Harry Harrison - At Last, the True Story of Frankenstein

And here, before your very eyes, is the very same monster built by my much admired great-great grandfather, Victor Frankenstein, built by him from pieces of corpses out of the dissecting rooms, stolen parts of bodies freshly buried in the grave, and even chunks of animals from the slaughterhouse. Now look!"

The tailcoated man on the platform swung his arm out in a theatrical gesture and the heads of the close-packed crowd below swung to follow it. The dusty curtains flapped aside and the monster stood there, illuminated from above by a sickly green light.

There was a concerted gasp from the crowd and a shiver of motion.

In the front row, pressed against the rope barrier, Dan Bream mopped his face with a soggy handkerchief and smiled. It wasn't such a bad monster, considering that this was a cheapjack carnival playing the small town southern circuit. It had a dead white skin, undampened by sweat even in this steam bath of a tent, glazed eyes, stitches and seams showing where the face had been patched together. Plus the two metal plugs projecting from the temples just like in the movie.

"Raise your right arm!"

Victor Frankenstein the fifth commanded, his brusque German accent giving the words a Prussian air of authority. The monster's body did not move but slowly-with the jerking motion of a badly operating machine - the creature's arm came up to shoulder height and stopped.

"This monster, built from pieces from the dead, cannot die, and if a piece gets too worn out I simply stitch on a new shtick with the secret formula passed down from father to son from my great-great grandfather. It cannot die nor feel pain, as you can see."

This time the gasp was even louder and some of the audience turned away while others watched with eager eyes. The barker had produced a foot long and wickedly sharp needle-which he then pushed firmly through the monster's biceps until it protruded on both sides. No blood stained it and the creature made no motion, as though completely unaware that anything had been done to its flesh.

". . . impervious to pain, extremes of heat and cold, possessing the strength often men . . . ."

Behind him the voice droned on, but Dan Bream had had enough. He had seen the performance three times before, which was more than enough times for him to find out all he needed to know. It was incredibly hot; if he stayed in the tent another minute, he would melt. The exit was close by and he pushed through the gaping, pallid audience and out into the humid dusk. It wasn't much cooler outside.

Life borders on the unbearable along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in August; Panama City, Florida, was no exception. Dan headed for the nearest air-conditioned beer joint and sighed with relief as the chill atmosphere closed around his steaming garments. The beer bottle frosted instantly with condensation, as did the heavy glass stein, cold from the freezer. The first big swallow cut a path straight down to his stomach.

He took the beer over to one of the straight-backed wooden booths, wiped the table off with a handful of paper napkins and flopped onto the bench. From the inner pocket of his jacket he took some folded sheets of yellow copy paper now slightly soggy, and spread them before him. After adding some lines to the scribbled notes he stuffed them back into his jacket and took a long pull on his beer.

Dan was halfway through his second bottle when the barker, who called himself Frankenstein the Fifth, came in. His stage personality had vanished along with the frock coat and monocle; the Prussian haircut now looked like a common crewcut.

"You've got a great act," Dan called out cheerfully as he waved the man over. "Will you join me for a drink?"

"Don't mind if I do,' Frankenstein answered in the pure nasal vowels of New York City, the German accent having disappeared along with the monocle. "And see if they have a Schlitz or a Bud or anything else beside local swamp water."

He settled into the booth while Dan went for the beers and groaned when he saw the labels on the bottles.

"At least it's cold," he said, shaking salt into his to make it foam, then half drained the stein in a long deep swallow.

"I noticed you out there in front of the clems for most of the shows today. Do you like the act or you a carny buff?"

"It's a good act. I'm a newsman, name's Dan Bream."

"Always pleased to meet the Press, Dan. Publicity is the life of show business, as the man said. I'm Stanley Arnold: call me Stan."

"Then Frankenstein is just your stage name?"

"What else? You act kinda dim for a reporter, are you sure?"

He waved away the Press card that Dan pulled out from his breast pocket. "No, I believe you, Dan. But you gotta admit the question was a little on the rube side. I bet you even think that I have a real monster in there!"

"Well, you must admit that he looks authentic. The skin stitched together that way, those plugs in his head."

"Held on with spirit gum and the embroidery is drawn on with eyebrow pencil.

That's show business for you, all illusion. But I'm happy to hear that the act even looked real to an experienced reporter like yourself. What paper did you say you were with?"

"No paper, the news syndicate. I caught your act about six months ago and became interested. Did a little checking when I was in Washington, then followed you down here. You don't really want me to call you Stan, do you?

Stein might be closer. After all, Victor Frankenstein is the name on your naturalization papers."

"Tell me more," Frankenstein said in a voice suddenly cold and emotionless.

Dan riffled through the yellow sheets. "Yes . . . here it is, from the official records. Frankenstein, Victor, born Geneva, Switzerland, arrived in the U.S. in 1938, and more of the same."

"Come on guy-the next thing you'll be telling me is that my monster is real!" Frankenstein smiled, but only with his lips, a quick and insincere movement.

"I'm betting that it is. No yogi training or hypnotism or such can make a man as indifferent to pain as that thing is - and as terribly strong. I want the real story, the truth for a change!"

"Do you... ?" Frankenstein asked in a cold voice and for a long moment the air filled with tension. Then he laughed and clapped the reporter on the arm. "All right Dan, I'll give it to you. You are a persistent devil and a good reporter and it is the least you deserve. But first you must get us some more drink, something that is a measurable degree stronger than this execrable beer."

His New York accent had disappeared as easily as had his German one; he spoke English now with skill and perfection, without a recognizable regional accent.

Dan gathered their empty glasses. "It'll have to be beer - this is a dry county."

"Nonsense! This is America, the land that raises hands in horror at the foreign conception of double-think - yet practices it with an efficiency that sets the Old World to shame. Bay County may be officially dry but the law has many itchy palms.

Under that counter you will find a reasonable supply of a clear liquid that glories in the name of White Mule and is reputed to have a kick of the same magnitude as its cognate beast. If you are still in doubt you will see a framed federal liquor license on the far wall, legitimatizing this endeavor in the eyes of the national government. Simply place a five dollar bank note on the bar, say Mountain Dew, and do not expect any change."

After they both had enjoyed their first sips of the corn likker, Victor Frankenstein sighed happily and lapsed into a friendly mood. "Call me Vic, Dan. I want us to be friends. Because I'm going to tell you a story that few have heard before, a story that is astounding but true. True, mark that word, not a hodgepodge of distortions and half-truths-or outright ignorance like that vile book produced by Mary Godwin. Oh how my father ever regretted meeting that woman and, in moment of weakness, confiding in her the secret of some of his original lines of research . . . ."

"Just a minute," Dan broke in. "You mentioned the truth but I can't swallow this guff. Mary Godwin Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818. Which would make you and your father so old . . . ."

"Please, Dan, no interruptions. I mentioned my father's researches, in the plural you will note. All of them devoted to the secrets of life. The Monster, as it has come to be called, was just one of his works. Longevity was what he was really interested in, and he did live to be a very, very old age. As will I. Nor will I stretch your credulity any further at this moment by mentioning the year of my birth. Let us press on. That Mary Godwin! She and the poet were living together at this period, they had not married as yet, and this fact permitted my father to hope that the lovely Mary might someday find him not unattractive. You must understand that he was smitten, was quite taken by her.

Well, you can easily imagine the end. She made notes of everything he told her, then discarded him and used the notes to construct her despicable book. Her errors are legion, listen . . .'

He leaned across the booth and once again clapped Dan on the shoulder in a hearty way. It was an intimate gesture that the reporter did not particularly enjoy. Still, he did not complain. Nor would he as long as the man kept on talking.

"Firstly she made Papa a Swiss; he used to tear his hair out at the thought, since ours is a good old Bavarian family with a noble and ancient lineage.

Then she had him attending the University of Ingolstadt in Ingolstadt - when every schoolboy knows that it was moved to Landshut in 1800. And father's personality, what crimes she committed there! In this libelous volume he is depicted as a weeping and ineffectual man - when in reality he was a tower of strength and determination. And if this isn't enough, she completely misunderstood the meaning of his experiments.

Her gimcrack collection of cast-off parts, sewn together to make an artificial man is completely ludicrous. She was so carried away by the legends of Talos and the Golem that she misinterpreted my father's work and cast it into that ancient mold. Father did not construct an artificial man, he re-activated a dead man! T

hat, you must understand, is the measure of his genius. He had traveled for years in the darkest reaches of the African jungle, learning the lore of the creation of the zombie. He regularized the knowledge and improved upon it until he had surpassed all of his aboriginal teachers. Raise the dead, that is what he could do. That was is secret - and how can it be kept a secret in the future, Mr. Dan Bream?"

With these last words Victor Frankenstein's eyes opened wide and a strange light seemed to glow in their depths. Dan pulled back instinctively, then relaxed. He was in no danger here in this brightly lit room with men on all sides of them.

"Afraid, Dan? You should not be." Victor smiled and reached out and patted Dan on the shoulder once again.

"What was that?" Dan asked, startled at the tiny brief pain in his shoulder.

"Why, nothing - absolutely nothing - except this." Frankenstein smiled again, but the smile had changed subtly and no longer contained even the slightest trace of any humor. He opened his hand to reveal a small hypodermic needle, its plunger pushed down and its barrel empty.

"Remain seated," he said quietly when Dan started to rise. Dan's muscles instantly relaxed and he sat back down horrified.

"What have you done to me?"

"Very little. The injection is harmless. A hypnotic drug the effect of which will wear off in a few hours. But until then you will not have much will of your own. So you will sit and hear me out. Drink some beer as well since we don't want you to be thirsty."

Horrified, Dan was a helpless onlooker as, of its own volition, his hand raised and poured a measure of beer down his throat.

"Now concentrate Dan, think of the significance of my statement. The so-called Frankenstein monster is no stitched up collection of scraps, but a good honest zombie. A dead man who can walk but not talk, obey but not think. Animate - but still quite dead. Poor old Charley is a zombie, the creature whom you watched going through his act on the platform. But Charley is just about worn out.

Since he's dead he cannot replace the body cells that are destroyed during the normal wear and tear of the day. Why the fellow is like an animated pincushion from the act, holes everywhere. His feet are terrible, not a toe left, they keep breaking off when he walks too fast. I think it's time to retire Charley. He has had a long life, and a long death. Stand up Dan."

In spite of his mind crying No! No! Dan rose slowly to his feet. Victor smiled and nodded approval.

"Aren't you interested in what Charley used to do before he became a sideshow monster? You should be, Dan. Old Charley was a reporter - just like you. And he uncovered what he thought was a really good story. Like you, he didn't realize the importance of what he had discovered and talked to me about it.

You reporters are very inquisitive - I must show you my scrapbook one day, it's simply filled with Press cards. Show it to you before you die of course. You wouldn't be able to appreciate it afterwards. Now come along."

Dan walked after him, into the hot night, screaming inside in a haze of terror, yet walking quietly and silently down the street.