Dr. Frankenstein's Daughters Read online

  Uncle Ernest nodded. “You are the inquisitive one,” he said. Reaching over, he squeezed my shoulder consolingly, as if sympathizing with my plight as the less attractive sister. “You are lovely too, in your own way.”

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. “Giselle is wonderful. We are very close.”

  “Of course you are,” Uncle Ernest replied.

  How happy I was to see my twin! We embraced, both of us delighted that the long months of separation were over at last. When one is a twin, it is more than merely having a sibling. Other sisters might be affectionate but they can never know the feeling of being one with another human that twins enjoy.

  Giselle pulled back from my arms to scrutinize me. “Italy has agreed with you,” she pronounced. “All that wonderful Italian cooking has filled out your figure beautifully!”

  This made me terribly self-conscious. “The food was divine, but I ate too much of it!” I confessed.

  “Nonsense! You were too bony before, but now you can fit into some of the gorgeous dresses I bought while I waited for my connecting train in Paris. They’re crammed into my luggage and no doubt need a good pressing, but how could I resist? It was Paris, after all!”

  “Of course! You could not be expected to resist.”

  “Did you see the art in Italy?” Giselle wanted to know.

  “Not very much of it, sadly. Count Volta kept me much too busy for trips to museums.”

  “What a loss,” Giselle mourned. “If I had gone to Italy, it would have been the first thing I did. To have been in the land of Michelangelo and da Vinci … Caravaggio … and not seen —”

  Baron Frankenstein coughed to get our attention.

  “This is our uncle, Ernest Frankenstein,” I said, embarrassed that I had forgotten he was there.

  Uncle Ernest bowed formally. “At your service.”

  Giselle extended her hand and Uncle Ernest kissed it gallantly. “How wonderful to meet you!” Giselle said. “Do you resemble our father?”

  “There is some resemblance, yes,” Uncle Ernest admitted.

  I know this will sound strange, but I am still getting used to the idea of having a father. There are so many questions I have!

  For Giselle, however, the questions moved quickly to the next topic. “How soon can we arrive at the castle?” she asked.

  “It is not a long way,” Uncle Ernest assured her.

  “No coach?” Giselle inquired, her dark arched brows lifting quizzically. She searched the area for a carriage we might hire.

  Uncle Ernest indicated a roughly dressed farmer several yards farther off who wielded a pitchfork as he tossed hay onto the back of his horse-drawn cart. “We might engage that fellow for a ride, if you would prefer,” Uncle Ernest offered.

  Giselle wrinkled her delicate nose in distaste. “Where would we sit?”

  “In the back,” Uncle Ernest replied.

  “Too itchy,” Giselle decided, shaking her head.

  “Perhaps he can bring our luggage to the castle.” Uncle Ernest left us and approached the farmer.

  While he was off negotiating, I hugged Giselle once more. “Have you seen the castle yet?” she asked eagerly.

  “No. We only arrived a half hour before you did. We stayed here at the harbor to await you. How was your journey?”

  Before she could answer, Giselle was seized with a fit of violent coughing. She buckled forward, turning red. I became worried by the intensity of the attack.

  “Are you ill?” I asked.

  “I am exhausted and can’t get rid of this cough,” she confided when she finally stopped.

  “Poor dear,” I said. “You can rest now. You have a whole castle in which to recover!”

  This seemed to lift her spirits somewhat. “I can’t wait to see it,” she said.

  As she spoke, I glanced to Uncle Ernest and saw that the farmer was shaking his head. For his part, Uncle Ernest had taken out his wallet and was proffering more and more coins.

  “The man doesn’t want to take us,” I observed.

  Giselle sighed unhappily. “I packed only what I needed, but I can’t drag my bags all the way up there.”

  When Uncle Ernest returned we questioned him about what had happened. “Did he refuse to take our bags?” I asked.

  “He was unwilling at first, but I finally offered him more money than he could stand to refuse.”

  “Why was he unwilling?” Giselle pressed.

  “I’m sure that it’s no matter for concern,” Uncle Ernest assured us. “The man tells me that the people of this island think the castle is a fearful place. At least that’s what I think he said. Though I spent many summers on this island when I was young, I have not been here for some time, and the heavy dialect spoken by the people confuses me. He might have said it was a sinful place. I do not recall the locals having such a fear when I was a boy. Now they seem to think some evil surrounds the castle.”

  Giselle and I exchanged a quick, worried glance. “Why would they think that?” I asked.

  There was an anxious flicker in Uncle Ernest’s gray eyes that belied the confidence of his words. “It hasn’t been inhabited in a long time, and these are superstitious people.”

  “How long has it been empty?” Giselle inquired.

  “Your father was the last of the Frankenstein family to stay there, and then only briefly. It was back in seventeen ninety-eight, I believe. The farmer says they have seen lights on in the place, especially during the long dark days of winter, when they experience only six hours of sunlight here. But no one ever comes or goes from the castle.”

  “Six hours of sunlight!” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “We’re not that far from Scandinavia and the Arctic Circle,” Uncle Ernest explained. “It’s spring, so now the hours of daylight will grow long. By the summer solstice, the sun will shine for up to eighteen hours.”

  “What’s that like?” I asked.

  “Those were happy times. Victor and I spent our summers here, running free. The long days only added to our fun.”

  I placed a kindly hand on his arm. “Do you miss him?”

  “Victor was never dull,” Uncle Ernest replied. I thought his answer evasive but it satisfied Giselle, who smiled and nodded. “Come!” Uncle Ernest said decisively. “This island is small. Our walk will be brief.”

  We began to hike up a winding country road. I enjoyed the constant crash of surf interlaced with the squawk of seabirds. Low rock walls lined our path on either side. Beyond them were rolling fields upon which sheep and goats grazed contentedly. There were breeze-rippled carpets of verdant green with only occasional patches of brown. Heather was scattered everywhere, as though some giant being had tossed it carelessly across the landscape.

  A warm, humid breeze made my braid dance behind me and ruffled what was left of Giselle’s elegant hairstyle. Uncle Ernest took off his hat to keep it from blowing away.

  The path grew narrower as we crested the hill. Finally we pushed our way through a patch of blueberry bushes that obstructed our view. Without meaning to, I gasped. Giselle gripped my hand, wide-eyed.

  Castle Frankenstein towered before us. Backed by the brilliant blue of the sky, the minerals of its stone walls sparkled in the sunlight. Windows were etched so deeply into the rock that they seemed to me like small caves. Two wide towers looked out onto the tempestuous waters leading out to the Atlantic Ocean.

  Uncle Ernest strode toward the massive castle. “Come, girls! Let’s see how this old giant has stood the test of time!”

  Still holding my hand, Giselle pulled me forward. Suddenly frightened, I resisted her.

  “What’s the matter, silly?” she asked, smiling.

  Despite the crisp blue day, the castle was dark and foreboding. Something within me warned not to go near it.

  Giselle looked over her shoulder to see Uncle Ernest hurrying away from us. “Don’t be nervous,” she said, turning back toward me. “It will be fine. Fine!”

  “You’re not frighte
ned?” I asked.

  Bending forward with her arm to her face, Giselle began to cough once more. The deep hacking worried me tremendously. Giselle had always been delicate, and it did not surprise me that the long journey had depleted her health. I wondered how she would fare in this damp, windy place.

  When Giselle’s fit had subsided, she came beside me, flushed from coughing. “Of course I’m frightened,” she said seriously. “But what choice is there? It’s too late to turn back now. Our only way is forward.”

  For a moment, our eyes locked in silent communication. I knew that she was right. Grandfather had not wanted either of us to come to Gairsay, but we had defied him and been disowned for our disrespect. Now the inheritance from our father was our only means of support.

  “Let’s get you inside out of this wind,” I said, rubbing between her shoulder blades. Nodding, she pulled in a deep breath in which I detected a shiver. And so we hurried forward, eager to discover what Castle Frankenstein would hold for us, yet afraid of what we might find.

  FROM THE DIARY OF

  GISELLE VON DER WIEN

  June 7, 1815

  Castle Frankenstein has set my imagination ablaze with ideas of both its past and its future. It is broken-down, disheveled, filled with insects and cobwebs; damp, leaky, drafty — and yet when I imagine how I can convert the rooms to my liking it fills me with excitement. The place is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, on which I can imprint my own vision. As we walked through the high-ceilinged open spaces of the castle, Baron Frankenstein bemoaned the decline of its condition, shaking his head woefully and muttering what a shame it was that the place had been allowed to fall into such disrepair.

  At one point I stopped to run my fingers along the thick, wavy, and bubbled stained glass of the windows. I was distracted, imagining how I could convert the rooms to my liking, and when I turned to ask Uncle Ernest a question, he and Ingrid were gone.

  Searching for them, I came upon Baron Frankenstein standing alone in an empty room that looked out over the ocean. The poor man’s eyes were filled with sadness. “I once sat here with my beloved mother, and she told me and Victor thrilling tales of giants and ogres in this countryside, a legacy from the Vikings who once raided and ruled here,” he said when he saw I was observing him. “Victor loved the stories.”

  “Were you and my father close?” I asked politely.

  “Victor was a wonderful brother,” Baron Frankenstein stated passionately. “As a boy he was full of imagination, but eventually it overtook him. He imagined too much! He was insatiable for knowledge and it drove him mad. In the end I didn’t know him at all — nor did I wish to know him. When he returned from the university, he wasn’t the brother I knew, but rather an agitated, paranoid lunatic, always looking over his shoulder for an imagined enemy.”

  “We know next to nothing about our father, except that we have heard people call him a genius,” I said. “Do you think that his genius drove him out of his mind?”

  “Yes. But there was more to it than that. It was as though something had happened to make him shun family and friend alike.”

  The man was shaking, and the heartfelt passion of his words was alarming. I stepped back to create some distance from them, for the idea that we had a father who had gone mad was not pleasing to me. Ingrid would remind me that such traits can be handed down from parent to child.

  Baron Frankenstein dashed the mist from his eyes and addressed me with more composure. “Will you be so kind as to find your sister and join me here? This seems as good a place as any to conduct the business of your inheritance. I see no reason to delay.”

  After nearly ten minutes of searching the vast castle, I came upon Ingrid in a small fifth-floor room where a narrow, glassless window revealed the vivid blue of the sky. She sat on the floor, engrossed in a large, thick, yellowed notebook. Looking up at me, her violet eyes shone with excitement. “These are our father’s writings,” she told me, “and they are amazing.”

  Settling on the floor beside her, I gazed down at the crumbling paper and saw the hurried, jagged scrawl indicative of an author in an agitated state. In contrast to the sloppily dashed annotations were biological illustrations rendered with impeccable precision; body parts of every sort were labeled and in some cases crossed out.

  “Look at these drawings! Aren’t they remarkable?” Ingrid gushed.

  “They are truly impressive,” I said, pulling the drawings closer.

  “There are more notebooks,” Ingrid said, pointing to a dusty stack of thick books across the room.

  “Are they journals?” I asked.

  “Yes, they seem to be both scientific and personal,” Ingrid revealed.

  With a clap of dust, she flipped to the front of the notebook, which was filled with scientific formulas. “I’m getting to a section where I’m having difficulty following what he’s talking about,” she admitted. “Since this is the first of the notebooks, it starts back in Geneva, before he even gets to university. I can follow some of what he says back then, as a boy of sixteen. He’s very interested in the ancient science of alchemy, and I can comprehend some of what he’s saying since I’ve read up on it a bit myself.”

  “Alchemy?” I asked, having never heard the word.

  Ingrid sighed and sat back on her heels. “It’s a very ancient science that attempts to transform simple metals into gold and silver.”

  “But our father was mad,” I told Ingrid. “Baron Frankenstein told me so.”

  I thought this news would disturb Ingrid as it had disturbed me. But instead she asked thoughtfully, “Aren’t all geniuses a bit mad?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “In my opinion, no amount of brilliance is worth it if you’re also deranged. What possible good can come of a madman’s work?”

  Ingrid shook her head, and I could see from the fire in her eyes that she was not taking any of this lightly. “He was not mad when he was sixteen and wrote these things,” she insisted, tapping the notebook.

  “But isn’t believing in alchemy like believing in magic?” I suggested.

  “Count Volta doesn’t think so,” Ingrid said. “Although he never said so publicly, one day he told me that his work with metals and electricity made him more convinced than ever that the alchemists were onto something since they were involved in working with metals. He and his mentor, Luigi Galvani, created current by making positive and negative metals. Galvani proved that animal body parts could be brought to life by running current through them.”

  “But that’s not making gold,” I pointed out.

  “Isn’t that gold of a sort? Or greater, even, than gold?”

  “Are you saying that reenergizing body parts is the same as creating gold?” I asked skeptically.

  “Isn’t it?” Ingrid answered.

  This was too complex for me to consider, and it still struck me as a sort of lunacy, proof that what Baron Frankenstein had said about our father being mad was true.

  Standing and extending my hand, I drew Ingrid up to her feet. “Baron Frankenstein has documents for us to sign before he can give us our inheritance, and we’ve kept him waiting too long already.”

  Ingrid’s brows knit as she looked down at the notebook, almost as though she hated to leave it behind.

  “You can return to it later,” I assured her. I began to pull her along, but I felt a cough rise in me and had to drop her hand. I attempted to cover this action, but she knew me too well. I tried to grab her hand again, but she hesitated, much as she had before entering the castle.

  “Giselle,” she said, her voice full of concern, “are you sure we want to stay here? It’s cold and drafty with only the barest of old furniture. I’m afraid your health will suffer. Maybe we should leave while the sea is still crossable. We will have money and can stay at an inn. Afterward, we can buy a more sensible home anywhere we want.”

  I walked her to the tall, narrow window and gazed out on the dark, swirling ocean. “It’s incredible here, Ingrid,” I said, thin
king again of all the possibilities I could bring to it. “This is a gift that has fallen to us. We have to take it.”

  Ingrid nodded, and I could tell she was nearly convinced.

  “You’ll promise me that you won’t let your health suffer?” she checked.

  “I won’t,” I confirmed. “This fresh air will do me good.”

  “All right, then.”

  Another cough tickled my throat, but I fought it down because a coughing fit was the last thing I needed at the moment. I forced a smile and beckoned for Ingrid to follow me back down the stairs.

  It was time to claim the Frankenstein fortune as our own.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF

  INGRID VON DER WIEN

  June 7, 1815

  Standing on the cliff’s edge, I gazed out over the ocean, thinking about my new life. I could do this. I had to. It was the chance of a lifetime.

  Gazing around, I noticed something that I’d missed earlier. There were no trees on the island. There was only ocean, low stone walls, and rolling fields. I had no idea where the hundred inhabitants could be living, since only two buildings were in sight of the castle.

  Looking down into the ocean, it was easy to see another small, rugged island not very far out. There was a tumbled-down stone-and-thatch hut located on it. I couldn’t imagine who might live in such a place and, indeed, it appeared abandoned.

  The other visible building was to the right of the castle. It was a white, one-story cottage with a thatched roof. Smoke puffed from its single chimney though the day was warm.

  Gazing back at the castle, I saw Giselle approaching. She came to my side and hooked her arm in mine. “We’re rich,” she said quietly.

  “We’re rich,” I agreed.

  “Now we have nothing to worry about.” She’s always known how and when to soothe me.

  “Nothing to worry about,” I echoed, and saying it made me feel it was so.

  We returned to the castle to find Uncle Ernest asleep in one of the few chairs, snoring with an impressive resonance. On a nearby table he had thoughtfully laid out some of the cheese and bread I recalled him buying back in Aberdeen that morning. We devoured it, both of us discovering we were famished.