As soon as I arrived at Limehouse I opened the door that led out to the river.
I waited for three or four hours, looking expectantly onto the water; in the late afternoon I walked to the little landing stage, and inhaled the scent of mud and tar that lingered on the bank. I was not impatient: I had known, even as I hurried from Jermyn Street, that he would not come until twilight. Slowly the air grew darker. A light breeze ruffled the water which was flowing steadily on an incoming tide, and I could see a flock of starlings heading for the marshes on the other side of the river. There was a faint light on the horizon, as the sun dipped lower through clouds. And then I saw him moving through the water; he reared himself upright as he approached me, and then ducked back into the river. I turned and walked into the workshop. I was quite calm when he stood in the doorway. “I have been waiting for you,” I said. “I knew that you would come.”
“How could I stay away, when my deliverance is near?”
“You are aware that my experiments have been successful? That my ambition has been accomplished?” He nodded. “So. What do you wish me to do?”
“You know what I wish for. Death. Forgetting. Oblivion and darkness.”
“I can promise you these things. Come forward.” He stepped into the light of an oil-lamp. He was wearing a pair of canvas breeches, such as shipmen wear, and a brown jacket; he had a shirt, but no stock, and I could see the yellow hairs upon his chest. He was barefoot, too. I surmised that he had led a harsh existence on the estuary.
“Do you have anything you wish to say before-anything you want to tell me?”
“Only that I suffer for my crimes. And I wish that suffering to end.”
“You repent?”
“Surely, sir, it is you who should repent? I did not ask to come into this world. I did not wish to rise again in such a form. Am I monstrous? Or are you monstrous? Is the world monstrous?” He stood in the flickering light, as woeful as I had ever seen him, and seemed to be studying the electrical equipment. “Am I to lie down here? This is where I was born, is it not?”
“If you could remove your clothes.”
“Otherwise they might burn?”
“It is possible. Yes. And then take your place upon the table. Your head facing this way.” He undressed and lay down in the position I suggested. I secured his wrists and ankles with the leather straps. There came from him the stench of mud and slime.
“The smell of the marshes,” he said as if he had guessed my thought. “I will stay quite still. You need not bind the straps too tightly.”
When he was prepared, I placed the electrical charges on his temples and at the very base of his spine. I looked at him, to assure him that all was ready. He closed his eyes, and sighed. When I released the electrical fluid his whole body shook violently, and then arched upwards breaking one of the straps upon his wrists; he seemed about to scream but the noise that came from him was a rasping cough. Dust came from his open mouth. Then his body subsided.
To my horror he opened his eyes. He could not speak but with his free hand he touched me. I started back with the knowledge that he had not been destroyed. “All is not lost,” I said to him. I realised that he could understand me. He nodded. “I will augment the level of the fluid. You are prepared for this?” He closed his eyes in assent. The second attempt was fearful. Again his body trembled and convulsed; there was some scorching of his left leg, and the smell of burning flesh filled the room. He seemed to fall into unconsciousness, with heavy and stertorous breathing. But still he was not dead. Without seeking his permission I tried a third time; again his flesh was charred, but all the signs of vital life remained. I could do no more. I released the straps by which he had been bound and, without seeing if he would rise, I sat down on a chair facing the window onto the river. I was utterly wearied and defeated. I had failed to destroy him: this thing, this burden, still weighed upon my life. After a while he joined me, sitting on the chair beside me; I could smell his burned flesh, but I felt no disgust or disdain. It was I, after all, who had been responsible. He tried to speak. His was no longer the melodious voice of the past, but a low murmur.
“I cannot die,” he said. “I will be in the world until the end of time. Is that so?”
“I do not know.”
“You know.”
“I have not the courage to look forward.”
“Yet what shall we do? My flesh will soon heal. That is nothing. Yet my mind and spirit will never heal.”
“We will share that fate then.”
He sat there, bent over, rocking backwards and forwards. “Make it stop,” he said. “Make it stop.”
I bowed my head, too. I do not know how long we sat there, side by side, but eventually we were roused by the sound of footsteps. It was Polidori. He had come down to the river bank, and was making his way across the landing stage. He came to the door of the workshop, and paused on the threshold. There was a look of bewilderment upon his face.
“Now you see my handiwork,” I said.
He came in, holding up a lamp, and stood before us.
“Behold the creature. This is what I have made.”
“Where?”
“Here. Before you.”
“There is no one here,” he said.
“Have you lost your wits? See here. Beside me. Here he sits.”
“There is nothing beside you, except an empty chair.”
“Nothing? I do not believe you. I know you lie.”
“Why should I lie, Victor?”
“To deceive me. To betray me. To enrage me.”
“There is nothing here. No one is with you. There is no creature.” He walked over to my electrical engines. “This is sad stuff, Victor.”
“What are you saying? Tell me this then. Tell me who killed Harriet and Martha?”
He looked intently at me. “I do not know who killed them.”
“There now. You have no answer.”
“You have lived in your imagination, Victor. You have dreamed all this. Invented it.”
“How so?”
“Perhaps you wished to rival Bysshe. Or Byron. You had longings for sublimity and power.”
“Enough. You are filling me with despair.”
“And what evil you may have done!” He paused for a moment. “What has happened to Fred?”
“Who is Fred?” the creature asked me in a whisper.
I did not know how to respond. How could I explain the disappearance of the child who had loved me? How could I say that his body was to be found in the limepit by the foreshore?
Polidori looked at me and then he asked: “Did you destroy Fred also?”
“I said enough!”
I sprang at him. I lunged forward and destroyed him. No, not I. The creature tore him to pieces with his bare hands.
Then we wandered out, the creature and I, into the world where we were taken up by the watchmen.
Given to me by the patient, Victor Frankenstein, on Wednesday November 15, 1822.
Signed by Fredrick Newman, Superintendent of the Hoxton Mental Asylum for Incurables.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER ACKROYD is a master of the historical noveclass="underline" The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde won the Somerset Maugham Award; Hawksmoor was awarded both the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Prize; and Chatterton was short-listed for the Booker Prize. His most recent historical novel is The Fall of Troy. He is also the author of London: The Biography, Shakespeare: The Biography, Thames: The Biography, and Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series.
