Tales from the Haunted Mansion, Volume 4

by Amicus Arcane

  But did she have the right?

  On the second day of her suspension, Shelley began redoing the calculations on her laptop. Multiplying. Reconfiguring. She soon realized that, technically, the experiment would be a logical extension of her grandpapa’s electrophysiological theories. The same spark used to resurrect a dead frog could reanimate a human body. If she increased power to the poles, the heart would recharge. It would be like galvanizing a dormant battery. Sort of.

  If only she’d been to school the past two days. The talk was all about the frog: how it had gone berserk, biting Mr. Gribbons before making its escape into the schoolyard. A posse of janitors with torches and pitchforks was sent out to find it. Don’t ask. It’s an angry-mob thing. By then, Mr. Balderston was no longer referring to it as a frog.

  He was calling it a monster.

  Another week passed before Shelley ran into Hank on her walk home. He apologized, asking her to forget everything she had seen in the lab. It would be pretty hard to forget seeing a cadaver on a slab, but she told him she would try. “Thank you, Shelley. I always knew you were special.” He gave her an unexpected peck on the cheek, and Shelley thought, He’s a lost soul. Just like me. And wasn’t he a lost soul worth finding?

  Just as they were about to go their separate ways, Shelley shouted, “I want to help!” though she wasn’t sure she really did.

  That afternoon, as Shelley and Hank shared an overpriced acai bowl at World o’ Coffee, Shelley told Hank what she’d been thinking about. “I think I can pull it off. But, Hank, I want you to understand: there’s no guarantee it’s going to work. Your brother isn’t a frog.”

  “It’ll work,” he said with certainty. “It’s science!”

  “Yes, it is. But since seeing you again, I’ve been thinking about more than just science. I’ve been thinking about fate. About souls.”

  Hank stared at her for a long moment. “Go on,” he said, clearly unsure of where the conversation was headed.

  “That cadaver, the one you call your brother—does it have a soul? Do you think its spirit is at rest?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “Then what if it doesn’t want to be woken up? He’s been gone for so long. It may be too late.”

  Hank squirmed uncomfortably in the booth. “I’m not an expert on ghosts.” I concur. “All I know is that you’ve been given a gift—and your family is good at weird science. Don’t you think it’s about time you embraced who you are?”

  Shelley sat back and thought about it. She was the weird girl. The class brain. It was good to be known for something, right?

  Hank took her hands and looked directly into her eyes. “You’re the only one who can help.” Overwhelmed with emotion, Shelley returned his gaze and said with confidence, “All right. Let’s do this.”

  Hank leaned across the table and kissed her—on the lips!—right over the acai bowl. “Come on. Let’s go tell my mother!”

  “Okay!” Shelley replied, her face as red as his bicycle.

  It felt like she was flying! Shelley was on the handlebars of Hank’s bike, gliding toward the nicest house in the neighborhood: the one with a mad scientist’s lab in the subbasement. They hadn’t held hands since the fourth grade, let alone shared an acai bowl. But in her recent flights of fantasy, which had little place for actual science, save biology, Shelley came to the conclusion that she had always been in love with Hank. And she still was.

  The future “Mr. Shelley.”

  As they approached the bottom of the hill that led to the blue house, Hank slowed down and Shelley hopped off the handlebars. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Home,” she said. “I have to ask grandpapa a few things. And you, Hank Clerval, need to talk to your mom in private. It’s a family thing.”

  Hank smiled warmly. “You are family.”

  They exchanged last smiles, and she watched him ride off, his red bicycle disappearing over the hill. And quite suddenly, Shelley felt an ache she could not identify. She had always admired Hank from afar. Now she couldn’t imagine a world without him. Well, it didn’t matter what she could imagine. Fate was about to lend a cruel hand.

  Shelley heard the terrible screech of tires. And then there was a sickening thud.

  She ran up the hill, hoping not to see her worst fear become a reality. People were already gathering around the scene of an accident, pointing fingers, identifying the victim. “It’s Hank! Hank Clerval! He’s been run over by a car!”

  The door to the blue house flew open and Hank’s mother emerged onto the porch. She saw a body and flashing lights in the street as another one of her sons lay dying.

  Shelley ran to Hank’s side and checked his vitals. Mrs. Clerval was soon behind her. “He’s dead, isn’t he? My boy is dead!” A billion tears would follow. But not from Shelley. The scientist inside her refused to cry. After a quick examination of Hank’s remains, she turned stoically to his mother. “He’s just resting, waiting for a new life to come.”

  Shelley had to work quickly. The only way to really save Hank was to use Adam’s body. Mrs. Clerval agreed.

  The details of how Hank’s brain wound up floating in a glass jar might be a bit much for certain readers (foolish or otherwise) but that’s never stopped us before. To simplify, let’s just say that it involved a bone saw grinding through his skull, that the brain itself was removed from the cranium like a large oyster and plopped into an alcohol-based solution to prevent it from turning to mush. But we’ll spare you the gory details. Let’s just say Hank’s brain was floating in a glass jar.

  Hank’s body, on the other hand, had been unreasonably mangled in the accident. Those details might be a bit too graphic for certain readers, so again, we’ll simplify. To start with, his left leg wound up where his…Oh, never mind. Hank’s body was too damaged to reanimate. So with Mrs. Clerval’s approval, Shelly began collecting spare parts from local graveyards. And now you know why we keep ours locked.

  Hank’s brain was subsequently placed inside the skull of a newly retooled body. That would be the reconstructed cadaver on the slab. The operation to give the body life was scheduled for a long holiday weekend, since Shelley had already missed too much school. For Mrs. Clerval, it was like killing two birds with one lightning bolt. If the experiment proved successful, she’d be reunited with both her sons.

  For Shelley, it was another chance at Hank.

  Sort of.

  That Saturday night, while most of her classmates were at the movies or playing miniature golf, Shelley was holed up in the Clervals’ laboratory, knee-deep in body parts. All the last-minute preparations had been made. The equipment was ready, and a massive electrical storm was on its way. Mrs. Clerval had been relegated to assistant status. Shelley’s Ygor, if you will. When Shelley said, “Throw the switches!” Mrs. Clerval threw the switches.

  Hank’s brain had already been inserted into Adam’s skull. An antenna had been attached to the roof, camouflaged as a satellite dish, drawing in the required spark of life. Machines whirled and beakers shook. There were blue flashes of electricity and showers of sparks.

  Stitched together from disparate parts, the large cadaver on the slab was starting to glow. The power surged directly through small metal bolts inserted into the temples. The body was recharging, the legs twitching like Shelley’s frog. Shelley and her assistant, Hank’s mom, watched in awe as the larger of the two hands seemed to form a fist. Was Hank…?

  “Alive?” Mrs. Clerval asked. “Is he alive?”

  Shelley began spinning knobs to decrease the current. Thin wisps of smoke snaked up from the cadaver’s eyes, ears, and nose. Shelley yelled for Mrs. Clerval to switch off the generator, fearing the body might burst into flames. Fortunately, it didn’t.

  Mrs. Clerval watched with her heart in her mouth (ahh, the lunch special) as Shelley placed a stethoscope on the cadaver’s chest, hoping the spirit of Hank had returned to the body she was trying to reanimate. But Shelley heard nothing. She put her cheek to his lips. Ag
ain, there was nothing. Not even a puff of air. She turned to Mrs. Clerval. “I’m so sorry.”

  The science experiment to end all science experiments had failed.

  The experiment—and its failure—had taken a great toll on Shelley. An entire month later, she still couldn’t kick it. Not to mention it was a gym day. But then something happened during homeroom that turned it all around. Call it a miracle if you want. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

  Mr. Sangster had just announced the arrival of a new student. He didn’t say where the student was from, but Shelley almost had a heart attack when she saw him—all seven-plus feet of him! “Let’s all give a big Buena Vista Middle School welcome to…Adam!”

  A hulking figure backed into the classroom, barely fitting through the door. Turning slowly, he made a dramatic reveal to the class. Shelley heard a triple thud, later identified as the sound of three kids fainting.

  The new student had a slightly bluish-green complexion; his eyes were sunken, and his pupils were a sickly yellow. His parts seemed not to match—one arm a little longer, one leg a little shorter—yet the mad stitchwork went unmentioned. He was just a little too menacing to make fun of.

  Shelley would later learn that the cadaver had woken up less than twenty-four hours after she had left the lab. Mrs. Clerval had kept his reanimation a secret and, for the next month, had nursed him to his current state. That would be direct current, as in one hundred thousand volts.

  The boy lumbered clumsily toward an empty desk, his coordination not yet there. It was the desk behind Shelley. He sat, barely able to squeeze his mismatched parts into the chair, and Shelley turned to face him. His bluish lips formed a smile. Somehow, he recognized her. Deep within the recesses of a mushy brain that used to be Hank’s, in a body that had started out as Adam’s, the creature recognized Shelley.

  “Hank, are you in there?” Shelley asked.

  “His name is Adam,” Mr. Sangster said, sternly correcting her. “He’s new.”

  “Of course,” said Shelley.

  It was crazy how things sometimes worked out. Class brain one day, class sweetheart the next. You see, in the semester that followed, Shelley had herself a not-so-secret admirer. The Adam-Hank hybrid followed her everywhere, clinging to her like a lost puppy. Or perhaps a lost soul. They sat together at lunch, the only two at their table—or forty-two, if you counted the parts that had gone into creating him. Shelley taught “Adam” rudimentary words, like friend and good. Also, having a seven-plus-foot-tall creature on your team provided certain advantages at gym. For the first time, she was the last one standing in dodgeball. The creature had decimated the opposing team with line drive shots, sending the more obnoxious players limping into the nurse’s office.

  In the following weeks, Shelley and the creature did all the things you see couples doing in those syrupy movie montages: picnicking by a lake, flying kites, eating ice cream. And their first kiss in the gazebo was electric—literally! Of course, they also did some things you don’t see couples doing in those movie montages, like replacing worn-out body parts and sewing up gnarly limbs.

  Unfortunately, the mushy remains of the complex computer known as Hank’s brain no longer functioned the way it was supposed to. True, the hybrid creature loved his Shelley, but without Hank’s precise memories, he simply didn’t know why. Yet his feelings were more than bluish-green-skin-deep. His was a passion that had survived death and transcended bodies.

  But all things must pass.

  Their love story, one of the strangest ever told, was doomed from the very first spark.

  The tragic ending began on the night of the middle school dance, the first and only one Shelley attended. She and “Adam” were doing the chicken dance in the middle of the gym when a bully shoved into them. “Watch it, freak!”

  The remark didn’t sit well with the creature. And when the bully insulted Shelley directly, making fun of the dress her mom had made, the creature took matters into his own, mismatched hands. The bully was sent sailing like a dodgeball into a punch bowl. Fruit juice splashed everything and everyone. There was shoving and shouting, and before anyone knew it, the dance had turned into a disaster. The staff soon had a full-blown riot on their hands, and not a laugh riot! Principal Gribbons was already looking for someone to pin it on.

  The bully in the punch bowl pointed at Shelley. “It was her! She started it! That freak and her freak boy-thing!”

  Gribbons nodded. “Shelley.” Of course. Who else could it be?

  Shelley took the creature by his unusually large hand. “I need to get you out of here!” They pushed their way through the crowd, making it to a back exit. The door was locked, but that really wasn’t a problem. The creature gave it a shove and it flew off the hinges. Then they went into the schoolyard, where Hank’s red bicycle was waiting, chained to a bike rack. The creature bypassed the lock, shredding the chain like string cheese. By then the mob of students, teachers, and chaperones was piling out of the gym, screaming for justice. Some of them were carrying torches. Again, it’s an angry-mob thing. They came prepared.

  Shelley was driving the bike, with the uncoordinated creature relegated to the handlebars. She pumped as hard as she could, but the mob was right behind them, gaining fast.

  The bike had made it halfway up the hill, just out of range of the pretty blue house, when Shelley’s legs gave out. “I can’t pedal anymore,” she told the creature. “My legs are on fire.”

  He growled. “Fire no good!”

  The bike started rolling backward, down the hill, where the angry mob was making its ascent. Shelley took out her cell. “I’m calling your mom for help!” She phoned Mrs. Clerval and told her the situation. Mrs. Clerval said she’d be there in a minute.

  But the angry mob would be there in less than a minute. Orange torchlight had made its way onto the hill, along with irate voices: “There it is! It’s a monster! Kill the monster!”

  The creature looked at Shelley and his bilious eyes formed tears—the biggest tears she had ever seen. “Go!” he cried. “You live!” And he leaped off the handlebars.

  “What are you doing? Get back on the bike!”

  The creature shook his head. “Go!”

  “Not without you!”

  “Yes! You live!”

  She gazed into his eyes a final time and saw the creature’s soul. It was Hank’s spirit, now trapped in Adam’s makeshift body. And she told them both, “I love you.”

  The creature gave the bike a monstrous shove, and Shelley went flying, straight over the hill and out of sight. Adam’s mismatched mouth formed a gargantuan grin. Even as the angry mob surrounded him, preparing to tear him limb from limb, Adam smiled, knowing she had gotten away.

  Fueled by blind hatred, the mob began to chant: “Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!”

  But the creature was not destroyed, and the mob stopped chanting when they heard the screeching tires, followed by a thud. And then came the panicked voices from the other side of the hill. “It’s the weird girl! The class brain! She’s been hit! Somebody call an ambulance!”

  The creature forced his way through the crowd, knocking down villagers like dominoes. He lurched awkwardly up the hill and only slowed when he saw the red bike under the car. Shelley’s body was lying next to it. The creature staggered over and dropped to his mismatched knees.

  The driver got out of the car. It was Mrs. Clerval, who’d been speeding over to help. She looked into the eyes of her boy as he knelt protectively over Shelley’s body. Then he unleashed a pitiful moan from the very depths of his godless soul that would not cease for as long as his reanimated heart remained beating. Mrs. Clerval understood the profoundness of his pain. She understood it as only a mother could. For the creature wasn’t a being of thought. He was a being of emotion. One born of love.

  Some considered it justice. Some said Shelley paid the ultimate price for stepping on God’s toes. Others insisted her death was the result of blind hatred, the hatred of those who would hunt and destroy anything t
hey didn’t understand.

  As for the creature…he was sent to the dungeon of Shepperton Sanitarium, where his piteous moans can still be heard, night after night after night.

  “Cherreeeeeeeee!”

  Prudence Pock looked up from the book to find Dr. Ackerman staring, his mouth agape, not at her, necessarily, but at the final page of the tale he’d just heard. “May I see that?”

  “Of course, Doctor.” She passed him the book, and his jaw dropped even farther. The words were all there. The entire story had somehow materialized.

  “That’s quite a trick.”

  “I’m here all week,” she said, adding some levity. She glanced at the rectangular slot. The eyes of the orderly were there, always watching. This time, she thought she heard him muffle a small laugh. The doctor was not amused. He returned the book, his wonderment becoming resentment. The doctor didn’t like being made a fool of, especially by “one of them.”

  “Your thoughts, Doctor?”

  “My thoughts, dear Prudence, are inconsequential. But if you’re asking for my literary evaluation…”

  Prudence leaned forward, close enough for him to feel her breath. It was cold—as cold as the dungeon. “Don’t be so stuffy. I’m asking if you liked it. Was it…believable? The story you just heard. Do you think it really happened?”

  Dr. Ackerman said nothing at first. He had to weigh his words. He didn’t believe in an afterlife; therefore, as a by-product, he did not believe in ghost stories. But that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy them. He enjoyed them immensely, actually—a fact he hoped to keep hidden from Prudence Pock for as long as he could. You see, Dr. Ackerman loved a good scare as much as anyone. You might even say he was an expert. Go ahead, say it.

  “Interesting. I’d say it’s more sorrowful than scary. But not terribly convincing. I mean, who’d believe such a tale? It’s outlandish.”

  “It’s Adam,” she replied.

  Prudence began incessantly tapping the book cover with her nails. Tap, tap, tap. Dr. Ackerman found it grating. This is why we put them in straitjackets, he thought. Prudence Pock was waiting for his real answer. Tap, tap, tap. Like the mansion itself, she demanded one. Tap, tap, tap.