“Ernest, you are late! Wonderful news, the conditions needed for us to press forward have miraculously aligned! We shall revive your brother tonight, just before the sun rises on the horizon!”
“Mr. Curwen, we need to talk.”
Curwen barely glanced up from the candle he was lighting. He did not seem surprised by my tone as he rushed around the strange symbols newly chiseled into the scorched floor. Many of the large bowls and vases I had purchased on his behalf lined the walls. The crates of blood were nowhere to be found.
“Idle chitchat can wait, Ernest. Tonight, we become gods!”
The power churning beneath his tone nearly swept me into submission, but I stood my ground. I had failed Victor, but I would save his friend.
“Mr. Curwen,” I started, pausing to steady my trembling broom-turned-cane. “I saw the contents of your cargo tonight, and so I must dissuade you from reviving my brother.”
“Your disgust is justified, I will not try and moralize my work,” Curwen said with smooth rehearsal. “But this is how discoveries are made. Dirtied hands now shall benefit mankind for generations! Your brother knew good could come from even the vilest of research.” Curwen shut the book he had been flipping through. The already torn cover peeled down to reveal a title beneath Qanoon-e-Izla. It was Necronomicon, the forbidden text even Victor had shunned!
“Victor used the dead to bring about life,” I said, eyeing the hall where I knew Walton hid, in case intervention was necessary. “He would never hire people to murder fellow humans. That goes against everything he stood for.”
“Which is?”
“Preserving life!” I screamed. “You said we would help people, yet you have them killed with no remorse. If my brother is brought back, it will not be at the expense of others!”
“So you found it in your heart to forgive him?” Curwen taunted, placing his hands on his hips. “Stumbling over family ties was Victor’s mistake too. He could have been so much greater, had he only cast aside you deadweights and focused on the potential of what our research could accomplish!”
“You burned his letters,” my voice was barely a whisper. “And ours to him as well?”
“It benefited Victor to not obsess over your little lives,” Curwen spat dryly. “Reading of birthday parties and sappy laments wishing he was with you instead of studying the alchemists or perfecting his theories of galvanism!”
“Our mother had just died,” my voice trembled. “He was seventeen, Curwen. Victor needed family more than ever, and you took that from him. You made yourself all he had to cling to for companionship and bent his well-meaning aspirations into a twisted replica of your own!”
“Hardly,” Curwen snorted, running his finger around the rim of a nearby vase. “Despite your years of fabricated silence, he never forgot. Victor’s mind could have unraveled the eldritch secrets of the cosmos, yet he settled on perfecting pathetic humans and see how that ended for him?” Curwen’s voice faltered, and he shook his head. “Not me. I left the dull minds of Salem behind to ascend beyond the feeble species of man! I shall surpass both the gods of earth and the cosmos, and it will be done by raising up geniuses and yanking the secrets straight from their mouths, because dear Ernest, knowledge is power.”
I thought I knew insanity, but even Victors most manic fits paled in comparison to the man standing before me now. Something had changed in Curwen’s face. That reserved mask of cordial gentlemanliness had peeled away to reveal something very different beneath the surface. Something beyond reasoning with. Beyond the confines of reason itself.
“You are mad,” I breathed. Walton, where are you?
“Victor said as much too, but he cannot lead an angry mob to run me out now!” Curwen’s laugh bounced off the scorched walls. “When I bring him back, Victor shall answer to me alone and his bleeding heart will obstruct his true capabilities no longer!”
“You will not make him a monster,” I shrieked and smashed my broom against a table of glass elixirs and spiraling instruments. Curwen made some strange noise as I flipped the table. Maybe I was weak compared to Victor, but I was still a Frankenstein. A human with enough fury to take a couple of syringes down with him. Curwen’s footsteps splashed through the puddles and I swung my broom his way. He smacked it to the floor and punched me with a force that slammed me against the wall. I grabbed a bottle from a nearby shelf and smashed it against his head. Curwen leaped back clutching the side of his face. I could see blood welling just above his right eye. His white teeth smiled in a perfect, horrible grin.
“Such determination! It is moments like this that you remind me of him the most! I truly respected Victor, and by extension tried tolerating you, but your refusal to cooperate leaves me to take drastic measures.”
I pushed myself off the wall, but my adrenaline was fading fast. The pulsing in my brain threatened to overwhelm me as I continued to glare Curwen’s way. A dark shape lurched upwards by the door. Walton? Had he come at last?
My happy cry ended in an abrupt gurgle as the growing figure extended up to the dome-ceiling far above me. Its tentacles thumped carelessly against the rough stone despite the rows upon rows of bulging yellow eyes jerking in every direction imaginable. Neither my nightmares nor the chiseled image beneath Ingolstadt could compare to what floated above me now. It was wrong in every angle and proportion and hinted at cosmic realities that could drive a man mad. My limbs went numb in the presence of this creature who watched me from its place in the air. Curwen’s voice whispered nearby, though I barely heard it.
“Did you really think I could retrieve souls unaided? Bow to Yog-Sothoth, my dearest helping hand!” His voice grew soft. “Speaking of helping hands, your dearest brother’s corpse was missing one of his. The fool! Thinking he could escape me by not being a perfect specimen. He did not anticipate that I would run into his own blood, or more likely, that an invalid like you would even try to get anywhere near the work of great men like us!”
Somewhere there was a thud, a clack of steel slicing bone and the sensation of dripping wetness, yet it felt far away. What did petty injuries on a small earth to a smaller boy mean in the face of those watering yellow eyes? Eyes! Eyes without a face!
“Given your failure to bring me more blood, your own must do.”
Those were the last words I understood. After that, Curwen spoke in syllables foreign to the human tongue as I slipped to the realm beneath consciousness.
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