Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“It is an engine. The engine of my work.”

“The devil’s work, is it?”

“It is nothing to do with the devil. I can assure you of that.”

“Well, it is all one to me.”

Then Miller took out a knife, and cut the cords that bound the tops of the sacks. An arm fell from one of them and, taking hold of it, he pulled out the rest. It was an adult male, as I had requested, but one who had suffered some injury to his chest. It had caved in, and the ribs were broken. “This one is damaged,” I said.

“Perfect specimens are hard to find. But look at this one.” Boothroyd then took the body from the second sack. It was of a young male in a very good state of repair and preservation; he looked as if he had died quite suddenly, and there was an expression of ghastly terror upon his face.

“This is good,” I said. “Excellent. Where did you find him?”

“We found him where he fell.”

I did not wish to know more. “Would you be so kind as to place one of them here. And one here.” I gestured towards the two long wooden tables. “Be careful with the frame of this one. His ribs are loose.”

“He is a genuine rattle-bag,” Miller said.

I paid them at once, eager to begin work, and arranged that they would return with a similar cargo one week later. They departed willingly enough, and I suspect that the terrible expression on the young man’s face had subdued even their spirits. “Will you be needing them sacks?” Boothroyd asked me.

“I have no further use for them. But you will be needing them again, I think.”

So they returned to their boat, and I waited on the landing stage until they had drifted out into the dark water. I noticed on my return that there was a curious smell in the room, similar to that of damp umbrellas or burned rags, and I was concerned lest a state of putrefaction would soon set in. I decided to begin work upon the damaged specimen, in case of some early blunder on my part. So I proceeded quickly to prepare it, washing it first with a solution of chloride of lime. It smelled fresher then. Then I took the precaution of fastening the subject to the table by means of a long leather strap. I had already decided to attach the metal clasps to the neck, the wrists, and the ankles, where the vital motions of the body are most exercised; the voltaic current was to be transmitted by means of thin metal wires that would not impede movement. The engines were ready, with their great strips of zinc and brass separated by pasteboard soaked in salt water. I had primed the batteries, and placed the conductor at both ends. All was in readiness for the creation of the spark that might light a new world.

The apparatus hummed with its own internal motion, and I noticed a slight quivering in the wires; it seemed to me then that the electrical machines had become living things. Their power increased, as each galvanic pile was affected, and I was aware of Hayman’s injunction not to test their power to excess. But I was exhilarated beyond measure at the spectacle of such energy unleashed before me. The body began to tremble violently. In the fitful light of the oil-lamp it cast a strange shadow upon the floor. I stepped over to it, and with a certain reluctance touched the arm. It seemed to be increasing in warmth. The head began to toss from side to side, as if the corpse were fighting to find its breath, but then the struggle subsided. The body relapsed into deathly stillness. It was once more quite cold.

I walked away for one moment, to examine the machines, when I heard a sudden movement behind me. My first thought was for the blunderbuss. I turned quickly, and let out an involuntary cry of surprise-the dead man’s hands had moved over the deep rift in his chest. By some strange instinct he had wished to touch the source of his extinction. This was a moment of revelation, suggesting to me that there was some power of will or instinct that could survive the death of the body. I had been touched by the lightning flash. I had triumphed. But even then I tried to restrain my overwhelming sense of excitement. Could it perhaps have been some involuntary motion of the muscles that the man had been prevented from performing at the time? Had this been the gesture he had been unable to make?

I was wary of approaching the body, in case of some new and unexpected motion, but I knew that my work depended upon expedition and iron will. I unstrapped the wires from the first subject, and applied them to the second. The discharge of electrical energy seemed to have done no injury to the frame, and I was quite sanguine about the effects on the second and more perfectly preserved corpse. I inwardly delighted, too, that no harm had come to the physical specimen, thus allowing me the opportunity for more experiment.

I charged up the batteries once more, and produced the spark with very little pressure upon the conductors. There was a jolt in the second body as if, so to speak, it had sprung to attention. Then again all was quiet. I attempted a second discharge, and the body stirred again-on this occasion with a more active and anxious motion. I detected some secondary movement in the fingers of his hands that seemed to tremble with the force of the excitation: I admit that my own hands were trembling, too. I charged the wires for a third time, but there was no consequent disturbance of the body. I was about to investigate further, and approached the specimen, when a most desolate and horrible shriek emerged from the mouth. It was the sound of some cursed demon, lost in the pit of hell, and I froze with the noise echoing around me. It was enough to wake the dead-except that the dead had already been awoken.

When I looked down at the body, fearful of what I might see, I observed that the expression of horror had disappeared and that the young man’s visage seemed entirely at peace.

Had that terrible cry released his suffering? If it were possible that the agony and horror of his last moments had somehow been confined within his body, then it was also possible that the shock of the electrical fluid had expelled the suffering spirit-or soul-I know not the word for such a momentous change. Could the corpse have been literally suffering its last agony until it was released by my agency? And then I was struck by a further revelation. The vocal cords had survived death.

I embarked upon other electrical experiments with the two subjects, and there were at first no further arousals. It appeared to me that the bodies, having performed their final delayed actions, had relapsed into stillness. Yet I could be certain of nothing. I took a large surgical knife and proceeded to remove the frontal bone of the cranium from the head of the second subject; then, with a compact saw, I cut away the uppermost portion of the dome until I could observe the anterior and posterior lobes of the cranium. The most absurd image then occurred to me-that of slicing the pie-crust from the pie-but I was so intent upon my work that I scarcely had time for any reflections. I then prepared an experiment that I had previously sketched out in my written notes. I placed strips of zinc and brass over the exposed skull, so that they touched the lobes. Then I applied the charge. The effect upon the brain was immediate; of the four lobes, only one seemed able to receive the delicate impress of the electrical current, and I have since named it the electric lobe. It had an immediate effect on the muscles of the body that, if it had not been strapped down, might have been tempted to rise up and walk. The whole frame was invaded by a violent trembling that, as I was astonished to discover, continued for several minutes after I had turned off the current.

To my utmost surprise and horror I then began to observe some contortions of the face. The eyes rolled, and the lips parted; the nostrils flared, and the entire expression seemed to be one of enmity mixed with despair. These were of course the accidents of physiognomy, but at that moment I could have sworn that the corpse strapped to the table was displaying to me all the viciousness of hatred and all the burden of melancholy desolation. Eventually the movements ceased and the face resumed its lifeless shape. But I was so shaken by the phenomenon that I was obliged to walk out beside the river in order to calm myself.