The Hammer Horror Omnibus (17 page)

“Paul”—it hurt me to talk, but I was laughing the words out—“I did it! I did it . . .”

“Yes.” He was not really listening. He helped me to the only chair in the room—there had never been time for relaxation in this part of the house—and lowered me gently into it.

I put my head back. I had succeeded. The glow of accomplishment warmed me through, driving out the memory of those few terrifying minutes when things had gone wrong. It was not my fault that they had gone wrong. Paul himself was largely to blame. Obviously there had been damage to the brain during that undignified scuffle in my family vault. That could soon be rectified. Also the process had been dangerously speeded up and my equipment had run wild after the lightning stroke. Next time there would be no such mistakes. Next time all my calculations would be strictly observed.

The important thing was that I had done it.

Paul was dragging the creature on to the bench and strapping it securely down. I neither helped him nor interfered. It was undoubtedly a good thing that the creature should be restrained until I could get to work on it.

Paul drew the last strap tight and then turned back to me.

“You must destroy it right away before it regains consciousness.”

I could hardly believe what I heard. Already I was wondering which of the seams in the head to open in order to get at the brain without involving too much further damage to the features.

“Did you hear, Victor?” Paul insisted.

“What did you say?”

“You must destroy this thing now.”

I was grateful for his intervention, but I was not going to be dictated to in this way. I tried to make him see reason. “Don’t you realize, Paul—I’ve succeeded.”

“You nearly succeeded in getting yourself killed. Another ten seconds and—”

“This is my creation.” I was still marvelling at it. Of course I had known that all would come right, but it was still splendid to have it proved beyond all doubt.

“Your creation,” said Paul: “a criminal lunatic. It tried to kill you.”

“That was due to the brain damage. When you attacked me,” I reminded him, “it was damaged. That makes the responsibility very largely yours, Paul. It’s your fault that it ran wild. Your fault that it’s not what I intended it to be. I can repair the brain. It’s what I’ve done that counts: I’ve created a living, sentient being.”

“You promised to destroy it, Victor.”

“Never.”

“When you came to ask me for help,” he said, “you said that once you had proved your theories you would destroy it.”

But the fool could not see that I had many more things to prove, many more things to demonstrate. This was only the beginning. I said: “When I’ve finished my research.”

“Don’t you see—you’ve created a monster.”

“I shall operate on the brain tomorrow,” I said. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

The basic principles were sound. From now on the difficulties could only be minor ones.

Paul looked from me to the prone figure strapped to the table. He touched one of the straps to make sure it was secure. Then he shook his head sadly.

“You won’t listen to me?”

“When we worked together,” I said, “I was glad to listen to you. You have contributed a great deal to this discovery, Paul. If you’ll continue with me—”

“No,” he said, “you won’t listen. And you’re too powerful in this district for me to have any chance of opposing you here.”

“Opposing me?”

“For your own sake, Victor, and for the sake of mankind I think you should be stopped.” He turned away. At the door he said: “I shall pack my things and leave the village tomorrow. I can see there’s nothing I can do here.”

I was sorry that we had to part in this way, but I could not let my resolve be weakened. There have always been opponents of new developments in all science and philosophy. Every great advance has been made in the teeth of ignorant opposition. Even the pioneers themselves, such as Paul might have been, often falter and turn back.

For me there would be no faltering.

It would be foolish to apply myself to the task in hand tonight, though. My body had taken a considerable battering and my fingers would lack the firmness and precision which were essential for the brain examination. I tested the straps holding the unconscious creature to the bench, disconnected the apparatus so that there should be no further mishaps, and went down to bed. I had to lie on my left side, as my right shoulder was heavily bruised, but I slept without difficulty.

The morning was clear and the storm clouds had moved on. I awoke refreshed, and breakfasted with Elizabeth. A dull bruise along the line of my jaw attracted her attention, and I had to improvise some silly little story about walking into a door. She did not know whether to laugh or to reprove me. Once again she referred with mild but genuine disparagement to my cherished laboratory, and threatened to come up and inspect it. “My rival,” she called it. I did not think that the sight of the creature with its torn bandages strapped to the bench would be the most edifying one to greet her.

As soon as possible I made my excuses and escaped to the top of the house. At the end of the first landing I caught a glimpse of Justine staring at me curiously. She made a move as though to intercept me—to ask me pertly, no doubt, what I was doing with my nights and why I had neglected her charms recently—but I waved her off and hurried up to the laboratory.

I hesitated briefly before opening the door. My experience of the previous night was not one which I would wish repeated.

But it was absurd. The creature could not have burst its bonds. It could not be standing there waiting for me again, ready to strike.

I opened the door.

There was no creature confronting me. There was no creature in the laboratory at all. Straps and bandages lay in a twisted pattern on the bench. The floor was sticky with fluid from a dozen shattered tubes and bottles, and there was broken glass everywhere. The window had been torn open, smashing two of the panes. When I went incredulously to look out of it, I saw a couple more torn strips of bandage caught in the heavy guttering. The way down to the ground was perilous, but the jutting masonry gave enough footholds for anyone determined enough—or mad enough—to choose such a route.

The creature had gone.

6

“H
e’s gone,” I said. “I’ve searched the house to make sure, and then gone all over the grounds. Heaven knows where he’s got to.”

Once more I was standing at Paul’s door. There was a certain grim satisfaction in his manner, as though he saw all his predictions coming true; but at the same time he was truly alarmed.

“We must call out the village—start a thorough search at once.”

“You had better leave that to me,” I said. “I have the authority here. But I want the two of us to set out at once. We know the creature we are dealing with better than the villagers do. And we’ve got to pick up his trail before he goes too far. If he gets deep into the woods we’ll never find him.”

Paul went indoors to make ready, while I walked away along the village street. I nodded to some of my tenants, and exchanged civilities with two Army officers from the garrison down the valley. I did not, however, stir up any unseemly panic. There was no reason why the villagers should know too soon about my experiments. I didn’t want their clumsy hands laid on my creation; and I didn’t want madly inflated stories about it to go humming along the valley.

I went back to Paul, and handed over to him one of the two rifles I had brought from my small armory. It had been a long time since there had been any use for them in this peaceful part of the world. I hoped now that we would manage without having to fire them.

We set off into the woods.

In other circumstances it could have been a delightful morning. Working as I did at night and spending so many mornings asleep before resuming this work, I had not strolled through the woods and glades at this hour for some years. As a boy I had known every path through the trees and every clearing. Now it was all strange to me. The fresh morning air had the taste of a sparkling water, cool and tangy from the stream.

When my experiments were concluded and had been acclaimed by the world’s leading scientists, I would make a new life for Elizabeth and myself. We would walk here often.

But now there was a grim duty ahead of us. I wanted to find my creature before some stupid peasant stumbled across him. He had to be recaptured and taken back to his birthplace. For that was what my home was for him: his birthplace.

Once the operation had been carried out on his brain, I was sure that I would find him a worthy intellectual companion. He and I might go on to further discoveries, blazing a trail for lesser mortals to follow.

Paul and I exchanged few remarks as we prowled through the trees. A brisk nod was enough to indicate a new direction; one hand held up brought us to a halt when some rustle in the undergrowth or the creak of a branch seemed to indicate another presence.

At the end of half an hour I was growing apprehensive. If we didn’t find him soon, others would find him. He would stray into their farms or down lanes which led to other villages.

Or he would lie low in the woods, hidden for as long as he chose to remain still, a constant menace—and perhaps past salvation by the time I found him.

Then we heard a voice. It was some distance away, and came eerily through the trees like the muffled cry of an animal in a trap.

Paul glanced at me. We swung off the path and trampled over leaves and snapping twigs without further concern for the noise we were making. Once again there was a cry, causing us to veer slightly to the left. We broke out, after scratching our faces on a thin but stinging barrier of trailing branches, into a clearing. Through the trees on the far side was a faint glimmer of water, and when we came to a stop we could hear the gentle chatter of a stream.

An old man lay beside a fallen tree trunk in the centre of the glade. For a moment my breath caught in my throat. Then I saw that he was not dead. He stirred and groaned, and reached out blindly with a gnarled hand. He touched the trunk and groped over it. His hand fell back.

Paul hurried forward to help him up.

At the first touch of Paul’s hands, the old man flinched and began to moan.

“No . . . who are you . . . what are you . . . ?”

Beside him lay two pieces of a stick as gnarled as himself. Clearly it had been his support, but now it was snapped clean in two.

I advanced into the clearing and stood before him. A man of his generation should recognize the Frankenstein face when he saw it. I had hoped to calm him, but he babbled on unintelligibly.

“What is it . . . what are you . . . ?”

Then I understood his groping and the blindness of his movements. He was indeed blind.

Paul said: “It’s all right. Have no fear. We are friends. What happened to you?”

“My grandson—where is he?”

Trembling fingers clawed at Paul’s sleeve.

“Your grandson?” Paul spoke as soothingly as possible, but he glanced at me urgently.

“The stream . . . he left me sitting here, in the sun . . . so warm . . . he went to the stream. Has he wandered away? Or is it after him, too?”

“Is what after him?”

“The stream . . . my grandson,” the old man raved.

Paul got to his feet. “Stay with him,” he ordered. It was not his place to give orders, but before I could protest he had moved away and was hurrying towards the stream.

I wanted to follow, but the old man wavered on the tree trunk and once I had tried to hold him steady he gripped me and would not let go. His story came out in fits and starts. His grandson had brought him into the woods as he often did on sunny mornings. It was good to sit here and reflect. The boy was a good boy, very patient with his old grandfather. He would go off and pick mushrooms—sometimes went farther away than he ought to, but he always came back.

Today the grandfather had thought he heard him coming back much more quickly than usual. There had been footsteps—slow footsteps—and then when he had spoken to the boy there had been no reply. Only the footsteps. And all at once he had known that this was not his grandson. He could not tell who it was, and it wasn’t right, it wasn’t normal.

“When you’re blind as I am, you get to know things—to sense things. This thing, it . . . it wasn’t
right.”

He had groped for his stick and then waved it. He had struck something, and then his stick had been snatched from him and he had heard a crack. In his blind gyrations he must have fallen over the tree trunk and gone down heavily.

“And it went away. I felt it going. Something lost,” he said hesitantly. “A pathetic thing . . . a lost soul.” Then his puzzled sympathy was swept away. “Where’s my grandson—my little boy?”

The crack of Paul’s rifle resounded through the woods. The old man started against me. I freed myself from that biting grip, and pulled his hands firmly down to the tree trunk so that he would know where he was. Then I raced into the woods in pursuit of Paul.

He had gone some distance along the stream. I caught a flicker of movement between the trees, and charged straight through the undergrowth.

Paul was standing irresolutely with his rifle at the ready. As I came up he said:

“I saw him. Making down that way.”

“Did you have to shoot?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “I had to shoot. I’m taking no chances.”

“If we can take him back without harming him—”

“The villagers should be on their way by now, surely?” he said. “Where did you tell them to make for?”

“The south lake shore. I said that if we converged on that we ought to be able to flush him out.”

Paul jerked his rifle towards a gap that had been smashed through some bushes. “The trail ought to be easy enough to follow. But where’s that boy the old man was talking about?”

We went on. The creature had certainly made no attempt to hide its tracks. It seemed to possess no cunning, no intelligence. Or else it simply did not care. In either case it was tragic: had Professor Bernstein’s sensitive brain been irreparably damaged?