The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (53 page)

“And this is how you repay me, my dutiful wife?” said the baron sarcastically. “Ah, ah! What am I to do with you?”

“Victor . . .” she began, a hopelessness in her voice.

“Victor!” mimicked the baron. “I could have made you great, Elizabeth. Sometime, the world will acknowledge me for my genius; glory and riches undreamed of will be mine when the world knows that God has no prerogative for the creation of man, and that I,” he thumped his chest and raised his voice, “I, Victor Frankenstein, can create life too.”

Tears stood in the baroness’ eyes.

“Victor, you are ill . . . ill,” she wailed.

“Ill? Ill, am I? You, who with your puny mind, cannot comprehend the sublety of my brain? And so, not understanding, you call me ill?”

Brian stood balanced over the lip of the cave mouth, his mind racing. If he attempted to continue downwards, he would have to leave the baroness to whatever fate awaited her. Also, it would not take a moment for the creature, Hugo, to follow and send him crashing to his death on the rocks below.

But what was the alternative? To return and admit defeat?

No, he thought grimly, he must escape. He must take his chance and bring help to rescue the baroness.

The baron had turned towards him.

“I see, Doctor Shaw, that you have made a companion in distress of my poor, deluded wife? Is it not so?”

He paused but Brian made no reply.

“My wife seems to have developed a fondness for handsome young men of science. Ah, but I too was once a handsome young man of science! You and she were running away together, eh? Perhaps to start some new life beyond my reach?”

Brian shook his head dumbly.

The man was clearly insane.

“Well,” chuckled the baron grimly, “others have tried that before now, is it not so, my Hugo? Is it not so, my ugly one?
Schweinhund
!”

Hugo, hearing his name, nodded his large head up and down and let forth a gibbering cry.

The baron raised his head and laughed.

“Yes, Hugo. You were once a fine young man of science, only you cannot remember now. You once tried to entice my wife away from her duties . . . just like this young man. Well, he, too, shall learn the wrath of Frankenstein!”

Brian’s eyes flickered downward to the night-shrouded cliff. The path for the first hundred feet or so was easy. Perhaps he could reach the beach before Hugo could overtake him. He must try.

The baroness looked towards Brian, and it was as if she read his thoughts.

“You must fly, young
Herr
! Fly for your life! Do not worry about me. I shall try to prevent a pursuit. Fly, for the love of your mother!”

With a sob she turned and grabbed an iron lantern holder, a tripod affair which she brandished before her as a defensive weapon, throwing back her shoulders in defiance.

“Put that down!” the baron snarled.

“No, Victor. Once I loved you . . . I should have tried to stop
your mad designs years ago. Now perhaps it is too late, but I owe a duty to God and to the people you have made suffer by your evil.”

The baron’s lips curled back over his teeth.

“You will obey me or perish!”

“No, Victor!”

“Then perish!”

He turned to Hugo with a gesture.

Without further ado, Brian began to make his hasty descent from outhanging rock to outhanging rock.

As his head disappeared beneath the ledge, the baroness sighed and lifted up her iron lantern holder.

Hugo was looking at her in puzzlement. One tiny glinting eye shone at her in the gloom. He raised a massive, hairy hand and scratched his head as if trying to conjure up some long forgotten memory.

“Destroy them!” shrieked the baron. “Go,
Schwein
, destroy!”

The baroness gave a deep sob and, shutting her eyes, raised her weapon and brought it down with a sickening thud on the head of the creature crying: “Hugo, Hugo! Oh my God! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

The creature staggered from the blow but did not fall. He blinked his one bizarre eye and made a weird whimpering sound.

The baroness opened her eyes wide in horror and took a step back.

Hugo gave a grunt and moved forward with deceptive speed. A hairy arm shot out and twisted the metal from the woman’s hands as if she were possessed only of the strength of a baby. The creature sent the weapon clattering into a far corner of the cavern.

“Kill! Kill! Kill!” screamed the baron, beside himself with rage.

For a moment the woman and creature stood there, eyes locked.

“Hugo!” whispered the woman.

The creature drew the muscles of its face together in an attempt to frown.

Again some thought played at the back of his mind, some small thought, like a match struck in the midnight darkness of some great cathedral; struck to be immediately extinguished.

The creature shuffled forward, hands raised to grasp the baroness’ slender throat. Fear lent her the strength of many. She beat and clawed at the man-thing with her puny fists. Fought and scratched, until the creature began to whimper in pain. The two figures, locked in an embrace which would only end in death, stood swaying in the mouth of the cave.

Biting, kicking, scratching, punching, the baroness fought for her frail life, in the arms of the thing which had once been her lover. They swayed to and fro, to and fro. Then the baroness’ hand scratched
down into the creature’s good eye. With a howl, still not releasing his hold, Hugo stumbled forward.

Over the edge of the cave mouth the two figures became locked in death’s embrace. The creature made no sound as he fell and only the baroness’ shrill cry marked their passage downwards.

Pausing for breath on a ledge some hundred feet below, Brian saw their bodies hurtle by, heard the sickening thud as they reached the rocks below, and then . . . then the silence, broken only by the faint roar of the surf.

He looked up in the gloom.

Above him, in the entrance of the cave, he could see a pale face peering downwards.

The harsh tones of the baron came faintly to his ears.

“Are you there, Doctor Shaw? You are, I know it. Well, do not think that yours is the victory. I shall win yet, you shall see. I am Frankenstein! I am master over all creatures, for I can give them life . . . or death! I shall win yet. You shall see.”

The face vanished into the darkness.

Brian paused breathing deeply. Then he began his descent again.

Here the cliff was difficult, and almost devoid of any holds by which he could make a safe descent. Once he looked down and caught sight of the surf far, far below him and felt his centre of gravity momentarily displace itself and a sickening feeling of giddiness rose within him. The terror of the open space gripped him as he felt the attractive power of the abyss.

For several seconds he clung, sweating, to the granite rock face.

Then slowly, foot by foot, he continued downwards. On the vertical face, as he went down, he found several irregularities of formation which facilitated his descent.

Every twenty-five feet, or his rough estimation of that distance, he paused to regain his strength.

His clothes were saturated with his own sweat and his legs, tired by the support of his body against the vertical cliff, felt like jelly and several times gave way to an uncontrollable shaking.

It felt like hours before he neared the bottom.

The pounding of his heart was overshadowed by the roar and pounding of the surf on the rocks below him. His clothes were now swamped by another dampness . . . that of the salt sea spray. He looked down anxiously for a moment and saw, to his great relief, that the tide was out, leaving a wide space of rocks along the cliff foot and out towards the cove at Bosbradoe.

He paused again before commencing the final descent. His whole body was shaking from exertion.

He put out a foot for the next hold, and suddenly the trembling in his calf muscles caused the leg to crumple as he placed his weight upon it. With a cry he fell, hitting the sandy shingle of the beach and then – it seemed to him – that he was falling further, further into a black, bottomless pool.

He recovered consciousness almost immediately and, in the pale moonlight, realized that he had fallen a matter of twelve feet. He breathed a prayer of gratitude, and began to examine his limbs to ensure that he had not broken or fractured any bones.

It seemed hours before he arrived, wet, sticky and uncomfortable, and climbing up on to the quay, made his way through the deserted village to the house of the late Doctor Trevaskis. As he climbed along the path, by the side of the house, a coach suddenly spun round the bend. A small black coach, almost hearse-like, drawn by two jet black horses. The momentary impression of the tall coachman, sitting atop the box, was strangely familiar to Brian. The coach vanished speedily round a bend of the road, out of the village.

A shocked looking Mrs Trevithick opened to his repeated knockings.

“Lord, Doctor Shaw! We wondered where you’d got to. Why, sir, you be all covered in sea and grime and . . . land sakes, sir . . . there be blood on you. Be you hurt?”

Brian shook his head dumbly.

“Just get me some hot water, Mrs Trevithick, a change of clothing . . . oh, and some rum, by God. The rum first. Oh,” he called to her retreating form, “and send your husband to me immediately.”

Trevithick came in while he was downing his second glass of rum.

“Run and fetch Mr Pencarrow.”

Pencarrow arrived as Brian was dressing after a brief, but refreshing wash.

“Thank God, Pencarrow, that you are here. I have a horrific tale to tell you . . .” he suddenly looked puzzled. “Where is Miss Trevaskis? Surely she can’t have slept through my arrival. I have made noise enough to waken the dead.”

Mrs Trevithick sniffed.

“She was tired and that stuff you gave her made her sleep fine.”

“Oh yes, I’d forgotten the laudanum. Well, she must be roused, I’m afraid, Mrs Trevithick.”

Unwillingly, Mrs Trevithick went to fetch her.

In a moment she had returned, her face pale, her eyes wide. She clutched a piece of paper in her hand.

Brian shot one look at her, and leapt towards the stairs.

Helen’s bedroom was empty. The bedclothes on her small four-poster were flung back as if a struggle had taken place. Of Helen there was no sign.

Mrs Trevithick was sobbing as he came back down the stairs.

“I found . . . I found this on her pillow, sir,” she cried and pressed the paper into his hand.

Brian took it. The message was curt.

A hostage for your good behaviour. Frankenstein
.

“It is not possible,” gasped a white-faced Pencarrow when Brian had finished his narrative. The old parson was visibly shaken. He reached forward with a trembling hand and poured himself a glass of rum.

Brian watched him in silence.

“I have heard of this Frankenstein before, of course. Yes, yes. I recall now that there was some scandal in Switzerland and that the tale was told by a Mrs Mary Shelley. But Frankenstein, alive? And here? It is so fantastic.”

“Fantastic or not, Mr Pencarrow,” said Brian grimly, “it is the truth. Doctor Trevaskis was killed by him, and now two more bodies lie beneath the cliffs on which Tymernans stands.”

The old man gave him a searching look.

“What do you suggest we do, my boy?”

“Ring your church bells to rally the village, arm the villagers and let us attack the house,” cried Brian.

The old man shook his head sorrowfully.

“The baron says he has taken the girl as a hostage for your good conduct. What do you think he will do if he hears the alarm bells, and sees the people storming his house?”

“Then what must we do?” demanded Brian, desperation sounding in his voice.

The vicar raised a finger to his lips, and began to nibble at a nail in his concentration.

“Do you have any weapons?” enquired the parson.

Brian shook his head.

“I am a doctor, sir.”

“Hold here then, doctor, for I have some firearms next door which may be of assistance to us.”

He was back within a few minutes carrying a rusty sabre.

“Here,” he wheezed with his exertion. “Take the sword. I am not much of a hand with knives.”

Brian gave a rueful smile.

“I am more at ease with a surgical knife than this mortician’s piece.”

As they left the house, they encountered Mrs Trevithick in the hall.

Tears welled into her eyes.

“God send you rescue her, for I have nursed Miss Helen ever since she were a bairn in arms. Good luck, sir. Good luck.”

Brian patted her hand silently and followed Pencarrow from the house.

They made their way up to the cliff tops without incident. There was a hint of light in the eastern sky, and Brian realized that dawn must be just below the eastern horizon, although the sky above Bosbradoe was like pitch.

He paused at the entrance to the estate, by the wrought iron gates, and could clearly see where these had been torn back to admit the coach in which the baron had abducted Helen. The gates were now back in place, chained and locked once more.

Brian raised a finger to his lips and spoke in a low voice to Pencarrow.

“We must go silently from here. I fear he will be expecting us and have some defences ready.”

The old man nodded.

Together they climbed the old stone wall and dropped noiselessly down on the other side into the dark woodland.

Brian led the way, keeping well clear of the overgrown pathway he had used on his previous visits. The two men, encumbered by their weapons, pushed through the heavy undergrowth towards the house.

The two men came through the woods to the moonlit lawn. It seemed to Brian that he knew every inch of the lawn, so many times had he crossed it during the past day.

Surprisingly the door of the house stood open.

As they entered they heard a scream from somewhere within the building.

“Miss Helen!” cried Pencarrow.

Brian plunged down the black passageway calling over his shoulder:

“Quick! To the cellar!”

The two men raced to the servants’ hall, and the vicar, panting, followed the young doctor down the stairs to the secondary hall and through the iron studded door to the great cavern which was the baron’s laboratory.