My #FridayFrights entry.
The Family Curse
By Lisa McCourt Hollar
Doctor Frank Stein looked down at the body that lay prone on
his operating table. It belonged to Henry
Talbot, the town drunk. He had died only a few hours ago; his body was
still warm and if it weren’t for the gaping wound in his neck, it would appear
he was sleeping off the effects of his drink the night before. In fact that’s what he was doing when the
doctor stumbled over him , down by the pier. Frank had been looking for sailors
that had recently come into port; preferably sick with scurvy and willing to
come quietly for a few bucks. Someone that wouldn’t be missed.
Henry fit the bill. His disappearance would be noticed only
in the sense that he would no longer be source of income to Tom’s Pub. He also
would no longer be an unwanted aggravation for law enforcement. Frank Stein
consoled himself with that knowledge when he slit the man’s throat. Not only
was he doing a public service to the community, he had a perfect test subject
for his latest experiment; Life Renewal.
Lifting the same knife he had used to cut the drunks throat,
Dr. Stein poised his hand over Henry’s heart. His own heart beat in
anticipation of the thing he was about to do. If he succeeded, his place in the
medical community and history, would be secured. Placing the knife against
Henry’s skin, he cut a thin line, opening the man and revealing the still organ
inside.
“You ready to make history?” Frank asked, inserting
electrical prongs into the lifeless organ, matching the spikes protruding from
Henry’s head. Similar points jutted out of his neck and Frank had even stuck
some in the man’s dick. Maybe Henry would benefit from this little experiment
in more than one way. Frank chuckled at the thought. He was sure more than one
‘working lady’ would be grateful for anything that improved Henry’s
performance.
In the background Twisted
Sister was playing, the beat pulsating, creating excitement in the air as the
doctor reached for the switch. Holding his breath, Frank yanked down on the lever
and waited for the body to react to the electricity. The body jumped, twitching
on the table and then went still as the laboratory was bathed in darkness. The
emergency generators kicked in almost immediately, bathing the room in faint,
yellow light.
“Damn!” Frank slammed his fist against the wall, cursing his
bad luck. The procedure needed to be done before the body went cold and became
too stiff to regenerate. In the distance he heard the emergency siren sound.
Looking out the window he stared down at the town, the buildings dark shadows
against the moon.
“I must have caused a power surge,” Frank said. “I’ll need
to make some adjustments before I try again.” Turning back towards his test
subject, Dr. Stein froze; the surgical table was empty.
At first he was confused; dead bodies did not just get up
and walk away, then he was excited. Dead bodies did not get up and walk away,
but live bodies did, or in this case, reanimated bodies. His experiment had
been a success!
“Henry?” Frank looked around the room, but he didn’t see his
patient anywhere. “Henry?” The light
flickered a little as the generator started to fail and then stabilized. Frank
turned slowly, his eyes searching out the entire room. In the corner the door
was open. No, not open…gone, having been ripped out of the frame, creating a
hole in the wall.
“Damn.”
***
The rest of the castle was dark. The generators only powered
the laboratory, something that hadn’t worried Frank when he’d first made
arrangements for the emergency power supply. His lab was the only room he could
foresee needing the precaution, it was the only room he spent any time in,
other than his bedroom, but even that was rarely used. Now, searching the
family fortress with only the aid of candle light, he questioned the wisdom of
his decision.
“Henry,” he called, as he made his way slowly down the hall,
checking every room he came to. Since the doors were still in place, he thought
it might be safe to assume they were empty, but he wasn’t about to take any
chances, not when there was the Family Curse to consider.
It had all began with his relative, Dr. Frankenstein and
that nasty little whore he’d shacked up with. The woman was a gold digger, only after his fortune. By the time Frankenstein had woken up to what the harlot was doing,
half the family fortune was gone. Heirlooms that had belonged to the
Frankenstein clan for centuries had been stolen and sold to finance her
spending habits.
The trollup had promptly been thrown out on her ass. The
harlot though was not done with Victor Von Frankenstein. She fancied herself an
author and wrote a book depicting his experiments in the castle. She marketed it as fiction but that damn woman
nearly destroyed him with her lies, the worst the fictional creation of the
Frankenstein Monster.
It was true the doctor had been working on a way to reverse
death, but he had been far from successful, but when that woman wrote her book,
the town went on a witch hunt. There had been a series of grave robberies and
they believed Victor was responsible for them. In fact he was, but it was all
in the name of science. Greatness was not achieved without taking some risk. In
this case, risk brought persecution. Doctor Frankenstein was driven out of town
and the castle set on fire.
Several years later Victor’s son returned, but he had
changed his name. Restoring the castle
to its original glory, Dr. Jeckle opened up shop, offering his services as a
psychiatrist. Unfortunately a change in name did not vacate the curse that had
befallen the family at the hands of the bitch, Mary Shelley. His new
experiment, one to eliminate the darker side of his test subjects, failed with
disastrous results. The castle was abandoned again, this time sitting empty
until Frank came across the deed in his mother’s files.
Shelley Stein, (ironic when he thought of it,) had always
been a bit eccentric, but once he found the deed and read the diary of one of
his ancestors, he realized he had the chance to restore the family name. He
didn’t believe in the curse anyway. Sure, he had been unlucky all his life,
barely graduating medical school and always being a step behind his friends in
success. But that was about to change.
Or about to get worse if he couldn’t find Henry. Just how far could a recently, reanimated
corpse go, Frank wondered. That question was answered as soon as he reached the
ground floor and found the main doors ripped out of their frame. Moving along the mountainside a dark figure
could be seen making its way towards the town.
“And of course, I left the damn moat down,” Frank sighed,
turning to pack his bags.
