Frankenstein Lives Again (The New Adventures of Frankenstein) (17 page)

The Monster, still for so long, finally stirred at his master’s command. The heavy eyelids fluttered several times, then the head of the beast turned in Winslow’s direction. But again, the Monster reacted strangely to Winslow’s appearance and did not lunge forward to kill his enemy.

Dartani, however, did not see that the Monster was disobeying him a second time. His concern now was the golden-haired beauty just inches beyond his grasp. He touched her shoulder and she cringed, her legs bending slightly at the knees.

“N-no…” she said, battling his will perhaps for a final time, and mustering the strength to shove him against the wall. But she might not have another chance to escape him. Always his dominating will returned to captivate her. No longer worried about her own nakedness, she rushed around a corner, not taking the way that led to the bedroom, but ascending yet another flight of stairs.

“You won’t get far from me,” said Dartani, recovering and following her. “It will only be moments before you’re mine again, completely… and eternally!”

In the laboratory below, the Monster was finally stalking Winslow. But there was a noticeable uncertainty in the giant’s movements, as though he were waging his own private battle against the Professor’s orders.

Seizing upon the Monster’s confusion, Winslow started for the staircase to go after Dartani and Lynn, but was promptly caught by a giant yellow hand. The Monster growled, his soul-shattering roar filling the chamber. He dragged Winslow back and hurled him against the wall.

Dazed but basically unhurt, Winslow looked up at him. “What’s wrong? Is that the hardest you can toss me? Or, is there something inside of you that won’t let you kill me as your master commanded?”

The Monster staggered, clutching the sides of his head, not knowing what to do next. That was the moment for Winslow to act. Grabbing a chair, he swung it at the creature, catching him off balance and sending him stumbling into a mass of coils and terminals and gadgets. The apparatus exploded in a terrific display of smoke and electrical sparks.

Shielding his body from the explosion, Winslow saw the room unexpectedly fill with torch-carrying townspeople, Franz standing in the lead. They too shielded themselves from the blast, then reacted to the presence of the Monster.

Only Franz had seen the Monster before, but there was no need to identify him.

“The Monster!” someone behind Franz hollered, voice cracking.

“It’s Frankenstein’s monster!” yelled another. “Let’s destroy him,” shouted Franz, waving his torch like a great general leading the charge.

But in that moment, Winslow heard another voice screaming his name in terror. He reacted toward the staircase. “Lynn!”

The Monster also heard the scream and raised his head. In his mind was the memory of the woman who had been kind to him while Winslow continued his experiment. Winslow – the Monster watched him now as he began to move toward the stairs. If something inside prevented his slaying Winslow, at least he could partially carry out his master’s command by hurting him. Again his hands were on the doctor, lifting him bodily off the floor.

“Burt!” Lynn’s scream again filled the castle.

The Monster’s mind fought the influence of Dartani, thought of Winslow, remembered the beautiful woman now in Dartani’s power. A pain shot through his transplanted brain and a snarl of utter hatred issued from between his clenched teeth.

The heavy eyelids blinked and his fingers relaxed.

Winslow dropped in a heap to the floor and looked up at the giant. That terrible awareness was back in those yellow eyes. In that moment the scientist knew that the beast’s mind had burst free of its psychic shackles.

Again, Winslow attempted to rush to the stairs, but the Monster brushed him aside. The blow sent pain coursing through Winslow’s body. He hoped he possessed enough strength to succeed at another try.

“Kill the Monster!”

Both Winslow and the Monster reacted to the shout, seeing Franz bravely rushing forward with his blazing torch. Even the downed scientist could feel the torch’s heat. Instinctively the Monster reacted.

Fire!

The flames were dangerously close. The giant recoiled, waving his long arms, growling at the sensation of the heat and the sight of an enemy that could consume his once-dead flesh.

Then a pale hand moved in a blur and grasped Franz by the leg, pulling him high into the air in an upside-down position. The torch dropped from the townsman’s shaking hand as he was lifted to the creature’s eye level. The Monster’s head turned toward an open window. A moment later Franz’ screaming form could be seen soaring through the opening to be swallowed in the darkness outside.

Again the room echoed with the sound of Lynn’s scream.

“Stay back!” Winslow warned the other human beings in the laboratory, who were all reacting with astonishment to the death of their leader.

The Monster’s mind whirled. The woman who was kind to him was now in danger from the robber of minds. But there were still the townspeople with which to reckon, vengeance-crazed men waiting to set him ablaze with their torches. There was no recourse but to brave their fire, even though it meant his complete destruction.

His gigantic hands reached out to grasp a huge piece of machinery set against the wall. With little strain, the beast lifted the massive device over his head and hurled it with incredible force into the front line of villagers, squashing their squirming bodies against the floor. They screamed, but the Monster was concerned only with the scream he had heard from above. He began to lumber toward the stairs.

“The rest of you, get out of here while you can!” exclaimed Winslow. He reached down to pick up the torch dropped by Franz. “From now on, I’ll deal with the Monster!”

But the giant was already rushing up the flight of stone steps.

* * *

Lightning again crashed in the cloudy night sky.

Atop the roof of Castle Frankenstein, Lynn felt the first drops of water fall to her shoulders. She was still fighting a no-win battle against Professor Dartani’s psychic powers. Every few moments she would begin to slip away from his control, only to be lured back to his gaze by his suggestive voice.

She managed to look down toward the moat, seeing that the wind was agitating the waters that eventually led to the Rhine. The churning waves seemed to beckon to her to leap to her death and be swallowed by the water rather than to submit to Dartani’s touch.

The water splashing against her bare legs and chest had somewhat of a recuperative effect. It aroused her own will enough to continue moving away from Dartani, shielding her eyes from his mesmeric gaze with her hands.

Overhead more lightning illuminated the dark sky and the rain began to drop in a torrent.

Lynn rubbed her arms from the cold, the wind, the water assaulting her. She saw the jagged, upstanding rocks that protruded from the waters of the moat. And she saw Dartani, a cackle spewing from his lips, as he came closer to her.

Suddenly there was the parapet pressing against her back. She had to decide what to do now for there was nowhere left to flee. Dartani was only inches away, his eyes lecherously basking in the way the soaked remnants of her clothes stuck to her.

“Now,” he gasped, to the accompaniment of a thunder clap, “you are mine!”

She turned away, trying to decide her own fate, fearing the instant in which Dartani’s clammy hands seized her. But he never again touched her flesh. When she looked up again she saw that the Professor was not looking at her anymore but at the black-clad giant angrily stomping toward him through the rain, a hideous frown on his face, his long arms extended forward.

“Stop!” Dartani commanded as the rain continued to fall on him. “Obey me! Stop where you are! Dartani is your master!”

But the Monster did not obey, nor would he ever again. With his thick black hair drenched by the rain, he stalked forward with hatred in his transplanted eyes and a growl in his throat.

Realizing that his psychic control over the Monster had ended, Dartani began to move away from the oncoming beast, back to where Lynn was standing. Even as the Monster stalked him, the Professor tried desperately to regain his control. But, as far as the Monster was now concerned, Dartani had no power.

The Monster saw Lynn, saw the shivering beauty in her torn clothes, and hated Dartani even more for his attempted molestation of her. She looked up at him, a faint smile appearing on her lips. The brute responded by roaring and lifting the cowering Professor off the wet roof.

“Put me down!” begged Dartani as the Monster lifted him over his rain-splashed head. “I am your master! I control your will! Let me alone… please!”

Professor Dartani was still shrieking when the Monster held him high to be struck by a sudden streak of lightning.

Then the beast dashed the smoldering vulturelike corpse down to the rocks and waves of the moat.

Lynn gasped with relief, almost collapsing from exhaustion but catching herself on the parapet. She looked up at the Monster, who was standing there gazing at her. “I know that if you heard me scream,” she told him, “you’d remember.” In that moment, as he started to lumber toward her, she knew that she had nothing to fear from the Frankenstein monster.

The giant reached out for her, his monstrous hand resting gently upon her shoulder. His dark lips started to curl into something resembling a smile. He began to draw her tenderly away from the edge of the parapet in the direction of the stairs. But as they turned, both the Monster and the woman stopped abruptly.

“Lynn!”

Torch in hand, Winslow stepped forward from the top of the staircase. There was a look of horror upon his face as he stared at the woman he loved in the company of the Monster that he hated. “Get away from that
thing
, Lynn!”

Winslow knew that he had to act fast before the rain extinguished his torch. He saw the Monster’s electrodes glint in the torchlight. His gaze met the hateful eyes of the beast.

From behind, at the bottom of the stairs, the crowd was shouting, waiting for him to carry out his promise to destroy the creature.

“Lynn, get away from it!”

“No, Burt, please don’t – "

Waving his torch, Winslow rushed forward, hearing the hate-filled snarl of the Monster as he began to back away from his fire. He saw the Monster gently move Lynn aside. In a moment he felt the guilt of every death perpetrated by the creature. A second later, he was an inch away from the beast, thrusting the blazing weapon into that stitched yellow face.

A shriek of agony resounded across the rooftop.

Another cannonade of thunder roared overhead as if in acknowledgment of the Monster’s cry.

The roof was already crowding with torch-carrying townspeople as the Monster staggered about, the fiery weapon still stuck to his face, his arms flailing about helplessly as he staggered closer to the parapet’s edge.

Lynn cried out, “No!” and began to move toward the giant, but was stopped by Winslow. He wrapped an arm about her wet body, pulling her against him and holding her back.

“Don’t worry, Lynn,” he said. “The Monster won’t hurt you now.”

She began to weep. “But, you don’t understand...”

Then the Monster, his face still burning, his mouth still screaming through the crackling flames, fell against the parapet stone and off the roof of Castle Frankenstein to be embraced by the violence of the moat.

Immediately, the group of villagers rushed to the parapet’s edge and looked down, with Winslow and the woman he held moving in after them. They saw nothing below but the turbulent waters, rushing to mingle with the mountain streams.

Lynn turned away and looked into Winslow’s face, tears in her eyes and mingling with the falling rain. “Oh, Burt. He wouldn’t have harmed me. He was only trying to save me from Dartani, then bring me back out of the storm.”

Winslow, not really hearing her, pulled her nearer and guided her face against his chest.

“Well, you did it, Dr. Winslow,” said one of the men from the town. “You kept your promise and got rid of the demon. Now, if you’re smart, you’ll get rid of yourself, too, and leave Ingolstadt.”

Someone else added, “It’s all over. We can all go home now.”

Winslow did not respond to them. He continued to hold Lynn against him, shielding her near-nakedness from the villagers as they tossed their torches into the angry waters of the moat as if in a final defiant gesture against him and the Monster, then filed back down the stairs and inside the castle. A few of them paused long enough to see the young man and woman embracing in the rain or to look up at the lightning that seemed to be crashing in tribute to what had just taken place.

Even when the villagers had gone, Winslow, still holding Lynn in his arms, was staring down at the moat, knowing that its waters would eventually empty out into the Rhine. He watched the waves that smashed against mammoth rocks, as though he expected to see a stitched and yellowed hand reach out from those black waters. But no hand emerged, and Winslow finally turned away from the edge of the parapet, guiding Lynn toward the stairs.

Winslow thought of a line he had memorized long ago:

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in the darkness and distance.

This time, he prayed, it would be forever.

THE END

About the Author

Donald F. Glut was born February 19, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois and since birth has been interested in all things fantastic. Growing up with a steady diet of listening to
Superman
on the radio, watching
Tales of Tomorrow
on television and reading comics as a kid, Don made the transition to science fiction and horror as he grew older. He started buying
Famous Monsters of Filmland
magazine with the first issue, which led to a meeting with its editor, Forrest J. Ackerman who was taken with Don’s many creative endeavors. Ackerman later became Don’s agent. Since those early efforts, Don has gone on to achieve success in many aspects of the entertainment business:

Don is the author of the
STAR WARS: The Empire Strikes Back
novel as well as over two-dozen non-fiction works including
The Dinosaur Dictionary, Classic Movie Monsters
and
The Frankenstein Legend
. He has earned a legion of comic book fans as the creator of many comic book characters including:
Dagar the Invincible,
The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor
and for numerous stories for
Captain America
,
The Invaders
and
Vampirella
.

In addition to writing, Don is an accomplished filmmaker having written, directed and produced such cult classic feature films as
Dinosaur Valley Girls
,
Blood Scarab
,
The Erotic Rites of Dracula
and
The Mummy’s Kiss
. A DVD of his early film work was released entitled
I Was A Teenage Moviemaker.
Don has also written scripts for many beloved television shows including
Land of the Lost
,
Shazam!
,
Transformers, Spiderman
and his
Amazing Friends, GI Joe
and
The X-Men.

Pulp 2.0 Press is proud to bring Don’s work back to audiences in these new digital and collector’s print editions. For more information on other Donald F. Glut books available from Pulp 2.0 please log on to
www.pulp2ohpress.com
.