HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  “Angie?”

  She refused to answer in repayment for all the days she had addressed the box with question and it had ignored her.

  “Angie, there is a rip coming. If you go with me, you can prevent it. That is the truth.”

  “Why would I prevent it, what do I care, who have I left to save?” She said this in rapid fashion, turning back in fury to the bed. “What is this mysterious 'rip' and why should it be prevented? You are a tale-teller, a deceiver.”

  “I bring the rip in time.”

  Angie tried to think what that would entail. A rip in time? How could time be rent and if it were, what did it mean to reality?

  One of the asylum's automaton orderlies came to the locked door and from the other side called, “Power will be restored in one hour. Power will be restored soon.”

  Angie ignored the machine outside her door and addressed the one on her bed. “If time rips, what happens?” She could hardly believe she was asking such a question, but the box made her suspect it might know more than any machine of her day. It was sought after by apparitions. It was alive with some sort of artificial intelligence that was extremely rare in her known world of smoke and dung and asylums full of sane offenders to the state.

  “A rip in time takes all this—all that you know--and makes it vanish. A rip in time throws off the axis of the planet and opens the heavens to the stars. It causes the gears at the center of the earth to halt and turn backwards, spinning the globe clean once more.”

  “And you have the power to make that happen?”

  “Indeed. Unless you agree to sacrifice yourself upon the alter of time...and join me.”

  She hadn't any idea what it all really meant. Could she trust a machine? Had any machine ever asked this of a human being?

  She closed her eyes and thought about her short life and where it had led her. She had trained herself as a horse-woman, a trick rider for a while, though the Bill Hickok Wild West show would not hire her. She had become a marksman with her revolver. Yet beyond those accomplishments, though they were not minor, she had done nothing of note. She had not married or settled down or started a family. She had not invented a new automaton or added to the store of knowledge that enhanced human life. She was really just a little cog in the great machine that was the earth, and if cast out, the machine wouldn't even notice, wouldn't slip a gear, wouldn't mourn her passing.

  “Show me,” she said, coming to the bed to sit and take the weight off her bad leg. “Show me what a rip in time means.”

  “Not possible. Once started, it can't be stopped. It reverberates out like a mushroom cloud enveloping everything.”

  Angie sighed. What was she to believe and what should she do?

  “What, then, would you have me do?”

  “Lean closer, Angie. Take me to your breast. Embrace me.”

  The sparks inside the little box grew brighter and the whirring was mesmerizing. Angie wondered where the shape-shifters were when she needed them. Had she known she'd be asked to give herself this way, she would have surely handed over the evil box the first time it was requested. She leaned over the bed, taking up the box in both hands. The blankets slid from her shoulders and the cold slipped into their place. She stared down into the sparkling chamber beneath the glass and for a moment it seemed to her the cogs and gears and chains were replaced by a miniature scene of a small city replete with lampposts and dirigibles and people hurrying through a snowy night. She held the box close to her chest and she shut her eyes, giving in to the disaster that was her life.

  When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the cold asylum. She stood on the street that looked identical to what she’d spied though the box glass. Men in top hats and long coats hurried by. Women in bustles and taffeta and velvet dresses strolled arm in arm with their lovers. Children dressed splendidly in hats and fine jumpers danced past between their parents.

  She looked down and saw she still held the box in her hand. “What happened? Where am I?”

  A smoky column whirled down the street toward her. She stepped back as it approached, but the whirlwind moved on past, nothing more than a dust devil stirred by wild wind.

  She heard a roar start up and glanced overhead at a lighted dirigible that floated there, its great gear system grinding and clanking. She sucked an intake of surprised breath. Beyond the dirigible she spied the glass ceiling. Even as she stared, astounded, a gargantuan set of curious human eyes in a strange giant's face closed in toward the glass, peering in.

  She was inside the box. She had sacrificed herself and now out there stood someone else who would be tricked into this box with her. There was no rip in time! There was no danger of her world in South Dakota disappearing.

  She began to scream and wave her arms, but the eyes never blinked or showed any recognition of her frenzied movements.

  It was as if she were but a little cog in the machine, nothing more, nothing worth examination. She heard a whirring begin and looked around her. From the edges of the street, from where the brick and stone buildings stood, reality began to wither and fall away like leaves from an autumn tree, revealing stark limbs. First the buildings became wheels, and the street became a wood floor, and on and on and on until the transformation reached where she stood, a small box clutched in her hands, and turned her into an accessory of the small noisy little machine. At the very end of her consciousness, Angie felt enlightened and realized the truth at last. The rip in time did not destroy the world out there. It took this one that for a short time thrived just like any other universe, and broke it asunder, ripping it apart to make it into working parts of the evil little machine, the destroyer of worlds.

  THE END

  FRANKENSTEIN:

  Return From the Wastelands

  by

  Billie Sue Mosiman

  Copyright Billie Sue Mosiman 1993, 2012

  First published in FRANKENSTEIN, THE MONSTER AWAKES as “Fallen Angel, Malignant Devil,” edited by Martin H. Greenberg, published by DAW Books 1993. Slightly revised from original publication.

  Dedicated to Mary Shelley who gave us our first monster.

  My Beloved Sister,

  I write to you about a deadly serious and Olympian idea. It is of a monster. I know you recall the one I mean, the only one that has ever been allowed entry into the world since Neptune was purported to rise from the deep blue ocean waters.

  But before I get to that, I also want to write of my misery at the news of your recent illness. I fear we both have reached beyond our prime years and are on the slow sad descent toward embrace with our creator. How many times this year alone has the archenemy pneumonia come to be your bedside companion? As for me, my cough has not abated nor, according to my good doctor, will it. It is the most bitter potion of later life to recognize the waning of the physical strength. The virility of my soul is as strong as ever (as is yours, I pray), but the body falters too long before the spirit. Did we ever once think that we would grow as old as our loving parents who watched so meticulously our little childhood games?

  But I have more to tell you than this common haggling we all have with the dimming of the light. It is most important to me that I share my lifelong obsession with someone at last, and there is no better candidate nor understanding friend than you, dear Margaret.

  Now let us speak of the monster—the creature who has obsessed me. I ask you to remember twenty years past my ordeal on the ship carrying Dr. Frankenstein into the northern regions where he searched for the great monstrous being whom he had created. I sent you letters, hoping to divest my mind of worry and woe on that perilous journey. No one has been able to forget the tragedy of Frankenstein's unfortunate passing, least of all me. That bone-cold fearful trip, the coming revolt of my crew, and then! Then the being himself appearing in the very room where his master had just momentarily given over his ghost to heaven's hands.

  I cannot forget the story the monster told me, of his making, and his anguish at being made. I admit to dreams, in
cessant, unrelenting nightmares of that very day, and the look of him—the scent from his pale flesh, the agony roaring in his eyes like souls caught in withering fire, the pitilessness of him that was made from death to live again.

  I admit another failure of heart. Until the being appeared standing at the side of his dead master, I really did not believe my good friend could be telling the entire truth. How could anyone, nay even a genius so great as our Dr. Frankenstein, actually create from human limbs a new personage to walk the earth? Only God could breathe life into inanimate clay. Oh, yes, I know I am a modern man and even twenty years ago I knew the precepts of science, but even science has its limits and I have never forsaken our God, Margaret. I would dread eternal damnation were I to completely cast out my faith.

  Yet there he stood, majestic in height and visage. I told you before how macabre was the meeting, how my heart trembled like a butterfly caught within my chest. Just one glance at his face told me this was an aberration of nature. Never could there have been born to woman a being with such beauty and yet such horror as loomed before me! There was the shock of his alabaster skin that appeared to shine with a tinge of yellow, like a slab of cold marble left to discolor in the hot sun. The pallid glow of his eyes that reflected high intelligence, but not without a sheen of low cunning. The graceful movements of his long tapered fingers as they reached out without tremor, then drew back like darting sparrows from the silent mask of death that lay over his master's features. He felt pain and sorrow; he felt the guilt of his misdeeds.

  I tell you, I have not been able to forget, cannot eradicate from my mind that strange and glorious encounter with what never should have walked the earth with mankind.

  I know I have not written of poor Frankenstein and that last fateful voyage into what might have been my own graveyard of ice, but this does not mean I have not grieved my friend, or wandered late nights throughout my home, lost in reverie and wonder, cloaked in the remnant of old fear.

  You see, dear Margaret, I did not know it all these years—I tried denying it to preserve my sanity!--but I am no less a man obsessed with that being who threatened to burn himself on a pyre in the far north regions, than his creator was when alive and under assault.

  The thought that has sustained me, given me wild little hopes and incremental spasms of pure excitement, has been that the being I saw leap from the ship to the floating ice, that being who stalks my dreams and dogs my days—he might yet be alive! Do you think it possible, or have I completely lost my mind?

  I can hear your answer now, whispering across the long miles. You necessarily will think me mad. The being promised before God he would do away with himself. Yes, I know this was told to me and when spoken I believed it with all my heart. There stood before me a man-made man, an abomination, and knowing his full evil, he said good-bye to Frankenstein, good-bye to the world that would not have a part of him, and I knew he meant his threat to perform self destruction. Yet... Margaret, the one idea I cannot rid myself of is this: What if he weakened in his resolve?

  Oh mad, mad, yes, you'll think age has caused a slippage of my mind, that time has brought me dementia as on a platter along with aches and muscle cramps and sleepless nights. But I am not truly mad no more than was Frankenstein. Like him, my view of what life is and what life can be, has been broken and remolded to fit the true facts. I have looked upon the face of a profane, held conversation with a heartless murderer, and it did not drive me insane. Why think it could happen just from twenty years of wonder and rambling thought?

  Since my health has improved somewhat and my fretful cough kept under control with mild poultice and sweet stinking syrup they sell at the local prescription palace, I feel strong enough to make one last venture into the question that has burned within me for these twenty long, mostly undistinguished years. Does he still live and breathe? Does that magnificent being lie scattered to the winds, a few bones scored with fire left behind, or did his pride eschew suicide at the last? And how will I know unless I pursue either his ashes or his footsteps across the frozen tundra?

  There is small reason to dissuade me, Margaret. I don't wish to bring you more pain than you already suffer, but you must understand this thing I feel compelled to do. Will you forgive me if I take a ship and supply bearers for one last trek into the white wilderness of the north? Will you find it in your heart to accept that this is the only way I can live out what days I have left to me without becoming so disturbed I will have to be put away from society?

  There are just the two of us left. I have lost all I loved since Frankenstein succumbed on my ship. There is no one to hold me safe, crazed with unanswered question, but you, only you, my beloved. Would you regard me with less devotion if I made the one pilgrimage my soul most desires?

  I will wait a fortnight for your reply and if you beg that I not search out the being for your sake, I will have to live on unfulfilled and wretched, stumbling through the dark labyrinth that is my mind, my eyes seeking contact with heaven as the last reprieve. You know my hope has always been never to cause you harm or a moment's worry, but if you could see a way to release me from guilt at my proposed voyage, if you feel strong enough to unfetter your brother from his familial attachment for this one last endeavor, this one last adventure, I will bless your name as a saint forever.

  Your loving brother,

  Robert

  * * *

  Robert Walton accepted the glass of port offered to him by the Captain. “I trust this will settle my stomach. Nothing else has been capable of it.” He drank a swallow, relishing the fine bodied taste upon his parched tongue. He had not eaten or drunk anything in hours due to how his digestion was misbehaving.

  “It surprises me the voyage has been so difficult for you. We all know what a fine vessel you sailed yourself at the helm as her good captain, sir.”

  Walton sighed and lowered the glass from his lips. “I am afraid that was long ago. It has been many years since I've set foot aboard a ship.”

  “And longer yet since you've been this far north, I expect?”

  “When I came back from these regions on my last trip where my crew considered mutiny and the ice mountained around the ship's decks like walls, I swore never to brave closing in on such utter misfortune again.”

  “Ah, well, these waters are not as dangerous for our ships today as they were in your time.” The Captain brought the decanter to the table where the overhead swinging lantern flame pierced the etched decanter glass and threw prisms of colored light dancing onto the polished teak planks. “I heard stories of your last trip. Sailors I served with in my youth told us tales I scarcely believe.”

  Walton glanced up, then abruptly away. He tested the port, willing his stomach to subside its rumbling. “Sailors favor tales that can be retold, tales never to be taken at face value, my friend.”

  “Yes, but the things I heard...”

  “I dare say they weren't true.”

  The Captain eyed Walton skeptically. He was not a man to be put aside from curiosity. “The man? The great huge beauteous monster who came to Dr. Frankenstein's cabin? He was a myth?”

  Walton nodded. “A creature of fevered imagination. You must recall we were facing extinction. Had not the ice floes broken apart and moved, we would have all died a cold death together.”

  The Captain drank his port in silence a while. The ship swayed gently through the swells, lulled by an open sea that had not seen a storm in three weeks. The glass stopper from the port decanter rolled across the table like a marble. The Captain fetched it and settled it into the bottle mouth.

  “There were all those rumors of an 'experiment.' Dr. Frankenstein upon his death had a trail of gossip tagging at his coat. There were so many of his friends and loved ones who were so brutally dispatched. Strangled, weren't they?”

  Walton knew he must escape this interrogation before too long. He distrusted the dark look in the other man's eyes. If anyone suspected Frankenstein's monster actually existed, a new hue and cry w
ould rise from the superstitious populace. Where the world might wish to kill the devil, Walton hoped to question the creature until he could still all his questions about immortality, and the life waiting on the other side of death that only a man dead made to live again could answer.

  “There are unfortunate circumstances in every man's life,” he said finally in rebuttal. “My own second cousin was knifed in London while on holiday.”

  “So the stories are untrue—about the monster? They are fabrications?”

  “They have never been more than that.”

  “And you were in the cabin with Frankenstein's body at the last and you did not see a tall substantial person who later leapt onto the ice to be carried away into the distance from your ship?”

  “If I had, would I not admit it? My men saw all sorts of visions and suffered innumerable nightmares when for a time we thought we would perish en masse, surrounded by frozen silence, far from home. Even I thought once I saw a veritable flock of black birds rising from behind the cliff of an iceberg. Crows!” Walton rubbed his forehead as if to dispel a bad demon camping there. He hoped his performance was believable. He'd not want rumor sailing back with this captain to alert curious explorers to follow him. Word, story, and gossip was like chaff on the wind; it could blow for hundreds of miles and put down anywhere.

  “Yes, well, I understand the strain you and your crew must have labored beneath. I was in the Straits once myself on a long voyage when a typhoon overtook us. The mind plays wondrous games when under threat of annihilation. Some men claimed an angel with a wing-spread a hundred meters wide swooped down from the top of a monstrous wave and lifted our ship from a deadly trough.”