And there, ladies and gentlemen,
on the other side of the lake,
we have the famous Villa Diodati,
where Lord Byron, greatest living English poet,
resides in exile,
Romantic, scholar, duelist
and best-selling author of "Childe Harold."
He was forced to leave his native land
after many scandals,
including incest and adultery with Lady Caroline Lamb.
"Mad, bad and dangerous to know," she called him.
Bedroom. Top right.
Oh, look, Polly. What a pleasant surprise.
Unexpected visitors.
Come on! Put some back into it!
Aye-aye, Captain!
He's so close, I can taste him.
Shelley! Shelley!
- Don't let him get away! - Shelley!
- Come here! Shelley!
Come on, Mary. Don't be a stick in the mud. Ahh!
I always said he'd run off with another woman.
Get off me, for God's sake! Leave me alone!
Sanctuary!
Quick! Quick! My hand!
They're coming!
Hurry!
What are you trying to do, wake the dead?
Wake the servants.
Much more difficult.
Mary, come on!
Mary!
- Come on, Mary. Let's... - Ohh!
They must have followed us all the way from Geneva.
What a spectacle!
What's he going to think of us arriving like this?
Poor Rabbit. Poor Pexi.
Those girls are insane.
They love me. How can they be insane?
She hates them, because they say, "What does he see in her?"
What do you see in her?
I don't know. What do I see?
Bless my soul, Mr. Shelley. Good to see you again.
- Terrible day. - Nonsense.
Oh, Murray, hello.
Lord Byron read of your arrival in Geneva.
Did he? Oh, damn. I wanted it to be a surprise.
Oh, Miss, it will be.
Did you see the lightning outside?
One could hardly avoid it, sir.
It was like the end of the world.
Then let us live and love so that people will say,
"The Devil as well as God is an Englishman."
Voilà!
Ah. Voilà, indeed, Miss Clairmont.
That you should follow me a thousand miles
says something about you.
Or something about me.
Shiloh.
We meet again.
I've dreamt of this since Piccadilly Terrace,
- when we argued metaphysics. - Yes.
And you read your poetry.
The more I read your poems, Shiloh, the more beauty I find.
You're most welcome.
You are all welcome.
Ah. So civilized.
Well, I should hope I am, if nothing else.
Oh, I'm sure you are, if nothing else.
I should have introduced you.
I never dream of traveling anywhere without my menagerie.
- What's wrong? - Nothing.
Nothing.
I diagnose all the symptoms of a broken heart.
I should demand a second opinion if I was you, my dear.
Ah!
This is Dr. John Polidori,
a man with no biography of his own,
commissioned to write mine.
A pleasure to meet the greatest English poet of his generation.
Uh, I was to be in Geneva tonight,
but the wild weather...
Even his cronies there have grown bored.
I was going to say that I hope you do not object, sir.
Object? Not at all, sir.
Ah, tolerance is a virtue, my dear Shiloh.
Alas, I have no virtues.
I trust there are some left in this house.
- Miss Godwin, I... - Mrs. Shelley.
Well, by nature, if not by name.
A robust little opium.
Opiates. Laudanum in liquid form.
My lord, dinner awaits your pleasure.
She also awaits my pleasure.
Mm.
What's for first course?
Your lips!
- Second course? - Your body!
- Dessert? - Your soul!
Of course, I eat merely to live.
Imagination is my sustenance...
for such time as life offers more pleasure than death.
Well, I say, at least we've converted you to vegetarianism.
Yes. Meat gives too bloody a complexion.
Vinegar, on the other hand, gives an aesthetic paleness.
And I thought you drank it in mockery of the crucifixion.
Oh, you damned atheist.
Thank God, and I will be damned.
He does everything to cultivate a cadaverish image
short of sleeping in a coffin.
It has been known.
The grave has certain qualities.
Sometimes when I have looked at a face that I loved,
I can see only the changes that death would one day make.
The worm feasting on lips now smiling.
The hues and features of health
changed to the livered tints of putrefaction.
You'd do well to embrace death, my dear.
Immortality is for poets.
Beware of the view bank.
They hire glasses at DeJong's Hotel
to spy at the wicked English across the lake.
Then I shall do my best not to be wicked.
On the contrary. Let us blind them with our wickedness
if that is what they want.
What do you expect? Your reputation precedes you.
In Geneva, they lock up their daughters after dark,
for fear of the Englishman prowling the countryside.
Which is a measure of the Genevese.
Remember I'm Swiss, you beast.
Ah, but of course.
Switzerland is a selfish, cursed, swinish country of brutes.
It just happens to be placed
in the most romantic region in the world.
Only the English are more unbearable,
Which is why I am here, the imprisoned poet.
- The exiled lord. - The fugitive.
Fugitive? From what crime?
From fact and fantasy.
Tell the truth, Albe.
He's the Devil.
Show them your cloven hoof.
Never do that again, you stupid bitch!
- You don't frighten me. - Don't I?
- No. - Don't I?
No.
- Don't I? - No!
Don't I?
No.
If you want to scare us,
first you have to catch us!
- Come on! Hide-and-seek! - Yes!
Party games?
Is fear a game?
You will play.
As long as you are a guest in my house...
you will play my games.
Then I shall go to my room.
Shiloh?
For God's sake, come back in! You'll kill yourself!
Lightning is the fundamental force of the universe,
the ether, the spirit!
You're mad!
Science was a fascination I shared with Mary's father.
At Eton, I'd study the work of Cornelius Agrippa.
Smells and fumes filled my rooms,
and the hum of the galvanometer.
Sky is your galvanometer tonight.
I surrounded myself with the instruments of life,
beckoning the spark of creation.
Ah, Shelley, the modern Prometheus.
But perhaps something alive can be created.
Galvanism has given token of such things,
although I'm not really qualified to comment on such scientific...
What is your field, Doctor?
I think of myself as a general physician.
However, the processes of the mind interest me
more than the body.
I have written a thesis, "De Morbo Oneirodynia."
Yes, yes, yes, we know, Poli.
The causes and effects of sleepwalking and nightmares.
Do you believe dreams can explain and illustrate
the waking state of the mind?
Poli's dreams are invariably the same... wet.
I've transcribed my dreams since...
Opium dreams?
All dreams.
Nightmares?
It is an age of dreams and nightmares.
Oh, yes, and we are merely the children of the age.
But we have all been weaned on blood.
"The Castle of Otranto," "Vathek," "The Monk."
- I see it in the page. - And more fun than any Bible.
Yes.
I picked this up from a bookseller in Geneva last week.
- "Phantasmagoriana." - Ghost stories.
Yes, from the German.
- Let me. - No! Wait.
Time enough.
Chill my blood.
Family portraits.
"On that fateful night,
"I remember moonlight bathed the windswept shore
"which bordered our ancestral estate.
"Our daughter was late, very late,
"and I stood anxiously awaiting any sign of her return.
"I could see nothing.
"I could hear only the low moaning
"of the wind in the trees,
"a moaning that somehow drew my tired and nervous mind
"to a shape hanging twisted like a discarded plaything
from the hideous branches."
"Consumed with fears for the safety of our youngest child,
"I flew to the window and shut it tight
"and perceived in a part of the grounds
"less dark than the rest the same figure from the vile portrait
"in its gray mantle, advancing towards the castle
"with slow and soundless deliberation,
"shrouded by a veil of mist
that reeked of the charnel house."
"The intent of the undead monster
"had become horribly clear.
"Escape was impossible. We were trapped in his web
"without the strength or knowledge
"to combat his dark and awesome power.
"Urged by a perverse compulsion, already gorged on my daughter,
"it now sought to take from us
"the innocent heir to its accursed line.
"I felt suddenly icy cold.
"The vile stench of the tomb gripped my senses
"as the ghastly apparition entered the room.
"Paralyzed with fear, I watched helplessly
as the specter moved towards the bed."
You bloody, childish, bloody imbecile!
Christ! Leeches! Some sort of joke?
Some sort, yes.
He's been trying to bleed me for everything
from syphilis to heartburn, the bastard!
They only suck blood, my lord.
- Excusez-moi. - Christ. Leeches.
Human worms, no more so.
Oh, calm down. It was just a silly prank.
Laudanum, the elixir of life, according to Paracelsus.
Yes, and who are we to argue?
"As the specter turned away from the unconscious child,
"it started towards me.
"I was petrified with horror.
"I was completely at its mercy...
"neither able to move
nor shut my eyes."
- What is it? - I'm all right.
But suddenly I had an image of a woman
I'd been told I'd meet,
and the madness was that she had eyes in her breasts.
I have some ether.
Bugger ether! I want laudanum.
How many drops do you take a day?
A hundred? A thousand? Five thousand?
I can handle it. I don't need a quack's opinion.
Just this headache in my brain like a scorpion.
Oh, it had a happy ending. I hate happy endings.
He should have butchered the little brat.
I'm sorry I interrupted. Let me take up the next...
The ghost has gone.
Why don't we invent our own ghost stories?
- A competition? - Yes!
The five of us.
What about a dark English nobleman
who draws women to him,
sucks their blood and discards them empty?
Oh, yes, or an obscene Italian doctor
raised by the Benedictines who turns to sin and buggery?
What about a murder...
Or is murdered.
Yes. Our own ghost stories.
I've always wanted to write the idea of a classical vampire...
in a modern setting.
What about you, Mr. Shelley?
I'm too restrained by narrative prose.
Not so Miss Godwin.
Oh, I defer to the more experienced writers.
Alas, my only talent is a good singing voice.
Hardly your only talent, my dear.
An oak tree struck by lightning. That's odd.
It seemed... alive.
Lightning has a power beyond our...
Our imaginations, yes.
But aren't our imaginations even more powerful?
Lightning destroyed it, but our imaginations...
brought it to life.
To create a ghost story is nothing.
Quickening of the heart. A brief half-image of terror.
In the end, nothing.
But to create a ghost...
Isn't your theory that lightning
can endow a lifeless being with life?
Perhaps that same lightning in our minds
- can take lifeless thoughts... - You are bored with poetry...
- No, sir, I'm bored with life. - Obviously.
So am I. Let us see if we can't bridge the Stygian gloom, eh,
- and if we can't... - We can!
We can!
A gardener unearthed it
in the grounds of Newstead Abbey.
Horrid.
Yes, The skull of the Black Monk.
I saw the old boy's ghost once the night before my wedding.
His appearance was said to herald disaster.
Is it terribly hot in here?
Yes, as hell.
Come, come. You need some fresh air.
I saw a spirit once, a 10-year-old,
and two bullets passed through its face,
and he vowed death to my wife and sister.
Good, good. Conjure up all your ghosts.
I- I don't understand.
Sometimes I...
Oh, it's easy to understand them, Doctor.
They have it in mind to raise the dead.
Can I get you anything?
Something for fear, if there is such a thing.
Fear?
Fear of the dead.
- I'm sorry. - No, no.
Please. Tell me.
My hus...
Shelley is too full of his own tragedies to bear mine.
Oh, I daresay if he didn't already have a wife in England,
you'd be married.
We were wonderfully happy once.
We would meet at my mother's grave.
He would write love poems.
We would kiss, pledge eternal love.
Last year in March, we... we had a child.
It was born prematurely and died.
Oh. My prayers.
In my idle moments,
I'd dream that my little baby came back to life again,
that it had only been cold,
that we rubbed it before the fire,
and that it had lived.
My fear, Doctor, is...
I said I'd give anything
to bring that child back to life again.
Let death be our witness.
Our minds will do the rest.
This is not a game.
She's overexcited,
- that's all. She... - I'm not a child.
Gaze into the eyes.
Conjure up your deepest, darkest fear.
Call that fear to form, to life.
M- Mo...
Mother.
This... This is...
your mother.
Stop. Stop.
S- Stop. Stop!
Hurt... Hurting...
Stop! Stop them!
Daddy! No!
They're hurting me!
I'm...
Open your mouth. Open your mouth. Be still.
Be calm! Be still.
Shelley!
It'll be all right, Claire.
- Can I do anything? - Poli, be gentle with her.
Take her upstairs.
It'll be all right.
Just hold her gently.
Sleep is nature's balm.
It's not the first time.
It happens at certain times...
of the month, strangely enough.
Sometimes at night when we were in Church Street,
she'd shriek and scream and go into dreadful convulsions.
Claire's horrors, we call them.
Doors slam when no one was near.
Pictures flew from the walls.
I remember one night
her bed shook under her like an untamed stallion.
Poor, poor, excitable child.
Ah, Shiloh!
Laudanum?
You're behaving as if it was a game.
Ah, but that's exactly what it was.
And all the more fun for being played with a straight face.
And was it fun for Claire?
My mother died in childbirth.
They brought in puppies to suck the overflowing milk.
Claire couldn't know that.
I said Claire couldn't know that.
- Do you hear me? - Perhaps we should go.
Cross the lake in this weather?
You're madder than I gave you credit for, Shiloh.
I wouldn't advise moving Claire anywhere tonight.
- I'm not leaving her with him! - What about William?
The boy will be all right with the nanny for one night.
Stay or go.
It makes no difference to me, I assure you.
I'm, uh...
I'm very sorry about the, uh... about the leeches.
It was, uh...
stupid.
Is...
Is there... anything I can...
I can do to, uh... to...
Justine!
Augusta.
Go to sleep.
She's so infatuated with him.
Who wouldn't be?
And when it burns out,
when he casts her aside like he did with all the others,
she'll be shattered.
Oh, Mary.
He's already bored with her. She can't see.
Of course she can't see.
Claire knows exactly what she's doing.
It was her idea following him here.
I know.
She seduced him.
Remember, Mary, you can't blame it all on him.
Can't I?
He's a brilliant man.
Well, a brilliant man can still be...
- Be what, evil? - Yes, if you like.
That's what he likes... mystery, unanswered questions.
Why did he exile himself from England?
What is his secret? Why...
There is no secret.
Oh, for God's sake, stop defending him.
At worst, he practices something we believe in, too.
- Hmm? - Free love.
I'm sorry.
Ah, my little friends.
Shelley.
Go away! You bastards!
Take yourselves off to a brothel,
and don't come back!
What's the matter?
There was something at the window looking at me.
- A dream. - You don't believe me!
- There's nothing out there. - What's that knocking?
- A door banging in the wind. - No.
I'll go and look if it'll make you feel better.
But go back to sleep.
Mary?
Mary.
Can you feel it?
Can you hear it?
It's his.
What's wrong? What did you see, Shiloh?
It's here. Can't you smell it?
The smell of the grave.
- You need to sleep. - Sleep?
Only the opium makes it possible.
- Are you sick? - Sick?
There is an affliction, narcolepsy,
and its sufferers face the possibility
that they might, at any moment, fall into a trance,
a trance like death.
Enviable.
Is it, when you dream of one day waking up in a coffin
and find yourself mistakenly buried alive,
enviable?
The storm is calm
compared to what's inside your poor head, Shiloh.
What is in my head?
One minute, terror, and the next, love.
Terror has an irresistible beauty, Shiloh.
Would the smooth neck of a woman be so desirable
were it not for our secret wish to see upon it
a trickle of blood?
Hmm?
Forget your women, Shiloh.
Do not waste your brilliant words upon them.
Poets are for each other.
I was just, um...
Mary!
If you have something to say, say it.
- Claire. - Claire who? Do I know a Claire?
Do you love her?
- Were you ever in love with her? - I have no love for any.
I can hardly be the stoic with a woman who has scrambled
a thousand miles to unphilosophize me.
- So you plan to discard her? - I never plan anything.
- You know she'll be destroyed. - We shall all be destroyed.
- What do you mean? - It is the Byron curse.
Sorry, but you're vain to think that your tragedy means ours.
We shall see.
Do you always torture those that love you?
- It is a role imposed upon me. - Yes, the thumper,
a role you seem ideally suited to.
Ah, and I thought that you, like your man,
were a great advocate of free love.
Free love, yes, but not free pain,
- free madness, free horror, free... - Finished?
No, I haven't finished. Do you know why?
Because she's carrying your child.
Well?
I'm sure even Polidori can perform a simple abortion.
My God!
Why this sudden concern for your stepsister?
What do you mean?
Always the three of you, the same bedroom,
the same bed sometimes.
Claire told me about your nights in Trois Maison.
- You shared him. - Rubbish...
You don't care about Claire or her horrors.
You're afraid. You're jealous.
You're afraid that she'll steal him from you.
Laudanum is his only mistress. He doesn't need another.
Admit it. You know the two of them have...
Ah, violence.
And I thought you that contradiction in terms,
an intelligent woman.
I've nothing to fear from Claire.
No. Except the child,
a child that might live.
In one way, I pray for her baby to be his.
You live for just one person in this world, yourself.
Oh, my Jesus!
- I'm sorry, Mary. - What do you think you're doing?
Staying awake. I thought a bath would help me stay awake.
- One of us ought to be with her. - Shh.
Shh.
There's no hurry, is there?
I'm afraid, Mary.
It's like the night at Trois Maison all over again.
The three of us.
Remember? I heard the screams of a smothered child.
And Claire kept shouting of the rats
putting their cold paws on her face.
I can't. I can't.
I can't.
- It's just rainwater. - Rainwater...
that catches the moonlight like the trail of a slug?
And that odor.
It's the gutters, rotting leaves, damp.
Not damp.
Decay.
- It must be trapped. - Try and rescue it.
I can't stand that noise.
There's nothing I can do. It's too dark.
You can't let it die.
Mary, that face in the window, I've seen it, too,
something outside in the dark waiting.
- Claire! - Yes, go to Claire.
It's always Claire.
She's your half sister, not mine.
- What is she to you, then? - A friend,
a friend that I care for. Is that a crime?
You're always so close.
I haven't had any choice.
She hasn't left our side since the day we met,
not even our midnight meetings.
When we eloped to the continent, you invited her.
Because she spoke French.
Oh, God, you must think I'm such a bloody fool.
You are a fool. This stupid jealousy.
Oh, Mary, there's something out there,
if it isn't already here in the house already.
- What? What thing? - I don't know.
Something dangerous.
More dangerous than your precious lord?
Don't leave me.
Listen.
Bird.
It's all right. It's escaped.
- Where are you going? - To Claire!
I'm sorry.
Look, I'm sorry.
Do you remember once we vowed eternal love?
Just say you still love me, that's all.
Just say you still love me.
I love you. I love you.
I love you.
Something is in here.
Wait.
Shelley.
I felt its icy breath.
I felt its fangs sinking into my throat.
No!
Vampire, indeed.
Probably some mad tourist with a scissors,
- eager for a lock of my... my hair. - It's alive!
Though how anybody even in the dark
could mistake this fop...
for me!
You wouldn't joke if you saw this thing.
We have. Yours was the same creature
- that I saw at my window. - Imagined. Imagined.
The same thing I imagined I saw in the barn?
Yes. Yes. Imagined.
- That wound was self-inflicted! - Listen. It was the séance.
Pretty Poli's full of our talking and Prussic acid!
We dreamt of darkness and of fear.
We dreamt of creation and the defiance of God.
Please, yes!
Are you content now that God's emissary is sent to punish us?
Whom God would destroy, He first makes mad!
We are the gods now.
We have dared to call ourselves creators.
And our punishment is that we have created.
But created what?
Hah!
Vampires, ghosts, demons.
No more, please. That stuff will drive you mad.
We must remember what was in our minds at the séance.
It's alive. Don't you understand?
We've given life to a creature, a creation,
a jigsaw of all our worst fears in flesh and blood.
I saw breasts with eyes.
I remember the scents of spirits, vengeful demons chasing me.
I was almost unconscious
when the smell of the damn bird hit me.
There was an oppressive weight on my chest, stifling me.
In your mind, you were being buried alive.
And what did you see?
She wants to resurrect her dead baby.
And what did you see, Doctor?
I don't know. It was dark.
Come on, quickly. Tell us.
- You're right. I couldn't see. - You have to tell us.
- Tell us. - What do you see, my lord?
Leeches sucking your blood?
The Benedictines riddled you with guilt.
You can't even admit to your own urges,
- urges for sex, sex with men. - I'm not the only one!
You fear yourself, your prick, your cock, your penis.
No, you idiot. I'm afraid of God.
That's what I'm afraid of, that He would kill us,
that He would... that He would destroy us.
I'm afraid of God!
Is there's no escape from this madhouse?
Claire?
- He's taken Claire! - Calm yourself.
Calm yourself. Now look downstairs. Run.
Claire.
Look into my eyes.
I said...
look into my eyes.
I found her.
- Is she hurt? - Not hurt.
- What then? - Metamorphosed.
- What? - It's taken her.
She's locked in sleep, trapped like a dream in human form.
Shelley!
Somebody, for God's sake, he's trying to poison himself!
I mean to do it! Don't come near me!
It's no good. You can't run away from your own fears.
Let me out!
She's all right.
Part...
Part leech,
part penis,
part grave,
part st...
Mary, you mustn't be afraid.
Fear makes it more powerful, horrible.
- How can we stop it? - We must send it back.
Send it back where? To Heaven or to Hell?
To the grave or to the stars?
We must send it back... to our minds.
- No. - Yes.
Yes, we can only destroy this monster
as we have created it.
- Another séance. - No.
- Yes. Yes. - No. No.
No. No. No.
- No. No. Not again. I can't. - Yes.
We must be exactly as we were before.
- Claire? - We must begin now.
- No. No! - Yes!
Claire!
Shiloh, it's all right.
It's all right, Shiloh.
You did all this.
You...
You brought her here with a ghost.
Shut up.
No, you damned hypocrite.
Two mistresses to bed, and still not satisfied.
What?
So you have to go and steal other people's.
- He hasn't stolen anything. - I don't want to listen to this.
I just want to kill him.
You bloody fool.
You can't even kill yourself.
Bastard.
Don't laugh at me.
Don't laugh at me, you bastard!
Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!
Bastard!
I'll give you a duel.
Any time you like. I'll pay to give you a duel.
You bastard!
Madman!
You flatter him.
Don't include me in any of your raising of the dead,
or deadening of the living! I'd be mad!
I would be mad if I were to stay!
You will stay or be damned.
Then be damned!
Mary.
I can't go through that again. I can't.
For God's sake, Mary, we can do it.
What we created with our minds, we can destroy.
Yes, like God, we have created,
and perhaps God, like us, wants to destroy his creatures
before they destroy their creator.
But God is already dead!
But haven't we raised the dead?
Claire?
Stop her. We need her.
Burn the head.
Don't look at her.
It's madness. She's terrified of rats.
She's trying to tell us.
Get rid of our fears. Yes.
It's here. It's too late. There's no time.
Yes. There is time.
We must rid ourselves of harmful thoughts. Purge...
Claire understands.
She knows.
We must be free.
- It's coming for us. - Empty your minds.
Quickly. Drop all the hate, the horror.
We can wipe it away, like waking from a dream.
No. Thoughts are immortal. Thoughts can't die.
It can die if we join together and we form one mind.
Shiloh, give me your hand.
God defier Shelley! Mad Shelley!
Mad creator of life!
- I'll do it! - It's your creature!
- It's a monster! - It didn't ask to be born!
Nor did any of us.
It's pleading with us to destroy it.
Don't you see? It's talking to us through Claire.
- We must! - And what if it goes wrong?
What... What if we can't get rid of the horror?
What if we create more monsters?
Love destroys fear. Tell her!
Oh! What love between a mad God and the Devil!
Yes.
Yes, I am the Devil.
Yes, Mary, Mother of Christ.
I am the Devil that has possessed your lover.
Possession that destroys,
like your wife was destroyed by your sodomy,
like every lover you've ever raped...
women, men, boys, and even Augusta.
For Christ's sake, Mary.
Go on. Tell us, my lord,
how does it feel to fuck with your own sister?
As pathetic as with any female, Miss Godwin.
Now let us finish what we've begun.
No, Mary! No!
Mama.
- William? - Mama.
- Baby?
Mama.
Augusta.
No, Mary! No!
No! No! No!
Don't stop me!
I can change it. I saw myself there in the future.
- No, Mary. - But if I die now,
- it will all be different. - Mary, no.
It won't happen. I was awake. I was awake.
The storm is over.
Is it?
We're dead.
It showed me the torture it has in store for us.
Our creature...
it will be there waiting in the shadows...
in the shape of our fears...
until it has seen us to our deaths.
Take that!
- Come on. - Play racquets.
Shiloh, don't do that. Here. Let's start again.
That! Here!
So what happened to... Take that.
And that. Now prance.
To think that in England, I was woken by larks.
Here it is the song of the lesser spotted nubile.
Ah, good morning.
Have some lemon tea, 'cause it'll clear your head.
Now, this is doctor's orders,
so it must be taken at least five times daily. There we are.
Watch the... Just watch the...
There are no ghosts in daylight.
You'll get used to our nights at Diodati.
A little indulgence
to heighten our existence on this miserable Earth.
Nights of the mind, the imagination. Nothing more.
What about your ghost story, Mary?
Because I rather fancy a skull-faced woman
deformed because she peeped through a keyhole
like Tom of Coventry.
My story...
My story is a story of creation,
of a creature who's wracked with pain and sorrow
and hunger for revenge,
who haunts his mad creator and his family and his friends...
- to the grave. - Shiloh!
All right, Mary, your turn!
Have you come to play with me?
Three years after that fateful night,
Mary's son William was dead.
Two more of the Shelley children later died at birth.
Shelley himself drowned off the Gulf of Spezia in 1822.
That same year, Allegra, Claire's daughter by Byron,
also died.
Byron survived her by two years,
dying of fever in the Greek War.
His biographer, Dr. Polidori, committed suicide in London.
Eight years after the night at Diodati,
only Claire and Mary remained alive.
But something created that night 170 years ago lives on,
still haunting us to this day.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.