by John Burke
This sneer was the most monstrous thing of all. I felt anger like a burning poison in my throat.
“Do you know why it looks like that—behaves like that? There you see the result of your handiwork, Paul. Yours as well as mine. I gave it life . . . I put a brain in its head . . . but I chose a good brain—a brilliant one . . .” I took a deep, shuddering breath. “It was you who damaged it, you who put a bullet in it. This is your fault—do you understand? Your fault.”
“Yes,” said Paul sombrely, “I understand.”
“But you won’t stop me, Paul. You won’t force me to stop, to despair. I’m going to carry on. I’ll try further brain surgery. If that fails then I shall seek another brain—”
“No, Victor.” Abruptly he was shouting. “No, you will not.”
“And another if necessary,” I said, “and another and another, until—”
“No!”
He turned and tried to rush through the doorway. I was so accustomed now to anticipating the creature’s erratic movements that I acted instinctively. Before Paul could escape I had grasped his shoulder and twisted him back towards me.
“What are you going to do?”
He pushed at me with all his might. I held firm, and we staggered back into the centre of the room. He stopped and I could tell that he was trying to keep his voice steady.
“For your sake and to protect Elizabeth I’ve kept silent so far,” he said. “But now I’m going to the authorities. That creature must be destroyed—and you must pay for your atrocities.”
I could have laughed if it had not been for the deadly seriousness of it. Absurdity and tragedy go so often together.
Paul flung me away with a sudden lunge, and my hip jarred nauseatingly against the bench. Before I could get my breath, he was out of the door and running along the passage.
I stumbled after him. As he raced down the stairs, Elizabeth came out into the hall.
“Paul, where are you . . .”
Her question died on her lips as she saw me in hot pursuit. I followed Paul out into the open, and our feet scuffed up dust from the drive. His pace was slowing. In spite of the pain in my side I forced myself to keep going, and overtook him as he reached the path to the village.
“Paul, wait a minute.”
He swung towards me on the defensive, ready to strike if I tried to grab him.
“Paul,” I pleaded, “what do you hope to gain by this? You’re as much a part of it as I am.”
“I’ve had nothing to do with it for months.”
“You can’t shed all responsibility for the earlier stages. And if you think that by betraying me you’ll have Elizabeth for yourself, I can assure you you’re mistaken.”
In the evening light it was difficult to make out his features. But he drew himself up stiffly and said: “I want nothing more than to protect Elizabeth. But I have never tried to win her away from you. If you think that—”
“If you want to protect her,” I broke in, “you are going the wrong way about it. How will it help her to learn that the man she is about to marry is in danger from meddling officials? How will it help her to know that his old friend and colleague is a traitor who himself worked on the preliminary stages? If we both suffer at the hands of the authorities—and don’t imagine, Paul, that I shall accept all blame myself—what will she do? She can’t live here alone, the butt of all the malicious tongues in the country. She has nowhere else to go. It is nearly her wedding eve—and you propose to shatter her whole future?”
“You’re falsifying it, Victor.”
“Falsifying it?” I said. “Think of her in that house while the authorities and their booted minions stamp through, examining everything, pulling the place apart, wrecking my laboratory . . .”
The same thought occurred to us both at the same instant.
“The laboratory,” said Paul. “When we came out . . . the door’s still open.”
“She wouldn’t . . .”
“Wouldn’t she?”
Elizabeth had not followed us out. The main door was still open, shedding light on the steps. She could, of course, have gone back into the salon. Or she could, wondering about our wild chase, have taken the opportunity of going upstairs. And I had undoubtedly left the door wide open.
We stared at the house.
“Victor!” Paul clutched my arm.
High up on the roof a light showed, and there was a flicker of movement. It was impossible to distinguish the outlines of the moving shape at first, but in the stillness of the night we heard the clink and rattle of a chain.
The creature had pulled its chain away from the wall. The light came from the open skylight which led out on to the roof. As we got used to the distance and the darkness, we saw the wavering head and the groping arms unmistakably.
The creature came to the edge of the parapet and looked down.
“We must get up there,” I said.
“Not this time,” said Paul. “I’m going to the village for help.”
I seemed to have lost the will to restrain him. Everything was going wrong. As he went away down the path to round up helpers and ruin my schemes once and for all, I returned to the house. I did not even bother to hurry. I was in the grip of a bleak fatalism.
But once I was indoors my steps quickened. There was no sign of Elizabeth. She must indeed have gone upstairs.
I went up the first flight two at a time and called her name along the landing. There was no reply. I pounded on my way up to the laboratory. The door was open, and the lights were burning just as we had left them. But the skylight, which came right down to floor level, was pushed open. A faint breeze stirred the sheets of notes which had accumulated on my desk.
A lantern stood on the parapet just outside the skylight. It must be one which Elizabeth had carried to light her way up the stairs, since I had certainly not put it there. And it meant that Elizabeth had followed the creature out on to the roof.
There was only a low balustrade to save them from the drop to the terrace below.
I opened the desk drawer and took out my pistol. Then I stepped through the open skylight on to the parapet.
Faintly touched with light, almost at the end of the roof, Elizabeth stood looking away from me, looking at something round the corner of the ridge.
“Elizabeth”—I spoke softly, not wanting to alarm her in that precarious position—“come back.”
She turned and stared at me. It was hardly the face of Elizabeth any longer. Horror was written across it—an incredulous, unconquerable horror that included me as well as the other thing she must have seen. This was not how I had meant her to see the creature for the first time. The shock must have dazed her. Coming into the laboratory just as the creature wrenched its chain free from the wall staple, she must have been hypnotically drawn to follow it, to prove to herself that it was real.
“Elizabeth . . .”
She shook her head as though to deny that I existed. I took a step out on to the parapet and she waved me back. She might have been trying to ward me off—concerned with keeping me rather than the creature at bay.
And behind her the creature appeared, clawing and rocking its way back from the edge of the roof.
I lifted my pistol. Elizabeth screamed. The creature reached out as though to embrace her, and I fired.
It was a bad, impossible target. Elizabeth jerked as though she had been struck, and even in this light I could see a dark stain begin to spread from her shoulder.
She fell back into the creature’s arms.
I had another shot to fire. This time I could not afford to miss. As Elizabeth’s head drooped to one side I braced myself and took careful aim. The creature stared stupidly, uncomprehendingly at me.
I fired, and this time it was the creature’s turn to flinch. Its arm slid to its side, and Elizabeth crumpled over the edge of the balustrade. She hung there, unconscious, her head swaying over the deadly drop.
The creature touched her once in a puzzled sort of wa
y and then carefully, with a lumbering solemnity, clambered past her and began to come towards me.
“Stay where you are,” I commanded it.
It kept up its slow, steady pace.
“Get back,” I shouted. It must have heard; must know what I was saying. So far its obedience had been unquestioning. “Get back—get away.”
It was within a few feet of me. I backed away until I was in the skylight opening. Still it did not slacken its advance.
I yelled for help, but there was nobody to hear.
I threw the pistol at the creature. It bounced off, and an eternity later I heard the rattle as it hit the ground far below.
Behind me was the laboratory. If I fled across it I could lock the door from outside and make my escape. The door was solid enough to withstand even the strength of this powerful creature. But to leave Elizabeth out there, trapped with the monster . . .
I glanced back over my shoulder in search of a suitable weapon. There was none. The silver-knobbed stick was not something I would care to trust against this solid brute force.
At my feet was the lantern. I felt the warmth of the flame against my ankle.
I stooped and picked it up.
The creature plodded towards me and raised its arms. I swung the lantern twice to give it plenty of impetus, and hurled it full at the creature.
As the spurting, flickering light was launched at it, the creature bared its teeth. If it could have sprung at me it would have done so. But it had not yet learnt such coordination of movements. It made one further step forward and then the lantern smacked into its chest.
There was a moment when nothing seemed to happen. A faint smear of thick black smoke hung on the air. Then flame blazed up from the lamp.
The creature was on fire. The flames licked up greedily, devouring it at a speed which appalled me. Its eyes stared out at me in agonized entreaty, and then were blotted out by crimson fury. A strangled, hideous voice screamed despairingly. The creature’s head jerked back in an effort to dodge the flames, but they were too voracious. Its hands beat vainly on its face. And then, a raging pillar of fire, it came blundering on towards me again.
I stumbled back into the laboratory. The glass of the skylight crashed into splinters, spraying across the parapet and into the laboratory.
And suddenly, rearing up like a living torch, the creature hurled itself forward. In its death throes it sought a respite, something to put an end to the intolerable pain. With one wild, insane leap it plunged into the tank.
The screams went on, reverberating through the laboratory. And the screams were mine. I was yelling like a maniac, trying to stop what had already been done. The tank was no longer full of the fluid in which the creature had once lain. I had recently recharged it with acid. And into that acid plunged the burning creature.
There was an acrid smoke that billowed up and raced like some elemental fiend about the room. In the tank there was a moment of wild thrashing and churning, and acid splashed out over the floor, driving me back into a safe corner.
Then the noise abated. It died to a sizzling and bubbling that went on for some time before finally fading into utter stillness.
My life’s work was destroyed. Destroyed in a moment by the same hand that brought it into existence. Within half an hour there was nothing left of my creature. The acid tank was cloudy, but that, too, would clarify in a short time and there would be no evidence that the creature had ever been in this world at all.
9
That is the true story of what happened. But it is a story which no one will believe. The priest shakes his head and exhorts me to repent. The executioner makes ready, and my hours are numbered.
One man could have saved me. If Paul Krempe had spoken out, then surely the verdict would have gone differently. But Paul had nothing to say. Paul, who was the cause of all that went wrong with the experiment, took Elizabeth away into the quiet countryside and left me to my fate—an undeserved fate.
When Paul brought a dozen villagers to the house that night with the story of a dangerous monster being loose, it was to find no monster. And foolishly, in my desire to suppress any further investigations and any possible scandal, I denounced him as an agitator and trouble-maker. There had been no monster such as he described. I was Baron Frankenstein, and I was shocked that my own villagers should have been seduced by this man’s glib inventions. I ordered them to go home and ordered Paul to leave the district before I instituted proceedings against him.
He left the district—and took Elizabeth with him.
I have said that I acted foolishly in so firmly denying the existence of the creature. For a week later some interfering shepherd, who had no business to be on that part of my land in the first place, noticed a peculiar conformation of recently turned earth in the woods, and began to dig into it. Why it should have occurred to him to do so I cannot say: it was but the last in a long series of ironical blows dealt me by fate.
In the grave which he exposed was the mutilated corpse of Justine.
They would not believe that I was innocent of her death. When I told them how the monster of my creation had torn her apart, they shrank away from me and reminded me that I had scorned the notion of any such monster. I tried to explain, but they would not listen. In their eyes I was the monster. Justine had been expecting a child, and I had murdered her. The more I cried that it was a terrible accident for which I was not responsible, the more their detestation of me hardened.
I sent out a plea for Paul Krempe to come forward and testify. He did not appear. I implored eminent scientists to inspect the apparatus in my laboratory while I explained how it could be used to create life. I offered to demonstrate the whole sequence of experiments to them. Grimly they said I would not be allowed that much time in this world. And on all sides I was accused not merely of murder but of blasphemy.
The priest to whom I have told the story cannot make up his mind whether I am mad or wicked. He has listened, but none of it means anything to him. He will intercede on my behalf with nobody—and if he did, it would be of little use, for who would make any sense out of his meanderings?
Late today came the worst moment of all. A last hope flickered and began to burn . . . but I should have known that my trust in old friendships was a vain one.
Paul Krempe came to see me. At last he deigned to show himself. The pathetic little dwarf who is my gaoler, and whom I truly think regards me with respect and a strange affection, showed him in with a flourish. I fancied I detected in the dwarf’s sad little eyes the hope that my wishes would be granted and that here at last would be a reprieve.
A great weight was lifted from my heart. Paul, after all, was not going to fail me. He would tell all that he knew. The truth would come out. The rest of the world would have to accept that Justine had been killed not by me but by a creature which, admittedly, I had constructed, but for whose wayward savageries I could hardly be held responsible. Paul knew. His conscience could surely not permit him to remain silent any longer. He must have been trying to hold out, to let me be executed so that Elizabeth would be his; but now he had seen where his duty lay.
I sent for the priest so that he could be a witness to all that was said.
“I knew Paul wouldn’t fail me,” I said. “He will verify everything I’ve already told you.”
The priest blinked. He gave every sign of being frightened of learning that what I had said was true. Better, in his eyes, that I should be executed than that these unpalatable facts should be firmly established.
Paul was shown in by the dwarf. I put out my hand, longing to clasp his in mine. But Paul stood sternly aloof.
He said: “I have come with a message from Elizabeth.”
“She will speak, too?” I said eagerly.
“She wishes you to know that she forgives you and that she will pray for you. I have implored her not to think of the past, but she would not rest content until I promised that I would speak to you before the end.”
“Te
ll them, Paul. Tell the priest here—and later we will make a declaration to the authorities.”
“Tell them what?”
He was being wilfully obtuse. “About the creature I made,” I said as patiently as possible. Patience was not easy with the shadow of the scaffold darkening over me. “Paul, you were the only person ever to see him alive. Elizabeth caught only a glimpse, but you know. You and Justine . . . Justine must have seen him, but she can’t help me now, can she?”
“Justine,” he said thoughtfully; “the girl you murdered.”
It was like a knife in my bowels. I said: “But I didn’t. You must realize that. He was the one. He . . . it . . .”
“Who, Victor?” Paul’s steely calmness brought fear welling up in me again.
“The creature.” I was trying to maintain my dignity, trying not to shout at him. “The creature we made together. Don’t keep up the pretence any longer. You’ve got to tell the truth now.”
Paul glanced at the priest and slowly shook his head. As though this had been a signal he was expecting, the priest left the cell.
I clutched Paul’s jacket. “You must tell them! You know what’s going to happen to me. Only you can save me. You must tell them. I’ll make you speak. I’ll make you . . .”
We fought in the confined space of the cell. It lasted only a few seconds. The guards rushed in and dragged me off him. Paul dusted himself off and gave the guards the same false, regretful look he had given the priest.
This was the only time during these degrading proceedings that I broke down. I began to scream.
“You must tell them, Paul. You’ve got to save me. You can’t let them . . . can’t let me . . . Paul, I’ll promise not to carry out any further experiments, but tell them. Tell them now!”
They held me back as he went out of the cell with his head hypocritically bowed.
The priest was waiting outside.
Paul said: “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
And he left, doubtless to insinuate himself even further into Elizabeth’s graces.