Frankenstein's Monster (34 page)

The boy rode off, presumably to tell Lily when I would be at her side.

So short a distance now. But what would I do in Dunfield? And why did I go?

As the day cooled down, I dragged out each step till I came to the signs at a crossroads. The way to Dunfield lay along a
road that hooked away from the main thoroughfare. I followed this smaller road and, by the time the sun set, could see buildings through the trees ahead. At this point I slipped into the woods and walked parallel to the road, reluctant to show myself too openly. Too many people had heard the message summoning me here; for my own safety, I should not have come.

Enough past the town so that it was no longer visible from it stood an old mill. I eyed its dark, vacant windows and half-open doors overgrown by last summer’s weeds, shriveled by the winter to straw. Most of the waterwheel had rotted through, leaving the bare skeleton of its iron fixings. The waterwheel hung over a dry streambed, which explained why the great millstones had ground to a stop. Spiders would be the only workers there tonight, spinning webs from every corner, and mice the only customers, gathering up the last bits of grain.

Discarded millstones, their grooves worn too smooth to be of use grinding, had been set into the earth to make a path around the building. Still others lay propped against one another in a haphazard pile. There I sat, even after darkness had completely fallen and a single light flared in one of the windows. I told myself I was ensuring that no one had followed me and that this was not a trap laid by Walton. But long after I was certain I was alone, I remained outside. If I had thoughts, I do not remember them. I simply waited.

After a few hours had passed, I crept closer, circling the mill. In the back I found the answer to the question of how Lily had come here from Tarkenville: the elegant painted carriage I had stolen had been drawn up to a side door. Its beautiful horses were still hitched. I was surprised to see all four—that Lily had not beaten them mercilessly the way she had beaten the animals when we first left Tarkenville.

The horses snorted and shied when they saw me but did not panic.

Entering the mill from the side opposite to where I had seen the light, I let my eyes, my cat’s eyes, become accustomed to the dark. I walked through the grinding room, storerooms, a smithy, an office. The building was as deserted as it appeared. Light flickered from beneath a door.

I pushed it open. This room had held cast-off tools: a bent scythe with a broken handle, a near-toothless rake, snapped barrel hoops, slivered pieces of wood, rotted sacking.

I opened the door to its widest. Only then did I see Lily on the floor next to a lantern. Head tilted, arms limp at her sides, legs splayed, she looked like a rag doll propped against the wall. Trousers and boots tossed off, she was naked from the waist down but for her stockinged feet.

A gasp whistled through my teeth.

She opened her eyes. “Sunset was hours ago,” she said. “I did not think you were coming.” Beneath her jacket, the farmer’s shirt that she still wore was long enough that its hem dipped down between her parted legs and covered her sex. The bottom edge of the shirt was marked by a large fresh stain, and I asked: “Is it your time?”

“I have made it my time. Oh, Victor, you left me too long alone!” She lifted her hand; in it she clasped a rusted metal file. “Look what I found.”

She tilted the file till the moisture on its tip caught and held the light.

“I’d have carved it out long ago. I find I am a coward even now and could make but the barest prick. Perhaps what I was wanting all along, though, was your eyes on me.”

She drew up her legs as if she would once more thrust the file between them.

I did not move. I could not move.

With a half-strangled scream, she threw the file across the room and covered her face with her palms.

“What have I done?” she cried.

“No more than you promised to do in the letter.”

“The letter.” Her anguish was brief. “I wrote the letter while in Tarkenville right after you left. Later I regretted giving it to the boy.”

“Yet you acted on it.”

“You said you’d be here by sunset,” she said, half beggingly.

How many hours had I waited outside while she had waited in here alone, thinking I would not come? How close had I come to leaving even then?

“We must go into town,” I said, picking up her clothes. “Someone will help you.”

“No, not here, not in Dunfield. He will know to look for us in Dunfield.”

I did not have to ask whom she meant.

“Why be afraid?” I said cruelly. “He would only finish your work for you.”

“Think of me then,” she whispered. “Think of yourself.” Her voice became urgent. “Now that you are here, we must leave at once! We must put this place far behind us.”

Her eyes shone, their feverish glitter unhealthy against her pale face.

“How far should I take you?” I asked, recognizing her old craftiness.

“To London, Victor.” Her hand flew up to the barrette. “You must take me to London.”

She fell into a grinning silence. I dressed her, tearing the sleeves off my shirt to stuff into her trousers as a bandage. When I had finished, she curled into a corner and fell asleep. I was not certain whether to move her and so have written this while I wait to see how her condition fares.

The lantern burns too low for me to continue this entry. I must try to rouse her or else carry her sleeping to the
carriage. I think it best that we be far from Dunfield before daylight.

I drive as a man possessed. I stopped in the first town after Dunfield. Lily refused to leave the carriage, clawing at my face when I reached in. In the next town, I beseeched an elderly woman to help her. When she opened the door to the carriage, Lily kicked her full in the chest and knocked her to the ground.

The pounding of the horses’ hooves sets the pace for my thoughts. Traveling round in a groove, my mind circles in on itself. Not even my journal enables it to break free.

Why did I go back to her? Why did I not grab the file from her when she would have stabbed herself? And if I care as little for the worm as she does, if I care as little for Lily herself, why did I bring her with me?

And so I drive.

I would not stop though she pounded on the window, cried out that she was ill, and cursed me vilely. When I at last pulled over, she was scarcely out of the carriage before I accused her of the most wanton callousness.

She pushed me aside and bent double; she had not lied about being sick. Still I felt no pity.

“All your life you have had every good thing heaped upon you,” I said. “How can you have come so close to killing and feel nothing?”

She straightened up and pressed her fists into the small of her back.

“What do
you
feel, Victor, when you kill? As little as you claim
I
must? Perhaps exhilaration comes only the first time.”

The easy baiting in her words chilled me.

“The first time?”

“The first time one kills,” she said, smiling. “Mine was the stable boy. Surely you remember the crime of which
you
were accused. It was the night I told you about the worm, though you did not understand my words. I told you someone was spying on us.”

“A boy. So you bludgeoned him till he could be recognized only by a birthmark. For what?”

“He would have blackmailed me!” Lily said. “My marriage was being arranged, my land was being increased. I could not be seen with you in so compromising a way. The boy could have done me much harm if he had talked.

“And besides,” she added, “isn’t it what everyone wonders, what everyone asks the young soldier when he returns from war: ‘How is it to kill someone?’ It is a man’s power, to take a life. Not
this,”
she said, striking her stomach sharply. “Any bitch in heat can do this without thought.”

She pulled herself back up into the carriage and settled in her seat. Then her face contorted and she clutched her sides.

“It will be soon now,” she whispered. She tried once more to grin. “At least I have succeeded in shortening my sentence by a little while.”

Perspiration formed on her upper lip. Her whole body shook. When she opened her eyes, they were flat and cold.

“Do not gaze on me like an idiot, Victor. Get back up and drive. Once the brat is dead, I would be in London the next day to celebrate my freedom.”

Why should the worm not be meaningless to her, after all, when the stable boy—who had a name and a face, perhaps overly large ears, a fondness for marzipan, and a neighbor girl sweet on him—when this boy, whom she must have known for years, meant so little?

I asked the only thing I could: “Weren’t you afraid of being caught?”

“No. I knew they’d blame you.”

Without a word, I shut the carriage door and resumed my seat up on the driver’s box. When I lashed out at the horses with the whip, it was Lily’s face I saw before me.

Again she had me stop. This time she fell to the ground, just to lie quietly, she said, away from the ceaseless jarring of the ride. A pinkish stain marked her trousers. She pushed me away when I said I would use the rest of my shirt for a clean bandage. Her pains were very sharp, yet irregular; there was no way of knowing how much longer she must wait.

“The worm has grown teeth and claws,” she said, gasping. “It is trying to rip its way out. Oh, kill it, Victor, kill it!” Then, breathing more easily, she bade me help her back in and drive.

No spasms for a while, though Lily’s trousers are a sodden mess. Whenever I slow down, she screams wildly that I must not stop, that I must drive straight through to London. Instead of weakening her, the pain has given her new strength born of madness. And so I drive, telling myself that she will try to hurt herself again unless I do as she says. All the while I am listening—hoping?—for her to fall silent.

I do not know when I can write again, or what it is I will say.

It was dusk when I first heard the hoofbeats behind us. A horse and rider were racing up. Made desperate by Lily’s cries, I could no longer endure my inaction.

Just minutes before, she had shrieked so wildly I pulled to the side at once. When I opened the carriage door, the smell of blood flowed thickly from the confined interior. With the setting sun I could scarcely see inside the coach; only her pale face was visible, floating in the blackness.

“Drive!” she said, her voice hoarse. “Do not worry. It is not yet time. I will do nothing without you.”

What did she mean? That together we would give birth to the worm, together give it death?

Before I could snap the reins, I heard the hoofbeats.

I waved to the rider to stop. He rode past, pulled up sharply, and jerkingly circled around. Sitting far forward and askew, he swayed to the other side, then slipped down and nearly fell off. He is intoxicated, I thought. A drunkard could offer little assistance.

“Are we near a town?” I called. “Or at least a farm?”

There was a sharp crack as Lily’s fist struck the window, followed by a wailing “Nooo!” As her protest dissolved into pain, her white hand opened and stretched flat on the glass.

“You can no longer refuse attention,” I said, then stood up on the box and asked, “Where is the closest town?”

The man, heavily muffled against the weather, forced his horse closer, which made it rear and prance. For a moment I thought he would fall, he leaned so far to the left. The horse panted out steamy breaths as if ridden hard for a long time.

“There is a woman here in childbirth,” I said.

Did the sound of Lily crying out at that very moment distract me, or did the scarf round the man’s face make his voice too soft for me to hear more than the words?

“Your wife?” he asked, riding closer.

“Yes.” Any other response would give rise to questions I had no time to answer.

“Then I am right to kill you both!”

Another crack. How loudly Lily struck the glass, I thought as the horses leapt and I sat down hard on the box. Then I saw the pistol in the man’s hand, saw the puff of smoke rising from its barrel. At the shoulder, my cloak bore a hole, immediately ringed with blood. Terrible cold rushed through me, only to be burned away by a hot stabbing flash.

The man struggled to reload. I threw myself from the box, fell onto his horse’s neck, and knocked the man half off the saddle. As the horse bucked, he slid down away from me, still working the gun. The horse reared full up and threatened to trample us. I grabbed its mane and held on, too stunned to do more than let my weight drag the animal to a stop. In the time this took, the stranger had found his feet and finished reloading.

Scarf fallen to reveal his face, Walton aimed his pistol at me again, his lame, burnt body in the crooked stance I had mistaken for drunkenness.

“Victor! Victor, now!”

Lily’s voice, harsh and guttural, made us both turn. A flash of white appeared at the window. Immediately Walton shifted his aim and fired. The bullet shattered the glass.

Again the horses leapt, and this time, without my hand to stay them, they bolted down the road, jerking the carriage after them. I tried to mount Walton’s horse. He jumped at me, his grotesque body as horrible as a nightmare. I swatted him, pulled myself into the saddle with my good arm, and galloped after Lily.

Walton’s horse, already exhausted and now carrying the weight of a giant, could not overtake the carriage. Instead we trailed behind at greater and greater lengths. “
Victor! Victor, now!
”—Lily had cried. But after the second shot, only silence. I slapped the horse and urged it onward with shouts.

Far away to the south the road curved downward into a
valley, leading to such an unnatural glow that the sky itself burned, it seemed, as it burned on Lily’s last night in Tarkenville. Traveling down the curve, the carriage disappeared from sight. My heart hammered and I could not breathe.

“Faster!” I shouted. Trying to spur the horse on, I nearly slid from the saddle, my own strength sapped by fiery pain. I wrapped my arms around its neck and held on.