The Bride of Frankenstein Page 2

  Down the centre of the road, roaring with shrill animal fury, came the Monster. About its neck, wrists and ankles were rough abrasions where the shackles had clasped its flesh. Its eyes glared wildly and its teeth gnashed as it raced after the scared villagers who had so lately been its captors.

  Stooping, it swooped upon the prostrate woman, snapping her spine in its two hands as easily as a man might break a twig. It shook the body venomously before flinging it brutally down on to the cobbles. The skull split open and the Monster trampled viciously upon the dead white face until its leaden boots were spattered with vivid gouts of blood.

  ‘Shoot!’ screamed the burgomaster helplessly from his window. The red-tape which had prevented him from having the creature killed on sight vanished. With it fled his hopes of the mayoralty. His natural pomposity was forgotten in the sudden wave of horror which overcame him. Cursing, he ran to the wall where he had just replaced his gun.

  When he returned it was in time to see the Monster lumbering over the fields beyond the village, and in a corner of the street a little group huddled over the still body of a child.

  Terror was loose again!

  One by one from outlying hamlets reports came in. There was Frau Neumann wantonly and horribly murdered. A gipsy family completely wiped out. The burgomaster railed at his guards and called on Heaven, but to no purpose. No bonds could have held a creature possessing such colossal strength; and now few could be found with the courage to go after it again. Perhaps, they argued, somewhat belatedly, if they left it alone it would leave them in peace.

  It was after its third murder that the Monster, wounded by a random shot and exhausted by the chase, came to a tiny hut set in the heart of a coppice.

  Night was falling, and the earthy smell of the dew-drenched bracken beckoned the creature to rest awhile.

  Furtively, for it had learned to fear all men, the Monster moved towards the lighted window of the hut. Then it paused, startled.

  From within the little dwelling came a strange, sweet sound. Another. And another. Someone was playing a violin.

  Music was a new sensation to the Monster. It was pleasant. It drew near, fascinated.

  Within the hut a hermit, who was blind and old, played on unaware of the hideous face pressed close to the pane. For fully a minute the Monster watched. Then it saw the old man turn – turn and stare mildly at him through sightless eyes that saw not the watcher’s aspect and were, consequently, unafraid.

  The Monster moaned faintly. It was nearly spent.

  The playing ceased. As often happens when one sense is lost, another develops acutely. So it was with the blind man. The sound the Monster made struck loudly on his ears. He went to the door.

  ‘Who is there?’ he called, gently.

  For a space Monster and man faced each other. The moment was tense with foreboding. What would the Monster do?

  Slayer of innocents, would it strike down the helpless blind figure before it, or would it mistake the violin in his hand for an instrument of destruction and stagger away into the darkness?

  The hermit came closer. He could sense where the other was standing. Gently he spoke.

  ‘You are welcome, my friend, whoever you are. Forgive me, but I cannot see you. I am blind.’

  Slowly he stretched out a hand and touched the Monster. A tense growl caused him to start back in alarm, then a sticky sensation at the tips of his fingers made him utter a low cry of concern. Blood! The stranger was wounded!

  Blind and unafraid, he slipped an arm about the creature and guided it into the hut. And there he tended the Monster’s hurts.

  That night the hermit prayed. He had long wanted a companion in his loneliness.

  ‘Dear Father, I thank Thee,’ he murmured, ‘that out of the silence of the night Thou hast brought two of Thy lonely children together and sent me a friend to be a light to mine eyes and a comfort in time of trouble. Amen.’

  From then onward, a strange friendship sprung up between them. The hermit believed the Monster to be dumb, and the affliction gave them a mutual bond. Blindness and dumbness – each could supply a want to the other.

  And the Monster? No longer hounded, stoned and treated as an outcast, it responded to the hermit’s kindness with the gratitude and devotion of an injured animal.

  It learned to speak.

  Painfully, it struggled with the sounds the hermit taught it. ‘Bread – drink – good!’ These words were pleasant, happy words. They were words which brought comfort and helped to supply bodily needs. But the greatest word of all, the word which sowed the seed of a soul in the Monster’s vast carcase was ‘friend.’

  ‘Friend,’ it repeated over and over again, touching the hermit’s sleeve with grateful humility. ‘Friend – good!’

  And here it might have stayed harmlessly for ever but for a certain happening.

  There had been peace in the countryside for some months now and people were beginning to venture abroad again. The Monster was supposed to be dead. Some even claimed to have seen its giant body lying at the foot of a precipice. A great cloud seemed to have been rolled back from above the village of Ingolstadt.

  One night, two strangers called at the hut. They had been out after wild duck and lost their way in the wood. With his usual courtesy, the hermit asked them in to rest and eat. They entered.

  Suddenly one of them uttered a low cry and pointed to a huge shape that sat hunched in a corner.

  ‘Look!’ he gasped. ‘It’s the Monster!’

  With an oath the other leaped to his feet and raised his gun. But he was not quick enough.

  Association with the hermit had sharpened the Monster’s intelligence. Though as yet it could talk but little, it understood all that was said. And it knew that the word ‘Monster’ was never applied to it by a ‘friend.’

  With a hideous cry it sprang, wresting the gun from the startled man and hurling him back against the wall. The next instant it had sent the weapon flying through the window.

  Bewildered, the poor hermit raised his voice.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he cried anxiously. ‘This is my friend.’

  The men turned on him furiously.

  ‘Friend? Why this is the fiend which has been murdering half the countryside. Good Heavens, can’t you see?’

  Then, looking closer, they realised what had happened. The hermit was blind. He did not know.

  But there was no time now for explanations. The Monster, roused from its feeling of security, meant to remove the two strangers who had blundered out the truth in the only way it understood. Lifting the table as easily as a matchbox, it flung it savagely across the hut.

  It caught the second man as he was shifting his gun from his shoulder, knocking him back against the door. The impact brought the swinging lamp down from its staple in the roof and a wave of flame shot up. In three seconds the hut was ablaze.

  Both men tugged at the hermit, dragging him out of harm’s way. Then they, too, leaped for the open door. Within the hut the Monster battled frenziedly with the flames, hurling himself again and again at the wall in the attempt to break it down – anything to get out of the furnace which was raging all about it.

  At last with a crash the board gave. Another and another. Screaming with pain and fury, the creature plunged through the opening and out into the wood. The hunt was on again.

  A black shape stood silent by the gaping mouth of a tomb. It was tall and gaunt, and the pallid moonlight shining from above, gleamed on a row of yellow teeth set in a wolfish grin.

  All about it, like stark fingers pointing to the sky, rose countless headstones, while here and there a monument to some noble family towered grimly remindful above its neighbours. It amused Doctor Pretorius to think that even in death there was snobbery.

  The graveyard was deserted, as a graveyard should be at dead of night, save for this solitary figure who waited motionless beside the crypt.

  Somewhere an owl hooted. The Doctor turned his head, then his lips snapped with
an exclamation of annoyance as he noted the glimer of a light moving over the graves. Of what use all this sccrecy when the fools gave their presence away in this idiotic manner?

  Cupping his hands, he uttered an answering hoot and waited until the two men came up.

  ‘Put out that light,’ he hissed, as they stood together awkwardly before him. ‘We want no witnesses for what we have to do.

  Reluctantly, for the men hehad hired were superstitious pheasants, they obeyed him. One of them blew out the lantern and the three figures stood listening intently.

  No sound, however, fell upon their ears, save the moan of the night breeze in the tall trees fringing the cemetery and the occasional creak of their branches.

  Satisfied at last that they were unobserved, Doctor Pretorius led the way down the narrow stone steps to the bowels of the crypt.

  Tonight was an important one for Pretorius. He had threatened, wrangled, cajoled and pleaded with Frankenstein for his co-operation in the experiment which was to make a woman fit to mate with the Monster. But it had all been to no purpose. Just when he had believed that Frankenstein was ready to yield, that his enthusiasm and love of science would compel him to throw in his lot with him, Elizabeth had entered the room.

  The few words that she had heard as she entered the door had been sufficient to enlighten her as to what was proceeding, and she had immediately forbidden her husband to countenance the thought of another such experiment. What was more – she had shown the Doctor the door and given orders for the Schloss to be closed while she and Frankenstein undertook a long trip abroad together.

  It was necessary, therefore, that Pretorius should conduct his experiment alone, and it was to procure a suitable body for the attempt that he was here in this crypt tonight.

  At the foot of the steps he paused and relit the lantern. The pale light flickered fitfully, dimmed and glowed. Like a great crow, draped in his long black cloak, Pretorius lifted the lantern on high and sniffed. The rank earthy smell of the grave assailed his nostrils. He grinned appreciatively. He was in his element.

  He looked about him. Behind him his assistants shivered apprehensively.

  The coffins were arranged in tiers. Some of them were incredibly old. Mildewed and rotting, they had warped with the damp, and where they had warped they gaped, disclosing yellow bones or torn and fibrous shrouds.

  Into one of these Pretorius thrust his hand. When he withdrew it, it clasped a woman’s skull.

  He chuckled softly, patting the bony cheek with insolent familiarity. Then he tossed it playfully at the shrinking men, deriding their horror as it smashed to pieces like an egg on the cold stone floor.

  ‘She’s no use to me,’ he muttered, tearing down a huge festoon of cobwebs which hung from the ceiling with his bare hands. ‘Too old. Too small.’

  A fat spider scuttled across his foot. He stamped upon it. It squelched, and he wrinkled his nose with distaste as he thrust its remains aside with his boot.

  ‘I want someone young,’ he continued, peering at the inscriptions on the coffin lids. ‘A girl – beautiful, supple, recently dead – and unmarked from any injury.’

  The two men stirred uneasily.

  Taking a wall each, they began to inspect the coffins. Presently one of them called out, his voice booming strangely beneath the vaulted ceiling.

  ‘Will she do?’

  Pretorius hurried to his side.

  ‘Read the inscription. How old was she?’ Stooping, the man began to read.

  ‘Madeline Ernestine, beloved daughter of–’

  ‘Skip that,’ Pretorius’ voice was sharp. ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Aged nineteen years and three months.’

  ‘Good! That’s the one. Break open the coffin.’

  The two men hesitated and glanced at each other. A sudden glint came into the Doctor’s eyes. It was a glint akin to madness. His fingers worked.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he asked in a dangerously soft tone.

  The two men shivered and crossed themselves. Their fear was abject. Pretorius grinned wickedly.

  ‘Do you want me to send you to the gallows – where you belong?’ he reminded gently. ‘Do not forget that I know who murdered Julius Steinberg.’

  The hold he had over them had its effect. Muttering, they bent over the girl’s coffin, hacking and prising, until a few moments later with a rending sound the lid came away.

  Gloating, Pretorius leaned over the still form within. ‘Pretty little thing,’ he chuckled, cutting the winding sheets from about her face. ‘I hope her bones are firm.’

  Caressingly he ran his fingers over the dead limbs.

  The two men picked up their tools, and, at a sign from the Doctor, made their way out of this abode of death. The lantern they left burning on the bottom step. It was enough for them to breathe once more the pure fresh air of the world above, and with all haste they flitted gratefully across the graveyard, leaving their erstwhile employer with the corpse.

  Alone, Pretorius seated himself upon the coffin, while he raised the slender body in his arms. She was not heavy, despite her dead weight. He propped her up against a wall while he lit a cigar and awaited the arrival of his own servant. Between them they would convey the corpse to his laboratory. There was half an hour at least to wait.

  The lantern burned lower.

  Pretorius was alone now, save for the silent occupants of the shelves about him. His isolation did not trouble him in the least. Cynical, indifferent to life and death, he was enthusiastic only in the matter of research. This subject, however, whipped his imagination to the point of madness, and he was entirely at a loss to understand how it was that Frankenstein, who had succeeded so far, could fail to pursue his crazy dream to the limit.

  If only he could think of a way to force his hand!

  Musing, Pretorius puffed out dense volumes of cigar smoke. They assumed strange shapes in the failing light.

  ‘Alone – I am still a pioneer,’ he muttered to the corpse that faced him. ‘I may fail at any turn. But with Frankenstein, whose creature still walks somewhere on this earth, to help me, ah, my pretty morsel, what a nuptial I could arrange for you!’

  As though it heard and understood, the head of the corpse dropped forward. The Doctor’s eyes narrowed, then he laughed softly as he noted the cause.

  A giant rat falling with a soft plop from the ceiling had struck the body on the shoulder in its passage, slightly dislodging it. Glancing malevolently at the Doctor with beady eyes, it scuttled across the flagged floor and disappeared.

  Chuckling to himself, Doctor Pretorius sat back and blew another smoke-ring. Then he delved into his pocket for his watch. What a devil of a time the fellow was in coming, to be sure!

  A creak sounded at the far end of the crypt. Surely that was he?

  Pretorius prepared to rise, when suddenly it dawned upon him that the noise emanated from that part of the crypt farthest from the entrance. It could not, therefore, be his servant. It must be someone else!

  For a moment his heart leaped, and a thousand superstitious fears inherited through the ages came to plague him. The next instant reason conquered, and he was his emotionless self again.

  The sound was repeated. It was louder this time. To the Doctor’s straining ears it sounded like a heavy weight being cautiously lowered to the floor. It dragged slightly.

  Slowly he turned his head. Then, with an exclamation of complete surprise, he sprang to his feet.

  There, close behind him, its body almost completely out of a coffin, was the Monster. It had obviously lain hidden there all the time the two men had been working in the crypt. Slowly it swayed to its feet and lurched towards the Doctor.

  It was to Pretorius’ credit that, after the first shock of surprise was over, he was unafraid. He regarded the creature coolly but warily. Indeed, a certain studied insolence crept into his voice as he addressed it.

  ‘Oh, I thought I was alone,’ he said airily. ‘Good evening.’ The flickering
light from the dying lantern picked out the bones on the creature’s face. They gleamed yellow-white under the taut skin. Pretorius watched it guardedly as it drew a step nearer. For weeks it had been missing – who knew what subtle changes may have taken place in the man-made creature. Its next action sent the hair rising up on the Doctor’s prosaic head. It spoke.

  ‘Friend?’ asked the Monster. Its voice was harsh and sepulchral.

  Pretorius took a grip on himself. After all, it was all perfectly normal. The Monster had been in the world some while now. It was natural that it should have learned to imitate human speech.

  ‘Indeed, I hope so,’ responded the Doctor, his brain beginning to work rapidly. He indicated a seat beside him. ‘Have some refreshment?’

  Avidly the Monster swallowed the wine and food that Pretorius had brought for himself. It was a wise move on the Doctor’s part. It put the creature in a good humour.

  Peering about it with curiosity, its gaze lighted on the corpse of the girl. It turned to Pretorius.

  ‘You make man, like me?’ it asked. There was a pathetic eagerness in its harsh notes.

  Pretorius shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he replied, playing up. ‘Woman – friend for you.’

  The Monster nodded, gratified.

  ‘Woman? Friend? I want friend, like me,’ it said.

  The idea which had been simmering in the Doctor’s brain from the moment he set eyes on the Monster and learned that it could speak, suddenly fructified. Stroking his chin, he rose to his feet.

  ‘I think you can be very useful, my friend,’ he smiled. ‘You can add a little force to my argument, if necessary.’

  For a moment he hesitated, then: ‘Do you know who Henry Frankenstein is?’ he asked. ‘And who you are?’

  The Monster nodded.

  ‘Made me – from dead. I love dead – hate living.’

  Pretorius chuckled.

  ‘You are wise in your generation,’ he answered. ‘Well, we must have a long talk, you and I. And then I have an important call to make. Perhaps Baron Frankenstein will not, after all, be so selfish as to refuse my request – when he sees you face to face.’