Introduction

The wind howled across Lake Geneva, slapping at the windows and rattling the shutters of the old stone villa. Rain pelted the roof like thousands of tiny pebbles, and flashes of lightning lit up the sky in jagged streaks of white. Inside the house, everything was flickering candles and shadows that danced on the walls. The air felt thick and full of electricity, like the whole world was holding its breath.

Mary sat curled in a velvet chair near the fireplace, her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She wasn’t scared, not exactly, but the storm outside was wilder than anything she’d ever seen. It was supposed to be summer, but this summer didn’t act like one. It had rained for days, and the sun seemed to have disappeared completely.

Thunder cracked again—closer this time—and Percy flinched, nearly dropping the book he’d been reading aloud. Across from him, Lord Byron gave a crooked grin. “A perfect night for ghosts,” he said, raising his eyebrows dramatically. His voice echoed through the parlor, and everyone laughed nervously.

There were five of them in the villa: Mary, Percy, Byron, Byron’s doctor friend Polidori, and Byron’s young lover Claire. All of them were writers or wanted to be. All of them were stuck indoors with nothing to do. At first, it had seemed like fun—fancy dinners, poetry readings, long talks about love and death and books—but the endless storm had started to wear on their nerves.

Byron leaned forward, eyes glittering in the firelight. “We need a new game,” he said. “Let’s have a contest. Each of us will write a ghost story. The scariest one wins.”

Everyone murmured their approval, though Mary felt her stomach twist just a little. She was the youngest in the group, and the only one who hadn’t published anything. Could she really write something good enough to impress them?

The challenge had been tossed into the room like a dare, and no one wanted to back down. They all nodded and agreed to start that very night. Mary opened her notebook, its pages still blank. The fire popped loudly, and the shadows on the walls seemed to grow taller.

At first, nothing came. She stared at the page. The storm outside kept roaring. Her thoughts wandered—flashes of stories she’d read as a child, tales of ghosts and monsters, whispers in the dark, things half-seen from the corner of an eye. But none of those ideas felt like hers. She needed something more. Something original.

Days passed. The storm didn’t stop. Percy wrote and rewrote lines of poetry. Byron thundered through his verses like a man possessed. Polidori scribbled in a corner, hunched over his own story. Mary tried to write, but her words felt hollow. She crossed them out again and again. Each night, they shared their progress. Each night, Mary stayed silent.

She didn’t want to admit how stuck she was.

Then one night, everything changed.

Mary had gone to bed late. Her candle had burned low, and the storm had quieted just enough to hear the rustle of trees. As she lay in the dark, her thoughts began to spin in strange directions. She’d been reading about scientists—men who were experimenting with electricity, who believed they could spark life into dead things. One had even claimed to make a frog’s leg twitch by sending a current through it. Could something even bigger be brought to life the same way?

Her breath caught.

In her mind, she saw a man—no, a creature—stitched together from pieces of other people. A scientist, brilliant and obsessed, builds him in secret. The creature wakes. It opens its eyes.

Mary sat up in bed, heart pounding. That image wouldn’t go away.

She knew it was her story.

The next morning, her notebook wasn’t empty anymore. The words came fast and sharp, like lightning racing across the sky. She wrote about Victor Frankenstein, a young man who dares to play with the rules of nature. She wrote about his creation, not a mindless monster but a thinking, feeling being who only wants to belong. She wrote about fear and loneliness and what happens when humans try to control forces they don’t understand.

Byron leaned back in his chair after she read the first pages aloud. “This isn’t just a ghost story,” he said. “This is something else.”

Mary’s hands shook slightly, but she smiled. For the first time, she felt like a real writer. Not just someone tagging along with poets and philosophers. She had created something bold, something new. Something terrifying.

The others kept working on their stories, but the mood had shifted. Mary’s tale had taken root in their minds, and it refused to leave. Even Percy, who had known her best, seemed surprised by how powerful her writing had become.

Outside, the storm began to ease.

The clouds didn’t part completely, but there were patches of blue in the sky. The lake glimmered in the pale light. It was as if the world had been holding its breath, and now it had finally exhaled.

Mary stood by the window, her notebook tucked under one arm. A breeze lifted her hair, and the scent of wet pine drifted into the room. Behind her, Percy called her name, but she didn’t turn around yet.

The creature in her story was still out there, walking alone through icy forests, longing to be loved and feared at the same time. She wasn’t done with him yet. Not by a long shot.