Mister Creecher (13 page)

‘It is no joke,’ Creecher said.

‘It’s a riddle, then, is it?’

‘No riddle. You have followed him. You have seen the work he does.’

‘Yeah – so?’

‘Do you not see it?’ said Creecher. ‘Frankenstein is my maker. I am his creature.’

‘No!’ shouted Billy, but without conviction, the word ‘creature’ echoing in his ears. Of course! Mr Creecher. What a fool he was.

‘You know in your heart that it’s true,’ said the giant. ‘You have always known that I am not as other men. Even I do not know what I am. Can I be human if I am built by human hands? Am I a machine? Am I –’

‘Shut up!’ Billy yelled.

‘Wait! Billy!’

But he had already climbed out of the attic window and was scrabbling down the roof into the alley.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Billy ran without any real feel for direction. His running was purposeless save for a desire to put as much distance as he could between him and the giant.

He ran until his legs would take him no further and his lungs burned. He stood, doubled over and gasping for breath. It took a few moments for him to recover.

As he collected himself and looked around, Billy realised that he had run, instinctively, back to his old haunts. He was standing in front of the steps of a church, its columns crumbling, the paintwork cracked and peeling on the entrance door, which creaked back and forth in the breeze until a sudden gust slammed it shut. He needed to move on and quickly.

Billy turned off the street down a darkened alley that ran alongside the high-walled graveyard. He could barely see his own feet on the cobbles, but he would have known his way blindfolded.

He was halfway down when he heard footsteps behind him. Was he being followed? The end of the alleyway was in sight. Billy speeded up just as a shadowed figure stepped into his path. He was grabbed by the throat and pulled sideways.

‘Well, well,’ said Skinner, walking into the light from a window overhead. ‘Don’t hurt him, Tibbsy. He’s one of us. You’ve come back to see us, Billy. Ain’t that nice, boys? And look how smart he is. I do believe you’ve washed.’

Billy spat and tried to calm his breathing.

‘You sound a bit out of breath there, Billy,’ said Skinner. ‘You want to look after yourself.’

Billy didn’t reply but stood up straight, coughed and spat again.

‘I’m not in the mood, Skinner,’ he said.

‘Is that right?’ Skinner smirked, pulling a knife from his pocket. The grip round Billy’s throat tightened.

‘I’ve got no fight with you,’ hissed Billy. ‘If it’s money you want, there’s a purse in my pocket. Take it.’

Skinner nodded to one of the boys holding Billy and he rooted in Billy’s coat pocket, found the purse and tossed it to Skinner.

‘Thanks for the cash, Billy,’ he said, walking slowly towards him. ‘But the fact is I just don’t like you – never have.’

‘Don’t be stupid –’ Billy began.

‘What?’ said Skinner, wide-eyed in mock fear. ‘Is the nasty giant going to come and get me, then?’

Skinner looked around. The other boys chuckled.

‘Well, where is he, then?’ said Skinner, turning back to Billy. ‘I don’t see any sign . . .’

The boy holding Billy had stopped laughing and was staring in horror at something over Skinner’s shoulder. Skinner turned to see Creecher standing behind him.

A strange sound emanated from his throat as Creecher grasped his neck and lifted him slowly from the ground. The other boys were already running, leaving Billy standing alone to watch Skinner’s body dangle, twitching, from Creecher’s noose-like grip. Skinner’s face was turning a darker and darker shade of purple, his eyes bulging from their sockets.

‘Let him go,’ said Billy.

Creecher looked at him but did not release his hold on Skinner.

‘Let him go!’ shouted Billy.

Creecher loosed his grip and Skinner fell in a gasping heap on to the cobbles at the giant’s feet. Billy walked over to him and kicked him hard in the ribs.

‘If I even see you again, I’m going to have him pull your innards out. Do you understand?’

Skinner coughed and gasped. Billy kicked him again.

‘I said, do you understand?’

‘Yes!’ hissed Skinner.

Billy looked up at Creecher.

‘What do you want?’

‘I followed you,’ said the giant.

‘Why?’

‘I was worried about you.’

‘Yeah?’ said Billy.

‘Yes,’ said Creecher. ‘Is that so hard for you to believe?’

Billy shrugged. Creecher slowly turned and began to walk away. Billy stood watching him leave, and then called after him.

‘Oi! Wait for me, you big lump.’

He trotted after the giant and they went back to the attic above the baker’s. They sat down at opposite ends of the space and, for a while, neither of them said a word.

‘How is it possible?’ said Billy eventually. ‘How can Frankenstein have built you? How can anyone do that?’

Creecher took a deep breath.

‘I cannot tell you how he did it. All that I know of my creation I have gleaned from a journal Frankenstein left in his coat, which I took when I fled his laboratory. But he was clever enough not to detail his methods there, no doubt fearing that someone else might read it and reproduce his experiment.’

Billy rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.

‘It can’t be,’ he said. ‘No one has the power to do that. It’s impossible.’

‘And yet he has done it,’ said Creecher.

‘But don’t you know anything about how he . . . made you?’

‘I have learned a little of his methods since,’ Creecher replied. ‘And I have read as much as I can from the works he used in his studies. I do know that he used the marrow from human bones and tissue from various organs to build me. Using his scientific skills, combined with arcane knowledge he acquired from an early obsession with alchemy, he has gained the power to grow flesh and give it life.’

‘Alchemy?’ said Billy.

‘You might call it magic,’ said Creecher.

Billy remembered Gratz and the story of the Golem. Sorcery made more sense to Billy than science.

‘In truth, what is now called science would once have been called magic,’ continued Creecher. ‘Maybe there is no difference.’

‘I read as many works as I could lay my hands on, the better to understand how Frankenstein had arrived at my creation. I read the works of Jabir ibn Hayyan. I read Hermes Trismegistus and Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus and Nicholas Flamel, and found that for centuries alchemists have sought to master seemingly impossible forces.

‘I had little interest in their search for a method of turning base metals to gold. It was their investigations into the life force itself that intrigued me. My eyes widened as I read of the elixir of life – a potion that would grant immortality – and of the creation of homunculi.’

‘What the hell is that?’ said Billy.

‘Homunculi are men created to do the alchemist’s bidding.’

‘Like the Golem?’

‘In a way,’ said Creecher. ‘But homunculus means “little man”. They are smaller than a child. And no one knows if any alchemist has truly succeeded in creating a living being.’

‘Until Frankenstein?’

Creecher nodded.

‘I believe that Frankenstein’s great discovery was in being able to bring life to his creation by harnessing the power of electricity.’

‘How?’ said Billy.

‘It is the spark of life,’ said Creecher. ‘A man called Aldini came to this very city when you were a baby. He ran electricity through a dead dog, an ox’s head – even a hanged man – making them twitch and cavort for the paying public.

‘Frankenstein realised that these circus tricks could be so much more. Instead of bringing animation to the dead for a few seconds, he might bring real life to his own creation.’

Billy was still picturing the spasms and convulsions of the hanged man as Creecher continued.

‘But for all his learning and powers, Frankenstein did not make the human being he had hoped for,’ he said bitterly. ‘Instead he built this monster you see before you. He brought me to life, but for what end? What is life without purpose?’

Billy was not sure what the purpose of his life was either, but kept his peace.

‘So how did you meet Frankenstein?’ he asked instead. ‘I mean, how did you meet up after you’d run away?’

Creecher waved the question away.

‘What does it matter? I met him and we talked and, though he clearly loathed being in my presence, he agreed to help me. He said that he needed to come to England to meet with some scientific minds that would assist him.’

‘But how?’ said Billy. ‘Is he going to . . . cure you?’

‘I am not a disease,’ said Creecher.

‘Sorry.’ Billy held up his hands. ‘But why are you – we – following him? What is it that you want him to do? How is he going to help you?’

‘He has promised to build me a companion,’ said Creecher.

Billy was speechless for a moment.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘Build another like you?’

‘Yes,’ said Creecher.

‘But . . . But why?’

‘Because then I will not be alone in the world.’

‘You’re not alone,’ said Billy. ‘You’ve got me.’

Creecher smiled.

‘That is good to hear. But it is companionship of another kind I want. Frankenstein has promised to build me a mate.’

‘A woman?’ said Billy, trying to calm the incredulity in his voice. ‘So that’s why he needs the bodies – the female bodies.’

Creecher nodded.

‘He needs fresh organs to work with. He harvests them and stores them in hermetically sealed jars.

‘If he builds me a mate, we will quit this world of men and go to the wilds of South America and live there in harmony with nature. The jungles of the Amazon will be our Eden. We have few needs and all will be met in our companionship.’

A procession of troubling images lumbered forward from the shadows of Billy’s imagination and he tried in vain to banish them.

What on earth would a female version of Creecher look like? The monster that Billy imagined was worse than Creecher. Though he could not have said why, it somehow seemed even more of a crime against nature to construct a female.

As usual, Billy had the distinct impression that all these thoughts were visible to Creecher, who stared at him with an inscrutable impression, making Billy blush awkwardly and look away.

‘I see you do not find the thought appealing,’ said Creecher. ‘Am I to be denied love, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Billy answered. ‘What do I know about love? You’re the one that reads all the books.’

He had never for one moment considered that the giant had any need or desire for love. Every time he felt that he was getting closer to understanding Creecher, he was shocked by some new revelation about the giant.

‘Have you never loved before?’ said Creecher.

Billy blushed and shook his head.

‘No, never. You?’

Creecher shook his head.

‘How could I?’ he asked. ‘What would be the point? No female born of woman would look on a man like me. She would have to be blind.’

Even then
, thought Billy,
there’s the size of you, the loose skin, the mortuary stink. It would take more than blindness to make you loveable.

‘If I could have a love and we could be together, I would want nothing more,’ said Creecher with a childlike enthusiasm.

‘But what if he builds this mate for you,’ said Billy, ‘and she doesn’t love you? Supposing you weren’t her type?’

Creecher laughed.

‘She and I will be the only two of our kind in the world,’ he replied. ‘She will have the same yearning for acceptance that gnaws away at me. I will love her and she will love me back. There is no doubt about it.’

Billy wondered about this logic. He had never much considered love in his life. Romance was for rich people, not for the likes of him. But would this new Eve love Creecher’s Adam simply because there was no other like her? Is that how love worked? He couldn’t see what the fuss was about anyway. Who needed girls? Maybe Creecher would come to realise that, too, in time.

Billy was surprised at how resentful he suddenly felt towards this unmade creature. As strange as it was to accept, Creecher was the closest friend Billy had ever had. In truth, he was the only friend Billy had ever had. But all that would come to an end when she appeared on the scene. Billy wasn’t going to the Amazon jungle. There was no Eden in store for him. What was the point of traipsing off to who-knew-where, only to be abandoned when Frankenstein had finished his second creature?

He knew that he ought to walk away now. But how could he just go back to being a ragged street thief in the knowledge of all that Creecher had told him? He would worry about the future when the future arrived.

‘So?’ said Creecher. ‘Now that you know who I am, will you stay here – or will you come with me?’