Mister Creecher (20 page)

‘I thought we were going to see if that Swiss fellow wanted him,’ said the other man.

Swiss fellow. Billy’s ears pricked up at that. Was Frankenstein going to be offered his own creation?

‘Nah,’ said the guard. ‘He only wants women, remember.’

‘Well, I’m sure that can be arranged.’ There was the sound of chuckling. ‘But what about our gigantic friend here?’

‘He ain’t going anywhere, not until I decide what to do with him,’ said the guard. ‘Don’t worry. Those chains would hold an elephant. Besides, that drug will knock him senseless. Come on – let’s get a drink.’

The two men walked away and Billy left a long interval before going back to the stable door.

‘Creecher!’ he hissed. There was no response. ‘Creecher!’

Billy entered the stables and felt his way over to where the giant sat draped in chains. The chains were certainly strong, but so confident were the men of Creecher’s inability to break them that they had fixed them to the ring set into the stone-flagged floor with rudimentary padlocks.

‘Creecher!’ whispered Billy again. The giant still made no sound.

Billy opened the padlocks with ease. He had been able to pick more complex locks than this since he was eight or so. After loosening the locks from the ring on the floor, he traced them up to the manacles on Creecher’s legs.

The locks on these were a little more testing, but Billy still had them open in a minute or two. After freeing Creecher’s legs, he traced another set of chains up to manacles on his wrists, which were in turn attached to the metal yoke around his neck.

All the time he worked he kept saying Creecher’s name. Billy’s eyes had gradually become accustomed to the gloom, but it was still too dark to discern the giant’s features. He was simply a great black shape, silent and motionless as a coal heap.

Finally, the last lock was picked and Billy could pull all the chains aside and fling them to the floor. As soon as he turned back to Creecher, an arm shot towards him and one of the giant’s huge hands closed around his throat.

Billy gasped and struggled, beating the arm with all his might. It was only because the giant was drugged that he eventually loosed his grip, allowing Billy to scuttle quickly backwards out of reach.

‘It’s me, Billy, you madman!’ Billy hissed, rubbing his throat.

‘Bill-ly,’ repeated the giant sleepily.

‘Come on, we have to go. If they come back, we’re both dead men.’

‘Dead . . . men,’ said Creecher.

‘Oh God. Come on! You have to get up. You have to move.’

‘Move.’

‘Yes!’ said Billy. ‘Get up. Get up!’

Just as it seemed the giant was never going to move at all, Creecher slowly began to stand. Billy thought it best to get out of the stable, just in case his confusion returned and he decided to grab Billy again.

Billy stood in the track and watched the stable door, waiting for the giant to appear. The moon came out from behind clouds long enough to shed some dim light on the scene. Slowly Creecher shuffled out. He walked backwards at first, and then, as he reached the doorway, he turned and stared at Billy.

The effect was horrible in that light. The drugs had made the giant’s face look even less animated than usual, his eyelids heavy, his gaunt head lolling. His arms hung limply at his sides.

Creecher looked at Billy as if trying to register who, or even what, he was. His head tilted and he peered into the gloom. Then he raised his arms and moaned plaintively, feeling the air between them. It was a pathetic gesture, as though he were a small child, confused and looking for reassurance. Swallowing his fear, Billy stepped forward and took the giant by the hand.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’re all right. You’re safe. You’re with Billy now.’

‘Bill-ly,’ repeated the giant. ‘Friend.’

‘Yeah,’ said Billy quietly. ‘Friend.’

And he led the shuffling giant away along the dimly lit track.

They found refuge in a copse of trees on the outskirts of the town. Billy was worried that passers-by might hear Creecher’s moaning as he tossed and turned in a drug-addled nightmare, shaking himself free of the opiate’s grip.

The giant’s jet-black hair only served to exaggerate the awful pallor of his skin. But studying Creecher’s face for so long made Billy realise, for the first time, that there was nothing inherently ugly about the shape of it. In fact, though it took an effort of will to see it, the features were noble – handsome even. But the pleasing symmetry of Creecher’s face was not enough to mask the horror that lay behind it.

While the giant writhed in his stupor, Billy forced himself to watch as the skin wrinkled and stretched over the barely concealed muscles of his face, as the thin black lips pulled back to reveal those brilliant white teeth and yellow-white gums, and as blood coursed visibly through a network of veins.

Could Frankenstein really have made Creecher? It seemed impossible. Yet Billy could see that Creecher was not human – or at least not wholly so. He was not simply the victim of disease or an accident of birth. He was some other kind of being entirely. He was something new, something unnatural.

But unnatural or not, Billy did sense humanity in Creecher. He was not some man-shaped thing. He had feelings and desires. He had a heart and, for all Billy knew, he had a soul as well.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Creecher flailed about, fighting invisible demons, whimpering and crying – and, all that time, Billy stayed by his side, leaving him only when he slept soundly and then just to fetch water to feed the giant’s raging thirst.

Often, Creecher would wake and immediately check for Billy’s presence. As soon as he saw that the boy was there, he would fall asleep once more, calm and content.

Sometimes, when Billy was sure that the giant was fast asleep, he would creep close and lean his ear next to Creecher’s mouth, fascinated by his breathless, deathlike slumber.

The only person Billy had ever looked after in his whole life was his mother when she had grown ill. But he had been too young to do anything but watch her die.

Now Creecher really did need him. And Billy had never felt needed before. It was a good feeling. It felt like nothing Billy had previously experienced.

He wondered if this was how Creecher had felt when he’d looked after Billy in the attic as Billy drifted in and out of his fever sleep.

Once Creecher was revived, Billy led the way and they left all signs of Oxford behind them, crossing fields and meadows and heading into open countryside. Creecher’s movements were a little drunken at first and more than once he put an arm out for Billy to take. Eventually they ended up beside a canal.

‘I wonder which way’s north,’ said Billy.

Creecher pointed along the canal.

‘How do you know?’

Creecher shrugged.

‘I just do,’ he replied.

Billy sighed and shook his head.

‘Look, there’s a boat. Can you row?’

Creecher nodded. ‘Yes, but –’

‘Come on, then, before anyone sees.’

Creecher got into the boat and, after loosening the mooring rope and throwing it aboard, Billy climbed in after him. The giant began to row and the boat moved along the water as if powered by a steam engine.

‘Woo-hoo,’ cried Billy, waving at two children who stood staring in disbelief on the towpath.

‘Why do you ask which way is north?’ asked Creecher as he rowed.

‘Because that’s where we need to go. We need to head north,’ said Billy.

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s where Frankenstein is headed. They’re travelling to Scotland.’

‘Scotland?’ said Creecher.

‘Yeah, they’re going to somewhere called Matlock first and then Cumberland and –’

‘How do you know all this?’ growled Creecher.

Billy hesitated.

‘The landlord of their rooms in London,’ he said. ‘He gave me their – what do you call it? – their itinerary, didn’t he?’

Creecher’s eyes narrowed.

‘And were you ever going to tell me?’ he asked.

‘Probably not,’ said Billy. ‘I don’t know. It just felt good to know something that you didn’t. You weren’t telling me anything back then.’

Creecher took a deep breath and smiled.

‘No more secrets,’ he said.

‘Fine by me.’

There was a silence while the two of them adjusted to the new footing their relationship seemed to have gained itself. Creecher suggested they make camp, and they pulled up at the side of the canal, near a ruined church. They walked across a field that bulged with the remains of a deserted village, the foundations lying under a blanket of grass, like a sleeping army.

The church ruins provided shelter from a wind blowing in from the east. Billy helped Creecher gather some food, taking guidance from the giant on whether such and such a plant or berry was edible or not. Creecher made a fire and they sat down to eat the food they had gathered, Billy longing for some meat, but also proud that he had helped in the hunt.

‘So,’ said Billy. ‘Are you ever going to tell me anything else?’

Creecher sat back.

‘About what?’

‘About you,’ said Billy.

‘What is it you want to know?’ he asked.

Billy did not know where to start.

‘Well, I don’t know. Do you remember anything about how you . . . how you came to be alive?’

Creecher shook his head. ‘Do you remember your birth?’ he asked.

Billy saw his point.

‘When I try to recall those first moments, my mind is awash with confusion,’ said Creecher, frowning. ‘It is a whirlwind of sensations, of light, of sound. I felt hunger and thirst, I felt cold and afraid, without really knowing what hunger, thirst, coldness or fear actually were.

‘I discovered that I could move. My eyes were gradually able to focus and I could see my hands. I saw the fingers flex and then controlled the movement and became aware of that control.

‘I had been lying on a table of some kind – a fact I only discovered when I moved and fell on to the stone floor. Pain was my next lesson.

‘I lay there a few moments before, clumsily and shakily, I managed to get to my feet. A newborn child would have been immobile, but I seemed to have been born with an innate sense of how my body worked. I was more like the deer or the calf – able to walk, albeit unsteadily, within moments.

‘But understand that I did not know what I was or where I was. I had jumped into existence. I looked about me but could not make any sense of what I saw.

‘Using the furniture as support, I made my ungainly progress around the darkened room. But, of course, I had no knowledge at this time that darkness was not the norm.’

Billy shook his head, trying to imagine what it must have been like to be the giant and take each step, not knowing what lay ahead.

‘Then I saw a light,’ continued Creecher. ‘It was not bright, but it attracted me as though it were a diamond.

‘I staggered towards its gleam and reached out a hand to touch it, but found my hand blocked by a barrier. I had no way of knowing, but what I saw was the moon, and the barrier was the glass of the window.’

Creecher smiled at the recollection of this foolishness and Billy was happy to join him.

‘What happened next?’ asked Billy.

‘I saw an opening nearby – a doorway – and I walked through. The moonlight was brighter here and shone on to a stairwell.

‘Over the fumes of the chemicals in the laboratory, my keen senses had detected another scent. And now that I stood away from the confusion of odours in the room, this scent came even more potently to my nostrils.

‘Some instinct told me to follow this scent and, though my attempts at climbing my first staircase were comical, I found myself, at length, in front of another doorway. The door was open and revealed a very different type of a place to that in which I had awoken.

‘The room was small and much more pleasant to my eyes, which had by now become so accustomed to the low light that I saw as clearly as if it had been day.

‘I stepped into the room and was immediately struck by the texture of the rug beneath my bare feet. I smiled – and put my hand to my face, puzzled by this involuntary movement.

‘In the centre of the room there was a tall structure whose purpose I could not begin to imagine, but, still following the scent which had brought me to this room, I walked forward.

‘I stretched out my fingers and found that the structure gave way at my touch and was soft. I took some of this material in my hand and brought it closer to my face, the better to see it. I even put some small part of it in my mouth to test it, but it was dusty and only increased my sense of thirst and hunger.

‘But this action had an unexpected result. The material I had grasped was the curtain that draped around a bed and, in pulling it apart, I now saw that there was a figure lying on the bed.

‘He had hands as I had hands, and feet and legs as I had already seen that I possessed. Whatever I was, I must be some kin to this creature, and again my face was pulled into a smile as I gazed down at him, the moonlight tumbling through the open curtain and illuminating his sleeping face.