We in the exvangelical community toss around the word “deconstruction” quite a bit, to the point that sometimes perhaps it loses its meaning in favor of simply being a popular hashtag. But what does it really mean to deconstruct? Very simply, it means to do a deep dive into a topic — to not merely accept an account or narrative as it has been transmitted to you, but rather to find out for yourself, to do your own research, and to trust your own intuition and critical thinking skills to draw your own conclusions. It is not only an essential component to one’s faith experience either, but a very helpful tool for discovering new meaning to anything that you hold dear.

The following short story is an example of deconstruction — not of the Bible or Christianity, but of my own sacred text: Mary Shelley’s Gothic horror novel Frankenstein. It combines historical consensus, speculation, and my own personal research to break down some (but certainly not all) of the inspirations and contexts of the novel, which I use as a springboard to form my own hypotheses about what drove Mary Shelley to write her classic horror story. I hope that with this piece, I can offer my reader insight into how deconstruction does not mean the end of the journey into understanding our sacred texts, but that it can actually expand our knowledge into a deeper appreciation. I also hope that it inspires you to consider deconstructing your own sacred texts, whatever they may be.

Thanks so much for reading. Remember to be kind to yourselves and to each other.

****

(Written in memory of Sol Neely)

“Everything must have a beginning, … and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.”–Mary Shelley, Preface to Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

…

The sturdy rap on his door shakes his whole hut, and he startles. Sitting straight up with nearly a gasp, his eyes immediately dash past his roaring hearth, his writing desk, and his walls of books to the source of his sudden jolt. Three impressively heavy knocks follow, then silence.

His fire’s warmth on his cheeks has made sleep a difficult temptation to resist – as do the shrieking winds and pounding rain outside contrasted to the relaxing sound of his kettle boiling above the open flames, which makes the whole hut smell of toasted chamomile. He’d have been happy to doze off, if not for the fact that he expects company.

Rising, he steals a quick glance at his reflection on a narrow windowpane, against which the winds and the rain continue their relentless pounding. The hearth’s fire casts his visage in a deep orange hue; he is short in stature, but his broad shoulders stretch past the window’s borders. Frowning at his ruffled appearance, he quickly runs his palms against the arms of his blazer to straighten out a few of its wrinkles. When they refuse to budge, he tries to at least wrangle straight all the loose and wild strands of his long, gray beard.

It’s no use. He gives up with a deep breath, in which he allows himself a moment to feel himself in his body. Then he tosses on a warm smile before answering the door.

Even his short frame towers over the tiny woman who meets him through a burst of soggy winds. Her bowed head obscures her face but for her piercing brown eyes that silently look him up and down. Clearing his throat, he steps aside and waits until she enters to take her in. “Please, Mrs. Shelley,” he says, as warmly as he can muster as his own eyes squint against the tempest behind her.

Stepping around him as he briefly fights the wind to close the door, she instinctively gravitates toward the fire, so that her bullet-like shadow soon dances across his writing desk and abundant bookshelves. Her arms coil her wool cloak into a tight hug around her head and shoulders, so that at first, only her inquisitive face and a few wet curls of steely blond hair are visible.

He is quickly beside her. When he sees that her whole face sops and her shoulders gently quiver, he reaches for a towel draped over his chair that he had prepared for her arrival. “Forgive me,” he says in thickly-accented English. “Please sit and warm yourself – I have some hot tea ready.”

A slender arm emerges from her wool, and she accepts the towel. “Thank you,” she says calmly. At once, she pulls down her hood to let the rain fall from her thick locks. She runs the relieving cloth along her long neck and tiny ears, and soon he offers to take her cloak and bag. Her casual blue dress underneath seems too big for her, so that she reminds him a bit of a raggedly old doll as she sits by the fire and leans into the towel to wearily massage the base of her neck. Her face tightens, as if she is in pain.

“You could have waited to hire a stagecoach in Darmstadt,” he says apologetically.

“And delay until morning? Rubbish.” She folds the towel neatly and places it on the arm’s chair. Straightening her back, she manages a mischievous smile. “I don’t mind a walk up a steep hill on a wet and windy night, Mr. Ogle. Besides that, I’d like to start our tour of the castle as early as possible tomorrow, so I think it’s better to weather this tempest right here, as we arranged.” She gently taps her left temple, her animated eyes briefly darkening. “It’s not the hike that has found me in such a pathetic state – it’s these damned headaches.”

He crosses his arms. “What kind of headaches?”

“They come and go – sometimes mild, sometimes so strong that it feels like a malignant monster is trying to force its way into my brain. And those kinds seem to be lasting longer and longer.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“I have.”

“And what did the doctor say?”

Her smile betrays a shade of exasperation. “He suggested that I travel abroad for a while to take in some fresh air.”

They chuckle together, before her face contorts painfully again. “Perhaps,” he says, “we should skip the tea and go straight to the brandy.”

“No objections.” She sounds relieved.

He pours them two cups from the cask on his desk. She accepts gratefully and settles into his comfortable hearthside chair. He pulls out his desk chair to join her on the other side of the fire. She starts to rise when she sees him do it, but he waves her back down. “No, no – I insist,” he says. “Drink up and warm yourself.”

She closes her eyes. “It will pass soon.”

He hasn’t yet sat down. “Is there any other way that I can be accommodating, Mrs. Shelley?”

She rubs her temple with two fingers while lifting her cup to just under her nose to take in its relaxing aroma. “Sit and talk and drink with me,” she says.

He finds his drink and soon sits across from her; they remain silent for a few long breaths as they settle into the warmth together.

She takes a sip of brandy, still massaging her temple. “How close are we to the castle?”

“We are right at its foot. If not for this terrible swell, you’d have been able to see its towers.”

“I thought that might be so.”

“I’m impressed that you were able to keep to the road and find my hut at all.”

“Your windows glow in the darkness. They were a lovely beacon.”

He pulls thoughtfully on his beard. “So a doctor’s note to travel abroad – that is why you’ve finally decided to visit the castle that shares your namesake?”

She nods. “I’ve actually visited before, many years ago.”

He raises a curious eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Only from a distance, I confess.” Her face quickly – and perhaps with a twitch of reluctance – drifts to some far off memory. “Percy and I were floating down the Rhine. I was sixteen when I saw the tip of the castle’s towers, up on the top of the hill. I was drawn to it immediately.”

“The towers would have been tiny from the Rhine – among dozens just like it across the tree line.”

He sees now that despite the years revealed in her face’s lines and eyes that confirm her long and wearisome history, she is the most animated and youthful of women. “I know – it’s that odd?” she says. “But I was drawn to it all the same. When the rower we’d hired told us its name, I kept saying it over and over again, until I suppose I was in a sort of trance. Or maybe that name suddenly become interwoven in a trance I was already in. Whatever the case, it’s been a part of me ever since I heard it. Frankenstein.”

“It’s a common German name, with a long and mostly boring history,” he says casually. “Literally translates into ‘the stone of the Franks.’ A family of knights and loggers, living in a castle not quite as big as the ones in which their neighbors resided.”

“What year was it built?” She sits stiffly as she sips and listens, but her tone is spirited and

engaged.

“Construction began around 1250,” he answers almost dismissively, learning forward as the lips behind his unkempt beard curl into an ambivalent grin. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Shelley, but before we continue with this history lesson, I need to tell you something.”

Her chin cocks inquisitively toward him. “Yes?”

“You have actually confirmed something that has been a matter of debate among us local historians. When you, at the mere age of eighteen, wrote the horrific parable of your Creator and his Creature, you indeed summoned this castle’s title as his name. Personally, I never believed it. I always thought that the connection was purely coincidental.”

“Is it so hard to believe that a writer pulls from as many sources as inspire her?” she answers abruptly.

“No. It’s just that your published journals are thorough, yet you do not mention the castle. I have actually always been skeptical of the connection, precisely because of what I have told you about its location on the mountain. Castle Frankenstein is unremarkable from the Rhine.” He takes a defeated drink. “I fear that I have lost some considerable wagers from my esteemed colleagues as a result of this information.”

Her eyes go wide for a moment, before her own triumphant grin ascends. “My apologies, Mr. Ogle. How about we keep it our little secret – would that be a fair payment for humoring me this evening?”

He raises his cup to meet the space between them; she touches her cup to his with a smile warm enough to match his own. “It would be a pleasure to humor you, Mrs. Shelley,” he says. “Just as it is a pleasure to meet you. I know your story intimately.”

“You mean my book?”

He shrugs. “Which one?”

Her eyebrow cocks skeptically, and she says nothing.

He says matter-of-factly, “You’ve written a half-dozen, and you’ve published your journals.”

“Yes, but no one has read any of the others.”

“I have.”

Her skeptical eyebrow hasn’t yet lowered. “Why?”

“Because you are an thoughtful writer, Mrs. Shelley. And more than that – you are a courageous one.” He barely contains his brewing animation. “That is to say nothing of the work you’ve done to revise and publish the complete works of your late husband and father – you’ve done a great service to academia.”

Her mouth stands open over the cup hovering at her chin. “I didn’t pay you to flatter me, Mr. Ogle. You really don’t have to do this.”

He continues. “I do not speak in platitudes, I assure you. In fact, I found The Last Man to be a bit too heavy-handed with its prophecies of our doomed humanity. It was not your strongest work.”

She has a way of thoughtfully strumming her fingers against her cup when it is clear that she’s summoning still forming thoughts. For the time being, she says nothing.

He waves his hands with increasing enthusiasm. “That being said, Falkner was absolutely beautiful. It is a brave and wonderful thing, Mrs. Shelley, for a woman to reflect on her relationship with her father in fiction – especially with the poetry and vulnerability that you summoned. But then, I suspect that you’ve had to conjure quite a lot of courage in your life. Forgive me if I am being too forward – but I just want you to know that the pleasure in tonight’s meeting is mine. I just wish that the weather had been more agreeable for your arrival. And I do not mind losing the wager – I’m happy that our humble castle influenced such a profound moment in literature; I simply did not expect it.”

After a deep and enigmatic sigh, she draws a long sip from her cup. Her eyes lock steadily onto him. “Then I shall accept your flattery at no cost, Mr. Ogle.”

He sighs, somewhat relieved. “I appreciate your patience with me, Mrs. Shelley. But allow me clarify: When I say that I know your story, I do not mean your considerable and extraordinary portfolio. I mean that I have studied your life itself with a great deal of interest. Even sharing my humble space with you, I sense your history.” His spirited eyes are ablaze from the hearth fire. “Your father was the great William Godwin – the progenitor of anarchy. Your mother was Mary Wollstonecraft – the founder of feminism. Your stepmother Mary Clairmont translated the continent’s greatest faery tales for English children. William Blake read you bedtime stories. As a child, you kept company with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, and the world’s leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. Yet you abandoned all of that scholarly discourse to elope and run away with Percy Shelley, the foremost poet of his age.”

She looks a little weary as she takes in his vivacious rundown of her ghosts; her subsequent smile is polite but incredulous. “And I suppose that you’d like to know what all those legends were like?”

He reads her mannerisms and soon shakes his head apologetically. “Oh, no – Mrs. Shelley. The truth is, I’ve no interest at all in knowing what any of them were like.”

“Why not? They were all remarkable.”

He gently points a finger at her. “Because despite all of their contributions, the ghost story you wrote on a dare between you, your husband, and the great Lord Bryon himself on the shores of Lake Geneva – on a night not unlike this one – encompassed and surpassed them all.”

She blushes instantly, looking delicately toward the fire. “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Ogle.”

“I would. We shall see what they’re still reading in one hundred years, Mrs. Shelley.”

She turns to him, strumming her cup thoughtfully again. “Will we, Mr. Ogle?”

He catches himself and quickly shifts his train of thought. He swallows loudly and mutters with no small hint of reverence, “The truth is, your book is the greatest literary masterpiece I’ve ever read. A parable not just for our time, but for all time.”

She leans forward, catching his eyes assertively. “Tell me why,” she dares.

Setting down his cup, he crosses his arms as his face probes the hut’s low ceiling. “I think that when we talk about Frankenstein as the story of failed science, we are correct. But I believe that we must get to the heart of the matter by realizing precisely what the science is that has failed.”

“Go on.”

He uncrosses his arms to emphasize with both hands. “Frankenstein’s Creature is not failed science. In fact, it’s dangerously successful – its reasoning, articulation, philosophy, and strength are all advanced even for the most superior examples of humanity. The science that created him is not what destroys either him or his Creator. It is his Creator’s response – how he was so focused on that task right in front of him that he did not consider the science of nurture, of observation, of care. The Grail isn’t the true quest, you see – it’s what you choose to do with that power once you have attained it. Your book is about a scientist who fails that test, who is not prepared for the responsibility he now carries with the forbidden knowledge he has discovered. If he had cared for his Creation right away and not fled in terror, leaving this brilliant wraith to discover his own tragic and vengeful path – your story would not have been one of horror but rather one of wonder. This is, indeed, a warning that will never lose its relevance, so long as scientists continue to search for answers in the vast, unknown cosmos.”

He’s smiling in a way that suggests he’s proud of himself, but his brow furrows when he sees that her gaze has left him – that she now casts her face toward into the fire, where she appears lost in thought. “Am I correct, Mrs. Shelley?” he says cautiously.

She glances at him and simply raises her now empty cup at him. “This is helping very much – may I have another?”

He stands. “Of course.”

She watches her cup fill. “Whether I think you’re correct or not doesn’t matter, Mr. Ogle. My story belongs to you now, as much as it belongs to me. What’s more interesting to me is how it spoke to you.”

He taps off his own cup before he sits. “It sounds like it is a story that you’ve let go.”

“On the contrary – it’s a story that I’ve let live… the Creation I’ve cared for, nurtured, and set free. And now it has a life of its own.” Her smile betrays old wounds. “A life with more power and longevity than my own, I know. And I suspect that even if Victor had offered the Creature love, he still would have had no power over what it chose when he released it into the world.”

A silence settles, as he intuitively leaves her to her melancholy contemplation. It seems an easy place for her mind to drift. The whistling winds and pounding rain beat against the ceiling and every wall, but the two remain safe and warm within. In a moment, she blinks fiercely a few times and strums her fingers along her cup. “Thank you, Mr. Ogle. You’ve flattered, tickled, and stunned me. Clearly you’ve done your research; it feels like we are already old friends. But if it’s all the same, that’s not what I meant when I asked you to humor me.”

“Well, thank you for allowing me to articulate my appreciation, in any case,” he says, chuckling. “We may now talk about whatever you wish.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Tell me more about the history of this castle.”

Grunting, he settles his elbows into his chair’s creaky arms. “As with any old castle, the folklore is far more interesting than anything that actually happened here.”

“What actually happened here?”

“Not much, honestly,” he said. “The Frankenstein family had unremarkable alliances with more influential families, and they eventually scattered. The castle was turned into a hospital – then finally was abandoned and fell into ruins about one hundred years ago.”

“That’s its whole story?”

“Nothing happened here, no one died here,” he says conclusively. “Oh, my colleagues like to spin more exciting yarn about ghosts that lurk in its shadows, of knights slaying dragons – because it’s those stories that turn a coin. My archives tend to focus more on the historical.”

“So there’s no historical basis for the story of Sir George Frankenstein, who slew the dragon?”

“In every myth, as they say, you’ll find a kernel of truth,” he says. “The legend says that the dragon terrorizing the countryside lived in a well, and that this is where Sir George confronted it. He defeated it, but only after it filled him with its poison – which ultimately killed him. Perhaps it was simply a snake, and the legend grew. A life of its own, you might say.”

“It certainly seems notable that this castle carries with it the tales of men destroyed by monsters.”

He nods. “Clearly, Mrs. Shelley, you have also done your research.”

“Enough to know, Mr. Ogle, that your statement that nothing ever happened here seems to me more a matter of your opinion than of fact.”

“Do I detect a rebuke, Mrs. Shelley?” he says playfully.

“Nothing so profound,” she retorts. “But I’m curious what you mean by ‘nothing,’ when there’s a consensus among historians that the Frankensteins were zealous Reformers who burned many an innocent woman for witchcraft. It was, in fact, said that a coven met every Walpurgis Night under the castle’s shadow – in the fountain of youth behind the herb garden, among the magnetic stones. Is that where God’s knights found the women they roasted alive?”

“Children’s stories,” he says dismissively.

“I know – I’ve heard them. I also know of the one about the Magician’s Monster.”

His face contorts like that of a man suddenly experiencing the most unpleasant indigestion. “How do you know that story?”

“As a child, I never got along with my step-mother. My eccentricities alarmed her too much, as did my stubbornness. I think that’s why she tried to frighten me with ghost stories. While she was translating the Grimm Brothers, they told her a story that she relayed to me – one so blood curdling that even the Grimms didn’t want to include it in their anthology of witches and black magic. It was the story of a magician who made a monster in this very castle – a monster that killed him, escaped to caves in the nearby forest, and lured children into its lair to devour them whole.”

His wince only tightens. “I assure you – no magician ever lived here, and he never created a monster.”

“Perhaps not, but the story kept me out of the forest when I heard it,” she says quietly, and her eyes grow distant again. “My mother died when I was only eleven days old. I knew her only through her writings — and the sad looks on my father’s face when he thought of her. William Blake illustrated a book of children’s stories, and he used to read them to me when I was a child. When he showed me the picture he’d drawn for Mother’s story about the Monster that snatches children while they sleep, I imagined it was the Magician’s Monster. But I never knew, for all those years, that the story came from this castle. Not until I paid that boy rowing Percy and I down the Rhine to tell us legends from Castle Frankenstein.”

He takes in her ever word, and his hesitant sigh reveals disappointment. “I fear, Mrs. Shelley, that you’ve pick the wrong historian to show you the castle. My colleagues are far better at embellishing than I, and it sounds like it is their kind of story that you actually came to hear.”

“No,” she says instantly and with unexpected clarity. “It must be you. I want no one else to take me.”

“Why?” he asks.

Her fingers strum along her cup. “Because you’re not just another local historian. You’re an academic who taught philosophy at Wittgenstein, but you gave up that career to become the caretaker of this castle – to not just archive its history, but to become a part of its story. That truly intrigues me, Mr. Ogle.”

“It is now you who flatters me, Mrs. Shelley.”

She laughs. “Did you think I chose you at random, Mr. Ogle?”

“I thought you chose me because I was the caretaker.”

“I chose you because you wanted to be the caretaker. I wonder: Did you also once look up as I did, and feel drawn to this castle in ways that you could not explain?”

He leans back and strokes his beard, momentarily allowing the wind and rain’s angry song fill in the silence. “It’s nothing that poetic, I fear. I was simply born here. Perhaps in this very hut.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

She shakes her head fiercely. “I don’t believe you.”

His face tightens, and his frown betrays a blush of defensiveness. “You say that with such certainty, yet we have just met. What makes you so confident?”

A brief silence settles. The bubbling kettle now spills over and leaves sizzling drops upon the hearth and coals. She mutters decisively, “I want to show you something.”

She winces when she rises, closing her eyes tightly as her fingers soon push against her temple. He swiftly stands to assist, but she waves him away. “No – I assure you, I’m fine.” She forces her eyes open and conjures a wan smile. “Why don’t you pour us some tea, Mr. Ogle? It smells intoxicating.”

He nods respectfully. “It is a family draught, from an heirloom centuries old.” He casts her intrigued glances as he tends to the bubbling kettle. Steadying herself, she finds the bag with which she’d entered and retrieves a purple cotton pouch – no larger or bulkier than his fist.

She soon sits again as he places a mug of steaming tea on the small table beside her chair. “It will need to cool,” he says only half-heartedly, for his inquisitive eyes now fall on the pouch cradled in her lap. Her brow tightens, he sees – in the same way it often does, when her thoughts are bourn back into her past.

He pours tea into his own mug and simply watches. After a deep, decisive sigh, she pulls back the yellow lace sealing the pouch and places a steady hand within. A simple wooden box emerges, cupped in her hand. He leans in to observe its smooth surface and small hinges securely holding its thin lid in place. He notices nothing exceptional about it, except for the quiet reverence that she now wordlessly casts it.

She sadly watches her fingers strum along the little oak box’s edges. “It perplexed my father, too.”

“What did, Mrs. Shelley?”

Her eyes well up with tears, and her voice lowers to an awed, steady whisper. “How I could give up the wonderful life he’d provided for me to run off with a rambunctious poet who, despite an estranged wife and child, practiced free love and preferred to live penniless. Father was right when he said that Percy was going to spend the rest of his life breaking my heart. But the truth is, I was so tired of breaking my father’s merely with my presence, just because I reminded him so much of my deceased mother. Did you know that he taught me to read with the letters of her tombstone? My earliest memory is literally his grief. The more I grew, the more I comprehended that they all loved me because they mourned my mother. But Percy – when he looked into my eyes, he didn’t see her. He saw only me, and I loved him for it. No matter how many lovers he took, while I remained faithful – no matter how much it hurt to watch Lord Byron enable his spiral into self-destruction… He only saw me. He was, is, my Victor.”

She looks up at him at last. “We first made love on mother’s grave. Is that too forward to admit to someone who is practically a stranger? It was my idea – my way of saying goodbye to her, in perhaps an act of defiance that would have pleased her.” He sits wordlessly enraptured, so she continues. “When I lost our first child, I thought that I’d found the compass by which to measure all my pain. It was a pain that I would meet again, twice more – and twice more, I did not think my heart could ever know greater despair. But then came the day when Percy ignored my pleas and pushed his little boat straight into the swelling tempest, because he had decided that no god could ever conquer him. And for his hubris, he became another man destroyed by his monster. At his funeral pyre, Lord Byron gave me this little box – and he sadly told me, ‘It seems that you have written our story, Mary – and it is now our destiny to fulfill it.’ And he was right – first we write our stories, then our stories write us.”

“So it’s true,” he says, nodding. “You keep Percy’s heart in a box, and you take it everywhere you go.”

Setting the box in her lap, she finally reaches for her tea. “I know what it is to keep close those precious things that matter the most to you. They are not the things into which we are born, but the things toward which our souls become fused. So please, do not speak to me of a birthright. Speak to me of what has threaded your soul into this castle.” She takes a sip, and her sad eyes brighten. “An intoxicating draught indeed.”

For just another moment, perhaps he resists. A silence briefly settles between them, save for the crackling fire and the howling swell outside. Then he sighs, surrendering. “My story isn’t the tragedy that yours is, but perhaps it is longer. It’s easier if you simply ask questions. Which of my obsessions interest to you, my friend?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “As you say – in every myth, we find a kernel of truth. I’ve heard enough myths about monsters. I want to know about the Magician.”

He grunts and shakes his head. “Konrad Dippel was not a magician, nor a monster maker – and he would have been humiliated to know that this is the shape his story has taken. He was a physician and a scientist.”

“A theologian first,” she clarifies. “Born in the castle, nearly two hundred years ago now.”

“Yes, a Pietist pastor – but only because theology was the fastest doorway toward education. You must understand – he was born the son of an impoverished minister himself. He had no money for school – his only option was the priesthood, so he pursued it with as much of his energy and passion as he could. But even as a young student of theology, he was skeptical. His treatise was literally titled ‘On Nothing,’ because that was the value that he gave his pastoral duties.”

“But he was a renowned pastor, was he not?”

“He liked the disciples religion gained him, and the small fortune he was able to obtain in publishing his theology books, which he hoped would provide an entry point to keep the minds of his followers open and curious. But the more he traveled and preached and engaged in pointless theological discourse that added up to nothing, the more he realized that religion could never expand anyone’s mind – only diminish it with outdated rules and concepts. Eventually, his disciples realized that he spoke truths contrary to their narrow understanding of the Bible. He grew exasperated with theological disputes and accusations of heresy. Those tiny minds didn’t deserve him. After years of bitter rivalries with pastors and spiritualists that lead to threats of prison, he decided that Christ was, at best, an indifferent being. So he used the money he’d made as a pastor to become a doctor, to try his own hand at curing the blind and the lame.”

“But he never gave up on the spirit,” she says. “He went on to become an alchemist of some notoriety, keeping company with kings and emperors all over Europe. He made an potions said to cast out demons, to drive away ghosts, to expand one’s life drastically. He invented an oil that he claims, if injected into a corpse, could restore its life. This all sounds much more like the work of a magician than a scientist.”

He casts a distant look into his fire. “Children’s stories and misinterpretations, from tiny minds that could not understand his pursuits,” he mutters sadly. “Oh, he made some bold claims about driving out demons that terrorized superstitious rich men who suffered from mad delusions, because exorcisms turned a profit. He also promised financiers that he’d turn lead into gold, in order to secure loans for his research. But all scientists do such things, to take advantage of people who don’t understand the breakthroughs of which they are on the cusp. Yes, Dippel dug up bodies for experiments – they all did. He boiled bones and teeth to make an oil – but they were for the benefit of the living, not the dead. He was sure that drinking distilled bones could heal any number of ailments. And I’ll have you know that Dippel’s Oil is still used today.”

“Is it?”

He grins sardonically. “Yes. Armies use it to poison enemy wells during wartime.”

“A textbook example of a failed experiment, then.”

“Most experiments are failures. So were most that he conducted in this castle’s tower.”

“Why here?”

“Because he thought he would be left alone here to work. Dippel was a scientist in the end – driven mad by his loneliness and ambition, mixing chemicals that would have changed everything, had he the courage to show them to the world. But as a former pastor – and especially as a man born in Castle Frankenstein – he knew a thing or two about witch burnings, so he kept his true work secret. When an angry mob accused him of sorcery and stormed this castle, he fled to Wittgenstein to set up his final lab, even though his dream was to one day purchase the castle of his birth so that his wandering spirit may at last may have ground to stand on that he could consider home. But it was never to be – he died in his new lab, probably from a stroke. Though some suspect poisoning; he had many enemies, after all.”

“I’ve heard that he drank his own potion, to expand his life. It killed him. Perhaps that was his monster.”

“Children’s stories.” It is now his common, weary refrain. “The pitiful story of Dr. Dippel has very little in common with the faery tales of a nefarious magician that he inspired.” He casts her a sad grin.

She’s quiet for a long time, content to sip her tea and take in her host – who has grown increasingly grave the more he talks of children’s stories. When she speaks again, her voice has a shade of reassurance. “Perhaps Dippel would take comfort in the fact that it wasn’t the legend of the Magician’s Monster that inspired my little book. That was the stuff of my childhood nightmares – but it was something else about him that finally compelled me to put my quill to paper. You see, as I floated down the Rhine all those years ago and heard Dippel’s name associated with this castle, it triggered a childhood memory. I’d heard his name before. ”

Her admission does intrigue him. “Oh?”

Her fingers strum the steaming mug hovering under her chin. “William Blake, who read me bedtime stories, was a disciple of the spiritualist Emmanuel Swedenborg.”

“Who was, himself, once a disciple of Dippel – before Swedenborg swore him off as a heretic and dangerous cult leader.” His eyes briefly find the ceiling, and he mutters under his breath, “Takes one to know one.”

“Mr. Blake was a firm believer in Swenenborg’s teachings – always ready to share his writings about his soul traveling to the afterlife, where he communed with spirits. I read Swedenborg vivaciously as a child as if they were ghost stories – especially the recorded visions in which he visited spirits in Hell. Did you know that one of those spirits was Dippel?”

Curiosity spreads across his face. “I did not.”

“Swedenborg saw Dippel twice,” she says. “Once as a stag, chained to a tree. Every night, Dippel’s chains would fall so that he could try to flee from Hell – but he was pursued by hellhounds, who always caught him and tore him to pieces. His stag body would then be restored, and he would find himself chained to the tree again – only to be torn into pieces the following night because of his defiance of the gods. His punishment was to repeat this cycle for all eternity – like a Modern Prometheus, don’t you see?”

His eyes blaze against the fire’s dance. He practically looks through her. “Remarkable,” he whispers. “Your subtitle was your footnote.”

She nods. “In another vision, Swedenborg sees what he thinks is the Devil in the distance, followed by his cursed disciples. But as Swedenborg approaches, he sees that it is in fact Dippel who leads these lost souls. He has offered them a poisonous draft that he keeps in a terrible flask; when they drink it, it takes away all their intelligence of truth and good, leaving them in a kind of delirium in which they obediently adhere to him. You may recall, in my little book, the moment in which Victor, at the end of his journey, sees himself reflected in another scientist just at the beginning of his own. Victor warns him: ‘Unhappy man! Do you are my madness? Have you also drunk form the intoxicating draught? Hear me – let me tell you my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips.’”

“Victor speaks of Dippel’s draught.”

“They are one in the same,” she confirms. “My Percy drank it as well. It takes many forms, this draught – but it always leads to hubris and doom.”

“You believe Swedenbog’s delusions?”

“Isn’t ‘delusion’ just another word for ‘dream?’ Was it not a dream of a student of the unhallowed arts that gave me my ghost story on the shores of Lake Genena?” She closes her eyes and draws in a deep breath. “And now we must speak more of Dippel’s draught. There’s something I must know.”

“What?”

She whispers carefully but excitedly, as if afraid someone hiding in the shadows might hear a secret forbidden. “It is said that Dippel learned the secret of soul-transference – capturing the soul of a recently dead person and putting it into a new host, thus achieving immortality. Is it true?”

His tired eyes find his feet, and he sighs again. “That was the explanation he gave in his writings, because he knew that no one could understand what he had truly discovered. One wonders if the world still isn’t ready. Perhaps they will be, in another lifetime or so.”

“Tell me.”

“Energy can be neither created nor destroyed – even in death. What we call a soul is simply the eternal energy that births us, animates us, kills us, and then moves on. Dippel believed that if he captured this energy at the moment of death, enough trace memories would remain from the previous life that transferring it to a new host would be a sort of resurrection.”

Her hungry eyes lock on him; she speaks so quietly that she is barely audible. “Was he right?”

He blinks and forces a smile. “I thought you wanted to hear my story, Mrs. Shelley – of why I keep this castle close.”

She her strumming fingers freeze: “Have I not, Dr. Dippel?”

He drops his mug with dull thud, his steaming draft soon seeping into the faded rug. The sound that emerges from his throat is something of a guffaw, and he shirks back in his chair. “Mrs. Shelley – you are exhausted and ill. Please, let me show you to your room.”

She holds up a steady hand. “You don’t have to say it or confess it, Dr. Dippel. I won’t betray your secrets to anyone, I assure you. Just listen to me – can you do that?”

After a pregnant pause, he musters a single nod as his whole frame lightly trembles.

A relieved breath pushes hotly from her throat, and her fingers find her temple. “These headaches will not be relieved by traveling here or anywhere. It is a tumor, I am sure of it. Soon I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. These burning miseries will then be extinct.”

His face grows mournful. “Dippel’s knowledge offers nothing against such a terrible malady.”

“I know.” Her eyes fall to the box on her lap, on which she places a tender palm. Her voice trembles more with each word: “When I close my eyes, the forms of nearly all my beloved dead flit before me. Are they invading spirits, or monstrous delusions of my abnormal brain? I only know that I cannot hasten to their arms, because Percy is not among them – and since the first day I held his heart, I vowed to never leave him again.”

“My God – you unhappy woman.”

“No – do not think me unhappy. The truth is, I am filled with joy. Because I think I finally understand why he is not among them. I believe that when Lord Byron gave me Percy’s heart, he captured his soul therein.” She tenderly strokes the box. “Now, I wonder if your intoxicating draught is one worthy of drinking after all.” Pushing out a sob, she pulls Percy’s heart tight into her. “I beg you, Doctor: If you could please find it in yourself to help me – to give Percy and I the lifetime together that was cut short, to ask our loved ones to wait a little longer…” Another sob softly escapes her, before she pulls herself together – then they lock eyes again.

He watches her silently, until a tear runs down his cheek and is lost in his graying beard. He mutters, “If Dippel were here, and if he could grant your request – is it truly what you would want? After the warning shot you fired for all those in pursuit of forbidden knowledge that, when attained, could destroy all of humankind?”

“Maybe your interpretation is correct after all,” she says softly. “There was something at work in Victor’s soul that he did not understand. Maybe I have learned this lesson, and I understand it. My only question is – do you regret the price you have paid for drinking the intoxicating draught? Has your journey been one of horror or wonder?”

Squeezing his knees, he hesitates. “Dippel never found anything in his science to answer that question.”

“Then please tell me – what did he find?”

He tugs on his beard, and his eyes flick up toward his bookshelf. Her eyes follow him as he rises and locates his dog-eared copy of her little book. Blowing off the dust, he sits again and finds the passage he pursues: “Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed. ” He closes both the book and his eyes.

She wipes away another tear. “Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous,” she whispers.

He soon cradles the book with the reverence and devotion that she holds her late husband’s heart. They face one another, the space between them becoming the narrowing chasm shared between Creator and Creation.

“I am weary of words, Mrs. Shelley,” he says at last. “Let us sit together as friends and listen to the storm for a while. Let us think.”

She nods in curt agreement, her mournful eyes staring at the steaming cup in her hands. “Your mug has fallen, Mr. Ogle. May I refill it for you, so we may drink your draught together?”

After a long time, he mutters, “You may.”