Frankenstein's Monster (35 page)

Columns of smoke rose up in that strangely lit sky. Soon I was close enough to see the underside of the clouds orange with reflected fire. An inferno was before me: I was chasing Lily into Hell. I felt my flesh being consumed, starting with my shoulder.

Night cast its darkness like a net that would draw me in and trap me; it was dark, all dark, save the weird light in the distance made more vivid by the surrounding night. The light pulled me in, pulled me down the road; I descended quickly, willingly, racing on and on toward damnation till I fell from the saddle. Fingers knotted in the reins, I was dragged along till the horse at last stopped.

The ground beneath me beckoned: Close your eyes, give up.

“Victor, now!”
I heard, or maybe it was the mute scream of the worm.

I pulled myself to my feet. If I once more mounted the tired horse, I would prompt no speed from it, so I gave it the only rest I could by trotting alongside.

Down and down the road led till finally, rounding a bend, it passed under a great bridge like the gateway to the underworld and opened onto a scene that displayed the horrors of man’s art.

Before me lay a river and on the riverbank an ironworks, a huge vaulted building whose inside was open to view. The furnace dwarfed the men who walked its top to feed it barrow after barrow of coal to make iron. Next to it sat a tremendous
bellows powered by chutes of water to provide a continual blast of air. The bellows wheezed as if a great dying beast were encased in its leather flaps. With its every breath the furnace burned more hotly, flames shot up from the top, and thick black smoke billowed out. The river itself was ablaze as the water’s reflection held the fire captive.

Everywhere men rushed back and forth. Panting with their labors, they breathed smoke into the frosty air and so burned themselves along with the coal. They looked up as I passed, a giant running alongside a horse, then they looked down upon their work once more. Had they dismissed Lily as easily, an out-of-control carriage of less importance than their drive to keep the furnace in blast, hour after hour, day after day, till the river dried up and the ore was mined out?

Shoddy row houses lay beyond the ironworks: cracked slate roofs, crumbling brick walls, undrained alleys between, and privies—far too close, and far too few.

The carriage had not stopped here.

“Faster,” I whispered to the horse. Even at this weary trot, it breathed as noisily as the bellows, its energies drained by the double chase, first Walton’s, now mine. I tried to walk a little faster myself. The raw ache in my shoulder flashed down my arm and up my neck; around the bullet hole my cloak was soaked with an ever-widening circle of blood.

Up ahead the houses ended and the town spread out into places of commerce: taverns and stores, potteries with kilns attached, a blacksmith, a brewery, a bakery, a school, and a church. Some distance beyond this, still below the road but also crossing it to engulf the other side, was a colliery, another hellish engine of human art that did not close for the night.

Before the road had passed by the trade shops, it had forked; the branch closest to the river ran directly through the colliery, the other veered to the right as if to circumvent
it. Just a few yards along the upper path, deep ruts marked the road, and it was there I found the carriage. It had lost a wheel and overturned, dragging one horse down with it. The animal lay on its side, legs flailing; the other horses pulled at the harness in a frenzied effort to free themselves. I began to run and called out Lily’s name.

How she had found the strength, I do not know, but she had crawled out of the wreck and sat against its side, her legs drawn up, her chalky face contorted. One hand, pressed to her heart, was pierced as by a saint’s stigmata. It bled profusely, and I realized it was not her face that had been the flash of white I had seen and at which Walton had shot.

I tried to gather her into my arms to carry her to town.

“There is no time,” she said, her voice almost too weak to be heard.

One of the mares reared, bumping the carriage, and Lily screamed and swore. I unharnessed the animals to keep them from jostling her again. Before I thought to tie them elsewhere, the three mares ran down the road, followed by Walton’s horse. The horse on the ground had broken its leg and lay there whinnying, rolling back its lips and showing its teeth.

“Help me,” Lily said. I took off her boots, then trousers. The soaked cloth peeled away, making my hands slick with blood. With my cloak I covered her nakedness. She complained of its smell, but her voice was thin. Another cramp seized her. Howling, she writhed against the carriage.

“You must push, Lily, even I know as much.”

“I cannot.”

“Push it out,” I said. “It is the worm. You hate it, you despise it. It is a loathsome parasite feeding on your flesh. It has invaded your body, it has ruined your life. Push it out! Push it out so you can kill it!”

She grabbed my hand and squeezed. My whole arm caught fire and I remembered the bullet in my shoulder.

“Push,” I whispered. I slipped my other arm around to cradle her back. The fallen horse moaned so loudly I raised my voice: “Push, and you will be rid of it!”

When she finished, there was no final triumphant yell. She simply let her head drop back against the carriage.

“Is it alive?” she asked.

I looked at the mess that lay between her legs, so covered with blood I could scarcely see it in the darkness. Too much blood. Had Lily not said the worm had grown teeth and claws and was ripping its way out? Surely it had done so, and that was why Lily was still bleeding.

But there were no claws. It was as weak a thing as I ever saw that yet lived. I pulled the tiny body up by its slippery feet and laid it in my palm. It gave a hiccuppy cough, took a small gulp of breath, and opened its eyes, but it did not cry. Sticking my great finger into its mouth, I cleared out some mucus and, with the edge of my shirt, wiped the blood from its head. It was very small, with an odd shriveled face as if an old man possessed its soul. One leg was withered and shorter than the other.

I hated it fully and at once, with a physical revulsion that made my stomach clench. Did I despise the thing because it was ugly? That made me no better than the rest of the world, no better than my father.

“It is a boy,” I said.

“It is the worm. Give it to me.”

“No,” I said, holding it close, away from her reach. “It is feeble and will die of its own soon. Let this not be on your conscience as well.”

“Give it to me, Victor,” she repeated. She gasped; her body clenched with a spasm.

“Push again,” I said. “There is more to come.”

She had no strength left, and the blood still flowed from her. Because she had not passed the afterbirth, she was attached to that which she hated. So I cut the cord, using the sharp edge of a rock. I was surprised at how the thing resisted me, forcing me to bring the rock down again and again.

At last Lily and the worm were separated. I ripped a strip from my shirt, tied the cord, and coiled it on the worm’s stomach. Noticing how it quivered, I took my shirt off entirely. The one side of it was stiff with my own blood; I folded that to the bottom and wrapped the clean side round the worm. Fighting my hatred, I held it close till I felt its breath on my face, so faint it would not make a feather stir. I pulled the cloak over the three of us, then took Lily’s hand, gently squeezing back in answer to the slightest movement of her fingers.

“Is it dead now?” she asked. She could not see that I held it.

“Yes,” I said. “It is dead.”

“Then I am free.” Her body convulsed. In a little while, the pain passed and she looked up at me and smiled. “When shall we arrive in London?”

Against my legs, the cloak felt wet where it had soaked up her life.

“Tomorrow,” I answered.

“Tomorrow? Foolish Victor, I am teasing you. I shall die soon.”

“No, I will take you to London.”

“However will you live without me?”

“Tell me,” I asked. “Tell me truly. Why did you stay with me all this time?”

Countless expressions passed over her pale face: pity and cunning, anger and hate, and finally, such gentleness as I have
never before seen. Would she lie or would she be truthful? And would I care? Not if she said she loved me.

She never spoke, only closed her eyes and rested her head against the carriage. Her breathing became very slow; the pressure of her fingers against mine, the barest tremble. Such shallow breaths, such a slight tremble, that in the end I did not know when she had breathed her last. Waiting to hear she loved me, I held on to her cold hand tightly, as if it were possible to keep her. Needing to hear she loved me, I held on to her cold hand tightly, as if it were possible to follow.

Where was Winterbourne this very moment? I wondered. Did he suddenly feel his heart fill with unaccountable grief? In the church I said I had protected her, kept her safe for his sake. And in the church he rejected me. Had I let her die because of it?

I pulled Lily close. The feel of her body limp against my arm reminded me of Mirabella, how I had held her, too, after she had been shot. Two women, one leading to the other, both dead, and for no better reason than that they both stayed with me for a little while.

After cradling the worm on my lap, I shakily removed the necklace I had given Lily, Mirabella’s necklace. I fastened it back around my wrist where it belonged, next to the bracelet Lily had fashioned for me. Two women, two gifts, two deaths. The little charms tinkled as I moved, and the worm turned its head toward the noise.

The worm: Winterbourne’s grandson. If he had a choice, he would take this pale wrinkly thing over me—another reason to hate the worm. Still, I lifted the little thing up to my chest and pulled the cloak over us again for warmth.

Minutes passed, or hours, or days. Someone drew close, carrying a lantern. Walton, I thought, come to finish what he had begun. I did not lift my head.

“There’s been murder done here!” a man shouted.

From farther away: “Another joke, Darby? We’ll be late for the shift.”

“’Tis a man and a woman, both of them dead. There’s blood everywhere. My God! His face!”

Stirring, I raised my eyes to see blunt features framed by bushy black hair and a beard. Part of the man’s cheek had been scooped away, an old wound, long healed. The rest of his skin was deeply pitted with strange bluish marks. When I looked up, he cried out, “He’s alive!” He pulled the cloak away. “And there’s a baby! That’s alive too!”

A dozen voices filled the air.

“Settle down,” Darby said. “Cooper, Sheffield, Smith—help me carry him to town. It’ll take at least three of us, maybe four. Why, he looks twice bigger than old Tom Humphries! The lot of you should go meet the shift. No need for all of us to be docked, and no need for Paxton’s crew to be sent back down again.”

As Darby picked up the worm, I whispered, “Get rid of the thing.
Get rid of it!”

When the men lifted me, an explosion of pain pulled the night crashing down till I at last knew nothing. Oblivion was dark and sweet, but I was too soon forced to wakefulness by a howl so loud God himself must have gone mad.

I awoke with a violent start and found myself on my back, lying on the floor in a dark room. From the ceiling hung smoked meats, thumping into one another as they swung wildly. Crockery had fallen and shattered; on the shelf, a lone unbroken bowl spun itself dizzy. The air was powdery, like someone had just run through sawdust.

What had happened?

My ears hurt. At first I thought only noise had wakened me—an enormous, astonishing boom that still echoed inside
my head. But the meat swung and the bowl spun and the floor I lay on vibrated.

A moment of silence, not half-a-blink long, then—

Shrieks from the next room. And from the road, names, instructions, wails overlapped in a single cry of agony.

I bolted up to a sitting position, was immediately crushed back by the fierce pain in my shoulder. I gritted my teeth and used the other arm to push myself up. I sat, then I knelt, then I stood.

A tunic had been made for me from sackcloth, two or three flour bags split open and stitched together to make a loose sleeveless shirt. Beneath it was a dressing on my shoulder, which had soaked through. While I watched, the bottom edge dripped. Instantly all the blood of all the world fell from the heavens. Standing bowed beneath this steaming cataract, I remembered.

Lily was dead.

And Walton was still alive.

Another blast! The ground convulsed: the earth itself shifted, as if the turmoil trapped in my soul had burst free. I staggered out, tripping where the floor had collapsed and dirt and stone had thrust upward. The main room was a tavern, empty now, half-filled mugs and smoking pipes abandoned on the counter. I ran out into the road. People raced by me unseeingly. Men struggled to button trousers or to pull coat sleeves onto their bare arms as they ran by. Women with tear-soaked faces dragged children by one hand, clutched babies with the other.

Down the road at the colliery, a pillar of flame spewed into the air, so huge as to transform night to day. A bell clanged over and over; another bell from the town soon answered.

Someone grabbed me from behind. Thinking it was Walton, I swung round and seized his throat, then recognized the
man who had found me on the road. I let him go. He rubbed his neck and winced.

“What did you think? That I was your wife’s murderer?”

“What happened?”

“An explosion in the mine.”

“Hurry, Darby!” someone called.

“What of you?” Darby asked. “You’re up, though I never thought you’d be on your feet so soon. Will you come?”

“You would ask
me
for help?” I said in wonder.

“I’d ask the Devil himself to go into the mine for us. Maybe I
am
asking him.”

My chest grew thick with the strange discomfort of putting aside my anger. Nodding, I followed him to the colliery.

The fire was at the rear and issued from the upcast shaft, which was used for ventilation, Darby explained, pointing as we ran toward the site. The furnace on top that created the draft had exploded, followed by another explosion down in the mine.