Dawn_A Re-Imagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Read online

  I wrestled and tugged at the ropes that confined me, all the while my senses heightened like never before. The knots that held my feet proved too strong, I couldn’t make them budge. I gnawed my teeth against the soft silken gag around my mouth, listening to all the sounds in the villa. The house spoke to me, as if we’d been secret friends for years and she’d been waiting for this moment to tell me everything.

  The stairs creaked. Byron was fleeing. And he was going to take our only means of escape with him.

  A cry sounded from downstairs. Claire was waking and her labor pains were ratcheting up a notch.

  Outside my window, the sangsue fretted with something, a fox or a deer, some beast they’d cornered during the night.

  My heartbeat sped up, sending pulses of panic through me.

  The sangsue had not yet retreated to the forests. They were still nearby—

  “No, Byron! Don’t go!” I cried, though my words were unintelligible to anyone but me. My teeth continued to gnash against the silk, fraying it, just like the monsters below my window were working their way through flesh and bone.

  Downstairs, the horse whinnied, its hooves struck wood, followed by a clatter of breaking glass and tumbling furniture. Byron was on his way through the house, heading toward the front door, making enough noise to raise the dead.

  Far below me, the library door creaked open and footsteps thumped on the hallway floor. “Byron! What are you doing?” John called out, his voice heavy with sleep. But he was too far away to do anything.

  The front door flung open with a crash, hooves beat across the portico, then down the steps—

  I fought against the gag in my mouth, bits of fabric shredding, catching on my teeth and tongue, but it still wasn’t enough to make it fall away. I screamed, still unable to move, my words muffled.

  “Byron, they’ll kill you, don’t leave us, come back—”

  I continued to yell as loud as I could, until my throat was raw and, yet even after that, I continued to bellow. He had to stop and turn around, he had to; they couldn’t hurt him, not Byron, so full of life and beauty and headstrong passion.

  The entire world grew quiet for one long moment, me pulling a long breath into my lungs so I could shout again, the sun drawing away from us as if we bored her, the clouds shifting and casting myriad shadows down upon us.

  A scream more horrid than anything I’d ever heard pierced the heavens. It rocked from the gardens beside the villa, a sound of both beast and man, of flesh and soul being ripped apart, of life being destroyed, of hearts being torn and dreams being destroyed.

  It went on and on and I thought it would never be over.

  I couldn’t bear it.

  I curled, knees to my forehead, wishing I could place my hands over my ears. But I couldn’t, for they were bound. I was forced to listen as a pack of monsters ripped Byron and the horse apart. There was no act of mercy, no savage bite to the throat to end their lives quickly.

  It was like penance—this was sort of ending he thought he deserved, death with no hope of forgiveness.

  Finally, one gunshot rang out, followed by another. It was as if someone had shot the clouds themselves, for they retreated with reluctance. Sangsue laughter rang out from the front of the estate.

  “Begone, foul beasts!” It was Hannah. Perhaps she had a ritual for chasing these creatures away, just like she had one for drawing them closer. Several sangsue yelped, like dogs scalded by hot water, and the thickets beside the villa rustled with their swift retreat and animal-like howls.

  “Byron! No, dear Lord, no!” This was John’s voice, defeated and heartbroken and it brought tears to my eyes. It was the sound of a man looking upon a dear friend, knowing he was gone.

  I wept, my sobs quiet, for I was no longer sure whether I wanted to be set free or whether I wanted to know what had happened.

  The door to my bedroom swung open, finally, a long time later. I’d lost track of time and had retreated inside of myself. My head still tucked in, my eyes pressed shut, my limbs shook as if I’d been left out in the rain and snow.

  “Mary.”

  I sensed someone watching me from the hallway, but I didn’t answer.

  “Mary.”

  At long last, I opened my eyes to see John standing before me, his head bowed in defeat and his shoulders slumped. Exhaustion darkened his eyes, his hair was mussed, his clothes rumpled and his feet bare. Blood and gore stained his shirt and britches, the stench of death was heavy upon him, and I turned my face away as he struggled to untie the ropes that bound me.

  “I thought—” His voice faltered. “—I thought you were with him. I couldn’t tell, not at first, there was too much—”

  He didn’t need to describe the scene. I could see it in my mind clearly. The pools of blood, the limbs of man and beast tangled together, the ripped flesh and broken bones.

  I tugged my way out of the loosened ropes, rubbed my wrists and ankles—raw and bleeding from my struggles—then I sat up.

  “Hannah and I—we cleaned up—we tried to clean up—” He was stumbling over his words, obviously in a state of shock. “He is—we have brought him into the—the—” He sank to his knees, then sat on the floor, his back against my bed.

  “And Claire? Is she safe?” I asked.

  “Yes. Hannah’s with her. The babe’s coming.”

  “Does my sister know what happened?”

  He shook his head. “We lied to her. Told her an animal had been attacked, I think. I can’t remember.”

  I rested a hand on his shoulder, then ran a quick glance around my room, finding and locating all the things I needed. John was spent, emotionally and physically and mentally. I knew he was too distraught to help me and that was just as well. I didn’t want to argue with him about right and wrong or the moral dilemma that nestled in the heart of my recent decision.

  It was as if my book was writing my life, as if another hand had been putting pen to paper all along.

  “Rest, John. Please. I cannot let—” I paused, making it look as if I was as broken as he was, though it wasn’t true. “I need you to be strong. But you must rest. We will need to leave when the babe has delivered.”

  I didn’t know if that would give me enough time, but I had to try.

  John nodded, not thinking through my words, not realizing we might not be able to leave without the horse.

  “I’ll go downstairs and help Hannah,” I told him. “But please, go to your room. Change your clothes. Wash yourself and then sleep, if you can. I’ll come to you when we’re ready to depart.”

  “I’m sorry, Mary.” The look in his eyes almost made me confess my plans. It would have been better to have him at my side, but his hands were trembling. The sangsue King had shot an arrow of defeat through John’s heart.

  I brushed my fingers through his hair, forcing a smile.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I told him, knowing this was true. If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I should have told Byron I would go with him. Somehow, between my bedroom and the front door, I could have convinced him to stay or found a way to overpower him.

  I just hadn’t realized Byron’s resolve.

  Now there was a devil to pay.

  Three

  Hannah’s iron-and-bone crucifix at my waist, rifle strung over my shoulder and an ax tucked into my boot, I was ready for whatever might happen next. I knew a battle waited for me up ahead. Elsie, the girl I’d rescued, was in the parlor with Hannah and Claire, and she still wore my cross necklace. I mourned it for a moment, toying with my collar, wishing the relic hung about my neck where it belonged. But I wouldn’t ask for it back. Not when it could protect someone else.

  I paused for a long, heart-wrenching moment in the door to the dining room, setting my weapons on the floor. John and Hannah had spread a sheet over the table and placed Byron’s ripped and torn body on top. He was barely recognizable, his chest sunken in from deep claw marks, his skin pale from a lack of blood, his arms and legs laid out lik
e pieces of a broken doll.

  If this had been a normal death, back in England, I’d have fallen to my knees in sorrow. I’d have wailed and moaned, along with a handful of other women who desperately loved Lord Byron.

  But this was not England. This was no normal death.

  And I was no longer a woman who could give herself over to mourning.

  I’d already gathered an arsenal of different weapons and they rested on the sideboard, spread out and wiped clean, some of them glinting in the morning light. Knives, hammers, scalpels, long needles and thick thread, linen sheets ripped into thin strips and a bucket of water. I took several long strips of linen and wrapped them around Byron’s mouth, binding it shut, just in case his dead body was infected with the sangsue blood sickness. A heavy canvas apron covered my clothes as I stood over the body, wondering where to begin. There came a moment of panic, when I worried if I was crossing an unholy line, pretending to be God. I could almost feel the characters in my story gathering around me, whispering as I began to work, Victor Frankenstein’s voice the loudest. At times I imagined his hand guiding mine as I stitched together my own patchwork man.

  I wasn’t a skilled surgeon, not like John, but I did my best, taking small careful stitches, sweat beading my brow and my back aching as I leaned over Byron’s still form. I kept hoping to see his muscles twitch, like the wolves had. But there was no movement, no indication that my friend’s spirit lingered in this battered and torn body.

  Shadows moved through the room as the sun changed its position; in the parlor, Claire’s cries grew louder and then ceased, followed by the high thin pitch of a baby’s squall. I stood and stretched, grinning at the sound, despite the heaviness that had taken possession of my soul.

  Every bit of flesh had been stitched. My work was clumsy and awkward—and a portion of Byron’s left leg had been missing, probably devoured by the blood-sucking beasts who’d attacked him.

  Still, Byron didn’t move. He didn’t look at me, he didn’t recite one of his poems, he didn’t smile devil-may-care in my direction, or try to tempt me into running away from this villa.

  “I should have gone with you,” I said. “I should have stopped you!” Anger and frustration caused me to lash out and I pummeled my fists against his chest. His eyes flared open—some reflex I didn’t understand—and I startled backward, waiting. Hoping. But nothing more happened. I struck his lifeless corpse again and again, slapping his face, beating his chest until I became ashamed of my behavior.

  Then I sank against the wall, a coarse laugh shuddering through me. I’d worried that I was trying to be God, but my attempts to rouse my friend from death had accomplished nothing. I hadn’t stumbled upon the secrets of life and death—the Gates of Hell remained locked. They refused to open and release my friend.

  At last, I crossed the long narrow room until I once more stood over the body of my dead friend. I leaned forward and kissed his brow, a smudge of his blood coloring my lips.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I still imagined that the characters from my story were with me, Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth Lanza and Henry Clerval, all of them urging me on. There was a hint of madness in me then, although I didn’t know it. All my reason had fled until only one thing remained now.

  I needed vengeance.

  So, I took the dueling pistol and the single bone and iron bullet that had been in Byron’s satchel. Then I turned away, putting his lifeless form behind me, heading for the front door and the brightening sky, knowing that I was going into a kingdom of shadow.

  I moved across the estate lawn quickly, worried that either Hannah or John might glance out a window and spy me. The remains of the horse still lay down by the road, the beast pulled to pieces, just like the animals in the stable had been slain. My rifle drawn, I aimed at the horse’s head and fired a single shot.

  The animal had to be killed, it must be set free—I couldn’t leave it, trapped in some half-life like the wolves had been.

  After reloading my rifle, I studied the bloody sangsue tracks in the snow, then lifted my head to the wind, checking to see which direction it was blowing. From the north it came, chill and brisk, down from the Alps. Careful that my scent didn’t precede me, I tramped through a shallow covering of snow, heading toward the forests that surrounded the Villa Diodati. I knew that deeper drifts awaited me up ahead.

  Along with a coven of brutish monsters. All of them sleeping and curled together in small packs.

  Four

  Snow crunched beneath my boots, my cape furled behind me. I’d brushed the garment back over my shoulders when I first entered the wood and now my arms were free. I was ready to hunt. Hair coiled in a long braid down my back, a fine sheen of sweat beaded on my brow. I held my breath, only allowing myself an occasional intake of air, monitoring the speed of my heart and the pace of my steps.

  I must be silent as the snow itself if I hoped to succeed.

  An uncommon madness descended upon me, one that separated me from the rest of the world. I found myself united with the demons I pursued.

  Squinting against the bright sun that dappled the forest, I noted how the pattern of light shifted with each gust of wind. In the hazy distance, the darkness was complete—so black, it almost blinded me. I stumbled as I headed toward it and barely caught myself, one knee crashing to the ground, clutching my iron-and-bone crucifix in one hand, my ax in the other. I thought it was my imagination at first, but the nearer I got to that impenetrable curtain of darkness, the more often I thought I heard something moving on my left, just beyond a low range of boulders. But whenever I looked, I saw nothing.

  There was only me. And a vast expanse of trees.

  If I’d been thinking clearly, I might have doubted my decision to go hunting alone. Yet, every time I considered returning to the villa, Byron’s lifeless body would appear before me, as if his spirit was driving me to continue. And, sure enough, a moment or two later, I’d find another sign, a faint track in the muddy snow. Sometimes the sangsue footprints looked human, bearing the recognizable imprint of a shoe or a boot; other times their prints looked more like that of a beast, with sharp claws instead of toes. The worst times, however, were when I discovered drops of blood in the depressions left behind.

  It was Byron’s blood.

  The sight of it made my own blood run hot.

  I saw the sangsue then, when I plunged into that unnatural darkness, where only faint glimmers of light sparked down through a ceiling of thickly woven pine branches. A huddle of the inhuman beasts crouched together, sleeping in a pack of four or five, covered by dusty cloaks and almost invisible in the mottled gray shadow. It was just as Byron had described—they looked like a pile of large rocks, nothing more.

  One of the creatures stirred as I passed, an arm or leg being repositioned. The beast crouched only a few feet from me and its nearness caught me off guard. My ax slipped between my fingers.

  Fear iced my throat.

  How could I kill five of them at once?

  I no longer knew if my plan would work; in fact, I was certain it wouldn’t. Nonetheless, I tucked the ax in a holster at my belt, and then lifted the iron-and-bone crucifix high over my head, remembering how the sangsue had turned to ash the other night, one after another, as they tried to remove this cross from the barn.

  I might not kill them all. I might merely rouse them, they could wake and feed on me. But if I killed even one, then I would die glad.

  The wind rose around me, protesting my decision, pelting me with fallen twigs and leaves. I blinked, calculating my aim. A howling grew—the wind taking voice as one alive—and it encircled me, tangling my braid about my neck. The crucifix required both of my hands to throw and, as a result, my aim was not as good as I had hoped. I had wanted to hit the center of the sangsue horde.

  I missed.

  Still, I was close. Half a foot to the right. The religious relic fell into their midst, burning as it sank, stirring up a column of smoke and ash. They all awoke with a dem
onic cry, flesh dissolving even as their eyes opened. Arms reached toward me, then melted to vapor.

  I clutched my ax and grinned as I watched them in torment, thinking of how those very arms had brought Byron to his demise.

  Unfortunately, one of the sleeping beasts had escaped the bone-encrusted crucifix. She rose from the shadows in defiant anger, taller and broader than I was, her eyes glowing, her face curved in a snarl, red hair swirling around her like fire. It was the very same sangsue who had called to me when I was at the window the other night. I remembered her scratching a mysterious sign on the glass, her claw covered in blood. She cursed at me as she leapt in my direction now, speaking in a language I didn’t recognize. Her arms pinwheeled recklessly toward me and I realized she was possessed by a vile anger and it was making her irrational.

  Because of it, she wasn’t quick enough to avoid my ax. The weapon caught in the side of her neck, striking deep—but, unfortunately, not deep enough. She laughed, yanked the blade free and swung the weapon back at me.

  I jumped away, feet sliding over pine needles, barely missing her strike, trying to get out of her reach. My right hand fumbled in my pocket for Byron’s dueling pistol. Once I located it, I almost dropped it on the muddy ground.

  She swung again, the blade catching on my cape and throwing me off balance, my right knee striking a nearby pine tree.

  I didn’t have time to aim the pistol; this was nothing like hunting a deer or fox. It was more like trying to take down a lion barehanded. The female sangsue screamed and rushed toward me, kicking up leaves in her wake. Both of my hands clutched the pistol and I pointed it at her, all the while she drew nearer, her long teeth bared.

  One small flare of powder, a dull thud and I never even saw where the bone-and-iron bullet struck. I had no idea if this bullet was made from the bone of someone who had been killed by a sangsue or if it even penetrated her flesh.

  But she faltered. Her eyes widened as she continued to run toward me, claws raking air. My ax slipped from her fingers and flew away, the blade spinning over my head, then bouncing across the forest floor. A trickle of brackish blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. She blinked, her eyes darkened, their glow fading.