Frankenstein Theory (3 page)

“
Victor.” The voice of the woman spoke again, only her lips never moved. “Remake me. Pour life into my vessel, and I will serve you for eternity.”

Blood fountained from the aortic valve. The dark-red liquid sprayed over me; the metallic scent filled my nostrils until I grew sick.

I tried to speak, but the faculty of speech escaped my lips and larynx. Instead I scooped the woman up and placed her on the surgical table. One by one, I replaced the organs and stitched the flaps of her torso closed. As soon as I tied the last knot in the suture, a bolt of lightning struck the corpse’s chest. The body convulsed violently and silently. Another shock of lightning, another convulsive dance. After a third shock, all went still.

Until the body slowly sat upright. The woman’s eyes remained vacant and dead—yet her body betrayed her condition.

“
This cannot be,” I cried out.

“
And yet, it is,” said the woman. Her voice was cold, completely unaffected. “Give me your hand, Victor.”

I hesitated.

“
Victor, your hand.” This time there was an undercurrent of threat to her voice. I complied and held my hand out to her. She grabbed the proffered appendage and violently jerked my flattened palm to her chest.

Instantly I removed my hand and stepped back.

“
I can feel it,” I said in shock.

“
Feel what, Victor?”

“
Your heart—it beats. How is that possible?”

“
Because you are a god, Victor. Life is yours to take and to give.”

Lightning flashed. Within the breath of a moment, the woman was there, and then she was not. In her place stood Professor Waldman.

“
Frankenstein, you will never amount to anything. You have made a mockery of your name and the very science that brought fame and fortune to your family.”

I felt the cold metal of the knife in my hand. In an instant, the blade slashed through the air and dug deep into the flesh of the professor’s neck. Instead of blood, music poured from the gaping hole in his flesh. The song was a symphony of life. The woman reappeared, this time dancing the tarantella ‘round about Waldman. As she spun, she laughed and hummed.

“
Victor,” a voice called out.

“
Victor,” again the voice.

“
Victor, wake up!”

It was Henry, standing over me. The disappointment instantly flooded my system.

“
You were dreaming. I heard you call out. Are you all right?”

I sat up. Rain and the dark of night continued to pelt the window pane. A flash of lightning cast shadows across the room.

“
Henry,” I gasped. “I had the most terrifying dream; and yet, the vision was more than just a night-time passage of subconscious imagery.”

I stood and grabbed Henry by the shoulders. “I know what I am to do.”

Before I lost the thread of thought, I rushed to my desk and grabbed my father’s notebook.

“
Within these pages lies the key to our future. This is more a prophecy than the scrawling of a mad genius. There was, however, one piece of this extraordinary puzzle which forever eluded my father. I believe I now comprehend that which he failed to grasp.” I drew in a deep breath and released a whisper of sound. “Electricity.”

“
Victor, pull yourself together. You had a nightmare; probably due to the unfathomable act we committed this evening.”

He was wrong; to his very core, Henry was wrong.

“
No. What we did will serve as a doorway to our destiny.”

I rushed over to the corpse. “Henry, we witnessed, albeit briefly, life from death. I held in my very hands a beating heart removed from the human form. Do you understand what this means?”

Henry stared at me, fear brimming in his eyes. “Yes, Frankenstein, it means you and I have lost what little remained of our sanity.”

“
No, Henry, I feel more in touch with reality than ever before. I understand now…completely. Life is not a finite measure of time. We begin, we end…we begin anew. You and I have the capacity to revive the dead.”

Lightning danced across the shadows of the room. As the thunder rumbled away, an awkward silence blanketed the encroaching darkness.

“
Victor, this theory you are coercing from deep inside your mind is made of the darkest stuff. I do not know what to say.”

“
Say nothing, if you must. Go back to sleep and tell me in the morning that you will take this journey with me, that you and I will give this theory life.”

“
I’m not sure…”

“
Please, dear Henry, give this the thought it deserves. If, in the morning, you have drawn the conclusion you want nothing to do with my madness, then you can be on your way, never to hear of me, or my work, again.”

He stared deep into core of me. I could feel the glare burrowing through the darkness into the very recesses of my soul. Henry knew me better than anyone, so he knew I would never waver from the chosen path.

With a curt nod, Henry turned and disappeared into the dark. The door to his room creaked to a close, and I was left alone with the corpse and the remnants of the disturbing imagery of the dreamscape.

I turned to the cadaver. “Rise. I command you, rise. Turn to me so that I may cry out to the heavens,
It’s alive!
”

The dead body remained still.

I had a long way to go before I could command the dead.

T H R E E

I rose with the sun. Beams of brilliant light struck my eyes and bid me wake and begin my quest to rewrite the very nature of medical science. A glance at my pocket watch indicated six thirty a.m. I was never an early riser. Of course, my current circumstances dictated behavior outside the norm.

The door to my room complained as it swung open to reveal Henry working with the corpse.

“
Good morning, Victor.”

I nodded succinctly. “What are you doing with her?”

“
I assumed we’d need to get rid of this before the stench of decay wafted into the halls and under the doors of inquisitive neighbors. We’ve no use for this particular corpse now. If there’s any hope of furthering this work, fresh bodies will have to procured.” Henry covered the body with burlap and made to tie up the ends with a lash of rope. “Do help me, won’t you?”

Henry nodded to the feet of the corpse. As I bound the legs within the cloth, I spoke softly. “Where do you propose we dispose of this body?”

Henry smiled. “There is only one fitting grave for this slurry of rot…the water. We’ll carry her down to the pier before anyone rouses and toss her over the edge. No pomp, no ceremony…just an ending.”

xXx

Outside, the streets were still empty. The air was chilled and the cobbles slick with moisture. Carrying the dead weight was already awkward; with the added danger, disaster was but a slip of the heel away.

With fortune on our side, we made it to the water’s edge without incident. Even more fortunate was the sight of the empty pier.

“
Quick, Victor, over here.”

Henry guided us to the end of the longest dock bereft of boat. The only sound was the slap of water against the wooden pillars below. A thick fog hung just over the water, casting an eerie pall over the scene.

“
Are you ready?” Henry asked.

I nodded.

“
Victor, as we rid ourselves of this first corpse, we must remember what this woman meant to our future.”

“
Henry, if you continue to refer to these as women or men, you will never survive this ghoulish undertaking. These are cadavers and nothing more. She is the first of many we will have on our table. We cannot risk any attachment whatsoever. I don’t care if you must look at them as little more than slabs of meat…whatever soothes your questioning conscience..” The severity of my tone made it clear I would not bend on the matter.

Slowly, Henry nodded and we released the cadaver into the water. The fog parted as the burlap bag splashed down, but quickly reformed the ghostly blanket.

I placed my arm around my partner. “Henry, you and I are going to change the world.”

“
Yes, Victor, we are. In order to do so, our first step must be to relocate. We cannot possibly expect to continue our work in that pit of despair. There is only one problem—we lack appropriate funds for such a bold move.”

I stopped. Henry turned to me to bear witness to the birth of a grand idea.

“
What is it you are thinking, Victor Frankenstein?”

“
In the basement of Castle Frankenstein is my father’s laboratory. It hasn’t so much as been entered since his death. The equipment within that room would allow us to continue our work with ease.”

“
But, Victor, what about your mother?”

“
My mother never dared enter the laboratory, even with my father alive. With him dead, the chances against that occurring are even greater.”

Henry agreed. “But what of when your family discovers you’ve failed out of university?”

I winked. “I have no intention of allowing them to discover that bit of tragedy. Keep Mother in the dark, and you and I shall have the run of Father’s laboratory. I will send a post to inform Mother of our arrival. She’ll be so thrilled to see me again, our moving into Father’s lab will most likely go unquestioned.”

“
Victor,” Henry drew out his pause. “What about Elizabeth? Your wife will want to be at your side every waking moment. How will you explain to her our designs of bringing the dead back to life?”

“
Simple. I won’t.”

F O U R

1791

Geneva, Switzerland

Our arrival to Castle Frankenstein was destined to be a celebratory affair—one which I desperately wanted to avoid. Mother’s will was a force not one man could reckon with. A feast was prepared, wine was poured, conversation flowed like rain through a gutter.

“
I assume you are on holiday from school?” Mother inquired.

It was Henry to the rescue.

“
Baroness, Victor and I have been charged with an exceptional assignment that could catapult the medical sciences decades into the future.” Henry lied and held up his hand to prevent questions. “Before you ask, we are prohibited from discussing the project with anyone but the assigning professor. I do hate to be secretive about the issue, but our tenure at university is at stake.”

Mother smiled and nodded. “I completely understand. Many an occasion found the Baron locked away in his study or his laboratory for hours or days on end without so much as a word to me. You have my word; I will not bother you.”

Henry was correct about Elizabeth. She insisted on being at my side for every waking moment. It wasn’t until I tucked her into her bed clothes I was able to get a moment to myself. That moment, of course, was used up introducing Henry to the laboratory.

xXx

“
Victor, this is absolutely brilliant!” Henry pointed toward the ceiling, to the block and tackle pulley attached to the monstrous table. “What was that for?”

I followed Henry’s point and nodded when I realized what he was questioning.

“
Henry, there is something about my father I have never told you.” I turned to the man and felt the blood rush from my face. “The life from death hypothesis wasn’t mine. In fact, it was the Baron von Frankenstein who drew up the original plans. He spent nearly his entire medical career obsessed with the idea that life could be drawn from the dead. My father was a brilliant scientist and surgeon. His undoing was his inability to control his obsession. While I was home on holiday, he died during an attempt to use fire as the secondary component for reanimation. His lack of understanding for things beyond the surgical theatre did him in. A single, misjudged flame ended his life. He was on the table, you see, drawn above the roof. When the flame ignited his gown, it knocked him from his footing. His back and spine were shattered when he hit the railing on the way down to the stone floor. Mother had no idea, the goings on within this laboratory. It was I who cleared away the corpse and secreted his notes from Mother’s purview. He did not hand me his journal—but I knew, with every fiber of my being, that my father would want his work to continue. And so, I confiscated every note he penned regarding this experiment.”

Henry walked about the laboratory. One by one, he removed the covers from the apparatuses, each with a dramatic flair. “Victor, I care about you and your family. But your father’s mistake will not affect our endeavor. There will be no such thing as failure within this laboratory, not with you and I controlling the ebb and flow of science.”

It wasn’t until Henry pulled the cover from the master flow controller for the electrical current that his speech and his enthusiasm waned.