Dr. Frankenstein's Daughters (11 page)

FROM THE JOURNAL OF
INGRID VDW FRANKENSTEIN

July 1, 1815

After hours of intensive reading, I needed a rest and made my way downstairs. I encountered Giselle as she was coming from her bedroom.

“Have you seen the portrait of our father yet?” she asked. When I told her I hadn’t, she grabbed my hand. “Come, quickly. You must see it right away.”

I have to tell you, it was a powerful moment for me. There he was — handsome, fiery, proud.

“It made me cry when I first saw it,” Giselle admitted. “Uncle
Ernest tells me he looks to be in his twenties — it must have been painted when he resided here.”

I nodded but found I didn’t have the impulse to weep. I was overwhelmed, just the same. Here was the face of the man whose journals were filling my days and nights. He was suddenly more real to me than he had ever been in my entire life.

“Who could have been stalking him all those years?” I wondered aloud, still gazing up at the dramatic figure in the painting.

“Someone he owed a debt to?” Giselle guessed. We hadn’t discussed it much, ever since I had recounted my conversation with our uncle to her.

“Possibly,” I agreed. “But what kind of debt could cause a person to hound another in such a way? This person went so far as to murder the ones our father loved. What kind of fiend could be so resolute in his desire for revenge?”

“Or
her
desire,” Giselle added.

“I suppose so. Even in this painting, he seems as if he is being pursued,” I observed. “I wonder who painted it.”

Giselle moved closer to the portrait and stood on tiptoes to read the artist’s signature aloud. “John Singleton Copley.” Her eyes went wide. “He is a famous American painter, Ingrid. He painted American presidents!”

“Was Victor Frankenstein that famous?” I questioned.

“Perhaps Copley was not yet so well known when he painted this,” Giselle suggested.

“Do you think he could tell us anything about our father? He must have known him.”

“If the man is still alive, I will invite him to our party,” Giselle said. She handed me a sheet of paper on which she’d listed the people she wanted to invite. “Joseph Turner?” I asked. “Another famous painter? Do we dare invite all these celebrated people?”

“Why not?” Giselle challenged.

“Will these people be staying with us?”

“Of course! There are so many rooms in this house that have yet to be opened; we only have to dust them out and revive their furniture. We certainly have the space. Wouldn’t it be fun to have the place filled with fascinating people?”

“The chemist Humphry Davy?” I questioned excitedly as I continued to read. Anthony had lent me Davy’s book from 1806,
On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity
, and I was even now reading it. It was utterly fascinating! “Do you think he would come?”

“I read in the paper that he is on an eighteen-month European tour with his assistant and his wife. Why not come to a grand party with notable thinkers?”

“You don’t think it a little presumptuous to invite famous people we don’t know?”

“Ingrid, we are from a well-known family. I am a baroness, as are you. We live in a castle!”

“Which is looking lovely, by the way,” I remarked.

“Yes, isn’t it? They’ve done a remarkable job. We live in a
lovely
castle, which anyone would like to see.”

“Do you think Berzelius will come from Stockholm?” I asked hopefully.

From the doorway, someone grumbled, and we both turned toward the sound. It was that arrogant fool, Riff. His gaze ran over us with that same insulting lechery as before.

“Hasn’t my uncle dismissed you yet?” Giselle snapped coldly.

“He told my aunt to do it,” Riff answered nonchalantly. “Auntie Agnes would never fire her own nephew, though.”

“It’s not up to her to decide,” Giselle insisted. “My sister and I are your employers — and we want you gone! You may collect whatever money is owed to you this Friday when everyone else is paid.”

“Don’t be a nasty girl,” he taunted. “You are much too pretty for that. I only came by to say I found this.” He held up a large ornate key. “I thought you might like to have it.”

At once I was at his side, eager to get the key from him. He held it away from me, above my head. He was taller than I, and it exceeded my reach.

“Give it to her!” Giselle commanded angrily.

“Do I still have my job?” Riff bargained.

“No!” Giselle told him.

“Then no key,” he said.

Giselle colored red with fury. “We’ll have you arrested. The police will take that key from you.”

“Not if I bury it. I’ll deny ever having seen it. Besides, the police on this island are all related to me.”

“Let him stay on, Giselle,” I pleaded. It looked so much like the key in my dream. I just had to have it, to see.

“Very well,” Giselle huffed, turning her back to us.

Riff handed me the key with a grin. “See you around, shoddy science sister.”

How I loath the conceited idiot!

Now I had the key. But what was it for? What might it unlock for me? I gazed up at the portrait of Victor Frankenstein, feeling he must know the answer to that question. If only he could speak to me. Gazing at the key nestled in my palm, I had the uncanny idea that maybe he
was
speaking to me.

But what was he saying?

FROM THE DIARY OF
BARONESS GISELLE FRANKENSTEIN

July 2, 1815

Diary, I cannot tell you how busy I have been, planning this party. I scarcely have time to think! I intend to send out fifty invitations, which is utter madness, but I would like nothing better than for all fifty to answer in the affirmative. What a gala it will be!

The party itself must match or even better the luster of the guest list. Ingrid is aghast at the audacity of my inviting these famous personages of the arts, literature, politics, and philosophy. While in mainland Scotland, I picked up copies of two newspapers,
The Edinburgh Review
and
The Quarterly Review
, from which to cull the names of any person of note mentioned in the paper. To this I
will add noted scientific minds from a list Ingrid made for me on the trip back from Edinburgh. Finding their addresses will be a challenge but well worth the effort, I am certain.

It was while I was sitting in the room facing the ocean, perusing
The Quarterly Review
to once more check that I had not overlooked anyone of note, that Baron Frankenstein inquired as to why the infuriating Riff remained on the premises. I told him what had transpired.

“Why was Ingrid so avid to possess that key?” he inquired.

I threw my arms wide in exasperation. “She said she’d dreamed of it.”

“Dreamed of it?”

“Yes — saw it in a dream.”

“Was it a large, decorative key?”

When I confirmed that it was, he shook his head. “That poor foolish girl! She didn’t see the key in a dream. More likely she noticed it hanging on a hook in the walk-in cool room. It opens the root cellar behind it.”

“Perhaps she noticed it without realizing, and then dreamed of it,” I speculated. “Dreams often work that way.”

“I agree, they do,” Baron Frankenstein said. “The fellow was toying with you. I will go talk to Mrs. Flett, and, if need be, I will dismiss the young ruffian myself.”

“It will be a relief to have him gone,” I said. Baron Frankenstein
went off to find Mrs. Flett, and I stared out the window at the vivid blue of the sky. We were so far above the ocean that the sky was all that was visible from the first floor, though the crash of waves and calls of seabirds filled the room through the open window. My mind drifted to the first day I had seen Riff, and how flattered I’d felt by his long appreciative gaze, even though I knew it was not a proper way to feel about such unabashed lechery. It was too bad that he’d turned out to be so boorish. I had learned my lesson about boors.

July 3

Today I awoke the moment Ingrid appeared in the doorway, looking feverish with excitement.

“Come with me, Giselle! I think I know what door this key opens.”

“I do too,” I revealed gently. “Our uncle told me it unlocks a door in the root cellar behind the kitchen pantry.”

An expression of unbelieving confusion spread across her face as my words hit her. “It can’t be. I was so sure,” she objected.

Rising from my bed, I quickly dressed and took her hand in order to lead her toward the kitchen. “Let’s see for ourselves,” I suggested, thinking it would be better if I were with her to help her with her disappointment. As we went, I told her all that Baron Frankenstein had said to me about how the dreadful Riff had
fooled us by implying that the key had more importance than it really did. When we got there, the kitchen was empty, and I lit an oil lantern as Ingrid led me to the door for the pantry.

“Look! Here is the key Uncle Ernest meant!” she cried triumphantly, pointing at a nearly identical key hanging on a nail just outside the door. Taking down the key, I placed it in Ingrid’s hand beside the one she’d gotten from Riff. The only difference was a nick chipped into the metal of the key from Riff.

We gazed at each other uncertainly and then cautiously descended the steps into the blackness of the pantry. Holding hands, we tried to stay within the halo of the light from the lantern, which tossed eerie forms on the wall. We shivered as our own shadows formed giant ghostly images.

“Go all the way to the back wall,” Ingrid instructed me, her voice tense with excitement.

A small white mouse scurried across my boot, causing me to scream and jump, knocking Ingrid to the side.

“Hold your light up. See where it runs!” she ordered.

Doing as she commanded, my gaze followed the mouse until it disappeared into the ground under a door in front of us. We quickly made our way to it and felt for the lock, which Ingrid immediately attempted to unlock with the key not containing the nick.

Ingrid pushed the door and it creaked open, presenting to us a room of even more impenetrable blackness, colder than the pantry.
Holding the oil lamp high, I saw empty crates that must have once held carrots, potatoes, turnips, and the like. The little mouse that had just startled me appeared once more, appraising us on two legs from the top of a container, his pink nose twitching. In the next moment, he leapt away, disappearing into the wall behind him.

Ingrid sprang away from me and dashed to the far wall, pounding on it.

“Have you gone mad?” I demanded, hurrying to her side. “What are you doing?”

“Listen, Giselle! Listen!” She pounded hard on the wall. “Listen to the echo. The space beyond this wall is hollow. There’s no rock or wood behind it.”

Ingrid searched the wall with her eyes and hands as I held the lamp high over my head to throw the maximum light. I searched along with her until my eyes caught sight of a thick iron plate just at the edge of the light.

“There!” I said.

Ingrid held both keys into the light, selected the nicked key, and, with trembling hands, inserted it into the lock. She looked at me, her eyes wide and bright with the thrill of possibly entering an unknown space.

“What do you think is behind the door?” she asked.

The images of insects, snakes, bats, and all manner of rodents flooded my mind, along with the even more horrifying images of
human skeletons and ghostly apparitions. And a person. I had such a strong sense that there could be someone waiting there. Waiting to hurt us.

“There’s only one light,” I said, unable to push my irrational thoughts aside. A film of cold sweat was crawling across my skin as my pulse quickened, prompted by the mere idea of being left in this lightless place by myself. I gripped Ingrid’s arm. “Please, let’s go back. I read once of a castle that had an underground tunnel that was actually a labyrinth. Only the initiated few could find their way through, and everyone else who entered it was instantly confused and perished there in the darkness.” I could not imagine any death that could be more horrible than to wander endlessly in a lightless maze.

“Stay here with the lamp and I will be right back.”

“You won’t be able to see. What good is it if you can’t see?”

“I can feel along the walls,” Ingrid insisted. “I just want to know how big of a space it is and how far back it goes.”

“I can’t go with you,” I confessed. “I want to, but I can’t. I have too much terror of the dark.”

“You’ve already come this far,” she pointed out.

It was true, but the way ahead was utterly lacking in even the dimmest glimmer. To me it seemed so deep and fathomless I was sure anything that entered would surely be swallowed up.

“I can’t go any farther,” I said, choking out the words.

“Can you stay here and hold the light?” Ingrid asked.

“Yes. I think I can,” I said with a quivering voice — how I despised myself for being so abject! But there was no choice, my terror was too overpowering. It was something in my blood, in my bones. “Please don’t go!”

“I’ll be very quick,” Ingrid promised. Still in the lamp’s glow, she found the wall of the interior room, which appeared to be a long tunnel approximately the width and height of a large grown man.

A grown man.

I watched, trembling, as Ingrid moved down the length of the tunnel, lifting the lantern ever higher to throw a longer circle of light into the empty space. Then, all at once, she was gone.

The flame of the lamp flickered and my heart skipped with panic. And then I heard it. A footstep. It was a man’s heavy tread against the stone floor, in tandem with an acrid odor.

“Who’s there?” I whispered.

No one answered, but now I could hear breathing. I thought to call for Ingrid, but I did not want to make it known that she was even there.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

A man’s hand darted into the light, pulling the lantern from me. I felt the hot oil splatter against my cheek as he dashed it against the wall, plunging us into blackness.

Then the hand gripped me, swinging me against the wall.