I was brought before the magistrate soon after I arrived.
He was an elderly man with a kind face and gentle manner.
Yet when he looked at me, there was a certain seriousness in his eyes.
He turned to the men who had brought me in.
“Who witnessed what happened?”
About six men stepped forward.
The magistrate chose one of them to speak first.
The man explained that he had been fishing the previous night with his son and his brother-in-law, Daniel Nugent.
“At about ten o’clock,” he said, “the wind suddenly became very strong from the north. We decided to return to shore.”
“It was extremely dark because the moon had not yet risen.”
“We didn’t land at the harbor. We went to a small creek about two miles farther down the coast, where we often came ashore.”
“I walked ahead carrying some of our fishing equipment. My companions followed behind.”
“While I was walking along the beach, I suddenly hit something with my foot and fell.”
“My son and Daniel came over to help me.”
“We used our lantern to see what I had fallen over.”
“It was a man’s body.”
“At first, we thought he must have drowned and that the waves had washed him onto the beach.”
“But when we examined him, we realized his clothes were completely dry.”
“The body wasn’t cold either.”
“We carried him to an old woman’s cottage nearby and tried to bring him back to life.”
“But it was useless.”
“He was a handsome young man, perhaps twenty-five years old.”
“We believed he had been strangled.”
“There were no other obvious injuries, except for dark marks around his neck that looked like fingerprints.”
Until he mentioned the marks on the man’s neck, I had been listening without much interest.
But those words suddenly brought back the murder of my brother.
My whole body began to shake.
My vision became blurred.
I had to grab a chair to keep myself from falling.
The magistrate watched me closely.
I knew he had noticed my reaction, and I feared he had taken it as evidence against me.
The fisherman’s son confirmed everything his father had said.
Then Daniel Nugent was called forward.
He gave an even more troubling statement.
“Just before my companion fell,” he said, “I saw a boat not far from the shore.”
“There was only one man in it.”
“I could not see him clearly because there were only a few stars in the sky.”
“But I believe it was the same boat that this man arrived in.”
A woman who lived near the beach was questioned next.
“I was standing outside my cottage,” she said, “waiting for the fishermen to return.”
“It was about an hour before we heard that a body had been discovered.”
“I saw a boat leave the shore.”
“There was only one man in it.”
“And it came from the same part of the beach where the body was later found.”
Another woman confirmed what happened after the fishermen discovered the body.
“They brought him into my house,” she said.
“He was not cold.”
“We put him on a bed and tried to revive him.”
“Daniel went into town to find a doctor or apothecary.”
“But there was nothing anyone could do.”
“He was already dead.”
Several other men were questioned about my arrival.
They all agreed on one important point.
The strong northern wind that night could easily have pushed my boat far out to sea.
They believed I might have been carried around for many hours before the wind forced me back toward the same area where I had originally left.
They also believed I might have brought the body from somewhere else.
Since I clearly did not know the coastline, they thought I could have entered the harbor without realizing how close I was to the place where the body had been found.
After hearing all this, Mr. Kirwin made a decision.
“Take him to the room where the body is being kept,” he ordered.
“I want to see how he reacts when he sees it.”
I understood why he wanted to do this.
My reaction to the description of the murder had been so extreme that he naturally suspected me.
The magistrate and several others led me to the inn.
As we walked there, I could not help thinking about how strangely everything had happened.
Yet I still believed I had nothing to fear.
I had been speaking to several people on the island around the time the murder occurred.
Surely they could confirm that I had not been anywhere near the mainland.
Then I entered the room where the dead man lay.
I was led toward the coffin.
The moment I saw the body, everything inside me collapsed.
It was Henry.
Henry Clerval.
My closest friend.
My dearest companion.
For a moment, I could not breathe.
The investigation, the witnesses, the magistrate—everything disappeared from my mind.
I threw myself over Henry’s body.
“Henry!”
“My dear Henry!”
“Have I destroyed your life too?”
“Two people have already died because of me.”
“And there are still others waiting to become victims.”
“But you, Henry…”
“My friend…”
“My one true friend…”
My body could no longer endure the pain.
I collapsed.
I was carried from the room in violent convulsions.
A terrible fever followed.
For two months, I hovered between life and death.
Later, I was told that my fever dreams had been horrifying.
I repeatedly called myself the murderer of William, Justine, and Henry.
Sometimes I begged the people around me to help me kill the creature who had ruined my life.
At other times, I imagined his hands closing around my neck.
I would scream and fight as though he were actually standing over me.
Fortunately, I spoke my native language during these episodes, so Mr. Kirwin was the only person who could understand everything I was saying.
But my screams and desperate movements frightened everyone else.
Why didn’t I die?
Why was I forced to continue living when I had suffered more than any human being should have to endure?
Death takes children from their parents.
It takes young lovers from each other.
People who are healthy and full of hope can be alive one day and buried the next.
Why was I still alive after everything that had happened to me?
What had I been made of that I could survive so many terrible blows?
But I was not allowed to die.
After two months, I slowly regained consciousness.
I opened my eyes and found myself in a prison.
I was lying on a miserable bed.
Iron bars covered the windows.
Guards and locked doors surrounded me.
At first, I could not remember what had happened.
I only knew that some terrible disaster had fallen upon me.
Then I looked around.
The prison came back to me.
Everything returned at once.
I groaned bitterly.
My sound woke an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside my bed.
She was a hired nurse and the wife of one of the prison guards.
Her face was hard and expressionless.
She looked like someone who had spent so much time around suffering that she no longer felt anything for the people experiencing it.
She spoke to me in English.
Her voice sounded strangely familiar.
“Are you feeling better now, sir?”
I answered weakly.
“I think so.”
“But if everything that happened is real, then I wish I had died.”
“I don’t know how I can continue living with all this horror.”
The old woman shrugged.
“If you’re talking about the gentleman you murdered, you’d probably be better off dead.”
“I don’t think things are going to go well for you.”
“But that’s not my concern.”
“I’m here to nurse you back to health.”
“I’ll do my job and keep a clear conscience.”
“It would be nice if everyone did the same.”
I turned away from her in disgust.
How could anyone speak so coldly to someone who had only just survived the edge of death?
But I was too weak to argue.
My entire life seemed unreal.
Sometimes I wondered whether everything had really happened.
It felt more like a terrible dream than reality.
As my memories slowly became clearer, my fever returned.
Darkness seemed to close around me.
There was no loving voice beside me.
No familiar hand held mine.
The doctor came and prescribed medicine.
The old woman gave it to me.
But neither of them seemed to care about me.
I thought bitterly that perhaps the only person who would truly care about a murderer was the executioner waiting to collect his payment.
Later, however, I discovered that I had judged Mr. Kirwin unfairly.
He had actually treated me with great kindness.
He had ordered that I be given the best room available in the prison.
Of course, even the best room was still miserable.
He had also arranged for a doctor and a nurse to care for me.
He did not visit often.
He wanted to make sure I was being treated properly, but he did not wish to watch the terrible suffering and delirium of a man accused of murder.
Still, he came from time to time to make sure I was not being neglected.
One day, as I slowly recovered, I was sitting in a chair.
I was extremely thin and pale.
I often felt that death would be better than continuing to live in such misery.
Sometimes I even thought about confessing to the murders and accepting whatever punishment the law demanded.
In some ways, I felt less deserving of life than poor Justine had been.
Then the door opened.
Mr. Kirwin entered.
His expression was full of sympathy.
He pulled a chair beside mine and spoke to me in French.
“I imagine this place must be terrible for you.”
“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”
“Thank you,” I replied.
“But there is nothing you can do.”
“Nothing in the entire world could bring me comfort now.”
“I understand,” he said.
“The sympathy of a stranger cannot do much for someone who has suffered what you have suffered.”
“But I hope you will soon leave this miserable place.”
“I believe the evidence will easily prove that you were not responsible for the crime.”
“That is the least of my worries.”
“I have become the most miserable person alive.”
“I have been hunted and tortured for so long that death no longer seems frightening to me.”
“What has happened to you is truly terrible,” Mr. Kirwin said.
“You arrived here under extraordinary circumstances.”
“You were immediately arrested and accused of murder.”
“And the first thing you were shown was the body of your murdered friend.”
“It was almost as if some evil force had deliberately placed his body in your path.”
His words surprised me.
I stared at him.
“How do you know so much about what happened to me?”
Mr. Kirwin immediately explained.
“As soon as you became ill, everything you were carrying was brought to me.”
“I searched through your belongings because I wanted to find someone I could contact about your condition.”
“I found several letters.”
“One of them was clearly from your father.”
“I wrote to Geneva immediately.”
“Almost two months have passed since I sent the letter.”
“But you are still weak.”
“You are trembling even now.”
“You should not become too upset.”
I became desperate.
“Please tell me.”
“What happened?”
“This uncertainty is worse than anything.”
“Who else has died?”
“Whose death am I supposed to mourn now?”
Mr. Kirwin looked at me gently.
“Your family is safe.”
“And someone has come to see you.”
A terrible thought immediately entered my mind.
I imagined that the creature had somehow discovered where I was.
Perhaps he had come to mock me.
Perhaps he wanted to remind me of Henry’s death and force me to obey him.
I covered my face with my hands.
“No!”
“Take him away!”
“I cannot see him!”
“For God’s sake, don’t let him come in!”
Mr. Kirwin stared at me in confusion.
Then his expression became more severe.
“I would have thought that seeing your father would make you happy.”
“My father?”
My entire body relaxed.
For the first time in a long while, I felt genuine joy.
“My father?”
“Is he really here?”
“How kind of him!”
“Where is he?”
“Why isn’t he here already?”
Mr. Kirwin was relieved by my sudden change.
He seemed to understand that my earlier reaction had probably been caused by another moment of delirium.
He stood up and left the room with the nurse.
A moment later, my father entered.
Nothing could have made me happier.
I reached out to him.
“Are you safe?”
“And Elizabeth?”
“And Ernest?”
My father assured me that they were all well.
He tried to cheer me by talking about the people I loved.
But even he could see that a prison was no place for happiness.
He looked around sadly.
“My son, what a terrible place you have been living in.”
“You left home hoping to find happiness, yet tragedy seems to follow you everywhere.”
“And poor Henry…”
The moment he said Henry’s name, I broke down.
I began to cry.
“Yes, Father.”
“Something terrible seems to have been written into my fate.”
“I have to live long enough to face it.”
“Otherwise, I should have died beside Henry’s coffin.”
We were not allowed to speak for long.
My health was still extremely fragile.
Mr. Kirwin returned and insisted that I rest.
But seeing my father felt like seeing an angel.
His presence gradually helped me regain my strength.
As the fever disappeared, however, a deep depression remained.
Nothing could drive it away.
Henry’s dead face was always in my mind.
Sometimes my distress became so severe that my family feared I would become dangerously ill again.
Why did they keep me alive?
Perhaps I had been kept alive only because I still had something terrible to accomplish.
Death seemed to be waiting for me.
I believed that one day it would finally end my suffering.
Until then, I often sat completely still for hours, wishing that some great disaster would come and destroy both me and the creature who had ruined my life.
The trial season eventually approached.
By then, I had already spent three months in prison.
I was still weak and often close to another collapse.
Yet I had to travel almost a hundred miles to the town where the court would meet.
Mr. Kirwin personally took responsibility for preparing my defense.
He gathered witnesses and arranged everything necessary to prove my innocence.
Fortunately, I was spared the humiliation of standing publicly accused of murder.
The grand jury rejected the case after evidence proved that I had been on the Orkney Islands when Henry’s body was discovered.
Two weeks after I was moved from the prison, I was released.
My father was overjoyed.
He was happy that I was finally free from the criminal accusation.
He was happy that I could breathe fresh air again.
He was happy that we could return home.
I felt none of that happiness.
To me, a prison and a palace were almost the same.
My life had been poisoned beyond repair.
The sun could shine as brightly as it wished, but I saw nothing except darkness.
Sometimes, through that darkness, I saw a pair of eyes staring at me.
Sometimes they were Henry’s eyes.
I could see his pale face in death, his eyes half closed and his long dark eyelashes resting against his skin.
At other times, they were the creature’s eyes—the strange, watery eyes I had first seen at Ingolstadt.
My father tried to awaken my love for home.
He talked about Geneva.
He talked about Elizabeth and Ernest.
He reminded me that I would soon see them again.
But his words usually made me groan with pain.
Sometimes I did long to be happy.
I thought of Elizabeth with deep affection.
I dreamed of seeing the blue lake and the rushing Rhône again.
I missed the landscape of my childhood with an almost painful longing.
But most of the time, I felt nothing.
I was numb.
A prison cell seemed no worse to me than the most beautiful place on earth.
Only occasionally was that numbness broken by terrible waves of despair.
During those moments, I sometimes tried to end my own life.
My father and the others had to watch me constantly to prevent me from doing something desperate.
Yet one responsibility finally became stronger than my despair.
I had to return to Geneva.
I had to protect the people I loved.
And I had to find the murderer.
If I discovered where the creature was hiding, I would kill him.
If he appeared before me again, I would not hesitate.
I would destroy the monster I had created.
My father wanted to delay our journey.
He was afraid I was too weak to travel.
And he was right.
I was barely recognizable as a human being.
I had lost almost all my strength.
I was painfully thin.
My body was still being consumed by fever day and night.
But I was so desperate to leave Ireland that my father finally agreed.
We booked passage on a ship sailing to Le Havre.
Soon we left the Irish coast with a favorable wind.
It was midnight.
I lay on the deck, staring at the stars and listening to the waves striking the ship.
I felt strangely happy to see Ireland disappear into the darkness.
Soon I would be home.
Soon I would see Geneva again.
For a moment, everything that had happened seemed like a terrible dream.
But the ship beneath me, the wind carrying us away from Ireland, and the endless sea around us reminded me that it had all been real.
Henry was dead.
And he had died because of me and the creature I had brought into the world.
I thought about my entire life.
I remembered the peaceful years with my family in Geneva.
I remembered my mother’s death.
I remembered leaving for Ingolstadt.
Then I remembered the terrible excitement that had driven me to create the creature.
I remembered the night when he first opened his eyes and came to life.
I could not continue thinking about it.
Too many emotions overwhelmed me.
I covered my face and wept.
Since recovering from the fever, I had been taking a small amount of laudanum every night.
Without it, I could hardly sleep.
That night, overwhelmed by everything I had suffered, I took twice my usual amount.
Soon I fell into a deep sleep.
But even sleep could not free me from my misery.
My dreams were filled with terrifying images.
Toward morning, I fell into a nightmare.
I felt the creature’s hands closing around my neck.
I tried to escape, but I could not move.
I heard myself groaning and screaming.
My father had been watching over me.
When he saw how violently I was struggling, he woke me.
I opened my eyes.
The sea was still around us.
Clouds covered the sky.
The creature was nowhere to be seen.
For a moment, I felt safe.
It was as though, for a little while, fate had given me a brief pause before the next disaster arrived.
I closed my eyes again and allowed myself to rest.