Okay, I'm really sorry this didn't come sooner! School has been killing me and I'm trying to get together my application for the JET Program to go to Japan next year, I have a bunch of writing projects for school and I started a novel for Novel Month in November! This chapter is actually cut short and I have the first few pages of the next already written because I haven't because I originally wrote these two as one, and then decided to give you this much and cut it a little short. So yeah. Don't be mad, I haven't given up on this story yet!
Anyway, we're in Henry's voice again! Yay!
Chapter 9
We made it to the village above the Chamounix Valley sometime after midday, it was the last outpost of society before the ascent into the glacial mountains. There was an excitement in the air of the village when we arrived, and most of its people were gathered at the tavern below the inn. We tied our horses outside of the wooden building and made out way inside, trying to push our way to the bar where it appeared the lady of the establishment was quartered, listening to the loud conversations being thrown about. I smiled as we approached and she allowed some of her attention to be put our way.
"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" she asked, a practiced note of welcome in her voice, though her eyes kept darting back to the men behind us.
"We'd like a room and perhaps a hot meal if you have anything prepared," I said. I noticed Victor had allowed the excitement to capture his interest.
The woman nodded. "I believe we have a room available—one bed or two?" Her smile curled up into a conspiratorial grin.
"Two. Please."
She shrugged and reached for a set of keys on the wall behind her. "Horace!" she yelled over the crowd. A young man peeked his head out from the group gathered in the bar. The woman raised her voice again, "Take a break from all that witchy business and help these gentlemen find their room."
The young man, really an adolescent, took the key from the woman and helped us bring our things upstairs. There was an intense silence that engulfed our little party as we climbed the stairs. The boy seemed disturbed and barely even made eye contact with us as he led the way. Once he had unlocked our room and set our things down, he hurriedly made his way back to the door, not even attempting to ask a coin for his trouble. Victor stopped him, however, before he could exit the room.
"Excuse me," asked my friend, "but what is going on? The whole town seems as if it is in an uproar."
The boy briefly glanced over at us, then took a deep breath. "If you must know they're all worried about a witch on the hill. Last night the butcher's youngest son had been out wandering around, trying to give his parents a scare. He came back yelling about a demon and a witch, and this morning a group of us went hiking around the glacier looking for these apparitions. What we found was…startling." He paused, and I almost thought he was not going to continue. He leaned against the door frame, as if trying to make sense of the event himself. "We found an old cottage we thought to be abandoned, and when we went inside we found what we first thought to be some giant monster, or a demon as the butcher's son had said, when it moved, Briand shot it without thinking and we saw that it had been lying beside a woman, maybe a couple years older than myself. We tried to grab her, thinking her the witch, but she put up a struggle and was able to get out of our men's grip..."
I had to fight back a smile, knowing that this indeed was the woman I had come to know.
The boy went on. "She grabbed a knife and stood in front of the monster. But then the thing spoke and told us it was a man and the girl was not a witch and had willingly kept company with him over the past days."
Victor snorted, causing the boy to stop once more and look at him questioningly.
"I assure you, monsieur, everything I've said is true. The girl could only speak English and I had to mediate between her and my friends. She spoke these words under no duress."
Victor walked over to the young man. "I believe every word you say, I just found it amusing that such a woman would willingly stay with such a creature. What happened next?"
The boy eyed Victor warily. "The…man had been injured by Briand's shot, so the girl went about removing the bullets and cleaning the wound and then dressing it. After watching her, Briand decided we should try to help them, to make up for our attack. We came back down to the village to get supplies to make their habitations more comfortable, but…" The boy stopped and looked over his shoulder. Even from our second-floor room, we could hear the arguments roaring downstairs.
"Let me guess," I said softly, "not everyone agrees with this Briand."
The boy nodded. "Aaron and Robert still believe the girl's a witch. Their younger brother is the one who had seen the two the night before, and by the way he came screaming into their home, they say it couldn't have been anything but a demon out of hell that scared him. They were also the ones who had first tried to grab the woman. She elbowed Robert in the face and kicked Aaron in the ribs—she bruised their pride almost as much as their bodies." I noticed a small flicker of a smirk at his last comment.
I stepped beside Victor. "And what do you think? You were the one to actually speak to the girl—did she seem like she was under coercion or did not wish to be there? Do you believe her to be a witch and this creature her demon?"
The boy crossed his arms and looked past us to the window. "The girl was strange and vulgar, but I do not believe her to be a witch. She was very brave to step in front of the gun to shield her friend. The fact that she would do so seems proof enough that she is not being kept against her will."
"Was there anyone else with them?" Victor asked, though by his tone he did not sound very hopeful that the boy would reply in the affirmative.
He shook his head. In our brief silence we were able to hear that the heated debates had ceased downstairs.
"Are you going to see them again?" I asked.
"If Briand has his way, then yes. He'll want me to come along to translate for the girl." He turned to head back out the door, but stopped short once more. "Why are you so interested, monsieurs? Are you familiar with either of these persons?"
I looked to Victor, not sure what he would say. He paused for a moment, then answered bluntly. "Yes. The girl was employed at my home recently."
The boy nodded. "She had mentioned being a housekeeper. If we ever get on our way, you are welcome to come with us. I'm sure Briand would not mind."
"We'd be very appreciative of that," replied Victor. The boy gave a slight bow of his head and closed the door behind him.
My friend immediately walked back to the bed and slumped down on it. He pulled the old book from his jacket and flipped to a page and started reading under his breath. I took a seat beside him and tried to listen, but he was barely mumbling the words. After a couple lines he looked up and let it fall to his chest, still open. His eyes stared blankly at the low dusty ceiling.
"Is that really the entirety of her plan, I wonder…"
"What are you talking about?" I was beginning to grow worried for Miss Aizen, not that I believed any harm could come from the creature, but the townspeople were at an impasse as to whether she was a witch or not. While I believed Victor's claim that she was under his family's employment would bolster her innocence, I could not get rid of the sound of the anger and disgust I had heard resonating from the downstairs when we had first arrived at the inn.
Victor sat up and glared intensely into my eyes. "After the creature's narrative he asks one thing of me, do you remember what it was?"
I ran a hand through my hair. "You never let me read that far."
My friend nodded as if this fact was trivial. "He wanted a mate. He demanded I create a female in the same manner as him so that he would not be lonely."
"What did you do?"
"After hearing his…threats, it seems I temporarily agreed. But, in the end, I refused and destroyed what I had started to create. I suppose I could not bring myself to complete it after what he did to William and Justine…"
I began piecing things together. "So, you think Miss Aizen means to…"
"Fulfill this role as his companion, yes." He looked away to the window. The path out of town that led to the peak of the mountain was visible through the old glass. "I suppose it's a sacrifice she was willing to make—her society for all our lives."
"Our lives?"
My friend handed the book to me without turning around. "Read the rest of it, Henry. And though it has not come true and you may not believe in it like I do, please forgive my stupidity. The events of this book may not have happened in our reality, but I feel as if in some world they did—and for that other blind fool named Victor Frankenstein, I apologize." He got up and went over to the door. "I'll be downstairs waiting for their departure. Whether you decide to come or not is up to you, and I will bear you no ill will either way."
The door closed and I was alone. I did not know what to expect in the last chapters of the novel. I had read all of it up to the end of the creature's narrative, for Victor had asked me to go no farther. I felt now an impending disquiet hanging over me, as if it was not possible that my friend would really allow me to finish the book. I had the absurd notion that the ink would melt from the pages as soon as I opened it. I flipped to the page I had dog-eared to mark where I had left off and began quickly reading, skimming with determination to take in only what truly mattered.
I sat on the edge of the bed in the cold room for a very long time, barely moving or even noticing the chill bite in the air. I had a vague memory of a maid coming in with a plate of food at some point but she left without my noticing and made not a sound.
I hurried through Victor's conversation with the creature, wondering all the while if it would have really been a bad thing to provide him with a companion. Victor's arguments for failing in his duties as creator were weak and seemed rather lazy in my opinion. Then I got to the part where we left on our journey through Europe, and I found myself put out that my friend never confided in me, or that I did not press him to. I pondered whether Victor would've ever told me his secret had Miss Aizen not been there as a catalyst for him to do so.
And then I came to the part; the part I knew Victor had not wanted me to read. My own death. I felt a shiver go down my body and I wanted to throw the book away from me—but I couldn't. Something compelled me to read the description of my mangled and torn up corpse, and suddenly I was on the floor, retching in dry heaves. My stomach was empty and so there was no way to sate the convulsive need to remove this horrible feeling of dread that I seemed to have swallowed. I got to my hands and knees, choking on the air itself. After a few moments I was breathing heavily, but able to get up. I took hold of the book once more, skipped ahead a few pages, skimmed through another of Victor's fevers to his wedding night. This time I was prepared for the tragedy. The monster had said if Victor did not provide it a mate, he would be there on his wedding night, waiting to exact his revenge. I was puzzled how he could think the monster so dull that it would come after him and not Elizabeth. It was clear this being was clever, as well as creative, and would not be satisfied with destroying its creator alone. It wanted Victor to suffer as he had suffered, bring "god" down to his level of damnation. Only Ernest and Victor's father escaped the monster's wrath, but even I knew that it was not much of an escape to see your loved ones killed and your oldest son and brother go mad and leave, with no word to where he was going.
Seeing the lives of my friends, and myself, destroyed so completely was devastating. I had to remind myself that this was not true. I remembered Victor's words.
A sacrifice she was willing to make—her society for our lives.
She knew what was going to happen. I felt as if she understood it more than I did myself. She had been carrying the weight of this knowledge for so long, since the very moment we met her—before that even. Where had she come from? Why would she put herself in the middle of this situation? She could have just as easily been killed if her rescue of William had not gone as it did. What would she have done if the boy had been killed before she could get to him, or if the creature had turned on her?
I finished the last words and closed the book. I looked at the cover, my friend's name printed across it and underneath, a penciled in drawing of the silhouette of the monster. With most of his features shadowed, he did not look that disfigured, just large and intimidating and scarred.
Seeing this figure I thought of what Miss Aizen must look like beside him. Her brown hair would be messy and unruly, and her dark eyes would probably have that bemused glint to them that seemed to perpetually shine out from her tanned face. The boy had said they had found them lying together.
The question of how much of a companion Miss Aizen was willing to become to the creature crossed my mind. Images of her laughing smile and the enticing way her skirts swayed out from her hips as she walked weaved in and out of my mind. Her rough mannerisms and strength of personality had taken my affections almost immediately, something I suppose I was realizing too late. Though, looking back, there was nothing I could have really done. She had meant to seek the creature from the very start—I was always meant to be merely an acquaintance. The heat in my face began to rise as I remembered my dream from so long ago, where she stood like a light with a shadow starting to engulf and wrap itself around her. Did she really mean to be the bride of such a being?
I set the book down on the table and then went over to the small basin of water and splashed my face. It felt like ice as the droplets fell from my cheeks and lips. I patted my skin dry with a clean towel and then went back downstairs.
It was now the late afternoon and most of the crowd from earlier had cleared out. The room had grown darker. Only the boy Horace and Victor were sitting in the tavern. Even the landlady was gone from her place behind the counter. The two sat by the open fireplace and were talking in hushed apprehensive tones. Victor turned around at my approach and immediately got to his feet, concern flooding his misty blue eyes.
"Henry…"
I put up a hand before he could continue and gave him as reassuring a smile as I could muster. His expression did not change.
I coughed to clear my throat and looked at both men. "So where has everyone gone? It is nearly evening. Has a decision been made yet?"
Horace looked away and Victor crossed his arms. My friend was the one who spoke.
"Henry, there's been...a murder."
Sorry, I'm leaving you on a cliffhanger...
Anyway, I'll try to post the next chapter soon, but with all the craziness I'm in till December, I don't know if I'll be able to get to it till then!
Well, I hope you enjoyed the chapter anyway, lots of exposition, but hey, we'll get back to the action in the next part! Thanks for reading!
