The Hammer Horror Omnibus (11 page)

Then a statue moved.

Paul caught the movement from the corner of his eye. Reeling to one side as Namaroff parried a blow, he knew that something or someone had advanced to the edge of the balcony.

He tried to look up, tried to call out, but Carla’s name died on his lips as Namaroff came at him again.

The crash and clang of their weapons was caught up in the swirl of wind and thunder. More important than anything in the world became the need to kill Namaroff. It was Namaroff who had dominated Carla for so long, Namaroff who had imprisoned her, terrified her, driven her out by his sinister influence, and then pursued her and hounded her through the forests. Until Namaroff was dead there would be no peace.

Paul took a mighty swing. Namaroff’s sword was torn from his hand and thrown shrieking, grating across the floor. Namaroff went down, grovelling, trying to push himself up again.

Paul turned the candelabrum in his hands and jabbed downwards. In a moment Namaroff would be impaled.

The Doctor wriggled desperately to one side. He groped for anything that came to hand, writhed like a serpent across the floor, and reached the sword. By the time he was on his feet Paul was lunging again, panting to draw blood, to see Namaroff in his final agony. They fought across the hall to the foot of the stairs. Namaroff jumped back up two stairs, giving himself the advantage of additional height. But the length of the candelabrum was still the main factor. Paul began to jab him up the stairs. At the top there would be room to swing the candelabrum again. He would finish it; must finish it.

Then Paul slipped. He was down on one knee when Namaroff laughed hysterically and struck back. The sword and the candelabrum locked together. Other shapes seemed to be joining in the struggle, mocking the thrusts and twists of the two men. Forced to one side, Paul found himself staring at his own face: a huge cracked, flyblown mirror was fastened to the wall beside the staircase.

The candelabrum was wrenched from his grasp. He felt the agonizing thud of Namaroff’s foot against the side of his head, and then he was turned over and over, kicked down the stairs. He spread his arms, tried to hold on, slithered and bumped down a dozen steps, and came to rest. He could not regain his breath, could not lift his head. He waited for Namaroff to leap down and deliver the finishing stroke.

Then he heard the moan that rose to an inhuman, shuddering cry. He grabbed for the rail and tried to haul himself up, seeing everything at a crazy, tilted angle.

Namaroff had the sword raised as though to defend himself. Or to shield his eyes . . .

There was a statue where no statue should be. There was a shape that loomed over Namaroff with its arms raised. It was still, yet not still. In the shadows the head was indeterminate, changing shape, alive with a dark life that was best concealed in those shadows.

Exhausted, Paul let his head slump down against the cold marble of the step.

He heard Namaroff scream. There was the clatter as he dropped the sword, and then he was stumbling down the stairs. His foot jarred against Paul’s arm. He went helplessly on his way, sobbing what could have been a prayer or a curse. Paul rolled over and looked down. He saw Namaroff stagger against a pillar at the foot of the stairs and then grab for support at a dusty, ragged curtain. It tore, and he sank to his knees and then on to his face.

Paul forced himself up. He groped for the rail and eased his way down the stairs. On the bend of the flight he looked straight into the mirror. And swimming out of it, just as it had once swum up through the weed and shadows of the pool, came the face he dreaded.

“No,” said Paul to himself. “No.” He swung away from the grinning monstrosity in the glass, and then kept his head down. He reached the bottom of the staircase and refused to look up. The temptation was almost overpowering. He had to see—had to confirm that it was true—had to defy this impossibility from a mythical past. But he made himself look at the floor as he edged away across the hall.

“Paul . . . where are you?”

It was Professor Meister’s voice. And Meister, incredibly, was up on the balcony. He must have found another way into the castle and was approaching the apparition from behind.

Instinctively Paul looked up.

And it was not just because of Meister. Not because of any wish to save the Professor, and not because he believed that if he stared straight at the creature it would all prove to be an hallucination. He had to look. There was nothing else for it.

He stared straight into the face of the Gorgon.

It was a classic, beautiful face. The features were those of an alluring woman—but they were only a mask for the evil that festered beneath. Paul Heitz saw what his brother and his father had seen; and the words choked in his mouth, thoughts choked in his mind . . . and through his body ran a tremor that touched every nerve with ice.

The snakes rose in a seething throng, lashing out as though desperate for something into which to sink their fangs. The Gorgon’s head was an abomination of poisonous frenzy. Her mouth stretched in a grimace of fury. If any sound emerged it was part of the savage hissing of the serpents.

Paul covered his eyes with his hands. He knew it was too late: he had chosen to look on that face of dread, and now there was no hope.

There was a faint metallic scrape against the floor of the balcony. Paul’s arm fell. Already it was growing heavy. Sluggishly he lifted his head. There was nothing to lose now. The vice was closing on his heart and lungs.

He looked . . . and saw the Gorgon beginning to turn as Meister rushed along the balcony towards her. She was too late. He had picked up Namaroff’s sword, and swung it with all his strength.

The snakes reared in a fury. The Gorgon’s mouth opened wider and wider. And suddenly the head was sliced from the body. Streaming blood, it bounced down the stairs and rolled across the floor, coming to rest near Namaroff’s corpse.

Paul slipped on the foul slime that was left as a trail. He crawled towards the head. As he did so, the snakes appeared to shrink. They withdrew into the head, retracting into the brain of which the Gorgon had taken possession.

The face itself began to change. Moonlight drifted across it like a silver veil, and it seemed that the skin dissolved. The features sagged, then reshaped themselves.

It was the head of Carla.

Paul let out a last despairing cry. He tried to drag himself over those last few inches, but his strength was failing.

“Carla . . .”

Behind him, Meister came down the stairs and stood over him.

“She’s free now, Paul. She’s free.”

Light and shadow, color and life, hope and despair . . . all faded and ceased to have meaning. The last thing on which Paul Heitz looked before he died was the severed head of Carla Hoffmann.

“Free,” he murmured.

Free. And dead.

The Curse of Frankenstein

1

T
oday the priest came to my cell to offer what he considered comfort and to see if I was in a repentant mood. The impertinence of it! Of what should I repent? I was glad to see him, but not because of any hopes he might hold out to me of the next life. It is this life in which I am interested. I am in no hurry to leave it. I wanted understanding and practical help from him, not pious platitudes. To him I would tell the whole story and ask him to pass it on. People trusted him: they listened to what he told them.

He was a drab, unimaginative little man. It was appalling that the survival of a mind such as my own should be at the mercy of a creature like this. Yet I had to try. Tomorrow they propose to execute me. It is monstrous, unthinkable. I am Baron Frankenstein, and there is still so much work which I must do.

“I’m sorry if you think my word will carry any authority,” he bleated at me. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

I insisted that he should listen, and listen most carefully. Unless I could convince him that what I was about to tell him was the absolute truth, in the morning I would die. Yet how could anyone so fixed in his ways understand a word of the complexities for which I and I alone was responsible? He was as limited as the old fool who had been my teacher in Geneva.

Geneva in those early years of the nineteenth century was a lively city, a forum for brilliant debate and philosophical argument. Even as a boy I was a keen student of natural philosophy, and I think I may say without undue pride that I had a bent for research and logical analysis of problems. It was unfortunate that my mother, who knew little of such things, should have sent me for tuition to a bumbling old idiot who knew even less. He had been teaching the same dreary rubbish for thirty years. I doubted whether he had read a new book or considered a new idea for at least twenty of those.

The studies which counted were those I carried out on my own. While my friends—and I had few of them, for I found most of my contemporaries dull—were out carousing, I worked late into the night. With the few resources at my disposal I carried out small experiments which one day would have to be done on a larger scale. I read voraciously. I imbibed scientific theories in the way that my acquaintances imbibed wine. They thought that I was the dull one, and laughed at me for not knowing how to live. But what they meant by life and what I meant were two very different things. If they imagined I was not interested in life, they were absurdly mistaken. Life was just what interested me most—life, and how to create it.

It was something I didn’t speak of to others. There were too many sceptics, and too many bigots anxious to suppress every manifestation of true progress.

When my mother died I inherited the Frankenstein fortune. This would enable me to begin the work and life I had always planned. I went back to the great house on the slopes above the pretty, trivial little village which had for centuries provided servants for the Frankenstein family and laborers to work in its fields; and here I endured the irritating formalities of the funeral, the condolences, and the family ritual before I could be left alone to concentrate on things which mattered.

My uncle from Basle commiserated with me and offered his assistance should I ever need it in my financial affairs. He thought I was rather young to be handling everything myself. If I wished to return to Geneva to continue my studies, he would make himself personally responsible for the estate. I was sure that he would—but I was not too happy about the possible future of the estate in such hands.

My Aunt Sophie had a delicate matter which she wished to broach. It was indeed so delicate that she could not bring herself to speak of it outright, and after some movements on her part as stately as a minuet but less conclusive, I was forced to say bluntly:

“You are concerned about the allowance my mother made you?”

“Oh. Victor, I would not wish to—”

“You need have no fears, Aunt Sophie. I shall continue to pay it.”

“You’re a good boy, Victor. Your mother would have been proud of you. The dignity with which you have handled everything . . .”

“Yes,” I said. I wanted her off the premises so that I could relax and savor my new freedom and the taste of my riches.

But Aunt Sophie had every intention of declaring her overwhelming gratitude and at the same time of insinuating another possibility into my mind. Her daughter Elizabeth had been waiting demurely in the background. Now she was brought forward.

“Elizabeth, thank your cousin.”

“There’s really no need,” I said.

She was adamant. “Come along, Elizabeth, say thank you properly.”

The poor girl curtsied, blushing most becomingly as she did so.

“She’s a good girl, Victor,” said Aunt Sophie in what she supposed to be a confidential aside. “She’ll grow into a fine woman one day.”

“I’m sure she will.” This at least I could say with conviction, for Elizabeth already had the makings of that fair, smooth-skinned, graceful woman she was soon to become.

“She’ll make someone a fine wife.”

I held out my hand. “Goodbye.”

Aunt Sophie herself almost contrived a curtsey. It was amazing that so gauche and insensitive a creature should have produced such an attractive daughter.

I was glad when at last they had all gone. The house was mine. The future was mine. All the resources of the Frankenstein estate were mine. At the back of the house were servants who would look after my every need without ever obtruding themselves. In the real sense of the word I was alone; and delighted to be so.

These pleasant musings were interrupted by the deep thud of the knocker on the main door. I was still not accustomed to having a full staff to attend to such matters, and instinctively I rose from my chair and went to the door. A serving girl, little more than a child, was already coming up the steps from the basement. She stopped when she saw me. She had bold dark eyes and a strangely impertinent, inscrutable little smile that was older than her years. I hesitated, not wanting to seem foolish by turning back and leaving her to answer the door. Then I waved her away and went to open it.

A young man stood on the step gazing out over the magnificent panorama of the valley. He turned to face me and made a polite bow in which there was no undue subservience.

“Good morning. My name is Paul Krempe. I have an appointment with Baron Frankenstein.”

I had been ready to dismiss the newcomer without delay, but now I stood back to let him in. He had come more swiftly than I had expected in answer to my summons. This was a good sign. I liked his shrewd, inquiring expression—I needed a man with a mind as relentlessly inquiring as my own—and I approved the speed with which he had got here.

“You must be Victor,” he said as he entered the hall and looked frankly around. “I’m to be your tutor.”

I led him towards the salon in which my mother had once received visitors in that eternal round of courtesies and conventions which I proposed to abolish. “Surely it isn’t settled yet?” I said. “I thought this was just an interview to decide whether you were suitable for the position.”