Will Hill - The Rising

The crew had sent him on his way when they reached port, with a jumper and a pair of overalls that were far too small for his giant frame. But he appreciated the men’s kindness, and their lack of suspicion; he was half-expecting to see the police and the coastguard waiting for him when the ship steamed into Cuxhaven harbour. But the only people on the dock to greet the boat were the crew’s wives and girlfriends, relieved to see their men home safely once more. The crew, who were fishermen born and raised, and had seen a lifetime of strange things at sea, had clearly decided that the huge grey-green man, whom they had hauled from the water as though he was nothing more than a grossly swollen cod, was none of their business.

Frankenstein had walked off the dock with no idea where he was, beyond the rudimentary picture of European geography that Hans had described to him, and no idea where he might go to begin the process of attempting to piece together who he was.

He was completely lost.

As night fell, and the cold wind drew in around him, carrying heavy flakes of snow with it, he had found a group of homeless men and women beneath a bridge on the outskirts of Cuxhaven. They had not welcomed him, nor offered to share their small amount of food, but they had not driven him away either, and had eventually allowed him to huddle round their brazier, and keep the worst of the cold from his bones. The following day he had headed south, away from the sea; he reached the tiny farming hamlet of Gudendorf as night fell, and the full moon rose above him, sickly yellow and swollen in the clear sky.

Suddenly a bolt of agony had burst through his body, driving him to his knees. It felt as though his skin was on fire, as though his bones had been replaced by molten metal, and he screamed up at the moon, as his body began to break. With sickening, agonising crunches, his bones snapped and reset in new shapes. Blood boiled in his veins as thick grey hair sprouted from his skin before his eyes, which had turned a deep, gleaming yellow. His face stretched and lengthened, his teeth bursting from his gums and sharpening into razors, as he fell on to all fours, no longer able to scream; what came from his gaping mouth was a deafening, high-pitched howl.

As the moon shimmered above him and the transformation neared completion, he began to run, shambling forward on four unsteady, newborn legs, then faster and faster, as the last vestiges of his rational self succumbed to the animal that roared in his blood, until he was racing through the dense, snowy forest, towards a distant light and a plume of grey chimney smoke, towards the thick smell of animal fear that drifted through the frozen trees.

The following morning, for the second time in barely a week, Frankenstein had woken up in a strange place, with no memory of how he had arrived there, or what he had done; compounding the strangeness this time was the fact that he was naked, and lying beside a main road.

Mercifully, the road was deserted, as dawn was barely scratching the sky in the east. But even as he looked around in an attempt to get his bearings, the cold of the German winter bit at his naked skin, and he knew he needed to find shelter, quickly. The patch of ground where he had woken up was a circle of damp green grass, the snow thawed away, as though he had been emitting tremendous heat while he slept. He was coated in something sticky, and when he rubbed his hands across his face, they came away streaked with red.

Frankenstein reeled, but then the wind blew hard across him again, and he tried to put the red substance from his mind and concentrate on staying alive. He began to stagger alongside the road, his breath clouding in front of him, towards a gentle slope in the terrain, above which smoke was rising in lazy loops.

Beyond the rise lay a farmhouse, facing away from the road and out over frozen fields and the forest beyond. Frankenstein tried to open the small gate, but his fingers were so cold that they refused to grip; he half-climbed, half-fell over it, his body screaming in pain as he landed in the hard, freezing snow. He staggered towards the house, prepared to risk the likely wrath of whoever it belonged to, knowing that he had to get out of the cold, had to or else he would surely die, when he saw a long washing line strung between the house and a tree that rose from the middle of the garden’s small lawn. He made for it, his feet numb and his grey-green skin now a virulent shade of purple, and hauled clothes down from the line, scattering the pegs on the ground.

Once he was dressed, Frankenstein thumbed a lift in the back of a pick-up truck, burying himself deep beneath a pile of sheepskins, which had carried him as far south as Dortmund. He had spent nearly two weeks in a homeless shelter on Kleppingstraße, only being forced to leave when a kind, nervous woman named Magda had started to take a little too much of a friendly interest in him.

Frankenstein still didn’t know who he was, but he knew that nothing good would have come from encouraging her affection. And so he had left, in the middle of the night, and resumed his journey, following the cargo routes through Germany, looking for something, anything, that might unlock his memory.

Frankenstein watched as Andreas slowly wheeled his truck round, and headed out on to the northbound lane of the road. Behind him were row after row of articulated lorries; huge rigs, eighteen and twenty-two wheeled, their trailers towering above him in the darkness of the parking area. When Andreas’s pick-up had been absorbed into the stream of red lights on the motorway, he made his way through the labyrinth of vehicles towards the diner that lay beyond the filling station.

Jeremy’s was a no-frills kind of place; a simple, greasy, one-storey building, in which Jeremy and his wife Marta sold heaped platefuls of cheap, starchy food to the endless stream of lorry drivers making their way south, to Paris, to Bordeaux, to Spain and Portugal beyond. Most were wired on coffee or amphetamines, and wanted nothing more than something hot to line their stomachs; it was these low expectations that Jeremy and Marta were experts in accommodating.

Frankenstein was not interested in the food, or even the temporary respite from the cold that sitting in one of the café’s linoleum booths would provide. He was only interested in finding a way of continuing his journey, of continuing south. He had no money to offer any of the drivers, and no goods to barter: no drugs, or alcohol, or pornography. There was always a chance that he might find a driver who craved human companionship, who was quietly going crazy at the isolation of being on the road, of the disembodied voices that floated into his cab via CB radio. But it was unlikely; the men who lived this nomadic life did so largely because they wanted as little to do with other human beings as possible.

“Are you a thief?”

The voice was soft, and lilted sweetly on the night air. It seemed to contain no accusation, only curiosity. Frankenstein turned to see the owner of it standing in the shadows between two of the enormous lorries.

It was a little girl, a tiny thing of no more than eight. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, thick, sensible work boots and was holding a small model of a truck in her hand; she was every inch a driver’s daughter. She was frowning at him, staring up at his huge frame, her forehead furrowed.

“I’m not a thief,” Frankenstein replied, lowering his voice. “Are you?”

The little girl smiled, involuntarily, at such a naughty idea, then remembered herself, and frowned again.

“Of course I’m not,” she said, firmly. “This is my daddy’s lorry.” She reached out and touched the wheel of the truck she was standing beside; it was taller than her.

“Where is your daddy?” asked Frankenstein. “You shouldn’t be out here on your own. It’s cold.”