Monster

by Shane Peacock

  “Sorry for him, sis! Have you lost your senses? He was about to kill us all, experiment on us!”

  “But he can’t feel anything. That is the worst thing I can imagine. And he didn’t choose to be what he is.”

  Edgar puts his hand on hers. “We cannot let him do evil to others. He is indeed desperate. I agree that he will flee, find someplace where he can recover, fix himself, but who knows what he will do while on his way. Everyone who sees him clearly will think him bizarre, an aberration, and he will feel the need to destroy anyone who can do anything about it.”

  “So the question is: where will he go?” says Tiger.

  “Well, what does the creature do in the novel?” asks Shakespeare.

  “That’s ridiculous, why would—” says Jonathan.

  “No,” says Tiger, “I think Mr. Shakespeare may have something there. Godwin appears to take some pride in the fact that he is essentially in such a famous book. He seems to have a fixation with it. And he took his name from its pages too.”

  “In the novel, the creature goes northward,” says Edgar. “He ends up in the distant reaches of Scotland. Then he goes farther north to the arctic and flees on the ice. That’s how the story opens: with a ship’s captain writing home to his sister about a creature he and his crew see that looks like a phantom on the ice floes, driving a dogsled north toward the Pole, and then they see its creator, Victor Frankenstein.” Edgar can feel the cold arctic winds as he speaks and see the hideous monster before him on the ice.

  “So, you think he’s headed toward the North Pole,” smiles Jonathan, “perhaps to talk things over with Father Christmas…Santa Claus?”

  No one speaks for a while.

  “Somewhere way up there would be perfect,” says Edgar. “It’s remote, it’s sparsely populated. He could set up there and word wouldn’t spread to London. He could rebuild himself.”

  “And kill anyone who interrupts, unobserved,” says Tiger.

  “Let’s track him,” says Jonathan.

  “We’ll need money.” At the mention of that word, their little host leaps to his feet and starts to walk away.

  “Shakespeare!” says Edgar.

  Shakespeare grinds to a halt, sighs and walks back toward his safe, hidden behind a painting of the witches’ scene in Macbeth. “Foot licker,” he says under his breath.

  “We can’t chase him dressed this way,” says Lucy.

  “Why not?” asks Shakespeare, stopping in his tracks and looking hurt. “They are simply lovely on all of you!”

  “Let’s go together to Kentish Town, safety in numbers,” says Edgar. “We’ll get better clothes there, and some food. You all have clothing in the house and I can wear some of Jonathan’s.”

  —

  Half an hour later they are at the Lear home and properly clothed in thicker trousers and dresses, and carrying heavy coats, food, and other clothes in sacks. Jonathan takes up the rifle, getting a hold of it when Tiger sets it down for a moment. He reloads it with their four remaining bullets, and as they leave the house he conceals it at his side, partially in the folds of his coat. He also slips a notebook into his sack. Edgar wonders what in the world Jon would ever do with such a thing.

  “Should we bring the cannon?” asks Lucy.

  “It would slow us down,” says Tiger.

  “Too bad,” mutters Jonathan.

  They head southeast to the London Hospital in two galloping cabs, sure that Godwin, despite his exposed appearance, will go there to gather up whatever he might have to take with him—operating tools and chemicals. He likely has clothing there too.

  One day, thinks Edgar, we may still unleash that cannon.

  —

  The sky is pitch black as they slip around to the rear entrance of the hospital. Someone is coming out at the very moment they arrive—they duck behind a bush. He is tall and thick, wearing a long black cloak, and has the Elephant Man’s hood over his face. He carries several sacks.

  “Sensational!” whispers Jonathan.

  Edgar sees something move on top of the hospital. It has the body of a panther and the head of an ape and it watches Godwin as he leaves. Edgar doesn’t say anything.

  Godwin hurries out onto the rear lawn and then heads west along narrow back streets, and the friends follow, keeping well behind. As they rush down Old Castle and Goulston streets, where the Ripper struck and one could believe still lurks, they hear screams from upper stories and the sounds of violence, but they keep pursuing Godwin, who maintains a steady, aggressive pace and never looks back.

  “If he would just stay still for a moment, I could get a shot at him,” says Tiger. Her eyes are lit with excitement. She has kept the pistol.

  At wide Bishopsgate Street, Godwin enters a nearly deserted Liverpool Street Railway Station and darts along under its glass ceiling to look at the train departure times on the wall. His followers stay in a doorway, waiting. In seconds, Godwin shakes his head angrily and goes out, back into the streets, heading northwest, keeping to the narrow roads again.

  He resurfaces from the tighter streets up on Euston Road and makes for the big railway station on that artery. They can hear his operating tools jingling inside his sacks.

  “I know what he’s after,” says Edgar. “It’s our old school train.”

  —

  And indeed it is. With his monstrous face still inside the Elephant Man’s hood, causing people to stare, Godwin gets himself a ticket on the first early morning express for northern Scotland and so do Edgar and his friends, keeping an entire train car behind. The locomotive powers out of London heading for Edinburgh. All but Tiger fall asleep.

  When they reach the Scottish capital, she rouses them and they change for Inverness and there observe Godwin from a distance as he hides himself on a bench in the shadows in the station for hours. Edgar buys some paper, a stamp and a pen from a little station shop and posts a note to Annabel, telling her he has been sent to Scotland on urgent hospital business, wondering if she will believe it. Then they watch their monster, still hooded, board the Far North Line to steam farther north. They follow and move out onto the moors. It has been dark for a long while by then but they know what is outside their windows—a bleak and misty world; and they all remember what happened when they were last here—the bloody words carved into Driver’s chest, the presence of the vampire. The College on the Moors is nearing. What occurred in that place brought them to where they are now. They hold their breath when the conductor calls out “Altnabraec Station,” but not a single passenger rises and the train zooms on through the night.

  “I really thought he would get out there,” says Jonathan, looking relieved.

  “No,” says Edgar, staring straight ahead, “we are in Frankenstein.”

  22

  The train gets to Thurso, a small town on the North Sea on the northern Scottish coast, just before dawn. It is the end of the line. Jonathan leaps to his feet.

  “No,” says Edgar, “we need to stay put. He will see us at this little station. I know where he’s going.”

  “There he is!” says Lucy, gazing through the window. Godwin is moving along the platform toward them. They duck down and wait. There were only a few passengers on this train and because it is so early in the morning, the great surgeon can walk about hoodless without much notice, simply keeping the cloak and its big collar partially pulled up over his head. The locomotive’s engine has stopped and it is quiet outside. Their window is cracked open a little. They can hear footsteps approach and pause. Then they see a shadow stretch across their seats and the floor. They have the sense that the monster has come up close to the glass and is peering in. None of them breathe. Then the shadow fades away.

  They wait a good ten minutes before they disembark from the train. Though it is a late June day, the air is cool here in northern Scotland.

  “Where are we going?” asks Jonathan.

  “To the docks,” says Tiger.

  —

  They make their way through town
and then spot Godwin down by the water, his cloak now almost completely covering his face, speaking to a man near a large boat. Gulls are squawking up above. The man is staring at what he can see of his tall inquisitor’s visage, shaking his head. But then Godwin pulls something from his pocket—a wad of money—and the man becomes more interested. Finally, the fellow takes the banknotes and Godwin throws his sacks into the boat and gets in.

  “After him!” says Jonathan.

  Edgar shakes his head. “He’d see us coming. We’ll have to follow in another boat.”

  “But we’ll lose him.”

  “I doubt that. Not where he is going.”

  There’s an island—several of them—far out on the horizon on the North Sea.

  “The Orkneys,” whispers Lucy.

  —

  Fifteen minutes later, they make their own agreement with another distinguished man of the sea—thirty English pounds’ worth—and get into his rickety wooden boat. He’s a grizzled old fellow wearing a dirty sleeveless shirt in the cool air, a blue felt cap and a filthy rag around his neck. His Scottish accent is so thick that they can barely understand him. They make their way slowly along the coast and then out into the open water. The old man pumps two of the oars and Jonathan, Edgar and Tiger take turns with the others. The boat looks rotten in places and even has holes up near the gunwales.

  “She’s as calm as glass today,” says their captain. But it isn’t true, at least for them. The man happily sings and whistles a song about a long lost “lass” on the Highlands for most of the three harrowing hours it takes to cross, the waves growing and growing, eventually nearly as high as a fully grown man. When they become particularly steep, their captain switches to a mournful tale of Mother Nature taking another loved one to his death upon the high seas. But no matter how much the waters lash the boat, he doesn’t seem concerned. Lucy sinks down into the stern, wrapped in the warm coat she has brought, her eyes closed. There is no sign of Godwin and his vessel.

  “We may be goners,” says the sailor as they approach the Orkney shore, though he shouts it with a smile. “You can’t fight Davy Jones! If it is time for you to go, then it is time, that’s me motto!” There is a strange glee in his eyes.

  There don’t appear to be any docks. The sailor, insisting that Jon now man the other oars, heads for a series of black rocks, the boat bouncing up and down like a rubber ball in the waves, which are now angrier than they have been at any point in the crossing. Tiger sits stone-faced, gripping her seat, her mouth set in a slit, telling Lucy that all will be fine. Edgar holds on to the edge of the boat, trying not to retch, reminding himself that fear is never helpful.

  They encounter the rough shoreline at high speed, just after the old man insists it is a good place to land. He stands up in the boat and seizes one of the rocks.

  “Now each of you just step out, the lasses first.”

  But Tiger won’t go until last. She helps Lucy disembark, then Edgar goes, and then Jonathan, who reaches back for Tiger. But she won’t take his hand. Each of the first three had fallen in the water when they got out but were able to cling to the rocks and struggle to land. But the waves seem even higher as Tiger, left in a boat with little ballast, tries to get out. She tosses her coat and sack to the others, but before she can take a step a spray of water hits the side of the vessel and the sailor loses his footing and the boat rocks out into the North Sea, a good twenty feet from shore.

  “You’ll have to jump for it, sir!” says the sailor to Tiger.

  “No!” cries Lucy.

  Tiger pauses, looks toward Edgar, and then leaps into the sea. She goes under the waves and disappears.

  “Tiger!” cries Edgar.

  She resurfaces, her face white but determined, and swims hard until she can reach for a rock jutting out from the shore. She grips it and pulls herself up, then staggers toward them on land. There’s blood oozing from a tear in her trousers near her knee.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  The boat vanishes out into the waves and in the distance they can hear the sailor singing. “Mother Nature,” he croons, “must be feared.”

  When they have found their legs on land, they turn to see that they are in a wilderness, on the edge of a brown field with no buildings in sight, a pattern of rock fences crisscrossing in the distance. They see sheep grazing on the spotty grass.

  “There!” says Lucy, pointing.

  Far away, not much more than a dot five fields from them, they see something moving. It isn’t an animal, though it barely seems a man.

  “Godwin!”

  He appears to be traveling at a brisk pace, as if he knows where he is going. They follow and pursue him for more than an hour, stopping to eat some of the food—bread, cold mutton—they brought with them, always making sure they are at least a mile behind him.

  They pass stone farmhouses and spot a few distant citizens, but Godwin keeps far away from people and buildings, and the four friends are thankful for that. The land continues brown and desolate and full of rocks, though small trees and stretches of green intrude here and there.

  They keep going north and then reach a shore where a channel of the North Sea separates them from another island. Godwin leaps into the cold water and swims. He powers through the waves like a shark, his bags wrapped around him as if they were an inconsequential albatross on his neck.

  “At some point he will stop,” says Tiger, “and then we will take him.”

  Or he will take us, thinks Edgar.

  Tiger starts removing her clothes.

  Jonathan gawks at her.

  “What are you doing?” asks Edgar, startled as her strong, smooth limbs come fully into view in the cool Orkney Island air while she strips down to her few undergarments.

  “I’m going after him.”

  “It’s nearly half a mile across!”

  “Yes, and if we wait to find some sort of boat, then we may lose him. And we’d have to explain what we are doing in order to rent anything.”

  They have been toting two large sacks, one of which Tiger has insisted she carry most of the way. She stuffs her boots and clothes into it. Edgar has the other sack. Jonathan grabs it from him and starts removing his own clothes, shoving them into it. He bares his chest and takes down his trousers. His powerful legs are chiseled like a Greek statue’s. Tiger, who was about to enter the water, pauses for a moment.

  “Let’s go!” shouts Jon, taking her by the hand.

  “Better to do this individually,” she says as she shakes him off and dives into the water. The waves aren’t nearly as high as they were on the crossing from the Scottish mainland, but the water here is far from flat. Tiger goes under the waves and then surfaces, her head pointed toward the land to the north.

  Jonathan ties his sack to his back and then realizes he has the rifle as well. He hesitates and looks at Lucy.

  “You can’t swim with that too,” she says.

  He gazes out toward Tiger, grabs the gun’s strap and slips it over his shoulder and dives into the water. It takes him a while to surface but he comes up before long and starts swimming after the girl he so admires, struggling with the heavy weapon and bag on his back.

  “Well,” says Edgar, turning to Lucy, “I guess we have no choice. Are you ready for this?”

  “I think so,” she says. “Stay close to me. You know, women float better.” She smiles at him and turns her back to take off her coat and brown dress, down to a light, white shift that goes to about mid-thigh. Edgar turns away. It occurs to him that Lucy often seems afraid of challenges, yet she never shirks them. It is remarkable.

  She has been carrying a smaller sack, which she’s dropped on the ground. Edgar takes off his clothes and puts them into it and stands waiting for her, his slim chest bared. She turns to him, her head down, but then looks up at him.

  “I’m ready,” she says.

  He puts her shoes and outer clothes into the sack and ties it around his back.

  “Take my hand,” s
he says. They go into the water together.

  Lucy turns out to be a better swimmer. She finishes second in the marathon across the water, Edgar is third, and then they turn to see Jonathan, all thick muscle and a heavy sack and a big rifle, struggling just three-quarters of the way across. Then he goes under.

  “JONATHAN!” sobs Lucy. Tiger’s face goes white.

  But he comes back up, almost as if in response to his sister’s cry. They can see him set his mouth and work harder despite his failing strength. Minutes later, Tiger leaps into the water and helps him across the last ten feet and up onto shore. He pushes her away as he staggers to his feet.

  “I am fine!” he shouts.

  Tiger looks at him in admiration. They all struggle back into their wet clothes, shivering in the early evening air.

  “Let’s keep going,” says Jon. “We can’t lose him.”

  But they can’t locate Godwin anywhere in the distance, at least for a while. An hour of fast walking brings him into sight. Beyond him they can see a town.

  “Kirkwall,” says Edgar.

  “Dear God, don’t let him go in there,” says Tiger.

  “He won’t,” says Lucy. “He can’t.”

  Godwin steers wide of the town and they follow him for another half hour to another shoreline where he heads northwest along its rocky surface. Crouched down on a barren hill above, they observe him. The sun is getting lower in the sky.

  “Where is he going?” asks Jonathan.

  “I believe we have a last swim to accomplish,” says Edgar. As he looks out over the cold, gray water, he thinks about the famous novel to which Percy Godwin is connected and, against his will, finds himself slipping back into it as if he were lying in his bed long ago listening to his father unknowingly unfold the horrific tale for him from the floor above. Edgar becomes Victor Frankenstein and leaves his loving family home for a German university town where his interest in science and thirst for knowledge grows dangerously exciting. He visits gravesites and steals dead bodies and makes a human being in the attic of his apartment! He is immediately devastated by what he has done and flees, but his monster pursues him, kills his brother in the woods near the family’s home, educates itself and comes after him again. Edgar agrees to an evil contract, promising the creature that he will make a female partner for it so it will leave him be and seclude itself from humanity. Edgar makes his way from Switzerland through England to the Orkney Islands to its most northern isle, bearing body parts and chemicals to attempt the gruesome operation in a secluded place. But he knows he cannot really do this horrific act. And so the wretch, who repulses him to his very core, takes revenge…and murders Edgar’s bride on their wedding night!