The Frankenstein Murders (26 page)

Wishing to avoid any delays, I would have liked to hire even the most humble wagon and ox, but was assured that this was not necessary as the axel could be mended and the wheel fixed within a day. There was a general wish for me to remove myself to a nearby cottage, where I would be given a warm drink and a place by a newly kindled fire. No doubt as a result of the accident, however, I was of an anti-social disposition and unwilling to expose myself to the benevolence of the villagers. Instead, I found a seat in a sheltered spot and asked not to be disturbed, barely having taken note of my surroundings. I pulled Victor Frankenstein's notebooks from my bag. I had not had the time to look at them fully and suspected they would reveal little, but I had precious little to occupy my time and so would be able to dedicate myself to them fully.

After some time, I had managed to transcribe only very little of Victor Frankenstein's notes in the wine-coloured notebook into my own. The writing was so cramped and the words so illegible that often I could not make out a single letter. Certainly, I could find no evidence that Frankenstein had ever addressed, at least not in these texts, such elements as the reanimation of human flesh after death. The notebook contained no calculations for his life-making secret. If they existed, he kept them in his head, for what was on the pages often made little sense. Once again I mourned the apparent loss of Victor Frankenstein's true journal, wherein he had written all the secrets of monster-making. But that tome, had it ever existed, was most likely lost forever. It took more than three-quarters of an hour to transcribe Victor Frankenstein's notes. Sadly, all my effort left me with a disappointingly short and mostly incomprehensible list of transcribed marginalia:

—
demonic mutterings

—
lay nervously exhausted

—
the casting of shadows

—
faint, insidious scratchings

—
strange shadows

—
overwhelming occurrences

—
snarl or bay at the moon

—
abysmally hideous laughter

—
giant wraith

—
devil, demon, and wolf

—
real, supernatural, and ephemeral

—
supernatural forces

—
halfway between men and gods

What I had transcribed could only have been described as superstitious, even nonsensical, descriptors of a darkly poetic nature, but with no other merit. There was no way of telling with any precision when or even why any of it had been written. All I gained was an incomprehensible list of unconnected yet disturbing ideas.

When I could bear the futility of these poor results no further, and was unable to bear complete inactivity, I left the dry seat and shelter I had found. Mutt and the men were hard at work, but I could see no great progress. They assured me that all was going well. The darkening sky threatened rain, yet still there was enough daylight, and so I chose to walk. The memory of Sir Arthur Gray's letters pressed upon me, and my greatest longing was to be upon the road again headed to Archangel.

At first I kept to the road that had nothing of interest to remark upon, except an axe left in the stump of a tree with split wood all around. Someone had been in the process of cutting up the not inconsiderable lower branches of a lightning-scarred, unnaturally large, and twisted tree that I guessed to be some sort of oak. The woodcutter, presumably distracted by the coach accident and our arrival in the village, had left his tool untended and work unfinished. I continued on until I spied what evidently had once been a path, or even a narrow sort of road, that had become disused and terribly
overgrown. The unused path led directly towards a hill of no small size. The land in the area was not entirely flat, but this one hill stood quite distinctly above the rest and could be seen from some distance. Upon reaching the hill, the path veered away from it. I chose not to continue to follow it, but rather to climb the hill as I had a wish to view fully my geographical situation.

Upon reaching the summit, and in the growing twilight, I could still discern the village from whence I had come. I could even distinguish the distinctive movements of Mutt and the other men hard at work at the coach. I drew some small comfort from their activities. Turning slowly, I almost overlooked in the shadows of the diminishing day another village tucked protectively in a shallow valley, surrounded by dense forest. So well placed was this village that it could only be discerned from atop this hill. What I saw were sturdy stone buildings with thick walls. One of the buildings was significantly larger than the rest, which fanned out from it in a rough semi-circle. Most interesting about this village was the fact that it was lifeless. No smoke curled from chimneys, no welcoming candlelight shone from the windows. The village was abandoned and untended. Weeds had long overgrown the streets, and the roof of every building had long ago fallen in.

Great was my urge to see the uninhabited village up close, but the sun was setting quickly, and I had no desire to be caught in an unfamiliar location in the dark, and so felt it best that I return to the other, living village. Upon regaining the main road, a strange, prickling, hair-raising sensation caused me to look back over my shoulder. I was certain I had heard the distinct sound of footsteps close behind me. The woods bore an aspect more than unusually sinister in the light of the waning moon. The walk back to the village seemed to be a much greater distance than I recalled, and I wondered momentarily if I had taken a wrong turn. Then I came again to the stump and lightning-scarred tree, where the axe had been removed. When the oak began to move, I thought I had momentarily lost
control of my senses, until I realized that Mutt had been leaning against the trunk waiting and watching closely for my return. Wordlessly, we returned to the village.

The coach was not yet fully repaired; I was obliged to stay the night in the village. Accommodation had been arranged for me in one of the better cottages belonging to a young farmer and his family. In truth, the cottage was comprised of little more than one sparsely furnished main room with a sharply peaked ceiling. In one corner, two partition walls created a sort of second room. The walls only went part way up to the ceiling, but they gave the illusion of privacy. This was to be my chamber for the evening.

The young farmer was a solid and serious man of few words. His wife, who had the sort of light prettiness that would soon fade, spoke even less than her husband. Their one young child, not yet old enough to walk, lay in a rough cradle at her feet as she plaited straw by the firelight. The last occupant of the cottage was an aged parent, who sat in a corner near the fire. So bent and wrinkled was she that she must have been the grandmother of either the farmer or his wife, but, as no formal introductions were made, no confirmation of my supposition was ever provided. Although the aged parent appeared to be half asleep, she never once took her eyes off me.

Throughout the simple meal, and after as we sat about the fire, conversation was limited to my asking general questions about the town, and the farmer answering in sentences of no more than four
or five words. However, when I asked about the abandoned village, their mood changed noticeably. The young wife who had been content to feed and entertain the child looked worriedly at her husband, who in turn gave her a stern look. She scooped up her child and held it very close, casting suspicious looks at me. The exact source of my blunder was not made evident to me at that time, particularly as it was apparent that any further conversation was completely out of the question.

Soon after, I excused myself for the night and retreated to the partial privacy afforded by the lone chamber. I could feel all their eyes on me as I left the small group still huddled by the fire. The aged parent remained silent throughout. The incomplete walls allowed for me to overhear the urgent whispers exchanged by husband and wife without knowing any of what they said. The fire was tended and the few candles were then shortly extinguished, and the cottage fell entirely silent.

The next morning, I was informed that the repairs to the carriage were well advanced and the expectation was to be on the road once more before midday. Any continuation of what I felt had already been too long a delay brought me no delight, but the promise of movement gave me some solace. I prepared to wait out the intervening time in the cottage as the morning was quite chill. Both the farmer and his wife were busy elsewhere, having left the small child in the care of the aged parent. I pulled Captain Walton's journal from my pocket as it appeared the only occupation left to me. When the aged parent addressed me, I was taken by some surprise.

“You would know more about the abandoned village,” she said in a low voice as she tucked the sleeping child into the cradle.

“Yes, yes indeed,” I said, feeling an uncharacteristic combination of annoyance and curiosity. The Captain's journal I put aside for a moment, and focused my attention on my companion. Her face and hands showed worn and weathered, although equally thin and
dry as paper, skin that told a tale of a life of hard work. Her eyes were little more than small, darkly glowing embers set within crumpled recesses in her face. Her simple, worn cap covered only scanty wisps of fine white hair.

“It happened before my time, but the stories did not stop then, nor has the passage of time managed to quell them all, yet most of the people of this village will not speak of it. With each telling and retelling, the details became altered, but I can tell what was said when I was first brought here as a young bride, and the stories were yet fresh in people's minds.

“I know not exactly what occurred, for the people of that village were very private and had almost no contact with others. Some of the stories were that the villagers were engaged in devil worship. One of the stories I heard told of how they ate the flesh of human sacrifices, and other stories talked of how they stole children, while there were other tales of how they raised the dead to live among the living. Some said they were men demonically possessed, others that they were devils risen from the rotten depths of the earth, released by the actions of a wicked wizard. What the stories generally agreed upon was that the villagers were engaged in evil and unnatural activities.”

The aged parent paused her storytelling to tend to the child that had begun to fuss and whine in its sleep. The blanket covering was tucked more securely and soothing words crooned over the cradle, and soon the infant had calmed and the story was begun again.

“There were even witnesses who claimed to have seen the village's offspring with mismatched eyes, not just in colour, but one wide and bright and the other narrow and dark. Certainly, they were known to be malodorous, and possessed stark white faces and unnaturally gnarled hands. To venture near the village was to expose yourself to a peril more hideous and dreadful than the most agonizing of deaths.

“What was generally agreed upon was that it was a village possessed by unspeakable evil, with strange happenings and evil activities late at night when decent folk had long since gone to bed. Travellers spoke of terrifying images of the villagers dancing grotesquely in the shadows of moonlight. Stories of the people of the whole village being fugitives from some foreign place, banished eternally because of the unspeakable evil they had done.

“Even with the many damning stories that circulated, the people of the village might have continued for much longer, for no one had proof of these accusations until one day, the daughter of a rich and powerful man went missing. The father was certain that the villagers were to blame and wrought the people of the surrounding villages, including this one, into a frenzy, until they converged as a bloodthirsty mob upon the village. Those who were not slaughtered had to flee for their lives. Tales of hidden gold and riches caused them to dig up the floors of the buildings, but instead they found the bodies of the dead in varying decomposition. They were not only houses — they were tombs. The houses and contents were burned and only the strength of the stones and masonry kept them from being entirely destroyed. The village was left for time and nature to do the rest. To this day, the village is not spoken of except in whispers.”

Almost exactly at that moment, Mutt entered the cottage to let me know that all had been restored to working order and that the coach was ready to leave. Hastily bidding the aged parent goodbye, I followed Mutt quickly out of the cottage and was soon back on my route to Archangel and Captain Walton. I was not unhappy to have been liberated from the village, and also from the aged parent's tale of what may very well have been misguided suspicion and unnecessary persecution of a perfectly innocent group of villagers. I was half sick of tales of the supernatural and monsters that roamed the earth wreaking havoc on the lives of the innocent and unsuspecting. The only true evil that stalked the earth was
entirely human in form. Perhaps they had things they wished to keep private and hide in the village. Cellar vaults in which to bury one's ancestors were not uncommon, although to bury ones relatives beneath the dirt of the floor of a cottage must be a much less common practice. Buried beneath the floor upon which the entire household walked. Depending on the perspective taken, actions such as those could be considered as either a means of showing deep respect or almost blasphemous treatment of the deceased.

What cannot be ignored as well are the almost criminal activities of the people in the surrounding villages. Perhaps their greatest crime was to have allowed themselves to have been driven into such a furor over the purported actions and likely unsubstantiated gossip of the inhabitants of a neighbouring village. They also were guilty of allowing themselves to be caught in the madness of a mob, following one charismatic leader whose daughter was more likely to have eloped with a local swain than to have been kidnapped by villagers whose greatest wish had been to be left alone. Little wonder that those who escaped with their lives did not chose to return to such an unwelcoming area.