Monster
Also by Shane Peacock
Eye of the Crow
Death in the Air
Vanishing Girl
The Secret Fiend
The Dragon Turn
Becoming Holmes
The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim
Text copyright © 2018 by Shane Peacock
Tundra Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a Penguin Random House Company
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Peacock, Shane, author
Monster / Shane Peacock.
(The dark missions of Edgar Brim)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 9781770497016 (hardback).—ISBN 9781770497030 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8581.E234M65 2017 jC813’.54 C2016-906911-7
C2016-906912-5
Published simultaneously in the United States of America by Tundra Books of Northern New York, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a Penguin Random House Company
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956779
Edited by Tara Walker and Lara Hinchberger
Cover images: (roots) koMinx/Shutterstock Images; (skeleton and bolts)
Pepin Press—Graphic Ornaments + L’Aventurine—Animals Animaux Tiere Animales
Designed by Jennifer Lum and Rachel Cooper
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
v5.1
a
To Sam, a young man of many talents, who grows more fearless every day.
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Shane Peacock
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I: The Creator
1: Aftermath
2: Refuge
3: Monster in the House
4: The Surgeon
5: Alfred and Edgar
6: The Attack
7: Godwin to the Rescue
8: The Truth about Alfred Thorne
9: Working the Corpse
10: Back in the Lab
11: Godwin
12: The Key
13: At the Elephant Man’s Door
14: What H.G. Wells Knew
15: The Cold Room
16: The Noises on the Other Side
17: A Particular Body
18: Monster Maker
II: The Creature
19: The House of Pain
20: Frankenstein’s Creature
21: A Visitor
22: North
23: Deal with the Devil
24: To the End of the Earth
25: Prey after Prey
26: Monstrous Surprise
27: Terror on the Ice
28: Arctic Murder
Acknowledgments
I
Art is long, life short,…
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
1
Edgar Brim is running for his life on the dark streets of London after midnight, Tiger Tilley by his side and fear in his heart. A demon is pursuing him: the creature that has just murdered Lear. Edgar can hear its footsteps thudding behind him, feel its presence in dim alleys, sense it peering down from the rooftops of buildings, but he cannot see it, cannot even imagine it or what it might do to him. And as he runs, the shriveled arms of the supernatural old woman who has terrorized him since he was in his cradle are squeezing his chest so he can barely breathe. He had thought this was over—the fear, the visitations of the hag, and the monsters. But it is all here again: as real as the thick London mist.
Edgar’s flame-colored hair is like a spotlight in the darkness as he rushes past the weird denizens who populate the night like actors in a dream—ragged, staggering women, swerving swells and deformed beggars. This is where civilization has brought us in the greatest city on earth, thinks Edgar, this is progress. The shop windows are black, some boarded up for the night. Whispers and shouts and screams echo up and down the streets. Edgar feels the monster getting closer. Tiger moves at lightning speed, quick in her black trousers and loose shirt. She flies around a corner and up Drury Lane in front of him and he is desperate to keep up. His breath comes in heaves. The Crypto-Anthropology Society of the Queen’s Empire and the madman who operates it are just a few doors away. He has their guns.
They had left Jonathan and Lucy at the Langham Hotel, one-armed Professor Lear growing cold in his bed and his face whiter and stiffer by the hour, as if it were becoming a mask. The moment before he died, his eyes had stared at them as though he had seen the devil and he had spoken in a croak from dried lips, his larynx quivering in a mutilated throat marked with red lines like the imprints of a huge hand. “Monster,” he had whispered. And then: “Worse!” The creature that had been in the room had frightened Lear more than the living-and-breathing vampire they had destroyed two days before!
Then the old man had gasped, “It is coming for you all!” before lying still.
Lucy had wept while they had all sat around the professor’s bed, unable to move. Finally Edgar had stood up and proposed a plan to get them through a day or two.
“We can’t tell anyone what really happened here. We need to remove the corpse from the room and suggest a believable cause of death. We might say it was a fall against something, his neck striking a hard surface, a bureau, a bathtub edge? But first, we need protection from this beast. Tiger and I need to make a run for the weapons. Jonathan, you and Lucy stay with your grandfather, on guard.”
Jon was holding his face tight and had trouble even answering, but his sister had risen and taken a thick iron poker from the hotel room’s fireplace and put it into her brother’s hand. When Edgar and Tiger left at three in the morning, they heard the door bolt shut behind them.
—
The Crypto-Anthropology Society’s door is locked too. Edgar puts his back to Tiger and surveys the dim street, sure that the monster is near, while she pounds on the entrance hard enough to wake the entire street. The lights are already on in the downstairs chambers.
Little William Shakespeare comes to the door fully dressed for the day, wearing a frilly Elizabethan blouse under a purple smoking jacket, rubbing his eyes, but his huge sagging face not betraying any sleepiness.
“You were awake?” asks Edgar, glancing at him and then back into the street.
“I had offered myself to the arms of Morpheus but had not yet entered his distant realm of—”
“Let us in, now!” says Tiger. “Something may be after us! Lear is dead!”
She shoves the short man aside and enters, and then locks the door behind them after Edgar goes past. Shakespeare stands frozen. But he doesn’t look upset, at least for a moment. Then there are tears, great blobs of them, falling down his hound-dog cheeks and wetting his shirt.
“Oh, my God, my God, my God,” he keeps repeating, “another has come for him, for all of you, has it not?” His voice cracks a little, as it does when he is excited…which is often.
“Downstairs, now!” exclaims Edgar and nearly picks up the diminutive man as he descends the steps with him.
“Where are the weapons?” demands Tiger the moment they enter the august meeting room with its big round oak table and its many place settings for the men who are never really there. “We need them NOW!”
“It won’t matter,” sobs Shakespeare, “this one will destroy you all. And then it might come for ME too!” He utters a little scream. “And these dear men…Messrs. Sprinkle, Winker and Tightman!”
“The guns!” repeats Tiger, advancing on him.
Shakespeare hesitates, then motions limply toward the weaponry, hidden in the darkness of his hallway.
They leave the distraught little man standing at the foot of the stairs and rush back into the night. It is raining now. Edgar has Alfred Thorne’s extraordinary rifle in hand, not even trying to hide it. Jonathan had fired everything in the gun at the other creature when it had menaced them. They will have to steal more bullets from Thorne House. Tiger is pulling the little cannon behind her and it is thundering along on the cobblestones, fully loaded.
They reach the hotel safely, soaking wet, Edgar holding the rifle by his side as he slips through the lobby, but Tiger is unable to disguise her weapon. She simply moves briskly, drawing looks from the doorman and desk clerk who aren’t exactly sure what the red contraption is that she is rolling along.
They knock three times—once hard, twice soft—as agreed, and Lucy opens the door and locks it once they enter. Edgar is relieved to see that nothing has tried to break into the room since they left, but the scene is grim. Jonathan and Lucy stare out at their friends from what seem like deep sockets now, their backs to the corpse, Jon gripping the poker tightly in both hands, his knuckles white. Finally, Edgar breaks the silence.
“It followed us, back and forth.”
“No,” says Tiger, “I imagined that too, for a while—but this thing would have struck if it had been out there. The hour was ideal. Remain calm, all of you. Do not make anything up; react to what is real. Remember, Edgar, you had a plan. Let us hear it again.”
He gathers himself. “We have to do as we said. We must tell the authorities that your grandfather has had an accident. The fall in the bath is the best idea. He needs to be taken from the room.”
Lucy is sitting on the edge of the bed and, though her back is still to her grandfather’s corpse, she has reached behind and is gripping a cold white hand. Edgar steps toward her and gently removes it, taking her hand in his.
“All right,” she says softly.
—
The big-bellied hotel owner wears an elaborate black suit and carries a black bowler hat, his cadaverous assistant a tall top hat that seems from another time, his cheeks powdered red as if it were he who was being prepared for burial. The two men are sour and suspicious, but after notifying the police, they allow the body to be removed. Lucy won’t look as it goes out the door.
—
“What’s next?” asks Jonathan when they are alone again. “Shall we search the streets and go into the pubs with our weapons and shoot off the head of any tall chap who prefers blood to ale?”
“It won’t be a vampire,” says Tiger.
“We don’t know that.” Jon is pacing.
“Lear saw it,” says Edgar. “He said it was worse.”
There is silence again.
“We need to go home,” says Lucy.
Jon stops. “Home?”
“We need to bury grandfather properly. Staying here won’t keep us safe. We need to divide up the weapons, stay vigilant, and figure out how to save ourselves. And we need to do that quickly.”
“Going home might be fatal,” says Edgar quietly. “We need to stay together, with all the weapons.”
“Perhaps it will just leave us alone,” says Jonathan. “Perhaps killing grandfather…” He swallows. “Will be enough for it. Perhaps it will see that as a sufficient warning. Maybe all it needs is for us to keep quiet about what we know.” He nearly shouts that last sentence, as if he wants it to be heard beyond the walls.
“Lucy is right,” says Tiger. “We need to take courage and separate for now.”
“One can be too brave, my friend,” says Edgar. “We should stick together.”
“Hear me out,” says Tiger, stepping closer to him and putting her hand on his shoulder and then sliding it down to his arm, which she squeezes. “I not only don’t think this thing followed us in the streets, Edgar, I doubt it is still lurking around here. If it wanted to kill every last one of us, it would have done that by now. Instead, it murdered an aging man, whose death might be explained away, and left. That is indeed a warning. If we gather together and barricade ourselves with weapons, it might take that as evidence of our intent to fight it, perhaps soon pursue it, a declaration of war. I don’t think that’s what we want. Not yet, anyway.” Her eyes flare for an instant. “We need to act normally, at least on the surface: return to our residences, but as Lucy said, with precautions, fully armed. The Thornes are expecting you to come home anyway, Edgar. It would be difficult to explain staying away any longer.”
“She’s right,” says Jon, looking more like his old self. “Let’s just be ready for anything.” He smiles at Tiger.
Lucy drops onto the bed again. Edgar sighs and sits beside her. He doesn’t take her hand this time, but lets his leg gently touch hers. For some reason, this gives him strength. During the silence that ensues, Tiger walks to a window, pulls back a curtain and peers out onto the street.
“All right,” says Edgar finally. “If this is what you all want, then Lucy and Jonathan should take Thorne’s rifle and Jon’s pistol too. And Tiger,” he adds, and looks up at her as she turns to him, “you take the cannon.”
“That leaves you defenseless,” says Lucy, now pressing her leg against Edgar’s.
“No,” he says, “I’ll be at Thorne House where I may be able to steal more weapons from the laboratory. I’ll get some bullets too, for whatever I find, and for you. I don’t think this thing will go there. I’m guessing that if it attacks it will choose either of your locations first…for you are the ones that are more alone.” He turns to Tiger again. “Especially you.” He thinks of her wide awake in her little abode in Brixton, her back to the wall, her face set with determination, the cannon primed and at hand in the middle of the night.
“Don’t worry about me,” says Tiger, her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed. He can see the bump on her nose and the little scars left from it being twice broken.
“She can protect herself,” says Jon.
Edgar rises and goes across the room to where Professor Lear’s portmanteau sits on a luggage rack and opens it. He sees what he is seeking, lying on top of two shirts with the left arm-sleeves pinned to the shoulders.
Edgar thinks of the creature they confronted at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, the undead revenant, its shaved head, the sickly white pallor of its skin, its long teeth for driving holes in human chests and drawing out their blood. He thinks of its cold hand across his face and of those long bony fingers caressing his chest when it ripped open his shirt. He thinks of its big head in the guillotine, the blade slamming down, the head severing from the trunk and rolling onto the soil on the stage, the eyes staring up. He cannot imagine a monster that is worse. Professor Lear had told him that the vampire was after him more than any of the others. Perhaps that is true of this one too.
These thoughts fill him with fear, his foe since childhood, the thing that debilitates and unhinges him, that brings on the hag. He thinks of his early years and the terror in his little heart when his father read the sensation stories that came through the heat pipe to him in his bed in their broken-down home.
He can hear the hideous old woman outside the door now, waiting for him in the hall. She used to only come when he slept, but now she can be anywhere. Edgar wants to run, forever and ever.
But he picks up the thing in Lear’s luggage.
“And I’ll have this,” he says, holding it up.
Lear’s huge blade glistens in the dim light.
—
Edgar follows Tiger home, keeping his distance, carrying the big sword-like knife inside his bag. The sun will soon be up and a strange dim glow is infusing the London streets. It is the sort of lighting that Edgar imagin
es exists in the other-worlds of the scientific romances of the brilliant young novelist H.G. Wells. Working people are beginning to appear, pulling carts, carrying heavy satchels and tools in rough hands, their ruddy faces cast down toward the stones. Edgar reassures himself that monsters seek and need anonymity, the shadows, secrecy. But still, he keeps his senses alert. Up ahead, Tiger’s strong, lithe figure is impossible to lose despite the growing crowds as she crosses Waterloo Bridge trailing her cannon, unconcerned (as always) about the way people look at her. She never once glances back. He follows her all the way to the end of Mordaunt Street and then observes from there, making sure she gets through the door and into the safety of her home.
But is she really safe there? he wonders.
As soon as he leaves, her door opens again, and she stands on her porch watching him, her dearest friend and perhaps more someday, walking away in the distance.
2
“My dear boy!” cries Annabel Thorne the instant she sees Edgar Brim on her doorstep. She takes him into her arms. But he feels a different sensation from the usual sense of safety and love that he receives from her embrace. He is suddenly afraid for her. It sends a shiver through him and he immediately wants to protect her.
“Mother,” he says, “I am so glad you are well.”
“But, why wouldn’t I be?” She pushes him back, gripping him by the shoulders, looking up at her now-tall adopted son, with her light blue eyes on his darker ones. “You look pale, Edgar.”
As they speak, Alfred Thorne is standing halfway down the stairs that descend to the hallway past the vestibule, no more than a dozen strides away. But he is in a shadow at a corner and partially out of sight, the scar on the left side of his face turned from the light. He is listening.
“Has everything been…all right here?” Edgar asks Annabel, stepping by her and into the hallway with its glistening black-and-white checkerboard floor. He looks up and down the corridor, glancing anxiously behind an open door, the suitcase with the sword inside still in his hand. He notices Thorne on the stairs with a start.