The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (36 page)

She’d followed the band for a year, since they’d arrived from London, through underground clubs, never missing a gig. And now that they had a home club, she was here every night. Those scars had been the first thing she’d noticed about Creature. And from that moment, she’d been hooked.

Monster
cranked it for the last song. At the end, the drummer slammed the cymbals and snares mercilessly, while his foot stomped
the bass pedal to death. Creature and the two other axe players ran riffs that broke the sound barrier for sheer volume and speed. She was so close to the speakers, the low notes throbbed through her body, and the blast of sound ruffled her hair.

They had never played so well. The room exploded. Candy’s eardrums vibrated, driving her to her feet, screaming and shoving with the rest. Man, if
only
she wasn’t so shy, she could
meet
him. Those scars made her sweat sex!

But a dozen groupies clung to the band like mould. Even before Creature jumped down from the stage, adoring hands of both genders grabbed his legs, fondled his crotch. Reached for his scars.

Taped music replaced live. “You have
got
to do it, and I mean now!” Fran yelled.

Candy sighed. Fran was right, but that didn’t make it easy. Ground zero, nowhere to backstep to. If she didn’t go in there and meet him now, she’d be crawling after him forever. And it didn’t take a demon-brain to figure out that the competition was fierce.

She jammed her bag onto the seat, opened it, and pulled out a couple of things. “Watch me,” she told Fran, then turned her back.

The mosh-pit at the foot of the stage was packed with drinkers and dancers and she pushed between sweat-streaked bodies towards the corridor that led to the dressing rooms.

She hurried down a dead-black hallway, another strobe flashing, stills from
Night of the Living Dead
glued to the walls. The taped music behind her became muted. The floor sloped downward. She felt hot; her black velvet dress buttoned from the throat to the ankles.

Before she saw them, she heard them: the groupies clustered outside the dressing rooms, stage hands moving equipment, security controlling it all. She’d been back here once before, but lost her nerve. This time, she headed right for the door she’d avoided last time.

“Brake, babe! Nobody drives into the Lab.” In front of her loomed a big guy with tattooed biceps, things with wings that flapped when his muscles flexed. His bulk blocked a door with a clean star mark in the center where that symbol had been ripped off. Over it, in blood red, “The Laboratory” had been scrawled.

Man, what could she say? She wanted Creature’s autograph? Lame. How the hell could she get past this guy? But being this close made her brave. Stick to the plan, she told herself. “I’m, like, here to interview Creature.” She held up the notebook and pencil she’d brought along and waved them in his face. Stupid. Really stupid. He wouldn’t fall for it.

“Right. And I’m here to fuck Madonna. Got any ID?”

She handed over the fake press pass Fran had created at the
copy shop where she worked. Above her name, and next to the photo, it identified her as a writer with
Chaos
, one of the local entertainment mags.

“Creature don’t do interviews. He don’t talk to people.”

“He’ll talk to me,” she said boldly. “Tell him I’m here.”

He flicked the pass with his finger and gave her a hostile once-over. “Stay, baby sister.” He rapped his knuckles on the door three times, then slipped inside.

What am I doing? Candy asked herself. Now’s the time to run, before he gets back and bars me from the club. But she couldn’t move, or maybe didn’t want to. She might not get to meet Creature, but she just had to try.

The muscle came back without her press pass. She expected the worst and was boggled when he said, “Yeah, okay.”

He stepped aside and held the door open about an inch. This guy’s dumb, she thought, relieved. It made her braver. A little, anyway.

Heart jack-hammering, she pushed the door open.

It was like staring into night space. The room stank of wet rot. The air felt dry electric. She touched the brass knob and got a shock.

In seconds her eyes adjusted. Two black candles had been wedged between the wall and the makeup mirror like torches. Ahead, shuffling in his seat, a dim shape. Remember, nowhere to step back to, she reminded herself. Candy picked up her Doc Martens and moved into the dressing room.

Silence pierced as bad as the music that had so recently punched her eardrums.

“Sit.” A raspy voice. No mistaking it. Creature.

Nervous, excited, she looked around. It was hard to see. A kind of cot in the corner, and the chair he sat on. She perched on the edge of the hard cot, facing him.

She’d never been this close to Creature. He sat at the makeup table with the candles behind him, the back of his head reflected in the glass, his front in shadow. Even sitting, he was bigger than she’d realized.

“I, uh . . .” she began, afraid to keep up the lie, but too scared to rely on the truth. “I
know
you don’t do many interviews, but . . . You guys are great.
You’re
great.”

A kind of wheeze came out of him. He held up the press pass. “You are Elizabeth.” His English accent was sexy.

“Candy.”
That
sounded inane. “I mean, my real name’s Elizabeth. Everybody calls me Candy.”

Another sound. Maybe the word, “Appropriate”?

More nervous than ever, she fumbled with the pencil and notebook she’d brought with her, trying to look official, hoping to
hell he wouldn’t ask about the magazine she supposedly wrote for.

She tried to cover it by taking the initiative. “So, how long have you played music?”

“I began with the flute. Nearly two centuries ago.”

“Right!” Candy giggled, but she was the only one laughing, so she stopped. “So, you’re like, the real Frankenstein or something?” She’d heard this, the rumour in the clubs. What he’d said on MTV recently. His first interview. Great promo.

“No!”

The volume of his voice sliced down her backbone as if it were a scalpel cutting her open. Instinctively, she jumped to her feet.

“Sit. Elizabeth, please.” His voice had dimmed to that fine rasp she found so appealing.

She sat, but glanced at the door.

“Victor Frankenstein was the man. I am his creation. Do you not recall his confession, as relayed to Robert Walton and recorded by Mary Shelley?”

What the hell was he talking about? “You mean the book?
Frankenstein
?”

Another snort.

“Well, we read it in school,” she said hesitantly. Half true. The class read it. She’d skimmed the abridged version. “I saw the movie,” she said hopefully.

“He created me, and yet his account was a lie! I am not driven by malice! Oh, of one thing, yes, he quoted me true. Immortal though it has been my misfortune to be, am I not as sensitive as any human being? Do I not feel cold and heat, pain and pleasure? Does not the sun blind my eyes, and the darkness of night stir fear in my heart? Am I not like you, beautiful Elizabeth?”

Wow! Was Creature coming on to her? She couldn’t believe her luck. Alone in his dressing room, with the sexiest guy in the world! Fran will die, she thought.

His pause made her remember why she was supposed to be here. She jotted down the last thing he’d said, about her being beautiful. She looked up. “So, uh, what’s the real story?”

Creature stood. She was startled by his height. On stage he was enormous, but here, two feet away, he was a giant. He must be eight feet tall! His head skimmed the ceiling as he paced, his hands scraped his knees, although his body seemed to be in proportion. He moved in that lanky, jerky way of his, as though his joints ached, or his legs had been badly broken. The candle glow created shadows in the valleys of the scars that lined his face, chest and arms. Her mother caught Creature on that TV
interview and labelled him ugly, but Candy saw the beauty of being wounded.

“He did it for
her
,” he finally said.

“Her? Who?”

He paused to look down at Candy, candlelight making his black hair shimmer, and the stitch marks on his face resemble war paint. He was so big! It was as though a warrior god peered down at her. “Elizabeth, of course. He made me for Elizabeth.”

She wasn’t sure what he was getting at. Then it clicked. He was like these guys who talk as if they’re Lestat. Creature was trying to tell her about himself, and “Frankenstein” worked for him. It was a symbol. Of course. All the lyrics of all of
Monster’s
songs had to do with being treated like a non-human. An outsider. They talked about being misunderstood and rejected.

Desperately she tried to remember details from the book. Even the different versions of the movie were vague. She couldn’t recall anybody named Elizabeth. There was that other film, where the doctor made a female creature, with that great lightning bolt streaking up the sides of her hair. Maybe
she
was Elizabeth. Maybe not. Candy decided she’d better keep her mouth shut as much as possible.

“Say some more about it, okay?”

He had resumed pacing the small room, his steps heavy on the raw wood floor. His arms swung in a strange way, but it just made him more attractive to her eyes. He was different, not one of those pathetic clones on TV, pretty boys who spend all day flossing. Creature was flesh and blood. Human.

“He claimed to love her. Yet, can a man truly love a woman he cannot satisfy?” he said. “You see, Victor was impotent. The crude anatomical examinations of the day produced no physical cause. I would expect a diagnosis today would be the same. His problems lay in the realm of the mind. As you might put it, Victor Frankenstein felt inadequate. Inferior. Perhaps he feared women, or even despised them. Perhaps he despised all of humanity. In any event, he built a creature, me, one who would be what he was not.”

“So, he wanted you to, like, be his stand-in with his girlfriend?”

“More. The lover of his soon-to-be bride.”

Bits of the story of
Frankenstein
were catching up to her, but not enough that she could piece all this together. She started jotting down a few sentences, but then realized he wasn’t really paying attention, so what was the point. She lay the notebook and pencil on the cot. “Look, that’s crazy. I mean, she’d have to be crazy not to know it was somebody else in bed with her, right?”

Creature stopped. With one step he was at the cot, sitting next
to her. His towering body was cool. Charged. He took her hand and Candy’s heart thumped so hard she almost fainted. His nails were long and black, his scarred hand so large it engulfed hers. He was not just big, but strong. He made her feel protected. She looked into his moist eyes, taking in the gashes surrounding them, and breathed in intimacy.

“You so resemble her. More than in name. The same innocent blonde hair and blue eyes. The identical soft demeanour.” His finger touched her cheek. A shock ran through her skin, all the way to her crotch. Suddenly, in the candlelight, a glint flashed through his eyes which she interpreted as torment. The moment she felt pity for him, he dropped his head and stared down at the floor.

Her heart reached out to him. She rubbed her palm over the chain mail vest covering his back. “Look, sometimes it helps to get it all out. I mean, this guy, Victor, he sounds like major corruption material. He used you. He was no friend.”

Creature turned to her. His black lips twitched, as if they were struggling to smile but just couldn’t cut it. “You are understanding, as was my Elizabeth. If only I had not loved her . . .”

Candy didn’t like hearing about this old girlfriend, but maybe if he talked about it, he’d get over her. “So, how did she find out she was screwing the wrong guy?”

“On her wedding night. I am, as you have surely noticed, large even for this day. Then I was as another species, although my entire body is in proportion. Even in the darkness of the boudoir, she could not fail to detect a difference between the man with whom she had made her vows that morning, and the one who possessed her body and soul that warm Victorian night. And yet she was too sweet, too gentle to voice her concerns.”

She didn’t really want to hear the detail of their sex life. “Well, you must look different, too, right?”

“Alas, but no. Victor, as with all architects of abominations, had fashioned his creation in his own image. In my case, in every respect but stature. And, of course, these remnants of his inept hand.”

Candy stared at the large scar running the length of his cheek. She wanted so much to touch it. To kiss it. To run her tongue along the red groove. Embarrassed, she looked away and said, “Wow! So she really didn’t know for sure you weren’t Victor until you two made it. ’Cause you were in the dark and all. Man, that’s truly weird.”

“Indeed.”

“So what happened when she found out you weren’t him?”

“At the moment our love was consummated, Elizabeth screamed. Frankenstein abandoned his voyeuristic pursuits and came upon us in a fit of jealous rage.”

“He attacked you?”

“With all his might. In my haste to protect myself from his fatal blows, I fear that in the darkness and confusion the unthinkable occurred. Elizabeth was dead.”

The silence was like dead air. Finally, Candy asked, “How?”

He raised his hands to his face and sobbed.

Candy jumped to her feet. She stood before him, her legs straddling his, cradling him to her breasts. He didn’t have to go on. She remembered now, everything. How Elizabeth had been murdered on her wedding night. And the book said Creature strangled her! And it was really that sick bastard Frankenstein! Something just like that story had happened to Creature and he’d been suffering all alone ever since. Not only was his girlfriend dead, but he was blamed. And he was innocent! Maybe that’s why the band moved to North America! He must be so lonely.

While he sobbed, while she held him, stroking the flaky skin down the back of his neck, his arms circled her hips and he clung to her as if she were a life raft. He cried “Elizabeth!” over and over, pulling Candy down onto his lap, and she hugged him tighter.