by Cindy Winget
*****
Morning sunlight filtered in through the gauzy curtains of the window, waking the young couple, who had been sound asleep.
“Good morning, Mrs. Frankenstein,” Victor smiled.
Elizabeth lay with her disheveled head upon his inner arm. As he drew her closer, she smiled back at him, her eyes twinkling with happiness. “Good morning to you too, Mr. Frankenstein. But whatever are you doing in my bedchambers?” she teased.
Victor laughed. “You know how we rascals are. We steal into the bedrooms of any unsuspecting young maiden we wish. And you are the only woman I wish to direct my attention upon.” He kissed her upon the forehead and watched as her cheeks flushed a becoming pink.
Her breath hitched and she bit her bottom lip. “I must look a frightful mess. I am embarrassed to have you see me this way.” She sat up and began combing her fingers through her hair.
Victor reached up and took her hand. “You are more lovely to me in this moment than I have ever seen you.” He kissed the back of the hand he had stolen.
“Victor! What is this? What has happened to you!?” she suddenly cried.
Victor was confused by her response until she reached out with her small hand and traced the scars upon his shoulder; made by one of the wolves being compelled by Dracula. “It’s nothing, my dear. An old wound.”
“Victor, I have known you all my life. I have seen you without a shirt on when you and Henry used to swim in the pond at the back of your property. This is not an old wound. It looks mighty fresh. The scar tissue is still pink.”
“Elizabeth, forgive me for my lie. There are events in my life that I don’t think I will ever be able to bring myself to tell you. They are too horrific. Suffice it to say, I have done things in my life I am not proud of and I am loath to share them with you at this time lest you see me differently.”
Elizabeth’s eyes grew thoughtful, the anger that had been there moments before fading just as quickly as it had come. “Did these events by chance start in Ingolstadt?”
Victor nodded in surprise.
“I knew something had changed in you. You used to be so zealous and ambitious and then when you returned from England, you had changed yet again. You seemed so depressed. I tried to tell myself it was because of the death of William and Justine, but I could tell that you felt a secret guilt, though I couldn’t for the life of me understand why.”
“I may yet tell you at some future date, but not now. Not when the memories are still so fresh. I shudder to dwell on them and would hate to think that your feelings may change toward me. No, don’t say anything. I know you will deny this, but as of yet you have no notion of what it is I have done. The crime that I have committed against God and nature. I selfishly want your gaze to rest upon me with nothing but love and respect and I am not quite ready to lose that.”
“I understand. I don’t like it, mind you, but I understand. Or at least I think I do. If at any time you should change your mind, you know where to find me, for I will always be at your side from this day forward.”
“How do I deserve such a good woman?”
Elizabeth feigned surprise. “Oh! I thought that was obvious. You don’t. I have lowered my standards in regards to you. I figured that I would qualify for sainthood this way and not have to worry overly much should I miss Mass a time or two.”
Victor chuckled. “You stay here, my saintly love, and I shall bring you breakfast in bed,” he said with a wink.
“Why, Mister Frankenstein. You have read my mind. I am famished!”
Victor got out of bed and pulled on a pair of breeches and a white button up shirt. He pattered into the adjoining room where a small kitchen was situated, humming contentedly to himself as he gathered scones, muffins, and salted pork onto ceramic plates. He poured out tall glasses of milk from the ice box and hot cups of tea from the teapot. Placing the small accumulation of baked goods and beverages onto a serving tray, he brought it all back to the small bedroom he shared with his new wife.
The sight that met his eyes upon his return caused Victor to drop the carefully laid banquet. The ceramic dishes shattered, sending shards of sharp glass skittering in different directions. Tea and milk splattered upon the pristine wooden floors and ran down the walls.
Leaning over his young bride, his meaty hands upon her slender throat, was that very fiend he had reflected upon being rid of not many hours ago. Elizabeth’s rosy cheeks had gone deathly pale and her eyes bulged in horror.
The monster turned his head in Victor’s direction, a wicked grin spreading upon his diabolical face. “Did I not warn you that I would be with you on your wedding night?” He removed his large hands from encircling Elizabeth’s neck and carelessly tossed her upon the bed.
She didn’t move. Already, dark bruises were forming upon her white throat. Her auburn hair was draped over her face, obscuring her eyes from Victor’s view.
It was just as well. He did not wish to gaze any longer upon the fear he had already witnessed there. He didn’t want her accusing eyes resting upon him, nor did he feel able to cope with seeing those lifeless eyes staring back at him, the light having left them forever.
Victor trembled with rage and anguish. “NO!” The cry tore unbidden from his dry throat. “No! No! No! What have you done!? Oh, unfeeling demon of hell! How could you deprive the world of one such as her!? Why must you make my loved ones pay for the sins which are mine? Why not just kill me?”
The pain of his loss dug into his heart like a red-hot poker. A yell of sheer anguish tore free from Victor’s lips; an inarticulate sound of grief. A sound of torment meant only for the damned. For damned Victor was. Would he never find solace or comfort?
“I have already tried that. It seems that you, Doctor Frankenstein, are not so easily killed. Besides, I had made you a promise and I have fulfilled it,” Dracula said, cruelly indicating Elizabeth’s prostrate body upon the bed. “Why should you have the happiness that you have denied me?”
“How is this possible? How can this be?” Victor was muttering to himself. “We killed you! We destroyed you in every conceivable way a vampyr can be harmed!”
Dracula chuckled deeply in his throat. “How many times must I convince you of my immortality, Father? I am not like regular vampyrs. Vampyrs are created by mortal men giving up their souls to the devil. I was created not by heaven, nor hell, but by you. Who says that I even have a soul to fritter away in demonic deals of greed and selfishness? I am Vlad the Impaler, the very first mortal thought to have sold his soul for the sake of his nation. But I am also so much more than that. More than him. I have you to thank for that, my creator. I am not like anything this world has ever known. I will admit that it took a considerable amount of time and effort to get past the garlic and holy wafers, but as you can see, I managed.”
Victor rushed at the fiend, his hands clenched into tight fists, but Dracula was gone. Nothing more than mist floating out the open window above the headboard.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Elizabeth was laid to rest and the inquiry into her death was resolved—it having been determined that she had been accidentally strangled in her sleep by her own nightgown. Victor did not correct this assumption for he did not have time to waste convincing a constable that he was innocent of all wrongdoing, and no law man had the power to retrain the true perpetrator.
From that time forth, Victor became obsessed and single-minded in his determination to destroy his creation. He would pursue the atrocity of his ambition for however long it took to make sure that, this time, the creature remained dead. He did not yet know how this feat was to be accomplished. He knew only that he would not rest until he saw it done.
Not able to tell the truth of where he was going or what he was about to his father or Ernest, he claimed that in his grief, nothing would bring him solace but to leave this place—
which held so many fond memories of his dear Elizabeth—and travel the world. In a sense, he was telling the truth. He could no more have
stayed in that place than he could have cut out his own heart.
His father had only nodded in sorrowful understanding and curtly gave permission for the trip, knowing in his heart that he couldn’t have prevented it anyway.
Victor knew the road to his success would be long and daunting, therefore, he did not enlist the help of his friends. They had already suffered enough. They had done enough for him and had their own lives to live and dreams to pursue. He must do this on his own. This was his problem to fix.
For nearly three years, Victor pursued his nemesis. Across oceans and continents, deserts and forests. He slept little and ate even less; finding meager sustenance only when it became absolutely necessary.
Dracula, seemingly enjoying the game of cat and mouse, would, at times, leave a recently killed rabbit or morsel of food for Victor upon the trail when it became apparent that the man would waste away otherwise. He would leave clues to his whereabouts or carve taunting messages into the bark of trees or the hard-packed earth. But he remained, as always, just out of Victor’s reach.
Victor would often stop when he was near urban metropolises in order to take advantage of their libraries and do research on vampyrs. It soon became apparent, however, that no amount of research was going to tell him what he so desperately wanted to know. Van Helsing had done research on the undead for years and he had no more clue than Victor on how to destroy this creature, for Dracula was right. He was not like ordinary vampyrs. The lore Victor dug up on the subject did not seem to pertain to Dracula.
Victor could not, nay, would not, believe that there was no way to destroy this fiend, and he would not rest until he had figured it out. Unless he should die before accomplishing his goal; giving way to fatigue, hunger, or the deliberate and debilitating ways of time, he would never give up. Should Dracula grow weary of the game and kill him, so be it. But until he breathed out his last breath, Victor would do nothing but try to eradicate the walking proof of his folly, and thereby save mankind.
At times, Victor would lose the trail and almost despair until coming across scared villagers or farmers who would claim to have been visited by a demon of hell. They would report that the Devil had sent his minion to curse their village for sins committed against heaven by selfish wrongdoers of the town. Wrongdoers who were now reaping their reward by having their blood sucked out of them, for bodies were found in the morning, totally devoid of blood. At other times they were simply frightened by the tall and grotesque appearance of Dracula, and would shriek and gnash their teeth in inarticulate speech as they pointed in which direction the fiend had gone.
In time, Victor’s pursuit took him into the far reaches of the glacial black sea. Victor procured for himself a sledge, a team of dogs to pull it, furs with which to dress and wrap his frail human frame, and as much food as the rest of his meager funding would allow, and followed Dracula into that dark abyss of the north from whence not many returned.
For three weeks, Victor ran upon the ice, urging his team of sled dogs onward toward victory or defeat. He rested only when necessary, having already had one of his dogs die of fatigue during the pursuit.
One dark and dreary night, Victor sat upon the ice, contemplating if plunging Dracula into the depths of the frozen sea would freeze him the way it would an ordinary man. He found a macabre delight in daydreaming of ways to kill Dracula. Here on the ice, his thoughts revolved around freezing and drowning him down in the dark abyss, where he would be unable to resurface due to the frozen expanse. Victor would cut a hole in the ice-covered wasteland, lure Dracula into it and replace the piece of ice—finally ridding the world of the demon. However, he knew in his heart it wouldn’t work. With a resigned sigh, he took a bite of his dried beef and tossed the rest to the dogs, who snarled and snapped at each other for the biggest piece. Victor lay down on the sledge, wrapped himself in furs, and closed his eyes; willing sleep to come upon him, if only for a few hours.
With a crack as loud as thunder, the piece of ice that Victor and his dogs reposed on, split apart and sent them adrift in the sea. In a panic, Victor vacated his bed and ran to the glacier’s edge. He broke off a piece of the sledge and attempted to use it as an oar, paddling frantically back toward the main landmass of ice. The dogs began to bark, as though sensing his distress. It was no use. All of his paddling did nothing to bring them about. The piece of ice remained adrift in an endless sea of freezing water.
This was it. Victor had reached the end of his journey. He was out of food, his fingertips and nose were black with frostbite, and he had no way to proceed further.
*****
Robert Walton was a simple man; humble and modest. A man of small pleasures and small dreams. Some would say he was a lonely man, but Robert never would have classified himself as such. He was quite content with his lot in life.
That is, until quite recently. As he got up in years and spent more and more time away from his sister, he would admit, only inwardly, or perhaps to that sister whom he loved more than life itself, that he would not despise having a friend. A confidante. A loyal companion with whom to converse.
He was never truly alone, for there were many men upon the whaling vessel he spent eight months out of the year sailing upon, but even so, he found to his chagrin that as amiable and pleasant as these men were, they did not fill that void within him that longed for companionship. They were a friendly group of men, hard-working and honest to a fault, but they, too, were simple men.
Not that Robert would hold that against any man, he himself being a man of no formal education. However, he had grown up reading novels about sea voyages and the adventures written by Jules Verne from his Uncle Thomas’s library. These books were the very reason for his interest in procuring for himself a vessel of his own and making a career of whaling. But although his interest remained mostly fixed in books about the sea—Treasure Island, Mutiny on the Bounty, Moby Dick and the like—he also found himself on rainy days reading any tome he could get his hands on. The men upon his vessel, only half of which were even literate, found his fondness for the written word quite bizarre and would only shake their heads and laugh whenever he tried to discuss literature with them, claiming that they had not the brains nor the inclination to keep up with what he was trying to discuss.
So it was that Robert remained close only to that sister whom a most merciful God thought to bestow upon his life, for she also deemed reading a beneficial and pleasant pastime. She was ever patient with a young lad who longed to go on adventures upon the open sea, when all others thought him rather mad.
It was to this sister that he now wrote, sitting in his cold and creaky cabin at the stern of the ship with a single taper to light the page. Wrapped though he was in furs, he was still chilled to the bone. Taking a long swig of rum to warm his belly, which dribbled down his bushy beard, he began to write once more, the fountain pen scratching across the paper. The shrill cry of the wind howling outside was the only noise to be heard.
August 5, 1843
My Dearest Margaret,
I write to you from the North Sea, where I have become trapped in a veritable wasteland of ice and snow. You will therefore not receive this missive for quite some time, when I have already been freed from the ice. Or else, perhaps you shall never receive it should nature take its natural course and I perish before we meet. Temperatures having hit an all-time low, I fear that I shall be imprisoned here for the foreseeable future.
But no more of this maudlin talk. I wish not to alarm you and, as you know, I have been in dire straits before and managed to get out of them. My trip to St. Petersburg, up until this moment, has actually been quite pleasant. Although I find myself missing you more and more. Busy though I know you are with a husband and three children to raise, I hope that in your contemplative downtime, your mind turns toward your loving brother.
I will admit that I long for some companionship. For an amiable man capable of holding his own in a lively discussion on more than just the subject of whaling. Or perhaps a p
retty young wife to keep me warm at night. I find myself more and more, wondering if my days of adventuring are better left behind me. Perhaps I am getting too old for this life. When I was younger, the prospect of becoming trapped in the North Sea would only enliven within me that spirit of adventure that encompassed me with each tale I read, and which emboldened me to seek out places unknown. But now these old bones creak like my sailing vessel and reminds me that I am not the young buck I once was.
I know you are likely laughing at me, dear sister, as you read this because you know full well that I am merely blowing steam. I have made similar complaints in the past and have always returned to the loving embrace of the sea.
But wait, there is something going on topside. Some commotion aboard my ship is drawing my attention away. Details to follow.
Ho ho! I have yet found myself an adventure worthy of Jules Verne or Robert Louis Stevenson. Upon ascending the stairs to the top deck, I found my men excited by something. When I asked what all the fuss was about, one of the men handed me a spyglass and pointed out toward the sea of ice. Raising it to my eye, a most unusual sight met my gaze. Roughly a half mile away, there was a man! A very unusual man of gigantic proportions. He was on a sledge being pulled by dogs. How could this be? We were hundreds of kilometers away from civilization. How had he not succumbed to the elements? What was he doing here?
The men and I watched him as he rode on by, having not had this much excitement for quite some time. In two hours’ time, the ice that had us stuck fast began to break up. What an omen! It was determined that we should spend one last night here, lest the large pieces of ice prove a danger to my ship.
I trust all is well with you and yours and now that the ice has broken up, I hope to be back with you soon. In the meantime, I shall be thinking of you and missing you.
