Free HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre by Billie Sue Mosiman Page A

something, do something immediately to forestall violence. “ Hello, gentlemen! We've come from across the tundra and it was a worrisome trip. My companion unfortunately had some frostbite to his face so he prefers to keep it covered until a physician can attend to it. We've been on a hunt. It's wonderful to be back with all of you and to share a drink with everyone. Woman! Fill the glasses! I will pay the bill; it's on me.”
    Still the patrons made no move to be at ease and none answered Walton's generosity. “ My friend here...he apologizes for keeping silent and his face covered. It's the...the tip of his nose, you understand, not a pretty sight...”
    As a body the men rose from their tables and stools. They came toward Walton, who felt increasingly nervous. He looked up into faces all around him that showed no smiles, not even a welcoming word. “ What's wrong?” he asked. He felt, rather than saw, the great creature push back his chair slowly. He put out a hand to stay him, but it was shaken off.
    “ We know who this is, what this is. This is the monster,” one of th e men said in a grave tone. He pointed and frowned fiercely. “ We were warned he would be back. Your men told us of him. And here he is, we know that much. He is an abomination before heaven — that is what your men said and I believe it.”
    Oh my God , Walton thought, the men had brought the news — what he'd prayed would not occur . Now Walton's mind skittered and slid and scampered as if on icy slopes to find some exit from this catastrophe.
    The monster swung out from the table to make way for the door, but he was overpowered; there were too many enemies to defeat. He fought valiantly, striking out and sending lesser men tumbling. A roar erupted from his dark mouth, filling the tavern with sound unlike any had heard before, but still the attackers came a t him. As Walton watched in horror, the men rode the great man to the floor, screaming back at him — DEMON! DEVIL! UNHOLY!--beating at him, stabbing at him with whatever they had in hand. The room was a sudden incredible melee of violence and bloodlust. The s cent of fear, like baking copper, mingled with the ozone tinge of unleashed fury. The creature cried out now in pain, his cries drowned by the clamor of the men. Walton broke from his chair and joined in. He tried vainly to pull off the frenzied crowd of a t least a dozen men beating the life from their victim, and at last, knowing he was losing the one thing that had made his life worth living, Walton shouted his misery as his heart broke, shattering to splinters in his chest. He was struck, fell, was roll e d aside, and lay there in tremendous psychic pain, panting, weeping, cursing in his mind the Supreme Creator for ever allowing him to meet and to know of Frankenstein's freakish, godlike mortal.
    In a short while the violence abated, though it seemed it las ted decades. The thunder of the enraged patrons fell to reverent whispers, and Walton heard the last words uttered from the throat of the dying beast.
    “ This is what I hadn't the courage to do...I leave this world to enter into the darkness from whence I ca me...”
    Walton turned onto his side, got to his knees, and crawled over to the broken body. Shards of glass still embedded in his flesh glittered in the lamplight like fiery spikes. Where Frankenstein had delicately, meticulously stitched the limbs together there were now bloody rents, an arm detached from shoulder, leg from groin, hand from wrist, lifeblood pouring, raining, and streaming to soak the hovel's wooden floor scarlet.
    “ Don't go,” Walton cried. “ I came for you. I dreamed of you. I lived for you a nd then risked my life to find you. Please don't leave. You lived through so much!”
    There was one last flicker of life in the otherworldly, washed-out eyes. Walton saw in those twin pools of gruel-colored orbs a brief embittered despair and then a yielding to fate that carried whatever soul the monster