The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (50 page)

A chorus of approval greeted this.

“Get out, baboon!”

“Bandy legs!”

“Devil!”

With alcoholic courage, the villagers started to shout ribald remarks at the unfortunate creature who stood staring sullenly at them.

It was Tom Jenner, full of rum, who staggered up to the silent Hugo and prodded him with a fore-finger.

“I bet ’ee can dance on them fine legs of yourn, can’t ’ee?” he said in a confidential tone, which brought a gust of laughter from the company.

Hugo scowled fiercely.

“Wine,” he said, doggedly.

“What’s ’ee say then, Tom?” demanded Evan Tregorran.

“Ee says he wants wine.”

Tom Jenner threw a coin on the counter.

“Give him wine, landlord,” he ordered imperiously.

Noall hesitated.

“Don’t you think you best leave him alone, Tom?”

“Give him wine.”

A glass was placed in the creature’s hands.

Hugo sniffed it suspiciously and then drained it.

“Wine . . . good,” he said, after a moment’s contemplation.

A shout of laughter went round the room.

“Now then,” interrupted Tom Jenner, prodding the creature again. “Now then, let’s see ’ee do a hornpipe or a jig on them fine legs of yourn.”

The creature looked at him puzzled.

Tom Jenner took up a fiddle and started up a tune.

“Go on,” cried several people. “Dance, dance!”

“Don’t ’ee know how to dance?” demanded Evan Tregorran.

He executed a few ungainly steps. The creature looked at him in surprise. Then he suddenly realized what these people wanted him to do. His mouth twisted into a grimace which was, for him, a smile.

He stumbled about on his short legs making weird sounds, the nearest sounds the creature possessed to laughter.

Faster and faster went Willie Carew’s fiddle.

Faster and faster stumbled Hugo.

Suddenly the creature tripped and fell, landing in a wild heap at Brian’s feet.

The creature lay moaning awhile amidst the shouts of laughter. Then he climbed to his feet, raising an arm to the table at which Helen and Brian were sitting, and using it as a lever to draw himself upright. Brian was surprised to notice that the arm was a well-shaped limb with a fine hand and long delicate fingers. Also on the arm was a strange tattoo mark, two whales supporting a mermaid who was playing some sort of pipe. And across the tattoo was a white line of livid flesh which Brian knew to be a scar. The arm surprised Brian because it was out of keeping with the rest of the creature’s grotesque body. He instinctively looked at Hugo’s other arm, and
saw that it was as gross and misshapen as the rest of the body, hairy with thick, stubby fingers.

He was about to remark on it when the inn door opened with a shattering crash.

The tall cadaverous figure of the baron, clad from head to toe in black, stood surveying the interior of the inn in grim silence.

His cold eyes swept the room and fell, finally, on Hugo. The creature seemed to whimper and crouch grovelling before him.

“Hugo!” snapped the baron. “
Komm mit
!”

Like a whipped dog, the creature ambled across to the baron and squatted at his feet.

There was a deathly silence in the tavern room.

The baron walked across to the counter and picked up the two bottles of wine that Noall had drawn up for the pitiful creature.

“Mine, I think?”

The baron’s voice was soft, almost sibilant.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. You would like Hugo to dance for you some more?”

The pale, cold eyes bore into the landlord.

“It were just a bit of fun, sir. Just fun.”

“Yes? Fun?”

There was an awkward pause.

“When I send my servant here in the future you will treat him with respect,” the baron’s voice was suddenly harsh. “If I hear of a man maltreating Hugo again, I will personally take my riding crop to that man, and his wife will have to live with a sight which will be infinitely worse than the face of Hugo.
Verstehen
?”

The baron twisted on his heel and, with Hugo gibbering and scrambling behind him, was gone into the black night.

In the silence that followed Brian turned to Helen and suddenly cried in surprise.

The girl lay in a swoon on her seat.

It took a little time to bring her, with the help of a sobered Tom Jenner, to her house and seat her before the fire in the parlour.

She gave a tiny rueful laugh as Brian lent over her and felt her pulse.

“I seem to be making a habit of fainting.”

Brian waved away Mrs Trevithick who stood armed with a jar of smelling salts.

“Just lay back and relax a bit, Helen. Don’t worry.”

But a fierce light blazed in her eyes.

She reached up and caught Brian’s wrist in a grasp which was almost painful.

“Did you see that creature’s arm?”

Brian nodded.

“The arm with the weird tattoo, you mean?”

Helen swallowed as if something was hurting her.

“Yes, yes. That was it.”

“I thought it was strange for a creature like Hugo to indulge in tattoos,” smiled Brian. “What of it?”

“Did you also see the scar?”

“Yes.”

The girl placed the back of her hand to her mouth and gave a shuddering cry.

Brian bent forward in alarm.

“Helen, what is it?”

“Brian, that arm . . . that arm! It was my father’s arm!”

Brian reached out and touched the girl’s forehead.

It was not unduly hot. And her pulse, though a trifle rapid, gave no indication of temperature.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the girl demanded. “I said, the arm was that of my father.”

Brian bit his lip.

“I hear you, but I am not sure that I understand.”

The girl gave a sigh of exasperation.

“I mean no more nor less than what I say. It is horrible! Horrible!”

“You mean your father has a similar tattoo mark?” enquired Brian wonderingly.

The girl banged a clenched fist on the table in agitation.

“The arm, the tattoo, the scar . . . they are just not similar. They are the same. They
are
!”

Brian picked up his medical bag and silently rummaged through the contents. He picked up a dark yellow bottle marked “Laudanum” and measured some drops into a glass. Then he rang the bell and instructed Mrs Trevithick to bring some hot water and honey.

The girl watched him in silence.

“Look, Helen, it has been an upsetting day for you . . .” he began.

“You think I am insane?” snapped the girl.

“No, no,” he said gently. “But what you say is impossible. Though the tattoo could be similar.”

Mrs Trevithick returned with a kettle of hot water. Brian motioned her out and mixed a small drink.

“This will help you to relax.”

“But what of the creature? You still don’t believe . . .”

He cut her short with a gesture.

“I believe you. But I want you to relax and get a good night’s
sleep. But certainly the matter needs investigation. You go upstairs to bed, and I will go and have a few words with the baron and see if we can clear up the mystery. The creature must have had the tattoo copied from somewhere.”

The girl was about to protest again, but resignedly took the glass from Brian’s hands.

When she had gone Brian poured himself a glass of rum and slumped into a chair.

Was she hallucinating? No, he had seen the arm for himself, and he remembered distinctly how, at the time, he felt that it was odd and did not seem to fit the creature’s general grotesqueness. But the very idea . . . the creature with an arm similar to the doctor’s – the
same
as the doctor’s arm. Ridiculous!

He rang the bell and Mrs Trevithick entered with her perpetual sniff.

“Did you want something, Doctor Shaw?”

“Indeed I did, Mrs Trevithick,” answered Brian. “You have worked for Doctor Trevaskis for many years. Did the doctor have any distinguishing marks on him?”

“What, sir?”

Mrs Trevithick frowned.

“Did he have any marks that were different from other people, from which he might be identified. Marks, such as tattoos.”

“Oh that!” The woman’s mouth quirked in an attempt at a smile. “Yes. The doctor had a tattoo on his right arm. Now let’s see . . . it was a mermaid, sitting atop two whales . . . sitting there playing a pipe or some such thing.”

Brian felt a cold gnawing in his stomach.

“Oh, and there was a scar on the same arm. He fought a duel once, so they say, and some man cut his arm with a sword.”

Brian sat in silence.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“What? Oh, yes. That’s all, Mrs Trevithick,” he said waving her from the room.

Why had Hugo devised a similar tattoo to the doctor? Had he seen the marks and liked them so much that he got somebody to repeat the tattoo on his arm? But how had he managed to obtain a similar scar? It was surely not possible. And Helen; Helen said that the arm
was
her father’s. But that was also impossible. How could someone else’s arm be transferred and grafted to another human being? It would require a surgery so advanced that . . . no, he was mad even to contemplate the idea. Beside which, the doctor had been missing only two days, and even if such an operation were possible, the graft could not be made and healed within that time.

There was only one way to solve the mystery, for mystery it surely was. He must go up to Tymernans, the baron’s house, and seek some explanation.

The moon was lighting the landscape with an eerie luminescence when Brian Shaw made his way along the cliff path that led to the grim blackness of the forest which surrounded Tymernans. Storm clouds, low and heavy with rain, were scudding across the blackness of the sky, sometimes scraping across the face of the moon and hiding the myriad of stars that hung like silver pinpoints in the black void. A slight wind made the tall grasses rustle and the leaves on the evergreens blow this way and that. Its breath through the tall trees made an almost human moaning which rose and fell, fell and rose with monotonous persistence. Several times, as the light was blacked out by the clouds, Brian stumbled and cursed in the darkness.

As he drew near the wrought-iron gates, and began to climb over, the rain began to splatter down and he was thankful for his heavy travelling cloak.

An instinct drew him along the overgrown path and this time he kept all his senses atune to any threatened danger. He stopped several times and listened attentively, wondering whether the unseen eyes of Hugo were upon him.

Slowly he moved on until he stood on the edge of the grass lawn before that once splendid mansion.

The rain was blowing in torrents now, mingling with the salt spray whipped up from the sea. He could feel the nearness of the sea, hear the angry crash of its breakers on the rocks somewhere below the cliffs, feel its menace in the air. The trees afforded him some shelter, and he stood irresolutely under their protection, trying to find courage to sprint across to the house.

A blinding light suddenly caused thousands of shadows to be thrown this way and that and lit up the house like some bizarre nightmare scene, painting it in vivid blacks and whites.

There was but the merest second before the heavy crash of thunder followed the lightning stroke.

Then the lightning struck again. This time Brian, his heart pounding, was prepared for the blinding flash.

What made him start, however, was the fact that the lightning seemed to fork straight into the old mansion before him and the noise of its impact seemed like a thousand wailing banshees.

He raised a hand to shade his eyes from the rain and waited until a third and a fourth stroke caught at the roof of the house.

No, he was not mistaken. There, on the roof of a tower, the tallest part of the old building, was a weird contraption – a sort of disc-like affair made of some gleaming metal. It was to this that the lightning seemed attracted, striking again and again, and causing the metal to turn yellow, red, blue and then white. It was a strange contraption, and after the lightning and thunder had passed echoing out to sea, the weird disc continued to glow and continued to hum with strange noises.

What did it mean? It seemed as if the baron was trying to tame the very elements to whatever experiments he was conducting.

The strange disc Brian supposed was a means to conduct the energy of the lightning into some usable means for experimentation. It glowed red like an angry eye in the dark night, hissing as the rain spattered against its hot surface. Brian drew his cloak tightly around his shoulders and walked across the lawn to the door.

To his surprise he found that it stood open a fraction, and he gently pushed it wide. It swung with a groan from its rusty hinges and Brian stood on the threshold, peering down a dark, unlit corridor.

Somewhere, deep inside the house, he could hear a strange humming, almost like the panting whine of an animal in pain.

He decided to follow the noise of the humming. He walked to a small hall which had once been the servants’ hall, for here he stopped to strike a light from his tinder box and saw a row of bells hanging from the walls. These bells would be connected to the various rooms from which the occupants of this once palatial residence could ring for their servants. In the dying light of the match he saw a stub of candle and struck another light to ignite it.

There were several doors leading off this hall, but one door was open a little and from behind it Brian could hear the hum which had become soft and rhythmic. He pushed it open and found the way led down a shallow flight of stairs to another somewhat tiny hall. Two doors led from this hall and from behind one came a strange eerie glow which seemed to rise and fall with the sound of the humming noise.

Gradually he pushed open the heavy iron studded door. He stood at the top of a flight of stone steps which led down to what was obviously a cellar. A series of little arches gave a weird ornateness to the stairway. Brian crept softly down them and halfway down he crouched and peered through an arch.

It was a sight which astounded him.