Frankenstein - Prodigal Son

by Dean Koontz

  She sighed. "I was sort of hoping that the concentration needed to drive would mean less patter."

  "Just the opposite. Driving keeps me mentally fluid. It's cool being the wheel man."

  "Don't get used to it."

  When they arrived at the Luxe Theater, after four o'clock, the sky had grown as dark as an iron skillet.

  Michael parked illegally at a red curb and hung a police card on the rearview mirror. "Lives in a theater, huh? Is he buddies with the Phantom of the Opera?"

  "You'll see," she said, and got out of the car.

  Closing his door, looking at her across the roof, he said, "Do his palms grow hairy when the moon is full?"

  "No. He shaves them just like you do."

  CHAPTER 82

  FOLLOWING A LONG NIGHT and longer day at Mercy, Victor ate what was either a late lunch or an early dinner of seafood gumbo with okra and rabbit etouffee at a Cajun restaurant in the Quarter. Although not as satisfyingly exotic as his Chinese meal the previous night, the food was good.

  For the first time in nearly thirty hours, he went home.

  Having enhanced his physiological systems to the extent that he needed little sleep and therefore could accomplish more in the lab, he sometimes wondered if he worked too much. Perhaps if he allowed himself more leisure, his mind would be clearer in the laboratory, and consequently he would do even better science.

  Periodically over the decades, he had engaged in this debate with himself. He always resolved it in favor of more work.

  Like it or not, he had given himself to a great cause. He was the kind of man who would work selflessly in the pursuit of a world ruled by reason, a world free of greed and peopled by a race united by a single goal.

  Arriving at his mansion in the Garden District, he chose work over leisure yet again. He went directly to his hidden studio behind the pantry.

  Karloff had perished. The life-support machines were not in operation.

  Stunned, he circled the central worktable, uncomprehending until he proceeded far enough to discover the hand on the floor. The thrown switches were directly above it. Furthermore, clutched in its fingers was a plug that it had pulled from a socket.

  Although disappointed by this setback, Victor was amazed that Karloff had been able to shut himself down.

  For one thing, the creature had been programmed to be incapable of self-destruction. On that issue there had been no wiggle room in the directives by which it had been governed.

  More important, the hand could not have functioned separate from its own life-support system. The moment it had broken free of its feed and drain lines, it had lost the low-voltage current needed to fire its nerves and operate its musculature. At that point, it should have at once fallen still, limp, dead— and should have begun to decompose.

  Only one explanation occurred to Victor. Apparently, Karloff's telekinetic power had been strong enough to animate the hand as if it were alive.

  When controlling the hand at a distance, Karloff had shown the ability only to flex a thumb and to imitate an arpeggio by strumming an imaginary harp with those four fingers. Small, simple tasks.

  To make the hand tear loose of its connections, to cause it to drop to the floor and then to climb three feet up the face of these machines to throw the life-support switches, to cause it to pull the plug, as well. . . That required far greater telekinetic power and more precise control than he had previously exhibited.

  An incredible breakthrough.

  Although Karloff was gone, another Karloff could be engineered. The setback would be temporary.

  Excited, Victor sat at his desk and accessed the experiment file on his computer. He clicked the camera icon and called up the twenty-four-hour video record of events in the studio.

  Scanning backward from the present, he was surprised when Erika suddenly appeared.

  CHAPTER 83

  AS WHEN SHE had been to the Luxe the previous evening, Carson found one of the front doors unlocked. This time, no one waited in the lobby.

  A set of double doors stood open between the lobby and the theater.

  Surveying the refreshment stand as they passed it, Michael said, "When you buy popcorn here, I wonder if you can ask for it without the cockroaches."

  The theater itself proved to be large, with both a balcony and a mezzanine. Age, grime, and chipped plaster diminished the Art Deco glamour but did not defeat it altogether.

  A fat man in white slacks, white shirt, and white Panama hat stood in front of the tattered red-velvet drapes that covered the giant screen. He looked like Sidney Greenstreet just stepped out of Casablanca.

  The Greenstreet type gazed toward the ceiling, transfixed by something not immediately evident to Carson.

  Deucalion stood halfway down the center aisle, facing the screen. Head tipped back, he slowly scanned the ornate architecture overhead.

  The strangeness of the moment was shattered with the silence when a sudden flapping of wings revealed a trapped bird swooping through the vaults above, from one roost in the cornice to another.

  As Carson and Michael approached Deucalion, she heard him say, "Come to me, little one. No fear."

  The bird flew again, swooped wildly, swooped... and alighted on Deucalion's extended arm. Seen close and still, it proved to be a dove.

  With a laugh of delight, the fat man came forward from the screen. "I'll be damned. We ever get a lion in here, you're my man."

  Gently stroking the bird, Deucalion turned as Carson and Michael approached him.

  Carson said, "I thought only St. Francis and Dr. Doolittle talked to animals."

  "Just a little trick."

  "You seem to be full of tricks, little and big," she said.

  The fat man proved to have a sweet voice. "The poor thing's been trapped here a couple days, living off stale popcorn. Couldn't get it to go for the exit doors when I opened them."

  Deucalion cupped the bird in one immense hand, and it appeared to be without fear, almost in a trance.

  With both pudgy hands, the man in white accepted the dove from Deucalion and moved away, toward the front of the theater. "I'll set it free."

  "This is my partner, Detective Maddison," Carson told Deucalion. "Michael Maddison."

  They nodded to each other, and Michael—pretending not to be impressed by the size and appearance of Deucalion—said, "I've gotta be straight with you. I'll be the first to admit we're in weird woods on this one, but I still don't buy the Transylvania thing."

  "That's movies. In real life," Deucalion said, "it was Austria."

  "We need your help," Carson told him. “As it turns out, there were two killers."

  "Yes. It's on the news."

  "Yeah. Well, only one of them seems to have been... the kind that you warned me about."

  "And he's a detective," Deucalion said.

  "Right. He's still loose. But we've found his... playroom. If he's really one of Victor's people, you'll be able to read his place better than we can."

  Michael shook his head. "Carson, he's not a psychologist. He's not a profiler."

  In a matter-of-fact tone, arresting precisely because of its lack of drama, Deucalion said, "I understand murderers. I am one."

  Those words and an accompanying throb of light through the giant's eyes left Michael briefly speechless.

  "In my early days," Deucalion said, "I was a different beast. Uncivilized. Full of rage. I murdered a few men… and a woman. The woman was my maker's wife. On their wedding day."

  Obviously sensing the same convincing gravitas in Deucalion that had impressed Carson, Michael searched for words and found these: "I know that story, too."

  "But I lived it," said Deucalion. He turned to Carson. "I don't choose to go out in daylight."

  "We'll take you. It's an unmarked car. Inconspicuous."

  "I know the place. I saw it on the news. I'd rather meet you there."

  "When?" she asked.

  "Go now," he said. "I'll be there when you are."


  "Not the way she drives," said Michael.

  "I'll be there."

  Toward the front of the theater, the fat man shouldered open an emergency-exit door to the waning afternoon. He released the dove, and it flew to freedom in the somber pre-storm light.

  CHAPTER 84

  VICTOR FOUND ERIKA in the library She nestled in an armchair, legs tucked under her, reading a novel.

  In retrospect, he should have forbidden her to spend so much time with poetry and fiction. Emily Dickinson, indeed.

  The authors of such work imagined that they addressed not merely the mind but the heart, even the soul. By their very nature, fiction and poetry encouraged an emotional response.

  He should have insisted that Erika devote most of her reading time to science. Mathematics. Economic theory Psychology History.

  Some history books might be dangerous, as well. In general, however, nonfiction would educate her with little risk of instilling in her a corrupting sentimentality.

  Too late.

  Infected with pity, she was no longer useful to him. She fancied that she had a conscience and the capacity for caring.

  Pleased with herself for the discovery of these tender feelings, she had betrayed her master. She would betray him again.

  Worse, drunk with book-learned compassion, she might in her ignorant fulsomeness dare to pity him for one reason or another. He would not tolerate her foolish sympathy.

  Wise men had long warned that books corrupted. Here was the unassailable proof.

  As he approached, she looked up from the novel, the poisonous damn novel, and smiled.

  He struck her so hard that he broke her nose. Blood flew, and he thrilled at the sight of it.

  She endured three blows. She would have endured as many as he wished to rain on her.

  Victor was not sufficiently satisfied merely to strike her. He tore the book out of her hands, threw it across the room, seized her by her thick bronze hair, dragged her from the chair, and threw her onto the floor.

  Denied the choice of turning off the pain, she suffered. He knew precisely how to maximize that suffering. He kicked, kicked.

  Although he had enhanced his body, Victor was not the physical equal of one of the New Race. In time he exhausted himself and stood sweat-soaked, gasping for breath.

  Every injury she sustained, of course, would heal without scar. Already, her lacerations were healing, her broken bones knitting together.

  If he wished to let her live, she would be as good as new in just a day or two. She would smile for him again. She would serve him as before.

  That was not his wish.

  Pulling a straightbacked chair away from a reading desk, he said, "Get up. Sit here."

  She was a mess, but she managed to get to her knees and then to the chair. She sat with her head bowed for a moment. Then she raised it and straightened her back.

  His people were amazing. Tough. Resilient. In their way, proud.

  Leaving her in the chair, he went to the library bar and poured cognac from a decanter into a snifter.

  He wanted to be calmer when he killed her. In his current state of agitation, he would not be able fully to enjoy the moment.

  At a window, with his back to her, he sipped the cognac and watched the contusive sky as its bruises grew darker, darker. Rain would come with nightfall, if not before.

  They said that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. They were lying.

  First, there was no God. Only brutal nature.

  Second, Victor knew from hard experience that the creation of a new world was a frustrating, often a tedious, and a time-consuming endeavor.

  Eventually, calm and prepared, he returned to Erika. She sat in the chair as he had left her.

  Taking off his sport jacket and draping it over the back of an armchair, he said, "This can be a perfect city. One day... a perfect world. Ordinary flawed humanity—they resist perfection. One day they will be... replaced. All of them."

  She sat in silence, head raised, but not looking at him, gazing instead at the books on the shelves.

  He removed his necktie.

  "A world stripped clean of fumbling humanity, Erika. I wish you could be here with us to see it."

  When creating a wife for himself, he modified— in just a few ways —the standard physiology that he gave to other members of the New Race.

  For one thing, strangling one of them would have been extremely difficult. Even if the subject had been obedient and docile, the task might have taken a long time, might even have proved too difficult.

  Every Erika, on the other hand, had a neck structure—windpipe, carotid arteries—that made her as vulnerable to a garrote as was any member of the Old Race. He could have terminated her in other ways, but he wished the moment to be intimate; strangulation satisfied that desire.

  Standing behind her chair, he bent to kiss her neck.

  "This is very difficult for me, Erika."

  When she did not reply, he stood straight and gripped the necktie in both hands. Silk. Quite elegant. And strong.

  "I'm a creator and a destroyer, but I prefer to create."

  He looped the tie around her neck.

  "My greatest weakness is my compassion," he said, "and I must purge myself of it if I'm to make a better world based on rationality and reason."

  Savoring the moment, Victor was surprised to hear her say, "I forgive you for this."

  Her unprecedented audacity so stunned him that his breath caught in his throat.

  When he spoke, the words came in a rush: "Forgive me? I am not of a station to need forgiveness, and you are not of a position to have the power to grant it. Does the man who eats the steak need the forgiveness of the steer from which it was carved? You foolish bitch. And less than a bitch because no whelp would ever have come from your loins if you had lived a thousand years."

  Quietly, calmly, almost tenderly, she said, "But I will never forgive you for having made me."

  Her audacity had grown to effrontery, to impudence so shocking that it robbed him of all the pleasure that he expected from this strangulation.

  To Victor, creation and destruction were equally satisfying expressions of power. Power alone motivated him: the power to defy nature and to bend it to his will, the power to control others, the power to shape the destiny of both the Old Race and the New, the power to overcome his own weaker impulses.

  He strangled her now, cut off the blood supply to her brain, crushed her windpipe, strangled her, strangled her, but with such fury, in such a blind rage, that by the time he finished, he was not a man of power but merely a grunting beast fully in the thrall of nature, out of control, lost to reason and rationality.

  In her dying, Erika had not only denied him but defeated him, humiliated him, as he had not been in more than two centuries.

  Choking with wrath, he pulled books off the shelves, threw them to the floor, scores of books, hundreds, tore them and ground them under his heels. Tore them and ground them. Threw them and tore them.

  Later, he went to the master suite. He showered. Restless and energized, he had no interest in relaxation. He dressed to go out, though he did not know for where or what purpose.

  From another decanter, he poured another cognac into another snifter.

  On the intercom, he spoke with William, the butler, who was on duty in the staff room. "There's a dead thing in the library. William."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Contact my people in the sanitation department. I want that useless meat buried deep in the landfill, and right away."

  At the window, he studied the lowering sky, which had grown so dark with thunderheads that an early dusk had come upon the city.

  CHAPTER 85

  AT HARKER’S APARTMENT BUILDING, Carson and Michael took the elevator to the fourth floor to avoid the stink of mildew in the public stairwell.

  Homicide, CSI, and curious neighbors had long ago faded away. The building almost seemed deserted.

  When they
reached the fourth floor, they found Deucalion waiting in the hallway, outside Harker's apartment.

  To Carson, Michael murmured, "I didn't see the Batmobile parked out front."

  "You won't admit it," she said, "but you're convinced."

  To her surprise, he said, “Almost."

  Evidently having heard Michael's murmured words, Deucalion said, "I used the Batcopter. It's on the roof."

  By way of apology, Michael said, "Listen, that crack didn't mean anything. That's just me. If I see a joke, I go for it."

  "Because you see so much in life that disturbs you, the cruelty, the hatred," Deucalion said. "You armor yourself with humor."

  For the second time in an hour, Michael found himself without a comeback.

  Carson had never imagined that such a day would dawn. Maybe this was one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.

  She slit the police seal on the door, used her Lockaid gun, and led them inside.

  "Minimalism minimalized," said Deucalion as he moved into the sparsely furnished living room. "No books."

  "He's got some books in the attic," Carson said.

  "No mementoes," Deucalion continued, "no decorative items, no photographs, no art. He hasn't found a way to have a life. This is the cell of a monk... but one who has no faith."

  Trying to get back in the saddle, Michael said, "Carson, he's an absolute whiz at this."

  Deucalion looked toward the kitchen but didn't move in that direction. "He sometimes sits at the table in there, drinking. But whiskey doesn't provide him with the escape he needs. Only occasional oblivion."

  Earlier, the standard premises search had turned up a case of bourbon in the kitchen.

  Looking toward the bedroom, Deucalion said, "In there, you will most likely find pornography. Only a single item. One video."

  "Exactly," she confirmed. "We found one."

  When it turned up in the search, Michael had referred to the porn video by various titles — Transvestitesylvania, The Thing with Two Things—but now he said nothing, impressed to silence by Deucalion's insights.

  "He found no thrill in images of copulation," Deucalion said. "Only an even more profound sense of being an outsider. Only greater alienation."