“You do not have to be dangerous. I've thought about your former deeds of murder and evil and came to the conclusion that had I been outcast from man, unloved, hated, feared, reviled, I might have done the same as you. What man can be set apart from the world and still be compassionate to it? Yes, you killed Frankenstein's friends and the ones he most loved, and he never forgave you for it, he died cursing you, but haven't the years alone taught you anything? Have you not come to terms with our God and asked to be relieved of your murderous desires?”
A look of absolute scorn suffused the being's face. Walton drew back, uncontrollably shaking and afraid to stare into those yellowish eyes.
“I ask nothing...of...God! There is no...God...who would allow my creation in His...universe.”
Quietly, meekly, Walton said, “All things come from God, even you. And unto God you will return one day, as will we all.”
The being reached out and with his bare hands thrust into the fire, scattered the burning coals all around the area between them. Walton jumped back so as not to catch fire to his clothes. He stood, looking down at the bowed head of the most incredible creature ever designed by the mind of man. Those arms, he thought, come from another human. Those legs, that torso, the massive distinctive head upon the broad shoulders. They all belong to men long dead. I do not believe Frankenstein could have known what he was intent on creating.
“You...must...go away.” The being left the twinkling bits of coal and moved to where his bed waited. He lay upon his back, one graceful arm flung over his eyes to blot out the moon splashed night.
Walton followed. He would never give up. He knew now the same furnace of ambition that drove Dr. Frankenstein. He must take this bounty, this remarkable genesis of a new man to show the world. The being had spent twenty years paying for his crimes. He was a different creation than he was when he jumped from the ship, devastated by his master's death. He was not as articulate, his hair was uncut and filthy, his clothes consisted of animal skins, his mind was desolate and empty, but he was a complete and total wonder, a demi-god.
Walton said it. “You will be a god before the people if you return with me. They will hail you as they would a king. I have money, plenty of money. I will fill a coffer for you, give you rooms, buy you a wardrobe. I will introduce you to the greatest men in the world and watch from the sidelines as they go down on their knees before you. There has never been another like you in the history of the world. Time has moved on and, in this modern era, you will receive the glory you never received before.”
The arm lifted wearily from the being's face. The moonlight limned his craggy features and his look was as cold as the deepest ice, as haunted as the most forgotten grave. He turned his head slowly on the thick stem of his neck, and for just a moment Walton's heart stopped in his chest. The look he saw in those glacial eyes congealed the blood in his veins, weakened his knees, and if he could have made a move to flee as had his men, he would have run out into the pitch black darkness begging for God to save his soul.
“You...want me...to be...your God? That is...what...you want.” First he asked and then he stated what he knew.
Walton felt his eyes filling with grateful tears that the truth, once and for all, had been brought into the open for him to hear and to welcome. What the being said answered all the questions Walton had asked himself over the years. This thing had told him, finally, what his real motive was in the perilous undertaking to find him. “Yes,” he whispered, falling down into a crouch, his fingertips touching icy floor, his head raised high as if to take the brunt of the truth. “Yes, you are my god. I want you to come with me and lead the way and teach me all you know.”
The great beast's arm moved back over the terrible stony face. Walton waited breathlessly and then stretched out before the dying embers of the scattered fire and gave in to exhaustion and sleep. He knew, felt it in his bones, in his molecules, that his wish would be granted.
* * *
Dear Margaret,
I send this letter with the wild hope you'll receive it before the news travels as far as your fair city. I have found Frankenstein's monster and he has agreed to accompany me back to civilization. He is a frightening person; he is what he told his maker—that he would have been Frankenstein's Adam, but instead he is a fallen angel. He is all the names he called himself in the cabin as his master lay dead, but he is also the most magnificent and awesome creature the world will ever know. Imagine if he is studied and scientists of today can make more like him! We will revive the dead and have them walk. We will restore life, overcoming the dark night that takes our souls, stealing them away into the universal silence.
What reaches will our imaginations take us next? What wonders will we perform, greater than our Jesus whose miracles we still venerate? I know that sounds blasphemous, but it is not meant to be. If God did not will for Frankenstein to create life, it would not have been created. Don't you see?
It has been many days since we left together from the hovel in the ice cave. My bearers all escaped, never to be seen since. I have no supplies, my kerosene is gone, my food, my medicines, but Frankenstein's monster is as brilliant as he is beautiful and he finds food for us to eat, and provides the fires to keep us through the long hours of cold night. He is so awesomely large that when we stop at night, he even bends over me while on his knees, his head touching ice on the other side of me, creating a shelter from the wind. Would a demon do that? More so, you should see the speed with which he can run! And the quickness he employs to naturally reach out and snag a running varmint to wring its neck.
We should come into the first village along this bleak plain of constant winter tomorrow. I have advised my friend (Yes! He is the best friend I might have ever hoped to have.) to cover his face when we enter to hire passage across the cold seas home, for what if the men who came with me spoke of him? I don't think they would, being worn and frightened, hurrying to the port and a ship home. Still, I fear the reaction of man until I prepare them for what they will see upon looking into his face. There is an abyss waiting there to swallow men who aren't prepared. How can I explain it? It is not like looking into the face of a dead man. Or looking into the face of a live one. It is a live-dead man and so new, so thrilling, so horrific, that it makes the mind numb. He has changed, too, and there is more death lingering about him than there was twenty years ago. It's as if a delicate balance has been upset, weighing down toward the grave. I am growing used to him, in a small way, but still when he stares at me with those unwavering colorless eyes or when he suddenly reaches to touch my flesh, I can't help but automatically recoil as if he were a snake with fangs full of poison and just as mindless. If I can't control my own reactions, I who love him, I know others would feel compelled by revulsion to smash him to his death rather than deal with the unholy feelings he causes to stir in a man's heart.
I hope you will also prepare yourself for I expect meeting him will scare you into speechlessness—if not worse. I rush to assure you he is not dangerous and means no harm unless you were to raise your hand to him, or displease him in some other manner, for he is more like God than we are, and we know we cannot trifle with God.
I must sound mad, and blasphemous, as usual, and sometimes feel that I have fallen over a precipice, truly, but I am filled with envy, loyalty, and yes, stupendous fear, of bringing back the one man who could change the entire world as we know it. I am not mad, dear Margaret, you must believe that. I am bringing home the Savior.
Your loving brother,
Robert
* * *
Walton walked alongside the tall, powerfully-built monster as they entered the village of fishermen and roughhouse sailors and men of small commerce. Even with his face covered with a length of wool wrapping, his eyes necessarily peeked from the hood, and something about the way he carried himself, how he moved like a strong dancer who has forgotten all his steps, how he clumsily tucked his hands into his coat—all these nuances combined to give off an air of dread and loathing that cause
d passersby to move aside, to turn and stare, to whisper behind raised hands.
Walton most feared the trip home and how to get his prize there without mishap. If he could have put the being into an iron cage and transported him the way he would a vile man-eating cat from the Dark Continent he would have done it. Of course, there was no man who could do such a demeaning thing to a god, not one who dared to try it however much he thought it might be the best way.
“Are you thirsty? Shall we go into a taphouse for an ale before I arrange our passage?”
Asked not to speak, the being nodded. He took a hand from his coat and held the wool over his face tightly together.
“I haven't had an ale for two months. I suppose it's been a lifetime for you.” Walton chuckled a little, but the sadness of it caused him to break it off in mid-chuckle. To live without the comforts of man was high punishment and it had robbed this creature and caused him the most extreme loss and agony.
Once inside the tavern, Walton took off his hat and threw back his heavy cape. He had eaten nothing but rabbit and wolf and seal for weeks. His mouth watered for the bitter ale and the hot steaming stew full of thickly chopped root vegetables. He ordered two plates and two ales from the slovenly young woman who came to serve them. Then he looked around, feeling alive again instead of frozen and half starved for community. He knew he must look a sight, unwashed, bearded, his cheekbones prominent from the restricted diet. Right away he saw the men in the dimly lit smoky room were not looking at him, not one of them, none of them interested in the aging man with the big appetite. They were deathly silent and stared, of course, at Walton's companion wrapped mummy-style in wool, hunkered over the odd little rough table, his large head in his impossibly huge hands.
Fear came like lightening struck through Walton, stinging and mangling all his innards. He cleared his throat. He must do something, do something immediately to forestall violence. “Hello, gentlemen! We've come from across the tundra and it was a worrisome trip. My companion unfortunately had some frostbite to his face so he prefers to keep it covered until a physician can attend to it. We've been on a hunt. It's wonderful to be back with all of you and to share a drink with everyone. Woman! Fill the glasses! I will pay the bill; it's on me.”
Still the patrons made no move to be at ease and none answered Walton's generosity. “My friend here...he apologizes for keeping silent and his face covered. It's the...the tip of his nose, you understand, not a pretty sight...”
As a body the men rose from their tables and stools. They came toward Walton, who felt increasingly nervous. He looked up into faces all around him that showed no smiles, not even a welcoming word. “What's wrong?” he asked. He felt, rather than saw, the great creature push back his chair slowly. He put out a hand to stay him, but it was shaken off.
“We know who this is, what this is. This is the monster,” one of the men said in a grave tone. He pointed and frowned fiercely. “We were warned he would be back. Your men told us of him. And here he is, we know that much. He is an abomination before heaven—that is what your men said and I believe it.”
Oh my God, Walton thought, the men had brought the news—what he'd prayed would not occur. Now Walton's mind skittered and slid and scampered as if on icy slopes to find some exit from this catastrophe.
The monster swung out from the table to make way for the door, but he was overpowered; there were too many enemies to defeat. He fought valiantly, striking out and sending lesser men tumbling. A roar erupted from his dark mouth, filling the tavern with sound unlike any had heard before, but still the attackers came at him. As Walton watched in horror, the men rode the great man to the floor, screaming back at him—DEMON! DEVIL! UNHOLY!--beating at him, stabbing at him with whatever they had in hand. The room was a sudden incredible melee of violence and bloodlust. The scent of fear, like baking copper, mingled with the ozone tinge of unleashed fury. The creature cried out now in pain, his cries drowned by the clamor of the men. Walton broke from his chair and joined in. He tried vainly to pull off the frenzied crowd of at least a dozen men beating the life from their victim, and at last, knowing he was losing the one thing that had made his life worth living, Walton shouted his misery as his heart broke, shattering to splinters in his chest. He was struck, fell, was rolled aside, and lay there in tremendous psychic pain, panting, weeping, cursing in his mind the Supreme Creator for ever allowing him to meet and to know of Frankenstein's freakish, godlike mortal.
In a short while the violence abated, though it seemed it lasted decades. The thunder of the enraged patrons fell to reverent whispers, and Walton heard the last words uttered from the throat of the dying beast.
“This is what I hadn't the courage to do...I leave this world to enter into the darkness from whence I came...”
Walton turned onto his side, got to his knees, and crawled over to the broken body. Shards of glass still embedded in his flesh glittered in the lamplight like fiery spikes. Where Frankenstein had delicately, meticulously stitched the limbs together there were now bloody rents, an arm detached from shoulder, leg from groin, hand from wrist, lifeblood pouring, raining, and streaming to soak the hovel's wooden floor scarlet.
“Don't go,” Walton cried. “I came for you. I dreamed of you. I lived for you and then risked my life to find you. Please don't leave. You lived through so much!”
There was one last flicker of life in the otherworldly, washed-out eyes. Walton saw in those twin pools of gruel-colored orbs a brief embittered despair and then a yielding to fate that carried whatever soul the monster had owned across the separation between life and death into the vast, unknowable, unreachable beyond—where his maker did or did not wait.
* * *
ONE YEAR AND FOUR MONTHS LATER
Walton knew the bed was going to be his grave. He tried as hard as he could to remain in the chair by the window, looking out at the spring abundant with wild flowers, with violets white and lavender, with tiny yellow buttery heads of flowers so small they were but dots in the green grass leading down to the passing creek. Margaret had come to care for him in his last days, ministering to his every need, loving him as the last of her family left on earth, loving him for being the devoted brother he had always been to her.
Walton thought more and more of his final voyage, the ship he sailed to the north. He thought of the wild, white-capped icy seas, of the ice floes that were like islands, of the white, glaring, relentless landscape awaiting him. He went over his first sight of the creature as it burst into the ice cave, dealing death blows to the frightened men. He lingered on the creature's death in the small village, broken glasses and bottles stuck into him from neck to ankle, his blood so red it was the crimson of a king's robes. In the end he was like every man—blood, bone, and sinew. Then there was the creature's last words—how he hadn't the courage to finish off himself as he had pledged he would when his master died. Wasn't that the most human quality about the creature? That he hungered for life, even if that life was manufactured and forced upon a body built in a laboratory? That he longed to survive despite the despair in his heart and the empty silence in his broken mind? He had been human; he had. The most human of us all, Walton thought, for he knew beyond any doubt he was unnatural and did not belong alive. Yet he strove to live, even to the last...
I am doing the same, Walton now realized, I am the same as the monster. Here he was holding onto life with both fists, cursing the failing of the light. He refused to be put to bed, never to rise again. He sat in the chair, crippled and weak, hardly able to take a breath, hardly able to swallow broth, and still he pushed into what life he had left with every fiber of his being, pushed and pushed and held on as if to a cliff face. He winced in pain, holding his breath until the stitch in his side passed.
He stared out the window at the spring world and knew he would never see the leaves turn in autumn, he would never see the ice rime on the riverbank, he would never see another flowering spring.
He knew what he must do as his final work.
“Margaret!”
She came running from the back of the house, eyes wide. “What is it, Robert, what can I do?”
He almost laughed, she looked so terrified. She must accept this too, his passing. His poor lonely sister must in the end bear her own sorrows. “Could you bring me paper and pen and an ink pot? I have something to write.”
She looked relieved to have a chore she could do for him. She was back quickly with his requests. She also brought a polished oak lap desk and settled it on his knees.
Once she had left again, Walton began to write down his story. He pulled out the letter he'd written to Margaret about his hopes to go on a voyage to search for Frankenstein's monster.
He copied it word for word, carefully, laboriously, and smiled to himself as he wrote...
My Beloved Sister,
---I write to you about a deadly serious and Olympian idea. It is of a monster. I know you recall the one I mean, the only one that has ever been allowed entry into the world since Neptune was purported to rise from the deep blue ocean waters.
Walton paused and again glanced out the window. The world beyond the glass changed in his mind from lush, green grass to ice, from flowers and a blue sky to a world empty of life and hugging the top of the world. He strode across the endless tundra, searching.
He returned to the manuscript and began to copy more of the letter. He wanted everyone to know what he had done and what they had all missed by killing the only thing Dr. Frankenstein ever created that was worth the effort. He wanted everyone to know what prejudice, superstition, ignorance and fear of the unknown could do to what had been...a man.
The greatest one of all.
Frankenstein's monster.
He wrote out the entire letter and began the story. After a while he paused, overly tired, and stared out the window glass at the creek's shining waters. He felt he would have time enough to finish. He must have time enough. The monster was not dead if he could capture him as he had been.
HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre Page 6