Victoria Frankenstein, III: Part 8

 

Seven

“How can I help?” John asked.

I didn’t say anything for a little while. Then said, “John. Here’s the thing—if we both take off to search for him, there will be a wide police alert, and it will be nearly impossible for us to avoid them.”

“But—”

“Let me finish,” I said. “The way you can help me the most? Lie for me.”

“I can do that,” he said.

“And be my contact back here. Give me your email address, and I promise to keep in touch with you.”

“That doesn’t seem like much help,” he said.

“But it is,” I said. “I’ll be hoping you can help me—keeping an eye on our house, doing some research for me online—I’m not sure I’ll be able to get on the Internet all that often. And if I do, they’ll be able to trace me—and quickly, too.” I looked at John. “Can you do that?”

“I can—though I’d rather be going with you.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s too dangerous.” I paused. “For the both of us. And besides—you have tomorrow night’s play production.”

He nodded.

As I hurried down his front sidewalk, I looked back and saw John standing under the porch light, and—despite my worries—I had to laugh. He looked exactly like Dracula.

***

I really had no idea what to do next—where to go—where to begin my search for Father. All I knew was that I had to find him—and I had to avoid the police.

Right now, I needed a quiet place to spend the night. I was feeling drowsy, and I needed a safe somewhere to think and plan. I knew I couldn’t go back to my house—not yet. But then I thought about the library. It was right across the street from our place—cater-cornered. I headed there, staying in the shadows as much as I could. There was a police car in our driveway, so I knew they were waiting to see if I would come back. It didn’t seem all that clever to park right there in full view—but I was grateful.

The Wisbech Public Library was one of the old Carnegie libraries from the early twentieth century. Father had told me about them. Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in the world (steel production), had given away piles of money to local communities to build libraries. Years later, quite a few towns had torn them down—or converted them to different uses (like art galleries, lawyers’ offices, and the like)—but some, especially in very small towns like Wisbech, were still libraries.

I loved the look of this one. Very classical—as if a giant helicopter had airlifted it in from Ancient Greece or Rome and plopped it down near our house. Not a bad thing to see every morning as I walked to school and home again. I often went inside and had already made friends with the librarian, Mrs. Jane Arden,[i] who seemed to me as old as the building itself.

On my visits there I had noticed right away that no one seemed too interested in … security. Sometimes—often!—Mrs. Arden forgot to lock the door when she left. I was hoping this was one of those times.

It was.

Even better news: The little light over the entrance had burned out. It seemed—for once—that Fate was on my side.

I slipped inside and moved quickly to the steps that led to the basement level, the place where they kept the oldest books of all, a place I’d already visited numerous times.

There was a faint glow on the stairway because there was a kind of night light that was on all the time. Just enough light for me to move safely down the rickety staircase and into the basement. I knew that the library used to have a custodian, who’d had a room down there. But the budget was so miserable that Mrs. Arden had to do the routine custodial work herself. The library committee also met now and then to help out with chores.

As I said, I’d been down there before and knew where the custodian’s old room was, always unlocked, of course.

I stepped inside, turned on the light, closed the door.

The old cot the custodian had used for his not-so-secret naps was still there—as was an old coat that hung on a hook on the back of his door.

I grabbed that coat, put my backpack on the floor, and lay down on the cot, covering myself with the coat. Plenty warm.

As I was drifting into sleep, I had the oddest feeling that the smell of that coat was familiar. Very familiar.

***

I awoke suddenly with the certain knowledge that I was not alone.

I hadn’t thought that I’d sleep at all—but I had. And soundly, too. Worry and fear had exhausted me, I guess.

***

But I snapped awake when I heard a cough nearby. A human cough. I quickly sat up and saw an old man in a chair. And not just any old man. It was Mr. Leon, who had been the school custodian back in Franconia at the junior high school.[ii]

He didn’t say anything—just looked at me and calmly sipped a cup of coffee from a thermos bottle—and he didn’t seem in the slightest bit surprised that I was there.

But I was surprised, and I blurted, “Mr. Leon! What are you doing here?”

“Well,” he said, “I figured you’d need some help.”

“But how—?”

“Old guys know stuff,” he laughed. “We can’t always do stuff anymore—but we do know stuff.”

“So what do you know?”

“I know your dad’s missing. I know you’ve run away from the police. I know you’ve got a new friend—”

“A new friend?”

“John Howard,” he said, chuckling again. “That Dracula kid.”

And no sooner had he spoken than John came bounding down the stairs. This was all getting a little weird—even for me, the weirdest kid I know.

***

From somewhere Mr. Leon produced some hot chocolate he’d made, and we three clustered in a little circle.

“I don’t know where your father is,” he began, “but I know some places where he could be.”

“Where?” I almost exploded with relief.

“We can talk about it when we get on the road,” he said.

“On the road?” said John.

Mr. Leon looked at him. “You said you wanted to help, Count Dracula.”

“But what about the show tonight?” I asked.

“They canceled it,” said John.

“Why?”

“Because a certain student—a girl—has gone missing.”

***

We headed out to the parking lot in the dark—though the light was already brightening in the east. There was only a single car there—an old beat-up blue Karmann Ghia.[iii]

“How old is this thing?” I asked.

“It’s a 1965 model,” said Mr. Leon.

“Oh, that’s great,” I sighed.

“Will it make it out of the parking lot?” John asked.

“Oh, you youngsters! Here’s all you need to know. Old guys know things. Old cars can do things.”

“Like break down in the parking lot,” I muttered, crawling into the cramped front bucket seat.

John had to struggle to get into the back after Mr. Leon tilted his seat forward for him. I could hear him muttering in complaint as he did so.

“John,” I said, “won’t your parents wonder where you’ve gone. At school, won’t they—”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Mr. Leon as he turned the key and unleashed a sound that resembled a freight train. “Don’t worry about it at all.”

And the acceleration was so sudden and quick that I must have lost consciousness.

---

[i] Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, as a young woman, had been very close to a family named Arden, especially to their daughter Jane.

[ii] In volume 2 of these memoirs, Vickie tells us quite a bit about Mr. S. T. Leon.

[iii] A kind of  sports car that Volkswagen produced from 1955–74.