Bride

by Kyle Alexander Romines

  I froze, my eyes widening with recognition. I was not the only monster Victor made who had returned to Geneva. It seemed wherever I walked, the creature was not far behind. Perhaps he had found me already.

  “What would you have me do?” the priest asked his companion.

  “Use your sermons to warn the populace. You must turn them against this evil before anyone else dies.”

  “Of course, my son. We cannot let the devil’s work go unchallenged.”

  “Thank you, Father,” the young man said with a slight bow. “I am in your debt.” Before he left, he turned to look at the cross, and I saw his face for the first time.

  Ernest, I thought, surprised. It was Victor’s younger brother, who had been there that fateful day when William was murdered. What was he doing here with the priest? I frowned and watched him disappear into the light.

  The priest’s shoes echoed down the floor as he returned to the confessional. “My apologies, daughter,” he said, but the booth was empty.

  I followed Ernest through the market, careful to remain out of sight. All the while, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me. I glanced into the crowd, searching for a sign of the creature, but there was none to be found. I returned my attention to Ernest, who had changed much since we last saw each other. He was now almost eighteen, tall and lean, wearing a red coat and carrying a weapon at his side—a soldier. The image seemed impossible to reconcile with Justine’s memories of him as a soft and sensitive individual, but much had changed since that fateful day when I tasted death.

  Finally, Ernest stopped outside the courthouse, where a carriage waited on the street corner. The carriage door opened, and out stepped a thin middle-aged man wearing a dark suit and top hat. Ernest nodded at him, and the two men clasped hands. When I saw who it was, my mouth fell open in surprise.

  It was the constable who had falsely arrested me for William’s murder.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ernest Frankenstein had been my friend. We were so close in age that he had always seemed more of a younger brother than one of my charges. I remembered sitting at his bedside as he lay at death’s door, praying fervently for his recovery when we were little more than children. That sickly, meek lad was now a strapping young man with an air of righteous confidence. After all we had shared, the good and bad we had endured together—why had he now allied himself with one of my killers?

  I frowned, displeased by this new turn of events. Even with my enhanced senses, the two men were well out of earshot. Before I could get any closer, the pair began walking toward the courthouse, where soldiers stood at their posts outside a tall brick wall. I hesitated on the street corner as the constable’s empty carriage pulled away. Pursuit would risk too much attention, and anonymity was still more valuable to me.

  “Who are those men?” I asked a man loitering beside me.

  “Why, that’s young Captain Frankenstein and Constable Rengel,” the man answered.

  Captain Frankenstein? I wondered. Suddenly, the uniform made sense. How had the kind and gentle adolescent I knew transformed into the man who stood before me? Ernest was always closer in temperament to Justine than either of his driven and reckless brothers. I sighed and turned away. The mystery of Ernest Frankenstein’s involvement with the constable would have to wait for another time. Still, I now had a name for another of my oppressors.

  “Rengel,” I muttered under my breath, committing the name to memory. Now that I knew where he worked, it would be an easy task to follow him home and learn more about him at my leisure. At the moment, there were other matters to attend to.

  I spent the remainder of the day making inquiries across the city about the various members of the Frankenstein family and Justine Moritz. It appeared that after the deaths of William and Justine, the townspeople had become suspicious of the Frankenstein family, thanks in part to rumors about Victor’s unnatural experiments. The constable and the priest had exploited these fears to foster civil unrest, and now exercised considerable influence over the populace. Alphonse had become a recluse, never leaving the Frankenstein estate. After enlisting in the army, Ernest had all but split with his family, though the reason behind this separation remained in question.

  Additionally, I learned everything there was to know about Constable Rengel and Father Wilhelm. The priest was a well-known hypocrite who preached fidelity on Sunday but indulged in excessive drink and other vices by night. Rengel, a zealot for his particularly severe brand of justice, sought power for its own sake while portraying himself as a champion of the people. He had also long harbored a grudge against the Frankenstein family, and his ascent came just as they had fallen out of favor.

  I was returning to the inn for the evening when I spotted Elizabeth in front of the tavern on the other side of the street. What’s she doing here? I wondered. She obviously wasn’t looking for me. My gaze narrowed in her direction, and I watched as she pushed open the door and vanished inside. I started across the street, intent on learning her reason for coming into the city. Fate had granted me another opportunity to enter the lives of the Frankenstein family, and I had no intention of wasting it.

  Just as I reached the other side of the street, Elizabeth emerged from the tavern, trying her best to carry a man who was slumped against her.

  “I think that’s enough for one night,” she said to him. Her face was lined with sadness, my first hint at a sorrow that lurked underneath her friendly exterior. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” she added as she struggled to support his weight. “Do you think this is what she would have wanted for you?” Elizabeth stumbled, and as the man began to fall, I took hold of him from the opposite side and steadied him.

  Elizabeth’s face brightened when she saw me. “Penny,” she said pleasantly.

  “I saw you from the inn,” I replied, helping her carry him. “It appeared you were in need of some assistance.”

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth said. She nodded at the man we carried, who was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. The scent of alcohol lingered on his clothes. “Just a little farther.” We led the drunken man a block down the road to the stables. “We can set him here,” she said once we were inside the barn, and we laid him on top of a pile of hay.

  When the drunken man looked up at me, he moaned a name that caused a jolt in the place where my heart used to beat.

  “Justine.”

  He reached out and grabbed my neck before I could react, staring into my eyes. “Your skin,” he whispered. “It’s so cold.” Then he fell back onto the hay, and his eyes closed as sleep took him.

  I know him, I thought, trying to conceal the slight tremor in my hands from Elizabeth, who seemed not to notice. Instead, she was gazing upon the slumbering man with compassion.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said quietly as his snores filled the air. “He wasn’t always like this.”

  The man’s clothes were ragged and worn, and his face was covered in stubble. It was clear he had seen better days. “Who is he?” I asked.

  “His name is Gerhardt,” Elizabeth answered, and without warning, a new memory surfaced from Justine’s past.

  I was standing in the market, selecting apples from the grocer. Our hands touched, and he smiled at me. He looked younger in the memory, and happier too. A flurry of images flashed through my mind, and I saw him again, kissing me in the forest the day William died. The memory faded just as quickly, and I was back inside the stables, kneeling beside Elizabeth.

  I loved him, I thought. Or rather, Justine loved him. The revelation that I had loved someone before Victor was followed immediately by the realization that my creator had kept such knowledge from me. Not once had Victor ever said anything about Gerhardt. As I watched him sleep, a small part of me wanted to reach out and stroke his hair, but I pulled back. Justine loved him—not me. Apart from a few fleeting memories, this man meant nothing to me, except for what he represented: another one of Victor’s lies. When I thought of how Gerhardt
had recoiled from my touch, my body pulsed with a cold fury.

  After a few minutes, Elizabeth rose and helped me to my feet. “We should be on our way. Can I buy you a drink? This is the second time in two days that you’ve come to my aid. It’s the least I can do to thank you.”

  “Why not?” I said, attempting a bright expression. I followed her outside, casting one last look at the man behind me.

  Sunset was still a half-hour or so away as we made our way to the inn, where Elizabeth and I took seats beside one another at the bar.

  “That man back there,” I asked, unable to let the matter lie. “How do you know him?”

  Elizabeth took a sip of wine and sighed. “Gerhardt was in love with a friend of mine. He took her death very hard.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked. “After she died?”

  “Gerhardt enlisted in the army—along with my younger cousin, Ernest. He never speaks about it, but Ernest once told me that Gerhardt killed dozens of enemy soldiers singlehandedly in battle and saved the lives of his friends. When they returned home, Gerhardt gave himself over to drink.” She sighed and shook her head. “Now he is little more than a ruin of the man he once was.”

  Another life destroyed by Victor’s thoughtless pursuit of immortality, I thought bitterly, raising the glass to my lips.

  “This friend of yours,” I mused, a plan taking root in my mind. “What was her name?”

  “Justine,” Elizabeth said reverently, giving me the opening I desired.

  “Justine Moritz?” I pretended to be surprised.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth answered, studying the false expression of shock on my face. “Why do you ask?”

  “Moritz is my surname. Justine was my cousin. I came to Geneva to learn her fate.”

  “I never knew Justine had a cousin.”

  I nodded. “We had not seen each other in many years—not since Madame Moritz cast her out.”

  “That was when Justine came to live with our family,” Elizabeth said. “She was like one of us.”

  My smile faltered at the use of the word ‘like,’ but I recovered quickly. “What happened to her?”

  Elizabeth drained the glass, as if gathering strength, and set it aside. “I was there the night she died—the night this city changed forever.” She stared at the fire, which burned softly as the night grew dim outside the inn’s windows. “I was inside the castle when I heard the news of my cousin William’s disappearance. He had gone missing in the forest after a picnic with Justine and Ernest. A massive search party was organized, but by the time William’s body was found…”

  I nodded knowingly. “That must have been awful for you.”

  “It was only the beginning. Justine was arrested for William’s murder. The authorities found his locket in the folds of her dress, but before there could be a trial, the mob lynched her in the town square. I was there with Victor, my fiancé, watching. It was terrible. There was nothing we could do.”

  So he didn’t even try to save me, I thought. The creature was telling the truth.

  “And you don’t believe she committed the murder?” I asked.

  Elizabeth grabbed my gloved wrist and held it tightly. “Justine would never have hurt William. She loved him more than anyone. She was the kindest, gentlest person I ever knew.”

  “Then who killed the boy?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. There were wild rumors from the villagers, but I never put any stock in them.”

  I finished my own drink and set it on the bar between us. “You cared for her very much, didn’t you?”

  Elizabeth nodded. She turned away and wiped her eyes before pushing back her chair and climbing to her feet. “I should be getting home. It’s best for me to avoid the city after dark.” Elizabeth hesitated at the bar. “Would you consider coming to our home for dinner? I would like you to meet the rest of my family. Justine meant a great deal to us, and any family of hers is a friend of ours.”

  Elizabeth had given me what I wanted all along: an invitation. “I would be honored,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “And of course, you’ll be a guest at the wedding,” she added, causing me to flinch. There would be no wedding, not if I had anything to say about it.

  We exchanged parting pleasantries, and after Elizabeth departed, I climbed the stairs to my room, already considering my next steps. When I reached my room, I froze. I had left my room locked behind me, but the door was now cracked open.

  Someone had been inside while I was with Elizabeth—someone who had followed me back to the inn. I crept inside, my eyes adjusting the lack of light. I tensed, ready for anything, but the room was abandoned. Whoever was stalking me was gone—for now.

  I visited the cemetery after midnight, under the cover of darkness. The black iron gate had been left open, beckoning me inside. A broken lock lay on the ground at my feet, a sign of forced entrance. Crows flocked overhead as I followed the path, which was partially covered by fallen leaves. The birds landed on nearby tombstones and watched my progress, as if welcoming back one of the dead.

  The graveyard lay in the hills outside Geneva, overlooking the city and the lake across the vast chasm of night. It was a large cemetery, reserved mostly for peasants. With the pox outbreak, its numbers were growing by the day—evidenced by dozens of freshly dug graves. Fog crept along the broken walkway that led through the cemetery, pooling in the valley below. An abandoned church sat on the other end of the graveyard, having fallen dark long ago. There were signs of neglect everywhere I looked, from the weeds that covered the trail to the cracked or shattered statues of angelic guardians. Moss grew freely over gravestones and mausoleums alike, unchecked.

  I continued under the specter of the lifeless trees, where more crows looked on from leafless branches. Some of the graves were little more than wooden crosses that had been hastily cobbled together. Other tombstones were more impressive, though most of these appeared considerably older. I wandered among the graves, until at last I found it at the base of a crooked hill, under a lonely tree.

  The clouds peeled back behind me, illuminating the name etched into stone. Justine Moritz, read the name—1775-1794. I stood there in the gathering wind as the fog licked at my heels, staring at the place where they had buried me. My father’s grave was nowhere in sight, and neither did I see those of my siblings. I had been buried alone, one final cruelty from my mother.

  Victor had covered his tracks well; the ground was undisturbed. He would have made sure no one knew my body was missing before he transported it to Scotland. I wondered briefly how he had managed to conceal the deed from his companion Henry. Surely Henry would have noticed something was amiss. Perhaps he had, but chose to remain willfully ignorant of Victor’s flaws, as I had for so long. It was a decision that probably cost him his life.

  A clanging noise echoed somewhere in the night, shattering the stillness of the cemetery. I craned my neck in the direction of the sound, and my gaze fell on a spot beside a dome-capped stone pavilion, where a lantern’s light glowed above the fog. I descended the hill without making a sound. My eyes perceived a human shape in the darkness, unearthing a freshly dug grave with a shovel. The lantern sat beside him on the ground, doing its best to hold back the fog. As I drew closer, his form became clearer.

  Victor Frankenstein stood mere feet away with his back to me, blindly occupied by his work. He wore a simple white shirt and a plain brown jacket, having eschewed the more conspicuous waistcoat and cravat I had seen him wearing the previous day. I crept upon him, so close I could reach out and touch him if I wished. He straightened suddenly, as if sensing my presence, and reached for the lantern.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded, squinting in the fog as he swung the lantern around. I darted past him, just out of sight, and he brought the light around in a circle.

  “Up to your old tricks, I see,” I said, announcing my presence, and when he turned around again, I was standing directly across from him.

  “Persephone,”
he said with a small gasp.

  “How long, Victor? After they cut me down and buried me under the earth, how long was I cold before you dug me up?” When he didn’t answer, I continued. “You don’t look pleased to see me, Victor—and after everything I went through to find you. I trust you found the pocket watch.”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, clearly surprised. It had been over a year since we had last spoken to one another. A great deal had changed in that time, for both of us it seemed.

  I glanced at the grave, ignoring his question. “I could ask you the same. There was talk in the village that someone was digging up graves again. I had hoped it wouldn’t be you.”

  Victor’s chest rose and fell more steadily as he calmed to my presence, but his heart rate remained elevated. “I need the bodies for my work with the pox,” he said quickly. “I’m attempting to develop a vaccine.”

  I took a step forward, and any hint of a smile faded from my face. “Don’t lie to me,” I said, my voice hard as steel. “Never again, Victor. You haven’t given up your experiments, have you?”

  Victor sighed and looked away. After a long moment, he nodded. “No, I haven’t.”

  I shook my head. “You still want to raise the dead, despite everything that’s happened? How much more suffering must your family endure before you cease this mad endeavor?”

  “You don’t understand,” he pleaded. “I’ve come too close—learned too much—to give up now. I’ve fixed the mistakes I’ve made with you…”

  I cut him off, incensed. “Is that what I am to you, Victor? A mistake?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  This was madness of another kind. Victor’s work had consumed him, and now he couldn’t let it go, whatever the cost to those he loved, and all the other unfortunate souls in his path.

  “I almost pity you, Victor—almost.”

  “What do you want, Persephone?” The coldness of his words left a bitter taste in my mouth. This was not what I had hoped for from our reunion. Then again, what had I expected? That he would beg my forgiveness for the way he had treated me and proclaim his love? It was a naïve hope—a foolish hope.