The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (92 page)

She straightened, smiling. The bed was ready.

“Will you require anything else?” she asked.

“Nothing, thank you.”

She nodded and left, and the room was stark and harsh with her departure.

I crawled into my crude bed.

I didn’t sleep well.

It was still early and, although my body ached and protested from the rigours of the trek, my mind was active and alert. The thought of starting out again early in the morning was unpleasant, and I felt that very little had been accomplished by my efforts. Perhaps Hodson would tell the Indian to set a more leisurely pace, but I couldn’t very well suggest this after he’d already mentioned how inconvenient it would be to have the Indian wasting time as my guide. It was a distasteful thought, added to the futility of the journey.

Presently I began to drift towards sleep, my body overruling my mind and drawing me into a state of half-consciousness, half thinking and half dreaming. A vision of Susan occupied my mind and then, as the dreams became more powerful than the thoughts and my subconscious mind rejected the restrictions of my will, it became a vision of the splendid Anna which I was unable or unwilling to reject. I yielded to this night-time prowling of the id, the transformation of thought to dream.

I was asleep.

I awoke in instant terror . . .

The sound awakened me.

There was no gradual surfacing from slumber, I was fully conscious in that instant, and I knew it was no dream . . . knew, even in that first moment, what the sound had been. Gregorio’s haunted words flashed back to me – a sound like no man has ever heard – and I knew that this was that sound.

It was a cry, a deep rolling bellow, quavering at the end, a sound that only vocal cords could have made, but that no vocal cords I’d ever heard could possibly have made. It was indescribable and unforgettable, the howl of a creature in torment.

I lay, trembling and staring at the dark ceiling. The candle was out, and my fear was blacker than the room. It seemed impossible that a sound, any sound, could have rendered me helpless, and yet I was petrified. I’ve always considered myself as brave as the next man, but this sensation was far beyond human courage – beyond human conception. I wanted desperately to stay where I was, motionless and silent in the dark, but I knew I would never forgive such cowardice, and I forced myself to move, inch by agonizing inch, as though my bones grated harshly together.

My cigarette case and lighter were on the floor beside the cot, and I fumbled for the lighter and ignited the candle. Shadows leaped against the walls and I cringed away from their threatening shapes, waiting for reality to form. It was some seconds before I managed to stand up and pull my clothing over the ice and sweat of my skin. Then, holding the candle before me like a talisman to ward off evil, I moved to the door and pushed through the curtains.

The house was too quiet.

Surely no one could have slept through that sound, and yet there was no stir of awakening. It was as if everyone had been awake beforehand and anticipated the noise. It had been very near, loud and vibrating, as though echoing from close confines, and I thought of the cave behind the house; felt strangely certain the sound had come from there; moved quietly down the corridor to the front room and then through the second passage that led toward the cavern entrance. Although the sound was not repeated, the silence was terrifying in its own way, a silence formed from that sound or an effect of the sound. I was stiff with dread, my backbone tingling and my flesh rippling until it seemed that snakelike, I was trying to shed my skin. If all fear is emotional, this fear was primordial, linked more to instinct than conscious knowledge of danger. I wanted to locate the source of the sound, but the dread was far deeper than any conception of what I might find, a repulsion that lurked secretly within me in some atavistic remnants of the past, some hideous racial memory awakened.

I forced myself forwards, through the second room. The door opening within the cave was open, and the tunnel beyond was dark. Light showed at the end, where it widened into the chamber, but it failed to penetrate the passage, and stepping into the darkness was like plunging into cold liquid qualms of panic. I don’t know what resolution drove me forwards, what reserves of willpower summoned the mechanical motions of advancing, but I held the candle before me and walked into the corridor.

The pale light circled before me, floating over the contorted rocks in evil designs, and wavering on to meet the electric light at the far end, fading against the great brilliance and recoiling over the stoves, over a bundle of rags that blocked my path.

Rags that moved.

I would have screamed, had my throat worked, but I was frozen into motionless silence as the rags shifted and took shape, and I found myself staring into a face, a face twisted and wrinkled and human, swathed in a filthy shards, the eyes gleaming under the dark shelf of overhanging brow. It was a woman, ancient and bent and deformed. She had been coming toward me. Now she stopped and spread her arms wide, barring the way like some loathsome crucifix, the rags hanging from her elbows in folds that seemed part of her body, some membrane attaching her arms to her flanks.

She hissed, an exclamation, perhaps a word in some unknown language, rocking from side to side on crooked haunches, and another form loomed up behind her, brushed her aside and advanced on me. My heart stopped, then burst with a surge of blood that rocked my brain. I dropped the candle, and saw the Indian in the
light that shot up from the floor, nostrils flaring and cheekbones casting oval shadows in the sockets of his eyes. His hand closed on my shoulder, the strength unbelievable, as if those terrible fingers could have closed effort, lessly through my bones. I fully expected to die at that moment.

The grip relaxed then. I was dimly aware that Hodson had shouted something from the laboratory; I heard a dull clang as the metal door beyond was closed. Then the Indian had turned me and was pushing me before him, back the way I’d come. I offered no resistance, and he was not unduly rough, although those hands could never be gentle. He walked behind me until we were back at my room, then pointed at the bed with all four fingers extended and stood in the doorway, bending beneath the frame, until I had crawled cringing on to the cot. When I turned he had left, the beaded curtains whispered his departure, and I collapsed in a limp reaction which it causes me no shame to recall.

It was some time before my mind was released from the emotions, and I was able to think. Then my thoughts came tumbling in disorder. What had caused that sound? What had taken place in the room beyond the laboratory? Who had the ancient crone been, what was her function, what would the Indian have done to me if Hodson had not shouted? Where was Anna? How on earth did this household fit together, what purpose did the members fulfil in whatever monstrous scheme was being conducted? I found no answers, and I don’t suppose that I wanted those answers, that I was prepared to have such terrible knowledge etched on my mind, with my shoulder still burning from the dreadful clutch of the giant Indian, and that ghastly cry still vibrating in my memory.

Anna came to my room in the morning.

She acted as if nothing unusual had happened in the night, and told me that breakfast was ready. I was still dressed, the sweat dried on my clothing, but she didn’t notice this, or comment on it. I got up immediately and followed her to the front room, where Hodson was already seated at the table. He looked tired and drawn. I sat opposite him.

“Sleep well?” he asked.

I said nothing. Anna poured coffee from an earthenware jug. Hodson’s hands were steady enough as he drank.

“I found myself unable to sleep,” he said, casually. “I often get up in the middle of the night and do some work.”

“Work? What work?”

“I beg your pardon?” he said. His annoyance and surprise at my tone seemed genuine.

“What on earth caused that cry in the night?”

Hodson pondered for a few moments, probably not deciding what to tell me as much as whether he should answer at all, rather to satisfy my curiosity or castigate my impertinence.

“Oh, you mean just before you came to the laboratory?”

“Obviously.”

“I wondered what brought you prowling about.”

“And I wonder what caused that sound?”

“I heard it,” he said. “Yes, now that I think of it, it’s small wonder you should be curious. But it was merely the wind, you know. You’ve heard how it howls higher up in the mountains? Well, occasionally a blast finds a crevice in the rocks and comes down through the cave. It startled me the first time I heard it, too. I was tempted to find the fissure and have it sealed, but of course it’s necessary for proper ventilation. Otherwise the laboratory would be as rank as the tunnel, you see.”

“That was no wind.”

“No wind you’ve ever heard before, Brookes. But this is a strange place, and that wind came from beyond where man has ever ventured.”

I felt a slight doubt begin. I’d been positive before, but it was just possible that Hodson was telling the truth. I had noticed that the air in the laboratory was fresh, and couldn’t doubt there were actually openings in the rock. But the doubt remained slight, with the sound still recent in my memory.

“I’m sorry if the Indian alarmed you,” Hodson was saying. “I’ve instructed him never to allow anyone in the laboratory without me, you understand. He was just performing his duties.”

“If you hadn’t shouted – ”

Hodson paused, his cup before his face.

“Would he have killed me?” I asked.

“For a scientist, you have a vivid imagination,” he said. He shipped from the cup. “I’m no Frankenstein, you know. No mad scientist from a bad cinema film. Although, I must say, the mad scientists generally seem misunderstood by the clottish populace.”

“Who was the old woman?”

“If it’s any concern of yours, she’s an old servant. Not actually so old, but these people age rapidly. She’s past her usefulness now, but I let her stay. She has nowhere else to go. Surely you don’t see evil implications in an ageing old woman, do you?”

His expression was scornful and angered me.

“Very decent of you to allow her to remain,” I said. “And to supply her with such extraordinary garments.”

His eyes reflected something that wasn’t quite indignation.

“My affairs are my affairs,” he said. “It’s time for you to go, I believe. The Indian has your horse ready and is waiting for you.”

At the door, I said, “I’m sorry for troubling you.”

Hodson shrugged. Anna was standing beside him.

“No matter,” he said. “Perhaps it did me good to talk with someone. And good luck with your investigations.”

“Good-bye,” Anna said.

We shook hands solemnly, as she must have thought a parting required. She remained in the doorway after Hodson had gone back inside. The Indian had led the horses around to the front of the house, and I saw they were both nervous, stamping and shying. When I placed my foot in the stirrup, my mount sidestepped away and I had to hop after him on one foot, holding mane and cantel, before I was able to get into the saddle. The horse had been very placid before. The Indian slipped on to his own horse and led the way up the track. I looked back and waved to Anna. She raised a hand rather timidly, possibly not acquainted with this gesture of farewell. Then she vanished into the house.

Well, that is that, I thought, as we wound up the track from the narrow valley. But I noticed one more thing. On the incline to the north a prominence of shrub jutted down toward the basin, and as we drew above it I saw that a strip, perhaps a yard wide, seemed to be broken and flattened, running from the top of the hill nearly to the apex of this growth, and where the strip ended some loose brush and limbs seemed to be stacked in a small mound, as if concealing something. A vague form, greyish in colour, was just visible through this tangled pile. It appeared that something had been dragged down from the rim of the hill and hastily covered. I couldn’t quite make out what it was. As we reached the top of the trail, and the land levelled out before us, I saw two dark shapes circling and starting a cautious descent, thick necks poised attentively, lowering their sharp beaks below arched wings. These repulsive carrion eaters sank slowly down towards the northern slope, and then the land shouldered up and I could see no more.

I must have looked in fine shape indeed, judging from Graham’s expression when I halted the horse in front of his store, filthy and unshaven and brittle with exhaustion. I expect I looked no worse than I felt. The pace of the return journey had not been noticeably less than the first, and had followed too soon to allow
my body to harden from that initial exertion. And that incredible Indian hadn’t even paused before turning back. When finally we reached the hardened beginnings of the trail that led through the tablelands to Ushuaia, he’d pointed in that curious, four-fingered fashion, turned his horse sharply, and headed back into the hills.

Graham helped me to dismount.

“All right?” he asked.

“Yes Just stiff and tired.”

“You look like a wounded bandit who’s been running in front of a posse for a week,” he said.

I managed a smile, feeling the dirt crack along the creases of my face.

“Didn’t expect you back so soon,” he said. He looped the reins over the post and we went into the building.

“Neither did I. I wan’t particularly welcome at Hodson’s, I afraid.”

Graham frowned. Inhospitality is virtually unknown in frontier territories. He said, “I always thought there was something queer about Hodson. What’s he doing out there?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

I began pacing back and forth over the wooden floor, loosening my muscles. The knots were firm. Graham called the boy to take my horse back to the stables.

“How far did you go?”

“God knows. How fast can a horse travel in those hills? We must have been actually riding more than twenty-four hours.”

“Yeah, that’s right. God knows. But I’ll bet that Indian covered the greatest possible distance in the time. It’s amazing how these people find the shortest routes. Can’t understand that Hodson, though.”