The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales, Page 2

  “Yes, that’s quite true,” adds the tall man. “But what do you say?” he asks the woman. She is weeping, “I don’t know, I don’t know. What does it matter anymore?” (No, it does! The promise, the promise!)

  Some of the men complain about how hard it is to turn up decent tinder in a forest where it had rained so much that autumn. Every leaf, every twig they find seems to be slick and damp, as if each one has been stained with some beast’s oily slobber.

  Leading Men

  The Intolerable Lesson of the Phantom of the Opera

  The phantom of the opera is a genius. Before he became the phantom of the opera he was a composer of only average talent, a talent that was taken advantage of by a greedy swindler who stole the young composer’s music. He tried to get revenge on the villain, and in the process his face was severely disfigured by some chemicals which splashed into it and caught fire. Afterward he moved into the sewers directly beneath the opera house, and he also became a genius.

  In the middle of the opera season the phantom kidnaps a rather mediocre soprano and devotes many weeks to training her voice down in the resonant caverns of the Paris sewer system. He tells the girl to sing from the heart, rapping his chest once or twice to make her aware she is singing from his heart too, and maybe other people’s. This is the basic message of his instruction, though he still exasperates his student with hours and hours of scales, ear training, and so forth.

  One day she gets fed up with all the agony this man is putting her through, and out of despair, not to mention curiosity, rips off the mask that hides his hideous face. She screams and faints. While she is passed out, the phantom takes this opportunity to return her to the upper world of the opera house. For whether she knows it or not, she is now a great singer.

  When the girl regains consciousness from the terrible shock she experienced, her days with the phantom of the opera seem like no more than a vague dream. Later in the season she is starring in an opera and gives a brilliant performance, which the phantom watches from an empty box near the stage. Over and over he raps his chest with satisfaction and a sadness so personal and deep as to be incomprehensible to anyone but himself.

  After the opera is finished and the star is taking her bows, the phantom notices that one of the heavy walkways above the stage is loose and about to come plummeting down right on his student’s lovely head. He leaps onto the boards, pushes her out of the way, and is himself thoroughly crushed by the falling wreckage.

  The phantom of the opera is bleeding freely and behind his mask his eyes are drowning. “Who’s that?” someone asks the girl whom the phantom of the opera taught to sing so well. “I’m sure I don’t know!” she answers as her strange and tormented teacher dies.

  But her words do not contain a hint of the inexplicable emotion she feels. Only now will she really be able to sing from the heart. But she realizes there is no music on earth worthy of her voice, and later that night her monstrously heavy heart takes her to the bottom of the Seine.

  The phantom of the opera is a genius.

  The Unspeakable Rebirth of the Phantom of the Wax Museum

  The phantom of the wax museum is walking down the street with his new girlfriend. Even though he is wearing a benignly handsome face, which he designed himself, there remains something repellent and sinister in his appearance. “No decent girl would go out with him,” mutters an old woman as the couple passes by.

  The phantom of the wax museum was once a gentle and sensitive artist who worked very hard shaping beautiful lifelike representations of figures from history and from modern times. A prosperous craftsman with no head for finance, he was cheated by his business partner and left for dead in a burning studio, where his masterpieces in wax melted one by one into nothing.

  He, however, escaped, though in a badly disfigured condition, and from that day on he was mentally deranged, a sadistic demon artist who every so often submerged young women in vats of boiling wax and afterward displayed them for profit to the unsuspecting patrons of his museum. “A genius!” the public exclaimed.

  The phantom of the wax museum is about to press the button that will cause his new girlfriend, presently unconscious, to descend into one of those famous bubbling vats. But quite unexpectedly some plainclothes detectives burst into the room and stop him. They rescue the girl and corner her would-be killer at the top of the stairs, just above the eagerly gurgling vat.

  Suddenly, in this moment of great stress, the phantom of the wax museum sees a gentle and sensitive face in his mind’s eye. He remembers now, he remembers who he was so long ago. In fact, he remembers precious little else. What was he doing and who were these people at the top of those stairs?

  “I beg your pardon,” he starts to say to the detectives, “could you please tell me—”

  But the youngest of the detectives is a little quick to fire his gun, and the evil phantom of the wax museum goes over the rail, disappearing beneath the creamy surface of the furiously seething vat.

  One of the older detectives stares down into the busy pool of wax and in a rare reflective moment says: “If there’s any justice in this life, that monster’ll boil for eternity. He killed at least five lovely girls!”

  But at the moment of his death the fortunate phantom of the wax museum could remember only one girl: his beautiful Marie Antoinette, which he’d finished a few hours ago, or so it seemed, and which he knew he would never see again.

  Gothic Heroines

  The Perilous Legacy of Emily St. Aubert, Inheritress of Udolpho

  Emily St. Aubert has had a very difficult life. When only a young woman she sees the death of both her parents: her mother, whom Emily finds out was not her real mother, and her wise father, whom Emily adored. “O Emily, O Emily,” cries her boyfriend Valancourt when she is carted off by the menacing Montoni to the somewhat broken down but nonetheless imposing castle named Udolpho.

  At Udolpho there are a multitude of secrets: secret passages, secret stairways, secret motives, secret murders, tracks of blood from secret persons, moans from secret chambers, from secret nightmares, Italian secrets, Italian love, Italian hate and revenge.

  At one point Emily sees the wax replica of a corpse with a worm-eaten face which she takes to be real. And it might as well have been. Eventually Emily is rescued by Valancourt, delivered from Udolpho, and not long afterward the pair are married. But complications arise.

  Emily and Valancourt seem made for each other. Both have been through quite a lot but neither has been poisoned by their sorrow, their suffering, or by months spent deep in the midst of vice. Their simple, everyday natures remain unharmed and intact.

  At night, however, Valancourt lies awake in bed, eavesdropping on the things Emily whispers in her sleep: secret things. After a few weeks of this, Valancourt is looking very haggard. In a matter of months he is hopelessly insane, and one day goes running off for parts unknown.

  Emily now spends much of her time alone. To occupy herself she writes poems, as she has always done, atmospheric little pieces like “To Melancholy,” “To the Bat,” “To the Winds,” and “Song of the Evening Hour.”

  Sometimes she cannot help asking herself if she was not deceived from the very start about the virtues of Valancourt. Why, he was no better nailed together than that crumbling old castle of Montoni’s. That awful, terrible place.

  What was its name again? Ah, yes…Udolpho.

  The Irreproachable Statement of the Governess’ as to the Affair at Bly

  The governess is writing an account of her experiences at Bly, where she had charge of two parentless children named Flora and Miles. She was hired for the job by the children’s uncle following a rather perfunctory interview at his office in Harley Street. Despite the brevity and formality of this encounter, however, the governess fell deeply in love with her employer. Or so it seemed to Mrs Grose, the housekeeper at Bly, when the governess told her about the meeting.

  Among other things, the governess writes of her amazement at the two beautiful ch
ildren and of her resolve to devote herself body and soul to their upbringing in hopes that someday her devotion would be appreciated by the man in Harley Street. At least so much we are led to believe.

  The governess now writes of the horrors at Bly. These are dire events involving the ghosts of two former retainers, Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, whom the governess suspects are trying to possess the souls of the children and through them perpetuate the unholy romantic alliance they carried on in life. However, this situation is not spelled out in so many words. Due to her subtle and indirect prose style, it is often difficult to tell what the governess is claiming.

  During her time at Bly, the governess writes, she saw the fiendish figures of Quint and Jessel standing outside windows and upon high ledges, lurking in the shadows at the foot of a stairway, and poised unmoving across the serene waters of a pond on the expansive estate. But she conquers her terror of these visitations, she tells, because at all costs she must protect the children. They are innocents after all. No matter what debased acts they have been led into committing, so the governess says, they may still be saved and, under her ever-watchful supervision, be returned to a sinless state. Accordingly, she packs up Flora and sends her to London, because, as the governess asserts, “Bly has ceased to agree with her.” Now it only remains to challenge Miles regarding some awful secret. The dead, however, are very tenacious and do not easily give up the pleasure of unexpectedly appearing at windows and preventing secrets from being told.

  One overcast day, the governess confronts Miles and begins her interrogation of him. What wickedness had he committed, she wonders, if any? Staring at them through the paned windows of a pair of French doors is the evil-eyed Quint. The governess rushes over to defend Miles from being wholly possessed by this demonic apparition. Each of them now seems to be making a bid for the boy’s soul, as far as can be gathered from the governess’s oblique relation of this tense scene. Tragically, Miles’s heart stops beating during the ensuing struggle, whatever its precise nature, and he falls dead into the arms of the young woman.

  So concludes the governess’s recounting of the dreadful incidents that she vows to have occurred at Bly. There is only one more thing to tell, another turn of the screw, so to speak, to tighten a loose element of the story. To wit, despite the catastrophic outcome of the governess’s first appointment in her profession, she nevertheless manages to gain employment elsewhere. One might well wonder how she was able to carry on that occupation, given the trauma she had by all accounts endured at the very start of her career. It almost seems she kept to herself much of what happened, and left it for her readers to work out the whole of what really took place. And why shouldn’t she?

  For some doings are simply too foul and degenerate to be told without equivocation, if not outright prevarication. Those at the inquest into the death of Miles could barely make sense of the governess’s testimony, which probably contributed to their exculpation of her of any wrongdoing in the affair. Even though she told so much, she could never tell all of the evil in which she became entangled. At the very least, a disclosure of that kind might have prevented her from finding another position like the one she had at Bly, where she proved herself a trustworthy member of the household and appeared for all the world a generally decent individual—a mentally and morally sound person who could not imaginably be someone with designs of a nature that could ever result in the death of a child. To think otherwise would have been too much for the good citizens probing the case. Beguiling as the governess presented herself, it was not…NO, there was nothing…HOW could it be—as if such a thing…And that was the end of it. As Mrs Grose testified at the hearing into the affair at Bly: “An upright young lady, she was, to be sure. And so attentive of the children.”

  Loners

  The Unnatural Persecution, by a Vampire, of Mr Jacob J.

  A young schoolteacher, who writes a little poetry on the side, is coming home to the boardinghouse where he lives on the top floor. A red-haired girl, one of his pupils, runs up to him just as he steps onto the old boardinghouse stairway.

  “Have you heard about the vampire, Mr Jacob?” she asks him, squinting in the bright afternoon sunlight. The girl goes on to describe the vampire and its activities as they in turn have been related to her. “Of course, I know all that,” replies Mr Jacob. “Well, see you tomorrow,” he says, crushing a cigarette underfoot. (He doesn’t like his students to see him smoking if he can help it.)

  That night Mr Jacob can’t sleep. He knows this business with the vampire is just nonsense, but in the middle of the night certain things can get on your nerves that normally you wouldn’t think twice about. He drags himself out of bed and opens the only window in his room. How quiet everything is at this hour. Somehow it seems as if he’s just noticed this for the first time.

  The next day the reports about the vampire are verified by several honest and reliable persons. There are eye-witness accounts of a floating figure with blood dripping from its mouth. In addition, the body of a man from out of town was found that morning in his hotel room—drained of blood. Mr Jacob, along with many others, concurs that he felt something strange was up the last few days…something, well, something he couldn’t exactly put his finger on.

  Tonight Mr Jacob is taking no chances. He sits by the sole window in his room hour after hour with a large crucifix across his lap. Every little while he forgets himself and dozes off, but each time he manages to startle his mind back to alertness with just one thought about the vampire.

  As the days go by, the situation worsens. Many more bodies are found drained of blood. Mr Jacob hasn’t had a decent rest since this terrible season of death began. All night long he sits gazing deep into the darkness beyond that idiotic little window. And he’s smoking too much. One day he coughs up some blood into his hand—right in the middle of a grammar lesson!

  Due to the inherent limits of the human will, Mr Jacob falls sound asleep one night by the window. Maybe he is only dreaming when he hears these little taps on the glass, but it seems so real. “No,” he screams, leaping from the chair and knocking the crucifix to the floor. He is shivering violently, as if some icy wind has rushed into the room and is tearing its way straight through him. But there is no wind. Outside the window all is quiet and dead.

  The next day there is good news. The vampire has moved on, everyone is safe once more. Mr Jacob opens his window for the first time in weeks on a radiant morning in early spring. Children are singing for joy in the street. He suddenly closes the window and turns back toward his little room.

  For Mr Jacob knows that everyone is suffering from a false sense of security. He stays on his guard. Night upon night he waits by the window, thinking one day the vampire will return…But for some reason she never does.

  Late that summer nobody in town is surprised to hear that one evening Mr Jacob lost his balance and fell onto the street far below. He’d started drinking heavily, poor man. An unfortunate mishap…and just as the autumn semester was to begin!

  The Superb Companion of André de V., Anti-Pygmalion

  Tonight, as he stands smoking a cigarette and staring out his window upon a hazy avenue, M. André de V. has accomplished the supreme feat of the romantic dreamer. From only the slightest experience with a real woman—Mlle. LeMieux, the pursuit of whom would have been a futility—he has fashioned an ideal one of his imagination.

  She is seated in a corner of the room: wise, beautiful, and content, she is the perfect complement to her creator’s temper and the unflawed realization of his unspeakably complex prerequisites. He smiles at her and she smiles back, faultlessly reflecting both the kind and degree of sentiment in the original smile. This and similar experiments have helped M. André de V. pass a great deal of time recently.

  Later that night a letter is delivered to the room of M. André de V. He pours himself a brandy, lights his last cigarette (he forgot to buy some that afternoon), and slits the envelope with a sharp, silvery letter-opener. Dear André (the let
ter begins):

  There’s some rather sad news tonight. Mlle. LeMieux has finally succumbed to her illness. (Were you even aware she was sick?) As she was among our circle of acquaintances, I thought you would want to be notified.

  P.S. How’s your new play coming along?

  M. André de V. reads the letter about a dozen times, until the message really sinks in. Then, still holding the letter in his hand, he returns to his position at the window. Without turning toward the phantasm in the corner, he says to it: “Go away! Please go away. There’s not much point anymore.”

  But the beautiful specter does not disappear as commanded. Having already sensed its maker’s unspoken desire, she takes the sharp letter-opener from where he left it on the table and buries it deep in the back of his soft neck.

  Shut-Ins

  The Ever-Vigilant Guardians of Secluded Estates

  A young man with a sparse mustache is sitting in a large chair in the innermost chamber of his large house, where all his life he has lived in magnificent solitude off the fortunes made by his ancestors. For him, simply drifting among rooms of dreamy half-lights kills the better part of any given day.

  Tonight, however, he is disturbed by certain mental images he is not used to experiencing: brightly lit places, crowds of people, and soft laughter. “Well, what do you think of that,” he says aloud.