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charlemange1 · 4 years

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Ask of the Lesser (Frankenstein/Lovecraft Works) 9: The Importance of Being Ernest

The creatures’ furious howling accompanied by shattering glass echoed ahead of us as Victor and I ascended the dark stairway. Victor had slowed so I could keep up, but even with the pole doubling as a cane for support, I still found myself falling behind him as we followed the sounds to Curwen’s lab. Inside the room of scorched stone, the creatures were ransacking everything they could reach, from scoring their claws across cryptic inscriptions to hooves smashing large bowls and scattering salt from broken vases. Victor growled and reached for Curwen’s tattered copy of the Necronomicon, but I yanked his paw back. He blinked at me in surprise.

“They will demolish Curwen’s lab permanently, Victor, but that means little if the man himself walks free,” I explained.

Victor bared his teeth with a determined nod, and we hurried down the stone hallway. Human voices came from an adjoining corridor up ahead. My initial joy at hearing the approach of my fellow species faltered as I recognized the concentrated rage within their cries. Shouts of my prison escape and finding my horse near the same university where Victor had done his wicked work filled the hall. Victor backed behind me with a whine, but they had already turned into view. The roars of vengeance fell silent.

“Guten Tag,” I greeted them with a little wave. Victor covered his face and turned away with a whimper. “I understand how this may appear, but Curwen—”

“Monster,” Button Boy croaked. The groups hardened stares melted like wax to reveal the most primal form of human fear beneath.

“You are wrong,” I stammered, trying to turn Victor around to face them. “He is no enemy, but Curwen is—”

“Monster!” Button Boy wailed, pointing a trembling finger. The gravity of my situation deprived me of enjoying my adversary’s despair.

I began to explain, but rationalization failed as raw instinct sent the entire caravan scrambling back from where they had come, wailing warnings of hellspawn and demons.

“They will return, we must hurry!” I breathed. Victor remained silent, his paws still clutching that half-formed crater of a face. How the tables had turned for him! I touched his shoulder.

“Do not listen to them, they call me a monster too.”

He whimpered a little.

“Victor, we must hurry. We need to find Curwen before he does this to anyone else.”

A familiar scream echoed further down the hall.

“You will never get anything from me!”

I coughed in disbelief. Walton?

Victor’s head perked up as the captain shouted an onslaught of sailor curses. Flexing his paws, Victor started forward with newfound determination. The brief rest rejuvenated me as well and we followed the screams to another door. We crouched out of sight, and Victor’s claw pushed it open. I saw Curwen feverishly pacing across an old lecture room, now crowded with twisting instruments of varying sizes and shapes I recognized as medieval torture devices.

Suspended in the center of it all was Walton with his hands tied above his head shaking enough to make the entire rope tremble. I stifled my happy cry, he was alive! My joy wilted as Curwen yanked Walton’s chin up to his wild eyes.

“Failure bars me at every turn. Victor must have shared more than what you published—tell me!”

“Not a word,” Walton spat. “He took it to the grave—where you should have left him!”

“Your bravery may have served you well on the ice, but here in my world, it is a liability.” Curwen said in his hollow tone. He twirled a knife dangerously close to the captain’s throat. “I will get answers from you. What that takes is entirely in your hands, which, if you have not noticed, are tied at present.”

“You leave him alone!” I shouted, jumping into view.

Curwen turned to where I stood in the doorway. I could see the raw cut I had left above his right eye, it would leave a nasty scar.

“You? You are dead!”

“I came back. Runs in the family.”

“Ernest, you must flee,” Walton shouted. “Tell the townsfolk, get help! If Curwen’s work is not thwarted, we will all perish!”

The smell of smoke from the hall graced me, thick and smoldering. The town is way ahead of you, Walton.

“Curwen’s work is at an end. His lab and underground stock are destroyed,” I smiled as Curwen’s eye’s widened. “Your creations are not so enthusiastic regarding your plans.”

Curwen remained poised, though I could see the tightness in his jaw.

“Do not take that tone with me, boy! Never mind the lab, I can rebuild. Victor was the closest I have come to raising the dead yet! My legacy has only just begun, but dearest Ernest, I can promise that you shall never leave these walls.” He pressed the knife to Walton’s neck. “Now call off those fiends.”

Glass shattered above us as a flaming torch broke through the window and clattered against a table crowded with Curwen’s chemicals. The furniture went up in a glorious ball of fire.

“You are in no place to make to make demands, Curwen,” I said steadily, though the smoke tightened my lungs. Curwen saw my weakness.

“But a feeble invalid is?”

“That depends on you. I am not the one with any use for this.” I walked toward the flaming table and held out the journal, letting the pole fall against my side. Curwen’s ever-proper frame stiffened.

“Victor’s journal?”

“This old thing?” I chuckled, lowering the book dangerously close to the flames. “These diagrams are far too advanced for a feeble invalid such as myself. It would make fine kindling, though!”

“Fool!” Curwen’s voice boomed around the room with monstrous ferocity. “You know not what you do. Burn those notes, and mankind will lose the ability to cure death forever!” His face loosened into a kind smile as the knife left Walton’s throat. “Maybe my ideals do not align with yours, but consider the benefits if this research were delivered into worthier hands? Would you damn humanity based on one bad egg?” His neck snapped to the side with a wicked sneer. “Do you admit your brother’s research was immoral? That he set out to create monsters as they claimed at the tavern? On the docks?”

My fingers tightened around the book as I fought for breath. “He would have LOVED his creature, had you not mixed his notions of life with such unbridled evil!”

“Oh, so you are buddies now?” Curwen cackled. “Have me take all the blame and forgive him for his bad parenting!”

“I cannot forgive him, but I understand his reasoning. I could never hate my own brother. Do you agree, Victor?”

Slippery shuffling came behind me as Victor crawled into view. I watched his shadow overlap mine as he stood on his hind legs. Walton screamed and struggled with newfound terror. Curwen’s face turned the color of clean bone.

“Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall command more than you,” I quoted, and Curwen stepped back. “You thought I was easy prey, but you made a mistake picking on a nothing like me.”

Curwen wiped sweat from his brow. “You misinterpreted the entire point of that warning—as though the grand scale I work on would encompass the likes of you!”

“Interpretation is a funny thing,” I said. Curwen’s taunts would shackle me no longer.

Curwen did not respond. His eyes were all for my brother.

“Do not do this, Victor,” he croaked. “I can return you in full yet. Consider the possibilities! We can still—”

Victor leaped over my head toward Curwen with a howling scream. Curwen grabbed a nearby vase and smashed it on the floor. Salt scattered around as greenish-black smoke hid him from view. I spotted Curwen edging toward the backdoor and shouted as much to Victor. Curwen pointed to the salt and began speaking in an unfamiliar language as the salt trembled around me.

“Y’AI ’NG’NGAH,

YOG-SOTHOTH,

H’EE—L’GEB-”

Several vibrating grains combined beside my shoe and popped like a kernel of corn into a glazed eyeball. Similar piles of merging salt began morphing into various bits of flesh that in turn lumped together to form larger pieces.

“Victor, he means to summon up creatures against us!” I cried.

Victor burst through the smoke and slashed at Curwen. Curwen’s incantation ended in a splutter of pain as claws scored across his arm. The half-built body of Curwen’s abomination slumped lifelessly on the floor. At the edge of my vision, flat tentacles slipped away.

Curwen pulled a vial from his satchel and smashed it against Victor’s head. Victor howled and pawed violently at his eyes as Curwen rushed to the backdoor. I started forward, but he was too far ahead. Curwen paused at the threshold to laugh.

“Mistakes were made here, but failure breeds success. You think yourself so great? I command a darkness your puny mind could never comprehend! My work is far from over, and so is yours. Those fiends you have released even I cannot control! When they are done wrecking the place of their birth, they will charge into the city and spill the precious lifeblood of every man, woman and child in sight!”

The blood I had been transporting was food for the creatures? My last shipment had been confiscated, they had to be starving! Curwen smiled as he shut the door.

“They are your responsibility now, Ernest.”

Victor stopped pawing at his head. He glanced at the door, then me.

The townsfolk cheered somewhere nearby. Smoke drifted in from the hallway to merge with the spiraling cloud from the blazing table. Curwen’s brainless creatures surely had the sense to flee fire! I bit my lip, if the two groups met, it would be a massacre.

“Victor, in your journal you wrote of attempting to disperse your creation, correct?” I flipped to the corresponding page and the quote Victor’s shaky hand had scribbled down. “If I read this, would it turn them back to salt?”

Victor nodded and reached for the journal.

“No, it has to be me. You cannot speak, remember?”

The paw lowered. Victor released a little whimper and tapped my shoulder in concern.

“I can do it. You must stop Curwen!”

Victor stared back.

“When we were children, you always told me I could be great if I only applied myself,” I said quietly. “You saw something in me when everyone else only noticed weakness. Let me prove you right, Victor. Let me disperse them!”

“With all due respect, Ernest, I am burning here!” Walton pleaded, still suspended central to an encroaching wall of flame.

Victor dashed over and snapped the rope between his paw while the other gently lowered Walton to the ground. Walton trembled at the towering creature, though to his credit he did not turn away. The flames were growing around us, it would not be long before both Curwen’s exit and the hall were inaccessible. Victor glanced to me, and I smiled. His head dipped, and he rushed over to pry the backdoor off its hinges before following Curwen.

“You must explain all of this to me later, Ernest,” Walton huffed, rubbing his rope burned wrists.

“Walton, you need to get the townsfolk away from here,” I urged. “They will listen to an upstanding citizen such as yourself. If I fail to disperse those creatures, they will devour everyone!”

“You sound like a general,” Walton laughed, and I wondered how much more of this madness the withered captain could take. “Despite your slouching, I can see that same determination Victor had when I met him on the ice. It is a power than makes universal law crumble. I shall assist you however I can, Ernest.”

“You are a good man,” I said, and I meant it. “I apologize for lashing out at you before.”

“Ernest, you must not—”

“All I ask, Walton, is for you to write my biography more tastefully than Victors. Just get to the point instead of throwing in such pretentious Romantic prose.”

Walton shook my single hand. “If that is your request, you must stay alive to make me.”

“I will try.”

Walton nodded and we rushed into the hall. As he followed the cheering, I went the opposite direction, toward Curwen’s lab and his creatures. Each step I took was purposeful. Victor would stop Curwen, Walton would evacuate the townsfolk, and I would disperse the monsters. None of us were greater than the other, we were each equal in necessity. If I played my part, all would be well.

I found all ten creatures mindlessly pummeling the steel and concrete remains of Curwen’s instruments, to fixated on smashing dust to notice my approach. I opened the journal with my trembling hand, watching the fiends’ destruction.

“OGTHROD AI’F,

GEB’L—EE’H.”

I dared to glance up and saw the creatures had paused. They could have overpowered me easily, but instead, something like peace settled in their eyes as I continued.

“YOG-SOTHOTH,

‘NGAH’NG.”

A transformation began before my eyes, so terrible I focused solely on repeating the final words.

“AI’Y,

ZHRO!”

Silence greeted the closing lines. I glanced upwards, but nothing remained of Curwen’s creations, except a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust scattered on the floor.

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