Anton Strout

Simon Canderous - The Fourteenth Virtue

(from the anthology by Martin H Greenberg, The Dimension Next Door)

“I guess I don’t so much mind being old as I mind being fat, dead and old,” said the dried humanoid husk, pausing to catch its breath on the villa’s stairs that led down into the catacombs. If an evil undead creature was capable of catching its breath, that is. I leaned against the wall of the stairway to the Villa Diodati’s catacombs, thankful for the respite myself. Forty-six was far too old for an agent of the Fraternal Order of Goodness to be chasing down the evil undead, especially if that agent was a research archivist like myself.

Evil radiated from the necromancer like a fire in the dead of winter. Yes, I had dealt with hunting the undead and every other manner of curiosity for all my natural life, but to finally catch up to him after all these years was on par with discovering the lost city of Atlantis or Shangri-la.

“My name is Thaniel Graydon,” I said with a mix of fascination and horror in my voice. “And your unnatural life ends here, necromancer.”

“I would prefer that you refer to me as Mr. Franklin or Benjamin if you must,” the creature said, sounding holier than thou. “That title is such an ugly moniker and perhaps the least of the ones I earned in my lifetime.”

My instructor from Opening Threats would have at how pedestrian my declaration must have sounded, but given the dire circumstances, I was just happy to have gotten it out at all in his presence.

The moment F.O.G. had caught the rumor of the necromancer’s existence, they’d sent their foremost expert on it—me—out into the field, running me ragged in singular pursuit. The modern marvel of Pierre Andriel’s steam-powered vessel had carried me safely (if somewhat queasily) out of New York Harbor, and within weeks I’d tracked the rumored creature to this Cologny villa just outside Lake Geneva. My life’s study culminated in this hunt, and I could hardly believe that I was finally standing here face-to-face with the creature. I was terrified.

Somewhat rested, I pushed myself off the wall and started closing in on the foul thing only to have it raise one of its hands in surrender. We were trapped far beneath the villa with nowhere left to run, and the creature seemed to sense this. I held my torch up to get a better look at him in the clinging darkness.

Despite his years of decay, I could still see hints of the human he had once been, but I had to look extra hard. The long gray hair that ran in a crescent around the back of its head was now snarled and matted with mud. His garb was at least thirty years out of date, and it hung off his pear-shaped torso in tatters of cloth that had long gone a muted brown with age. The stench of the dead that came off his body was overpowering in the confines of this subterranean staircase, but I did my best to hide my discomfort. Thankfully the burning pitch-soaked rags from the torch helped mask the malodorous scent.

The creature started slowly down the stairs with a defeated resolve, beckoning me to follow. I did so but with a healthy dose of reluctance, surprised when he led me past the stone caskets of the catacombs and into a small furnished chamber that resembled a lonely writer’s garret. The creature gestured me toward a table in the center of the

room that was covered with books and loose scraps of parchment. Its chair slid away from it at his command.

“What sort of trick is this?” I asked, feeling both heady and confused in my moment of triumph. Did it actually think I was going to sit down and leave myself defenseless?

The creature shook its head.

“No trick, human,” the walking corpse of Benjamin Franklin said, “but if I am to be destroyed, I would first have you set the record straight where it concerns my life. My good friend John Adams once said that I was ‘more esteemed and beloved than Newton, Leibniz or Voltaire.’ I would prefer to keep matters that way if possible. Now sit.”

His words held power in them, and despite my reluctance and fear, I felt compelled to sit. I found an empty sconce along the wall and slid my torch into it, then did as he bid, sitting down at the table. The creature flicked its wrist. The table’s oil lamp blazed to life and pressed back the cloying darkness of the room. The creature reached toward the table and pulled a blank moleskin notebook free from the clutter and offered it to me. Despite my unease, I took it without hesitation.

When this creature had been alive, my respect for him had been enormous. My life’s pursuit had been to set all manner of his arcane knowledge straight for our archives, and right now I felt excitement at this long-awaited prospect. If things went well, I would finally be able to transform conjecture into testimonial fact and earn a place of respect and note among my fellow archivists in the Fraternal Order. I was shaking so badly I could barely pull the quill from its nearby inkwell as I attempted to make room on the tabletop to write. Whether it was excitement or a bit of fear, I didn’t know.

After all my years of study, I hadn’t come unprepared. I reached into the bag hanging from my shoulder and pulled out sheaves of parchment I had “borrowed” from the Order’s archives. I flipped through the loose pages. Some of them had been worn or torn by time, and most of them had been written by unfamiliar hands much older than mine.

I raised one closer to the oil lamp and read from it, always keeping one wary eye on the creature.

“It says here you were born in 1706 or 1705, depending on how you reckon it by calendar,” I said.

Franklin gave a chuckle, pulled his glasses free from his face and wiped them clean with the edge of his tattered coat. He fit them back on his face, dirtier than they had been before, but it was no matter—he had no eyes left in the sockets to speak of. I waited for him to settle down into the chair opposite me, partly out of courtesy but mostly out of fear for my own life. Despite his manners, I reminded myself that I was still in the presence of evil.

Franklin chuckled again.

“Is something funny about that?” I asked, then quickly added, “Sir?”

“If I’m not, mistaken, it’s 1818 now, yes? It’s hard to tell after so much time… that would make me surprisingly lively for a man of one hundred and twelve years of age,” he said. “I’m in the prime of my senility!”

He continued chuckling to himself. Pretty jovial for the damned, I thought. I looked back down at my papers, grateful to be avoiding those dead sockets of his, and reread them. “That’s what the record shows, anyway. Of course they also wrote that you died in 1790.”

The creature snorted. “Don’t you think I know when I died, son?”

Something buglike scuttled out through his nostril and across his cheek and then disappeared into the tangle of his long gray hair. The creature settled back into the chair opposite me and said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. Well, taxes anyway…”

“Sorry,” I said, quick to apologize. I hadn’t been expecting to engage it in a dialog and figured it was better to act as civilly as I could. The creature was congenial enough now, but who knew what might set off its evil ways againWhat price had this man paid for so long a stay on God’s earth? I had to find out. The creature seated before me was a result of a life pulled far too thin by powers I had barely begun studying in the Order, powers that I’d rather not think of. I tapped the excess ink from my quill against the rim of the well and flipped open the notebook.

“Shall we begin?”

The creature nodded.

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten,” the rotting corpse said, quoting himself again, “either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing.”

He held up both of his bony hands. Neither of them possessed a complete set of fingers. A chill ran down my back and a dark smile crept across his face.

“Since I seem incapable of performing the simple task of setting quill to page, I suppose you will have to do. Before destroying me, of course.”

He seemed to be taking this rather well, all things considered.

“Naturally,” I said. I lowered the tip of my quill to the blank page before me and started writing.

“The secret history of our United States is dark material indeed,” the extremely elder statesman said. “And of the greater body of historians and their books, not a one it tells the true tale.”

Even given his advanced necrotic state, Benjamin Franklin cut an imposing figure.

I ran my quill through a few of the historical pages I had brought with me.

“We’ve done extensive research,” I said, “on mankind’s transgressions into the arcane arts, and one common thread has run through the last century: They all seem to prominently feature one of our most senior and well respected statesmen. You, sir.”

I sensed a smile on his decaying face, but it was difficult to tell for sure.

The creature coughed dryly, a rattling rising from its chest. I guessed this passed for laughter, but the sound of it alone made me want to flee in terror. Maybe another agent of the Fraternal Order of Goodness would have fared better, one who hadn’t dedicated his life to the pursuit of this one man, one who wouldn’t be taking this task on with so much gravitas mixed with terror. Hoping to settle myself, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“You try living over a century and see what polymathic accolades you garner,” Franklin said.

I stopped writing and looked up.

“Polymathic?” I said, cocking my head slightly. “Forgive me… I’m not familiar with the term.”

“From the Greek, I believe,” he started, and his voice changed. There was an inherent power when he spoke, and I could hear why people had listened intently to his every word when he was alive. “Meaning ‘having learned much.’ I have an encyclopedic knowledge of a variety of subjects. Diplomat, printer, author, activist, scientist, inventor…”

He tapped his decaying index finger at the glasses he was wearing.

“And the study of something a little more … sinister?” I added.

He nodded and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his legs and rested his hands daintily on his knees. It was such a dainty gesture from so grotesque a creature that I almost laughed.

“There’s a danger in being a polymath,” he said. “Adams and Jefferson were quoting me when they said an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. It is true that a little knowledge can go a long way, but an encyclopedic amount? Why, it practically begs questions about the natural philosophy of the world!”

“Meaning the dark arts?” I said, trying to be clear for the archives.

“For heaven’s sake, just say it!” he shouted, slapping his hand down on the table. Bits of it flaked off the bone and onto my notebook. “Necromancy.”

Despite my hatred of the actual practice itself, I couldn’t contain my excitement.

“I knew it!” I said. “All the other agents in the Order couldn’t get beyond your early religious ties …”

“But not you,” Franklin mused. He cocked his head as if studying me. His neck clicked and cracked like dried leather. “I wonder why?”

“Deism,” I said proudly. “Everyone said that your proclamation of being ‘a thorough Deist’ was a path that ultimately led to God, but it just didn’t ring true to me.”

There was almost humor on his face now, if I could read that type of thing off a half-rotted corpse.

“But,” he interrupted, “if you follow Deism through to its logical, reasonable and very human conclusion, Deism does lead to God!”

I shook my head, thrilled to be engaged in such a debate with one of our nation’s greatest thinkers. It was almost a shame I would have to destroy him.

I grabbed several pieces of parchment and looked back through his history, searching for an answer.

“You yourself said that ‘God shouldn’t be found in the supernatural or miracles, but through human reason and things we observe in the natural world,’” I said. “I don’t think you believe that though. You’ve read too much, studied too much of the world to believe that. I propose you don’t actually reject the supernatural but rather embrace it.”

Franklin’s silence was all I needed to hear to know I was right. I dared to stare into his lifeless eyes despite my fear. He was truly hideous in this unnatural state.

“But why this?” I asked. “Why would you do this to yourself?”

The creature sighed again and a waft of rot filled the room.

“If you are as learned about me as you seem to be, young

man, I’m sure you are aware of my love for puzzles and codes. Again, another polymath trait. If you understood that love, you could have easily found the reason for my transformation yourself. It’s hidden within my Fourteen Virtues.”

“Thirteen,” I corrected. I might not have been the foremost Franklin scholar, but I had learned enough about the man during my lifetime to know he had written his famous Thirteen Virtues—a set of personal ideologies he lived by— when he was only in his twenties.

Franklin raised what remained of one of his eyebrows. “Does it surprise you that I’m still a virtuous man despite the black art that keeps me in such a state? There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”

He produced a well worn fold of paper from his coat pocket, smoothed it out, and pushed it across the desk. I refused to touch so old a document from so fouled a creature, instead using the tip of my quill to hold it open while I read.

The Thirteen Virtues—B. Franklin.

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

“Are you familiar with the term decacoding?” he said, once I stopped reading.

“It’s a coding system based on a system of tens, isn’t it?”

“Correct,” he said, pleased. His mouth split into a grin, bile and blackness showing instead of teeth. He tapped at the folded piece of paper. “Most of the Virtues listed there are the thoughts of a young idealist. What did I know back then? But once I made my choice to engage in the darkest of necromancy, I really only lived by The Fourteenth Virtue. There are only thirteen on the page but my coding points to the only one of those I truly held any real stock in.”

I scanned the page, applying his decacoding. By starting with a base of ten and beginning to count from the top of his list again, it meant that was actually the fourth one he had listed.

“Resolution?” I asked.

“Resolution,” he repeated. “The Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. Notice I don’t bring up whether good or evil fits into that equation.”

“A resolution about what?”

“The answer lies before you,” he said. He pointed at the piles of paper. “Right there in your histories, the greatest and most defining moment in all modern history. The American Revolution. Necromancy saved that marvelous homeland of ours. After all, I was, and still am, first and foremost a patriot and a statesman.”

I sat there in shock as I let it sink in. “You did this to yourself… for our country? But you were one of our greatest leaders! You are the elder statesman.”

“Many foxes grow gray, but few grow good,” he said, running one hand along the rotting fringe of his matted hair. “With age, idealism melts away in the face of practicality.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m still not following.”

It was hard to feel remotely smart sitting in the same room talking to Benjamin Franklin, no matter how evil a rotting creature he might be.

“Remember your history! The Founding Fathers and I were attempting to declare independence for the thirteen colonies from the British. Despite what other historians have written, the British would have easily overrun this country, even given their distance from England. Action had to be taken to ‘secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.’”

“But…” I stammered, “but giving yourself over to the power of necromancy to combat the British forces? It’s folly!”

“All wars are follies,” he said, raising a finger and waggling it at me. “Very expensive and very mischievous ones. I knew what price I paid when I made my bargain.”

“Did they know, too?” I asked, writing as fast as I could. I jabbed the quill back into the well whenever the ink started to run dry.

“They?”

I stopped and looked up. I struggled in my mind to search for their names.

“Adams, Jefferson, the Continental Congress …”

The creature shook its head.

“I thought it was best they never know,” Franklin said. “He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees. Naturally reports came in from the front concerning the American dead. Generals kept sending in reports of the dead rising from the battlefield and soldier

ing on against the British. Most of Congress ignored such reports, dismissing them as fantastical, but I think Jefferson had his suspicions. Always the clever one, Tommy was.”

What I was hearing seemed unbelievable. “And you were okay with this… ‘bargain’ you made?”

The corpse shrugged. It seemed a gesture well beneath a man of his stature, even a decaying one.

“All human situations have their inconveniences, but for the immortal, energy and persistence conquer all things. Think what you will of it, but the power over life and death, limited as I was with it, saved this country. Legions of the living dead founded our freedom. Old boys have their playthings, you know, as well as young ones. The difference is only in the price.”

He looked over at me with those dead eyes once again. I couldn’t help but turn away.

“Don’t judge my actions,” he tsk-tsked with a sad finality to his words. “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.”

Franklin rose from the table while I finished writing my account, but I no longer felt the need to keep an eye on him. I was surprised to find that my fear had dissipated a bit with hearing his story. I stood and eyed my torch sitting in the sconce on the wall.

“You seem rather willing to let me destroy you,” I said. “You’re turning yourself over for disposal? Just like that?”

Franklin nodded as if he were a parent being patient with a small child. “If you prefer,” he said with a grim snarl, “I could swarm you with the contents of these catacombs instead.” He held his arms out and the sound of stone coffin lids sliding free rose up behind me. The scratching and clawing of bony fingers fighting to get out filled the room. I didn’t dare look back.

I realized how powerless and insignificant I was in this creature’s presence and quickly shook my head no in response to his offer. Franklin dropped his arms, the coffin

lids slid shut, and once again the room fell silent. A lifetime of studying him hadn’t prepared me for this. Several lifetimes wouldn’t have been enough.

“I’ve hunted for you my whole life. Why are you willing to die now?” I asked, feeling my own reluctance for the task at hand setting in. “Why ever?”

“Other than the fact that you have me cornered and at a disadvantage?” he asked.

His empty eye sockets looked down at my hands. I was still clutching the quill in one and the moleskin notebook in the other. I put the quill back in the well and closed the notebook before tucking it into my bag.

“This is strictly for my own curiosity, not for our archives,” I said. In the face of standing toe-to-toe with this necromancer, I opted for politeness. It seemed the reasonable thing to do. I liked to think that my brothers back at the Order would have been proud. “If you’ll forgive me asking, sir, why do you want any of this on record at all?”

The creature made no move to stop me as I headed for the torch on the wall.

“I first met Mary Shelley in the summer of 1816,” the walking corpse said, letting out another dry earthy sigh. The humanity in it almost broke my heart.

“The writer?” I said, pausing with my hands on the shaft of the torch.

Franklin nodded. “Of course, she was only nineteen then and still Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin when I met her. She and Percy hadn’t married yet, but that was when she found me.”

“Found you?”

Franklin cackled for once like the evil undead creature that he was.

“My dear boy, it wasn’t like she was looking for me specifically. She simply chanced upon me here in Switzerland one wintry summer a few years back.”

He took on the tone my grandfather used when he was recounting his service at Lexington and Concord. As I 15

pulled the torch off the wall, it settled heavy in my hands. Setting Franklin aflame was going to be harder than I imagined.

“Once I had ‘died’ for the sake of my country,” he said, “I fled the now United States of America in the hope of obscurity off in foreign lands. I found a certain modicum of peace high up here in the Swiss Alps. All of Lake Geneva had fallen under an imposed volcanic winter two summers ago thanks to the untimely eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year.” He raised his own hands and examined them for a moment, as if he were seeing his skeletal appendages for the first time. “By that point of my transformation, the cold didn’t bother me much. Few things did at that point, and if it hadn’t been for that damned book she insisted on publishing, you might never have found me.”

“Her damned book?” I repeated moving back around the table toward him. “You mean Frankenstein?”

“You’ve read it?” he asked with genuine interest in his voice. “It’s only been stateside a few months, by my reckoning.”

“Yes,” I said, pausing midstep, “but what does it have to do with you?”

“She was fascinated when she discovered me here, and she had of course heard of my doings in America during my natural life. This is the infamous Villa Diodati, after all. When Polidori, Byron, and Shelley suggested their fateful writing contest in the rooms above these very catacombs, Mary simply couldn’t resist recounting my life in her own dark fashion. Think about her book for a moment. The evil doctor attempting to raise the dead? His experiments with electricity to do so? Sound familiar?”

“Surely not…” I started, but he cut me off.

“She even went so far as to name her main character Franklinstein, but I objected to so direct a correlation and drew the line.”

“I never would have made such a connection,” I said, “but I see it now …”

“You wanted to know why I insisted on you writing down my account? Glass, china and reputations are easily cracked, but never well mended,” he said. “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it. History will judge me, and I’d rather not have the truth behind Frankenstein be the lone record of my dark life. If people should ever make that connection, see the darkness behind this abomination I’ve become, I want this secret history to be known. Let the world know that what I did, I did for my country with Resolution … that I performed without fail what I resolved for the good of America. A man’s net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after his bad habits are subtracted from his good ones. Let us hope that is true.”

He looked almost at peace as he stood there; then he lowered his head and fell silent. I readied the torch in my hands, knowing my duty but surprised to find myself unwilling to follow through. The heat of the burning pitch waved over me while I hesitated.

“I can’t do it,” I said finally and dropped the torch to the floor. It flickered while it fought to keep itself alight.

“You may delay,” Franklin said kindly, reaching over and taking my hands in his. I didn’t flinch. “Time will not. I should have no objection to going over the same life from its beginning to the end, requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first. Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”

With that, Franklin stepped farther away from the table full of his papers. With a wave of his hand, my torch blared to life and leaped from the floor toward him. The crackle of dark magic filled the tiny chamber, and before I could react, the creature burst into purifying flames of light, light that nearly blinded me. I raised my arm to shield my eyes as the screams of hell filled the room. I clamped my hands down over my ears until the permeable evil slipped slowly away, followed by silence.

Flames licked at the beams above me. I quickly gathered

what I could of Franklin’s papers and stuffed them into my bag. I stayed to watch the last of the flames consume what remained of one of the most revered men in history before racing back out through the villa. I had no idea what I would do upon my return to America, my return to the Fraternal Order. Suddenly, forty-six didn’t seem a bad age for retirement.

Found in the archival records of The Gauntlet at the Department of Extraordinary Affairs in New York City.