by John Burke
“Paul . . . where are you?”
It was Professor Meister’s voice. And Meister, incredibly, was up on the balcony. He must have found another way into the castle and was approaching the apparition from behind.
Instinctively Paul looked up.
And it was not just because of Meister. Not because of any wish to save the Professor, and not because he believed that if he stared straight at the creature it would all prove to be an hallucination. He had to look. There was nothing else for it.
He stared straight into the face of the Gorgon.
It was a classic, beautiful face. The features were those of an alluring woman—but they were only a mask for the evil that festered beneath. Paul Heitz saw what his brother and his father had seen; and the words choked in his mouth, thoughts choked in his mind . . . and through his body ran a tremor that touched every nerve with ice.
The snakes rose in a seething throng, lashing out as though desperate for something into which to sink their fangs. The Gorgon’s head was an abomination of poisonous frenzy. Her mouth stretched in a grimace of fury. If any sound emerged it was part of the savage hissing of the serpents.
Paul covered his eyes with his hands. He knew it was too late: he had chosen to look on that face of dread, and now there was no hope.
There was a faint metallic scrape against the floor of the balcony. Paul’s arm fell. Already it was growing heavy. Sluggishly he lifted his head. There was nothing to lose now. The vice was closing on his heart and lungs.
He looked . . . and saw the Gorgon beginning to turn as Meister rushed along the balcony towards her. She was too late. He had picked up Namaroff’s sword, and swung it with all his strength.
The snakes reared in a fury. The Gorgon’s mouth opened wider and wider. And suddenly the head was sliced from the body. Streaming blood, it bounced down the stairs and rolled across the floor, coming to rest near Namaroff’s corpse.
Paul slipped on the foul slime that was left as a trail. He crawled towards the head. As he did so, the snakes appeared to shrink. They withdrew into the head, retracting into the brain of which the Gorgon had taken possession.
The face itself began to change. Moonlight drifted across it like a silver veil, and it seemed that the skin dissolved. The features sagged, then reshaped themselves.
It was the head of Carla.
Paul let out a last despairing cry. He tried to drag himself over those last few inches, but his strength was failing.
“Carla . . .”
Behind him, Meister came down the stairs and stood over him.
“She’s free now, Paul. She’s free.”
Light and shadow, color and life, hope and despair . . . all faded and ceased to have meaning. The last thing on which Paul Heitz looked before he died was the severed head of Carla Hoffmann.
“Free,” he murmured.
Free. And dead.
The Curse of Frankenstein
1
Today the priest came to my cell to offer what he considered comfort and to see if I was in a repentant mood. The impertinence of it! Of what should I repent? I was glad to see him, but not because of any hopes he might hold out to me of the next life. It is this life in which I am interested. I am in no hurry to leave it. I wanted understanding and practical help from him, not pious platitudes. To him I would tell the whole story and ask him to pass it on. People trusted him: they listened to what he told them.
He was a drab, unimaginative little man. It was appalling that the survival of a mind such as my own should be at the mercy of a creature like this. Yet I had to try. Tomorrow they propose to execute me. It is monstrous, unthinkable. I am Baron Frankenstein, and there is still so much work which I must do.
“I’m sorry if you think my word will carry any authority,” he bleated at me. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”
I insisted that he should listen, and listen most carefully. Unless I could convince him that what I was about to tell him was the absolute truth, in the morning I would die. Yet how could anyone so fixed in his ways understand a word of the complexities for which I and I alone was responsible? He was as limited as the old fool who had been my teacher in Geneva.
Geneva in those early years of the nineteenth century was a lively city, a forum for brilliant debate and philosophical argument. Even as a boy I was a keen student of natural philosophy, and I think I may say without undue pride that I had a bent for research and logical analysis of problems. It was unfortunate that my mother, who knew little of such things, should have sent me for tuition to a bumbling old idiot who knew even less. He had been teaching the same dreary rubbish for thirty years. I doubted whether he had read a new book or considered a new idea for at least twenty of those.
The studies which counted were those I carried out on my own. While my friends—and I had few of them, for I found most of my contemporaries dull—were out carousing, I worked late into the night. With the few resources at my disposal I carried out small experiments which one day would have to be done on a larger scale. I read voraciously. I imbibed scientific theories in the way that my acquaintances imbibed wine. They thought that I was the dull one, and laughed at me for not knowing how to live. But what they meant by life and what I meant were two very different things. If they imagined I was not interested in life, they were absurdly mistaken. Life was just what interested me most—life, and how to create it.
It was something I didn’t speak of to others. There were too many sceptics, and too many bigots anxious to suppress every manifestation of true progress.
When my mother died I inherited the Frankenstein fortune. This would enable me to begin the work and life I had always planned. I went back to the great house on the slopes above the pretty, trivial little village which had for centuries provided servants for the Frankenstein family and laborers to work in its fields; and here I endured the irritating formalities of the funeral, the condolences, and the family ritual before I could be left alone to concentrate on things which mattered.
My uncle from Basle commiserated with me and offered his assistance should I ever need it in my financial affairs. He thought I was rather young to be handling everything myself. If I wished to return to Geneva to continue my studies, he would make himself personally responsible for the estate. I was sure that he would—but I was not too happy about the possible future of the estate in such hands.
My Aunt Sophie had a delicate matter which she wished to broach. It was indeed so delicate that she could not bring herself to speak of it outright, and after some movements on her part as stately as a minuet but less conclusive, I was forced to say bluntly:
“You are concerned about the allowance my mother made you?”
“Oh. Victor, I would not wish to—”
“You need have no fears, Aunt Sophie. I shall continue to pay it.”
“You’re a good boy, Victor. Your mother would have been proud of you. The dignity with which you have handled everything . . .”
“Yes,” I said. I wanted her off the premises so that I could relax and savor my new freedom and the taste of my riches.
But Aunt Sophie had every intention of declaring her overwhelming gratitude and at the same time of insinuating another possibility into my mind. Her daughter Elizabeth had been waiting demurely in the background. Now she was brought forward.
“Elizabeth, thank your cousin.”
“There’s really no need,” I said.
She was adamant. “Come along, Elizabeth, say thank you properly.”
The poor girl curtsied, blushing most becomingly as she did so.
“She’s a good girl, Victor,” said Aunt Sophie in what she supposed to be a confidential aside. “She’ll grow into a fine woman one day.”
“I’m sure she will.” This at least I could say with conviction, for Elizabeth already had the makings of that fair, smooth-skinned, graceful woman she was soon to become.
“She’ll make someone a fine wife.”
I held out my hand. “Goodbye.�
��
Aunt Sophie herself almost contrived a curtsey. It was amazing that so gauche and insensitive a creature should have produced such an attractive daughter.
I was glad when at last they had all gone. The house was mine. The future was mine. All the resources of the Frankenstein estate were mine. At the back of the house were servants who would look after my every need without ever obtruding themselves. In the real sense of the word I was alone; and delighted to be so.
These pleasant musings were interrupted by the deep thud of the knocker on the main door. I was still not accustomed to having a full staff to attend to such matters, and instinctively I rose from my chair and went to the door. A serving girl, little more than a child, was already coming up the steps from the basement. She stopped when she saw me. She had bold dark eyes and a strangely impertinent, inscrutable little smile that was older than her years. I hesitated, not wanting to seem foolish by turning back and leaving her to answer the door. Then I waved her away and went to open it.
A young man stood on the step gazing out over the magnificent panorama of the valley. He turned to face me and made a polite bow in which there was no undue subservience.
“Good morning. My name is Paul Krempe. I have an appointment with Baron Frankenstein.”
I had been ready to dismiss the newcomer without delay, but now I stood back to let him in. He had come more swiftly than I had expected in answer to my summons. This was a good sign. I liked his shrewd, inquiring expression—I needed a man with a mind as relentlessly inquiring as my own—and I approved the speed with which he had got here.
“You must be Victor,” he said as he entered the hall and looked frankly around. “I’m to be your tutor.”
I led him towards the salon in which my mother had once received visitors in that eternal round of courtesies and conventions which I proposed to abolish. “Surely it isn’t settled yet?” I said. “I thought this was just an interview to decide whether you were suitable for the position.”
“I have had some correspondence with the Baron, and he seemed quite satisfied with my qualifications.”
“That’s right.” I was deriving some amusement from this. “He did, didn’t he?”
Paul Krempe gave me a swift sidelong glance. He was trying to assess just how difficult a charge I was likely to be.
He said: “Will you tell your father that I’m here.”
“My father is dead.”
This took him aback. “But that’s ridiculous. I had a letter from him . . .”
“He has been dead for many years. It was I who advertised for a tutor. It was I who wrote to you.”
“You are the Baron?”
“And have been since I was five years old.” I smiled.
“Yet you wrote to me saying that you wanted a tutor for your son.”
I had thought it would save a lot of explanation if I made the man come for a personal interview. In a letter he might have read things awry and been dubious about dealing direct with one as young as myself. He might have decided that the long journey was not worth while merely to satisfy what might be a rich young idler’s whim. Now that he was here we could talk frankly.
We did talk, and at great length. I admired the way in which he reacted to what must at first have been a somewhat disturbing situation. He had a wry sense of humor and a keen appreciation of most of the points I made about my education so far and my requirements for the future. We talked as equals, yet he paid just the appropriate respect to my position, while I found it easy to defer to the wider range of his knowledge.
I had no intention of leaving this house and the estate in the hands of any of my relatives. I had no intention of completing my studies in Geneva, since I was convinced that under such conditions they never would be completed. What I wanted was a man like Krempe, a scientist and a scholar, who would live here and fill in the lamentable gaps in my knowledge. A general education was not what I sought: I was happy enough with my general background, and wished to concentrate now on the specialized work for which I felt I was destined.
“You were engaged as my tutor,” I said at the end of our long discussion, “subject to the Baron’s approval.” We both smiled: it had now become an agreeable joke between us. “I may tell you that the Baron approves. Do you still want the position?”
“I shall be honored, Herr Baron,” said Paul with a trace of respectful mockery which I found most refreshing after the hypocrisies and servility of my relatives.
And so we began.
There were times when I grew impatient. Paul turned out to be an admirable tutor, and in two years I had learned all he had to teach. But those two years dragged abominably. Of course, the groundwork was essential; but I wanted to move on to the subjects which really obsessed me.
It was Paul who taught me patience. Now, when he has forsaken me and repudiated all that we worked on together, I wonder if he realizes just how much of my doggedness and unwearying application can be attributed to his personal example? We spent the days, the weeks, the months together, probing into the unknown, investigating, recording, searching . . . always searching, until gradually the great sweep of our research began to narrow down to a single direction.
To this we finally turned all our energies. We had explored biological byways, had even studied alchemy in the hope of finding grains of truth in the dross; but now we saw how recent discoveries in the field of magnetism opened up possibilities of a stimulus which might provoke the reaction we sought. It took us years of unrelenting work to approach even the fringe of what we longed to find.
During those years Paul lived in the house and rarely went out. We needed no outside distractions. He paid a few visits to some ageing uncle many miles away, but was always eager to return. Sometimes he went down to the village and I refrained from asking what entertainment he found there. For myself, I observed with a by no means dispassionate interest the development of the young serving girl on my staff, and when I fancied some frivolous relaxation I coaxed her into my bed. She required little coaxing. For all the splendid firmness of her body and the burning promise of those restless eyes, there were few in the neighborhood who could satisfy her, and we spent some rewarding hours together. Justine was her name, and I will confess that there were many times when I murmured the syllables lovingly into her ear in such a way as to persuade her that she meant everything to me. There is little point in pursuing any pleasure, however fleeting it may be and however easily discarded it may later be, unless one is wholehearted about it at the moment of its consummation. There would come a time when I regretted the romantic glibness of my tongue.
Justine, after all, was merely a diversion. I summoned her when I was in the mood for her, and if she had understood the responsibilities and limitations of her employment in my household there would never have been any trouble. I was Baron Frankenstein, and my life was consecrated to life itself.
Of the activities of Paul and myself she knew nothing. Or so we believed. Our efforts were applied out of sight and sound of the rest of the house. Nobody was allowed into the laboratory. When the place required cleaning we cleaned it ourselves. When there were things to be disposed of—things better concealed from the prying eyes of ignorant servants—we destroyed them in various ways.
And at last, after years of application, we were rewarded.
We had been experimenting on a dog which Paul had lured away from the village. There had been a small outcry about its disappearance as it was a great pet with the family to which it belonged, but nobody suspected that it had found a resting place in the Frankenstein home. They ought to have been honored. Possibly one day, when the whole story is told, they will indulge themselves in some petty pride: their dog made history, though the history is still to be written for the world to see.
I had killed the animal painlessly and then lowered it into the tank. It floated for two days in the viscous fluid with which we had already dosed or injected some hundreds of rats, mice, and birds. At the end of two days w
e began to apply the magnetic charges which jolted through the system and beat out an imperious rhythm in the animal’s heart. A hundred minor adjustments were necessary. The frequency of the heartbeats and the intensity with which these could be simulated were delicate matters.
We reached the crucial stage late one night. There had been so many failures that I was not unduly optimistic. The most I allowed myself to hope was that we should learn something, some tiny additional piece of knowledge, that would make the next step clearer. I opened the tank and drained it. Paul, as engrossed in the task as myself, was impatient to reach in and take out the dog but I waved him away. The body needed thoroughly washing before we could allow ourselves to touch it. I drew on my gloves and sluiced the dog down until I was sure it was safe to approach the final investigation.
The dog lay as it had lain the day I killed it. Its eyes were open but glazed and unseeing. The paws lay flat and lifeless. There was no sign of breathing.
Paul stood beside me as I applied the stethoscope. He, too, might well have been lifeless: he was afraid to breathe or make a move. I listened, and he watched me.
The throb might be in my own head. I wanted so much to hear it that I could be cheating myself.
But no—there could be no mistake. I stood upright and tried to control my trembling exultation.
“Paul . . . it’s alive!” I scooped the dog up in my arms. It was a limp weight, but I laughed madly over it and felt a wild desire to give it a pet name because it had behaved so well. Good dog . . . good dog! I said: “We’ve done it.”
2
There was a considerable lag between the cardiac reaction and the first visible signs of life. Paul took the dog from me, wanting to share in my jubilation just as he had so devotedly shared in my work, and carried it downstairs to the sitting room. He laid the dog on the floor, and we drank a glass of brandy while waiting for it to get up on its feet. I was alarmed by its continuing stillness, but Paul pointed out that some time would be necessary for the first heartbeats to circulate life through the body once more.