Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror

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Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror Page 36

by Jean-Marc Lofficier


  He had to insinuate himself into the conspiracy, if he possibly could. If he could not convince its members that he was a friend–and they seemed far too mistrustful, at present, for that–then he had to persuade them that he could be useful to them in some way. They knew now that he knew the bare bones of their secret, but they did not know how much he knew.

  Perhaps, he thought, he could persuade them that he knew more, and that he might be a useful assistant if the man of science were, indeed, forced by circumstance to use his new apparatus before he was ready, on Percy Shelley or his wife.

  Chapter Six

  Science’s Adam

  Deep in thought as he was, Ned was not long unaware of the fact when someone began following him. Nor had he any doubt as to the identity of his tracker. He was not in the least worried for his own safety, but he was anxious for the safety of his follower. Guido must have recovered consciousness by this time, and the banditti must still have scouts scouring the town. The man who was taking so much trouble to hide his face was only drawing attention to himself by so doing.

  Fortunately, the Sun was past its zenith now, and the inhabitants of Spezia tended to be as strict in their observance of the siesta as any Catalonian. The streets were not yet deserted, but the people who were still about were mostly in a hurry to be elsewhere, and they walked with their heads bowed. Everyone sought the available shade, averting their eyes from the brightly-lit paving stones.

  Ned hurried his paces, not because he was trying to evade the pursuit but because he wanted to draw the other man into a safer vicinity as soon as was humanly possible. He took as roundabout a route as the hill would permit back to the hotel, taking time to make sure, as best he could, that there was no one dogging his immediate pursuer’s footsteps. When he reached the hotel, he was glad to find it silent, with no sign of anyone moving within. When he turned the corner of the stone arch that formed its coaching entrance, he stopped dead and waited for his pursuer to catch up.

  As soon as the tall man with the muffled face turned the corner, Ned raised a hand. “We’d best hurry up to my room,” he said. “You should be safe there, if no one has seen us. Fortunately, the banditti cannot have many friends in this part of town, no matter how many they have about the docks.”

  The other stared down at him, evidently surprised by this matter-of-fact greeting. The Sun was high and the big man’s broad-brimmed hat cast a black shadow over his partly-veiled face, but Ned was almost certain now that the man’s skin was grey. General Mortdieu was obviously not the only Grey Man ever made who had retained all or most of his mental faculties.

  “Who are you?” growled the reanimated man, speaking English with a guttural accent that might have been Switzer-Deutsch.

  “I believe that’s the question I ought to be asking you,” Ned said. “Either way, let’s get out of sight first. This way–and be as careful as you can, in case any of the servants is still on the prowl.”

  Ned and his companion took the back staircase up to his room. They met no one as they climbed, and Ned sighed with relief as he shut the door behind them. The water jug on the dressing-table had been refilled since he had gone out; he filled two cups, offering one to his guest and drinking deeply from the other. The morning’s exertions had given him a fearful thirst.

  “You can remove the layers of protective clothing now,” Ned said. “I’ve seen your kind before, and talked to them. I didn’t get much out of poor Sawney Ross, but General Mortdieu was much more forthcoming, though not very polite to begin with.”

  The Grey Man took off his hat and headband, and then unwound the silk scarf that covered the lower part of his face. His movements were deliberate, but not particularly awkward. The resurrected man seemed to be challenging Ned, measuring his face to see if he were really as brave and well-prepared as he pretended.

  Eventually, seemingly satisfied by Ned’s composure, the Grey Man sat down into the armchair, accepted the proffered cup and drank even more thirstily than Ned had done. Ned filled both cups again, while he studied his guest carefully.

  His heart had begun to race as he accustomed himself to the idea of who this man must be. In Frankenstein, he remembered, the man of science had called his subject a “daemon” or a “creature,” never a man. Ned knew that much of what was said about the creature there must be the pure product of madness or the literary imagination, but it would be foolish to assume that it was all false. After all, General Mortdieu had given the impression of being a wrathful and violent individual, and it seemed not unlikely that waking up from the sleep of death to find oneself reincarnate as a slate-grey walking corpse might be a intrinsically embittering experience.

  “Since you asked first,” Ned said, as he continued to study the grey features anxiously, “I’m Edward Knob, an Englishman. I thank you for the warning you shouted to me on the shore, but I wonder why you were watching me from hiding before your pursuers chased you away.”

  “Do you really know what I am?” the Grey Man asked. “I was about to assure you that you had no need to be afraid, but perhaps there is no need. Have you seen many others of my kind?”

  “Yes, I know what you are and how you were brought back from the dead,” Ned said. “I am certainly willing to assume, until I have evidence to the contrary, that I do not need to be afraid of you. I have seen several dozen others of your kind, but I fear that all but a few were imbeciles, and only one seemed as articulate as you. May I take my turn to ask some questions now?”

  “You were in that house on the shore,” the Grey Man stated, guardedly. “You must, therefore, know... my maker.”

  “Ah,” said Ned. “You were following him, of course, although that also obliged you to follow Guido, who was also following him. You are his first subject, then–the infamous daemon of Frankenstein?”

  The Grey Man’s dull eyes did not flare up at that, but his broad mouth curled in distaste. “My maker should not have described me thus,” he said, softly, “if, in fact, he did. Nor should he have written his memoirs while he was still sick enough to mistake his fears and delusions for reality. In either case, Walton’s sister should not have given the letters and the manuscript to a publisher. All of that has done us both a severe disservice. Walton was very angry with her, I think, when he found out–but it was too late.”

  “In all probability,” Ned said, currying favor shamelessly, “the worst of the horrors supplying the story with a plot were grafted on to the original by some hired hack instructed to bring out the tale’s inherent melodrama–I cannot believe the rumor that Shelley was responsible, but, whatever the truth of the matter, I agree with you it would have been better for everyone concerned had the book not appeared.”

  “I am entitled to compensation for that, if nothing else,” the Grey Man murmured. “I am certainly not eight feet tall, as the text alleged, and I was certainly not patched together from the refuse of slaughterhouses, although I presume that my body was plucked intact from a fresh grave. However ugly I may seem, I am certainly not a demon.”

  “You’re not so very ugly,” Ned assured his visitor. “Your color is a little unusual, but it’s preferable to the hideous yellow that was if my memory serves me rightly, cited in the published text. Actually, I’m not personally acquainted with your maker, although I knew of him before meeting him for the first time this morning. He is quietly famous, in his way, quite apart from what I feel sure is a gross misrepresentation of his character in the pages of the novel named after him. Germain Patou’s continuation of his clandestine work has not provided the best of supplementary advertisements, but it has served to attract a good deal of fascinated attention from various interested parties. Why were the banditti trying to kill you?”

  The Grey Man shook his head slightly. “I’m not sure,” he murmured. “I’ve encountered their kind before, in a quarrelsome fashion, but I had hoped that the disagreement was long-forgotten, given that it dates back to the years when men of that sort fancied themselves revolutionaries–b
ut Italians hold grudges. It was their fellows who attacked me all those years ago; I merely defended myself a little too well for their liking. Coming back to the region was always a risk for me, I suppose–that fact might have figured in my maker’s calculations when he decided to establish himself in Spezia. It was a risk I needed to take, though. If my maker is about to resume his work, at last, then I am entitled to play my part. He owes me that–and his fears are groundless.”

  “What fears?” Ned demanded.

  “He wants to reserve the privilege of educating his subjects and directing their lives to himself. He would have guarded the privilege of supervising my own education very jealously had he not fallen victim to illness and dire anxiety, and he bitterly resents the fact that he lost control of me–but once I had recovered self-consciousness, I was my own man; we were bound to quarrel. He fears, I think, that I might have more ready-made moral authority over other people of my kind than he would be able to retain for himself. That is true, or so I hope and believe–but he need have no fear of what I might do with that authority. My intentions are benign.”

  “In the novel,” Ned observed, “the so-called creature demands that Frankenstein make him a bride, and becomes murderous when thwarted.”

  “Melodramatic embellishment,” said the Grey Man, sipping water from his cup with affected delicacy. “My maker always intended to repeat his experiment, when he was well enough, and tried more than once. I was his natural partner–but he rejected me, as he lost his grip on reality, and fled from me. If I have pursued him ever since, it is only with the determination to make my peace with him. I have never murdered anyone. He might have loved his little cousin, I suppose, but he certainly never married her, and I certainly did not kill her, any more than I killed his brother or his friend Clerval.”

  Ned nodded, anxious to give every visible indication that he believed what the Grey Man was telling him, no matter what private reservations he was careful to make. In fact, he was perfectly prepared to believe that the Grey Man was no Hellish fiend, but he was a spy now, and it was his duty to withhold his judgment. “Your maker might be forced to resume his work sooner than he wanted to, if Shelley has his way,” Ned observed. “He seems reluctant to press forward, but he might have no choice if he wishes to retain the good opinion of his friends.”

  “Is one of them dying, then?” the Grey Man guessed.

  “Shelley is worried about his wife,” Ned said. “I am worried about him. Do you know Shelley?”

  “We have met,” the Grey Man said, a trifle guardedly.

  “As I said, I mistrust the rumor that he wrote the published version of Walton’s story,” Ned said, in case that was the reason for the other’s caution. “It was probably falsely credited to him by a rumor put about by the publisher. Lord Byron was once said to have written a famous tale about vampires, but that ascription turned out to be false.”

  “I have met Byron too,” the Grey Man said, mildly. “I know more of vampires now than he ever did.”

  Ned frowned at that. “Do you, indeed?” he murmured. “The man you followed from Walton’s house is rumored to be a vampire’s minion, it seems. Is that likely, do you think?”

  “Quite likely,” said the Grey Man, casually–but he was not unobservant, for he immediately added: “You did not believe it when you heard it, I suppose? You were testing me–but vampires are not what you think, if you have taken your notion of them from Polidori’s tale.”

  “What are they, then?” Ned asked.

  “Nature’s Grey Men,” his guest replied. “The accidentally reanimated dead. Most are mere brutes, even if decay leaves them relatively unravaged, but on occasion... I am not alone, you see, even though I was the first of my kind to be deliberately made. A new Adam I may be, but the world beyond my meager Eden was not empty. There are more avid hunters looking out for me than the ones you saw today. Is Shelley really in danger of dying? I had thought Byron far the more reckless of the two, and hence more likely to die first.”

  “He was injured in a brawl, it seems,” Ned said. “The wound was not serious at first, but it was aggravated by an accident on his boat and it has become infected.”

  “Did he aggravate it deliberately, do you think?” the Grey Man asked, surprising Ned yet again.

  This time, Ned did not attempt to hide his surprise. “I cannot believe that,” he said. “Do you really think that he might be courting death deliberately, in order to force your maker’s hand? I don’t think so–although I do believe that he tried to win an agreement from his friends to subject his wife to the treatment, should she fail to recover from her present fever.”

  “Is she very ill?” the Grey Man asked.

  “I haven’t seen her, but Shelley was obviously very anxious.”

  “She would not have endangered herself deliberately,” the Grey Man said, bleakly. “She did not like me at all, although I was never anything but courteous to her, and she did not take to my maker either, although he was still handsome when they first met. She could almost have believed that farrago of nonsense that the publisher put out–her nightmares were worse than my maker’s.”

  “Where did you meet her?” Ned asked, curiously.

  “At the Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, six years ago. My maker had a house not far from Cologny; Byron and Shelley became acquainted with him there. He and I were on better terms in those days, but he was still determined to hide me away. Inevitably, his secrecy only piqued their curiosity, and they persuaded him to let them in on his secret, swearing to keep it. He probably did not take much persuading–he was still proud of his accomplishment, as much in the process of my initial education as my reanimation. It was shortly thereafter that he fell prey to the delirious fever that induced his panic and caused our estrangement. That was not entirely a disaster for me, though, for it forced me to take charge of my own education–not in the bizarre fashion represented in that silly romance, but with far greater success.”

  “I’m a self-educated man myself,” Ned told him. “I pride myself on having made a better job of it than many schools would have done–but I suppose that men like us are bound to think that.”

  Grey Men did not, in Ned’s experience, have expressive faces, but the Adam of the New Grey Men did his best to demonstrate his surprise at that. “Men like us,” he repeated, softly. “Thank you for that, my friend. No one has ever gone out of his way to pronounce such a phrase before.”

  It was at that moment that the sheer bizarrerie of the occasion struck Ned with some force. He had been face-to-face with Grey Men before, but those occasions had seemed to be the substance of pure melodrama even at the time. Now, he was sitting in a hotel’s bed-alcove while a reanimated corpse was relaxing in a nearby armchair, and the two of them were talking, as if engaged in the most natural conversation in the world, about great poets and vampires.

  What an adventurer I have become! Ned thought–but then he broke out into a half-smile as he realized that he really did feel more at ease with this strange creature than he had felt during his first interview with the glowering Gregory Temple.

  “May we talk about these others of my kind you have seen?” the Grey Adam asked, with scrupulous politeness, after a brief pause. “I had heard that they existed, but I have not yet had the privilege of meeting one. Do you know how many there are altogether?”

  “I don’t know whether Patou has been able to make any more since leaving England,” Ned replied, “but even if he has, I doubt that any them have retained as much presence of mind as you. He has hit a snag there, it seem, that your own maker contrived to avoid.”

  “It’s a common problem, it seems,” murmured the other. “I’ve heard rumor of more than one so-called vampire who can pass for human, but I’m far from sure that I can trust the second account, even if the first is true. There are a great many who are less than beasts.”

  “Patou certainly had not given up hope of restoring more of his patients to full self-awareness and ordi
nary intelligence,” Ned observed. “Had he not been trying so hard to facilitate their re-education, I would never have run into Sawney and become entangled in this business. Given time to experiment, and improve his methods, who knows what he might achieve? In time, it might be possible to replenish all the lost humanity of the reanimated dead.”

  “In time,” the Grey Adam said, equably, “it might be possible to do far better than that–if we are only given the chance.”

  That possibility had not occurred to Ned. He chided himself silently; he had, after all, met General Mortdieu and seen evidence of his vaulting ambition. “Who are you, my friend?” he asked. “Or should I ask who you were, when you were alive?”

  “I was no one when I was alive,” the Grey Man retorted, “and I’m no one now–but I’m not a monster now, any more than the tenant of this body was when he was alive. I wish I could tell you that my predecessor had been a man of note, but he died too young to make his mark.”

  Ned took careful note of the fact that the Grey Adam now saw himself as a person distinct and different from the one he had been before his death, but took leave to wonder how that could really be the case. “You must have had a name, though,” he objected.

  “I did–but I gave it up when I died, and never troubled to invent another. I certainly never thought to call myself Mortdieu, or the Vampire King. If you need a name by which to think of me, though, you might call me Lazarus–I dare say that some such analogy has already cropped up in your private thoughts.”

  “Of course,” Ned murmured. “It was too much to hope, I dare say, that you might have been someone renowned, who would have been at or near the head of any list of those deserving to be brought back from the dead–Tom Paine, for example.”

  “It’s not the rights of man that concern me,” the new Lazarus replied, seemingly conscious of taking a risk, “but the rights of the undead.”

  “You’ll not achieve the second without first establishing the first, my dear Lazarus,” Ned said. “If you and I are to be allies, that must be understood and agreed.”

 

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