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

had owned across the separation between life and death into the vast, unknowable, unreachable beyond — where his maker did or did not wait.
    * * *
     
    ONE YEAR AND FOUR MONTHS LATER
    Walton knew the bed was going to be his grave. He tried as hard as he could to remain in the chair by the window, looking out at the spring abundant with wild flowers, with violets white and lavender, with tiny yellow buttery heads of flowers so small they were but dots in the green gra s s leading down to the passing creek. Margaret had come to care for him in his last days, ministering to his every need, loving him as the last of her family left on earth, loving him for being the devoted brother he had always been to her.
    Walton thought m ore and more of his final voyage, the ship he sailed to the north. He thought of the wild, white-capped icy seas, of the ice floes that were like islands, of the white, glaring, relentless landscape awaiting him. He went over his first sight of the creatu r e as it burst into the ice cave, dealing death blows to the frightened men. He lingered on the creature's death in the small village, broken glasses and bottles stuck into him from neck to ankle, his blood so red it was the crimson of a king's robes. In t h e end he was like every man — blood, bone, and sinew. Then there was the creature's last words — how he hadn't the courage to finish off himself as he had pledged he would when his master died. Wasn't that the most human quality about the creature? That he hu n gered for life, even if that life was manufactured and forced upon a body built in a laboratory? That he longed to survive despite the despair in his heart and the empty silence in his broken mind? He had been human; he had. The most human of us all, Walt o n thought, for he knew beyond any doubt he was unnatural and did not belong alive. Yet he strove to live, even to the last...
    I am doing the same , Walton now realized, I am the same as the monster. Here he was holding onto life with both fists, cursing th e failing of the light. He refused to be put to bed, never to rise again. He sat in the chair, crippled and weak, hardly able to take a breath, hardly able to swallow broth, and still he pushed into what life he had left with every fiber of his being, pus h ed and pushed and held on as if to a cliff face. He winced in pain, holding his breath until the stitch in his side passed.
    He stared out the window at the spring world and knew he would never see the leaves turn in autumn, he would never see the ice rime on the riverbank, he would never see another flowering spring.
    He knew what he must do as his final work. “ Margaret!”
    She came running from the back of the house, eyes wide. “ What is it, Robert, what can I do?”
    He almost laughed, she looked so terrified. S he must accept this too, his passing. His poor lonely sister must in the end bear her own sorrows. “ Could you bring me paper and pen and an ink pot? I have something to write.”
    She looked relieved to have a chore she could do for him. She was back quickly with his requests. She also brought a polished oak lap desk and settled it on his knees.
    Once she had left again, Walton began to write down his story. He pulled out the letter he'd written to Margaret about his hopes to go on a voyage to search for Frankenstein's monster.
    He copied it word for word, carefully, laboriously, and smiled to himself as he wrote...
     
    My Beloved Sister,
    ---I write to you about a deadly serious and Olympian idea. It is of a monster. I know you recall the one I mean, the only one that has ever been allowed entry into the world since Neptune was purported to rise from the deep blue ocean waters.
     
    Walton paused and again glanced out the window. The world beyond the glass changed in his mind from lush, green g rass to ice, from flowers and a blue sky to a world empty of life and hugging the top of the world. He strode across the endless tundra, searching.
    He returned to the