Holding Out for a Hero

A full moon enveloped the ballroom in shining silver, giving those sitting across from me the appearance of ghosts. From the way their shoulders slumped beneath the weight of life, they seemed more dead than alive.

"We appreciate you seeing our son back home, Monsieur Clerval." Alphonse repositioned himself on the couch. "I only wish it were under happier circumstances."

"I could not allow my friend to return alone after such tragic revelations, Monsieur Frankenstein."

"Please, call me Alphonse."

"Alphonse." I echoed, my tongue fumbling with the word. I still wasn't used to the informalities that came with adulthood. I wasn't used to the little portrait of William hanging below the painting of Caroline, either. The surrounding candles made their painted eyes look alive, as though they too were part of this most miserable occasion. The ghosts of the dead eager to pass judgment on the living.

Elizabeth slipped into the room like a shadow, settling on the couch beside Alphonse and stroking his hunched shoulder. Ernest sat to their left, his eyes on the floor.

"I've put him to bed," Elizabeth said. "Victor is exhausted, we shouldn't worry about him wandering in on us." The kind smile she held for Alphonse soured for me. "Henry, what has happened to Victor? He didn't write for years, and when you visited him in Ingolstadt you wrote back that he was fine. Fine! The man—if you can call him that—who walked through our doors this morning is anything but!"

"What happened to William has unnerved him, that is all." My voice faltered. I couldn't say murdered.

"The news of William alone couldn't wither a man like that," Elizabeth paused as Ernest stood and walked to the window. With his back to us, he dragged a finger across the dusty sill. "Caroline's death shadowed Victor when he left for university, but now it has consumed him. Grief must have been eating at him for years. You promised you would bring him back to us, Henry. How could you have let him fall to such a state? You were his friend!"

My fingers dug into my palms. My feelings for Victor extended far beyond simple acquaintances. She couldn't understand how wretched his state had been on my arrival. Of the contents I had found in that horrid dorm. Who could explain those racks of rotting flesh seasoned with strange salts rising to the rafters? Sanity does not linger on a floor where bits of animal and man have liquified into mush carelessly tracked across alchemic symbols written in flaking blood!

To think that the son of the renowned Alphonse Frankenstein, fiancé to the fair Elizabeth, brother to sweet William—would be an accursed resurrection man! Our Victor—a graverobber!

I knew he wasn't writing home, yet where was I while he grieved? I'd remained in Geneva, lost in my world of poets and prose while obeying father's every order like a dog. I wasn't fit to wear the crown of heroes in the plays I had forced Victor and Elizabeth to partake in as children—I was a coward. No amount of memorizing the escapades of Odysseus and scripting grand adventures would change that. It was all I could do to throw Victor's instruments into the Danube before the authorities of Ingolstadt sniffed them out.

My silence to Elizabeth's question was not to protect the grieving family from Victor's sins, but to cover my own shame. Father, Victor, the noble Frankensteins, when would I stop disappointing the people I loved?

At least Victor had returned to the light. He had renounced his dark practices—whimpering in his sleep of imaginary monsters that haunted him. That history was buried, and I saw no need to dig it up again. So I held my silence as Elizabeth held my gaze with teary eyes.

"Accusations will not fix the past. What's done is done," Alphonse laid his hand over Elizabeths. "What matters now is protecting the son that still remains to me. Henry, you were with Victor at Ingolstadt. Would you consider him a harm to himself?"