Santastein Or the Post-Holiday Prometheus

Santastein

Or the Post-Holiday Prometheus

Brian K. Morris

RISING TIDE Publications

Copyright © 2014 by Brian K. Morris

Editing by Cookie Morris

Cover is © 2014 by Trevor Erick Hawkins

Published at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Brian K. Morris / Riding Tide Publications

Lafayette, Indiana

www.RisingTide.pub

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout © 2016 BookDesignTemplates.com

Santastein/ Brian K. Morris. – 2nd ed.

ISBN -13: 978-0-999039295

ISBN-10: 0999308297

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ALSO BY BRIAN K. MORRIS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

Christmas was a time of joy … somewhere else. Certainly not in early 19th Century Geneva.

Elizabeth Lavenza pulled her scarf over her button nose and what were normally scarlet lips. However, tonight, just two days before Christmas Day, the latter were understandably tinged with blue from the frigid air that rolled down from the dark mountains surrounding all of Geneva.

The finest wools of Germany comprised her long coat and the softest ermine covered her ears, but the latter failed to restrain the flow of Elizabeth's long naturally-blonde hair over her shoulders. Highly polished black leather boots pressed lightly into the freshly-fallen snow that covered every horizontal surface of the village from brick walkway to rooftop.

The days of December moved towards the holiday season with all the speed of an iceberg, but only half of the enthusiasm of the boat waiting to meet it. During this time every year, Elizabeth opened her usually warm and optimistic heart even wider to the glories of the season. She delighted in the act of giving for its own sake, never desiring reciprocation, and to see the faces of those she cared for light up with gratitude and surprise. She reveled in the music of a child's laugh as well as the angelic joy in their eyes. Recognizing a young boy she'd seen from the market, Elizabeth called out to him in cheerful greeting.

The child looked up from manipulating the snow at his feet with a pair of trembling hands barely covered by a set of threadbare gloves. His eyes appeared haunted, wide and dark. While traveling with the Frankensteins, her adoptive family, Elizabeth remembered a similar sight as a child; a painting suspended from the wall of her hostel room. It was a painting of a small child with eyes like midnight, immortalized upon a canvas of dark velvet. It complimented the room's other painting, also in ebony velvet, of a youthful, dark-haired truck driving troubadour of whom the legends claimed sang of not being cruel, returning mail to the sender, blue suede footwear and something called hound dogs.

Elizabeth shivered, but not from the cold. She averted her gaze, hoping she wouldn't cry at the thought of the boy's unhappiness. He glanced up at Elizabeth, a moment later resuming his efforts to shape a replica of his favorite dachshund from the gray snow that fell from the even-grayer clouds. After several awkward attempts to form a tail whose weight didn't prevent it from binding with the rest of the statue, the boy sullenly tossed the snowdog upwards. Gravity then pulled the chilly construction back into the fallen precipitation that covered the rest of the village.

The boy frowned and contemplated calling out for his parents before remembering that boys his age didn't mourn for dogs made of snow. That's what babies did. As the youth contemplated further, he realized the identities of his mother and father were a total mystery to him as the author of this book didn't award any of them with either names or occupations. Nor could the boy remember what to call his three siblings, nor their genders. He rose to his feet, not even bothering to brush off his clothing before trudging home to his loving parents, What's-his-name and Oh-yeah-her-too.

Moving with renewed purpose towards her fiancé Victor's home, Elizabeth found her smile returning from whence it hid. Victor! The very thought of him renewed her spirit and gave her heart the wings of an eagle. Suddenly, in her vision, the snows turned as ivory as an angel's heart and the buildings became mansions to rival the proudest castles in all of Switzerland. The children sang carols of the season in perfect non-castrato harmonies, their bellies bulging with roast goose and stuffing and jellied cranberries.

Elizabeth couldn't wait to be taken into Victor's powerful embrace, to press her lips to his, and to take her medications, the ones that kept at bay the visions of snow, architecture, children, hymns, and all things culinary.

At the outskirts of Geneva, near the edge of a dense forest, the mansion awaited her. Each window held a single candle, each wick lit with a flame that beckoned the lovely young woman to enter the abode.

The towers at each corner of the castle rose proudly into the darkening skies. One, however, appeared taller than the others, almost as if daring to part the clouds in order to gaze more clearly upon the Throne of Heaven. As Elizabeth surveyed the tallest tower from the ground, one windowsill of that spire appeared to have been scored, as if some form of intense heat had struck it. But what could burn stone so thoroughly, save for lightning?

Of all the people in the village, only Elizabeth seemed to be able to gaze upon this edifice and not wish to be elsewhere beyond its long shadows. Since Victor returned from his medical studies in Germany several months ago, the building seemed to gather darkness around its foundation, even during the brightest of days. No birds nested in the property's trees, no dog or cat willingly crossed onto the land, and the children avoided the estate as if spirits implored them to play elsewhere.

Even the sun almost refused to shine upon Victor's family home where she'd been raised after his parents adopted her as a child. The only evidence of nature extending its touch towards this building came a few nights ago when a terrifying rainstorm pelted the village and slashed at the castle's spires with the most fearsome lightning anyone could recall seeing. Only ash-colored snow seemed to embrace the haunting mansion at all on this late December morning.

However, Elizabeth knew only that the man of her dreams lived inside this mansion. His smile could warm her heart and his laugh could summon the sun at midnight. But for the last few weeks, she'd found him for only a few minutes at a time, possessed as he seemed to be with some secret project that he allowed no one to see. Not her, nor his brothers or even his best friend, could pull Victor from his laboratory for any longer than it took him to grab a hasty meal, offer his sincerest apologies, promise fervently that he would emerge soon, and leave the room with a grin that found no mirror in his eyes.

Still, she managed to force a smile onto her frozen lips when she considered the poetry to soon be found in her new name, Elizabeth Frankenstein, the wife of Geneva's newest family physician. Across the whole of civilized Europe, the Frankenstein name brought respect as it had for generations. It was a name she would be proud to pass on to her children, the number of which would be determined by her husband as well as by the level of good behavior demonstrated by the last one to emerge from her womb.

A set of three stone steps elevated visitors to the sturdy oak door upon which hung a lovely wreath of juniper berries, pine cones and what appeared to be wolfsbane. Typical male, Elizabeth thought, no sense of design.

Elizabeth reached into the center of the wreath for an iron circlet and slammed it hard against a plate, also forged in iron. She knew this was as much her home as his – and would be even moreso once they wed – but she felt compelled to announce her presence to give him time to prepare himself for her arrival. She turned the door latch and allowed herself inside.

Perhaps this time he would remove the filthy lab coat that he hadn't removed for the last month. Maybe he would greet her as the gentle, compassionate, loving man she knew him to be. She stamped the snow from her boots onto a rug of soft bearskin, a gift from Victor's own father and a testament to the man's hunting ability.

Elizabeth's breath no longer could be seen. Safe from winter's attack, she removed her soft armor and hung it neatly on a nearby clothing peg next to Victor's leather jacket and fur-lined hat.

The foyer, as always, was fully lit by several lamps in Victor's hope that his lifelong love would enter and humble those bright flames with her perfect smile.

But no smile crossed Elizabeth's lips as she cast her glance from one side of the entryway to the other. With ever widening eyes, she put her hand to her lips as if