Frankenstein's Monster

by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe

  “His property’s entailed. If the daughter becomes Mrs. Hawkins, she needn’t fear ruin when Winterbourne dies. Nor need his wife fear it. He’s just seein’ to his duties. He made Hawkins change his will first. The price of flesh.”

  The price of flesh. The words incensed me. I squeezed the sexton’s neck until his struggles became annoying, then let him drop to the floor. I paced up and down the church’s center aisle.

  “Winterbourne,” I complained, “has caused me more pain than anyone in existence, with the exception of his brother-in-law. More so! Walton never deceived me. But this man invited me into his house—only to attack me!”

  “Such injustice,” the sexton agreed, wheezing from my last assault, but all the while crawling away. “You do not deserve to be ill treated.”

  “I swear, I will have my revenge after all!” I cried. “I was a fool to put it off.”

  The sexton was nearly at the door. I grabbed him by the feet and yanked him back. He squealed over and over till I slapped him into silence. Propping him up against the base of the pulpit, I held his sweaty face so that he might at last look at me.

  “Why are you leaving?” I asked. “You have to prepare the church for the wedding.”

  “The wedding isn’t here.” His quavering voice once more broke into that piglike squeal. I raised my hand; he clapped his own against his mouth. “Do not kill me,” he whispered from behind his fingers.

  “Give me no cause to do so. Where is the wedding?”

  “The Winterbournes’ private chapel.”

  A single blow rendered him senseless.

  The chapel’s stained-glass windows, lit from within, were vibrant against the black sky. Although the small building was attached to the house, it sat at the end of its own drive leading through the grounds. Even with the ceremony’s haste, there were guests, perhaps the result of the sexton’s gossip. Horses were tethered nearby to iron stanchions, their carriages still engaged, but only two of their drivers stood by.

  I circled round from the far side. The chapel had double wooden doors with a great ringed handle on each. The iron circles rattled as one of the doors opened and a servant with a lantern emerged from within. He set the lantern between himself and the two drivers.

  “It was faster’n lightnin’ to get ’em into the church,” the servant said. “Now it’s slower’n a snail to get ’em out. I never saw such prayin’ in my life.”

  “Still, they’ll run outta breath sometime,” said one driver. “And I want my chance to eat before that. Go call Tim and Charlie and the others back from the kitchen. It’s their turn to watch the horses.”

  The servant took the lantern and headed toward the main house.

  “And hurry,” called the other driver. “They’ve had time enough to eat three times over.”

  Silently I moved from the shadows. My presence made the horses skittish, which distracted the men. In just seconds I dragged their unconscious bodies to the side. I kicked at one of the empty stanchions till it loosened and then yanked it from the ground. When I hefted it, its weight as a bludgeon was satisfying. I shouldered it like a club and entered the chapel.

  The first set of double doors led into a dark vestibule. Seeing a second set of doors, I set my eye at the crack.

  Lily wore a white lace dress and veil, with a jeweled barrette in her hair that caught the candlelight. Next to her stood a slight, sickly man who leaned heavily on a cane. The ceremony was over. Margaret was congratulating the groom, although her movements were jerky and fearful. Winterbourne’s face wore a peculiar smile. The crafty hawk was pleased. He had married off his daughter, done his duty, all the while successfully deceiving the man, as he deceived me.

  But Lily! Her pale cheeks and fever-harsh eyes had been replaced by ineffable beauty. What cruel illness could paint so lovely a portrait? My anger thickened. No matter how Lily had teased me with intimate talk, I could never rightfully purchase such a prize. I did not have the price of flesh. Her husband could take from her by law what I could take only by violence—even though he and I were both corpses.

  As if to agree, Hawkins was gripped by a terrible cough that wracked his body and stained his handkerchief. Graham, Winterbourne, and Margaret at once turned to help. Ignoring both the choking noises behind her and the good wishes offered on both sides, Lily walked away from the altar toward the closed double doors.

  Yes, I thought, still peering through the crack, a more able bridegroom awaits you here. With growing hunger I gazed on her as she approached. When she was a few yards away, I burst through the vestibule doors. Men leapt up, some to flee, some to do battle. Matrons shrieked. Margaret fainted.

  Lily stood motionless, staring at me, her expression neither frightened nor comforted. I grabbed her around her waist. Only then did she come to life and begin to fight.

  Winterbourne rushed down the aisle to his daughter. I swung the stanchion to fend him off and, when he still advanced, slammed it against his upper arm. Screaming, he fell to his knees. I raised the stanchion over his bowed head.

  “No!” cried Reverend Graham. “If you would be a man,” he begged, “if you would have a soul …”

  I lifted the stanchion higher.

  “So, this is how you replace your slut.”

  From the corner shadows stepped Walton.

  Why was I surprised? Had he not followed me everywhere before this? He was cadaverously thin and unkempt; his eyes burned like hot coals set into a skull. There was a murderous ease to the man, as if triumph were already within his grasp.

  A moan drew my attention to Winterbourne’s imploring face. He whispered my name.

  In a mocking tone, Walton said, “If you would be a man …”

  I looked from one to the other, then dragged Lily backward through the doors.

  Outside, I slipped the stanchion into the ringed handles, thus bolting the chapel from the outside. Then I freed the horses. Panicked by my strangeness, they scarcely needed my slap before galloping away. I shoved Lily into the last carriage and drove off.

  It was a phaeton, its top folded back. I had chosen it for its lightness and speed. Also, I could drive the span of horses with one hand and hold on to Lily with the other. If I had had to sit up on the driver’s seat of an enclosed coach, I believe she would have flung herself out. As we raced over the countryside, she slapped and bit and kicked at me. Her protestations were so steady and vigorous that she soon slumped at my side.

  Seeing how exhaustion had made her submissive, I pulled off the road and drove the phaeton to where thick shrubbery provided shelter. There I stopped. I had fanned the horses into a great lather and they needed to rest. I gagged and bound Lily with strips torn from her veil. She twisted and thumped on the bottom of the carriage, but at least would not be able to cry out to any who might pass. At one point she fell into a light, uneasy sleep. When she woke, her eyes moved unfocused across the night sky. Then they filled with memory, and her expression held such abhorrence and loathing, such malice, I could see she was clearly her mother’s daughter, her uncle’s niece.

  I took out my journal and candle stub and now sit here writing. I needed to think and have always done so through my pen.

  Walton.

  Because of him, the woman who would have stayed with me was dead. Because of him, the woman I had taken would hate me forever.

  Thoughts flash through my mind more quickly than I can write them—lightning in a night sky, instantly illuminating the darkness of my desire. I know what I must do.

  Later

  I led the horses back onto the road. Earlier, as the animals rested, riders had passed in the distance, and galloping hooves joined with the baying of dogs. Another group rode out later in a different direction, also with dogs, and later still, a third. Once quiet had returned, I reined the horses back onto the road and drove to a place near the top of the cliff, where I knew the path to be gentle. I secured the phaeton and shouldered Lily like a sack of flour. She kicked me and banged her head till I
came to the edge of the cliff. Then she pressed against me tightly as if her slightest movement would push me hurtling forward. Once on the shore I trotted north, set her deep within the cave, and covered her with my cloak. Her muffled cries echoed as I left her in darkness and went back up to the Winterbourne estate.

  The house was a beacon, every window lit: a lighthouse to guide their missing daughter home. Winterbourne had foolishly sent out too many men to hunt me and kept too few behind to guard so large a house. They stalked the grounds, armed with rifle and musket, cudgel and axe, and yet it was nothing for me to wait, hidden, until one had passed by, then to creep forward and wait again. Apparently all the mastiffs had been sent out as well. My presence triggered no howling response. And since I had used the phaeton to escape, the only scent they could track would be my footsteps leading back to Reverend Graham’s church.

  I began to circle the house, from window to window. I did not see Walton. It was as if he hurried from one room to another just before I peered within. What did his child’s game matter? I would be the dog here: I would find him easily, following the stench of frustration, baseness, and corruption. He spoiled all that he touched and left behind nothing but blowflies.

  At last: Winterbourne, his wife, and Walton, together in a sitting room. The sleeve of Winterbourne’s jacket was empty, his arm beneath it bound in a sling, his hand limp and floppy. His other hand clutched a glass. The butler Barton brought in a fresh decanter of liquor and took away an empty one. Where was Lily’s groom? Tucked away in bed, spinning bloody drool, like a spider spins web?

  Though I could not hear the conversation, I understood that Winterbourne was trying to persuade his wife to go to bed. She refused as he gestured again and again toward the door. Finally Walton took his sister’s arm and led her out. Winterbourne poured himself a fresh drink, downed it in one gulp, poured another, and sat, the decanter within reach. He drank himself to unconsciousness, slumping forward in the chair, then rolling to the floor. I slipped into the room and snuffed out the candles. By the banked fire I studied his slack, snoring face. My hands stretched out. In the air between us, I could feel the warmth of his drunken flesh and the pulse of his jugular.

  No. I would wait till he could be roused and could see the face of his executioner. I had come here to kill Walton. In the end Winterbourne’s betrayal made him deserve the greater punishment.

  Beyond the sitting room drifted murmuring, which I followed to the top of a small stairwell. What worthy gossip I had given the servants!

  Upstairs, the door to a bedroom was open. Margaret slept fitfully in a chair drawn to the open window to keep watch. I passed her for now; she would be easy enough to take later. In this wing no other room appeared to be occupied, but at the end of the next corridor, an open doorway spilled light. I inched close. Although candelabra burned on either end of the mantel, and candles illumined a book on the vanity, the room was empty. I was about to continue down the corridor when I noticed a dirty black coat on the bed and, beyond the bed, a door leading to an inner room. As I approached it, my fingers, moving on their own, closed upon the book and pocketed it.

  A noise behind me from the corridor … and without a word, without a cry of alarm, Walton hurled himself on me like a rabid wolf, leaping upward to grab my throat. He held on, feet dangling, years of hatred compressed into his grip.

  The viciousness of his attack forced me back against the mantel. Flailing, my hands found the lit candelabrum. Immediately I pressed it against his face. Red flames kissed his sunken cheek, and hot wax dripped down his neck. Madman that he was, he did not loosen his hold, nor even scream. He simply gritted his teeth and butted the candelabrum with his head until I dropped it. His hair shriveled, dry weeds for kindling, and then caught fire. Red tongues crowned him like a martyr. Smiling, he pulled himself up closer and leaned toward my face: rather than let go, he would be the tinder to make me ignite. Instinct fought insanity: for the first time in all these years, I truly battled rather than merely eluded him, and I battled for my life, not revenge.

  I swung round in place and slammed him against the mantel. At last he let go and fell to the floor. While we had fought, flames from the dropped candelabra had licked the bottom ruff of the bedclothes and then shot along its full length like a fast fuse. The charge flashed: the entire canopy and hangings were ablaze. The rush of fire startled me. For one thoughtless moment, I backed up and shielded my eyes, and in that moment, Walton leapt from the floor and threw himself on me. Soon we struggled within a burning circle. His madness proved the equal of my strength.

  As my one hand grappled with him, the other sought a weapon. Again and again I picked up a glass or porcelain trinket, smashing each down on his blistering skull without effect. Finally I found a bookend and he crumpled to the floor. The room was a contrast in searing white flame and deadly black, and I could not see him for the smoke. I stumbled out into the hallway, but the fire had outpaced me.

  Swallowing ruffles and doilies, drapes and rugs, the flames had already eaten their way through the room and were beginning to flicker along the bottom edges of tapestries lining the walls. A crazed chuckle broke from my lips. Besides the tapestries, in just this corridor alone were carpet runners, upholstered chairs, needlepoint pillows, lace tablecloths, wicker stands, and so much more. I had spoken of kindling; this kindling would burn the house, purging Winterbourne of his excesses, the foolish source of his pride.

  With more merriment than I could have anticipated, I ripped down one of the burning tapestries and dragged it behind me. It lit my path, but the path I had come from, as if I only had hindsight. Everything accepted the fire eagerly. Its life had withered long ago. For decades it had awaited the mercy of the funeral pyre: peacock feathers overstuffed into vases, Oriental fans arranged like bouquets, useless oil portraits painted for useless men, silhouettes scissored from black paper, and white paper quilled into pastoral scenes.

  Winterbourne had decried me as a thing? His other things, in their absurdity, were no more deserving of life than I was. I laughed with forced gaiety lest I howl.

  I rushed to his study, grabbed the liquor decanters, smashed them onto the huge lovely desk, the desk behind which I never should have sat, and held the burning tapestry to its edge. The puddle caught at once, and a sheet of flame spread from corner to corner. A man needs a solid place from which to make solid decisions? Winterbourne should have decided to love and not hate me. He should have decided to be honest and not deceive me.

  I watched the fire burn, and in that brief moment of inaction was almost overcome with heartsickness. To drive back the feeling, I snapped the leg off a straight-backed chair, wound a length of drape around its end, soaked the cloth with brandy from another decanter, and lit it. I carried the torch past the staircase to the other wing. There I weaved in and out of the empty rooms, laying it on everything. I would burn it all, every meaningless prize, every forgotten pleasure. I would burn the life that in its narrow provincial fear would not give me even the shade beneath its boot. Some future winter, when I was alone on a January night, memory of this fire is what would keep me warm.

  My lungs burned with every breath. Sweat sizzled off my brow. Cinders kissed my hands and left love bites.

  Suddenly—as if the numbness swaddling my mind burned away, as if I myself needed first to burn—I realized, the books! I was destroying what was most precious to me. In the past, when I had no people, I always had paper flesh. When I heard no voices, I always had paper words. Now all of it burned, and I had set the fire myself.

  I tried to fight my way back to the study. Some of the books could be saved, at least one or two—must be saved! It would be worth every new scar. I dropped to the floor and slid on my belly, but, like the snake, I was blocked by fire and could not return to Eden. Close to tears, I had to forsake the library. I found the main center staircase and crawled down, the railings on either side solid tracks of fire. At my back, crackling flames chattered maniacally, ever louder until thei
r roar deafened me to all other sound.

  Near blind, I made my way to the outside. After the smoke, the fresh air needled my lungs like angry wasps.

  Margaret lay on the ground, coughing, her hand pressed to her chest, a servant at her side. Here and there stood the men who had been set as guards against me, their clubs and knives and muskets dropped to the ground. A small group of servants huddled together, dressed in gowns and robes and nightcaps; their faces upturned, their eyes so mesmerized they saw nothing else. I wondered at the handful of them: surely, so large a house would employ more than these few?

  A man’s shape crossed one of the blazing windows on the second story. He pounded on the glass with outstretched palms and then with balled fists. With amazement I recognized the tall, thin shadow as Walton’s. How had he survived being at the heart of destruction?

  Over and over again he hammered at the glass, clawed at it, struck it with his shoulder. His figure slipped to the floor, then stood up a second later holding a chair, which he flung full force at the windowpanes. With a terrible shriek, the wooden frame buckled outward. Glass fell in a silver shower. Like a scarecrow struck by lightning—head, body, and limbs bright with flame—Walton jumped out onto the flagstones below.

  Margaret, who not seconds ago appeared too weak to move, scrambled to her feet, ran to her brother, and smothered the fire with her own body. The crumpled figure did not move. Her wail pierced the roar of the conflagration.

  Walton was dead.

  I felt no triumph, only overwhelming exhaustion.

  Glass shattered as window after window exploded.

  Winterbourne! I had left him on the first floor, drunk and unconscious, meaning to save him as dessert to a meal of rage. I would not let the fire claim my right to destroy him.

  Eagerly, I circled the house, but Barton was already dragging his master’s lifeless body from the smoking building onto a white-graveled path. The servant looked up. Tears washed white lines down his sooty cheeks.