The Ultimate Frankenstein
Page 23
"Yes," says the older man, almost napping in his chair. "I daresay he will take responsibility for him, someday."
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William. Justine. Elizabeth. Bones rattling in cold boxes. Spectres 'round my bed. He has killed you all. Driven a dagger at my heart through you.
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The room is dark, illuminated by a single source. Victor is sweating, bent over the surgical table working hard, carving and sewing, mating tissues, furiously trying to effect another dark miracle.
"A companion," the creature says. "You will give me a woman." His voice is thick, nearly incoherent. "I must have a mate. Am I to wander alone while all else in nature is paired?"
"You are not of nature," Victor says, and his voice shakes with fear.
"You have created me. You will create my woman."
Throughout the hot night Victor toils. The creature withdraws to brood in solitude.
Near dawn, a bird fills the air with trilling song.
Victor pauses in his desperate labors, wipes his brow. He has engendered one abomination. Is that not enough? What has he learned? Too much. He pulls back from the table and the torso lying there. He puts down the knife.
'If I must be alone, so will you be," the creature says. "I am in your mirror, your dim reflection. And I will be with you on your wedding night."
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The philosopher's stone. The elixir of life. Better if I never learned of those fanciful imaginings. Father, why did you not tell me that other, better investigations had already borne fruit? The clean rationality of chemistry would had drawn me, surely. I curse that day in the inn when I came upon Agrippa's work. I curse you, Father. All fathers. All men and all their offspring.
He stretches a wooden toe and for a moment the warmth recedes. The room dims, fades, replaced by blinding whiteness.
Henry, he thinks. Dear Henry, favorite friend of childhood. And Father. Brave, loving man. Gone. All I ever loved. Fitting payment. But not enough.
For poor Henry alone surely he will go to hell, and he welcomes the journey. A hot red space filled with chittering, buzzing horrors: birds with jagged teeth and clamshell wings, swollen nightmares with spindly legs, cloven hooves, and hairy, piglike hides cleft to reveal gelatinous eggs filled with staring yellow eyes? What awaits? Has a special torment been devised for me?
Victor chuckles.
Such arrogance. Even after so many years, he has not completely outgrown that dangerous, insolent pride. The thought almost gives him pleasure. He leans back upon his pillow. Even his head feels numb, warm.
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William has been missing all day and into the night. With growing fear, the family and servants search. The maid Justine is distraught at the news of the young boy's disappearance. She delays her return to town, searching each hayloft, each milkshed she passes.
"William," she calls, and the echoes fade to nothing. "Sweet boy, come to me."
She lingers too long in the fields—perhaps he has fallen asleep under a berry bush, foolish child—and the thick town gates are locked against her now. The night is short and sleepless, save for a strange dream in which she sees some monstrous shadow looming above her and feels the touch of strange hands pulling at her apron.
In the morning, she stumbles back to Geneva, exhausted, disheartened. Her brown hair is matted, her eyes dull.
"Justine," Elizabeth cries. "Where have you been?"
"Out all night, looking for young Will. Has he returned?"
Elizabeth's eyes glisten with tears. "They found him early this morning."
"Good, then. I'll go to him."
A hand on her shoulder stops her. "His neck was broken. Some fiend did it and stole the jeweled locket I'd given him to wear."
"Dead?" Justine staggers back against the wall. Is this a nightmare, too? Her hands begin to pick nervously about her person, straightening a sleeve, flipping up a collar, reaching into a pocket of her apron to close upon an unfamiliar object. She draws it forth, holds it up to the light. Gasps in disbelief.
Upon her open palm rests a jewel-encrusted golden locket threaded upon a broken velvet ribbon.
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Clever madman. The diseased imagination and cruelty of the thing. To murder first the beloved younger brother, then to implicate an innocent family maid. Stripping the tree bare with relentless malice. Oh, clever, brutal monster.
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Elizabeth, his bride, lies upon the bed like a discarded doll, her arms at strange angles, her head bent horribly back. Her eyes stare at him, accusing, empty.
And Henry, good Henry, is found strangled in the snow. His father, bowed down by too many tragedies, succumbs to sorrow. Victor is alone. But that noise, what is that noise? Death approaching? No, he is too anxious, breathing too hard. He will scare away that black rabbit. Calm, he must be calm.
Those sounds, like the groan of stairs under a heavy foot. Surely not death coming.
The space around his bed is crowded by his memories. But one is missing. One alone of that ghostly crew who may yet survive his creator. Coming now, tracking him, to find him and finish the job death has abandoned?
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By late November he has done it. The object of two years' work lies shuddering upon a stained pallet and opens dull amber eyes. The grotesque mouth stretches in what might become a smile. A misshapen hand reaches out. And Victor knows that he has failed.
He has attempted pure science, that most sacred of religions. So pure, so certain. And he knows with cold clarity that he will be called a blasphemer. His name will be whispered to children as a threat. His ambition will be cursed.
The creature rises up, mutters something guttural. The grasping hand comes nearer. "No!"
Victor pulls back, slams the door behind him, and bolts it. Will the thing rise up to pound and smash its way to freedom? He pauses. Curious sounds issue from the locked chamber. High, keening. Almost like that of a crying child.
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The creature. Even now, Victor cannot restrain a shiver of dread. He had tried to love it. But the hideous countenance, more awful than any mummy reanimated, recalled to life. His own guilt and fear had become too great, the noise of the mob too loud. The thing at first had not been evil. How can the dead be evil? If, through clean and pitiless science they are reborn, must they then put on that stain of Christian guilt and wretched responsibility as though donning rusty old clothing? No. No.
Again the heavy footfall. It is the monster—coming to finish him. Here at last.
A huge hand grabs him roughly by the shoulder.
"Sit up," the creature says. "Face your death."
"I am ready."
"Are you?" The creature leans back and the seamed face contorts with strange mirth. "I do not think so." The awful hands reach for him.
Despite his resolve, Victor feels a faint stab of fear, of defiance. "Wait," he says. "You cannot be so completely evil."
"Evil?" The monster pauses as though surprised. "I am not the evil one. It is you. Your guilt. Your will."
"But the murders ..."
"Committed by you through me."
"How dare you. I am innocent of any killing."
"You are not innocent. You made me. Repudiated me. Pretended to know nothing as all around you were destroyed. I have made no pretense, ever, as to my true nature. But you, you have remained silent while others were slain in your place. You are the monster. And there will be no peace for you."
Victor meets the gaze of those dead amber eyes and understands. Death will not end it, will not be the safe hiding place he has imagined. Merely a tunnel, rather, a conduit to the hell of rebirth. He will become the creature. He must, as penance. And the monster will midwife his rebirth after death, the creator recreated, the creation the father. He will become the reflection of his own creature.
He wants to weep. Oh gods, he thinks, will his be the first face I see when I awaken? And what shall I call him? Father? Brother?
The creature vanishes. The walls of the room melt and disappear.
Victor is lying in the snow, alone.
He looks around. Gone, he thinks. No one is there, no one at all. A delusion brought on by the cold.
I must get up. I must find shelter.
Clumsily he rises to his knees, forces deadened legs to bear his weight. He pauses, takes a step. Then another. But his legs are too weak, too numb. He falls hard against the snowpack and stays there, eyes closed against the brilliant whiteness.
Behind him in the wasteland he hears a sound. The unmistakable crunch of snow being compressed by slow, deliberate footsteps. As he listens, the wind dies to a whisper.
The steps grow louder.
PART FIVE
Garfield Reeves-Stevens
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THEY REMIND one of fires, do they not?"
Samantha Grant glanced away from the night and the deep and glittering vista sweeping out beneath the Hollywood Hills. She had been thinking of the part. She hadn't heard what her host had said.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked.
"Fires," her host repeated, as if caught up in distant memories. "Torches, really. Like vast parades of people carrying torches."
"Oh," Samantha said. "The lights." She looked back through the floor- to-ceiling windows, trying not to think of the hundred-and-twenty foot drop down the sheer side of the lot off Mulholland. As was Warren Beatty's estate to the east, and Marlon Brando's compound to the west, so too was this house as secluded and unassailable as any medieval castle.
Yet the house was not isolated. Past the black silhouettes of the trees below, Los Angeles was defined as uncountable shimmering sparks of light, strung out along the streets and highways like dew on a spider's web. And I'm here, where I'm supposed to be, Samantha told herself, right in the middle of it for as long as I live. The city at my feet, the studios in the valley behind me. Right in the center of the web.
She took a breath and the cool air of the house caressed her as gently as the silk she wore beneath the tightly draped black jersey of her Azzedine Alai'a dress. She had rented it from Dressed to Kill. Three hundred dollars for the evening. But if she got the part, then the extravagance would be worth not eating for the next few weeks.
"Yes, they do," Samantha said. She turned again to her host. "Very hot fires."
Edward Styles had stopped watching the city. He was watching his guest, as if she were no less magnificent than the view his house possessed.
Samantha Grant had seen that look before. And she had been in town long enough to know how to handle it.
That's right, she thought as she caught Edward's gaze and held it. I know this town, I know how this business works. His sparkling gray eyes flickered lightly to her lips. She could still feel the thick covering of her lipstick there and she knew it would be glistening moistly in the candlelight that filled the expansive circular living room. Use it, use it, she told herself—the mantra of the unemployed actor. Seven hundred dollars' worth of Dr. Morely's collagen injections in these lips. They're meant to be looked at. Then, calculatingly, she bit in ever so lightly on her lower lip, knowing that in class her scene partner would be proud of the subtle innocence that expression conveyed. Michelle Pfeiffer had nothing on her.
Edward's eyes came back to her own, with no indication that he might have detected any artifice in her mood. He spoke in the portentous language of Hollywood. "The city is like that, at times. Hot." His eyes dropped from her face, alighting gently on the low and taut neckline of her dress.
And look at those, too, Samantha thought. Thirty-five hundred a pair. Everything she had earned from her one week of work on the USA Network made-for. At twenty-three, she had not required augmentation—she planned on that later, when she had moved past her prime in this town, perhaps twenty-eight, certainly by thirty. For now, Dr. Morely had persuaded her that all she required had been a careful tuck of skin, and a subtle lift and minor recontouring with the fat cells which had been carefully vacuumed from her inner thighs. Go ahead and look, she thought. That's what they're there for. That's why this body is the way it is, the way I made it. So that you'll want to look, so they'll all want to look, to see me spread across a sixty-foot expanse of reflective theater screen. To have me in the privacy of their televisions and VCRs. She thought of the part. It was all for the part and the rewards it would bring her.
Edward's gaze swept over the rest of her and—always the gentleman— met her eyes again, apparently oblivious to her green-tinted contacts and the small folds that hid the thin scars of an ever-so-slight rearrangement of her lids. Big eyes were in this year, Dr. Morely had assured her.
"We find it quite passionate," Edward continued, and Samantha had talked with him long enough this evening to realize that when he said "we" he meant only himself. "This city. The heat and . . . excitement of it." Edward lifted the thin Steuben flute of champagne to his lips and drank from it as softly as a kiss.
Samantha did the same, holding his gaze, and realizing as the Dom's bubbles lightly cascaded across her tongue that the other guest would not be coming this evening. That sudden knowledge did not upset her. It did not even surprise her. This was Hollywood and the rules of conduct were as simple and as brutal as those in any other jungle. As far as Samantha Grant was concerned, if that was the way her host had chosen to play the game tonight, then she was prepared to go eye to eye with him. And with that decision she knew she had moved another step closer to getting what she wanted. What she needed. What she lived for.
Edward put his champagne glass on a small, black marble cube by the window, then checked his watch. Even five feet away, Samantha could see the gleaming profile of Mickey Mouse on the watch's face, set out in platinum and gold. There were only ten of those watches in existence and Edward Styles had received his personally from Michael Eisner the day Stardreamers had grossed $100 million, less than two weeks after its opening. At a hundred mill a watch, by rights Edward Styles should have three of them for that one movie alone—the first film to have out-grossed Home Alone in the domestic market despite more than three years of decreasing box office and a faltering economy. But unlike most other producers, Edward surprisingly had refrained from self-promotion, avoided the media, and waited quietly in the Hollywood Hills until almost all outside the business had moved on to the movies of the next season and forgotten about him.
Until now. Until the inevitable.
Stardreamers II.
Edward smiled at Samantha as if apologizing that he had done something as mundane as look at his watch. "We believe it is time," he said, then gestured elegantly away from the windows.
Samantha played the part she knew was expected of her. "Won't Steven be joining us?" Her reading of the line was perfect. She sounded as if she honestly believed that Spielberg would be arriving at any moment.
Edward responded with equal sincerity, making a face of benign disappointment. "Alas, he's been held up and asked us to continue without him." Edward winked conspiratorially. "Apparently, he's reediting the ending of Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. Again."
Samantha placed her glass beside Edward's, reflexively tugging down on her dress's hemline which had been precariously drawn up by even that simple movement. "Isn't it supposed to open next month?"
"Exactly," Edward agreed. "That Steven, too much the perfectionist. But then, he does earn his keep."
Edward's laugh was unexpected and Samantha was surprised to see how that expression transformed her host's face, bringing back to it an essence of youthfulness she had assumed was long gone. Not that Edward had let youth go without a fight. Her own experience with the science and art of face and body resculpting had taught her the telltale signs to watch for.
To the untrained eye, Edward Styles was a healthy and fit fifty-year-old, casually but fashionably attir
ed in a loose ivory silk shirt buttoned to the neck, and draped linen trousers that spilled easily onto twelve-hundred dollar slip-ons from Fred Segal. Like Steve Martin, his conservatively cut hair was brilliant white so it did not age him as much as make his appearance memorable. The corners of his eyes were accented with creases which an aging generation of baby-boomers insisted on calling smile lines, not wrinkles. But despite those signs of age and experience, his lids were tight and his brow taut, leading Samantha to suspect that hidden somewhere in his transplanted hairline there would be a fine white scar from at least one facelift.
The flesh around Edward's jaw was also tight; no doubt a sagging half- inch of skin had been removed to smooth the neck and define the bone. Or perhaps the clean and sculpted planes of his cheekbones were the result of implants which had served to return the tautness of youth to flesh worn out through decades of battling gravity. Dr. Morely had suggested a similar procedure to build up Samantha's face, but in the end, they both had decided that her cheekbones were fine as they were for now, requiring only the removal of her two rearmost wisdom teeth to allow her cheeks to draw in and accentuate the leanness of her youth.
Samantha was impressed by what she saw in Edward. Here was a man who cared about himself and his appearance as much as she did about hers. She wondered who his doctor was, though that was a question that would have to wait for later. Some people were uncomfortable with the topic. Samantha knew that she would be uneasy discussing her various procedures with someone she did not know well. Though according to the evening's undercurrents, she suspected that she would not be uncomfortable with her host much longer. Once the part was hers, of course.