On the Edge of the Abyss: The Outcasts: A Shared Life, A Shared Love
Chapter 3 – Life among the Dead
"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." Kahlil Gibran
The Creature had learned things from the Basque people whom he lived among now. He kept to the outskirts of the village, but the people seemed to regard him or rather his deeds, as a gift from God. He had caught and dressed hares for an elderly widow whom he had seen gathering firewood in the forest. She was old, gnarled, and blind and moved about with slow purpose. She had caught him hanging the hares on the door knocker, touching his arm, she had told him to return. When he did the next day, she fed him hearty hare stew and freshly baked bread with butter. He refused to come into her home, but he took the clay earthenware bowl in his hands. The bread was so delicious and melted in his mouth with the melted butter. The stew was full of root vegetables and hare meat which filled him more than he had been in months.
He returned her dishes to her after rinsing them in a stream, belly full, and strangely sated in a way he had not been in ages and he brought her more meat. He wished her well told her he would not return. She had been sad, but he had moved on, knowing that he could not stay in one place again for long. The lovely woman, like DeLacey was blind, and had treated him well, but how would her family react to him skulking about. Agatha and Felix had run him off despite their praise of his work only days before. Then the Creature had taken his revenge. He had killed them all. Four lives lost due to an act of rage stemmed from a hatred and misunderstanding with false hopes and dreams.
Four lives. DeLacey, Felix, Agatha, and the unborn child that Agatha had been carrying, all died and for what? Like Elizabeth, the Creature regretted their deaths, but still felt justified after DeLacey had promised acceptance and the Creature only was beaten, even as his blind friend called his son to stop and cried for the Creature to forgive him. Too late, the Creature had forgiven him. He had forgiven him when his body was ash and dust after the cottage burned with the four inside.
The Creature walked for nearly a week, parallel to a major road. He watched people, cowl drawn up over his head and covering much of his face, even as people passed within meters of him and had no idea he was there, watching them.
He arrived, walking through the mists of the early morn, his gait swirling the low fog about his ankles as he walked through the thick leaves the trees had dropped heralding the coming winter as the autumn chill gripped the air. The Creature cocked his head. He was two now. The body of a man, but he had been on the earth for two years and had learned much about life and humanity.
He came to a sign. He read it. Oñati. He was in the province of Gipuzkoa. The town was small, surrounded on three sides by hills slopping up toward the mountains of the Pyrenees. It was full of life as most Basque towns he had encountered were. These people spoke Spanish which he could understand thanks to DeLacey who had taught him Latin, but they also spoke their own more guttural language among themselves. This was Basque, or so the Creature assumed and he listened, trying to learn the words in the hopes of one day communicating with them.
He smelled smoke on the air.
Not that of a fire that had been stoked in a hearth, but it smelt of something that irritated his nose and something behind it. The acutely sweet scent of rotting flesh was near and in abundance by how strong it was.
The scent of death.
He cocked his head and followed the scent until he came upon a house beside a forested woodland. He blinked. From the scorch marks on the trees the wind had been going down the canyon that the now stood. There was a small river to the west. He had seen it and it maundered about the area. The smoke had blown away from the village making it so that no one would have come.
He looked at the scorched timbers and marks on the whitewash where the flames had licked upwards, reaching higher toward the heavens, destroying everything in heat and hate. He walked closer and saw a large oak tree some meters away from the home. From the thick branches, higher than a normal man, hung a man, who was clearly middle aged, a son nearing twenty, and a boy who looked to be near William's age.
They swung about in the breeze, the rope about their necks had clearly snapped the bones there by how they lulled to the side at odd angles and they looked wretched and cold in the light now that rigor had left their corpses. The scent of human waste was over powering as was the smell of rot. These bodies had been here for at least a couple days if not longer. The Creature stepped closer to the boy. He lifted a hand to his arm and noted the tell-tale bruises that someone had beaten him before death.
He swallowed. He had killed William as painless as he possibly could, snapping his young neck like a chicken to save him the pain of strangulation or worse. This boy's eyes were wide in horror as he looked forever outwards.
What had happened here?
No one deserved to be so. He reached up using the knife he had gotten from Frankenstein when they had been up in the mountains above Ingolstadt, discussing life and the Creature's mate, and he cut the man down. The man fell in a heap of bone, mess, and rotting flesh. He did the same for the two boys and then shifted looking about. Leaving people so was a warning, not Christian. He had read the Bible. People were supposed to be buried with due ceremony and care.
There was a freshly tilled garden with a spade embedded into the corner of the plot. The harvest had come in and they had clearly just turned the soil. It would be easy digging for the morbid task. He moved and began to dig the grave. The day was cool and it was easy work. The grave was shallow, but wide enough for the three of them. He moved, lying them out, side by side in the earth, folding hands over their breasts, and trying to make sure they looked more as if sleeping than dead. He then covered them with the soil he had displaced, mounding it up over them as he fought the urge to vomit at the injustice of it all. No one deserved to be treated so, especially innocents. These people were farmers. What had they possibly done to deserve such torture and death to be beaten and hung like criminals.
He stepped back and said a few words in Latin as he looked at the sad mound. He then shifted to leave, turning, he nearly collided with a girl. He looked at her, stunned a moment. She did not move away from him or scream as she stood, in a simple dress of homespun, covered in dried blood. She regarded him, but there was no malice in her look, just curiosity and a deep set sadness.
She was beautiful and young, though tears had made channels into her cheeks. She was small for even a female, standing only to his chest, but her thick dark hair and clear eyes gave him pause. He shifted back, gauging her reaction as he stepped more into the light, revealing his sutures and grotesque features. There was no disgust, just gratitude reflected in her dark green eyes. They reminded him of the hills of the area.
"Please…" The girl said softly. "Help." She paused. "My momma…she…"
She had spoken in Spanish, but her voice was hoarse as though she had been wailing for hours if not days at the carnage. He shut his eyes. Had she witnessed this? Were these her family? How horrible to watch the butchery of your own family. He swallowed. The poor girl. Even he felt disgust at the idea of her watching everything.
How had she survived? Had she been away? Had she hid? Had she been let go to live with what had happened due to a problem in the recent past? No, this crime, these murders were an act of hate.
He cringed a little. Would this be him if the people could find him and subdue him? A corpse from the end of a rope? Or would they do worse?
He stepped to her and moved to speak, but she promptly turned away from him and walked to a small barn. He followed her, curious about the girl and why she was there. She walked to the back and dropped to her knees beside a bloody mess. Flies buzzed about despite the chill due to the fresh blood and corpse of the woman lying there. The blood had long since clotted and the Creature reached down, touching her arm that had been thrown to the side as though she had fallen back, unable to catch herself, she lay like a macabre marionette without strings.
There was a gaping hole in her middle. He bent closer, feeling bile and then withdrew from the stench. He then looked down at his feet. There was a blood trail leading from her to a post a few meters away. He looked down at the hay at the base of the post. A small human, or what could have been lay there. Blood had run down it and had dried. He bent closer, waving the flies away and then lifted the tiny being in his arms. It fit in the palm of his large hand, tiny limbs hanging to the sides, far too small to be a newborn. This child had not been ready to come out of the womb he realized. It had been taken by force, killing both mother and child through the vast amount of blood loss he had seen.
This was a whole new level of human destruction than he had seen. This baby was innocent of all things and it had been taken from its mother before its time and used for sport. This being was something that he had wanted to be, a young child, with a name, a family, an innocent, to feel love, but he too was broken now. Not like this poor thing, but emotionally. He touched the tiny body with his free hand. It was cold to the touch and not a bone in its body was unbroken. It had been smashed from head to foot, spine to pelvis. The tiny head had even been crushed making it barely recognizable as a human though it had been a tiny female. He sighed. This poor child had suffered much, never to know life, never to know right from wrong, to sin, to know love or even die of old age. It did, however, know hate and pain and that was devastating of all. He looked at the post and again felt bile rise in his throat. It had been smashed against the post as the mother had watched, in horror as her own life ebbed away.
If he ever found who did this, the Creature vowed, he would kill them.
He moved back, following the blood trail back to the woman whose hand the young woman who had asked his help was holding. She was weeping again. The girl's front was crimson with dried blood as though she had desperately tried to save her mother who had likely been dead before she had found her anyway. He closed his eyes.
He was a monster in the eyes of man, but what kind of monsters would so such a thing? It was one thing to execute the men of a home, but it was quite another to torture, rape, and kill a woman and rip the child she bore from her. The kind of monsters these were, were true monsters. The kind who killed for sport or pleasure. The kind who would reanimate a corpse and play God.
He paused. That was a little unfair. He doubted even Frankenstein could stomach this butchery.
He shook his head and then moved, lifting the cold, blood covered body in his arms after placing the tiny being back into the hole in her womb that it had been taken from. His eyes caught the sight of the hay nearby with blood, rope and the hay in the woman's hair made it clear the violence she had endured before she had succumb.
Humans were vicious creatures. They killed as they pleased with no thought to their fellow man.
He moved to the garden, lying the sad corpse down before he dug a fresh grave beside the others, even as it began to rain. He blinked. Even God wept for this mother and child. Once the grave was dug, he laid the woman, who likely had been beautiful before she had lived the hard life of a farmer and borne children to say nothing of the beating she had taken while being raped by who knew how many assailants. There had to be at least three involved to subdue the father and elder brother. Perhaps they had murdered the men and then turned on the lone woman.
He looked back and saw the girl watching him as he continued to cover the grave. It still begged the question how the girl had survived the carnage. Women were the targets of men. The male condition to assert control. The Creature had raped Elizabeth in revenge for what Frankenstein had done, been the first man to be within her and it had been in violence, though he too had been virgin. But these people…what had happened here that such butchery had come to pass?
The girl was shivering with cold as he finished the mound.
She walked forward and dropped to her knees and begun to press bulbs into the earth of the mounds. "Momma loved flowers. She would have loved these. I bought them in the market…" She said, speaking softly and sadly.
The Creature understood her, watching her as she rose to her feet, hands covered in dirt, blood staining her dress and limbs. She was thin and wobbled a little as she moved. He caught her gently by the elbow and noticed she wore a glove on her left hand. She looked at him as she steadied herself. Again there was no malice in her eyes as she lifted a hand to his cheek.
"What did they do to you?" She asked.
He shifted away from the touch, but she was insistent. He finally held still for her as she looked at his face, the sutures, and azure eyes. He locked eyes with her. She seemed to want to know more as she touched the healed scars that still held the stitching.
He blinked and narrowed his eyes, stepping away from her, unused to the kind gentle touch. "Do you have a name child?" He asked slowly in Spanish.
"I am nearly eighteen." She said a little defensively.
"Apologies, Madam…" He said bowing a little sarcastically.
She narrowed her eyes and then swallowed. "Arantzazu." She said.
"Beautiful." He said. "Like the town near here."
"Yes." She cocked her head. "You speak very well."
"Thank you." He said. "But I must go." He turned to leave her, but she caught his arm. He looked at her startled.
"Please. Take me with you."
"The wilds are no place for the likes of you. Go to the town. Be with your people. Your family will care for you."
She looked at him as she blinked a mix of tears and rain from her eyes. "My family is dead, sir. You buried them, bless you." She looked toward the village. "No one will help. The Spanish wanted my family terminated. They served as a warning. The village is in fear."
"But why? What have you done to earn that malice?"
"My father dared to vote against the control of the region." She said simply.
"So they hung your father and brothers, raped your mother, and ripped your sister from her womb because he voted?" He asked. He stepped away blinking. He turned back. "Why were you not killed among them?"
"I was in the forest with the pig getting truffles…my family was a warning against resistance." She looked down. "I am the only one left I have no one." She sighed.
"The wilds are hard."
"There is nothing for me here."
He nodded a little. "Come then." He said. He could at least have a companion, even for a short time. He intended to see her into a village that would take and care for her. She seemed intelligent and she was beautiful even with the slight kink in her nose from a break that did not fully heal properly. Her thick dark hair and olive skin moved him in ways he did not understand.
He moved, walking at his normal pace, satchel over his shoulder as he walked. She trotted to his side and he regarded her. It would not be easy and she would be a social outcast as long as she knew him. Still, he would see no harm came to her and he would care for her. She deserved that much at least. She was a female and men protected their female companions. She had witnessed such atrocities of what man could do to man, she was no doubt as damaged as he was.
She shivered a little, but made no mention of it even though he noticed her arms wrapping about herself. He still could not understand why she looked at him as though she had known him for years even though he was a stranger, a powerful male stranger she knew nothing about, whose ugly visage would likely be her downfall. "Do you have a name?" She asked looking up at him as the rain continued. She paused a moment and he paused with her. "You are clearly an outlander and you have seen much hell, but what are you called?"
He considered that.
Now free of Frankenstein, he could have any name he chose. He could be anyone and live the life as a free man. He would not be nameless anymore and he looked at the gentle face of this woman who did not see him as a monster, but as the man who had helped bring her family to peace.
He swallowed suddenly shy for a moment.
He looked up at the sky as he lifted his head, letting the rain fall on his sutures a moment before he opened his eyes and looked down at her face again. "My name is Adam. Adam Frankenstein."