But the pounding was not part of a nightmare.
Krag’s eyelids fluttered open. He rubbed the dried particles of sleep from his eyes, then sat up. With a dissatisfied look, he turned toward the door which was shaking from the rhythmic rapping.
“Who is it?” he grumbled. “Don’t you know what time it is? Go away!”
The plea was not honored. The knocking became even louder. A voice called out from behind the door. “Krag, open up! Quickly! It’s me!”
“All right, I’m coming, the Mayor complained, still not knowing the identity of the man behind the door. “All right, damn it all! You don’t have to shake the house apart with your damned knocking!”
Wishing he could be back asleep, even with the nightmares, Mayor Krag stood up on his tired feet, lit the oil lamp on his chest of drawers, wrapped his robe about him, then slid into his slippers, grumbling, “Who in his fool mind would be up at this time of night and have the gall to wake up the town mayor?” He shuffled his way to the door as rapidly as his weary overweight body would permit. “Oh, I’m coming! Now stop knocking, will you?”
Quickly the Mayor made his way to the front door of his house and unlocked it. He was eager to identify and possibly arrest the intruder for disturbing his peace. Opening the door he saw his old friend Heinrich Franz. But this was not the same brave and often time foolhardy Heinrich he had known for so many years. Rather there was a strained look about him that seemed to distort his features. His eyes were wild, red, and there were uncharacteristic wet streams running from them.
“Heinrich!” Krag gasped.
“Thank the Lord in heaven that you are here!” exclaimed Franz, grabbing him by the robe sleeves.
“What’s happened to you, my friend? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“If only I had,” said Franz, his voice cracking. “But it was no mere fleshless phantom that I saw.” His breathing became heavier as he continued. “It’s alive and I saw it! Alive!”
Krag was already beginning to comprehend. “What? Do you mean...?”
Franz lowered and raised his head, a look of terror paling his face. “I saw it! The Monster! The Frankenstein monster!”
“But how can you be sure it was the Monster? None of us has ever seen it. All there have been are the legends, the stories passed down through generations.”
“It was the Monster, all right. A giant, he was, almost ten feet high... with skin like a deadman’s, all stitched together.”
“Where?” asked Krag, believing now what he was hearing.
“In the woods. Near the old Frankenstein place. Braun and Ulrich were here with me. The demon killed both of them like they were ants. Oh, it was the most terrible thing I have ever witnessed!”
He covered his eyes, sobbing as he recalled the egregious incident.
“I…" he cried, “managed to get away before the Monster could reach me. But he’ll find me – find all of us! We’ve got to protect ourselves. Get him first!”
“And how do you propose to do that?” asked the Mayor. “It is dark and—”
“Damn the darkness!” said the villager, looking up at Krag with a scowl of hatred on his face. “We have torches, don’t we, and according to the old legends, the demon fears fire! We’ve got to organize the townspeople, light torches, and hunt the Monster down like an animal! Destroy it! Burn it to ashes before it can kill anyone else!”
Krag could smell the beer on his friend’s breath, but knew what he had seen was not the result of over-indulging.
“I’ll call the police,” promised Krag. “We’ll comb the countryside for the Monster. Where did you last see it?”
“Near the moat in front of Castle Frankenstein. He’d been walking away from the castle and in the direction of the town. He’s probably headed this way at this very moment.” Franz appeared to be on the verge of collapse.
The Mayor placed a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Go home, Heinrich. You’ll be no good to any of us in the state you’re in now. You’ve been through too much. Calm down, rest, try to sleep. Then, when you’re back to your usual robust self, you may join us in the chase.”
“I’d like to go, but –” he said, shivering. “Y-yes, perhaps you are right.”
Heinrich Franz left the house and Krag bolted the door shut behind him. From the window, the Mayor watched the man hurry down the street and how he seemed to be avoiding every shadow that he encountered. Krag could not blame him.
Then the Mayor turned to the telephone. Once his call was made, the gendarmes would be out in full force, seeking out the Monster from their horses. But before the town official could put through his call, the pounding began anew, this time at his back door. Perhaps there was another sighting of the Monster to report, he thought, setting down the telephone receiver.
“Who is it this time?” he complained, sauntering toward the back door.
There was no verbal answer save for something that vaguely reminded Krag of the low growl of an angry dog. Of one thing he was certain, however. The person knocking at his door was physically stronger than Heinrich, for the door shook, almost buckling, with every impact of that unseen fist.
“Who is there?” asked Krag with a distinct flutter in his voice.
The light thrown into the room by a streetlamp outside revealed that the door was literally shaking on its hinges.
Krag could feel the river of perspiration chill his brow. His heart thundered in his breast as he saw a white crack splinter toward him, flying off the wooden barricade. There was but one being the Mayor could presently think of with such inhuman strength.
The Mayor stepped back, his round face suddenly appearing long, his eyes registering the terror now felt in his soul. As he slowly moved, another great jagged piece of wood flew through the air. Following it through the door and into the sanctity of his house was a yellow fist, formed from an enormous hand that seemed to be stitched to a yellow arm.
A moment later the entire door flew from its hinges and fell to the floor.
The intruder was a huge and monstrous silhouette in Krag’s open doorway —an awesome giant clad in black with a face worse than any that Krag had heard in the old legends or experienced in his worse nightmares. There was a glassiness in the figure’s hooded eyes and a low, sepulchral snarl issuing from its partially open mouth.
“The Frankenstein monster!” roared Krag.
But it was not merely the creature’s size and appearance that brought an icy feeling to Krag’s limbs, but also the thing in the giant’s other hand, that metallic object that flashed in his eyes from the streetlamp light.
“Oh, my God!”
With a fearful attempt at escape, Krag ran into the bedroom, the Monster advancing with enormous strides that covered the same distance in seconds. The creature’s huge hands smashed aside everything that happened to stand in his way. His movements were mechanical, as if they were guided by someone else.
Reaching his bureau, Krag flung open one of the drawers, the oil lamp shimmering as he rummaged through the stack of shirts to find the luger he always kept loaded and ready for burglars. He spun around, the weight of the pistol giving him a momentary sense of security, as the towering horror lumbered toward him.
Without thinking, Krag fired the gun into the Monster’s barrel chest, the bullets tearing through the black turtleneck sweater. For a second or two, the brute stood there, staring down at the smoking bullet holes. Then a snarl came to his face, obviously resulting from the pain caused by those wounds. But the creature seemed not to be otherwise affected by Krag’s bullets. Infuriated, the Monster lunged for Krag with his free hand, the shiny weapon in his other hand reflecting the light of the oil lamp.
Krag continued to fire until the gun was empty.
“You’re .. . not dead!” he exclaimed as the empty hand of the Monster caught him by the hair, trapping him where he stood, preventing him from taking another step. He saw the Monster’s other hand rise ominously into the air and could see i
n full view the heavy weapon in his hand. Krag had seen such a blade before, but only in pictures, and recognized its peculiarly angled edge that supposedly ensured a swift and nearly painless death.
But the Monster’s arm hardly possessed the speed and precision of the guillotine. The blade came crashing down into his neck and for an agonizing moment Krag felt the heavy blade hack its way through his flesh and bone. Only then did death mercifully come to him.
As if in a final act of desperation, the lifeless body of Ingolstadt’s mayor swept a dead arm against the oil lamp to splash its flaming contents across the far wall.
* * *
The fire spread rapidly across the room, like a living and voracious thing, eating whatever happened to find itself beneath its jaws of flame.
The Frankenstein monster stood entranced, watching as the fire — perhaps the only thing in this world that made him cringe with fear — ate through the dry curtains and sent a wall of deadly flames from one piece of furniture to the next.
He wanted to flee before the flames grew precariously larger, but first there was his master’s command... an order that must be obeyed.
“Proof! You must bring back proof of Krag’s death!”
Proof?
The giant was standing in the spreading river of his victim’s blood, gushing from the truncated neck and spreading about his raised black boots. He felt the heat of the growing inferno behind him as he found something lying in the pool of blood, something that still bore the Mayor’s frozen look of horror.
Both retrieving the object of proof by its hair and recoiling from the flames, the Monster rushed for the door through which he had come, but escape was barred by a wall of fire. Instinct forced him to flee in the opposite direction, bringing him to the front door. Prompted by the approach of the flames, the beast slammed his shoulder to the door and sent a shower of wooden splinters into the street.
A moment later, with a trophy in one hand and a dripping guillotine blade in the other, the Monster had escaped from the blazing house.
Suddenly the night was alive with noise – that of people shouting and of the fire engines.
Attempting to avoid detection, the Monster slipped into the shadows of an alley, taking concealment behind a stack of wooden boxes. Peering out, he observed the crowd of human beings gathering in front of the burning building. He heard the wail of a siren and saw the strange looking vehicle — one he had never seen before — from which men in uniform leaped out to spray the building with great streams of water.
The Monster was now safely away from his deadly natural enemy, but his spirit could almost feel those flames. He knew what fire could do to his ancient flesh. He had felt the biting of flames before, so early in his existence.
He watched with fascination as the men in uniform continued to battle the fire and wished that he too had the power and nerve to brave his worst foe.
Even as he observed, the beast saw that one man — a familiar man not wearing a uniform — was attempting to stir up the small band of onlookers. The creature gave out an angry roar. The man was the last of the three he had encountered in the woods, the one who had escaped his wrath.
* * *
When the fire-fighting crew finally reduced the inferno to a steaming ruin, Heinrich Franz was able to make himself heard.
“I tell you, Mayor Krag was not the type who would accidentally set his house on fire. He never smoked in bed and never left on his lamp. I know him. I’ve known him for years. I left him only minutes before the fire was reported and he wasn’t even smoking. I tell you,” said Franz, raising his voice, “that Krag was killed ... by the Frankenstein monster!”
“The Monster!” someone in the crowd echoed, after which the entire group joined in with a barrage of indistinguishable shouts.
Regaining the crowd’s attention, Franz continued with vehemence, “I tell you the Monster is back with us! And alive! With my own eyes I saw him murder our friends, Ulrich and Braun! Their corpses lie at this very moment in the woods!”
At that moment, two firemen emerged from the smoking ruins, carrying the charred remains of the town’s mayor. The group could not help but notice the absence of a head, but it was assumed that part of the body must have been incinerated. The grisly remains were hastily deposited into the ambulance.
When the fire engine and ambulance drove away, Franz again aroused the crowd. “And the Monster has killed our Mayor! If you doubt that he also murdered Braun and Ulrich, go up into the woods near Castle Frankenstein and see for yourself what remains of them!”
There came another round of shouts.
Then a woman yelled, “I believe you, Heinrich!”
“And so do I, Franz!” came another voice.
“As do I!”
The crowd was now a mob thirsting for vengeance, with fists raised to the dark heavens and curses shouted to uncaring and unseen forces.
“Then let us get our torches lit and hunt down this monstrous fiend that has already taken three of us! Let’s kill him before he can claim another citizen of Ingolstadt!” Franz was yelling as loud as possible, his nostrils flaring like those of an enraged beast. “Let’s end the curse of Frankenstein once and for all!”
They were like a swarm of human locusts, shrieking to destroy the Monster which none of them had yet actually seen. There was a swelling pandemonium of overlapping voices as the mob dashed, some of them pushing to get ahead, in all directions. Whatever wooden objects they could find — table legs, chair legs, thick tree branches — were quickly wrapped in cloth, dipped in kerosene and set ablaze. Soon the entire street was illuminated by the crackling fires of their torches as the irate townspeople scattered everywhere, searching every corner and shadow for their quarry.
No one saw the giant figure retreat deeper into the umbrage of the alley.
There was a small group of six townsmen pressing ever closer to the alley, their torches casting their radiance along the building walls.
“Maybe in there,” said one of the men, looking into the alley but still not seeing the cowering giant.
“There’s some boxes over there,” remarked another man in the small group. “He could be hiding back there. Come on, let’s get a closer look.”
As the six men stepped into the alley, a low growl, issuing from the darkness behind the pile of boxes, froze them where they stood. The growl sounded almost human. The men looked apprehensively at one another.
One man nudged the tallest member of their party. “Ludwig,” he whispered, “you go first. You’re always boasting that you’re the strongest man in Ingolstadt.”
Gulping, Ludwig advanced with caution, holding his torch above the boxes. But when he saw the light from his torch had illuminated behind those boxes, he could not move. The creature staring up at him, crouched like a wolf ready to spring on its prey, was the black-garbed giant. In one of its yellow hands was the gaping face of Mayor Krag. Atop a box next to the creature was a huge blade stained with crimson gore.
“By all the saints –” he gasped.
He saw the Monster begin to rise from the slime and filth of the alley, setting aside the decapitated head.
“What is it?” asked one of the group.
They were advancing toward their friend when the towering form of the Monster arose over their heads. The tallest of the six men was still unable to move, a choke having lodged itself in his throat. Instinctively the Monster reacted to the torch in his hand, turning his face away from it and roaring angrily.
“The fire!” said another in the group. “He’s afraid of fire!” Taking advantage of the moment, he hurled his torch against the Monster’s chest.
In a black flash, the Monster’s arm knocked aside the fiery missile, some of the flames managing to scorch his yellow flesh. The creature screamed, both from the pain and from the fear of the flames. Then he swung a powerful arm into the neck of the man who had thrown the torch, nearly severing his head with the force of his blow.
The other five me
n watched dumbfoundedly, several of them dropping their torches to the pavement in their horror.
Then, with unbelievable speed, the Monster seized the corpse of his latest victim and, using it as a weapon, swung it by the legs. The body’s skull slammed with deadly force into the skulls of the other men. They staggered for a few moments, too stunned to resist, as the Monster, taking them unawares, brutally ended their lives under a barrage of pounding yellow fists and crushing black boots.
Now six battered corpses littered the alley, their blood mingling with the little black pools of filth that settled on the pavement.
Six torches fizzled in the water, dying shortly after the men who had once carried them.
His work here finished, the Frankenstein monster returned to the trophy and the tell-tale weapon he had left behind the crates and took up one in each hand.
From outside the alley a cacophony of voices and scrambling feet could be heard.
“Did you hear that? Those noises came from the alley!”
The Monster could see that the man leading the mob of torch-bearing men was the same one, again, who had escaped him in the woods. But there was no time to wait and add him to his growing list of deaths. The mob was getting dangerously close with their torches. And there were also the commands of his master, old Professor Dartani, resounding over and over again in his transplanted brain.
“Kill Krag! Bring back proof! And don’t let yourself be taken captive or slain!”
The luxury of killing that other man would have to be postponed, perhaps until the Monster found the means to shake off the influence that had taken over his mind.
Seeing the torches blazing like monstrous fireflies, the creation of Frankenstein fled through the darkness of the alley. He had already passed through the archway that led out of town when he heard the voice of the mob leader shout at him from behind.
Frankenstein Lives Again (The New Adventures of Frankenstein) Page 14
