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When the doctor came to move her to her own room—which, it was clear, she would never leave again in this life—her fingers curled around my wrist like a manacle. “This is your family,” she said, her voice rasping as though she had swallowed a live coal. The same coal burned with imagined red light in the intensity of her gaze. I realized she was not, finally, declaring me a true part of the family. She was assigning them to me as a burden lifted from her shoulders and deposited onto my own. “Victor…is…your…responsibility.”
The doctor and Judge Frankenstein carried her from my bed. Her head lolled to the side so her eyes could watch me the entire time as they bore her away. I pushed out of the bed and away from the ghost of Madame Frankenstein already taking residence there, though she yet lived.
Sliding against the hallway walls for support, I stumbled to Victor’s room. I found him, there, barricaded in amidst a fortress of books. His candle was burned low; his clothes, usually so meticulous, were dirty and in a state of disarray. His bed, unslept in, now functioned as a desk and bookshelf in one.
“Victor,” I whispered, my voice not yet healed from long disuse.
He looked up, eyes unnaturally bright in contrast to the dark and hollow space around them. “I had to save you,” he said, blinking as though seeing me and not seeing me at once.
“I am better.”
“But you will not always be. Someday death will claim you. And I will not allow it.” His eyes narrowed, and his voice trembled with fury and determination. “You are mine, Elizabeth Lavenza, and nothing will take you from me. Not even death.”
* * *
—
“You forgot Victor’s new clothes,” Mary said, her lips pursed and her clever eyes examining my disheveled and breathless state. It was well past dark now.
I laughed, putting a hand to my head where my hat was askew due to the missing pin. “I could not find a shop in time. They were all closed, and then I got lost in an unfamiliar part of town. I have been wandering ever since! I am simply exhausted.”
Nodding, but showing little sympathy, Mary showed me to my room.
I waited several sleepless hours, until I judged it was time for the second half of this night’s unsavory activities. I longed for sleep. Longed to close my eyes and forget all I had seen and done. But I could not. Victor still needed me.
The clock in Mary’s sitting room showed just past one in the morning when I slipped out, carrying the supply of oil I had stolen from her closet.
The city had an entirely different character at night. Streetlamps were few and far between, and the buildings seemed great hulking beasts at night, watching with black eyes that reflected myself back at me. It would be so easy to disappear here. To wander into the dark and never be seen again.
I hurried, my cloak drawn around me with the hood up. I felt pursued at every step, constantly checking over my shoulder. But I was alone. I paused at the gatehouse, shrinking further into my cloak and eyeing the doors warily. No sounds greeted me. The entire world was silent, as though holding its breath to see what I would do.
The journey over the river, which during the rainy day had been unremarkable, felt like crossing a bridge to another world. A few of the boats had torches burning, so that it looked like portions of the jet-black river were on fire. Like the river Styx, a passageway directly to hell.
Shivering, I moved faster. I needed this night to be over, this last task accomplished. Once it was, I would be safe. At last I came to Victor’s residence. I would not call it a home. It was nothing of the sort. I lifted my hand to turn the knob—
The door was slightly ajar. I was certain I had closed it all the way when we left. Had I? I had been so eager to get Mary out and away from further exploration….And Justine had been talking to me….Maybe I had not waited for it to latch. I nudged it open with my foot, not daring to light my lamp. But there was no other light inside. The trapdoor above my head was firmly shut. I peered into Victor’s living quarters. The stove was still cold. I used one of my matches to light it, closing the flue and leaving the oven door open. Then I turned and—
A man loomed out of the darkness.
A shriek of terror left my mouth. Lashing out, I swung my container of oil into him. He toppled with a wooden clatter. The hat that had been atop the hatstand rolled away from me.
“Damn you, Victor,” I whispered. I had not noticed the hatstand during my earlier trip, being quite preoccupied. I picked up the hat and was hit with a shock of recognition even in the dark. I knew this hat.
It was Henry’s. I had purchased it for him, just before he left for Ingolstadt. I ran my fingers around the brim, feeling the velvet softness in contrast to the stiff shape of it. So Henry had found Victor when Victor was already living here. He had to have seen the madness taking hold. And still he had left.
Angry tears burned. He had left Victor, and he had left me. I did not know which betrayal hurt worse. Part of me, too, hated him for being able to decide to just leave. Some of us did not have that option, and never would.
I dropped the hat and poured some of the oil on it. I made a trail around the borders of the room until every last drop was emptied. Then I pushed Victor’s table into its path, as well as his wooden bed. I found more oil next to his stove and added that, soaking the bedsheets while I waited for the stove to heat up.
Finally, I went into the hall and draped the bedsheets on the ladder.
Back in the living quarters, I lit a match and dropped it onto Henry’s unfaithful hat. It burst into flames, which moved with liquid grace along the lines of oil on the floor. The heat was sudden and intense. I had done my job well. I backed out of the room, letting my eyes linger on Victor’s time here being erased.
No one would ever know what he had studied, how far down the path of his madness he had been allowed to stumble alone.
I lit the bedsheets and watched the fire climb the ladder to the trapdoor. Then I shut the front door behind me. No one would see the fire until it had overtaken the second floor. By then it would be too late to salvage anything. I backed up to the edge of the stone wall lining the steep riverbank and waited. I wanted to see the fire claim the horrors of his laboratory. I had to be sure.
It did not take long. Soon there was a glow, and then a brilliant, explosive burst that blew out the windows. I ducked as glass rained down around me. Whatever chemicals had soaked into the floor up there, they did not mix well with fire.
