HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Walton finished his port, and satisfied his stomach had been revived to normalcy or some state near it, begged the captain's pardon for his early departure for bed.

  In his cabin, he took out the writing materials and sat at the small desk attached to the wall. He penned in his painstaking script:

  Dearest Margaret,

  The trip so far has been uneventful, though far from boring. Just tonight the captain of this ship thought to examine me about the rumors brought back to the mainland from my trip with Frankenstein. Here it is twenty years after the fact, and still those stories will not be put to rest. I admonished my crew to forget what they had glimpsed so briefly, to hold fast to their tongues or evoke ridicule for a tale so unbelievable not one common man would take it as truth. Yet here we are, and the captain of ships sailing north to sea repeat gossip of an unlikely creature who visited my ship and then left it like a madman, flinging himself off to become frozen upon a triangle spit of sheer ice.

  I put the captain's curious nature to rest, I pray, but I know my entourage and many cartons of supplies indicate I am trekking into the wildest reaches of the north, and my lie about scientific measurement of the wind velocities across the steppes of the plains does not satisfy every inquisitive mind who knows of it.

  Oh, if only I can be left alone!

  Nevertheless, I must tell you that despite the lingering spells of coughing I withstand and the regular stomach upsets that I ply with port and strong mind control, I am so excited to be on my way at last to find either the monster or his bones, that I hardly sleep. Adrenalin races through my body and clouds my brain day and night. I cannot thank you enough for giving me leave to make the trip.

  I hope this finds you well from your bout of sickness, that you do not fail to pray for my soul, and that you know my love resides with you even as the waves press me onward to an uncertain future. This quest has such hold on me that not even physical ailment, interrogation, or the fear of finding that what I seek can delay me in the least.

  Your devoted brother,

  Robert

  * * *

  Walton had hired bearers to carry his supplies north through a wasteland of snow and ice. Across great flat plains they trekked, spidery shapes of shadow struggling across the whiteness of open tundra, beset by winds so cold it froze the bits of hair the men failed to shave from their cheeks and chins. White blinding light swept down from across the far craggy mountains so that tinted glasses and goggles covered everyone's eyes from the pain and the possibility of the loss of eyesight.

  Where he was going, Walton did not know, save north. He consulted the compass every hour, making sure the troop of tired and bedraggled men not lose their way. At each towering snow bank, natural ice cave, or deep crevice they came to, he paused to search the white pristine realm for evidence of habitation.

  His hired men were beginning to balk, to hang back and walk in sullen groups to speak among themselves in whispers. Walton felt their reluctance growing with each new day, and he despaired that he would find anything to prove to him Frankenstein's being was either dead or alive before his companions, like the crew of his last ship, threatened to abandon him to his intractable mission.

  He would die if left alone. They must not leave him now!

  It was twenty-two days into the trip, having passed two outposts where their group spent time warming by fires and taking home-cooked food. They were six days distant from the last hamlet of the north. Already four of his men had turned back, slipping away in the night while he slept, when Walton chanced upon an artifact that made his heart leap with joy. Just at his feet as he trod relentlessly up a slippery hillside of ice, he spied something glinting in the torturous blaze of sunlight. He bent to retrieve it, to peer at it closely. Finally he raised the tinted goggles and turned the item over in the palm of his gloved hand. It was a flint stone, shaped by human hands, chiseled by other rock, perhaps, but unnatural in shape. The being had done this, he knew it! He was close by, surely. Frankenstein's creation had found flint; this meant he had fire and had discovered a way to survive the cold and ice that would have claimed him if his suicide had not.

  Walton smiled a little smile, his lips just curving slightly beneath the covering of thick wool over his mouth. He looked back over his shoulder at the men coming along behind him, and quickly shoved the stone into a pocket.

  The thrill was such to spur him to even greater expenditure of his energies, and that day he covered two more miles than on most days before. His bearers grumbled and called out pleas that he slow down, but nothing could hold back Walton's immense desire to find the dark treasure of the north.

  It was near sundown when the night came dropping over the plains like a black sheet, that Walton found the place he had dreamed might actually exist.

  Around the bend of a mountain's foot, he happened upon a curved wall of ice, the south side of another ice cave carved into the mountain's belly as if God had taken a giant scoop and hollowed out a cavity. He hurried forward, racing the dying sun to the lip of the wall. Grabbing hold of it with his left hand, he swung around to peer into the vast opening.

  There! Walton stood rooted to the spot, stunned.

  In a great gaping hole with a roof overhead of shining ice reflecting the last shards of sunlight was the evidence that Walton had always hoped would be found. It was all primitive, disorganized, but recognizably made by human hands for human comfort. There was a bed of limbs against a far wall, taken, Walton surmised, from some far region in the area where trees must grow. There was a cold dead heap of coals indicating fire for warmth and cooking. There was a cave man's ax, made of a length of timber and a sharpened stone attached to the head with sinew strips from an animal's hide. There was a pile of bones, tiny ones and larger, the marrow gnawed for nourishment and then the bones were discarded all in one place.

  This is where the glorious being lived.

  And he lived yet! The coals were not scattered, the bed undisturbed and ready for a man to lie his head down for a sleep. He lived, he lived!

  The first men to catch up with Walton wandered into the cave and began looking around in disbelief. Some shuddered. Some laughed and then abruptly lost the impetus to laughter. One, the leader of the hired men, a bear of a man with biceps as enormous as cannon balls, came to Walton and said, “What does this mean? Who or what lives here?”

  “I don't know,” Walton replied truthfully. “I hope it is the man I've come to find, but I don't really know.”

  “We were told you were a scientist.”

  “And that I am.”

  “Come to measure wind with strange instruments.”

  “I am afraid that was not quite the truth.”

  The leader glanced around before turning again to Walton. “You hunt a man who would live alone in this icy wilderness, someone who would live like an animal hibernating in a cave of ice? What manner of demon is this?”

  Walton almost laughed in the man's face. Demon? God would more approximate the real character of Frankenstein's successful experimental being. He said, placing a calming hand on the other man's arm, “We'll have no talk about demons and such things. I have been searching for a friend of mine, someone who deserted civilization twenty years ago, someone I thought must by now be dead from exposure or starvation. That I've finally found his lair, and I admit it appears to be not unlike where a polar bear might take up residence, but now that I've found him, you cannot fully imagine my joy and thanksgiving. This man was once great. A learned man. He spoke fluently and visited all the great cities of the world. But something...tragic...caused him to turn his back on his fellow man, and I could not live with myself had I not made this ponderous trip to assure myself he still lived—or had finally found a restful peace in death. You do understand, don't you? You'll assure the others not to be afraid? We will return now, all of us, just as soon as we can. Our long journey is at an end.”

  The leader frowned trying to understand what was essentially an unreasonable and illo
gical story from the man who paid his salary, but after a moment, his breath pluming ghostly as fog from his lips, he nodded acquiescence the way a sheep will bow to the shepherd's song. “I'll tell the men,” he said, and trundled away to the mouth of the cave where the rest of the party stood in stupefied wonder.

  That night, with his lantern turned low to conserve oil, Walton could not stand the wait for the being's return to his cave home. He took out the paper and began to write to Margaret about his discovery.

  Dearest Sister,

  Through divine providence I have not been killed, beset by my churlish supply bearers, or dropped off an ice crevice into an endless cavern. The Good Lord has answered my prayers and taken me to the very place of my dreams. I am here in the cave where Frankenstein's monster has been living! If something happens to me so that I do not make it back to your loving sphere, perhaps someone will bear this missal to your hands so that you will know I have not wasted my money and my last year of health. I did not waste those years thinking about this incredible being; my life was not a squandering of my precious time on the ridiculous notion that the monster still lived and walked on the same earth I did. I took a delusion—I know you thought me delusional!--and proved it to be reality.

  He is here. Somewhere he is in this vicinity, roaming outside these ice-laden walls, hunting for food or scouring the snow for something to burn at his fires. There is evidence all over that he was here within the last forty-eight hours. The coals from his last fire lie just as he left them. His bed of dried limbs where he lays his head is a long dark rectangle behind me, and his ax made from materials at hand (wood and stone and what appears to be strips of rabbit skin) leans against the freezing wall. He had even carved wooden bowls and utensils for his food. This is such a sight to see and I wish you were here with me to witness it.

  I cannot tell you of my exuberance, how this makes me feel to be in the abode of the man I met that once and who ever after ruled my thoughts. It is like happening upon a casket of jewels when you are destitute. Or having been adrift at sea on a badly made raft for forty days and forty nights and finally making landfall upon a paradisaical shore. I feel as grand and full of passion as I am sure Frankenstein felt when first his creature moved and drew the first breath of life.

  My men are in a dreadful mood and though I've sought to reassure them I have found a lost friend, I can see them even now at the mouth of the cave, their backs to me, and by observation of their agitated movements I know they are plotting to flee upon the slightest provocation. Margaret, dear, we have progressed with our science and philosophical knowledge a long way from the days of idle witchcraft, spells, potions, and fear of the dark unknown, but these men are but a minute step from hysterical outright mutiny. I have seen it before when on my ship in the sea that brought me into the north, and it consists of an unmistakable aura, a miasma of anxiety and trepidation that first seeps and then overwhelms men when they face a rip in the veil of natural events.

  My joy is tempered by my own fear of how the men will react upon encountering “my long lost friend.” I expect a wailing and a cringing, for this being who has been in the studio of my mind for twenty years still causes me to shiver when memory takes me too close to the surface of his true person. You know I have been at a loss to describe him except to tell you there is an instinctive drawing back from him, though his beauty is astounding. I know Frankenstein felt he had pieced together a freakish basket of limbs and body parts to create a terrible looking being, but to me he always seemed to be a masterful thing of creation. He does inspire that dread all men harbor of the grave; he rankles the perceptions of what a man should be, and it is his “new life” that Frankenstein gave to him that causes us lesser mortals to quake and to turn away to evade seeing what God, in His mercy, dared not create out of dead parts. Still..to me....he has always been the most impressive of all men. He is the ultimate man. The man we all might be if only we had our own dear Dr. Frankenstein to fix us...to correct us. If only my legs were so long, my arms so extended, my chest so wide, my head so ample. If only my torso was so muscled and my stomach so flat, my eyes so far-seeing!

  I grow sleepy, dear, or I would write more. The warmth from the fire, after my long day in the fierce biting cold, causes my head to droop on my shoulders. I have eaten heartily of potatoes cooked to a mush and chewy jerky of that fine venison I brought from the last outpost. I am too happy. I feel a consuming content invading my body from my toes to my graying hair; I am satiated as a man can be who once—no, many times!--thought he was mad to follow after a nightmare, just to wrestle it from the dungeon into the full luminous glare of corporeality.

  I hope the being does not find me sleeping, but I must rest now, and write more later when I know, beyond any doubt, I have done this good and righteous thing by coming to claim Frankenstein's world-shaking creation.

  Your most devoted brother,

  Robert

  * * *

  The first he knew of the commotion, one man was dead.

  Walton rose from the robes covering him near the fire and shrieked along with his men, the sounds issuing from his mouth without volition, so great was his terror.

  Out of the blackness of the cave's opening, back lit by a wide shaft of moonlight, stood the thing Walton feared and yet adored. Two of the men rushed toward the imposing figure, but the being brandished a length of raw corded wood that struck them on the heads, knocking them back into the cave where they sprawled on their backs.

  “Don't!” Walton called, anguished that it had come to this already, that his dream so easily slipped into fiendish nightmare. He didn't know if he called to his innocent men or to the monster, but none of them listened.

  A harsh ear-splitting bellow rent the air and another man was in the monster's big hands, held off his feet from the floor of the cave, struggling mightily to save his life. As Walton rushed forward, he could see the tendons bulging on the monster's great arms and the veins filling to bursting point from the hapless victim's throat.

  “Let him go! Don't you recognize me? Don't you know me, Robert Walton, your master's friend? I'm WALTON. Hear me or, as God is my witness, I will shoot you down without hesitation.” Walton held a pistol on the monster, but whether he could actually kill with it, he did not know.

  The monster's face turned slowly toward his voice and as his full features were presented, Walton felt the gun wobble in his fist, felt his stomach turn over, and his mind fell back as if from a blow. What horrible malignant devil was this thing that held his gaze as though in a vise? The beauty was still there, hiding beneath insane eyes that knew no language or obeyed no laws. The skin was smooth over the wide sunken cheeks. The lips, compressed in rage, were black as they had been when Walton first saw him, but an unearthly hardness made them look carved from dense obsidian stone.

  “Please?” Walton asked, his voice pleading softly. “Let him go.”

  The man dropped and his feet went out from under him. He scrambled to his knees, and hunched over, gasping in air. Walton watched in suspense as the man came to his feet and ran for the outside, disappearing into the night. Suddenly it was clear Walton and the being were alone together. One man lay on the ice floor, but he was obviously never going to run or move again. His neck was broken, his head angled incorrectly, eyes staring. All the other men had fled in fear for their lives. A despair filled Walton when he realized they surely had taken with them most of the supplies.

  “Now what shall we do?” Walton asked quietly, coming closer to the being and reaching out tentatively with his fingers to touch him. “Don't draw back, I won't hurt you. I never meant to cause harm. Do you remember me now? Do you recall that meeting in the ship's cabin where your master died? Remember the story you told me?”

  A cry of anguish and of buried rage arose from the creature's chest as it staggered away from his touch into deeper shelter of the cave.

  Walton, overcome with pity, approached him again. “Do you still miss him? Do you still live with re
gret that he died?”

  It occurred to Walton the being probably had not spoken aloud for years, maybe he had never spoken again after leaving the ship. If that was true, he might have forgotten by now even how to speak, how to form the words he had once so exquisitely voiced.

  It was amazing that he had even remembered Walton's face. The recognition in the being's eyes, just as he loosened hold of his victim's throat, had been unmistakable. There was a shadow of humanity that slowly came forth to defeat the fury of the animal the being had become to survive in the north alone. He knew Walton. Oh, he knew him.

  “I came on this long journey to find you.” Walton now said. He saw the monster lower himself before the fire and stretch out his marble white hands to the golden flames to warm himself. “I knew in my soul that you had too much pride to destroy yourself on a pyre the way you said you would. You are a superior creation, built from flesh and blood, given life again, and you couldn't end it, could you? I knew, someway, that you still lived. And now I've found you.”

  The first efforts at speech were like gears grinding and flooded streams gurgling over their banks. The monster made guttural sounds, shook his great shaggy head, threw out his arms in frustration, and tried again to overcome the limitations of his unused, rusty vocal cords.

  Finally the words he tried to bring forth were just intelligible enough for Walton, leaning in close and paying strict attention, to decipher.

  “You...should...shouldn't...have...come.”

  “Yes, I should have come. I had to come. Destiny meant it to be. I've spent my life obsessed with you and what you might be doing if you lived. I dream about you. I write about you. I could not die without knowing you better.”

  “I...I...am...a dangerous...thing...”