I’m a brilliant scientist myself, you know. I was in the middle of a RIDICULOUSLY challenging experiment when you knocked on the front door.”

  “Oh,” I said, impressed. She was cute AND smart!

  “I want to be my own person and do great things of my own without people always thinking of Dr. Frankenstein when they hear my name,” she said. “You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “Definitely,” I nodded, because it seemed like the right thing to say. But actually I didn’t really understand. Nobody had ever thought of my dad when they heard my name. Mostly because, until today, nobody — including me — knew who my dad even was.

  “So that’s why I changed my name,” she said.

  “To Fran Kenstein?” I asked.

  “Exactly.” She nodded as if that made perfect sense. She took a bite of guacamole. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds without any chips. Or even a spoon!

  “I’ve lived alone in this house since my father died,” she said, pointing at the kitchen and the large house beyond. “Doing my own experiments. Which are really quite brilliant.

  “But enough about me.” She smiled, and then gave me a serious look. “Let’s talk about my father’s journal! I had no idea where it went. Your dad must have stolen it. He and my father never really got along very well.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” I said, then stopped short.

  I was about to stick up for my dad. But then I thought, maybe he did steal Dr. Frankenstein’s journal. I didn’t know him well enough to be sure he wouldn’t do something like that (he was a MONSTER, after all). And Fran seemed to be positive that he had.

  Suddenly, I realized something else.

  “Wait, did you know my dad?” I asked excitedly. “What was he like? Did you know my mom? Do I even have a mom?”

  I had a million more questions. But Fran stopped me before I could get any of them out.

  “There’s so much I can tell you,” Fran said. “But first we should get to work on finding out who the people who went into your father were!”

  I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t even told her why I had come here, and she was going to help me do it!

  Did I mention she was cute, too?

  Fran asked if she could see her father’s journal. I reached into my bag and pulled out a book.

  “WHOOPS! That’s my journal,” I said, stuffing it back in my bag. “Here’s your dad’s.”

  Fran took it and started scanning the pages into her computer on the kitchen table.

  “Once the pages are scanned
, it will be easy to cross-reference and find whom each part of the monster came from,” she explained.

  I felt that happy tingling in the back of my shoulders I only felt when I was sure something AWESOME was about to happen. I loved that feeling.

  True, every time I had felt it before, the awesome thing I was sure was about to happen turned out to be a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.

  But I was sure this time would be different.

  “And as soon as I find where each part of the monster came from, I’ll be able to build a new one,” she went on. “And when I do, no one will ever compare me to my father again!”

  “You mean, after you do the same thing he did?” I asked, confused. That didn’t seem like the smartest idea to me. But I knew Fran was really smart. (Mostly because she kept telling me.)

  “I’ve tried so many times to build my own monster,” Fran explained. “I’m not going to say I failed, because a genius never fails. Those setbacks were a necessary part of the process. They showed me that there was something special about the parts that went into the original that made it work. I realized that to have any chance of recreating the monster, I would need to use the same genetic material. I could get that from the people whose body parts went into the original monster. If they were still alive. Bodies that have been dead for too long don’t work anymore. My other experiments proved that.”