The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (49 page)

No sooner had he started to struggle, than he became aware of the futility of the task. The thing had muscles of steel, the strength of a dozen men.

He was on the verge of blacking out, when there came a merciful release. The bands at his throat relaxed and the form above him moved away. He lay gasping and became aware of a cracking noise and a man’s harsh voice shouting in a foreign language.

Brian shook his head to clear it and raised himself on one elbow.

He beheld a tall man dressed in sombre black from his calf length riding boots to his high crowned hat. Under a long black cloak, the man wore a black suit and a black cravat. The only relief to this
dark garb was the white of his face, a cadaverous face which seemed like the pale wax face of a corpse. Only the eyes were animated, and shone like burning coals from the fires of hell. The man held a whip in his right hand, which he now and then cracked at the cowering figure before him.

It was this figure that caused the breath to catch in Brian’s throat.

The face was large, with a long bulbous nose atop a horseshoe-shaped mouth, open to display straggling teeth with breaches here and there, and protruding slightly over the lower lip and letting a trickle of saliva dribble on to the stubby fork-bearded chin. The eyes were terrible; under bushy black brows there was a small right eye, so small and closed that at first, one might think he was peering into an eyeless socket, until they caught the pinprick of malignancy shining brightly from a bloodshot surround. The right eye was misshapen by an enormous wart.

But if the face was horrible, the body was sickening.

The head bristled with hair, like the hair of a mad dog, while between the shoulders rose a humpy protrusion and a corresponding hump stuck from the chest. The arms were long and muscular, and hung downwards like the arms of an ape, but the rest of the body was of thighs and legs so bowed that Brian wondered if the creature could move on them at all.

The whip was raised yet again and the horrible apparition went scuttling into the undergrowth.

The tall man turned to Brian and he was surprised to see an expression of concern on the man’s face.

“Are you hurt?” the English was stilted and heavily accented.

Brian raised a hand to his throat and massaged the tender area carefully. He coughed several times.

“I do not think so, sir. I would be the better for a glass of water, however.”

The tall man bent down and raised him up.

“Lean on my arm, sir, and I’ll bring you to my house.”

“I’m most grateful, sir. Are you the German gentleman?”

“I am, by birth, a Genevese, a native of the Swiss Republic.”

“And you are the owner of Tymernans?” persisted Brian.

“I am.”

Brian was silent for a moment.

“By all that is holy,” he burst out. “What, or who was that creature?”

“Merely a servant of mine.”

“A servant?” said Brian in astonishment. “But he was so grotesque, so animal-like . . .”

“He is a creature of nature, endowed with life in the same way as you or I,” replied the man. “He is misshapen, but if I did not give him employment, then he would be stoned to death by the miserable natives hereabouts.”

His voice was full of a bitterness which startled Brian.

“But is he not dangerous and deserving of restraint?”

“Ah, because he attacked you? Would you say the same of a guard dog which attacked a man entering your property? My estate is forbidden to visitors and this Hugo knows. For all he knew, you might have meant me ill. Why should I restrain him when he is doing his duty by guarding his master? He is no more dangerous than the average guard dog. He will do what he is told and if he does it well, then he is rewarded. If he does it ill, then he is punished. This is his simple life. If you mean me no ill, then you need have no fear of Hugo.”

They did not speak further until the tall man led Brian from the woods and across a wide ill-kept lawn which separated the woods from a large rambling house. It stood precariously, almost on the edge of the cliffs. Brian noticed that most of the windows were closed and shuttered and the house had the appearance of a deserted ruin.

The man beside him noticed his absorption in the condition of the building.

“I am a recluse, sir,” he said by way of explanation. “A man of scientific pursuits who cannot afford to waste time in dabbling with the upkeep of a property. All I need is a quiet place to work, to be left alone. If I am left alone by people I, in turn, will leave them alone.”

This last was said by way of accusation.

“I came to see you,” said Brian. “To speak of the disappearance of Doctor Trevaskis.”

The man shot him a quick, searching glance but said nothing.

He motioned Brian to follow him into a scullery and drew a glass of water from a pump.

“And now, Sir?” he said when Brian had eased his throat sufficiently and returned the glass.

“I am Doctor Trevaskis’ new partner, Doctor Brian Shaw.”

The tall man bowed.

“I . . . I am the Baron Victor Frankenberg.”

Brian detected a slight pause before the final syllable of the name. He explained about the disappearance of Doctor Trevaskis. The baron’s face was an impassive mask.

“Perhaps you would accompany me into my library?” he said, suddenly turning and leading the way, without waiting for a
response. Puzzled, Brian followed him across a musty hallway into a large, well-lit room which was clearly in constant use. Brian’s eyes flickered around the shelves which contained many hundreds of books; books in many languages which, he was surprised to note, were mostly on natural philosophy and chemistry.

“A glass of claret?”

Brian shook his head.

He was about to press the baron as to whether he knew Doctor Trevaskis when a long eerie howl filled the room. It was the howl of a hound, similar to that which he had heard the previous night out on the moorland. But this time it seemed as if the hound was in the room itself.

The baron calmly replaced his half-emptied glass of claret.

“Forgive me, sir,” he said, “an indulgence of mine. I keep a small hunting pack for whenever the urge takes me to follow the fox through my grounds. At the moment one of my best hounds lies ill.”

There was a silence while the baron reached for a silver decanter and refilled his glass, sipping it slowly as if savouring the fragrance of every sip.

“I beg your pardon, sir. Of what were we speaking?”

“Doctor Trevaskis, sir.”

“The doctor called by here a few times since I have been here. As a man of science with a degree of medical ability myself, I had no cause to consult him. I did, however, see him walking along the moorland path two days ago, but only from a distance.”

The baron rose to his feet.

“Now, sir, there is no more I can suggest. I regret the disappearance of Doctor Trevaskis, but the countryside hereabouts is wild and often dangerous. Let us hope there is a happy solution to the disappearance, that he stayed with friends, or that he has lost his way and will return anon.”

He led Brian to the door.

Brian hesitated and motioned with his head towards the woods.

“What of . . .” he paused.

The baron drew back his thin lips in a mirthless smile.

“Hugo? Do not worry about Hugo. He has learnt his lesson, like a good dog and will have learnt it well.”

The baron gestured to the whip that stood by the door.

The heavy wooden door of the house was swung shut in Brian’s face. For a moment he stood irresolutely and then began to follow the path back towards the iron gates.

He could not help but suppress a violent shiver as he thought of the grotesque beast lurking in the bushes, waiting ready to pounce,
the hairy hands closing round his throat. But he strode grimly on, trying to keep his head firmly upright, letting only his eyes dart from side to side as he walked down the gloomy woodland path.

The feeling of being followed suddenly seized him, and he could swear he heard the rustle of the undergrowth and the sound of laboured breathing.

He swung round and found the path had wound so far into the woods that he was out of sight of the house and any aid from the baron.

A bush suddenly trembled before him and he raised his hands to protect himself.

Brian stepped back in surprise as the bush swung back and a woman almost fell at his feet.

“Help me,
mein Herr
, help me!” she gasped.

Brian reached down and helped the woman from her knees. He could not discern her age; it could have been anything from thirty to fifty. She must have once been strikingly beautiful. Her face was well-formed, the eyes wide and blue and the mouth a rosebud of red. But the once flaxen hair was streaked prematurely with grey, and lines of worry crept in tiny crevices around her eyes and mouth. A strange deadness could be read in her eyes. They lacked any form of vitality.

“You must help me,
mein Herr
, you must!” she gasped again.

“Why, what is it, madam?” asked Brian in astonishment.

The woman cast a terrified glance over her shoulder and began talking in voluble German.

Brian interrupted her with a shrug.

“Alas, madam, I cannot understand your language. Can you speak in English?”

“He . . . the baron! Do not trust him,
mein Herr
. I heard you at the house. You must trust him not. He is evil, evil! Oh, God’s curse on the day I married him!”

Brian started at her vehemence.

“You are the Baroness Frankenberg?”

The woman threw back her head and laughed obscenely.

“
Grüss Gott
! Frankenberg? Frankenberg?”

She went off into a peal of laughter so maniacal that Brian thought she must be possessed of some disorder.

The woman suddenly shot a look back along the pathway and lent closer to him.

“Trust not the baron,” she said in her broken English. “He is an evil man. You must help me get away from him. His name is not . . .”

There was a movement in the undergrowth.

The woman turned pale and nearly fell forward. She turned with a cry of despair and vanished into the undergrowth.

Brian looked up in the direction in which she had been looking.

The grotesque features of the man-beast, Hugo, leered at him from the bushes.

He felt his heart skip a beat and race wildly. But the grotesque man made no movement towards him and so, his pulse drumming rapidly, he walked slowly down the path to the wrought iron gates, swiftly climbed over them and hastened down the pathway to the village. He did not pause or relax the tension in his body until he saw the first of the stone, whitewashed cottages of Bosbradoe appearing round a bend in the roadway.

Helen Trevaskis, still looking pale and drawn, was seated in the parlour of the house when Brian returned. She turned quickly as he entered and Brian saw the faint light of hope die in her eyes as she read the lack of news in his face. Briefly, he recited the events of the morning.

“So father was last seen going over the moor?” she summarized at the end of his recital.

He nodded.

“I have managed to get Mr Trevithick and a few other men to ride along the moorland paths,” she went on. “Perhaps they will discover something. Oh, but I wish I were a man! This sitting waiting is so destructive to my nature.”

Brian reached out a sympathetic hand for hers and she let him take it unprotestingly.

“I am sure he will be found, Helen. I shall see if I can organize some men who know the area and will set off to look myself.”

“You are kind, Brian. I do not know what I should do without your support.”

He squeezed her hand again and stood up.

It had been a tiring day for Brian Shaw. Many of the villagers, sheepishly recovering from their alarms of Hallowe’en, had accompanied Brian and the Reverend Simon Pencarrow in searching across the moor, but when, as dusk fell, no sign of the doctor was forthcoming, the search was called off, in spite of the desperate efforts of Helen to get the search continued by torchlight.

It was Brian who suggested that he take Helen to the Morvoren
Inn and ask Noall to provide their meal. The atmosphere in the inn was not exactly a happy one, and most of the villagers sat in silence, studiously avoiding Helen’s eye.

Noall seated them in an alcove and brought them hot roast beef and mulled wine. The meal was eaten in silence. Brian said little out of respect for Helen’s feelings and Helen was oppressed by the weight of the thoughts which tumbled in her mind.

Suddenly the soft chatter in the inn died away altogether.

Brian and Helen looked up to see the inn door swinging open and the grotesque shape of Hugo, the baron’s servant, shuffling in.

The creature stood a moment on the threshold, leering at the company with his twisted and misshapen eyes. Then he shuffled forward, his arms akimbo, towards the bar.

The villagers knew him, although Hugo was not a frequent visitor to the village. Now and again, if the need was vital, the baron would send him to the village to obtain certain provisions. The villagers avoided Hugo as they avoided the baron’s estate.

The grotesque form stopped before the bar, behind which Noall was standing watching his approach with evident distaste.

A hairy arm slapped down some silver coins on to the counter.

The mouth opened and a series of inarticulate sounds came forth.

This drew a nervous laugh from the villagers.

The mouth twisted and turned. Then suddenly words formed, strained, twisted words but comprehensible nevertheless.

“Wine . . . master wants wine.”

Noall looked at the creature in disgust as he swept up the coins and counted them.

“Wine is it? Why don’t your master and you leave here? You ain’t wanted.”

The creature seemed to hang his head.

Brother Willie Carew, the preacher, called from his seat.

“That’s telling him, Noall. We want no creatures of Satan in this god-fearing town!”

Noall laughed grimly.

“I’ll give you wine. But you tell your master that we don’t like his sort here.”