12
In the weeks that came to pass, Greta had tried as hard as she could to forget all about her great-uncle's flawed creation, hiding in that castle high above the town. Waiting there all alone and hoping for her to come back.
It was a painful thought. One which she fought a hard battle to ignore.
Greta buried herself in her school work and scarcely allowed herself a moment to focus on anything else. But almost everything would trigger a memory, or make her think of that unfinished man in the castle again.
Her mother would take a pair of kitchen scissors out of the drawer. Her father would trim the hedges with garden shears. It did not seem to matter where Greta went, the memories followed and plagued her from everywhere.
She had stashed away all of her notes and her great-uncle's books far under her bed, away and out of sight. But sometimes, one of her small, handwritten notes would fall out of her school book and she'd be reminded of everything all over again.
Call it fate, karma, luck…. Or some greater force entirely, Greta was forcibly being reminded of Edward and his home on top of that desolate mountain, every single day.
To the point where she could no longer ignore it.
Despite all the different ways Greta re-read the news headline in her mind, there was nothing about this discovery that she could make any sense of.
She herself had read every page of her great-uncle's notes. The proof of Edward's benevolence was all there, in front of her eyes. He simply had not been made to do harm. It was impossible. He had been given a pure soul and a body that had been meticulously stitched together with nothing but good and loving intentions.
Her ancestor had created a man. And at one time, perhaps that had been true.
But Greta could not completely free herself from the suspicion that over the years, stagnating in his isolation, Edward may have become unstable.
What if his mind had deteriorated into hostility? The urge to kill becoming too great, once discovering how easy it was for him to destroy anything.
Greta had to remind herself frequently that even though he very much acted like it, Edward was not human. He was not a person in the same way that she was. Rather, a mechanical creation with thoughts and instincts that were far different than her own.
And from how little he spoke, there was no way to know exactly what he was thinking at any given moment.
And to think, she had been so quick to help him the other day in the chamber. Would she have done the same, if she knew what she did now?
Had she unknowingly saved the life of a merciless killer?
Even so, there was a part of Greta that desperately wanted to deny it. How could Edward, who had been so frightened at the first sight of her, the same man who had made all of those beautiful hedge animals and ice sculptures, who was so shy and acted so much like a child, be even capable, much less guilty of murder?
Perhaps that boy's death had been an accident. Perhaps not. And Greta was beginning to wonder if it any longer mattered.
She had grown so tired of thinking about this, but her brain could not focus on anything else.
There was nothing to be done about the past. But here, now…in the present, where it was within her ability to do something, Greta realized that she had a very difficult decision to make.
Despite all of her overthinking and ignoring of the problem, something had to be done.
She could call the police. The phone was right there on her desk, mere inches away from her hand.
She could do nothing and simply let the memory of Edward and the castle fade away.
Or she could keep her promise to him.
Her mind dwelled just a little too long on that last possibility, tracing over all of its implications and consequences until she was sick to her stomach with it.
Reaching under her bed, Greta pulled out the largest book. She opened it slowly to the drawings of Edward. All of the stages of his construction neatly displayed in ink on ancient parchment.
She flipped to the last page.
It was Edward: handsome and un-scarred. Shiny and new. He was fully made, complete with regular, human hands.
Greta's eyes began to fill with tears again.