by C. J. Archer
He sat back, alleviating the pressure of his weight on me. The blade was gone too, I realized. I pushed him off and he stumbled aside. He clutched his shoulder where a meat cleaver was lodged.
The moonlike head of Cook appeared above me. He held his hand out and I took it. He inspected my throat. "It ain't too deep."
Perhaps not, but it stung.
He reached down and, as calmly as he'd helped me to stand, he pulled the cleaver out of Holloway's shoulder. The man screamed and clutched at the wound, but it didn't staunch the gush of blood.
Cook sighed at his cleaver. "Have to throw this out now. Shame. Good knife, that."
I touched the cut at my throat and my hand came away bloody, but it was nothing compared to the blood covering Holloway's shoulder. "He needs a doctor," I said.
"He be needing a miracle when Fitzroy learns what he done."
Holloway curled into himself and sobbed into the dirt. He was pathetic; a small man with a closed mind. I couldn't believe I'd looked up to him, yearned for his love and respect. For the first time since discovering I was adopted, I was glad he wasn't my father.
"We'll put him in the cellar." Cook hauled Holloway up by his good arm. Holloway wailed in protest but didn't fight. He couldn't win anyway, not against a big man holding a meat cleaver. "Fitzroy can decide what to do with him when he gets back."
"We can't let him bleed to death."
"I'll patch him up best I can. I ain't calling the doctor until Fitzroy says to."
"Will he be mad if you let him go?"
"Furious. I'd rather have this cur's death on my conscience than be dismissed from Lichfield. Or worse."
He half-dragged half-carried Holloway to the house. I picked up his forgotten knife and followed. Cook unhooked a large key from inside the kitchen door then descended a set of stairs nearby. He unlocked a heavy oak door and marched his prisoner into the cool, musty room beyond.
Wine bottles lay on shelves to the left, most covered in dust. Sacks of flour huddled in the back corner, some empty crates beside them. Cook sat Holloway on one.
"How did you know where to find me?" I asked.
"You thought yourself clever." He laughed harshly. "You were seen leaving the cemetery."
"By whom?"
"By someone you have wronged before. Did you visit my beloved? Did her spirit talk to you, tell you that you revolt her?"
"That's not how it works." I wasn't going to try to explain my necromancy to him. Besides, I was curious about the person I'd wronged before. "Do you mean the costermonger?"
"He recognized you. You think a dress changes you, but it doesn't. The devil's creature is always recognized by the pure."
I snorted. "If this is the same costermonger who alerted the police to me, then he's anything but pure. I saw him fondling a whore one night, behind his cart. I believe he's married." It didn't surprise me that the costermonger recognized me that day when I left the cemetery with Fitzroy. He knew me well; I'd walked past his cart many times and stolen from him more than once. Holloway must have realized I would visit my adopted mother's grave and questioned him.
"Wait here," Cook ordered.
"The devil get you," Holloway hissed.
"One day. But not today. I be too busy."
Holloway's teeth ground audibly. "You'll burn in hell for this."
"No," I told him. "The bible preaches forgiveness. I will forgive you for this, in time, but you seem unable to forgive me for being born differently. Which of us deserves God's love?"
I walked away. It was only then that I saw the iron chains dangling from rings attached to the walls. I wondered if Cook had the keys to them. If so, he didn't chain Holloway up, but simply locked the door.
"I'll see to his wound," Cook said. "You rest."
Rest. I was too on edge to rest. Cook found a salve for me to use on my throat and I tied a clean bandage around the cut to protect it from my collar. I washed the dishes next, while he tended to Holloway's injury. I had to remember to thank him. If it hadn't been for the burly cook, I'd be dead.
That thought troubled me for the rest of the day. Holloway wasn't a large man, yet he'd completely overpowered me. And then there was the homeless fellow who'd almost raped me, the men in the holding cell… Too many times, I'd come close to either losing my life or my virginity. Today was one time too many. I couldn't rely on someone else being nearby to help me. One day my luck would run out, and I would be alone and helpless.
It was time to stop being helpless and learn to fight off attackers. Somehow.
The day went by slowly. Fitzroy and the others didn't return for lunch or dinner, and when darkness fell, I was sick with worry. Cook was no help. He insisted they always returned after such ventures, occasionally harmed and exhausted, but always alive.
But what if today was the day their luck ran out? What if Frankenstein had discovered them and captured them? While it seemed unlikely—three against one—I couldn't shake the anxiety needling at me.
I told Cook I was going to bed early. Instead, I changed into my boys' clothing when I returned to my room. Sometime in the previous days, the trousers, shirt and jacket had been cleaned, folded and put away in my dresser. I unpinned my hair and dragged the long fringe over my face. A familiar boy stared back at me in the mirror, and I offered him a smile. Charlie wasn't as afraid as Charlotte. He was tougher, more resourceful, and fleet-footed. It was good to walk in his boots again.
Cook kept to the kitchen so it was easy to sneak out the front door. It was a long walk to the docks, over an hour, but the night was dark, and nobody saw me as I crept through the shadowy lanes to Wapping.
It wasn't an area I knew particularly well and there were more warehouses than I realized. Fitzroy had said Frankenstein's was behind the larger dock-side ones, so I ran down streets and looked for windows that were covered. At each one, I paused and listened. When I heard nothing, I moved on.
After another hour, I was beginning to think I'd missed the right warehouse altogether, but then I spotted one at the end of a lane with a crack of light edging the window covering. I squatted beneath the window and listened. Only a faint humming came from inside. Not human, musical humming, but machine-like.
The window was locked; the door, too. A quick check showed there was no other way in through the front. I traversed back up the lane, past the row of joined warehouses, until an even smaller lane cut through the row. I scrambled over the gate and landed softly on the other side. The rear of the row was fenced off with gates providing access to loading yards behind each warehouse. I ran to the last one and tried to open it. Locked. Using a discarded crate as a step, I climbed over the top. My landing was as silent as all my movements had been so far. I may not have been able to fight off an attacker, but I'd been the best thief in the gang. None of the boys could match my combination of agility, speed and lightness. Dressing as a boy again reminded me of that. It was a skill I must remember to harness and use when necessary.
Now, it was vital.
The rear window was covered like the front. I squatted beneath it and listened. The humming sounded louder, like an engine coming to life. Then suddenly there was a crack, like lightning without the light.
I peeked through the window and had to cover my mouth to smother my gasp. Fitzroy had told us about the bodies of Frankenstein's creations, but seeing the six pale, scarred forms strapped to the chairs was far more gruesome than anything I'd imagined. The flickering light from a dozen candles revealed raw, ridged cuts across their chests, throats and foreheads, sewn up like seams. Blue veins formed intricate webs beneath their ghostly skin, and dark bruises circled their eyes. They were alive. I knew that much from the veins, yet they were utterly still.
So why the thick leather straps pinning their ankles and wrists to the chairs? And what kinds of chairs were made entirely of metal and had wires connecting them to a central machine? The humming and cracking came from that device. It was so loud now that any noise I made would not have been h
eard by Frankenstein inside.
He bent over another body, lying on a table at the far end of the warehouse. There were two more bodies on separate tables, their feet pointed toward me. Their ankles were strapped down too, but I couldn't see if their wrists were bound from my squatting position at the rear window.
I dared to stand on my toes, but still I couldn't see the faces. There were three bodies, and I could tell from their large bare feet that they were all men. No. No, no, no. Surely Fitzroy was too clever—too strong—to have been caught. But the coincidence was too great for me to dismiss it.
Bile burned my throat. My stomach rolled and heaved. I squatted down again and sat with my back to the wall. I drew in large breaths and steadied my nerves. Then I began to plan.
I found crates and stacked them, then climbed up to peer through the smaller, high window, used for ventilation near the roofline. From that angle I could see all three faces of the bodies on the tables. They were bloodied and bruised, but I recognized Seth and Gus immediately. The third had his cheeks smashed in, and the rest of his face was swollen and covered in blood. His hair was matted too, but it was clearly black. Unlike Seth and Gus, the third figure struggled to breathe. His chest barely rose with each gasp of air, and once, a bubble of blood formed on his lips. He was unconscious. They all were.
I stumbled down from my makeshift ladder and threw up in the corner of the loading dock. Oh God. No, please no. Don't let them become a body farm for Frankenstein. Don't let Fitzroy die.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my heart, where it felt like a sharp blade pierced me. Tears cascaded down my cheeks, but I dashed them away. They weren't dead yet.
I steeled myself and climbed back up the crates. Frankenstein had moved away from the tables and was checking the machine. Candlelight picked out a cut on his lip, the swell of a bruise on his cheek, but they were nothing compared to the injuries on my three friends. How had he overpowered them with only minimal harm to himself?
His face was slick with sweat, his hairline damp. He'd discarded hat, coat and gloves and stood in his shirt and trousers, rubbing his hands together as he inspected a glass panel on the machine. With a satisfied nod, he twiddled a dial and tapped the glass. His gaze flicked between his six creatures, then he turned the dial again. The sudden crack and snap of lightning made me jump. Bolts of light flashed at the points where the wires met the chairs, causing the bodies strapped to them to twitch and jerk as if they were alive.
My rapidly beating heart in my throat, I leaned closer to the window, unable to believe what I saw. I'd heard about electricity but never seen it in action before. Even so, I knew that I witnessed electricity at work. The engine must be generating it and sending it through the wires and into the chairs to animate the bodies.
If he had a machine to bring them to life, why did he need me?
The motor's hum began to slow, and the lightning bolts generated by the electricity ended. Yet the bodies still jerked and twisted.
The eyes of the one facing me opened, and I fell backward in surprise, landing on the hard ground. Thankfully the crates remained in place, and I'd not cried out. I was sore but nothing seemed broken. When I realized Frankenstein wasn't coming out to investigate, I climbed back up.
He wasn't there. I couldn't see the whole room from where I crouched on the top crate, so it was possible he was simply out of sight, or he could have left without snuffing out the candles.
The motor had wound down and stopped. Now that the humming had ended, the silence seemed unnatural. The creaking of boat timbers carried on the breeze, but otherwise, there were no sounds. The starless sky above was a vast, black sea. The only light came from the flickering candles inside the warehouse. They lit up the cloudy, soulless eyes of the creature facing me. He didn't seem to see me, but that could have been because he didn't see anything.
His head moved from side to side and every part of him jerked or twitched. Then, as if it were nothing, he pulled free of the bonds strapping his wrists to the chair arms. His bound ankles freed next and he sat a moment, as if he wasn't sure what to do with his newfound freedom. Then he rocked forward and finally stood.
The other five bodies came alive too, each of them releasing themselves using unnatural strength. They stood on unsteady legs and checked their surroundings with blank eyes. I kept low, and thankfully my window was above their head height. They did not look up or down, only from side to side.
The first one, the one nearest me, tore the leather straps off the chairs and threw them. The others did the same, and even tried to pick up the chairs themselves, but they must have been bolted to the floor. One of the creatures took a candelabra and stared into the flames. He tried to catch one, and the fire didn't seem to hurt him, even when his skin began to burn. Then he snapped each candle in two, and threw the pieces to the floor where one of the others stomped on them, mashing the wax into the wooden boards with his bare heel. The first creature then slammed the metal candelabra against the chair until it too broke.
If I had any thoughts about these creatures being human, they were quickly dashed. They might have the appearance of men, but they had no conscience, no thoughts beyond violent instinct. They couldn't be allowed to roam free.
"I knew you would come, Charlotte."
My heart leapt at the familiar voice behind me. Slowly, slowly, I turned away from the warehouse, where the creatures progressed ever closer to the three bodies on the tables.
"I hoped you would be here to witness this." Frankenstein smiled up at me. He held out his hand, but I refused it. "Come away from there. If they see you, neither of us will be able to stop them."
I climbed down. I could run now. He didn't appear to be armed, and I'd wager I was faster than him. It was the only way to keep myself out of his hands, to keep myself safe. I was dressed in boys' clothing again, and it would be easy to lose myself among the network of narrow lanes leading away from the docks.
It was so tempting to dash past him. I'd not kept myself out of danger for the last five years only to throw myself into the pit now. If I stayed, there may never be another opportunity to change my mind. It was unlikely that I could save myself once caught. I'd proven my ineffectiveness in fights several times over, of late.
No, I needed to make a choice now. Run, or stay and try to save Seth, Gus and Fitzroy.
Yet it was no choice at all. I could never live with myself if I left them to the mercy of this man. Fitzroy's callousness toward me hadn't stopped me from caring about all of them, including him.
"You must stop those things!" I cried. "They're going to kill them."
He held up his hands. "I can't. They don't listen to me. I learned that the hard way."
I frowned. "Then why did you animate them again?"
"Because I saw you there, watching, and I wanted you to see why I need you."
He'd seen me?
"Admittedly, I was looking out for you." He smiled gently. "I hoped that when your captors didn't return you would come to investigate. I had everything prepared—"
"My friends! You have to get them out!"
"They're not your friends, Charlotte. You can't trust them."
I went to shove him, but he caught my arms. "I see that they've succeeded in brainwashing you." He sighed. "Ever since meeting you, I've been wondering if that's what happened. It's understandable."
"Listen to me," I growled. "Get. Them. Out."
He let me go and turned me toward the lower window. "It's all right, dear daughter. Their energy will dissipate before they can do any harm. Look."
Two of the creatures had fallen to the floor in crumpled heaps, while the other four seemed to be winding down, like automatons having run their course. Only one had reached a table. I watched as the remaining four stopped altogether then stumbled as if their legs could no longer hold them. Their expressions didn't change as their eyes closed and they too slumped onto the floor.
Tears of utter relief clogged my throat.
"The
electrical currents only animate them for so long." Frankenstein sounded disappointed. "And even when it does bring them to life, they're not controllable. They won't even listen to me, their maker."
"That's why you came outside."
"It's too dangerous in there when they're alive. They're uncommonly strong, stronger even than the original men whose parts I used to make them."
"They're not alive," I spat. "They're not human. They're monsters."
"At the moment, you're right. But once they have souls, they'll be perfect. They'll think and feel—"
"Stop it," I hissed. "I'm not going to help you." Fitzroy had been right. Frankenstein wanted to use me to reanimate his creations, to bring them fully to life. To bring them under his control.
"You're sounding like them again." He jerked his head at the bodies through the window. "Charlotte, listen to me." He grasped my shoulders but I shook myself free. He sighed. "With your help, we can control them. They'll be absolutely perfect. There might not even be a need for the electricity. Imagine that!"
"I am, and it's sickening."
"Come now. Disregard what the ministry have been telling you and think for yourself. I know you're a smart girl. You're my girl, after all." He smiled again, and it was patient and understanding. It was how a loving father smiled upon his daughter when she said something silly. "Together, you and I will have created life. How is that a bad thing? It's not. It's beautiful. You'll be a part of something amazing, and innovative too. Something that no one else in the world has done."
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "So you can build an army and take over the government?"
"No, no, nothing like that. Once again, you've allowed yourself to be brainwashed. I'm a scientist, a doctor. I don't destroy life, I create it."
"Shouldn't doctors save lives?"
"Save, create…it's all balanced out. One sick, dying man's life is taken and given to another so that he may live and breathe again. It's not something to recoil from—it is something to embrace. It's the way of the future, Charlotte. It's where modern medicine is heading, and you and I are at the forefront of new and exciting things. They'll write about us in books and newspapers. They'll remember the name Frankenstein forever. I'll be the father of half the world—perhaps all of the world one day. Imagine it, Charlotte."
