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By Emmanuel Williams

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“Evil in Germany” by Matthias Stadler, The Austrian Times, translated to the English, 17-

The town of Ingolstadt, Germany has been ravaged by a string of deadly encounters with what appears to be a man on a rampage through what is typically a quiet and studious community.

Attacks began without warning just two weeks ago when a report was delivered to local Nightwatcher that a woman was found with musculature torn from her body leaving only blood and bone when her daughter discovered the remains as she came down the stairs.

She said barely moments had passed between hearing screams and when she landed on the ground floor, to find a puddle of blood and a wide open front door.

“I just saw a very tall man far down the path just out the door step. I couldn’t keep my food down when I saw her… who would do such a thing? Did we know him?”

Other attacks share the shock and disgust of the poor daughter, and most of them are just as gruesome. This report will exclude those details. But suffice it to say, there’s a monster in Germany!

*

Letter from Austry Jacob, addressed to “Anyone”, October 23, 17-

Someone knocked on my door around 11:15 in the evening. I was in my drawing room, perusing female anatomy for pleasure when the rap rapping tapped at my door. Rising me from the wooden chair and leading me to my coat closet. I placed my topcoat around my night clothes and opened to see Victor Frankenstein, wide eyed, long unshaven, and appearing all manner of a frail being.

I welcomed him in from the chill of the night, closing the door on the pitch black shadow of the night outside. 

I lit an extra candle, and as the flame rose, my guest began to ramble excitedly.

“Doctor… need doctor… bones, yes, strange… madness, yes… tolerable… manageable… if only…” he muttered.

You must not judge him.For though he fret, it had only given me more concern for whatever brought him from his estate down into the city in nothing more than pants and collared shirt. How he made it without blowing away in the autumn winds, I’ll never know. Time was limited for such ponderings. 

“Victor,” I said, attempting to steady his shoulders. “Make some sense son. Where is your mind? And why are you here at this ungodly hour?”

“The monster!” is all he replied.

“Are you in trouble?”

“Yes! No, no! What?”

“Are we in danger?! Is he near us? -chased you in here?”

“Yes! No! He is… he has always been… Doctor…” he rocked himself back and forth. He wrestled with his own horror, apparently, then I must have misheard him, for he was whispering. It grew as though he were repeating a refrain from a tune he had hated.

“Creature… creature.. Creature is my creature…creatur… creature… creature is my creature… CREATURE IS MY CREATURE DOCTOR!”

He shook me back now.

“I MADE THIS MONSTER!”

The chanting ceased at this final crescendo.

“No…” I replied. But I shared his horror.

“You must help me. We have to stop it. He has come home again. With the blood of his every adventure stuck to his coat, his legs, his shoes. He loves me, you see. Cannot be far from his creator.”

“But ho-”

“Nevermind how. The next part requires you…”

*

Letter From Austry Jacob, titled “Pre-Surgery”, addressed to “Anyone”, October 24, 17-

Last night was a blur, somehow we had traversed the town quickly and were heading up the stairs to meet Victor’s monster. Confused, I was. 

What had he asked of me, really?

But we had reached a door at the top of his tower, and I could not breath. A stench had met me of the sort we in my field tend to avoid. It smelled of the Valley of Gehenna, but this was no Jerusalem.

This was hell.

Blood stained the entire floor, machinery and tools I had never seen before littered the walls, along with hand drawn images of highly detailed anatomies. 

A brachium here, a quadricep there, and near the center of the circular chamber, above a gurney in the center of the room, sat the image of an open skull. A plump human brain appeared either freshly severed upon it, or about to fall into the open sinuses beneath it, I had not decided which was the proper orientation.

Given the state of the artist of these drawings, I did not ask. I had more questions about the subject lying on the table.

It was grotesque.

An anomaly of bad stitching, pulling parts that obviously did not belong together into torturous connection. 

Yet the person was… no… is that?… breathing?

“Victor…”

“Quiet! You’ll wake him,” he shouted at me in a whisper.

“This is your monster?” I whispered back.

“I prefer to think of him as my creation. But while he sleeps, you must perform the act you promised to perform, back at your cabin!”

“You were serious?!?”

“I’m not putting your brain in this man’s body!”

“Skull!”

“Yes I know where the brain goes, goddamit! This is madness!”

“This madness is killing everything it runs into! The only way to stop it without undoing all of my hardwork, is to control it! And the best way to do that is from the inside! There is no going back Austry! No turning back now! You will do this! And put us all out of our misery!”

*

Letter From Austry Jacob, addressed to “Anyone”, October 24, 17-

Severing a friend’s skull should have caused me ovenfires of pain, but once Dr. Victor Frankenstein was under his own anesthesia, and the monster slept beside him, and I stood between both tables attempting the surgery of the century. 

I grabbed the scalpel tightly, and once my hand became steady, my body went numb, and I concentrated.

I could draw no lines, so I operated with my own instinct for location. Blood could not be caught by the usual pans and buckets, so it trickled and spewed itself as the incision opened more and more of each forehead. 

Wanting the occasion to end as soon as manageable, I rushed the creature’s cut more than Victor’s. He seemed an Other I could not make human, no matter how hard I tried.

Victor’s brain needed detaching, vein by vein, spinal cord, everything. The monster had only a little cord himself, so I took part of Victor’s and fixed that problem.

Nevermind the problem of the creature simply slumbering all throughout my cuts, prods, and attachments. His new brain didn’t quite fit, so I drained some blood, and the cranium beneath sucked in its new soul.

As I finished, the beast, whatever I had created… was not just Victor with new limbs, it was the old monster with Victor’s brain.

I slammed my fists on the monster’s chest, and Victor’s voice coughed from the cocoon.

“Victor?”

The creature’s head turned in my direction. Then to Victor’s former body next to him. 

“UUULLLAHHHHHHHGH! AHHHHH!”

A wail. Perhaps agony, maybe shock. Something was wrong.

He tried to get up and walk. He did stumble, but he towered over me, and I sought to minimize the difference by giving him space. But he misread my actions and jumped within his clothes into a wide stance.

He was going to attack me. And I was not prepared.

He pounced and I fled around the room, hoping to give it some exercise. Get the blood moving in the correct direction. But soon his steps slowed.

Then he fell.

Hard.

A faceplant contained within the chamber. And as Frankenstein lay motionless, I saw blood and more blood, and more blood…

Someone must know what has happened here…

*

fin