The Monster's Wife(26)

Like a child, she ran for the bed, jumped in it and burrowed under the covers. She knew it was foolish. It hadn’t been the doctor spying on her, of that she was sure. The man must work in the big house, a servant of Frankenstein’s perhaps, though she had never laid eyes on him.

The way he had stared, those blue eyes.

As if he knew her.





22


Oona stayed still as a sepulchre. Night turned and dawn stained the sky orange. Roof beams groaned and ticked as if someone were pacing back and forth, back and forth in the attic above.

She shrank down under the faded coverlet, hiding her face. Coward, she told herself as she hid under the covers, but outside them everything was too loud, too bright, nightmarish. Pushing inside her head, blinding. The boards creaked louder. She slid further down. Her hair clung to her sweating cheek.

In the darkness, she saw eyes.

Blue eyes in a clean-shaven head. A disfigured face, more broken than any she’d seen, the nose pummelled like a boxer’s and sliced by a scar that clipped the side of the eye, spliced the brow. A fat, white graveworm crawled up the naked head.

Another scar dragged the mouth down at one corner and crept over the cleft chin. She fancied that if the man spoke, his voice would be thick and his words hard to fathom. His eyes had bespoken shrewdness though, as if he saw inside her and understood.

Pale eyes meeting hers.

Something had stolen between them in that moment, a shiver of recognition. Beads pulled tight on a string, clacking together.

She imagined a great knife slicing the eyes and face, erasing the troubling vision. But each time she pushed the memory from her thoughts and felt peace return, the face pushed under the covers to haunt her. It tangled in the sheets with her, a pestering spirit, an incubus, an unwelcome lover, clutching, suckling.

“No!” She kicked off the bed linens and lay panting in the cold spot her sweat had made.

Her skin shone with fever and there was a pain in her gut like a knife plunged in. She pushed herself off the bed and stumbled to the ewer, retching to rid herself of the disgusting ache. Spittle dripped down. She vomited again but brought up nothing. Pressing her cheek to the porcelain, she shuddered. When she finally pulled away, a necklace of droplets ran between her and the ewer. Beads pulled tight on a string, clacking together.

***

“’Tis the laudanum certainly and it pains me. I ought to have prepared you for its effects: the fever and frightful fancies – alptr?ume, nightmares such as an opium eater might have… All such are normal to the swallower of the suspension!” Frankenstein let out a staccato laugh.

As he spoke, his charcoal stick darted over the page of his journal. He kept it hidden from her, so whether he scribbled or sketched was impossible to say.

She glanced towards the green leaves patterning the walls. At the edge of her vision, the ewer gleamed bone white. She remembered the little pool of vomit in it and, feeling ashamed, shrank down until the coverlet was halfway over her cheeks. She hoped he hadn’t seen it. She had no way to wash it out, not with the door being locked. Her eyes flicked back to his face, angrily taking in the smug spread of his full lips, the secretive look of his squinting eyes.

“That is not all of it, Sir. For after you left me here, I saw a man at the window with blue eyes and a scar.” She traced her finger down her forehead, slantwise across the bridge of her nose.

He had been scribbling with the charcoal, apparently caught in some daydream. Now he met her eyes, all at once wary.

“You saw this person where?”

“At the window. That window.” She pointed to where the grey sky sulked and a bird flew by, black and sharp against the low-slung hips of storm clouds blowing in from the sea. “Win-dow. Or, you know...some German word for it.”

“Die Scheune. Ja naturlich.” He pulled his chair closer to the bed, the legs screeching harshly against the floorboards. Closing his journal, he rested it on the covers and leaned forward, steepling his hands.

“It may be,” he pressed both fingers to his temples, “and I am shameful to admit this. I believe—”

Her shoulders ached. Without meaning to, she’d craned her neck from the pillow, braced her whole body in readiness for his answer as to whose the face was, whose the staring eyes that seemed to know her.

“As I have told you, laudanum is a powerful medicine. I administered it to you for good reasons, for your heart, you see. I feared in your state of collapse that you would over-exert yourself. You needed rest. Ach, so... But I should have warned you. These...nightmares...can seem like lucidity. One such fancy - the man you saw - a terrifying vision assuredly! But no more real than any other dream. And yet...and yet...what we call hallucinations—”

Her neck pulsed and her throat was dry. “He was no nightmare! He was real. I saw him plain as I see you now. I swear it. I saw him there at the window, staring.”

As if by speaking of him, she had summoned him, the scarred man was back at the window. His blue eyes fixed on her, his face full of hate.

No! No! she wanted to scream, but couldn’t. The words jammed in her throat and choked her. She was unable to look away because her whole body was frozen. There was no choice but to stare back at the pale, blue eyes.

Hands pushed her into the pillows. Metal shivered between her teeth. A spoon pushed into her mouth and scraped over her tongue. It crawled down her throat. A slug. A leech. She tried to spit it out, to retch, to spit. Get away!