The Diary of Percy Cavor
13th December 1795 (after luncheon)
Bole Manor, the Village of Wold Newton, Yorkshire.
I write this entry perplexed that I may have neither the wit nor the placidity of mind to faithfully and accurately record the many and wonderful events of this day. Oh, I thank God that He has graced me with the opportunity to see such magnificent sights, to better perceive the elegant but infinitely complex workings of his universe and to come to possess …
After breakfast von Frankenstein commandeered the library and there began to assemble the most strange and novel of devices, which combined batteries of Leyden jars (albeit of a unique and esoteric design) connected to a Franklin lightning tower von Frankenstein had Heathcliff erect in the garden. Once satisfied that his electrical engine was connected in a correct and satisfactory manner he draped a profusion of copper wire about the room such that those sitting in its centre would be enveloped by any electrical charge von Frankenstein conjured through the wire.
His preparations complete and chairs arrange before a podium, von Frankenstein took the floor and for a full sixty minutes directed an impassioned monologue towards his small audience making the outrageous and blasphemous claim that through his enquiries with regard to those poor souls beset by Moral Insanity he had detected a second, latent species of the genus homo lurking within Man. This second species he christened Dark Charismatics or H.Singularities. In the doctor’s estimation H.Singularity was a taxon wholly distinct and wholly antithetical to H.Sapien.
Von Frankenstein further contented that the occasional rousing of the Dark Charismatic within Man was the cause of the periodic rise to prominence of exceptional and brutal individuals who, with distressing regularity, plunged the world into turmoil and revolution and threatened the order of civilisation. He cited such individuals as Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and Vlad the Impaler as examples of those individuals whose malevolent Dark Charismatic aspect had come to dominate the kinder, more Christian, H.Sapien side. Von Frankenstein went on to state that he had - following the work of Galvani regarding the bioElectricality of the human body - amassed a body of experimental evidence which suggested that the Dark Charismatic within Man could be roused by the said body being subject to electro-magnetic radiation.
He went on to state that he wished to conduct just such an experiment but for this he would need to tap into the electrical discharges made during a thunderstorm. It was for this reason he had had the tower built in the garden. Unfortunately, as the day seemed clear and bright, the prospect of accessing such an unpredictable force of nature seemed remote,
In the discussion which followed Sir Algernon supported von Frankenstein’s theories, placing before his guests information he had uncovered whilst on an archaeological expedition to Kerch in the Crimean. Here he had been made aware of the legend of a pre-Deluge civilisation - matriarchal in nature - presided over by the Goddess Lilith. Lilith had, so the legend had it, caused three new races to rise from the soil of the earth: the Lilithi (a race of women blessed with a strange hive-like consciousness); the Grigori (a warrior race); and the Kohanim (a race of intellectuals). Bole wondered if it was the intermingling of these races with Man that had somehow given rise to von Frankenstein’s Dark Charismatics.
It was William Jekyll who took this line of speculation further, wondering if these ‘mongrels’ could, perhaps, be the genesis of such fabulous creatures as vampyres and others of their ilk.
This comment elicited a profound and excessive reaction from Countess Karnstein. The woman leapt to her feet and wagging a finger in Jekyll’s face loudly and angrily announced ‘zhat you dabble mit forces beyond your comprehension’. Fortunately before this confrontation could become rancorous, proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of a meteor.
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