Monster

by Shane Peacock

  “I beg your pardon?” says Jonathan, “Made it?”

  “Annabel Thorne drew a very specific and detailed face. That must mean she truly saw something. And if you look very closely at the drawing—” he pulls it out of his pocket and sets it on the table again—“you can see some barely visible lines done with faint scribbles right at the neck. It looks like they might have gone right across the top of the throat if she had completed them.”

  Lucy gasps. “…As if someone attached and stitched on the head of this beast.”

  “It,” continues Edgar, “appears to be brutish and without morality. It operates by simply breaking into places with sheer force and kills with terrific blows to the head or throat, and sometimes it strangles, and it has a gruesome face like something a ‘plastic’ surgeon might put together.”

  “But that doesn’t mean that—” begins Jonathan.

  “No,” says Tiger, “let him finish.” She is leaning toward Edgar.

  “Thorne had a plaster cast of a human being he was working on in his laboratory. It made me wonder if he was doing what scientists are being tempted to explore these days, with their occupation in its ascendency. Create life! Thorne was too moral for that, but others may not be. My Uncle Vincent is intrigued by the idea; he as much as told me so. And he idolizes Dr. Godwin.”

  “The vivisectionist,” says Lucy.

  “With whom I am working at the London Hospital, to whose side, for some reason, I was recruited. Godwin too is fascinated by this ungodly possibility, though he denies it. He is a good man, but I am sure he is tempted on this subject. Perhaps he has already gone beyond mere temptation? If anyone could do this, that genius could.”

  “But are you saying that he—” asks Tiger.

  “And this H.G. Wells fellow—” continues Edgar.

  “He knows things!” says Shakespeare.

  “This H.G. Wells, a science teacher and a man of great imagination and invention, he has a book about a scientist who tries to make human beings out of animals, ripping them apart, operating on them, adjusting them! My uncle had two books, two novels, on his desk when I went in to see him recently. One was the Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, and the other was—”

  “Frankenstein!” says Lucy, and puts her hands over her mouth.

  “Yes,” says Edgar.

  “A Frankenstein monster is after us, wants to kill us,” says Tiger quietly, her face tightening.

  “NO!” shouts Shakespeare. “It lived long ago. NO! No, that isn’t right, it can’t be right!”

  “It can’t be, old man,” says Jonathan, “or do you not want it to be?”

  “I’m simply wondering,” says Edgar, “if it may be very much like this sort of thing, some creature made by the hand of man and on the loose.” He takes a deep breath. “When I was working with Dr. Godwin in his lab, I heard a noise coming from a sealed door in a room connected to his. It sounded like something moving about and it knocked something over. Godwin quickly said it was nothing, and then he said it was bats and then rats. It is the room where the Elephant Man used to live.”

  “The freak!” shrieks Shakespeare. “He was just a man,” he adds quickly, sounding perfectly sane, “an unfortunate human being named Joseph Merrick with a mysterious disease that deformed his body. That is all!”

  “What if what we seek is in that room?” asks Jonathan. He picks up the rifle.

  “How can we get in?” asks Tiger, rising to her feet.

  Edgar produces the key from his pocket.

  13

  “I tell you, you are wrong,” says Shakespeare, shaking his little fist at them as he stands at the door and watches the four of them rush out into the night in a spitting rain. “I am warning you!” It is a strange choice of words.

  They don’t speak as they walk briskly along the street. Jonathan is hiding the gun by his side as he tries to keep pace with Tiger, who is in the lead, Edgar staying with Lucy behind them. They are down to the bottom of Drury Lane quickly and then move east along The Strand onto Fleet Street toward St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Old City.

  But Jonathan is impatient. This trip to the East End, even rushing, will take them an hour. He hails a hansom cab and offers to take Tiger’s hand to help her up into it. She hesitates for a second, then frowns at him and nimbly hoists herself into a seat. “The London!” she barks to the driver above them. Jonathan sticks his head out the window and shouts back at Edgar and Lucy. “Get the next one! Hurry!”

  There are many other cabs on Fleet Street and Edgar whistles for one. A black model approaches, the driver just a dark shadow with a whip up on the box above the cab.

  “What if this is the real thing?” asks Lucy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You speculated that this creature might be like a Frankenstein monster, but Shakespeare insists that everything that pursues us comes from books and we have some evidence that it’s true. So, what if this is not simply a wretch that Godwin or someone else recently created? What if it somehow really is Frankenstein’s monster, the unkillable beast from the novel…and it is there tonight, in that room?”

  The driver comes into view, an old man with a face like a skeleton.

  “Enter,” he says.

  “Then we will have to face it,” says Edgar. “The London Hospital!” he shouts upward. He helps Lucy in, follows her, and the skeletal driver snaps his whip and they are off.

  —

  By the time they reach the East End the streets are quieter, though that isn’t unusual for this dangerous area. The few pedestrians are either desperately poor or appear to be up to no good. Most of the faces, even those on the frightened-looking street children, look haggard. There are no police officers in sight. It is the perfect habitat and hunting ground for a monster.

  Jonathan and Tiger are waiting for them at the hospital doors, standing close to each other but saying nothing. The rifle is on its butt on the ground, held tightly to Jonathan’s side. They head into the nearly empty reception room, and Edgar gets them past the desk by nodding at the nurse behind it and then ushers them through the hall to the back of the hospital. They pass just a handful of people and then descend the stairs into the basement.

  There doesn’t appear to be anyone in the hall, at least as far as they can see, and the lights are out in Godwin’s room.

  “We didn’t bring a lantern!” grumbles Tiger.

  “Then we’ll just have to turn on the lights,” says Jonathan.

  “I don’t think that is wise,” whispers Lucy.

  “Wise or not, we have to do it, sis.”

  But when Edgar puts his hand on the doorknob of Godwin’s laboratory, they hear a sound coming from near the stone staircase behind them. They all turn. Something seems to be emerging into the light over there! They slip away from the door and farther down the hallway into darkness. The thing appears to be in a doorway, one that Edgar has never noticed since it seems to be in the wall in the pitch-black beside the staircase and always behind him whenever he walks down the steps and heads toward the laboratory.

  They see the dim lights of the East End neighborhood behind the hospital for a moment, outlining the door frame, a big square figure grunting like a beast as it fills that entrance and then the door closes and all is dark there again. The beast sighs, grunts once more and begins to advance toward them. Lucy gasps and Edgar puts his arm around her, gently placing his hand over her mouth.

  The beast stops. It drops something with a thud to the stone floor. They can see what it is now—a huge dirty sack with something in it. It’s the size of a body, but not a large one, perhaps that of a teenage boy or a woman. The beast steps forward and looks down the hallway toward them. Edgar can see its face. He tightens his hand over Lucy’s mouth as he feels her shiver.

  It’s Graft.

  “Anybody there?” he asks in his low, guttural voice. They can see his thick head now, covered in sweat, blood on it, his crushed nose, the black brush mustache and the yellow, pegged
teeth. His chest is the width of a gorilla’s.

  He unfastens a small lantern from his belt and shines it in their direction. They slip farther back into the hallway and find a few crates against a wall and get behind them. But they are barely hidden. The light flashes into the darkness.

  “Anyone? Dr. Godwin?”

  They try not to breathe as the light passes near them and surveys the crates.

  Graft grunts and turns back to his big sack, seizes it with one hand and drags it along the stone floor like a Neanderthal toting a woman by the hair. He opens the lab door and goes inside. The lights come on.

  “That’s the gravedigger from Highgate!” says Lucy. “We should go.”

  “No,” says Edgar, “he won’t be long.”

  “How do you know?” asks Tiger. “What’s he doing?”

  Edgar doesn’t want to say, but there is no use in hiding it. “He has a body for Dr. Godwin to dissect, likely a fresh one.”

  Lucy doesn’t utter a sound.

  They wait for a good ten minutes, hearing Graft banging and rattling inside the laboratory as he struggles with the body, hoisting it onto Godwin’s operating table. Finally, he emerges, looks both ways and leaves by the back door under the stairs.

  “Let’s go in,” says Jonathan.

  “But that body is in there,” says Lucy.

  “Yes, it is,” says Tiger as she takes the lead.

  Inside, Edgar doesn’t hesitate to turn on the lights.

  “We have to do this fast,” he says and points them in the direction of the door to the Elephant Man’s room. They move smartly toward it, but then Lucy lets out a scream, which she covers immediately.

  “Oh, my God!”

  The dirty, bloody sack is on the operating table, open, exposing a dead woman from the waist up, her blond hair clotted and wet, her face turned toward them and her mouth caught in a frozen grimace, almost like a smile. The eyes have somehow opened and they seem to be staring at the four intruders, though rotated up in their sockets.

  “We need to concentrate on the door,” says Tiger forthrightly. “Give me the key, Edgar. Though I would wager I could unlock this without it.”

  He hands it to her and she advances quickly toward her target. Sometimes he almost doesn’t like her bravery. He takes Lucy’s hand.

  But then the laboratory door creaks open behind them and as they turn, they see Dr. Godwin closing it behind him.

  14

  Jonathan holds the rifle behind him but keeps a grip on it right near the trigger. Tiger pulls the key out of the lock and slips it into her trousers pocket, as smooth as the thief she once was.

  “Edgar?”

  “Uh, yes, yes, sir, it’s me.”

  Godwin walks toward them. “And…and you have friends with you?”

  “I…sir…I…”

  “He is very proud that he is working with you, Dr. Godwin,” says Lucy, stepping in front of the others, “and he wanted to show us the laboratory. That is, he told us that he wanted to, but shouldn’t, but we were so excited about the possibility of coming here that we persuaded him. I cannot believe that I am in your famous laboratory. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Godwin glances at Edgar, then at the others, and seems to cast his eyes down to where Jonathan is hiding the rifle in the dim light, and only then appears to notice that these intruders are standing at the Elephant Man’s door.

  “I see,” he says. “What a lovely idea, despite the remarkably late hour. I do not mind in the least. Come over here, Miss…”

  “Lear. Miss Lucy Lear.”

  “Come with me.” He takes her by the hand. “I have something fascinating to show you.” He guides her toward the half-naked corpse on the table. Edgar freezes, but Lucy doesn’t. She goes with the great surgeon with a smile fixed on her face. Godwin stops when Lucy is near the head, which is tilted toward her, its white eyeballs milky.

  The good doctor beckons to the others. “Are the rest of you not going to observe this remarkable specimen? How many people ever get to see another human being shortly after it dies? It is utterly riveting. There is much to learn. Master Brim can attest to that. Learn, learn, learn—that is what life is all about. Progress!”

  Tiger moves toward the table, staring at the corpse without the least sign of repulsion, as if she can hardly wait to be near it. Edgar follows slowly. But Jonathan stays behind.

  “It looks a bit crowded over there,” says Jon loudly, then silently mouths, “I need to hide the gun,” at Edgar and heads toward the laboratory door. “Enjoy!” he says.

  “Would you like to touch it?” asks Godwin, moving Lucy’s hand up toward the corpse. “The skin has a different texture in death. Go ahead.”

  Tiger steps in front of Lucy and reaches out and takes the body’s whole face in her hands. “Interesting,” she says, smiling at Godwin.

  Edgar can see that this body is very different from the first one he encountered. He remembers the red stains on the sack Graft was carrying and considers the gutters on the table, wide enough to gather great pools of blood. This woman’s flesh doesn’t look gray like the skin on the other corpse. It doesn’t seem as tight or stiff either.

  “Why are you really here?” asks the great surgeon suddenly.

  Edgar can swear he hears the rifle cock over by the door. “It is as we said, sir, they wanted to see the lab, and I was so proud that I was working with you that I could not resist.”

  “So it was vanity, simple human pride? That is known as a sin, you know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There is another reason though, isn’t there?”

  “Uh, no, sir.”

  “Come now. Were I a young man such as yourself and I knew that a very famous freak’s room could be mine to observe I would not be able to resist. Am I not correct?”

  Edgar doesn’t know what to say.

  “Yes, sir,” says Lucy, “you are correct, sir. But we saw that the door was well and truly locked.”

  “Yes,” says Godwin, “and you do not have a key, do you, Edgar?”

  “Uh, no, sir.” He is so glad that Tiger has it. Godwin wouldn’t guess that he would give it to her, a young woman, and put her in charge.

  “We were just about to leave when you arrived, sir,” says Tiger.

  Godwin looks her up and down, taking in her trousers and her manly blouse. “You are an interesting one, young lady. I suppose we must all accept that the roles of women are changing. But I trust that Edgar’s friends are good people.” He gives Tiger’s shoulder a light pat. “I hope to see you again, my dear.”

  “Thank you, sir,” says Edgar. “I will be here first thing in the morning, ready to help with…” He glances at the pink corpse. “With that.”

  “Indeed you will be,” says Godwin. “Although, I need to prepare the body first in the morning, keeping half the blood, with just some fluid—and you are up so late tonight, so if you arrive at noon, then that will be fine. We shall commence at that time.”

  The three friends walk toward the door. Jonathan has already slipped out into the hallway, the gun hidden by his side.

  “It is unusual for me to be here at this hour, you know,” says Godwin. “You were fortunate to encounter me. I knew we had a fresh body arriving. I am usually home by five o’clock or shortly thereafter, already in bed by this hour. But if your friends would like to be here about six in the evening tomorrow, I will show you all the insides of the Elephant Man’s room. I will get the key from your uncle, Edgar.”

  “That sounds exciting, sir, thank you.”

  “Not at all. Good evening. My regards to your large friend in the hall too, rather bashful, he is.”

  “Thank you,” says Edgar again.

  “And Master Brim?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You do not need to sneak about here you know; I am an open-minded fellow. You do not need to hide things from me. If there is something that you would like to do or see or anything that is bothering you, please tell me. Worri
es can be eliminated when they are shared. If you are in any sort of need, I might be able to help you.”

  —

  As Edgar walks up the stone steps from the basement with his friends, he tells himself that it really shouldn’t matter how long a corpse is dead. Dead is dead. Godwin is doing this for science, he reassures himself, for the betterment of man.

  “I keep wondering if I should tell Godwin about our situation,” says Edgar once they get to the ground floor. “He is a brilliant man. He might be an invaluable ally.”

  “He could have been very angry with us,” says Lucy.

  “He never is,” says Edgar. “He is always even tempered and kind. I find it difficult to suspect him of anything truly evil, though I wonder if he may be protecting someone, or someone’s secret.”

  “He delighted in showing us the corpse,” mutters Tiger.

  “Hard to blame him,” says Jonathan. “He had to punish us a little. I’m sorry I had to miss it!”

  —

  Edgar leads them up to the second floor and slips into his uncle’s room and deposits the key back onto the hook so it will be there for Godwin to find tomorrow, then they head out into the night.

  “I have to be honest, Edgar,” says Tiger, who has been quiet for a long while. “I don’t trust Godwin—”

  “But he’s the only adult who might really help us now,” says Lucy. “Otherwise, we are completely on our own.”

  Tiger keeps speaking as if Lucy hasn’t said anything. “I can take the measure of people, I had to on the streets, and I have my doubts about him. I not only don’t want to take him into our confidence, I’m not sure we should go back into that lab with him.”

  “But we have to,” says Jonathan, “whether we trust him or not. Anyway, he’s an esteemed surgeon with an admirable reputation. I doubt we have anything to fear from him. We can’t allow the sight of a corpse to disturb us.”

  “I agree with Jon,” mutters Lucy.

  “I’m not disturbed by a corpse,” says Tiger, “trust me.”

  Outside, the rain is still spitting down. The street is even more deserted now.