Monster Page 16

  There is a sound at the door. It opens with a slam. Tiger stands there, holding Thorne’s marvelous rifle, the one with the expanding bullets that destroyed three-quarters of the vampire’s neck.

  “It’s him!” shouts Edgar to her. “Godwin is the monster! Kill him!”

  Tiger Tilley loves Edgar Brim and trusts him. She doesn’t hesitate. She aims and fires at Godwin, right where the skull meets the neck. That’s what Lear had said to do with creatures. Take off the head.

  There’s a shuddering recoil as the gun fires, driving the butt back into Tiger’s shoulder as the bullet explodes from the barrel and rockets toward Godwin. Edgar feels a thrill go through him, a masculine thrill at the violent action of this weapon, this object moving through space. The shot is perfect! Tiger is extraordinary!

  But it doesn’t hit its mark.

  Godwin darts his head away with superhuman speed and the bullet hits the brick wall behind him and makes a foot-wide hole in it.

  Tiger and Edgar and Lucy gasp.

  “Good evening, Miss Tilley.”

  “It won’t be for you,” she says.

  “And yet, you have missed, Miss,” says Godwin. “You cannot kill me with that thing. You cannot kill me at all.”

  “We’ll see,” says Tiger, advancing toward him, the gun trained on his head again. But suddenly the barrel is in Godwin’s hand. Tiger has the reflexes of a cat but her opponent made her look like she was standing still. Lear was right when he said that this one was worse.

  “Ah, I now have your weapon,” he says, “and I have you too.” He reaches out and grips her by the neck, his big hand wrapped almost around it, pinching a nerve and causing her to go limp. Then he lifts her with just one arm and sets her with a crash onto the remaining empty steel table.

  “No!” cries Edgar.

  “Yes,” says Godwin. “And please do not shout. There is no need for that. We must be civil and intelligent about all of this.” He straps Tiger to the table and turns the bright lights on above her. He clasps his hands together and hyperextends them backward from the wrists, making all ten fingers crack at once. “Ah! This is a wonderful specimen! Graft did not return, which means she must have eliminated him. That is delightful. She is a strong young female indeed, strong of mind and body. There is room in the future for women like her. All of that attractiveness and femininity is just a waste. Her limbs, her brain, are exceedingly difficult to resist!” He turns to Edgar. “Now!” he says. “I shall make something out of the four of you!”

  The panther, whose head has been removed and replaced with another creature’s—Edgar can’t see it clearly in the shadows—offers a kind of growl, but it cannot get to its feet.

  “That beast has a male body and a female head, my boy, from different species! And it survived. I shall get it going before long. My task with the group of you is to see if I can employ the best of the two genders and make you into something even better! I shall use your powerfully well-built young friend’s arms and perhaps his legs, take either your brain or this hermaphrodite’s and either connect up your male cortex better or divide up hers a little. Which gender’s torso to use, ah, that is an excellent question! How much testosterone to employ…or any? Now that is indeed a conundrum, for despite its power, testosterone may be the source of all life’s problems. Sometimes I even think that is the point of the Frankenstein novel.” He looks around at the four bodies. “I’m not sure whose pelvic area or hands would be best?” He looks at Lucy. “Now, this beautiful girl, well, beautiful except for her nose—though I could fix that—and rather too pale skin and abnormal colored hair, what could I use of hers in particular? In many ways she is too slight and too weak, but lovely and symmetrical. She is fragile yet incredibly strong. I have observed that she has something none of the rest of you have…an obvious soul. How, in God’s name, do I get at that? You, Edgar, may have a soul too, of a sort. You have both the masculine and feminine about you. It is quite remarkable.”

  Bound and gagged, Lucy is crying; Jonathan, battered and bruised, is trying to rouse; and Tiger is groggy. Only Edgar can speak. He tries to keep calm and rational.

  “Sir, you seem as though you want a soul for yourself too, you want humanity and you want a sense of humor and human pleasure.”

  “Yes, very good, that is accurate.”

  “The human way, the humane approach, would be to release us.”

  Godwin pauses for a moment, rubbing his chin. “No,” he finally says, “I don’t see it. The human way is to kill you.” He stares up at the long pole that goes through the opening in the ceiling. There is a crack of lightning and then thunder rolls through the sky. “The meteorological report was accurate for tonight. It so often isn’t. Have you noted, Edgar, that when these weather people tell us in the papers that it will be fair, it isn’t, or when they predict that it will rain, it doesn’t! It is most upsetting. But tonight, success! Once I have carved up the four of you and attached you together in a new way, I shall use a jolt from God—not God, no, that is such nonsense—Mother Nature…to electrify your reconfigured dead flesh back to life! Galvanize you!”

  There is a knock on the door.

  21

  “A late-night guest?” says Godwin. “Alas, Miss Tilley, you have not locked the door behind you!”

  Vincent Brim appears in the entrance.

  “Unfortunate,” says Godwin.

  “Dr. Godwin…what, what is the meaning of this?” Vincent Brim surveys the scene, shocked.

  The great surgeon sighs. “This is turning into a truly busy night. Now I must eliminate you as well, Dr. Brim. And that is really a waste, since I have no need of your mind or your withering body. I already have several brains here, and souls and youth!”

  “I don’t understand. What are you doing to them? I’ve been worrying about our—” His eyes dart back and forth between the restrained young people. “You can’t be—”

  “He is going to kill us and you,” cries Edgar. “Run! Get help!”

  Vincent Brim sees the rifle that Godwin had tossed to the floor when he seized Tiger. He hesitates for a second, then picks it up and aims it at the monster.

  “It’s useless!” shouts Edgar.

  Vincent Brim fires. Godwin dodges the bullet as easily as he had the first time and smiles back at his colleague. Vincent fires again and Godwin merely turns his head to save himself.

  “Impressive, think you not, Dr. Brim? If we put our minds to it, we could make more perfect people like me, perhaps even better. Well, not we, not you and me, just me and whatever I might—”

  The gun goes off again and again and again. But Vincent Brim, who has a larger mind than Godwin seems to have imagined, isn’t shooting at the great surgeon. He is firing Thorne’s remarkable weapon and its exploding bullets at the shelves of combustible liquids and at the lit gas and kerosene lamps that are everywhere. Everything is igniting! In an instant the entire room is on fire, a boiling hell of flames.

  There are explosions and human screams and the cries of the panther creature. Vincent races toward Edgar, seizes a scalpel by the side of his table and slices off one of the straps on his hands. Godwin comes striding out of the flames and delivers a blow to the side of Vincent’s head that knocks him down as if he had been struck by a sledgehammer. Then Godwin picks up his colleague as if he were a toy and raises him high above his head and throws him across the room. He turns back to Edgar, but the boy has already snatched up Lear’s sword, sitting there on the table next to him, and sliced open the other straps, freeing himself in seconds with the razor-sharp blade. Godwin is coming for him though and reaches out through the conflagration. Edgar swings the blade at him and misses but cuts the surgeon’s left thumb clean from his hand. Godwin doesn’t even wince. Edgar rolls away from him and onto the floor, catching a glimpse of the monster’s face as he dives—it seems to be melting.

  Edgar rushes through the inferno toward Lucy’s table and cuts her loose in five violent slices that may have lacerated her too
, and then goes for Tiger. At first he can’t find her in the orange and red blaze and black smoke: mind-bending fear is paralyzing his brain. He hears other sounds—the shrieks of the hag running about the room in glee. Do not be afraid, he remembers his father saying again and concentrates on where Tiger might be. Finally, he hears her. “Edgar,” she is saying in a loud but firm voice. “Edgar, I’m here!” He drops to the floor beneath the worst of the smoke and crawls toward her, reaches up and feels for her body on the table, which is already getting hot. He finds her naked arm, the sleeve of her blouse ripped off by Godwin’s rough treatment. Tiger’s skin is soft but her bicep is hard and tensed. He wants to stay there with her, holding her, their flesh touching. He has heard that sometimes a slow death can be like this—seductive—you want to expire and just let it be. They could perish here: he and Tiger, friends and more since the moment they met; they could go to heaven with their skin touching. But Edgar wants her to live and wants to live with her, so he darts to his feet and cuts off her straps, releasing her. He wants to save the others too, but he feels Tiger’s grip holding him fast. Though she is shorter and slighter than him, she is strong and has him around the waist and is lifting him away in seconds, powering him toward the door, both of them coughing and dizzy. On the way, she seizes the rifle from the floor and keeps moving. She slams the door behind them, they collapse, and for a moment lie together in an embrace. Then Tiger leaps to her feet.

  “Jonathan!” she cries out and reaches for the door.

  “No! We have to leave! We can’t go back in.”

  It’s Edgar’s turn to seize Tiger. He grabs her sinewy arms and pulls her down the stairs, but it is Lucy Lear’s face that is in his mind. He has never met anyone like her, no one as sweet and perfect. And she is back there in that inferno. He starts to cry as he pulls Tiger with him and hopes his sobs sound like mere emotion from their escape from the fire. It is just the two of them again, he thinks, and for the first time in his life, to his surprise, it doesn’t seem like enough.

  They pause for a moment when they reach the seventh floor hallway, leaning against a wall, their chests heaving.

  “Jonathan,” says Tiger softly.

  Edgar looks up and his sightline goes straight through a window into the dark stormy sky. From here, he can see the turret that contained the lab. It is engulfed in smoke and huge angry flames. But then a figure appears, climbing up the pole that is thrust through the opening in the ceiling. The creature is huge, nearly black, charred. Somehow it ascends the sizzling pole without releasing it.

  The sound of the bells of several London Metropolitan Fire Brigade engines rings in the distance.

  “Tiger, look!”

  The figure is now at the top of the pole. It swings itself around the tip by gripping it with its muscular arms and then releases it, sending itself flying into the night toward a rooftop. For a moment, they both see its face in its black hair, the plastic skin burned completely off—the face is yellow with black eyes and lips, a monstrous visage!

  The door to the hallway slams open and Lucy comes through it, dragging her brother by his arms. His shirt is almost seared from his body and he lies there, groggy, his big chest bare, his face wounded, attempting to get up. Tiger runs to him and pulls him all the way into the hallway. Lucy staggers forward, her dress burned beyond recognition, her arms and legs exposed, those usually white appendages angry red. Edgar embraces her.

  “We need to get them out of here,” says Tiger, her arms wrapped around Jon’s muscular chest as she holds him upright.

  They all stumble forward, and by the time they reach the end of the hallway, firemen are rushing past them.

  “Stay there, we’ll send someone to help you!” shouts one of them.

  But they can’t be questioned about what has happened here. They disappear through another door and take back stairs downward, Lucy and Jonathan walking better with each flight. They descend all seven floors and leave by a rear door. The rain is pelting down on them, soaking them to the skin. Edgar takes off his coat and wraps it around Lucy who accepts it with a weak smile. Jonathan and Tiger have no outer clothing to offer each other.

  “Give me your arm,” he says to her, “I can help you walk. You must be spent.”

  “I am fine,” she almost spits and starts walking quickly, at an arm’s length from him, the rifle in her hand. “You are the one who is hurt.” Indeed, there are awful bruises on Jon’s face and blood in his hair.

  Edgar looks back toward the hotel and sees something running on a rooftop across the street on a building just a few stories high. But it isn’t a man. It is an animal with the body of a panther and the head of some sort of huge, black-faced ape. It leaps down onto a lower building, heading toward the street.

  “We have to get far away from here, out of this mess,” says Lucy, bringing Edgar’s attention back to his friends. The scratches on her face are still red. “We have to fix ourselves up and change our clothing and figure out what to do next.”

  “We can go to Thorne House. Annabel will be asleep. I will explain everything to her in the morning, somehow.”

  “No,” says Tiger, “Godwin escaped! He is out in the city somewhere. We can’t go to Mrs. Thorne’s. We can’t endanger others.”

  “Then where?” asks Jonathan.

  “Follow me,” says Edgar, and in moments, they know where he is leading them.

  —

  William Shakespeare answers his door again in the middle of the night fully clothed. This time they don’t bother to remark on his appearance or his clear-eyed expression.

  “Find us some clothing,” says Edgar, “anything will do.”

  “What has occurred? You appear to have been boating upon the River Styx.”

  “Much more fun than that,” says Jonathan. “We’ll explain in a moment.”

  “Lovely! We shall chat of a daring adventure. I can sense it. I shall light my heartwarming hearth!”

  But a fire is already roaring when they reach the main room. Shakespeare has obviously been up in the night. It seems like he often is. He putters down a hallway in search of dry clothing for his visitors. Lucy throws herself into a big, cushioned chair and pulls Edgar’s coat tightly around her as if he were hugging her, her teeth chattering loudly, letting little gasps escape from her lips. Edgar sits on the arm of the chair beside her, not sure what to do or say. The other two stay on their feet, acting as though the situation is just a temporary irritation. But Edgar can see the horror in their eyes.

  They hear Shakespeare in another room, whistling “God Save the Queen” and opening and slamming drawers.

  “This one? Well, yes, Mr. Sprinkle, bring it forth!”

  “That one! Are you but a lump of foul deformity, Mr. Tightman, a young lady cannot wear that!”

  “Mr. Winker, that is not a manly enough color for the likes of Master Lear, have you not glimpsed his masculine physique!”

  In the other room, the four friends say nothing for a while. Then Jon breaks the silence.

  “I’m sorry about your uncle, Edgar.”

  Edgar hadn’t given Vincent Brim a thought since they’d escaped and it immediately shames him. His uncle, incinerated in the turret lab at the top of the Midland Grand Hotel, had not only saved them but given his life for them. “A human being couldn’t do more than that,” whispers Edgar. There had been goodness deep within his uncle that Edgar had never tried to glimpse.

  “Ah! Here we are!” exclaims little Shakespeare re-entering the room at top speed carrying a load of clothing piled so high that it nearly reaches the ceiling. It has rendered him incapable of seeing where he is going and he slams into the table and all the clothes fly across it, as if laid out for them to choose from—a series of chiffon dresses and bright red military coats and other extravagances that look like costumes from seventeenth-century plays. “I do desire we be better strangers!” shouts Shakespeare at the table, rubbing his shin.

  “Brim,” says Jonathan, “I think the pink one wou
ld match your eyes.”

  The clothes are ridiculous, but the four friends are too wet to not take something. Jonathan, Edgar and Tiger pick out scarlet military coats, while Lucy chooses the least outrageous and warmest dress she can uncover. Shakespeare boils some water for them and they retire two at a time to use the washbasin and tub in the little man’s living quarters. Then they all change into their new outfits and return to the main room to lay their wet clothes over the fireplace. Lucy somehow keeps her underclothes out of sight, but Tiger spreads out hers in plain view.

  Jonathan has cleaned the blood from his hair and dabbed his wounds a little, but his face still looks bruised. He doesn’t seem to care. “We must go after him,” he says, the second they have seated themselves at the table, sipping the tea the little man has made for them.

  “Him?” asks Shakespeare. “Who is this enigmatic him whom we must pursue!”

  Edgar gives their host a quick account of their terrible adventure.

  “We have to go now,” says Jon, the instant his colleague is done.

  “No, no, no,” says Shakespeare, “leave him be! He has no heart, no soul, he would kill you all without a thought, and now he is desperate!”

  “That isn’t an option for us. We have unleashed him. It is our responsibility to destroy him.”

  “But how do we kill something like that?” asks Tiger. “You saw what he could do.”

  “I think he will be afraid at first,” says Lucy. “I think he will flee. He will not be able to return to his work at the hospital, since not only do we know what he is, but his hideous face is exposed. He said it took years to build that handsome countenance.”

  “Then we must chase him!” says Tiger.

  “I actually feel a little sorry for him.” Lucy drops her head.