Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“But energy can be joyous,” Bysshe said. “An infant laughs, does it not?”

“The infant is experiencing life,” I replied. “That is all. It has neither virtue nor vice. It laughs or cries on an instinct. Instinct does not possess qualities.”

At that moment there was a peal of thunder. Bysshe laughed. “You have the elements on your side, Victor. They applaud you. The season of darkness begins.”

“The thunder is electrical too, is it not?” Mary asked me. She was taking up the kettle with a cloth, and pouring the boiling water into a pot. “How is the energy of nature to be distinguished from the electrical force within the body?”

“It is not. It is not different in essentials. It animates all matter. Even the stones in the garden can be electrified.”

“We are surrounded by it, then?”

“I am afraid so. Yes.”

“Why be afraid?” Byron asked me. “What is there to fear in the primal nature of the world?”

It had grown quite dark, and Lizzie busied herself with lighting candles. It was a large drawing room, stretching from the front to the back of the house, and some portions of it were still in shadow. “On such a night as this,” Bysshe told us, “we must amuse ourselves after dinner by telling stories of elves and demons. If there is a lightning storm, so much the better.”

The cook, who came with the house, prepared a meal of veal and boiled cabbage; it was a favourite of the region, but it was not so much relished by our English poets. They complained of too much butter and of pepper in the sauce. We settled down comfortably enough after dinner, however, and Byron brought down from his room a collection of German tales translated into English. He told us that they were all of a wonderfully morbid and eerie nature, coming under the general title of Fantasmagoriana . By the light of the candles, placed on either side of his chair, he began reading one of them aloud. But then he threw the book aside. “This is all very well,” he said. “But it is not the thing. The genuine article. What I mean is this. We must tell our own stories on these dark nights. We must entertain ourselves-with truths, with inventions, what you wish. They will be a wonderful accompaniment to the storms.” He turned to Bysshe. “That is, if you can endure-”

“Oh, yes. I am not of a nervous disposition. I am perfectly happy to take part.”

It was agreed between us that, over the next two or three days, each of us would prepare a tale of terror which would then be read aloud. I retired to my room, that night, in a state of some perplexity. I had one tale that would fill them with horror, strike them to the root, but how could I narrate the history of the last months without my heart beating violently as a testament to its truth? I would seem to them an accursed thing, a manic or an outcast-it would not matter which. No, it could not be done. So at breakfast on the following morning I excused myself from the collective task. “I am not a poet,” I told Bysshe. “I am not a writer of tales. I am a mere mechanic and experimenter. I cannot divine the secrets of the soul.”

“You criticise yourself unjustly,” he replied. “The great experimenters are poets in their way. They are travellers in unknown realms. They explore the limits of the world.”

“But not in words, Bysshe. That is where I will fail.”

Mary had been listening intently. “I have the words,” she said. “I have thought of a story. I remained in the drawing room last night, after you had retired, when all at once it came to me as an idea far more powerful than any reverie. A sequence of images rose up before me, unbidden-”

“I know that sensation,” Bysshe said.

“In the first of them some pale student of unhallowed arts was kneeling beside a man stretched out, but yet it was not a man at all-”

At this moment Byron entered the room. “Have I missed the cutlets?” he asked Lizzie, who was standing behind Mary’s chair. “Be a good girl and rescue one for me from the kitchen.” He sat down beside Bysshe. “Where is the good Dr. Polidori?”

“He has not risen,” I replied. “Fred tells me that he heard him snoring.”

“Only if he put his ear to the door, I suspect. Fred is incorrigible.”

At that instant Polidori came into the room. His shirt was crumpled and his waistcoat undone. “You have not washed your face, Polidori,” Byron said in greeting. “Good day to you.”

“I am late, I’m afraid. I spent half the night in thought.”

“Thought of what?” Bysshe asked him.

“Of a horror.” He looked at me for a moment.

“This is for our feast of stories, I take it?” Mary was also looking at me strangely.

“I think it may be too dreadful to be told.”

“Oh?”

“Have you ever been in the process of thought-or even of a dream-when a face emerges in front of you? A frightful face. Full of terror and malevolence. And at the sight of that face all your most secret and intense fears spring up-the fear of death, the fear of what might happen after death, the fear of fear itself, all those sensations converge upon this malignant face.”

“That is all?” Byron asked him.

“No. Not all. I have a story.”

“Go on.”

“I call it ‘The Vampire.’”

“You have a good beginning,” Byron said. “But do you have a middle and an end?”

“I have set it along the romantic coastline of Whitby. Does anyone know of it?”

“There was a synod there,” Mary said. “The abbess Hilda.”

“Precisely so. The abbey church is perched upon steep cliffs. The rocks below are treacherous, the foam of the beating sea striking high up the stone sides of the cliffs. I have seen it. There, one dark night at the end of the last century, a schooner was making its perilous way among the rough waves. There was a tempest raging, and every dwelling in Whitby was bolted with the windows barred and locked. So no one saw the vessel coming closer and closer to the rocks. Then one great wave lifted the boat higher than before; it reared up on the turbulent sea, and then with a sigh of agony it settled on the rocks at the base of the cliff. There it was suspended, shivering like some wounded thing.

“At the break of day, after the tempest had subsided, the cry of shipwreck went up. The inhabitants of Whitby gathered eagerly on the clifftops and looked down upon their prize; some ropes were lowered and the young men of the town clambered down upon the deck of the broken and beleaguered vessel. There was no crew to be found. There was no captain, or purser, or first mate. The ship was deserted. They reported only one remarkable find. Four coffins had been lashed to the main deck with strong ropes and twine. They had been fastened so securely that they had survived the storm and the shipwreck. Truly this was a ship of the dead. The coffins were taken on a pilot boat to the little harbour, where they were laid in a row upon the shore-”

“Enough!” Byron cried out. “You are all substance and no style. It is too wearisome.”

I sensed that Polidori was enraged, yet he remained to all outward appearance quite composed. I had laughed, and he gave me a look of such malevolence that I should have been warned. “When one of the coffins was opened,” he went on, “there was a voice crying out, ‘What more do you want from us?’”

At this moment Bysshe shrieked and ran out of the room. Mary followed him in consternation. She called out to us for assistance, and, on entering the room, we found Bysshe stretched out on the carpet in a dead faint. With much presence of mind Polidori, bringing in a jug from the breakfast table, poured ale over his face. This revived him a little. “I have a restorative,” Polidori then said to Mary. “Pray give me your handkerchief.” He fetched a small case from his room and, taking out a bottle of green liquid, applied the contents to the handkerchief. He put it against Bysshe’s nose; to our great surprise Bysshe then sneezed, and sat upright. “I am sorry to have caused such commotion,” he said. “The truth is-I had an experience very similar to that which Polidori has just told us!” He raised himself from the carpet, and grasped Mary’s hand. “Shall we go back to the dining room?” he asked us calmly enough. “I am quite recovered.” We resumed our seats and Bysshe, his composure fully restored, told us his story.