Peculiar Tales Read Online Free PDF

something about the whole thing...I mean, it was one thing to tell a tall tale over a beer in a tavern, but to go to all this trouble? Just to get me to believe that he was really the mad scientist from that old book? I believed him when he told me that he hadn’t ever before let anyone into the trailer, or told them the things he was telling me. I don’t know for sure exactly why I believed that. Reporters just develop a kind of internal lie detector, I guess. Whatever the reason, I was starting to believe him.
    “You’re telling me that thing out there is the real honest-to-God Frankenstein?”
    “Yup”.
    “And that you’re immortal? That you’re more than a hundred and sixty years old?”
    “You got it.”
    “Well, Jesus, if that’s true I don’t see why you’d spend your life hauling that monster around. Maybe you do feel responsible for it, but for Christ’s sake, I’d think that after the first hundred years you’d’ve paid your debt to it. I mean, you’re a—well, you look like a young man. You could be going places, doing things. I mean, you could be doing a lot better for yourself than working a two-bit carnival.”
    “Tell me about it. It isn’t as easy as you think. I’ve tried to dump him more than once, believe me, but he follows me everywhere. I’d thought I’d lost him once about, I dunno, twenty-thirty years ago, but he managed to track me down. I had a good job by that time, too. Friends, even a girl. Busted in on me in the middle of a cocktail party. You can imagine the fuss that made! Well, what with one thing and another, it just seemed easier to do what I’m doing now.”
    “You ever think about, well...ah, getting rid of him? You know what I mean...”
    “Don’t think for a minute I haven’t thought about that! Many times! You would too if you’d been saddled with an albatross like that for more’n a hundred years. Shoot, people kill wives and husband’s who’ve only been tormenting them for a tenth that long. But you see my problem, don’t you? The thing can’t be killed. It’s immortal.”
    “How do you know...”
    “All right, all right...I’ve tried, I admit it. I’ve tried, for all the good it did me. Why do you think he looks as bad as he does? I can tell you right now that nothing works, as I knew all along it wouldn’t. Poison darts, axes, bullets, acid, steam rollers, ball peen hammers, drowning, electrocution, speeding Buicks, garrottes, gas, fire, rabid bats, locomotives, broken light bulbs in his tapioca, tapeworms, botulism, snakes, embalming fluid, hungry cats, influenza...you name it, nothing works. Already I’d had trouble getting him just to keep ...trying to kill him just made things worse.”
    “I can see where it would.”
    “Well, there you go, then. The whole sad, sordid story. I’m glad I told you. Nothing’s going to change, I guess, but I’m glad I got it out. Thanks for listening, buddy, I appreciate it.”
    “Yeah, well, everything you said, it’s all well and good, but I got you on one little detail.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You keep calling the monster ‘Frankenstein’. That’s where most people go wrong, you know, calling the monster Frankenstein, because it’s not the monster the book is named for, but Victor Frankenstein, the mad scientist who created it. I don’t think the monster itself ever really had a name and I sure don’t think you’re Dr. Frankenstein.”
    “That’s right !” he said, laughing and holding out his hand. “Good God, man, is that what you’ve been thinking? Well, then, let me introduce myself. My name is Hans. I was a hunchback with a club foot, a withered arm and a cast in one eye who was hung for stealing pigs a hundred and thirty years ago. See?” He pulled open the collar of his shirt and there, by God, was a deep scar running clear around his neck. “The doctor saved my life, mister. He pieced me together a brand new body and brought me back to life—an immortal life, as it