A/N Thank You so much reviewers! I am pleased you find my vision of Frankenstein's story worthy of your attention.
"I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and conciliating words, I should first win their favour and afterwards their love." --Chapter 12
Chapter 4
Therese
Thomas and I oiled the wheels of the chair so it will be easier to get out to the old Abbey. Like children we hide away near the conservatory doors until the staff is busy dispensing medicines and meals. We sneak out of the exterior doors.
The dying sun paints the abbey walls red. Our shadows turn from small gnomes to monstrous giants against the wall as we get closer. My breath is coming quicker, for although Thomas helps pull the wheels, I must do the guiding of the chair. We reach the solitary door. It is not locked, only one board crosses over it to bar it, and I give a tentative push, lifting it out of the way.
Thomas giggles like a child. This is the most exhilaration he has had in weeks. I shied from coming here, but Ragache's insistence on getting Thomas drunk every night had put a strain on my working with him. I must give Thomas the spark of life and hope unless I wish to see him lost to Ragache's machinations.
The door swings open, and we work together to get the chair inside. Once in, we pause to catch our breath. With the door closed, the room is dim. Only a pair of windows in the upper story let in the light, dust motes fill the beams that point to the table.
We look at the strange boxes sitting to one side, a rats nest of wiring intertwines several of them. They have faces with numbers on them like clocks. The large copper clad table seems to overwhelm the room. On it rests more strange instruments, wires, leather straps and what looks like a horse's bit tossed in a heap.
Thomas rolls forward, but I stand firm. Something moves along my spine like fingers and I feel the goose flesh rise on my arms. I feel as if the floor were tilting, and step quickly forward to grasp the handle at the back of his chair for support. Like a life line, it grounds me to stand in the present, but my eyes see into the past.
The lightning speeding through the heaven, the sizzling of the wires, the deafening bang as the bolt strikes the bar that separates the two spheres over which the spark winds, slowly dropping to the wires to run down to my skull. The pain is awful; every muscle in my body is commanded to respond to the power that rips through me. My body spasms under the will of the electricity in me, painfully pulling against something that ties me down. Bright light surrounds me, bathes me in a glowing aura of pulsing power that shreds my nerve endings. It stops for a moment, I feel myself dying again. My heart faltering, the beats uneven, my blood slowing to a pause, I sink into blackness again.
The second bolt is a more capable messenger than its previous sibling. I can feel my scalp charring, the smell of my hair burning. Tears leak passed my closed eyes, they drop below me and over the hum of the wires I can hear the sizzle of the moisture. I try to cry out around the metal in my mouth. I want to live. I want to die. I want someone to protect me from the ravening attack of the storm.
"There were two large copper spheres," I hear my voice. Thomas turns, startled.
"Therese," his eyes are large in the dim light, and filled with wonder, "your voice."
"Yes," I reply.
From somewhere above us is a sigh. A stirring in the air of the room tells me that we are not alone. My breathing stops as my ears strain to pick up the sounds around me.
"Therese, what's wrong," Thomas is getting upset for me. He must see something in my expression. "Do you want to go back?" It is a question for both of us. I smile at him, and nod. We turn the chair and close the door on my past.
The Demon
I let them leave. I do not wish to reveal myself to the young man. He and Therese are like brother and sister, making the best they can of the austere surroundings of the sanitarium.
I am so glad she has a friend. She smiles also. She never smiled for me, and I feel of wave of hatred for Victor so piercing my teeth grind. He has denied me those small gifts from her. But I have received one gift that Victor has not been privy to yet. Her voice. By the astonishment on the boy's face, no one has heard it but the three of us.
Yes, Therese. There were two large copper spheres to channel the lightning down into the wires. Have you felt the two lumps on your scalp? I will show you tonight when you return to me. I know you felt me here with you. I shall be waiting.
Therese
I bring Thomas to my room. We sit quietly and have a drink from a small bottle of schnapps that I took from Victor's study when I went to see Elisabeth. The liquor warms my stomach, and for a moment I see it again. The two spheres, the hissing sounds, the glare that frightens me, the burning, the feeling of being powerless before the lightning.
Thomas asks, "Are you alright, Therese?"
I refill our glasses, and lean close to him to whisper, "Do not tell Victor or Ragache any of this. I will go back to the Abbey tonight. I have to know what happened, Thomas."
"In the Abbey," he asks, "did you see something?"
"Only my past." I promise I will tell him what I find out. I cannot tell him of the flashes of memory I see. Not the glaring light, nor the picture of my body as I die. Someone was in the Abbey with us, someone who will know the truth.
I wait until it is quite late. I get changed for bed and extinguish my candles. Slipping on my shoes, I wrap myself in Elisabeth's old blue velvet robe. The dark material covers me completely as she is taller than me. I tuck my hair under the collar. Arranging my pillows to look like I am in the bed, I climb out of my window.
My steps are quiet in the grass, I move to the Abbey, staying in the shadows of the larger building. Lifting the board again, I go inside into the waiting darkness. My eyes try to adjust, but the night is moonless, and I see very little. I put my hands out in front of me and move them around me; there is nothing in my way. I slowly make my way to where the table waits. I am aware that I am being watched. I can feel eyes boring into me.
I stop and run a hand on the table. Cold, yes cold metal beneath me, arms lift me and hold me close to a strong body, I can remember this. I remember the voice as well. I can feel the hairs on the nape of my neck rise. The feeling of someone moving towards me makes me shiver. Slowly into the darkness, "Who are you?"
"I am the first creation. He gave me no name. He calls me Demon." It is a man's voice, deep but gentle.
I can feel the heat from his body, he has moved closer to me in the silence. He finds my hands in the darkness, and lifts each to the sides of my face. Pushing through my hair, he locates the two small bumps on my skull. He knows.
I feel him lift my arms, upward they continue, and then they are moving through hair, and I feel the same lumps on the sides of his skull. "Therese," his voice so soft, my name sounds like a benediction. I wait in the darkness. "We are storm born." I can feel the rumble of his voice in his chest.
"Who gave me my name?"
"Your name is the name you were born with. It was also the name that you carried to your grave."
He is silent now, his hands have slowly moved downward, leaving mine. I move my fingers around the bumps, and then I drop them through the hair until I feel them run over the ridge of a scar. Cupping my hands around the cheeks, they slide to a firm jaw with a dusting of whiskers.
He captures one of my hands and guides it to rest upon his chest. I can feel the steady thud his heart makes. "I carried you from your grave to this table. Victor repaired your wound, and we waited for the storm. Life came back to you on a bolt of lightning from the heavens, Therese. You are to be my wife."
I wonder at what he tells me. I would not have believed it until today, when I remembered the table, and my death. "Did Victor do that to you as well?" I can feel him take a deep breath, his chest rising under my hand.
"Victor created me from the bodies of other men. I was to be his example of his genius. He wanted to be able to cheat death, to reanimate those who had perished."
My mind struggles to understand what he is saying. "Victor is stealing God's power?"
"And for that he may be eternally damned," his voice is rough, "he has provided a body, given life to me, but then turns me out and wishes me dead. He has the skills, but lacks the compassion to deal with me as God would. God gave us life and set us free; Victor gave us life and makes us slaves."
I can feel the suffering in his words. "Why do you stay here, then?"
"I don't. He abandoned me after I was reanimated. I was forced to leave and find a way to survive away from men. I hide in the forest."
I feel a hand brush my cheek. "I cannot live alone, Therese. You cannot know how empty your life is until you are shunned by every being around you. I would do anything if one human were to extend a hand to me." There is a long silence before he continues, "That is why I found you and brought you to Victor. I want another being that was made like me, someone who shares this other form of humanity. Together we shall leave, and find a home away from men."
I know his voice. "You gave me water when I awoke."
"Yes. I stayed and held your hand through the first night." His voice changes, "Beware of Victor. He keeps you from me, thinking he can control me through you. Do not trust in him, Therese. He will not hesitate to turn us against each other."
I feel his hands move again, they sweep up my throat and frame my face, he moves closer and in the darkness, his mouth finds mine. His kiss is almost chaste. "I will be near, wife. I watch over you."
He tilts my chin upward and his lips descend upon mine with an undisguised hunger. This is no mere kiss; it is a ritual of possession. "Victor will be watching, be careful. The time will come when I will take you from this place."
His hands are gone, and I feel a change in the air. There is a faint sound of movement above me. I reach out again in the darkness, and find my way to the door. Quietly I step out, and go back to the sanitarium.
I slip in my window and go to Thomas' room. He is waiting up for me. We lay on his bed like children, our heads together. I tell him everything I remember. As I explain my visitor in the darkness of the Abbey, I find myself uncomfortable with calling him 'Demon' as Victor does.
Thomas suggests we give him a name. If Victor were to hear the name, he would not associate it with his re-animated man. I tell him I will think about it, that when I decide we will use the name.
"Are you sure about this, love? Can we trust this man?"
"My heart tells me yes. Victor has been kind, but I know he lies to the staff about finding out where I came from." I guide his hands to my head, to the bumps left behind. I also pull up my gown high enough to guide his hand under it to my scar.
"Bloody hell, Therese," he breaths. Thoughts pass behind his eyes, pain, sorrow, and fear.
I have the terrible feeling that he will see me as something less than human now. I look away from him. This is how my 'husband' must feel.
"Here now, love, don't be afraid." He pulls me to him in a hug. "You're my best friend, Therese. You're what keeps me sane through all these days of lying on my back and looking for a future." He gives me a kiss on the forehead. "I love you, lass. For that and more. We'll get through this, not to worry, eh?"
We swear to each other to keep this secret from everyone. We both know that my survival may depend upon it.
The Demon
I leave the abbey through the upper window. I wait only long enough to see that Therese makes it back to the main building. I move slowly through the trees towards the village. I get close enough to see people milling in the main square.
Victor spends his money on guards and dogs to patrol the grounds. He makes the mistake of trusting his safety to loaded guns. None of these men are adept at hunting another man. I am not an animal, I am another hunter.
I wonder what Victor has told them? Do they look for some deranged man, or an animal? And if one of his men were to bring me down, how will you explain it Victor? What will they think of my dead eyes, and the scars?
I will not allow this to happen. My survival now is all that might keep Therese from becoming a slave to Victor the way Astrid is. I am sure Victor took Astrid in, playing the beneficent Doctor taking sympathy on the infirm. But I know he enjoys her flesh. He created her from his own ideals. The fact that I turned away from her because I have no taste for a child doesn't seem to hamper his sexual attraction towards her.
Indeed, for a learned man, Victor exhibits very poor morals as called for in his deportment with the fairer sex. He tells me to go violate some poor girl to fulfill my body's needs, takes another lover while he has a pregnant wife, and turns poor witless Astrid into his whore.
My blood turns hot, my pulse pumping rage like quicksilver through my veins. You have your women Victor, yet you try to deny me mine. You will not touch Therese; you will not taint her with your prejudices, your pride, and your lies.
We are not your slaves, Victor. Even I, the piecemeal puppet you created, was brought forth a complete man at one time bearing a soul. If that soul was lost at our deaths, then why does God intervene with the unpredictability of the storms? Do we not still complete a course of his intentions rather than yours?
You live now because your actions have intertwined our fates. I could not function without a human contact, and you neither had the courage nor the foresight to rid yourself of me while I was still defenseless. As time matured me from the helpless child to the man, I needed you to provide the one thing that the world of men will not give me. My wife.
I turn and leave the town, the anger in me building like a sea of fire. As I pass a wagon I give it a shove. The wood groans but gives under the strength of my hands, moving the wagon several feet to one side.
I go to the lake and sit listening to the sounds in the dark forest beside it. The rage ebbs away to be replaced by the joy that I have communed with my wife. I kissed her. I talked with her. I held her hands for a moment. I will allow her the time to think on what I have told her.
Victor
There were no intrusions last night according to any guards or staff. I did hear one slightly disturbing bit of gossip from Frau Radmacher. One of the servants saw Therese leaving Thomas' room late in the night.
With the lack of feeling from his injuries, it cannot be that they are together for sex. I wonder what it is that Therese is up to. Ragache thinks she is sticking close to Thomas because he is wealthy. If she is, then she certainly makes up for her mute state with an eye towards a man who will pay her way through life. I know nothing of her background except for the fact she was from a village to the North West near the border of France.
I do not doubt that the Demon is out there, biding his time to take her away. If she becomes a plaything for Ragache's cousin, she may leave with him. This twist leaves me to ponder how long I can keep Thomas here as well as Therese.
