HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre by Billie Sue Mosiman Read Free Book Online

heaven's hands.
    I cannot forget the story the monster told me, of his making, and his anguish at being made. I admit to dreams, incessant, unrelenting nightmares of that very day, and the look of him — the scent from his pale flesh, the agony roaring in his eyes like souls caught in withering fire, the pitilessness of him that was made from death to live again.
    I admit another failure of heart. Until the being appeared stand ing at the side of his dead master, I really did not believe my good friend could be telling the entire truth. How could anyone, nay even a genius so great as our Dr. Frankenstein, actually create from human limbs a new personage to walk the earth? Only G o d could breathe life into inanimate clay. Oh, yes, I know I am a modern man and even twenty years ago I knew the precepts of science, but even science has its limits and I have never forsaken our God, Margaret. I would dread eternal damnation were I to co m pletely cast out my faith.
    Yet there he stood, majestic in height and visage. I told you before how macabre was the meeting, how my heart trembled like a butterfly caught within my chest. Just one glance at his face told me this was an aberration of nature . Never could there have been born to woman a being with such beauty and yet such horror as loomed before me! There was the shock of his alabaster skin that appeared to shine with a tinge of yellow, like a slab of cold marble left to discolor in the hot s u n. The pallid glow of his eyes that reflected high intelligence, but not without a sheen of low cunning. The graceful movements of his long tapered fingers as they reached out without tremor, then drew back like darting sparrows from the silent mask of de a th that lay over his master's features. He felt pain and sorrow; he felt the guilt of his misdeeds.
    I tell you, I have not been able to forget, cannot eradicate from my mind that strange and glorious encounter with what never should have walked the earth w ith mankind.
    I know I have not written of poor Frankenstein and that last fateful voyage into what might have been my own graveyard of ice, but this does not mean I have not grieved my friend, or wandered late nights throughout my home, lost in reverie and wonder, cloaked in the remnant of old fear.
    You see, dear Margaret, I did not know it all these years — I tried denying it to preserve my sanity!--but I am no less a man obsessed with that being who threatened to burn himself on a pyre in the far north regi ons, than his creator was when alive and under assault.
    The thought that has sustained me, given me wild little hopes and incremental spasms of pure excitement, has been that the being I saw leap from the ship to the floating ice, that being who stalks my dreams and dogs my days — he might yet be alive! Do you think it possible, or have I completely lost my mind?
    I can hear your answer now, whispering across the long miles. You necessarily will think me mad. The being promised before God he would do away with himself. Yes, I know this was told to me and when spoken I believed it with all my heart. There stood before me a man-made man, an abomination, and knowing his full evil, he said good-bye to Frankenstein, good-bye to the world that would not have a part o f him, and I knew he meant his threat to perform self destruction. Yet... Margaret, the one idea I cannot rid myself of is this: What if he weakened in his resolve?
    Oh mad, mad, yes, you'll think age has caused a slippage of my mind, that time has brought me dementia as on a platter along with aches and muscle cramps and sleepless nights. But I am not truly mad no more than was Frankenstein. Like him, my view of what life is and what life can be, has been broken and remolded to fit the true facts. I have l o oked upon the face of a profane, held conversation with a heartless murderer, and it did not drive me insane. Why think it could happen just from twenty years of wonder and rambling thought?
    Since my health