There is nothing more painful than the emptiness that follows a terrible series of events.
When everything happens at once, the mind is kept alive by fear, hope, and action.
But once it is all over, there is nothing left to do.
The danger has happened.
The decision has been made.
And there is nothing you can do to change it.
Justine was dead.
She was finally at peace.
But I was still alive.
My blood continued to flow through my veins, yet my heart felt crushed beneath a weight of guilt and despair that nothing could lift.
I could not sleep.
I wandered from place to place like some restless evil spirit.
I had already caused horrors that were almost impossible to describe.
And I was convinced that even worse things were still to come.
What made my suffering even more terrible was that I had never been a cruel man.
My heart still longed for goodness.
When I was young, I had wanted to help people. I had dreamed of doing something useful for humanity.
I had believed that my life would be filled with good intentions and noble achievements.
Now all those dreams had been destroyed.
Instead of looking back on my past with pride and using it to build a better future, I could think only of my guilt.
Remorse had become my prison.
I felt as if I were living in a hell that no words could describe.
My health soon began to suffer.
Perhaps I had never fully recovered from the terrible illness I had endured after creating the creature.
I avoided people.
The sound of laughter or happiness became painful to me.
I could not bear to see anyone enjoying life.
I wanted only one thing.
Solitude.
Deep, dark, complete solitude.
My father noticed how much I had changed.
He saw that I no longer behaved like the son he remembered.
He tried to help me.
One day he said quietly, “Victor, you know that I am suffering too.”
He paused, and tears filled his eyes.
“No father could love his child more than I loved William.
“But we still have to think about those who are alive.
“Do you really think it is right to destroy ourselves with grief?
“We have a duty to the people who remain.
“Your sorrow is so extreme that it prevents you from living, working, or even helping the people who need you.
“You must find the strength to continue.”
I listened to him.
His advice was reasonable.
But it could not reach me.
If my grief had been the only thing hurting me, I would have hidden it.
I would have comforted my family and tried to be strong for them.
But my grief was mixed with guilt.
And beneath the guilt was fear.
I knew what I had done.
I knew what creature was responsible.
How could I simply forget?
I could only look at my father with despair and then turn away from him.
Not long afterward, we moved to our house at Belrive.
The change was a relief to me.
Living inside Geneva had become unbearable.
The city gates were closed every night at ten, and after that hour I could no longer go out onto the lake.
At Belrive, I was free.
Many nights, after everyone else had gone to bed, I took a boat onto the lake.
Sometimes I raised the sails and allowed the wind to carry me.
Other times I rowed to the middle of the lake, stopped, and simply let the boat drift.
I sat alone with my thoughts.
The lake was peaceful.
The sky was quiet.
The mountains surrounded me.
I was the only troubled thing in that beautiful world.
Occasionally I heard frogs calling from the shore or saw bats flying through the darkness.
Otherwise, everything was silent.
And sometimes I wanted to end my life.
I would look at the dark water and think about simply letting myself fall into it.
If I drowned, the lake would cover me forever.
My suffering would finally end.
But then I thought of Elizabeth.
She was already suffering so much, and she loved me deeply.
Could I really abandon her?
Then I thought of my father and my surviving brother.
What would happen to them if I died?
And what if the creature returned?
What if he attacked them after I was gone?
Could I leave my family helpless against the monster I had released into the world?
No.
I could not do it.
Sometimes I would sit in the boat and cry bitterly.
I wished only for one thing—to find peace inside myself so that I could comfort the people I loved.
But peace would not come.
My guilt destroyed every hope.
I had created suffering that could never be undone.
And every day I lived in fear that the creature would commit another terrible crime.
Somewhere deep inside me, I felt that the story was not over.
I believed he would kill again.
And perhaps his next crime would be so horrible that it would make William’s and Justine’s deaths seem small by comparison.
As long as I had someone left to love, I had something left to fear losing.
My hatred for the creature became almost impossible to control.
Whenever I thought about him, I clenched my teeth.
My eyes burned with anger.
I wanted desperately to destroy the life I had foolishly created.
When I remembered what he had done, my desire for revenge became overwhelming.
I would have traveled to the highest mountain in the Andes if I believed I could throw him from its summit.
I wanted to find him.
I wanted to face him.
I wanted to make him pay for William and Justine.
Meanwhile, our house had become a house of mourning.
My father’s health had been badly damaged by everything that had happened.
Elizabeth was deeply depressed.
She no longer enjoyed the things she once loved.
Even ordinary happiness seemed wrong to her.
She felt that enjoying life while William and Justine were dead would be almost disrespectful to them.
She believed that endless grief was the only tribute she could offer to two innocent people who had been destroyed.
She was no longer the cheerful girl who had once walked beside me along the lake and dreamed about our future.
Grief had changed her.
One day she spoke to me quietly.
“Victor, when I think about what happened to Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world the way I once did.
“When I was younger, I read about cruelty and injustice in books and thought such things belonged to another time.
“They seemed far away, almost unreal.
“But now suffering has entered our own home.
“Now I look at people differently.
“They seem like creatures capable of destroying one another without mercy.”
She lowered her eyes.
“Perhaps I am being unfair.
“Everyone believed Justine was guilty.
“And if she really had committed that crime, she would have been one of the most evil people imaginable.
“To murder William for a piece of jewelry—a child who had been raised in our home and whom she had cared for since birth—would have been unforgivable.
“If she had really done that, I would have believed she was unfit to live among decent people.
“But she was innocent.
“I know she was innocent.
“I feel it in my heart.
“And you know it too.
“That is why I believe it.
“But Victor, if a lie can look so much like the truth, how can anyone ever feel safe?
“I feel as though I am standing at the edge of a cliff while people all around me are trying to push me over.
“William and Justine were murdered.
“The real murderer is still free.
“He is somewhere in the world, perhaps even walking among respectable people.
“And yet, even if they had condemned me for those same crimes, I would not have traded places with the person who truly committed them.”
Her words tore through me.
I was the real murderer.
Not because I had killed William or Justine with my own hands, but because I had created the being who did it.
Elizabeth saw the pain on my face.
She gently took my hand.
“My dear Victor, you must calm yourself.
“These tragedies have hurt me terribly too.
“But you are suffering even more than I am.
“There is something frightening in your face.
“Sometimes I see despair there.
“Sometimes I see anger and revenge.
“And it frightens me.
“Please, Victor. Let those dark feelings go.
“Think about the people who still love you.
“We have placed all our hopes in you.
“Have we really lost the ability to make you happy?
“As long as we love each other and remain faithful to one another, we can still find peace here.
“This is your homeland.
“It is beautiful and peaceful.
“What could possibly destroy our happiness?”
I looked at her.
She was the person I valued above everything else.
Her words should have been enough to drive away the darkness inside me.
Instead, I moved closer to her almost instinctively.
I was afraid.
Afraid that at that very moment, the creature might be somewhere nearby, waiting to take her from me too.
Nothing could save me from my misery.
Not friendship.
Not love.
Not the beauty of the world.
Not even the peaceful sky above us.
I felt trapped beneath a darkness that nothing could penetrate.
I was like a wounded deer that crawls into a hidden place in the forest, looks at the arrow buried in its body, and waits there to die.
Sometimes I managed to control my despair.
At other times, my emotions became so violent that I could no longer remain at home.
I needed movement.
I needed distance.
I needed to escape myself.
During one of these moments, I suddenly left home and traveled toward the Alps.
I hoped that the vastness and permanence of the mountains might help me forget my own temporary human suffering.
I decided to go toward the valley of Chamounix.
I had visited it many times when I was young.
Six years had passed since then.
I had been destroyed by what had happened.
But the mountains had not changed.
I traveled the first part of the journey on horseback.
Later, I rented a mule because it was safer on the rough mountain roads.
The weather was beautiful.
It was around the middle of August, almost two months after Justine’s death—the moment when I felt my life had truly fallen apart.
As I traveled deeper into the valley of the Arve, the weight on my mind began to lessen.
Huge mountains rose around me.
Deep cliffs surrounded the road.
The river roared through the rocks.
Waterfalls crashed down the mountainsides.
The power of nature was overwhelming.
For the first time in a long while, I felt small before something greater than myself.
I no longer feared any human being.
Only the immense power that had created and ruled the natural world seemed worthy of fear.
The higher I climbed, the more magnificent the landscape became.
Old ruined castles hung from steep, forest-covered mountains.
The Arve rushed violently through the valley.
Here and there, small cottages appeared among the trees.
Above everything stood the Alps.
Their enormous white peaks rose into the sky like the towers and palaces of another world.
They seemed too great and ancient to belong to ordinary human life.
For moments at a time, I felt something I had almost forgotten.
Pleasure.
A turn in the road would reveal a familiar landscape.
A mountain peak would remind me of my childhood.
The wind seemed to whisper gently through the trees.
It was as if nature itself were telling me:
“Stop suffering.
“You have cried enough.”
For a while, I listened.
But the peace never lasted.
The darkness inside me always returned.
My memories would come rushing back.
The deaths of William and Justine.
The creature.
My guilt.
My fear of what would happen next.
Then I would push my mule forward, desperate to escape the world and my own thoughts.
Sometimes I would dismount and throw myself onto the grass.
I would lie there overwhelmed by horror and despair.
Eventually, I reached the village of Chamounix.
By then, both my body and mind were completely exhausted.
I stood at the window for a while.
Above Mont Blanc, pale flashes of lightning moved across the night sky.
Below me, the Arve rushed through the valley.
Its constant sound filled the darkness.
For once, the noise did not disturb me.
Instead, it soothed me.
The sound of the river became almost like a lullaby.
I lay down.
Sleep slowly came over me.
For the first time in a long while, I welcomed it.
I was grateful for the temporary escape that sleep could give me.