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.
CHAPTER VI
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.”
A chorus of approval greeted this.
“Get out, baboon!”
“Bandy legs!”
“Devil!”
With alcoholic courage, the villagers started to shout ribald remarks at the unfortunate creature who stood staring sullenly at them.
It was Tom Jenner, full of rum, who staggered up to the silent Hugo and prodded him with a fore-finger.
“I bet ’ee can dance on them fine legs of yourn, can’t ’ee?” he said in a confidential tone, which brought a gust of laughter from the company.
Hugo scowled fiercely.
“Wine,” he said, doggedly.
“What’s ’ee say then, Tom?” demanded Evan Tregorran.
“Ee says he wants wine.”
Tom Jenner threw a coin on the counter.
“Give him wine, landlord,” he ordered imperiously.
Noall hesitated.
“Don’t you think you best leave him alone, Tom?”
“Give him wine.”
A glass was placed in the creature’s hands.
Hugo sniffed it suspiciously and then drained it.
“Wine . . . good,” he said, after a moment’s contemplation.
A shout of laughter went round the room.
“Now then,” interrupted Tom Jenner, prodding the creature again. “Now then, let’s see ’ee do a hornpipe or a jig on them fine legs of yourn.”
The creature looked at him puzzled.
Tom Jenner took up a fiddle and started up a tune.
“Go on,” cried several people. “Dance, dance!”
“Don’t ’ee know how to dance?” demanded Evan Tregorran.
He executed a few ungainly steps. The creature looked at him in surprise. Then he suddenly realized what these people wanted him to do. His mouth twisted into a grimace which was, for him, a smile.
He stumbled about on his short legs making weird sounds, the nearest sounds the creature possessed to laughter.
Faster and faster went Willie Carew’s fiddle.
Suddenly the creature tripped and fell, landing in a wild heap at Brian’s feet.
The creature lay moaning awhile amidst the shouts of laughter. Then he climbed to his feet, raising an arm to the table at which Helen and Brian were sitting, and using it as a lever to draw himself upright. Brian was surprised to notice that the arm was a well-shaped limb with a fine hand and long delicate fingers. Also on the arm was a strange tattoo mark, two whales supporting a mermaid who was playing some sort of pipe. And across the tattoo was a white line of livid flesh which Brian knew to be a scar. The arm surprised Brian because it was out of keeping with the rest of the creature’s grotesque body. He instinctively looked at Hugo’s other arm, and saw that it was as gross and misshapen as the rest of the body, hairy with thick, stubby fingers.
He was about to remark on it when the inn door opened with a shattering crash.
The tall cadaverous figure of the baron, clad from head to toe in black, stood surveying the interior of the inn in grim silence.
His cold eyes swept the room and fell, finally, on Hugo. The creature seemed to whimper and crouch grovelling before him.
“Hugo!” snapped the baron. “Komm mit!”
Like a whipped dog, the creature ambled across to the baron and squatted at his feet.
There was a deathly silence in the tavern room.
The baron walked across to the counter and picked up the two bottles of wine that Noall had drawn up for the pitiful creature.
“Mine, I think?”
The baron’s voice was soft, almost sibilant.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You would like Hugo to dance for you some more?”
The pale, cold eyes bore into the landlord.
“It were just a bit of fun, sir. Just fun.”
“Yes? Fun?”
There was an awkward pause.
“When I send my servant here in the future you will treat him with respect,” the baron’s voice was suddenly harsh. “If I hear of a man maltreating Hugo again, I will personally take my riding crop to that man, and his wife will have to live with a sight which will be infinitely worse than the face of Hugo. Verstehen?”
The baron twisted on his heel and, with Hugo gibbering and scrambling behind him, was gone into the black night.
In the silence that followed Brian turned to Helen and suddenly cried in surprise.
The girl lay in a swoon on her seat.
It took a little time to bring her, with the help of a sobered Tom Jenner, to her house and seat her before the fire in the parlour.
She gave a tiny rueful laugh as Brian lent over her and felt her pulse.
“I seem to be making a habit of fainting.”
Brian waved away Mrs Trevithick who stood armed with a jar of smelling salts.
“Just lay back and relax a bit, Helen. Don’t worry.”
But a fierce light blazed in her eyes.
She reached up and caught Brian’s wrist in a grasp which was almost painful.
“Did you see that creature’s arm?”
Brian nodded.
“The arm with the weird tattoo, you mean?”
Helen swallowed as if something was hurting her.
“Yes, yes. That was it.”
“I thought it was strange for a creature like Hugo to indulge in tattoos,” smiled Brian. “What of it?”
“Did you also see the scar?”
“Yes.”
The girl placed the back of her hand to her mouth and gave a shuddering cry.
Brian bent forward in alarm.
“Helen, what is it?”
“Brian, that arm . . . that arm! It was my father’s arm!”
Brian reached out and touched the girl’s forehead.
It was not unduly hot. And her pulse, though a trifle rapid, gave no indication of temperature.
“Didn’t you hear me?” the girl demanded. “I said, the arm was that of my father.”
Brian bit his lip.
“I hear you, but I am not sure that I understand.”
The girl gave a sigh of exasperation.
“I mean no more nor less than what I say. It is horrible! Horrible!”
“You mean your father has a similar tattoo mark?” enquired Brian wonderingly.
The girl banged a clenched fist on the table in agitation.
“The arm, the tattoo, the scar . . . they are just not similar. They are the same. They are!”
Brian picked up his medical bag and silently rummaged through the contents. He picked up a dark yellow bottle marked “Laudanum” and measured some drops into a glass. Then he rang the bell and instructed Mrs Trevithick to bring some hot water and honey.
The girl watched him in silence.
“Look, Helen, it has been an upsetting day for you . . .” he began.
“You think I am insane?” snapped the girl.
“No, no,” he said gently. “But what you say is impossible. Though the tattoo could be similar.”
Mrs Trevithick returned with a kettle of hot water. Brian motioned her out and mixed a small drink.
“This will help you to relax.”
“But what of the creature? You still don’t believe . . .”
He cut her short with a gesture.
“I believe you. But I want you to relax and get a good night’s sleep. But certainly the matter needs investigation. You go upstairs to bed, and I will go and have a few words with the baron and see if we can clear up the mystery. The creature must have had the tattoo copied from somewhere.”
The girl was about to protest again, but resignedly took the glass from Brian’s hands.
When she had gone Brian poured himself a glass of rum and slumped into a chair.
Was she hallucinating? No, he had seen the arm for himself, and he remembered distinctly how, at the time, he felt that it was odd and did not seem to fit the creature’s general grotesqueness. But the very idea . . . the creature with an arm similar to the doctor’s – the same as the doctor’s arm. Ridiculous!
He rang the bell and Mrs Trevithick entered with her perpetual sniff.
“Did you want something, Doctor Shaw?”
“Indeed I did, Mrs Trevithick,” answered Brian. “You have worked for Doctor Trevaskis for many years. Did the doctor have any distinguishing marks on him?”
“What, sir?”
Mrs Trevithick frowned.
“Did he have any marks that were different from other people, from which he might be identified. Marks, such as tattoos.”
“Oh that!” The woman’s mouth quirked in an attempt at a smile. “Yes. The doctor had a tattoo on his right arm. Now let’s see . . . it was a mermaid, sitting atop two whales . . . sitting there playing a pipe or some such thing.”
Brian felt a cold gnawing in his stomach.
“Oh, and there was a scar on the same arm. He fought a duel once, so they say, and some man cut his arm with a sword.”
Brian sat in silence.
“Will that be all, sir?”
“What? Oh, yes. That’s all, Mrs Trevithick,” he said waving her from the room.
Why had Hugo devised a similar tattoo to the doctor? Had he seen the marks and liked them so much that he got somebody to repeat the tattoo on his arm? But how had he managed to obtain a similar scar? It was surely not possible. And Helen; Helen said that the arm was her father’s. But that was also impossible. How could someone else’s arm be transferred and grafted to another human being? It would require a surgery so advanced that . . . no, he was mad even to contemplate the idea. Beside which, the doctor had been missing only two days, and even if such an operation were possible, the graft could not be made and healed within that time.
There was only one way to solve the mystery, for mystery it surely was. He must go up to Tymernans, the baron’s house, and seek some explanation.
CHAPTER VII
The moon was lighting the landscape with an eerie luminescence when Brian Shaw made his way alon
g the cliff path that led to the grim blackness of the forest which surrounded Tymernans. Storm clouds, low and heavy with rain, were scudding across the blackness of the sky, sometimes scraping across the face of the moon and hiding the myriad of stars that hung like silver pinpoints in the black void. A slight wind made the tall grasses rustle and the leaves on the evergreens blow this way and that. Its breath through the tall trees made an almost human moaning which rose and fell, fell and rose with monotonous persistence. Several times, as the light was blacked out by the clouds, Brian stumbled and cursed in the darkness.
As he drew near the wrought-iron gates, and began to climb over, the rain began to splatter down and he was thankful for his heavy travelling cloak.
An instinct drew him along the overgrown path and this time he kept all his senses atune to any threatened danger. He stopped several times and listened attentively, wondering whether the unseen eyes of Hugo were upon him.
Slowly he moved on until he stood on the edge of the grass lawn before that once splendid mansion.
The rain was blowing in torrents now, mingling with the salt spray whipped up from the sea. He could feel the nearness of the sea, hear the angry crash of its breakers on the rocks somewhere below the cliffs, feel its menace in the air. The trees afforded him some shelter, and he stood irresolutely under their protection, trying to find courage to sprint across to the house.
A blinding light suddenly caused thousands of shadows to be thrown this way and that and lit up the house like some bizarre nightmare scene, painting it in vivid blacks and whites.
There was but the merest second before the heavy crash of thunder followed the lightning stroke.
Then the lightning struck again. This time Brian, his heart pounding, was prepared for the blinding flash.
What made him start, however, was the fact that the lightning seemed to fork straight into the old mansion before him and the noise of its impact seemed like a thousand wailing banshees.
He raised a hand to shade his eyes from the rain and waited until a third and a fourth stroke caught at the roof of the house.
No, he was not mistaken. There, on the roof of a tower, the tallest part of the old building, was a weird contraption – a sort of disc-like affair made of some gleaming metal. It was to this that the lightning seemed attracted, striking again and again, and causing the metal to turn yellow, red, blue and then white. It was a strange contraption, and after the lightning and thunder had passed echoing out to sea, the weird disc continued to glow and continued to hum with strange noises.
The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) Page 38
