Page 104 of Her Creation

Victoria shrank back instinctively, curling in on herself, the child she once had been clawing at the surface of her terror.

“What is wrong with you? He loved you more than anything in the world, and you…you murder him? Desecrate his body for your experiment?” His face burned crimson, veins dark and pulsing beneath the surface, as if the horror of her crime had etched itself physically into him.

Victoria’s gaze clung to him as though he were a flickering, fragile apparition. The scent of stone, dust, and the faint copper of old blood curled around her like smoke, tightening in her chest. “I—I didn’t murder Papa,” she stammered, her voice brittle, tremors clawing at her throat. “He fell during the experiment, down the stairs.” She rushed forward, shoving past him, only to be met with empty space where her father’s body should have been. The chamber seemed to swallow her, the air heavy with the acrid stench of death, the faint, undying odor of decay clinging to the walls and the floor, curling under her nostrils like smoke. “Where is he? Where is he? What have you done with him?”

Dr. Paranthal’s voice cut through the room, sharp, brittle, echoing off the stone in a thousand jagged reflections. “What have I done with him?” he gasped, clutching the doorway, his hands trembling as though the walls themselves had tightened around him. “You have desecrated his corpse! You loved him so little you could not even grant him a proper burial? You stuff him in a cold chamber?”

He recoiled from her gaze, taking a step toward the three men behind him. They were large, looming, their forms impossibly tall in the flickering light, shadows stretching like grasping hands across the cracked stone floor. Each movement they made sent a chill rolling through the air, cold and merciless, as though the castle itself had conspired to trap her.

“That is not what happened!” Victoria’s voice trembled with terror, her knees threatening to buckle. “He was sick! You know it! You know that’s true! He tripped down the stairs!”

“I know you would not abandon your obsession with resurrection, despite him resisting! He told me, damn it! You could not even grant him peace in death. You continued to massacre his body! What sort of monster are you?” His words were nails scraping across stone, jagged and piercing, mingling with the musty, iron-rich smell of the chamber. The shadows themselves seemed to pulse with anger, creeping along the walls, winding toward her like dark serpents.

Victoria’s protest faltered. The air had grown thick, oppressive, and her throat ached. The stone walls seemed to close in, each breath she drew a labor, and the faint whisper of death coiled and curled heavy in the corners, whispering of horrors yet to be seen.

“I have all your notes. Every single one. We know your experiments—you have acted as assistant while continuing God knows what, performing vile acts on the people of these towns.”

The three men advanced, their footsteps echoing like the tolling of a bell for the condemned. Their shadows stretched across Victoria, reaching toward her in long, black tendrils, blotting out the thin shafts of sunlight that managed to pierce the gloom.

“No…no, this is not what you think! He trained me! My father trained me!” she cried, writhing violently as their iron grips seized her arms. “I was helping him when he could not perform!”

Dr. Paranthal’s face twisted with disgust and anguish, every feature sharpened and haunted by grief. “You expect me to believe he willingly trained you? Even if he did, you would have needed years of practical experience! Do you think no one would notice? Do you think the world is blind? You hacked your way through hellish experiments. You were always obsessed. Always…odd. Take her.”

“No! You cannot!” she shrieked, her voice raw and fracturing, reverberating in the high, vaulted ceiling. “Where are you taking me?”

“He will die too, your creation,” Dr. Paranthal said, tugging at his hat in a futile gesture of control, then flinging it onto the table as though movement alone could expel his grief. “They are already after him. He will be killed.”

“No!” Victoria collapsed, knees hitting the stone floor, but the men held her fast.

“Yes. You are charged with all eleven deaths—you created this…abomination and unleashed it upon the village.” He shook his head violently, tears spilling freely now, grief and judgment wrapped tightly around his voice. “By this time tomorrow, you will be deservedly executed.” His quivering lips pressed together as he turned away, swatting at a spider web with his hat. “Spiders everywhere.” He swore and crushed his foot down on the tiny arachnid.

The last thing Victoria heard, as the men dragged her out and the carriage’s wheels scraped over wet gravel, was Dr. Paranthal’s whispered, ragged curse: “Your mother would be devastated if she were alive to see what you have done.”

Chapter 30

Log entry

March 1803

Recounting events 1773–1795 Location: Unknown

The kerker smelled. An armed guard stood dutifully, if not nervously, by. Filthy, smashed straw riddled with piss and vermin tucked against the edges of the dungeon. A heavy oak door with iron bands was the only thing separating the seeping stone walls from one continuous square of melancholy gray stone.

Victoria sat with her back against the back wall, chained to it with manacles similar to those in the laboratory. She had no one to talk to; as a woman accused of unnatural acts, she was sequestered even from the other prisoners. Forbidden from speaking for fear her voice and words would call upon the creature who was still unaccounted for.

Though the space was silent now, her mind played the chants of the men around her as she was thrown into the small, underground room and chained.

Widernatürlich!

Gottlos!

Unweiblich!

Against nature. Godless. Unwomanly.

She was scheduled to be beheaded at noon.

Many men had stared at her yesterday when she’d arrived. The priest had visited—a man she’d known since childhood. He’d reminded her softly that she never should have claimed knowledge forbidden to her. Several other men who had known her father joined him to calmly chastise her for acting without male sanction and creating life instead of bearing it in her womb as a woman was meant to.