“What exactly is that?”
“A dress for Mama! She will need clothes when we revive her, Mr. Curwen,” I chirped, caressing the white silk. “Mama looked so beautiful in the dresses she used to wear. When I was a boy, she would always take William and I’s hands and race up the hills near our villa to watch the sun rise over the mountains. You should have seen her! When we went after a rain shower, the droplets on Mama’s dress would sparkle in the rising light! She was such an angel,” I wiped away fond tears. “William always tried capturing those shining droplets in his little hands, his expression was so precious when the liquid ran down his fingers instead! I cannot wait to relive those happy times. See here,” I hopped over to my assortment of dresses and toys and snatched up a carved spinning top to show Curwen. “I have been spending some of the allowance you give me on little trinkets I know will make them smile!”
Curwen moved aside a carved ducky with his shoe, unimpressed. “Pace yourself. We must resurrect Victor before we can even consider the rest of your family.”
“I know,” I sighed, returning the spinning top to the couch that doubled as my bed. Curwen had drug it and other abandoned furniture into a cleared corner of the kitchen for my sleeping quarters. I had hoped the move would cure the nightmares that plagued me in the library, but the devouring mass of tentacles and eyes followed me wherever I rested my head. Traumatizing though the visions were, I internalized my horrific dreams to save Curwen the trouble of mocking my senseless agitation. He was going to such great lengths for my sake and I dared not inconvenience him with petty complaints.
“I have also made you dinner,” I smiled, pointing to the readied fish platter on the table beside a smaller plate containing my own. “I spent the entirety of my allowance this week on some rare spices for us!”
“We agreed that you would leave all food outside my lab, nowhere else,” Curwen’s voice dripped with disapproval and my eyes fell back on the dress. “Do you honestly believe I have the time to waste eating out here with lesser minds such as yours?”
“Of course not, sir! But surely you cannot usurp the laws of nature on an empty stomach?” I pleaded. Try as I might to prove myself, so set was Curwen’s sights on high aspirations that he never glanced down to consider fellowship with little men like me. “Sir, you always eat alone in your lab, and since you are too busy for evening walks together, I thought this would be the best way to show my appreciation for everything you do for me…”
“That can be achieved by picking up my equipment from the docks every fortnight and minding my personal space,” Curwen muttered, though he placed his coat over the chair and settled down. I scampered over to the seat across from him as Curwen took his first bite and grimaced.
“This is far too plain, Ernest. You cannot expect me to finish.”
I slid the readied jar of salt his way. Curwen groaned and sprinkled it sparingly.
“You have your brother’s determination,” he shook his head with the first smile I had seen in weeks. “Nothing deterred Victor once his mind was set—for better or worse.”
My finger’s tightened around Mama’s dress at Victor’s mentioning, though I dared not speak out and ruin the first conversation I had had with Curwen, or anyone, in days. The gesture was not lost on my host.
“You should not hate him, Ernest.”
“You expect me to forgive that man?” I folded the white dress. It was the color of good, not like my brother. How beautiful Mama had appeared when the morning light lit her smiling face! “Those bright souls are extinguished because Victor could not let the dead lie!”
“Just as you are doing now?”
Ingolstadt’s unnatural silence filled the room.
“No. I am undoing his destruction,” I corrected.
“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Curwen’s white teeth flashed in the torchlight.
“Unless said wrong is for the greater good,” I retorted. The greater good. That was what I told myself the noises from Curwen’s locked laboratory that woke me in the dead of night were.
“Your brother said the same,” Curwen said.
“I thought you said he kept his life private?” I challenged, though Curwen’s glare silenced me, reminding me how much I owed this man.
“I did,” Curwen frowned. “But with time, it is easy to see into the hearts of the company you keep. Victor arrived at Ingolstadt broken enough to seek out the unorthodox. Your mother’s death crushed him. He cared deeply for those he left in Geneva.”
“Not enough to write,” my default complaint faltered on my tongue.
“You can hardly blame one for being swept up in their work,” Curwen idly brushed some blueish powder off his shirt.
“Do you ever write to your family in America?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation into calmer waters.
“Having moved among far more potent entities, what use have I for the likes of them?” Curwen laughed sardonically. “Why go back on nearly nine years of blissful silence?”
“Nine years?” I gagged.
“Salem is trapped between woodlands and ocean, there is little opportunity for fine education in America,” Curwen sniffed, banging his fist on the table. “Europe is far richer in its secrets. Secrets my weak-minded kin lack the constitution to grasp.”
“Indeed,” I said slowly, thinking of that lonely letter. Someone had wanted to block Victor from reaching out to us. Someone who cared little for family relations. “It is dusk. I should start for the docks if I hope to receive the next shipment.”
**
My second horse resided in an abandoned barn a great distance from the frightening presence of the university. Curwen had made a habit of seeing me off and waiting for my return to help pull the wagon the rest of the way. Tonight was no different, and I settled into my routine as I rode to the secluded waterfront where the old captain waited with his hat hiding his eyes. Neither he nor the sailors mocked me as I paid up, a change I was to grateful to question until the masks were flung aside and a dozen muskets forced me to the ground. The ‘captain’ stepped into the torchlight, boasting a far more menacing figure than the shriveled man I had grown accustomed too. Beneath the familiar coat stretched over wide shoulders, I glimpsed a shirt buttoned unevenly. It was Button Boy from the tavern, and he had acquired several new friends.
“Beautiful night for a stroll, eh Monsieur Frankenstein?” he sneered.
“It was. The pitchforks and muskets ruined the mood, I fear,” I muttered as two men held me down in the dirt.
“Tell me, Ernest, what business do you have wandering out after dark? Your clattering wagon could wake the dead.” Not expecting a response, Button Boy turned to another ‘sailor’ with glasses halfway down his crooked nose. “See your honor, I told you we could mimic those outlaws and he would be too foolish to know the difference!”
I was just happy they were not laughing at me!
“Where is the captain?” I croaked, looking around the silent bank.
“Where all the killers go,” Button Boy traced an imaginary line across his throat.
“Killers?”
“Feinting ignorance will not save you,” Button Boy snarled. The captain’s coat slumped to the ground as he knelt beside me. “Everyone in Ingolstadt knows what you Frankenstein’s are about,” his palm opened to show the jewelry I had paid him earlier. “You conspire with the Deep Ones for earthly riches! Unhallowed servant of Satan, you will bring the devil’s work to our city no more!” He called to a man beside my wagon, “Split the crate! Show him how much we know.”
The man threw one of my crates to the ground and a group of three smashed the wood with the ends of their muskets. I held back a cry at the splintering wood, for each crack widened the gap in my heart that whispered I would never see Mama or any of my family ever again. My agony turned to confusion as what rested in the crate was not mushrooms at all, but more sealed vases. An angry kick shattered one and a dark red spilled out. After years of walking through former battlefields, I recognized the familiar scent of blood!
The captain’s remark floated to the surface of my skull and popped with a ferocity that rattled me—that is the finest chemical France has to offer! Only thing those hounds are good for.
“Paying outlaws to gather your wicked supplies?” Button Boy hissed. His face was redder than the blood spreading toward us. “Who were they? Fleeing refugees no one would miss? I doubt the specifics would keep a monster like you from sleeping at night. Rest assured; we will make this the last night you live.”
“Lock him up,” the man beside Button Boy tinkered with his thick glasses. “We have the evidence to execute him on the morrow.”
Button Boy nodded. “We will make an example of you, Frankenstein. Of what happens to those who play god.”
“You are mistaken,” I protested. My head throbbed from illness and shock as I fought to act on these dreadful revelations. “I would never stand for such heinous dealings!”
But Curwen?
The surrounding faces were contorted in a mixture of terror and rage. Not even Button Boy had a trace of trickery in those blue eyes. These men were homesteaders protecting their loved ones from villains. Villains like me, I realized with a shudder, as the spreading blood left its sickly trail of red on the stones. Even as they led me away, I knew I had to remain their only target. Maybe it was from shock or disbelief, but I could not expose Curwen to these men. His success was wrapped up with my family, and amidst all the lies and chaos, the image of Mama holding me in her white dress was all I had to cling too.
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