In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  I

  A fierce wind drove landward from the Atlantic, a predatory elemental force, almost sentient in its fury. In its screaming wake line upon line of breakers smashed on rocky shores, spume and rain mingling, lashing the cliffs. The cauldron of the skies mirrored the churning grey maelstrom, thick black clouds pulsing and fomenting, ripped through with bolts of light. Beyond the rim of the cliffs, a single cottage seemed to crouch down in a fold of moorland out of the storm’s anger, the rain clawing at it, tearing loose slates from the roof, dragging down a length of guttering that tumbled across the adjacent fields and was gone in the blink of an eye.

  Inside the cottage, mind closed to the hysteria of the night, Staverton slumped in a high backed chair, reading through one of the numerous volumes that lined the wall of his small living room. A coal fire smoldered in the grate: he would retire to bed soon, though it was relatively early. Too wild a night to go out to the shed for more logs. When he had been a young man, he would have revelled in a night such as this, but now, at fifty, he felt the cold too easily, and his bones ached at the very thought of a stiff breeze. But it was the price he paid for isolation, for severance from the world he had once inhabited.

  He jerked as the thought was given substance by a sudden pounding on the front door. Far too rhythmic to be the wind. And it demanded to be answered. His light was on; it would have been seen.

  Cursing, he went to the door and slid back the long bolt, easing the door inward. A blast of freezing air cuffed at him and as he lifted his arm to protect himself, he saw figures beyond. Three dishevelled youths confronted him. Beyond them, on a knoll by the cliff edge, he caught a glimpse of another, hunched over against the tempest but positioned like a sentinel.

  He had no time to study it: his visitors were inside, the door banged shut and bolted anew against the storm.

  “Doctor Staverton?” said the first of them. He was in his early twenties, his near-shaven head bare, his eyes sunken and dark-ringed. Clothes poor, jacket and faded trousers baggy and creased, shirt stained, buttons missing. The two other youths could have been his brothers, equally as shabby. Didn’t they call them travelers?

  “Not doctor. I was a surgeon. And I’m retired,” said Staverton.

  “We know,” said the youth, half smiling. His teeth were bad, his mouth cruel.

  “I don’t have anything worth stealing—”

  “We’re not here to do the place over. It’s you we want. Better sit down.”

  Staverton had no alternative. He dropped back into his chair. The spokesman sat awkwardly in the chair opposite him as if it were alien to him; the others stayed by the door, watching vacantly.

  “I’m Turner. You don’t know me,” said the youth. His face gleamed with the rain and Staverton saw now that his jacket was sodden, though the youth didn’t seem bothered, hardly noticing the fire.

  “Who sent you?” said Staverton uneasily.

  “Not who you think. Not Walton.”

  In spite of himself, Staverton gasped. “What do you know about him?”

  “You worked for him, at the Institute. For years.” Turner’s eyes were tiny, but they fixed on Staverton’s face, the youth’s gaze irresistible, frightening.

  “It was a long time ago—”

  “It’s taken my boss years to track you down. After you left the Institute, you really did go to earth, Doctor.”

  “Look, I’ve nothing worth having, worth knowing.”

  “My boss doesn’t think so.”

  “Who is he? Not the police?”

  Turner’s face creased in a semblance of a grin. “No chance. You’ll meet my boss soon enough. Then you’ll know him. He’ll make it worth your while. And you won’t get hurt. He needs you.”

  “Has—Walton—got anything to do with this?”

  Turner snorted. “Oh, yes. Indeed he has.”

  “I won’t go back to him, not now—”

  “Sounds to me like you hate him.”

  Staverton pulled his jacket tighter about him. “He’s despicable. Treats people like dirt. Uses them and discards them.”

  “You should know, eh?” Turner leaned forward, a hellish gleam in those tiny eyes. “You don’t know half of it. Want to?”

  Staverton shuddered. “No. I’m glad to be out of there now. I’d outlasted my usefulness. God, it’s such a relief to be free of him.”

  “It’s time you knew the truth about him.”

  Staverton shook his head. “No. All I want is to be left alone.”

  “Tough. My boss needs your help. He said to tell you everything about Walton. Then you’d help.”

  Staverton looked up, then across at the other two youths. They were slouched against the door, seeming to drowse. “I don’t have much choice.”

  “Hear me out, then choose,” said Turner.

  Staverton again felt the onset of coldness creeping in the air. It molded ominous shapes from his past, but he nodded. There was an inevitability in all this that part of him had always dreaded.

  II

  “Did Robert Walton ever talk about his first partner, Victor Frankenstein?” Turner began.

  Staverton pondered the name, but murmured a negative.

  “Frankenstein was, among other things, a brilliant surgeon. He lived in the eighteenth century. We don’t know when he died.”

  Staverton frowned. “But you said he was a partner of Walton’s. That’s not possible—”

  “Walton is not what he seems. You know he’s a surgeon, well, sort of. But Frankenstein was the master. His genius is what Walton wanted, what he stole.

  “Two hundred years ago, this woman, Margaret Saville, got a series of letters from her brother, who was an explorer, gone on a voyage to the Arctic. This brother, also called Robert Walton, said how he happened across a couple of weird people in the ice wastes. One of them was Victor Frankenstein. Exhausted, near enough dead, Frankenstein told Walton how he had created a living being built from cadavers and body parts, alive for a second time. This Monster, as Frankenstein called it, created havoc, went berserk, killing in a rage against mankind. It ran off to the Arctic wilderness, with its creator chasing it.

  “In his letters to his sister, Walton said how Frankenstein died on board his ship, and how the Monster went right on to the north, meaning to set itself alight on a funeral pyre. As far as anyone knew, both Victor Frankenstein and his creation ended up dead in the frozen wastes.” Turner looked meaningfully at Staverton. “That was what Walton put in his letters.”

  “And this Walton was related to the Robert Walton I knew?”

  Turner snorted. “They’re the same. The last letter to Margaret Saville was a cover up. Frankenstein didn’t die on Walton’s ship. Walton kept him going, brought him back to England. He was wealthy and had a lot of rich contacts. Victor Frankenstein was kept like a prisoner, though he didn’t realize. And Walton fed on him like a vampire sucking the juice out of its prey. All that knowledge!”

  “This is preposterous!” Staverton began to protest, but already his doubts were uncoiling, coaxed out of him.

  “Life,” said Turner. “Immortality. Mankind’s dream since he could first walk. Frankenstein had created it. Walton wanted to do it. And he wanted much more. He wanted it for himself.

  “Modern surgeons transplant vital organs every day, and medical science leaps forward. But Frankenstein was the greatest medical genius that ever lived. He went further than any modern surgeon. He thought Walton was his friend and he believed that his Monster had perished. Walton gave him a fresh sense of purpose, new hope. Goaded on by him, Frankenstein started his work again. Not to create another Monster. This time he wanted to step up. Who knows better than you, Doctor, his speciality, his obsession? He wanted to transplant the human brain.”

  Staverton made to speak, but something held him back.

  “Walton learned, made himself into a surgeon, though he could never hope to match Frankenstein’s brilliance. There were errors, trials, successes. In the end, the big
test. Walton wanted to live forever. Frankenstein transplanted his brain into the body of a younger man. The operation was a perfect success. Walton had his wish.”

  Staverton’s blood was coagulating, his hands pressed to his face. He would have poured derision on this, but he knew, God help him, he knew that somehow this answered so many questions about the man he had worked for.

  “How many times since then has Robert Walton transferred himself into a younger body?” said Turner scathingly. “Who knows? How soon was Victor Frankenstein made redundant, eh? You can bet his body is buried somewhere well out of the way, or his ashes are long since scattered.”

  “Robert Walton, alive for over two hundred years,” muttered Staverton.

  “You know enough about him and his work to understand, Doctor. You, of all people, know it’s the truth. Your own speciality was the brain.”

  Staverton looked at his hands.

  Turner smiled coldly. “Steady as a rock. My boss will be very pleased. You better get ready.”

  Staverton shivered: resistance was not an option.

  III

  They traveled in an old van, Staverton in the front, Turner driving. The youth had insisted on leaving immediately. Staverton had no alternative: they allowed him to bring an overnight bag, a few clothes. Turner hardly spoke now, and as the vehicle ground its way through the night and endless storm, Staverton mulled over his own past, his dealings with Robert Walton.

  As a surgeon himself, he had known about the Waltonian Institute, as everyone in his profession had. Walton was a reputable surgeon, but had apparently also inherited vast sums of money through family connections that went way back. The word was that his grandfather had set up the Institute, a private research center specializing in neurosurgery and more recently, genetic engineering. There had been a degree of opposition to the Institute’s methods and somewhat secretive programs, but Walton was well connected in the political world. There were more than a few stories about the Institute’s successes in the field of plastic surgery. Parliamentary perks.

  Walton had a network that spread throughout Europe: the Institute was able to seduce many of the most gifted surgeons, neurologists and geneticists, even if only for a brief stay. Staverton had been one of them, lured into the fortress-like Institute by the opportunities that its funds promised, funds that were simply not available to him elsewhere. For five years he had worked inside the place, its slave, oblivious to the outside world, reveling, yes reveling in the possibilities. But—to transplant a brain—was that really what Walton had achieved? Staverton’s own work had been in repair, adjustment, precision tuning of the brain. Moving a human brain from one body to another remained a fantasy.

  After five years, Staverton had suddenly been summoned by Walton, his contract terminated. There had never been a proper explanation: at thirty-eight he still had his clarity of eye, his deftness of touch, all the artistry his science demanded of him. But the Institute, it seemed, wanted a change. Perhaps he knew too much, or was in danger of questioning what it did. He had become critical of some of its methods, its insensitivities.

  He would have been horrified by his dismissal, but Walton had paid him a ridiculously generous sum, a “pension,” so that when he had left he felt a kind of disappointment rather than anger. The bitterness accrued later as he tried to return to his work in the outside world. Walton, for it must have been him, had made sure no one would employ him. The network was very effective. The money was no compensation at first, but gradually he used it to ease his disillusionment. But as an ex-Waltonian, he found himself ostracized. He thought at first it was professional jealousy, but gradually understood that it was the hand of Robert Walton. How many other former staff had been cast out, each of them knowing no more than a fragment of the Institute’s truths? He had traced some of them, but none of them would discuss the Institute. Their fear clung to them like a shroud.

  Staverton’s anger welled up anew as he recalled the wasted years, the frustration. He evaded sleep, eyes fixed on the road ahead, his vision blurred by rain, the greys of dawn.

  “You want food?” said Turner suddenly, his own eyes lidded, though his control of the old van was tight, mechanical. “We’ll eat soon,” he said, answering his own question. “Then rest for the day. This evening you’ll meet my boss.”

  Outside, the wind fisted the van, but the wheels clung to the road, its purpose fixed, inexorable.

  IV

  They did as Turner said. Staverton eventually succumbed to sleep, the van parked up a side road, somewhere in the country where the lane had hedges high enough to conceal it from prying eyes. Staverton somehow felt furtive. He told himself it was fear of Walton, the network of power webbed about the man.

  By late afternoon, when Staverton woke, the storm had abated, leaving a dripping landscape, fields churned, threaded with miniature lakes. Turner drove on, still the silent automaton.

  Staverton recognized the countryside: they were very close to the Institute. Soon the van would be swallowed up by the vastness of forest that surrounded the place, locked it away. Twenty miles from Greater London, though it may as well have been the Moon.

  Staverton finished a stale sandwich and swigged the last of his tea from a cheap thermos they had bought on the journey. Turner brought the van to a halt, the shadows outside gathering. Staverton peered into the gloom, and recognized the high, black railings of a long fence that parallelled the road opposite the forest.

  “We get out here,” said Turner bluntly.

  Outside the van, Staverton felt a renewed chill. He clutched his suitcase and glanced uncomfortably at the wrought iron gates before him. He knew the place: a familiar landmark to staff at the Institute. An old cemetery, closed now in favor of a new crematorium in its pristine grounds and gardens adjacent to the Institute, partly funded by its generous master.

  Turner’s henchmen watched the road while he, to Staverton’s surprise, tugged out a large key from his pocket and unlocked the huge padlock on the chains of the gate. He motioned Staverton within. Moments later, with the gates again locked, they were all inside the graveyard. Overgrown and neglected, the graves and their various headstones disappeared into the dusk on every side. Huge, Gothic crosses jutted intimidatingly, tiny headstones poked up from choking grass, an occasional shrub or tree dotted the scene.

  Turner walked down the central path, the gravel crunching faintly, though even it could not hold back the weed army.

  “Why are we here?” said Staverton at last. Behind him, Turner’s henchmen seemed like gaolers, alert for any break that Staverton might make. “The Institute is—”

  “He’s here,” said Turner simply.

  They turned down a side path and threaded through a maze of them. “He likes the night, and the privacy,” said Turner. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

  Staverton nodded, but all he could see ahead of him now was his own pain, his own torment.

  Turner pointed to a solid building, partly hidden in a mass of matted brambles. A mausoleum, squat and somber, its twin pillars symbols of a distant age, dead as its tenants.

  “In there.”

  Staverton no longer had a choice. Haltingly he stumbled through the open portal, surprised to find a guttering light within. Turner wrestled with a thick wooden door, shutting out the twilight, his henchmen with it. He led Staverton farther into the building, coming to a stairway that led downward to its rotting vaults. Light seeped up from below, another brand, mark of another time.

  Turner nodded and Staverton went hesitantly down. Stone arches curved to support a ceiling, pillars forming narrow columns. A few blocks of solid stone lined the walls, their lids bearing sculpted forms, daubed now in the orange glow of the torches.

  At the far end of the catacomb, Staverton could make out a hunched figure, broad in the shoulder, its back to him as it sat crouched over something, a book, perhaps. Turner went towards the figure cautiously, feet gently slapping the stone floor. It lifted its immense head, turni
ng.

  Staverton realized that this was Turner’s master, the leader of the youths. As the man turned, Staverton felt his heart jar and he had to reach for a pillar to steady himself, thinking his knees would betray him.

  The face was horrifically ugly, a pale, wasted grey; the skin looked dried, rotten, the flesh of a mummy, and the eyes were black, windows on an emptiness that was chilling. Wisps of hair straggled, shoulder length, tangled and dry. It was the head and face of a corpse, garishly animated and it moved with an almost mechanical uncertainty. When the creature, for such Staverton took it to be, spoke, the voice was doubly unnerving, for it was not in the least coarse, either in tone or manner. It was cultured, deep and rich, completely out of keeping, as if another spoke through the ghoulish body.

  “You are Daniel Staverton,” it said. It had not risen, but even hunched in its makeshift chair it was huge, its square shoulders almost on a level with Staverton’s.

  “Yes,” Staverton breathed.

  “You are terrified of my appearance. All your kind are. I have lived with that for a long time. But if you do as I tell you, you have no need to fear me.”

  “But … who are you?” murmured Staverton.

  “Turner told you about Victor Frankenstein? I am his creation, his demon.”

  V

  The creature spoke then of its tormented life, the chase across the ice floes of the Arctic, the flight to the Pole.

  “I passed Robert Walton’s ship among the bergs. Frankenstein paused in his mad pursuit of me, doubtless exhausted. Walton took him aboard, nurtured him for days. I spied on them both. The fury of the elements is nothing to me, who was forged with primal fire. Ice or fire, it is all one to me.” The terrible eyes seemed to reinforce the statement. “They were not aware of me. I could see that Frankenstein’s pursuit of me was over, whether he lived or died. So I quit them, intent on reaching the heartlands, offering myself up in a funereal sacrifice. Ah, but life, no matter how twisted, no matter how much a parody, does not render itself up so easily. When the moment came, self-destruction, even for one so hideous as I, was no less repulsive to me than it would be to you. The elements could not destroy me.