Gokul made as if to wait at the entrance but I stared hard at him until, with obvious bad grace, he made off. Waiting only to ensure that he had truly gone, I accepted Chandira’s invitation.
It seemed that even more incense sticks were being burned within the dwelling, and that Chandira had used rather more of her heady perfume than previously. This was understandable, though, for beneath the richness of the scents I caught a faint whiff of death.
I looked around for Chandira and saw that she had taken up position at the far side of the room by the small stove upon which flickered a small fire.
Aditya’s white-clad corpse lay on his charpoy, arms resting by the sides, a garland of variegated flowers about the neck. I stepped over and gazed down. The rishi’s flesh had assumed a greyish pallor, while the eyelids and cheeks were already beginning to fall in. I studied the lines and folds on that dead face and suddenly I had an inkling that Aditya’s claims for greatly advanced age might well be true.
I turned to Chandira, deciding that this was not the time for the customary florid overtures. I was blunt. “I hear gossip that you wish to become sati.”
The woman inclined her covered head a little. “Not gossip but truth, Rowan-sahib,” she told me.
I sighed heavily and sat down on one of the stools. “Why do this thing?”
“It is what I wish for, more than anything in the world.”
I made a contemptuous gesture at Aditya’s still form. “You mean it’s what he wished for.”
“No, it is my wish, my desire even.” Chandira shook her head. “He died without even having expressed an opinion about it. If it was a matter of his wish, and I was able, I might well defy it, for he has used me ill and I have good reason to detest him.”
“You know that sati is outlawed,” I said. “And that it is my duty to prevent your death.”
“Perhaps I can persuade the sahib that I should be allowed to do this thing.” Chandira lowered her veil, showing to me a face of sublime beauty, a face which could have been that of a temple statue given life. Dark and fascinating eyes were lined with kohl and rich, full lips were painted scarlet. I felt breath tightening in my chest.
She took away the covering from her head and then started to loosen her gown.
I found myself torn between a well of longing and a flame of indignation. Chandira was about to offer me the use of her body now in exchange for her right to die tomorrow.
The lonely young man in me wanted to leap up and clasp her in my arms. The well-trained bureaucrat suppressed the young man.
“Stop this now, Chandira!” I snapped. “My duty is clear and I will not let you seduce me from it!”
She paused, and then she laughed. It was a sad, empty noise which made me feel immensely foolish and pompous.
“Be at ease, Rowan-sahib,” she told me. “I have no intention of offering you love, or even the sham of love. But I must show you, so that you understand.”
Moments later the burkha fell about her feet and she stood there naked. Something in her tone of voice had chilled me, and now I was able to gaze at her without desire.
Chandira’s form was graceful, alluring, but in that dim light it seemed somehow to be disproportionate. There also appeared to be some disparity in the flesh tints, and many parts of her body—her neck, for instance, and at the joints—were encircled by weird, bangle-like tattoos. She walked towards me, until just inches separated us.
She offered her right hand and against my will I took it in one of mine. Her palm was silken soft and surprisingly cool. With her free hand she indicated the marking about her wrist.
“Look closely, sahib.”
I did so, then I rose quickly to my feet and gripped the woman by the arms. She stood passive as I examined the other tattoos.
But those were no tattoos. They were broad bands of stitches, hundreds of fine, close, delicate sutures layered over faint, long-healed scars.
I heard again Aditya’s voice, a mocking remembrance. “Kumud had fair looks … Radhika’s was the body which most delighted my senses … Shamin’s arms … Phoolan’s legs … Harpal’s hands and feet …”
I dropped my hands from Chandira and stepped back, hoping that my sudden horror was ill-founded. “It’s not possible … ,” I muttered.
A tear spilled from the corner of an eye, slipping its sad course down the woman’s cheek. “No, it is not possible … but it is true. Chandira is the name he gave to this … creation … He could not bring himself to let his favorites rest in peace and so he used the best attributes of each to give life to … Chandira.”
I slumped back onto the stool. It was either that or perhaps faint. “But how … ,” I floundered.
“He told both of you, you and Barr-Taylor-sahib, of his willpower, of how he could conquer death. Over the years, he told many sahibs. None believed him. He frightened you with a demonstration, but no doubt you thought that he had mesmerized you.
“After the death of each favorite, his willpower held the … essentials … from corruption. He held them over the years until he had sufficient to join as one and breathe life into her. Such was his power that I live now, even beyond his own death. But that willpower is slowly waning.”
She held out her hand again, this time placing it delicately beneath my nostrils. At first there was only the musk of her perfume, and then I noticed that beneath the exotic fragrance was another aroma, the slightest hint of decay. The suggestion of death in the hut did not come from Aditya’s remains alone.
I got up and walked from Chandira’s home without another word. Gokul was waiting by my horse. He asked me something but I don’t know what it was. I made some sort of non-committal comment and rode from the village.
When I reached that half-hidden jungle temple, I reined in and clambered down from the horse. I had some thought that perhaps Prithivi could help solve my dilemma. My old school chaplain would have been shocked. Army chaplains in barracks all over India would be shocked. And Mushtaq Khan, if he knew, would throw a blue fit. But, I reasoned, this was a Hindu matter, and a Hindu goddess was better qualified than God or Jesus or Allah to help.
I stepped through the trees and came to where the goddess sat. Something was different here now. The petals woven about Prathivi had faded and withered, like a dotard’s skin, and as I gazed a great insect crawled from one of the stony nostrils, weaving about in parody of a blindly feasting grave-worm.
I was up early again the next day. This time, as I stepped from the bungalow, strapping on my Webley in its large holster, Mushtaq Khan was waiting for me.
“Where are you going this time, sahib?”
“I must go to Katachari on urgent business,” I told him. “There will be no need for you to come.”
“If you hope to stop the sati single-handed, Rowan-sahib, then you are a very foolish young man,” the Pathan told me. He folded his arms across his chest and glowered at me. “Allah knows that these Hindus are little better than sheep, but when their beliefs are interfered with they are very dangerous sheep.
“And you, Rowan-sahib, are stubborn, as stubborn as any young warrior from my own hills. If I were your father, I would be concerned. Concerned and … proud. I will not be able to sway you from your duty, so do not try to sway me from mine. Come, sahib, our horses are saddled and ready.”
Katachari was quiet and deserted when we reached it, the only life to be seen or heard; a few pi-dogs, some poultry searching the dust for tit-bits, the odd raucous crow.
Mushtaq Khan pointed beyond the village. “The burning ground is about a mile that way,” he said. We rode on.
A little way on we began to hear a low, rhythmic drone. Although not yet fully audible, it was a sound filled with foreboding. The farther we rode, the louder the drone became, until at last it was clear. It was the chanting of many voices, a repetitious, hypnotic, “Ram-ram … ram-ram … ram-ram …”
At length we came upon the thickly-clustered chanting crowd. There were many more than belonged to Katac
hari: people must have traveled from great distances around to attend the cremation. From our vantage point on horseback, we could see clearly over their heads.
The funeral pyre—a platform of interwoven sticks and branches soaked in ghee—was about head height, roughly the same length, and perhaps four feet wide. The corpse, blanketed with great masses of flowers, rested on the top, and Chandira knelt at its head, hands clasped before her. She had discarded the burkha for a plain white sari. The area was filled with the combined stenches of decomposition and ghee.
We dismounted and approached slowly. Some of the mourners at the back of the crowd had seen us and glared threateningly.
I unstrapped my pistol and handed it to Mushtaq Khan. “Wait for me here,” I instructed.
“They’ll tear you to pieces, sahib!” he protested.
“Wait for me,” I repeated. I clasped the old man’s shoulders. “It will be all right.”
“Very well, sahib.” His hawk’s eyes glared and his tone was grudging. He laid one hand upon his dagger and brandished my pistol with the other. “But let one of those unbelievers raise a hand against you and they’ll find what it means to have the Pathans fall upon them,” he growled. “If we die, we die together giving a good account.”
I pushed my way into the crowd which parted before me. I think it was bravado that carried me through, that and their astonishment at my foolhardiness. I reached the pyre where the Brahmin priests were chanting their prayers. Gokul stood to one side clutching a burning faggot of wood. As I reached them, the prayers turned to cries of outrage.
I held out a hand. “Give me the torch, Gokul-sahib,” I ordered.
“Go!” he hissed. “Go now you foolish young man, we have no wish to harm you.”
“Give me the torch!” I repeated, filling my voice with as much quiet savageness as I could muster.
The zamindar did so, reluctantly. The crowd fell silent, waiting, I believe, for the command to rend me.
I turned to look at the woman on the pyre. Her face was older, much older, than before and I detected livid streaks of subcutaneous mortification. Her cheek bones had become prominent, the flesh below them concave, and her eyes, now lackluster, were already sinking back.
“Namaste, Chandira,” I greeted her.
She bowed a little. “Namaste, Rowan-sahib.” Her voice was but a dry croak.
“Your husband once told me that I was to perform a service for him. I am here to give that service.”
Stepping forward, I thrust the torch deep into the tinder of the funeral pyre and leapt back as the mound of wood and ghee ignited with a roar.
I like to believe that I saw a look of gratitude and peace pass over Chandira’s withering face before the purifying flames engulfed her.
STEPHEN VOLK
Celebrity Frankenstein
Stephen Volk is best known as the creator of the multi-award-winning drama series Afterlife and the notorious 1992 TV “Hallowe’en hoax” Ghostwatch which jammed the switchboards at the BBC, terrified the nation, and even caused questions to be raised in Parliament.
He cowrote the recent feature film The Awakening starring Rebecca Hall and Dominic West, and his other screenplay credits include Ken Russell’s Frankenstein-themed Gothic starring Gabriel Byrne and Natasha Richardson, and The Guardian, directed by William Friedkin. He also scripted the TV series Afterlife (2005–06) and Midwinter of the Spirit (2015), and won a British Film Academy Award for his short film The Deadness of Dad starring Rhys Ifans.
His first collection of short stories, Dark Corners, appeared in 2006, and his short fiction has previously been selected for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Best New Horror and Best British Mysteries. He is the author of the stand-alone novellas Vardøger and Whitstable, the latter published to coincide with the Peter Cushing centenary. A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, his second collection, Monsters in the Heart, won the British Fantasy Award in 2014.
As Volk explains: “Often I’ve heard the observation that pop stars these days are mere commodities, manufactured to the specifications of an industry hungry to create something or someone, thrust them in the limelight, then drop them just as quickly. People talk of ‘Svengalis’ and ‘puppet-masters,’ but I thought of Dr. Frankenstein’s rejection of his creature and the parallels struck me as delicious fun to play with. Even if the fun ends in tragedy.
“The title was a given. Almost every TV show, here in Britain anyway, has ‘Celebrity’ in the title (Celebrity Bitchslap News possibly taking the prize for the most inane and depressing of the bunch).
“Unnecessary to point out, probably, is that my inspiration came from the tabloids, the talent shows, the stars forever in the limelight, as well as Mary Shelley—who certainly knew a thing or two about fame in her lifetime, but to my knowledge never had her own chat show.”
In my mind the gap was non-existent between falling asleep and waking up, but of course weeks had gone by. Obviously. There were many procedures to be done and one had to be recovered from, and stabilized, groggily, still under, before the next began. I had no idea of the doctors taking over in shifts, or working in tandem, to achieve the program-makers’ aims. I was out of it. Meanwhile the video footage of the surgery circled the world. Screen grabs jumping from cell to cell. I learned later that at the moment the titles began running on the final segment of the Results show, we’d already had the highest ratings the network had ever had. Any network ever had. This was history, if I but knew it. If I was awake. Then I was awake …
Salvator’s eyes took a while to focus. Some filmy bits floated in the general opaqueness like rats’ tails which troubled me for a few seconds. That and a certain lack of pain which came from being pumped with 100%-proof Christ-knows-what anaesthetic and various other chemicals swashed together in a cocktail to keep me stable. The new me, that is. If you could call it “me” at all.
I raised a hand to examine it front and back. It was Murphy’s hand, unmistakably. I’d know that blunt-ended thumb and slightly twisted pinkie anywhere. The tan ended at the stitches where it was attached to Vince Pybus’s tattooed arm. I revolved it slightly, feeling the pull in my forearm muscles—not that they were mine at all. Except they were. There was the tremendous urge to yell something obscene, but I remembered being counselled not to do that on live TV for legal and other reasons, not least being the show might get instantly pulled. But the word “Fuck” seemed appropriate, given a new entity had been given life, of a sort, with no actual “fucking” involved. As befits suitable family entertainment. Primetime.
Anticipating my thoughts, some guardian angel out of my field of vision put an oxygen mask over my mouth—whose mouth? I felt a coldness not on my lips but on Finbar’s, wider and more feminine than mine, a Jim Morrison pout—and I drank the air greedily: it stopped the feeling of nausea that was rising up from my guts. Or somebody’s, anyway.
I raised my other hand and it was trembling. It also happened to be African-American, muscled and smooth. My man Anthony’s. I flattened its palm and ran it over my chest, hairless, Hispanic, down to the hard, defined muscles of Rico’s stomach. Maybe alarmingly, I didn’t have to stifle a scream but a laugh. And almost as if it wanted to drown me out in case I did, up came the Toccata and Fugue, blasting loud enough to make the walls of Jericho crumble, and my hospital table tilted up, thirty, forty-five degrees, and shielding my eyes with Anthony’s hand from the army of studio lights, I blinked, trying to make out the sea of the audience beyond.
“Are you ready for the mirror?” said a voice.
It was Doctor Bob and I saw him now, brown eyes twinkling above the paper mask, curly hair neatly tucked under the lime green medical cap. I nodded. As I had to. It was in my contract, after all.
I looked at Moritz’s face as the reflection looked back. Long, lean, pale—not un-handsome, but not Moritz either. Finbar’s lips, fat and engorged, maybe enhanced a little cosmetically while we were all under, gave him a sensuality the real Morit
z lacked. Moritz, who lay somewhere backstage with his face removed, waiting for a donor. Next to armless Vince and armless Anthony, a fond tear in their eyes no doubt to see a part of them taken away and made famous. I saw, below a brow irrigated with a railway-track of stitches where the skull had been lifted off like a lid and my brain had been put in, Salvator’s darkly Spanish eyes gazing back at me like no eyes in any mirror in Oblong, Illinois. Blind Salvator, now, who was sitting backstage, whose grandfather had been blind also, but had only eked a rotten existence as a beggar on the streets of Valladolid. Yet here was Salvator his eyeless grandson, rich and American, and about be richer still from the story he now had to tell, and sell. Salvator could see nothing now—true, but he had seen a future, at least.
“Wow,” I said.
Doctor Bob and the other Judges were standing and applauding in front of me now, wearing their surgical scrubs and rubber gloves. Doctor Jude’s cut by some fashion house in Rodeo Drive, her hair stacked high and shining. The gloves made a shrill, popping sound. Doctor Bob’s facemask hung half off from one ear. I was still in a haze but I think they each said their bit praising us.
“I always believed in you guys.”
“You’re the real deal. That was fantastic.”
“You know what’s great about you? You never complained and you never moaned in this whole process.”
It was the Host speaking next. Hand on my shoulder. Sharp charcoal suit, sharp white grin: “Great comments from the Doctors. What do you think of that? Say something to the audience.”
With Alfry Linquist’s voice, I said: “Awesome.”
Soon the clip was on YouTube. Highest number of hits ever.
I got out of the hospital bed and they handed me a microphone. I sang the single that was released that Christmas and went straight to number one: “Idolized.” One of the biggest downloads ever. Global.
As soon as I could record it, my first album came out. Producer worked with Frank Zappa (not that I was real sure who Frank Zappa was). Born Winner, it was called. The Doctors decided that. Guess they decided way before I recorded it. Like they decided everything, Doctor Bob and his team, the Judges. Went triple platinum. Grammys. Mercury. You name it. Rolling Stone interview. Jets to London. Private jets courtesy of Doctor Bob. Tokyo. Sydney. Wherever. Madness. But good madness.
In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus Page 58