My frantic flight from Switzerland had taken weeks on foot through the surrounding woodland. The carriage Curwen purchased after leaving Ingolstadt made the journey in a few days. Towns identical in their destruction passed us by as folks picked through the rubble. Geneva likely suffered a similar fate, and my heart ached for the devastated people this bloody revolution was meant to help! Their torches and pitchforks had given great men power and renown, yet what had Napoleon done to benefit them and their broken windows?
Given my familiar face, Curwen decided to wait until nightfall to visit the cemetery, a decision I did not protest too. Abandoning the carriage, I guided him through the desecrated suburbs of Belrive and welcomed the darkness that hid the extent of the damage done to my former home. Despite my occasional pause for breath, we made good time and the moon had not fully risen when I stopped beside the Frankenstein tomb. In the four years of my absence the wildflowers had taken over, though the stone structure stood as regal as ever. Curwen placed his hat over his heart, content to pay his respects from a distance. I shook the vines from my cane and stumbled to the entrance. My torch lit up the chiseled letters above the sealed door: Frankenstein. My family. Little saplings had sprouted around the tomb, how long until nature reclaimed the only proof my loved ones had existed at all?
A sudden wildness seized me, and my knees hit the ground as I tore out the surrounding weeds and flung them into the night. Dirt clogged my nails as I desperately tried beating back the woodland that cared so little for memories of warm smiles and charity. The effort tightened my lungs and I collapsed in a panting heap, still surrounded. It took me a moment to realize Curwen had vanished. Wiping sweat from my brow, I staggered to the tomb’s entrance where the door stood ajar. An odd chemical scent floated around melted metal where a lock had been.
“Are you finished, then?” Curwen’s voice echoed from inside. “Do come in, they do not bite.”
“What did you do,” I stumbled over to Curwen waiting in the back of the tomb.
“I told you already. I wish to see your brother,” Curwen said. His pupils drew in the surrounding shadows. “Which casket is his? We do not have time for petty guesswork.”
His right hand clutched a crowbar. Reality suddenly dawned on me. I was in a hostile land, breaking into the realm of the dead with a stranger who had allegedly known Victor. Previous encounters had taught me that Victor’s rambles attracted two types of readers: those from the tavern who looked on his actions with terror and disgust, and those who did not.
“You are one of those resurrection men,” I breathed. “A graverobber!”
Curwen’s face was a mask. “Your brother kept like-minded company.”
“Victor did no such thing! It was all in his head!” I snarled. “You actually believe he stitched together rotten corpses and reanimated them to massacre my family?”
“What I believe means little, Victor said so himself,” Curwen carelessly tossed the crowbar on Mama’s casket and pulled Walton’s book from his satchel.
“You are mad,” I stepped away.
“Come now, do you really credit your extraordinary misfortune to mere chance?” Curwen pressed. “That those connected to the Frankenstein family just have a habit of getting their necks snapped? That your sweet maid saw it fitting to murder her little charge and hide his locket in so obvious a place? You speak of madness, yet I find your denial of the evidence precisely that!”
“Nonsense!” My cane struck the floor as though the motion alone could defeat Curwen. “My brother was a genius, yes, but creating life? That is strictly God’s domain!”
“Foolish boy, you do not get it. He beat God! Earths’ at least, had it been the other gods he chose to rival, well, that is beside the point!” Curwen shook his head. “I thought being his brother would have opened your eyes more so than the others, but you people are all the same. So stuck in your beliefs that you are incapable of comprehending the grand scope of genius! Of the power we hold now and will claim in the future!”
The image came again—Victor shaking his head as I begged to come with him. His voice saying I was too weak. A slammed door. No, I did understand. I was not on the level of Curwen, and certainly not Victor. And Curwen’s voice, crazy as his claims were, had an undercurrent of genuineness I could not ignore. Somehow, he spoke the truth. The caskets stacked around me seemed to grow with the revelation. Those at the tavern were right. My older brother was a monster! And the man smiling in front of me was…?
“I have researched such unhallowed arts as well, and now I too believe I hold the key for such endeavors,” Curwen said. “I can bring him back, Ernest.”
“Why?” I whimpered. “Has he not done enough?”
“You must have read Walton’s biography,” Curwen insisted. “That creature was a blank slate turned black from Victor’s neglect. If the resurrected had memory, had a soul, how much greater would they be?”
“Far worse, if he was a fiend in life!”
“Your brother was onto something revolutionary,” Curwen continued. His hand lifted toward a future I could not see. “My black magic cannot compare, but I can resurrect his soul. You could have him, and once he relates his secrets to me, everyone you have lost returned.”
“They are mere skeletons,” I croaked, unsure of anything now. “You cannot reanimate flesh the worms have long since eaten away.”
“Its essence remains all the same. Decay does not stump me as it did Victor. In many ways, my methods are superior to his, but not permanent. I need him, the same as you. He is your brother.” Curwen held out his hand. It took me a moment to register the gesture.
“You are right,” I said and grasped his fingers with a smile. “I need him too.” With the last word I yanked Curwen forward and struck his head with my cane—the classic surprise attack mentioned in my old combat books. Turning on my heels, I rushed from the tomb and down the moonlit graveyard. Away from this madman and the truth beneath those caskets! My family murdered by a monster of my brother’s own design! A monster he had said nothing of while Justine hung for his crimes. The poor woman, rotting in a criminal’s grave! I had cursed her legacy while showering the real daemon with misplaced sympathy. My knees gave out and I crashed amidst scattered stone and charred wood. It took me a moment to recognize the great oak that towered over what was once my backyard. I had been so fixated on running away that I had forgotten there was no home to run to anymore. Nothing remained of our villa now, it was rubble and ashes.
Different ashes flashed through my mind, and I wept. Wept for William, Justine, Elizabeth, Papa, Henry, and any other hapless victim that had stumbled upon Victor’s creation. Wicked world! Why must I be the sole survivor? Why not those with such promise, not an invalid too blind to see the truth? Yet here I crouched, the least worthy left unclaimed by the spoiler. Had the monster found me too insignificant to kill? Did I mean so little to Victor that his vengeful creation had ignored me? My hands pawed at the rubble, as though reality could be brushed away and I could return to better days. The dust brought on another coughing fit I did little to disguise. If I had caught on sooner, if I was not so weak, they would still be alive.
Weak. I repeated that word to the charred planks and stone until the sun rose. I was powerless, but I knew someone strong. A genius who could peel back the mortal bounds that held me captive. If Curwen brought Victor back…
No, do not think such things. They are not of God!
A God who did nothing to stop the slaughter. What did God care for my little life or those of the peasants crushed by this horrid war? Where had he been when Victor’s creature strangled my baby brother or French officials drowned innocent commoners at Nantes? Why were cruel men set up to rule while their supporters lived in shacks? Either God had a preference for the wicked, or he viewed us humans as I would an ant—how we lived and died were beneath him.
If Curwen brought Victor back, wicked though my brother was, Curwen could force the secret of life from his lips and we could revive those who had been so cruelly slain! I dared to dream, to picture little William chasing grasshoppers in the vineyards again as Elizabeth and Mama (yes, Mama too!) chuckled while we watched him together. It would be sunny with no monsters in that happy home. Victor would be turned away before his delusions of grandeur ruined us again. Yes, yes it would work! Wicked though such work may be, nothing could rival the vile acts that had sealed my family in the tomb to begin with. If that damns me, so be it. I had nothing to lose in the face of failure. I had to find Curwen!
I arrived at a tomb vacant of life. Victor’s casket stood empty.
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