“Why did you poison my ale?” I demanded.
“I-I did not! I swear—”
I slapped him across the mouth. Not hard enough to kill, or even injure him severely, but hard enough to break several teeth loose from his mouth. I knew the answer to what I was asking him, but I wanted still to hear the words from him.
“Do not lie to me or I will crush your head like a grape!”
I grabbed his skull and applied enough pressure to make his eyes bulge.
“I only did as Victor asked,” he cried.
“Frankenstein sent you to poison me?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“And he sent others to defile and murder Johanna Klemmen? Or did you do this? Or did he?”
Clervil was sobbing now, and in his tears he stammered out that Frankenstein had hired others to murder Johanna.
“Stop your crying now or I will slap you again, but this time with enough force so that you will lose all your teeth!”
He stopped his crying and pathetically begged me for mercy. “Please, I beg of you, I myself have a betrothed—”
“Shut up! Why did Frankenstein want to murder Johanna Klemmen, and arrange for me to be punished for this crime? Answer me!”
Clervil squeezed his eyes shut before answering me. “He needed an educated brain for constructing you,” he whimpered weakly. “When he learned of your betrothal to Johanna Klemmen, he wished also to perform this experiment to test the nature of attachment. He needed brain material from two young lovers.”
He told me only what I had long suspected, but there was no longer any doubt of Frankenstein’s culpability in the murders of Johanna and Friedrich Hoffmann. I threw Clervil then, sending him traveling twenty feet through the air. When he landed, he lay quietly for a moment. Then surprised that I had let go of him, he staggered to his feet, and in his panic to escape me he tripped and fell after only a few steps. His head struck sharply against a rock, and from the way his skull cracked open I knew he was dead. I left him to return back to the cottage.
The scene within the cottage showed Frankenstein cowering on the floor with his hands and arms covering his face to protect himself as Mariel struck blows at him, all the while screaming her hatred at him. I pulled her off of him.
“He deserves to die for what he has done,” she forced out, her eyes simmering with her rage, her small white face shining in its violence.
“You do not need his blood on your hands,” I implored her as I led her back to the cot.
She nodded. “What he has done to you is far worse,” she said in a harsh whisper. “If anyone deserves vengeance against him, it is you.”
I left her standing by the cot, but I did not wish her to see what was going to happen next. I found myself trembling greatly as I approached Frankenstein, my rage and hatred boiling within me. He looked at me, more confused than afraid.
“What happened to Johanna Klemmen’s brain?” he asked. “The bowl is empty. How am I to bring your betrothed back to you if her brain is missing?”
For a moment Frankenstein disappeared in a haze of red, the rage blistering inside of me too great to allow me to see properly. What happened next was as if it were a dream. I was barely aware of grabbing him by his jacket as I did Clervil, or lifting him into the air so that he could witness the fury burning in my eyes. I must have carried him through the hole in the cottage for the next thing I was aware of I was standing by Clervil’s body, with Frankenstein in my grasp and his feet dangling helplessly in the air. He was talking to me, trying to be patient as he kept saying over and over again for me to let him down, that the spell which he had rendered over me would prevent me from harming him. To prove otherwise I slapped him in the ear hard enough to cause it to immediately begin to swell. This stunned him and caused him to close his mouth. As I stared at him, another plan entered my mind, and I tossed him to the ground. I trembled as I told him to leave the island.
“But before you leave, I want you to look at your childhood friend, Henry Clervil. See how his brain is leaking from his skull? A pity, otherwise you could scoop it up and use it for your next wicked experiment.”
He glanced quickly toward his dead friend and he whitened to the color of milk. When he looked back at me his lips trembled as if he were encased in ice.
“If I leave now you will lose your beloved forever. Do you really want that, Friedrich?”
My hands closed into fists as I stared at him and fought to keep from ripping him to pieces. I said through clenched teeth, “You are trying my patience. Leave this island immediately or I will tear each of your limbs from your body, but I will do so in a way that will keep you alive for days.”
Any confusion that had remained in his face was gone, replaced instead by raw panic. He understood full well that he’d better listen to me. I watched as he struggled to stand and then as he ran to the shore, moving with the unsteady gait of a drunken man. He tripped several times in his fear, but eventually he reached the rowboats and pushed one of them into the water. It seemed to take him a great deal of effort before he was able to climb aboard it, but then he was rowing away. Slowly, but still propelling the boat away from the island’s shore. Only then did I open my fist to unveil the button that I had pulled from his jacket. A great sense of weariness came over me and I turned and walked to the area where I had buried the last of Johanna’s remains. I dropped to my knees and told her how sorry I was that I could not allow her to be brought back to me.
“It was not cowardice on my part, my beloved,” I whispered. “I knew that you would have felt the same warm feelings toward me regardless of what body I resided in. But it would have been a wicked act to allow harm to come to an innocent girl, and I knew that you would have been repelled by me if I had allowed it to happen. I was not deaf to the words that you spoke to me in my dream. We will have to be content with spending eternity together once I leave this earth.”
I mouthed a silent prayer to her, promising her that I would be joining her soon, and as I struggled to imagine my Johanna, a hand touched my shoulder. I looked up to see Mariel standing beside me, concern wrinkling her brow.
“Is this where you buried your betrothed’s remains?”
I nodded, at that moment unable to speak.
She tried to smile sympathetically at me but her exhaustion from all the evil that she had had to endure over these many months kept her from doing so. She asked about Frankenstein. “Is that fiend dead?”
I shook my head. I felt every bit as exhausted as she looked. “Clervil is,” I said. “He died when he fell in his panic to flee me. I will allow others to deal with Frankenstein. Come, we need to leave this place.”
She wanted to ask me more questions but stopped once she realized that I was too weary to answer her. I first carried Clervil’s body onto the last remaining rowboat, then went back and searched through the cottages until I found where the food and water was kept. I then loaded the rowboat with supplies, guessing that we might be on the water for some time. I also covered Clervil’s body with a sheet, and apologized to Mariel about needing to bring his body with us. She nodded, but did not say anything about it.
Once I pushed the rowboat from the shore and climbed in, I spotted Frankenstein in his boat and pointed him out to Mariel. Her face paled with hatred as she stared at him.