Brynn Staples
723841, English 11 E
The Creator
I reached the address Mary had given me, and sighed longingly. The cabin lay before a glassy expanse of lake and was shielded in an arc by a set of crisp white mountains. By the shore next to an old wooden boat, beds of wild roses and other bristly shrubs grew—an array of colours, muted and bright, dancing at the water’s edge.
“Mary, darling!” I exclaimed, seeing her sitting on the porch. “It’s so good to see you again! How lucky that you’re right here when I arrive!”
“Claire?” Mary beamed. As I came up the walkway, I saw that her smile was wilted, and she seemed almost skeletal—a shell. “How are you?” Her voice was off, I thought, like she was trying to hide something.
“Fantastic,” I sighed, deciding to save my questions for later. “How’s life here? You have a beautiful place.”
“G-good. Thanks,” she stumbled on her words, and I thought her strained smile faded a little more. “Why don’t we go inside?”
Mary let us in and we made our way through the corridors of the house that had been her hideaway these past months. It was immaculate. The place looked barely lived in. The oak floors were polished to a high shine, and looked as if they’d never even been walked on. It wasn’t an elaborate place; not much effort had been made in the area of décor, but it was tidy. After giving me a tour of the cabin, she made tea in the small kitchen, and I told her about life back home.
“You know my employer, right? You can imagine, then, how hard it was persuade him that a break would do me good, and really, I think I left him pretty incredulous. He’s always maintained that he’d never taken a vacation in his life, and he wouldn’t ever give any to his employees, but I think he’s had a soft spot for me ever since I rescued his cat from that burning stable. That, or he’s becoming soft with old age.” I looked at Mary, who was stirring her tea distantly. I’d been talking for an hour now and she’d barely said a word. “Enough about me,” I finished. “How are you?”
“Hm, me?” Mary looked up. “Nothing much is new really. I’m so happy you’re here though, Claire.” She sipped her tea. She didn’t sound happy. The bare sunlight from the kitchen window made her face seem a ghostly pale and the bags under her eyes a bruised shade of purple. It looked like she’d aged years in the past months.
She looked up from her coffee abruptly. “How’s my family? Are they doing alright?”
“Your family? They’re doing great. They’re happy enough, but sometimes they worry. They haven’t heard from you in a while. In fact, I plan to lecture you a bit on their behalf myself. But first, Mary…” I paused, brows furrowed, studying her face. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked. “Are you alright? I mean, you’re so thin and pale and—have you been sleeping okay?”
Mary sighed and slowly raised her eyes to meet mine, as if to tell me that I knew her too well. “It’s just, I’ve been really fixed on writing this one thing lately, and I haven’t let myself get a good sleep in a while. But hopefully, all that’s done with and I’ll be free soon.”
She would say no more, though I could tell she was deeply troubled, so I dropped it and kept a close watch on her. It wasn’t good. She was fidgety; she trembled excessively the whole evening, and when we both finally went to bed, I heard her cry in her sleep from two bedrooms down.
The next morning, she woke me up filled with a boundless joy. I thought it was wonderful at first—that such a shift had happened overnight. When I came into the kitchen, Mary had made breakfast already, and she was sitting at the table with a full plate before her. “Good morning, Claire!” she smiled.
“Good morning,” I replied, pleased by her good mood. “You seem happier today.”
“Oh, I am. I am. I am!” she crowed, and there was a wildness in her eyes as she spoke. She was breathing fast and almost bouncing in her chair.
“Breakfast? Have some!” she muttered to me, wide-eyed and grinning. She leapt up, darted to the stove, dished me up some eggs and bacon, smacked a piece of toast on top and drizzled milk over it all. I sat in shock. She was more than happy; she was hysterical. She hopped over the chairs and clapped her hands, laughing giddily all the while.
“Mary!” I cried. “What’s wrong? Please, stop! You’re not well! What happened?”
She grew frantic, and growled, “Don’t ask me, he can tell. Oh, save me! Save me!” Mary struggled furiously with some invisible force and collapsed in a fit. She didn’t move. I tried to slow my breathing.
“Mary?” My voice echoed in the kitchen. I slumped down next to her and felt for a pulse. She was out cold.
She didn’t wake up for several days, and I worried incessantly. She said nothing when she first opened her eyes; just seemed dazed and confused, and I hoped she didn’t have a concussion. There were no doctors around here and the next house was a league away. If she was physically injured, there was no way to get help. And I couldn’t risk leaving her alone with herself; what would she do if she woke up and I was gone? The cabin was supposed to be Mary’s writing retreat, free from distractions, so the only thing to do would be to write letters, which would reach neither her husband, who was away on business for a few months, or her son, who was staying at a friend’s place during that time. It was hopeless.
So, for the next several months, we were alone. The house had ample amounts of food, and in the back there was even a chicken coop, a cow and a garden we could use for herbs. The chickens and the cow were half-dead and the herbs and roots were fairly feeble, but I managed to restore them moderately.
While Mary was still in her vegetative state, I searched for the cause of her breakdown, and pinned it down to her study. It was chaos in there compared to the rest of the house, as if all personality had accumulated in that one room: a forest of books surrounded her desk on all sides, many acting as end tables and chairs; the floor was a field of coffee-stained pages, and the walls and ceiling were plastered with hand-drawn images of a sick-looking man and a ghastly, decaying monster. I wondered if one of the pictures was of the “he” Mary had talked about. I was curious, and perhaps it was an invasion of privacy, but I looked through her files. Most of them were surprisingly empty, but I found one sealed package in the trash. It looked like a manuscript and was titled, Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus. It had been entirely burned on the back and the edges were charred on the front, but I could just make out the address of a publishing company, as if Mary had intended to send it and decided against it. Inside the package could’ve been a stack of financial papers, for all I could read of it; it was so scorched. I quit my pursuit for that day, but about a month later, when my curiosity picked up again, I resorted to rummaging through her other notes, which were largely illegible, but at least untouched by fire. I picked up a minimally damaged book labeled, quite clearly, ‘DIARY,’ and began, with a rightfully sore conscious, to betray my stepsister.
“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world,” I read. “His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade, that this thing that had received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter, and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.
I opened mine. The idea so possesses my mind still that a thrill of fear runs through me when I think of it and I wish to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still: the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond. I cannot so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunts me. I must try to think of something else. Perhaps my ghost story—my tiresome, unlucky ghost story! For so long, I’ve felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull. Oh! If I could only contrive a tale which would frighten my reader as I, myself, am frightened tonight.
But wait! I’ve found it. This is the story! What terrifies me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre that haunts my midnight pillow. Oh, how I will write! None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of literature. In other studies, exempting science perhaps, you dream only as far as others have dreamt before you, and there is nothing more to create, but in a written pursuit there is a continual food for creation and wonder. You may visit anywhere, make or unmake any world and anyone, and thread yourself into the very fabric of the page, at once bestowing in your characters your very essence, and your ideas.”
I paused, understanding that here lay the root of Mary’s troubles: in her ghost story—her Frankenstein—and in her monster and his author, who must be the figures on the walls. By degrees, she was recovering, but I didn’t think I should ask her about them. She still relapsed frequently, although by now it was starting to seem like she’d regained most of her former vigour. She was becoming much more like the person I had grown up with than the shadow I’d met on the porch when I’d first arrived, and though I was glad, I still itched to know what had tipped her off the edge.
Sensing that my curiosity would soon be answered wholly, I continued: “Reading the messages in stories, some hidden like zebras in a striped room—you see them not but if they move—and others as clear as your nose, has always been a particular joy of mine in empty hours. But here, with my creature and his master, I shall create a world better than such for my successors to lose themselves in. My idols shall cry, ‘You are among our ranks!’ as my Frankenstein becomes a medium for a zebra and a nose in not so much as an instant, delivering my message as clearly as the full moon that glows now: ‘Do not,” I read, realizing at last who Mary had become, “play God.’”
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