The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

  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.

  VII

  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.”

  He reached behind the counter and came up with a bottle; he handed it to me and I drank from the neck. It was brandy, and it felt very good.

  “Well, what now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. First thing, I want to crawl into a hot bath. Then I’m going to sleep through until morning. I can’t make any decisions in this state.”

  “Good judge,” he said.

  I thanked him for his help, told him I would see him the next day after deciding what further supplies or assistance I might need, and limped back to the hotel. The desk clerk raised a polite eyebrow when he saw the condition I was in, and I asked him to have the maid heat a bath. I think he concurred with that judgement, and he asked if I needed any help getting upstairs. I managed on my own, however, and as soon as I was
in my room I stripped my grimy clothing off and put a bathrobe on, then sat down on the bed to wait for the bath to be readied. After a moment or two, I lay back and closed my eyes, just for a second.

  I never heard the maid knock, and when I awoke it was morning . . .

  I spent the day relaxing and writing two letters, seated at a table in the bar. Jones, despite his reluctance to follow in the paths of his fellow tourists, had succumbed to a chartered flight to Cape Horn, and there were no distractions, other than my own musings as to how he was getting along with the three widows, and an admission that I would rather have liked to see Cape Horn myself.

  The first letter was to Smyth. I considered for some time before I began writing, and informed him in detail of my interviews with Gregorio and MacPherson and my visit to Hodson’s, stressing, I fear, the devotion to duty which the latter entailed. I sketched the nature of Hodson’s work briefly, from what the man had actually told me, and asked Smyth for his opinion of the possibilities of that, from general interest rather than in relation to my own investigations, and stressing that it was a theoretical point because Hodson would surely not welcome further concern on my part. I mentioned the Indian and Anna in terms, respectively, of awe and admiration, and was surprised to find how greatly Anna had impressed me. My conclusion was that I considered further probing warranted, despite Hodson’s avowed disinterest and lack of connection.

  But I made no mention of that sound in the night.

  Somehow, I found myself unable to express the feeling it had driven into me, and certainly there was no way to describe the sound itself, no comparisons whatsoever. And, now that I was back in the quiet hotel, I found myself almost willing to discount Hodson’s connection with the rumours. There seemed to be no connection with his laboratory work, however advanced that might have been in its own right, and his explanation – the wind howling down the fissures – seemed reasonable enough, likely even, although it brought a chill to remember my certainty at the time. But it was far too subjective a feeling to symbolize by the written word, and I did not attempt it.

  The second letter was to Susan. Before starting this, I re-read what I had written of Anna, and a sense of infidelity swept through me. I remembered how I had felt, watching her bend naked over the bed, with the candle light dancing over her flesh; how my loins had tightened with desire, and how close I had come to reaching out to her. I had never been unfaithful to Susan, and had never before felt the slightest urge or need, but there in the confines of that narrow cell, in that remote and forbidding land, I had struggled with an urgency so powerful –

  Well. I had resisted, and I was very glad that I had, and I wrote to Susan with love.

  VIII

  My mind came back from that faraway place, through those eternal weeks. The waiter was taking the dishes away, concerned that we’d barely touched the food, but not mentioning it; aware that something was very wrong between us.

  “Anything else, sir?” he asked, softly.

  “A drink?”

  “Yes. A strong drink,” Susan said.

  Susan had never drunk very much. I ordered large brandies, and she downed half of hers with the first swallow.

  “I kept your letter,” she said, as if she had somehow followed my thoughts. “The letter you wrote from Ushuaia. You still loved me when you wrote that, didn’t you? Or was that a lie, too?”

  “It was no lie. There is no lie, Susan. I love you now as much as then.”

  “Yes, whatever changed your mind must have happened after you wrote. I know there was love in that letter.”

  She drained the brandy.

  “But I shan’t ask you again.”

  “Another?”

  “Yes,” she said. She turned the empty glass in her hands. “No, never mind. I want to leave, Arthur.”

  “All right.”

  I signalled to the waiter.

  “I want to leave alone, Arthur,” Susan said.

  “Susan. Darling – ”

  “Oh God. I can’t stand this. I can’t bear it. I’m going now.”

  She stood up and walked quickly towards the entrance. I pushed my chair back and started to rise, then collapsed back on to the seat. The waiter stood beside the table and Susan was getting her coat at the counter.

  “The bill, sir?” the waiter asked.

  I shook my head.

  “No. Not yet. I’ll have another brandy.”

  “Large, sir?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  * * *

  I’d been drinking a large brandy the day that Gregorio came into the bar at the Albatross, too. It was the second day since my return from Hodson’s, and I’d sent the boy from Graham’s store to fetch Gregorio, feeling that it might be to my advantage to put my proposition to him here at the hotel, rather than at his shack – to talk to him on my own ground, removed from the realities of Gregorio’s life.

  He stood in the doorway, beside the boy. I nodded and the boy pointed to me and went back out. Gregorio walked down the bar and stood beside me.

  “Oh, it is you,” he said. He didn’t seem pleased. “I didn’t remember the name.” I had the impression that, had he remembered, he wouldn’t have come.

  “A drink?”

  “Pisco,” he said, shrugging. The barman poured the grape alcohol into a large tumbler. Gregorio was in no hurry to drink, and his feet shifted nervously.

  “I’ve been looking for your Bestia Hombre,” I said.

  He nodded, expecting that. He lifted the glass.

  “Pray God it doesn’t look for you,” he said.

  “Will you help me, Gregorio?”

  “I? How is that possible?”

  “I’d like you to take me to the place where you saw it.”

  “No. I will not go there again.” It was more a statement of unalterable fact than an assertion of refusal. He took his blackened pipe out and began to fill it with some exotic mixture from a rubber pouch.

  “I’ll pay well.”

  He looked balefully at me, struck a match and continued to regard me above the flame as he sucked the pipe into a haze of smoke. The contents blackened and curled above the bowl, and he pressed it back with a hardened thumb. A few shards escaped and drifted, smoking, to the floor.

  “I need money,” he said. “We all need money. But not to that place.”

  “You needn’t do anything else, Just guide me there. What danger could there be?”

  “Danger? Who knows? Perhaps none. But that place is . . . it is not a good place. It has very bad memories. I am no longer young and no longer brave. The dog was brave.”

  He shrugged once more.

  “Well, could you show me on a map?”

  “A map?”

  I thought he hadn’t understood the word.

  “Mapa,” I said.

  “Yes, I know this word. But what map? There is no map of that place. Not with detail.”

  “Could you make a map?”

  “Of no use to you. I have lived all my life here, and I am not young. I know the land. But to make a map – what is there to show on this map? It is rocks and trees and hills. How are they different? To me, perhaps, for I know them. But on the map it is the same.”

  This was true, of course. It had been a thoughtless request. And, anyway, I needed a guide with me, a man who knew the land and, preferably, knew where Gregorio had seen the creature. And that was only Gregorio.

  “I have already been out there,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I have heard the sound of the thing. Gregorio, I have heard it, and I know you told me the truth.”

  His eyes were wide. I wanted to shock him.

  “I heard it in the dark of night,” I said.

  “And still you wish to find it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are very brave, Señor. Braver than I.”

  “That is because I know there will be no danger,” I said. “I was frightened when I heard it, yes. But it is a living thing. It is no demon or spir
it, whatever it is, it is alive, and we’ll be well armed. It can’t hurt us.” I tried to look confident, almost nonchalant, and Gregorio seemed to weaken slightly. He took the pipe from his mouth and drank, replaced the pipe and drew, cheeks hollowed and a deep line etched between his eyebrows.

  “I would have a gun, too?” he asked.

  I nodded. I don’t honestly know if I had intended to carry a weapon, against my principles, but I do know I was relieved that Gregorio’s reluctance made it necessary.

  “I would like to kill it,” he said.

  “Only in self defence – ”

  “I would very much like to avenge the dog, yes.” His jaw tightened. “But the dog is dead. It would not help the dog. It is my Spanish blood that has the desire for revenge.” He leaned against the bar with both hands, head down between his shoulders. His shoulderblades were sharp beneath the canvas poncho, and his thoughts were sharp beneath his furrowed brow.

  “I would be very much afraid,” he said, without looking at me. The pipe bobbled in his teeth as he spoke.

  “But you will show me?”

  After a while he looked up.

  “How much money will you pay me?” he asked.

  But I knew that the money had very little to do with it.

  We decided to leave in two days, which gave ample time to make preparations, and for me to recover from the physical effects of the last trek. Actually, I felt very well. I’d been exercising lightly since my return, so that my muscles hadn’t stiffened much, and I felt that the exertion had hardened me sufficiently so that I didn’t dread repeating the journey. Then too, this time I would be able to dictate the pace at which we travelled. Although I was eager to get to the area where Gregorio had seen the creature, I felt no need for haste now that definite arrangements were being made for departure, unlike the impatience I’d felt while waiting for Hodson’s man to arrive without knowing when to expect him, when time and distance were unknown quantities. This time, we were able to plan accurately and take all the equipment and supplies necessary for a prolonged camp in the mountains.