CHAPTER 9-1

As much as Dr. Frankenstein enjoyed writing a novel, he found himself eager to get back to theoretical work. Besides, the simplistic solution to mankind’s suicidal dilemmas seemed increasingly childish. And so he returned to the mansion with his lab on Long Island.

The creation of Laura marked the completion of his studies of gene mapping, morphic resonance, and the creation of human tissue. With the strudel drug he felt he had made progress with the evolutionary problem of the human brain being split into left and right hemispheres. His strudeled brain was marvelously harmonized. He decided his next passion would be theoretical physics, in particular figuring out the perplexing question of the elusive twelfth dimension. But before he turned to that, he wanted to do one more experiment with the strudel drug. Possibly a very dangerous experiment.

Frankenstein focused on what he perceived to be the failure of human evolution. He agreed with Arthur Koestler, who wrote in Janus that the real problem of the human species was not the left-right brain split but that the prefrontal cortex and the primitive brain stem had not been properly screwed together as they evolved. Humans were capable of the most amazing creations (ahem--Laura) but also savage violence toward one another. The shadow, darkness. Why are the most popular movies full of explosions and people shooting one another with progressively more powerful weapons?

Frankenstein developed a modification of the strudel drug that would access the primitive brain stem directly. The idea came from reading Carl Jung’s Red Book—a chronicle created a century before but only recently translated and published—of what Jung called his descent into the unconscious. The book had been kept under wraps by Jung’s heirs because of the violent and shocking nature of his journey—images of death, cannibalism, monsters—which he illustrated with lavish paintings and meticulous German calligraphy, all by Jung’s own hand. The original book, which resembled a medieval manuscript, was bound in a large format, made of special parchment, with a red leather cover. Jung kept it on a lectern in his therapy office for years, adding careful lettering and colorful images over time.

Frankenstein read and reread this personal odyssey of Jung’s, both in the original German and in English. He also read Jung’s memoir, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, which contained a narrative of this time in his life. Jung kept a revolver at his bedside in case it all became too much, this messing with the unconscious. Frankenstein wanted to do his own Jung-inspired descent into the realms of dark energy, but with the aid of his neuro-enhancing modification. Did Jung take any drugs? Probably not.

The revised drug had been ready for almost two months when Frankenstein decided to go ahead. He was alone at the mansion, late at night. Outside a storm wailed--wind, thunder, lightning. The setting seemed perfect-- a reminder of the night he created Laura. He lit candles. Why not? He poured a large dose of the liquid on a piece of store-bought strudel. Certainly nothing like the strudel the chef made at the Pelican. He put the strudel in his mouth. He swallowed.

Almost immediately he knew it was a bad idea. But too late. He waited and then, bit by bit, he felt his grip on reality slipping, felt emotions coming from nowhere, with no content—fear, greed, envy, rage, shame. Over the next twelve hours he was presented with horrific images of death and destruction, swirling shadowy smoke, mirrors he disappeared into, tunnels he went down, and slimy, noxious fabric that wrapped around him. He couldn’t avoid a new understanding of the motivation for human violence. He understood murder, mass murder, suicide. He became the Devil with horns and hoofs and blazing red eyes. He understood how genocidal dictators could give their orders.

The worst part was when Laura appeared in his fantasy. But other than superficial resemblance, she was nothing like his Laura. She was covered in blood and feces, her head partially bashed in. She was screaming to go back from where she had come. She attacked him with a hatchet, blaming him for creating her as a soulless, empty shell of misery. And then before his eyes, she turned into Victor Frankenstein’s monster, a rotting stitched together hulk.

 He finally fell into a deep sleep with the worst nightmares imaginable, a level deeper and more horrible than the previous waking daydream. Laura was embedded in his dream, doing horrible things he was grateful not to remember the next day.

CHAPTER 9-2

Dr. Frankenstein was in his bedroom when he woke in the morning, A breeze lifted the soft white curtain in his window. He noticed the little eyelets in the lace. He heard birds singing, their songs divided into individual notes that hung in the air. For a moment he was himself and then he remembered the night before. He experienced the full blast of something he named his Shadow. Was it an expression of his inner self, his own consciousness, or had he somehow evoked an external power that was truly evil. Frankenstein didn’t believe in evil and he wouldn’t believe in morphic resonance if it weren’t for Laura. Yet this force field around him felt evil, no Evil with a capital E. And it was out to get not only him but Laura. Laura, the man-made abomination. Was he the Evil one?

Knowing he was in some kind of trouble, really over his head this time, Frankenstein booked the next flight to San Francisco. He needed to be with his friends.

 By the time he arrived in San Francisco, having been on a plane with people sleeping and eating, babies crying, Frankenstein felt somewhat back to normal. At the airport he bought two jumbo burgers and fries. The saturated fat grounded him. When he got to the inn, Laura, Matt, and Joe hugged him all together. Joe caught on quickly.

“What’s up, F? Man, you look like a corpse.”

They went for a walk up the hill and Frankenstein told Joe about his experiment. He went into detail about the Shadow and the feeling that It, whatever It was, was going to get them. He told him some, but not all, of his encounter with a horrific Laura-creature.

Practical Joe would normally shrug off such a theory but he knew Frankenstein was in touch with realities way beyond him. Laura was the proof of that. So he took it seriously. Standing next to Dr. F, looking into his eyes, he felt as if this Shadow force surrounded both of them. He felt a cold chill from his head to his feet. What was that called-- heebee-jeebies. He felt something that spies could not afford to feel--fear. This was something that he did not want to mess with.

“You can count on me. You know that.”

Frankenstein felt somewhat better, but he wasn’t sure it was such good news that Joe seemed to grasp the reality of this Shadow.

Chapter 9-3

Dr. Frankenstein’s next step in grappling with this new phenomena was to contact Father Max.  He described over the phone what happened. Max insisted they get together. Maybe only to talk--but he had another idea. He suggested doing a kind of ritual exorcism.

“Max, I’m not possessed. Get your irrelevant Catholicism out of here.”

“You were raised a Catholic, right?”

“Many years ago.”

“Well, let’s do a ritual to rid you of whatever is following you, whether it’s a manifestation of your Catholic childhood, an archetype, or”—he laughed—“a real Devil.”

Frankenstein trusted his friend. He needed to understand, to be free of this thing, and if Max had some absurd ritual that would move in that direction, fine. At times he felt that he was ok and then without warning the icy dread would wash over him.

Max reserved a room at Green Gulch where they would not be disturbed. They met at dawn and Max pulled out his paraphernalia. Incense, robes.

“Seriously, Max? We’re really going to do this?”

Just then, the room began to shake. Frankenstein laughed.

“Hey, Pal, you’re really good.”

 And then they realized this was what the San Francisco Bay Area waited for: an earthquake.

 Joe held something in his fist.

“Matt, I have a very special gift for you.”

Slowly he turned his hand over and opened it. There in his palm lay a gold coin.

“Dr. F said I was to give this to you.”

This moment made up for every time Matt had ever felt excluded. He was part of  their inner circle! Never had he been so happy to be part of something.

“Laura and Curt and Max have theirs. Now if only I knew what happened to mine.”

Extending the dramatic moment for all it was worth, Matt reached in his pocket. He put his fist on the table and slowly turned it over and opened his palm.

There, seeming to glow with a delicate light, was the gold Cervantes coin.

“Matt, you sly dog, you.”

Just then the room shook, making everything rattle and shift.

“Earthquake,” they said in unison.

When the seismic convulsion passed under the Pelican, she rode it like a galleon on a skyscraper wave. No structural damage was done, but everything not riveted to the walls--the dishes, the pictures of jolly England--was tossed and broken. The picture of Charles had split in half right in the center of his forehead, so that his left eye and his right eye were staring at each other. The piano was neatly bifurcated at middle C.

That evening Matt, Joe and Laura met for dinner. The staff went on as usual, cleaning up the debris. The jagged cut on Joe's left cheek, the only visible wound from his foray to the Middle East while Matt and Laura were at the Olema Inn, was healing nicely. Now Matt had a matching cut on his right cheek from the sword that hung in the dining room. The earthquake had sent it careening across the room as Matt skidded forward, making a delicate slice in his cheek as it flew by. Although he had bled profusely, the cut was superficial. Laura observed that they looked like bookends, or parentheses, as they sat on either side of her. She was unscathed and in high spirits. The earthquake was just another adventure in her exciting new world. Matt observed once again how she thrived on danger.

In San Francisco Rondo and Frida were salsa dancing in the Mission when the quake hit. They had just agreed to a wedding date over dinner.

Ay caramba!! came over the loudspeaker as the band felt the rumble. Frida clutched her future husband as if the world were ending and Rondo took a moment to enjoy the bliss of holding her as the quake threatened to demolish the old dance hall before he swept her up in his arms. She could not run in her high heels. He dashed for the door, a massive man carrying a child-like woman whose hair, not in pigtails tonight, made a billowing red cloud behind them.

In the street, cars were crashing and the smell of smoke and the sound of sirens filled the air. Rondo jogged down Market Street toward the Sausalito ferry. If the ferry was still running they could get to their car on the other side. Frida settled herself into Rondo's arms and enjoyed the ride, her fears of married life being boring set to rest by their first moments of engagement. Life with Rondo would never be dull.

Rondo and his precious cargo arrived as the steel gate, just about to close, was held by an attendant whose fantasy was engaged by the running tattooed man and his tiny flame-haired passenger.

On board the ferry, Rondo and Frida felt themselves blessed, lucky amidst the horror of the destruction. They hugged and kissed and watched this transformative moment of history, as San Francisco burned on the horizon. Ahead, Marin looked dark and quiet.

Rondo, whose allegiance at this moment (other than to Frida) was to Joe and therefore to Laura and Frankenstein, hugged his woman and headed home.

CHAPTER 9-4

 The quake had knocked out the electricity and so the inn, lit by oil lamps, candles and the fireplace, seemed even more nineteenth-century. The threesome gave up their Jules and Jim game, which was getting strained anyway, and decided they needed new characters. Matt, who had done some research before the lights went out, revealed their next game. He cast Laura as Mary Wollstonecraft soon-to-be-Shelley. She loved the twist of being the creator of Dr. Frankenstein (and his monster). Matt, who really wanted to be the dashing, sexy Lord Byron, accepted the inevitability of Joe being Byron and took for himself the persona of Percy Bysshe Shelley. He read from his laptop the story of how this threesome had met around Byron’s log fire on a stormy night and had read German ghost stories translated into French from a book, Fantasmagoriana. Byron suggested they each write a supernatural tale. When the men left on a trip, Mary stayed and plotted and scribbled her monster tale. Matt gave the laptop to Laura to read to them how she conceived the idea in a waking dream:

“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for SUPREMELY frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”

They all laughed riotously as Laura, moving like a robot, mimed the coming to life of the monster.

Joe, who had not heard from Dr. F since the quake (cell phones were not working), wanted to run over to Green Gulch and check in but feared leaving Laura and Matt alone. Rondo was nowhere to be found but his friends were around, watching over everything. He decided to sit tight for now and wait for word from Frankenstein.

As they considered what to do next, a young man in a brown monk's robe entered the inn and came straight to their table. After touching his mouth and shaking his head from side to side, indicating that he was not allowed to speak, he left an envelope on the table and then went to sit nearby.

Laura's name was written in thick black ink on the vellum cream envelope. She opened it and read the note.

Dear Laura,

Please come immediately to Green Gulch and tell no one.  Come alone. Do not be afraid. Please be ready to leave the area quickly.

Dr. Frankenstein is ok but he needs to see you.

Father Max

 CHAPTER 9--5

Joe took the note from her.

“Joe, he says to come alone.”

“In your dreams are you going over there by yourself.” Then, more seriously, “Dr. F has been into some weird stuff lately. I’m absolutely going with you.” He turned to Matt.

“If Father Max says we should leave, we will leave. Matt, find Rondo and have him meet you here with the guys. Pack enough stuff for a road trip. Let’s take the motorcycles and my car. Laura, go pack a carry-on. Matt, you stay here and keep a watch on the inn. We’ll send for you. Let’s go see what it is Frankenstein says Laura doesn’t have to be afraid of.

Laura went upstairs to pack.

Joe wrote on the bottom of the note, “Father Max—Laura and I are on our way,” and gave it to the monk.

Matt felt his heart contract when he saw Laura coming down the stairs with her suitcase.

What if he never saw her again?

Joe took him aside and pressed something cold into his hand.

"Have you ever fired a gun?"

"God! A gun? No!!!"

Joe, a few inches from Matt, stared into his eyes and smiled.

"Take it. Sorry, chum. It's a little lady-like. But then it is your first gun."

Joe showed him how to use it. Matt doubted that he would ever be able to fire a gun, but then was he not finding reserves of bravery and loyalty that he had never guessed he had? Was it Joe’s influence? Was he being mentored by a superspy and hardly noticing it? Or was it Frankenstein’s confidence in his abilities? Matt had lost weight. He was excited about his life. He felt very much like a different person.

The two men hugged and then Joe and Laura swept out the door with the monk.

Matt saw himself as Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca, watching Ingrid Bergman board the plane in a swirling fog. Yes, like Bogart, he was giving up the woman he loved for some greater good. Matt couldn't help crying. Soon the three people who made up his whole universe would be leaving, and his heart, like the piano, would be split right down the middle

Just then Rondo and Frida arrived. Matt had work to do getting the road trip, should it happen, organized. Even if he would be left behind. He wiped his tears and went to tell them what was going on.

CHAPTER 9-6

 The monk led them to the room where Max and Frankenstein had done their ritual. Joe knocked on the door.

 Max opened it, wearing a black robe with a purple collar. The room smelled of smoke and incense. They could see Dr. Frankenstein across the room, sitting on the floor, looking dazed.

 Max explained what had happened. They had both taken the strudel drug—the good kind—and then had begun a traditional exorcism to see what if anything would happen with Dr. F’s dark shadow.

 “Joe, Laura, it was amazing.” Max’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve never seen anything like it. First there was the earthquake which had nothing to do with our procedure but seemed awesomely coincidental. Because Frankenstein had been so immersed in Jungian theory, he couldn’t see it as anything but a splendid synchronicity. Then I read incantations and burned incense and, you know, waved my robes around as priests do in these rituals. You’ve seen The Exorcist. Or maybe you haven’t. Anyway, I did the full show.

“Frankenstein experienced something I’ll call God-revenge—a melange of fear and regret, melancholy, but hubris too. An expression of his guilt for having created life—excuse me for that, Laura. It was wild. I felt a foreign presence but maybe it was just the power of Frankenstein’s amazing self. Who knows? Whatever. The Shadow left.  We both felt the Shadow leaving. Frankenstein experienced forgiveness. And we were done.

 You have to get him away from here. Go somewhere without these associations for now, until we’re sure he’s mentally stable. He thinks the Shadow may come back to get him, and you too, Laura. He took a lot of the very bad kind of strudel drug and then enough of the good to balance him out. For now. He’s a very brave man. Whether it was a good thing to do or not, who knows? Joe, take care of them. As you always do. You don’t believe in this hocus-pocus. You can ground them all.”

 Joe nodded. But he wasn’t sure it was true that he didn’t believe about something dangerous in the air.  A Shadow—or something more real. He had felt it when he stood next to Frankenstein on the hill and now Father Max was agreeing it was something. Not nothing.

Not at all nothing.

CHAPTER 9-7

Dr. Frankenstein saw Joe and Laura talking with Father Max. Dear, sweet Laura. No longer monster Laura. How to explain it all. He was clueless. He liked being clueless. Mostly he was tired. Thoughts wandered in his brain like cows munching scraps of grass on a cloudless day. For a moment he was one of those cows, gently moving across a bright green hillside. Cows munching scraps of grass? Had his intelligence left him completely? Where did that come from? Listlessness. Lassitude. Was it the drug? Or the ritual?

 Laura sat down on the floor in front of him and looked at him with compassion and love. And a fierce intelligence. A laser seemed to shoot from her eyes to his. Pierce his passivity. Sink through his eyeball into his brain as if it were non-fat yogurt. Non-fat yogurt? Dr. F gently let his thoughts meander to the wonders of a brain that could make up images like cows munching thoughts as scraps of grass and brains like non-fat yogurt. Laura, Max, Joe--all faded away as he laughed softly at his own immensely clever god-like abilities. His newly restored god-like abilities. His new innocence.

 A roar emerged from the eucalyptus-lined entrance to Green Gulch. Around the bend came three magnificent Harleys—Rondo and two of the Yin Yang Club, Matt riding with one of them —their black leather jackets emblazoned with the blue and green yin-yang logo, followed by Frida driving Joe’s Volvo. Matt had decided at the last minute that he wasn’t going to be left behind. No more. He was part of this group and he was going. He had a gold coin. Joe saw him and nodded. He felt invincible and invincible people did not get left behind. Laura flashed him a big smile.

Joe led a shuffling Dr. F to the car and gently pushed him into the front seat. Frida nodded. He fastened his seat belt and patted him on the cheek. “Get some sleep, F,” he said. “You did good.” Frankenstein smiled and drifted off.

 Joe and Laura rode with the other two bikers.

 As they sped through the eucalyptus grove, Joe looked back at Laura.

 She was radiant.

 They shared a thumbs up and a wink.

CHAPTER 9-8 

 At the top of the hill, Rondo leaned into a right turn. They continued single file along the winding Shoreline Highway as far as Tam Junction and then on to Route 101 toward San Francisco.

Euphoria was the only word to describe what Matt felt as he crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. He felt cozy in the borrowed brown leather jacket, an icy wind on his face, clutching the ample waist of Rondo's biker buddy Aloysius. Beside him Laura, who was smiling, seemed to be asleep on the shoulder of Mick. Ahead, Joe rode with Rondo. Behind, Dr. Frankenstein, still spacey, and Frida.

Above, a crew hanging in the swirling fog and orange rafters of the bridge repaired the earthquake damage. To the left, San Francisco nestled in the fog bank, its iconic shapes—Coit Tower, the pyramid-shaped Transamerica Building—were bathed in breakthrough shafts of light that to Matt resembled a religious painting. To the right, bright sunlight played on the water of the golden gateway. Behind him, the Pelican, ahead San Francisco and who knows what? He relished the views that commuters to San Francisco enjoyed every day. Beneath him Aloysius's hog purred like a giant kitten. Beneath the bridge, the dark cold water of the Bay. Is it not rare, Matt pondered, to be at a place in time and space where existence is exquisite in all six directions? Passing beneath the midpoint of the bridge, he made a note to remember this moment as the geographical apex of his life.

Was it the strudel drug that made him so blissfully reflective? Or just the joy of being with Joe and Laura when less than an hour ago he had been at the Pelican worrying about what may have happened to them and feeling left behind. And then he had hopped on a Harley, and here he was, gently, enchantedly, rapturously even, abiding by the Golden Gate Bridge speed limit on his first motorcycle ride. With Laura. Joe. Frankenstein. Frida. Rondo. And their biker chums. Headed for San Francisco and who knows what next adventure.