by Jeff Rovin
Come to me . . .
“Yes, Master.”
There was no question about obeying. He had spoken. Memories returned quickly now. She remembered the night that the insurance investigator had arrived looking for the Frankenstein Monster. Joan Raymond, her name was. She remembered telling Count Dracula that they had to cancel the operation, that she didn’t want to be found out and arrested. She remembered insisting that her will was as strong as the vampire’s, that he could not force her to do his bidding.
She curled her fingertips inward and dug her nails into the smooth surface. She would have to go through the metal. The metal resisted. She pushed harder. She felt the lid begin to bulge where she was pressing. She pushed harder still. A moment later her nails punctured the metal. She pushed her long fingers through and felt the cool, damp, refreshing soil beyond.
The soil of my grave, she thought. The only place where she had ever known peace. Peace from her critics and from persecution. But now it was time to leave the grave and the dreamless state in which she had existed for so long. It was time to finish her work.
She bent her fingers and pulled down. The metal came toward her. Particles of dirt showered through the finger-holes. Turning her elbows toward the sides, she pulled outward. More earth fell in as the metal ripped in the center. She withdrew her fingers from the holes and peeled the lid back. Soil poured down in sheets, filling her mouth and covering her face, neck, and shoulders. She ignored it, even as it filled her mouth. She moved her arms, pushing through the dirt as though she were a swimmer beginning a breaststroke. When her arms were directly above her, she raked them outward until they were lying on top of the coffin. Then she extended her fingers and grabbed the sides of the lid.
Come . . . come . . .
She pushed down hard with her hands, wrists, and arms. The sides of the coffin creaked as she sat up. She twisted her head so it would fit through the opening she’d torn in the lid. More of the cold earth spilled around her. She sat with great effort and then she reached up again. Her hands moved like spades through the damp soil. Bent beneath the weight of the falling earth, she rose slowly—first to her knees, then to her feet. Dirt fell along her back, and when she straightened it poured down even faster. When the shower finally stopped she was standing immobile, surrounded by the cool earth, her arms straight above her. Then she turned them like an exotic dancer, writhing through the soil and loosening the dirt.
Her left hand was slightly higher than the right. Her fingers touched a meshwork of roots. She worked her fingertips through the tangled canopy, slipping them through the tendrils and into the hard-packed soil above. Then, with a final push, she broke through to the fresh air. She forced her right hand through the roots and dirt and stretched her fingers toward the sky. The air felt even better than the soil had when she pushed through the coffin lid.
As her palms worked up through the surface, she began wrigging her shoulders and rotating her hips. Earth shifted around her, some of it rising and some of it falling into the now-empty coffin. She stepped on the dirt as it collected beneath her like silt. Her forearms worked through the roots and broke the surface. She placed them flat on the warm earth and spread her fingers again. She pushed down with her newfound strength until the top of her head emerged. She turned her face upward. Scraped and jabbed by roots, it broke free of the earth. It was followed by her neck and shoulders. She continued to push until her torso and waist cleared the grave. Then she slumped forward, though she didn’t rest. There had been rest enough. The dirt and living things fell from her as she clawed along the sliding carpet of earth. Upon reaching solid ground, she rose unsteadily. Her legs buckled, unused to her weight, and she dropped to her knees. Silently, dirt and worms tumbling from her open mouth, she stood again on her bare feet. This time she wavered but did not fall. And for the first time in fifty years, Sandra Mornay opened her eyes.
She looked through the matted tangle of hair and dirt. Above her, the sky was a dark, dark blue. To the west, the sun had set behind the castle. And before her was the black shape of a man. The man didn’t move or speak, yet she heard and understood his wishes.
“Yes, Master,” she said slowly. “I will find him.”
She took a step and waited until she felt confident. Then she took another step. Then another and another. Her white burial gown trailing behind her, the black-haired woman with alabaster flesh glided through the garden toward the castle. Dirt and maggots fell piecemeal from her as she made her way to a gnarled old tree. She looked out from the family cemetery, out at the castle that had once been hers. She noticed thin clouds of smoke drifting from the windows. There had been a terrific fire here. She felt the disaster in the smouldering timbers . . . and in her bones.
Her bones and not her soul. What had happened to her soul? Had he taken it, or had she lost it years before?
Her eyes moved slowly from the low rocks to the high tower. How well she remembered this place. From here she could see the cove where she and the Master first examined the weakened Frankenstein Monster and decided to move ahead with the operation. She saw the laboratory where she had worked to provide it with a new brain. She saw the clearing beneath the window where she had been thrown by the creature, then lay feigning death. She saw the postern into which she’d crawled to escape the blazing rays of the sun.
She remembered the undertaker who had tried to embalm her, and his appalled reaction when she awoke. But the poor man’s shock had lasted only for a moment, until she could hypnotize him into interring her as she was—in a closed coffin, to protect her from the sun. She remembered shutting her eyes then and the Master commanding her to sleep.
Go, the silent voice urged her now. He needs you again.
“He, Master?” she asked.
The Frankenstein Monster, she heard in her mind. Find him, Dr. Mornay. Care for him.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
Ducking stiffly beneath the tree, the lean, ghostly figure moved toward the castle with halting steps.
Behind her, the black silhouette vanished.
ELEVEN
The morning did not go as Caroline Cooke had planned.
Trooper Willis had driven quickly down the quiet streets of LaMirada, streets with quaint names like Market Street and Blue Room Place. As they drove, Talbot seemed confused by the computers and revealing beach fashions they’d seen in the store windows and by the small, sleek cars they’d passed on the road. Cars with unfamiliar names like Toyota and filling stations with names like Exxon. When they’d stopped at a traffic light, the rap music they’d heard coming from another car baffled him completely.
“I’m not sure I belong here,” he said sadly.
The state police station was more comforting to him. It was located in a corner of the mid-nineteenth-century town hall. The three-story brick building was a small, charming rectangle with a courtyard in the center and a bell tower that was used to call people to meetings. Though the stone fountain in the courtyard was shabby from disuse and the walks around it covered with weeds, Talbot smiled when he saw it through a window. Perhaps because it was dead and overgrown, Caroline thought.
Upon reaching the state police office, Caroline asked if she could use the phone. Her parents were driving home from the funeral and wouldn’t be home yet. But in case they read about the castle fire in the newspaper or heard about it on the radio, she wanted to leave a message letting them know she was all right. Willis directed her to a pay phone in the corner of the station house. Talbot went with her; he seemed confused by the charge card and push buttons.
After Caroline placed her call, Willis introduced them to Deputy Trooper David Clyde. The short, slightly pudgy officer came from behind his gunmetal desk near the door. He told them to make themselves comfortable on the wooden bench beneath the bright bay window. He said that they might be there for a while.
“Why is that?” Caroline asked, her expression showing concern.
“Your attorney, Tom Stevenson, had to go t
o court this morning to defend the city against a sanitation worker who refused to pick up bags of garbage that dogs had soiled,” he said. “Mr. Stevenson doesn’t get very many of those defining issue cases, trying to decide whether dog poop is the responsibility of the Department of Sanitation or the Department of Health. Problem is, the head of the Department of Sanitation, Stanley Ridges, is also a volunteer fire fighter. He’s out on La Viuda and won’t be back till God knows when.”
“Then why can’t we see Mr. Stevenson now?” Caroline asked.
“Because the judge wants this issue settled today,” Clyde said. “It’s summertime and he doesn’t want those street muffins stinking up the street.”
Talbot clearly failed to grasp the significance of the debate. So did Caroline. However, there was nothing to do but wait and hope that Stevenson got there before too long.
Trooper Willis went directly to his glassed-in cubicle across from the small holding cell. As he put in a call to the state police barracks in Naples, Deputy Trooper Clyde showed Talbot and Caroline to a bench. He asked if they wanted anything to drink or read. They both declined, though before sitting Talbot took a trooper coat from the rack and folded it into a cushion for Caroline. Clyde seemed as though he wanted to object, but he didn’t. After a moment’s reflection he even offered Talbot a white prison shirt to replace the tattered one he had on. Talbot gratefully accepted.
Caroline curled up on the bench beside Talbot. Though she was tired she wasn’t sleepy. As she lay there, she listened as Willis reported the fire and the possibility that there may have been homicides on the island. He also said he’d be e-mailing over some data he wanted them to check. Caroline could just imagine what it was:
Who is Lawrence Talbot and did his family ever live in Southern California or in Wales, England?
She hoped the trooper would learn that Talbot had returned to England over a half century ago. It would not only present Willis with the puzzle of his career but it would also vindicate Caroline’s faith in what Talbot had told her.
While everyone did their jobs, it was heartbreaking for Caroline to watch Lawrence Talbot’s minute-by-minute decay. Heartbreaking and also frustrating because there was nothing she could do to help him. Ironically, he reminded her very much of Harry Haller, the hero of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Like Haller, Talbot was the Wolf of the Steppes. A desolate loner. An idealistic man totally overwhelmed by his miserable fate.
For the first hour, Talbot sat quietly beside her. He was slumped on the bench, his big hands in his lap. He accepted tea when Deputy Trooper Clyde offered it, but he drank very little. He glanced at the LaMirada Good Times Dispatch on the reception table, but only for a moment. He spent more and more time looking at the big round wall clock located to their right, just outside the small holding cell. As the morning and then the early afternoon dragged by, he spent more time watching the clock than not. By this time Caroline was also getting anxious. She calculated that they only needed two hours from the time Stevenson arrived to convince him to let her take Talbot to the clinic and then “secure him for the night,” as she had begun to think of it. They still had time—though the comfort zone was shrinking.
Stevenson finally called from the courthouse shortly after one-thirty to say that Mr. Ridges had finally arrived and that the hearing would begin after the judge got back from lunch. He told Deputy Clyde that he expected to be at the station no later than three o’clock.
Caroline was glad to hear that. It would be close, but that would still leave them enough time.
Talbot, clearly, was not so sure. After Stevenson’s call he leaned close to Caroline. There was a fearful restlessness in his eyes and urgency in his voice.
“I looked at the newspaper before,” he said tensely. “According to the sky chart, the full moon will rise at five minutes before seven tonight. When that happens I’ll suffer another one of my spells.”
“I know,” Caroline said. “But that’s over five hours from now. We still have plenty of time.”
“No,” Talbot said. He began squeezing his hands together roughly. “We’ve got to do something now. What if your plan doesn’t work?”
“It will.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” he said. “What if your sedatives aren’t strong enough or what if you can’t administer them in time? Please, find something made of silver. A dagger or a walking stick—”
“Lawrence,” she said, “I hate to say this, but I’m starting to believe that you bring the change on yourself.”
“I’ve heard that before, Doctor,” he said. “The last time was in London, right before I ripped the throat from the psychiatrist who was saying it.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true.”
“At least put me in the cell,” he pleaded. “Whatever the cause, take that precaution.”
“We can’t put you behind prison bars without admitting your guilt,” Caroline said. “If we do that, then the state will take over your care. We’ll never be able to work on a cure.”
Talbot shook his head forlornly. “I don’t think I like this world of yours,” he said. “People have gotten smart without becoming very wise. Everything moves faster but nothing moves any more efficiently.”
Caroline didn’t disagree but she assured him again that there was still enough time to do what needed to be done. Talbot didn’t seem comforted, but he sat back and stopped arguing.
The truth was, Caroline felt awful. She’d been sitting here hoping that her own quiet confidence and this neutral environment, free of dark woods and gothic arches, might be mitigating factors. They hadn’t been. Until now, she had also been wondering if it wouldn’t be better for Talbot, better for all of them, if she let this play out. If they simply sat here and he didn’t transform, then there would be nothing to connect him with the killings. That would also give her a handle on how to cure him: through the mind. If Talbot did begin to change, then the troopers could always lock him up. Contrary to what he said, the jail seemed sturdy enough—at least as sturdy as the brick wall in the castle. If he transformed, at least Caroline would have a good look at the nocturnal state of her patient.
Now, however, she wasn’t so sure that to let it play out was a sensible course of action. Given Talbot’s already agitated state—and it was still nearly four hours before moon-rise—she was beginning to think that whatever power was at work on him was far more powerful than a physical condition heightened and reinforced by suggestion. Sedation might be a better idea, and soon.
Caroline looked over at Willis. The trooper had left them alone since they’d arrived. During lunch hour he even brought back food for everyone—“State’s treat,” he said affably as he handed out hamburgers, fries, and cans of Fresca. Talbot didn’t touch his meal.
At the moment, Willis was on the telephone with the fire chief, who was still at the Tombs. From what she was able to overhear, it sounded as though the fire was finally out and a team was getting ready to go in. Caroline was thinking of going over and asking him if they could move Talbot to the clinic. She could always make up something about a preexisting hypertensive state.
Talbot continued to knead his hands. At least several times a minute he looked up at the clock.
“Lawrence,” she said, “I’m going to keep saying this until it sinks in. I want you to calm down. I need you to relax.”
“Relax!” Talbot yelled. “How can I when in just a few hours the moon will rise and I’ll kill again?”
Willis looked over. “Excuse me, Mr. Talbot?”
“It’s nothing,” Caroline said.
“It didn’t sound like nothing,” said Willis. “It sounded like your friend said he’ll kill again.”
“He did,” she said. “We’re arguing about fox hunting. He’s for it, I’m against it. Seems they do a lot of that over on English estates.”
Willis glanced over at Deputy Trooper Clyde, who was on the phone. It looked like Willis wanted to say something. Instead he glanced at his watch, purse
d his lips, and returned to his paperwork.
Caroline exhaled softly. She didn’t want to say anything that would upset Talbot further. Instead, she held his hand and rubbed his shoulder reassuringly and tried to put him at ease.
But when three o’clock arrived and Tom Stevenson hadn’t, even Caroline became concerned. She said something to Willis, who put in a call to the courthouse. He was informed by the bailiff that the session was over and the lawyer would be leaving at any moment.
Talbot was not reassured. He rose and walked slowly around the office, running his fingers through his hair and looking up anxiously. Only now he wasn’t looking at the clock. He was glancing at the high window, looking out at the sky. He was watching . . . and waiting.
TWELVE
By the middle of the afternoon, the fire at the Tombs was little more than patches of smoke clinging to blackened stones and charred timbers. Water that had been part of the Gulf of Mexico earlier in the day ran down the walls and sat in puddles on the tiles and hardwood floors. In one day, the rooms that had been so carefully and lovingly preserved by Joan Raymond suddenly looked their age.
While most of the exhausted fire fighters rested, three men donned self-contained breathing apparatuses, entered the castle, and began looking for the remains Trooper Willis had said would be there. A LifeSaver helicopter had been flown to LaMirada Hospital from Naples and was ready to evacuate any survivors. If the fire fighters found anyone alive they would be evacuated at once. If not, they would be left where they were until the police arrived.
To short, chunky rookie Emmett Vogan, who worked as a high school science teacher when he wasn’t fighting fires, the interior of the castle looked like his uncle Cedric’s barbecue pit after a pork roast. The stone walls were scorched different shades of gray, from pale to nearly charcoal. Drapery and rubber-backed rugs had been burned onto the walls and floor in a few areas and burned up everywhere else. Furniture had been reduced to stacks of charred sticks—just like the dry twigs Vogan’s dad used to move the coals in the pit with and then drop in. There was a thin tester of smoke overhead in the foyer. Except for that, the twilight coming through the shattered windows was clear and crisp. If he didn’t hear only his own breathing, Vogan knew—absolutely knew—that the silence of the gutted castle would be absolute.