Demon Read online

  “All right,” she says, and then pauses. “Do you think we missed something? I thought we looked through it thoroughly.”

  Edgar evades her glance. “Maybe that would be a waste of our time.” He wonders, however, why she is resistant to exploring one of their few options.

  “One of us could go on watch outside the building,” adds Tiger quickly. “When we see anyone suspicious enter, we could alert the others and investigate. Remember, someone must have lit those candles.”

  “What about Shakespeare?” asks Lucy. “Perhaps he knows more than we imagine. He has been insisting that our enemy is the devil all along. We have some reason to believe he has been visiting Thomas Street too.”

  Something that has been bothering Edgar for a while comes back to him. He remembers the little man saying that the devil had visited him. Now that Edgar thinks of it, he realizes that Shakespeare said it twice. He wonders if the other two heard it. They have never mentioned it. Edgar asks himself if Shakespeare really said that. He wonders, for a split second, if only he can hear some of the things the little man says.

  There is a knock at the door and Edgar and Lucy freeze. Tiger picks up the rifle and aims it at the entrance. Lucy moves toward the cannon.

  “I’ll answer this,” says Edgar. “Keep the rifle trained.”

  He walks slowly toward the door and glances through the window. He immediately recognizes the face.

  “Oh!” says Edgar with relief, “it’s just a friend of mine, the chairman of the hospital board. I mentioned him to both of you—Andrew Lawrence.” Edgar is about to open the door.

  “Stop!” shouts Tiger. “Open it slowly. I’ll keep the gun trained at his head.”

  “Tiger, it’s my friend, one of the wealthiest and most respected gentlemen in London!”

  “You mean someone who doesn’t appear to be a threat? We should have been cautious with Beasley too. I’m not letting anyone else approach this door without protection.”

  Edgar knows she is right. He opens the door slowly and Lawrence smiles at him. Then he sees Tiger pointing the rifle at his head.

  “Edgar, what is going on?” Edgar does not respond at first. He is thinking about how this man lied to him and sent him to a mind doctor. Did I really see them embrace? “Why are you staying away from the hospital?” continues Lawrence, his eyes right on the end of the gun barrel. “Are you ill? Those demon thoughts are not still driving you mad, are they? I understand your concerns, I really do…I have looked into things. But—” Lawrence glances at Tiger. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “That depends,” says Tiger. “What do you want?”

  “I just want to speak to Edgar.”

  “You can speak to all of us. You keep your distance and you do not touch anyone. I want to see your hands at all times. Those are the only conditions under which you can come into this house. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Lawrence enters the house and sits down on the settee. Tiger stands against the wall with the rifle still in ready position. Lucy is down the hall near the cannon.

  “Who are these people?” asks Lawrence.

  “They are my friends.”

  “Lovely friends.”

  “We have reasons to act this way. We have had a terrible few days. We are under siege.”

  “I am sorry to—”

  “What do you want?” snaps Tiger.

  Lawrence turns to Edgar. “I have come to inquire after your health, to ask you to return to the hospital and to apologize to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About the monsters.”

  “What do you mean?” Edgar sits on the settee.

  “Well…I’ve been having a marvelous time with your mother, saw her twice in the last few days, though I did not say a word about the state you were in when you last left my side and the fact that you have been away from the hospital for so long. I did not want to upset her. As my fondness for her grows, I see her deep love for you and my heart has been going out to you and the state you are in. I felt that, rather than simply thinking you deeply troubled, I would look into things, give your perceptions, however strange, some consideration. I had several people pursue research on our Dr. Godwin: where he came from before he was with us at the London Hospital, where he was before that, and before that. I had different individuals do the research for each institution, so they could not connect any dots should any irregularities turn up.”

  “And?” asks Lucy, stepping forward and sitting next to Edgar.

  “Our Dr. Godwin, a man who appeared to be barely forty years old, had been at some dozen hospitals as a surgeon…over the past seventy-five years.”

  “He was made—created—by a human being,” says Edgar. “He would never have died of natural causes.”

  “That is sounding less insane to me than it used to.” Lawrence sighs. “I have friends at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. I have funded many of their enterprises—Irving’s productions are very expensive, as you well know, everything needs to be lifelike for him. I am seeking permission to have a little digging done in the basement of the theatre, where the soil is piled deepest.”

  “You will find a decomposing body there,” says Edgar, “a large one with an astonishing tooth in its mouth that can puncture a breastbone to allow its owner to suck out blood…you will find half of its neck shot off, the work of an extraordinary weapon.” It all sounds mad as it comes out of his mouth and he glances at Lucy. To his surprise, she is looking down, almost as if embarrassed by his words. No one says anything for a moment.

  Lawrence turns to Tiger. “Can you set down your gun now, if you please?”

  She keeps training it on him.

  “Tiger,” says Edgar.

  She hesitates, then lowers her weapon and sits on the settee not far from Lawrence, eyes on him.

  “The devil is after us now,” says Edgar.

  “Or something very much like him,” adds Tiger.

  “I am less inclined to disbelieve that too,” says Lawrence. “In fact, I am also here because I would like to know what I might do to help you. I have money and many other assets at my disposal. If you need protection, I can hire people to watch over you twenty-four hours a day. I can hire investigators or speak to friends at Scotland Yard, whatever is needed.”

  “They would laugh you and us out of their offices,” says Edgar. Why is this man suddenly so much my ally concerning all of this? he asks himself.

  “And one wonders what protection might accomplish,” says Tiger.

  “What do you mean? Don’t you think that—”

  “My brother was killed a few days ago,” says Lucy in a monotone, “right outside our door here, without a single mark on his body. How do you protect someone from that, from such evil power?”

  Lawrence goes pale and does not say anything for a while. When he speaks again, his voice is low and measured. “You know, I was born into poverty. My father was a laborer in Ireland. My mother sewed clothes for pennies. They worked hard and I was proud of them; I still am proud of them. I vowed, however, that I would have more than they had, and never suffer the abuse that they did, that I would fight with my very soul to make something of myself and not let anything, my heritage, my social standing, stop me. I came to London as a young man with little more than the clothes on my back. There was nothing for me at home: no secondary schooling, no reputation, nothing, and I had no choice but to come to the city to seek my fortune. I was afraid of my very shadow in those days, though I had an inner strength. I summoned that strength, the power we all have inside us, and I built a tool-making business and then a textile company and then another and another. I am respected now, revered, in fact…money will do that.” He pauses again. “You have to face this, whether it is indeed the devil himself or not. Satan takes many forms, my friends, I know. I will help you. Now,
what is to be done?”

  “We have discussed a couple of possibilities,” says Lucy.

  As she seems poised to reveal the plans they had made in private, Edgar remembers again that Lawrence is inappropriately courting his dear widowed mother, and sent him to see Dr. Berenice the instant he appeared to be having nervous troubles…that embrace. He also thinks he can smell a whiff of perfume on the chairman. “Perhaps there might be a better time to—” Edgar begins to say.

  “No,” says Tiger, “we need to do this now. We are in a desperate situation and maybe this man can truly help us. He has the motivation and funds to do it. Who else can we go to?”

  Edgar wonders how Tiger can so suddenly be on Sir Andrew’s side. Is it just desperation?

  “We are considering questioning our friend Shakespeare,” says Lucy.

  “I thought you truly disturbed, Edgar, when you mentioned that name in my office,” says Lawrence, “but I sense now that you weren’t really referring to the great bard, were you?”

  Edgar does not respond, but Lucy speaks up immediately, revealing everything about Shakespeare to a man who was a stranger to her just moments ago.

  “He is a lunatic,” she says, “who lives here in London: a little man who was of eccentric ways to begin with and lost his mind as his years progressed. He was a scholar, a person of some wealth, and he believed that it was possible that some of the creatures that are part of our folklore and our novels and poems might, in some ways, really exist. He wrote papers about it. My grandfather went to see the little man when he was still of reasonably sane mind, and Shakespeare helped fund him when terrible circumstances in his life put him in pursuit of something that seemed very much like the monster Grendel from the great legend Beowulf.”

  “Edgar said something about that. Was it really—”

  “Grandfather killed an aberration.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He killed something on the moors in northern Scotland that looked like a huge ape, a strange being that walked on two legs, had killed my grandmother and had been murdering children in Scandinavia.”

  Lawrence looks like he does not know what to say.

  “Shakespeare told my grandfather he was worried that some aberrations might keep track of each other and know if harm came to one of their number and seek out anyone who might be aware of them and want to eliminate them. All for self-preservation. So, after my grandfather killed Grendel, the little man was frightened that something worse would come after him up at the College on the Moors.”

  “And it did,” says Tiger, “or so it seems. The thing you will unearth at the Lyceum. Then Shakespeare warned us again, after we killed that revenant. He seemed frantic about it that time. Something even worse did come. It killed Professor Lear, but Edgar slew it on Spitsbergen Island about two weeks ago…Godwin, the Frankenstein creature.”

  Lawrence looks from her to Edgar. “It is just as you said during your ravings, my boy. This is incredible. It truly is.” He shakes his head. “And imagine—these great works of literature have contained such truths all along.”

  “Think about it, sir,” says Lucy. “What could be coming for us now? What could be worse? Mr. Hyde? Witches? No, not anything like that. None of those creatures are worse than what we have already encountered.”

  “The devil,” says Tiger. “Shakespeare said it himself.”

  “But why would you believe an insane old man?”

  “Because he has been right, twice…three times if you count now,” says Lucy.

  “When I asked you about what we might do, you mentioned his name.”

  “It is because we are grasping at straws, trying to find some sort of starting point for fighting back. Edgar says he saw the little fellow in the East End, going up Thomas Street near the hospital the other day and entering a building. He apparently did not look like himself that afternoon. He always wears flamboyant clothes, says bizarre things and has a lunatic look in his eye. He has three imaginary friends with whom he meets on a regular basis to discuss the existence of human aberrations. He calls it the Crypto-Anthropology Society of the Queen’s Empire. So that is the sort of person we are talking about, as strange and unique as that, yet when Edgar saw him in the East End, he was wearing a gray suit and appeared very serious. Earlier, he had spoken to us about negotiating with the devil.”

  “So, Edgar and I went there,” says Tiger, “to Thomas Street in the early hours of the morning. We were accosted by someone, a large man whom I was able to quickly incapacitate.” Lawrence raises his eyebrows. “And we went upstairs in the building and found a place that looked like it was the throne room of the devil. There were jars filled with blood on the aisles. We saw other things too.” She does not elaborate, perhaps wanting to spare Lucy, or, thinks Edgar, because the hoofed footsteps were a figment of his imagination. The story makes Lawrence shift uncomfortably on the settee.

  “Someone attacked Edgar near the East End too,” says Lucy. “He…was eight feet tall and spoke of the devil and said it would kill us all.”

  “My God,” says Lawrence. He sighs and rubs his face. “Have you confronted this Shakespeare fellow about his presence in the East End?”

  “Yes,” says Lucy, “Edgar asked him about it once, but didn’t pursue it since he denied it. That denial probably should have made us suspicious. We have no way of fighting back, it seems, but we know about that building and that room…and what was in it.”

  “Where is this Crypto…poly…morph…” Sir Andrew frowns. “Where does the little man live?”

  “In Drury Lane.”

  “We need to pay your friend a visit,” says Lawrence, getting to his feet. “Now.”

  “Not now,” says Edgar, who has remained silent for a long while, his heart thumping. Something tells him that he should keep Lawrence away from William Shakespeare. “We cannot be too rash about this. We are exhausted, excited about a couple of possibilities that seem far-fetched. Let us gather ourselves today. We shall speak to Shakespeare tomorrow. We need to think carefully about what we ask him, in case he is hiding something and we alienate him.”

  “Really?” asks Lucy. “You want to wait, with this thing at our door?”

  “That’s all right,” says Lawrence. “It will give me time to marshal some resources and to excavate that body in the Lyceum. Who knows, it may tell us something.”

  “It was good to see you,” says Edgar, getting to his feet, extending a hand toward the door.

  “Yes,” says Lawrence. “Yes, of course. It was very nice to meet you all, even under these circumstances.” He shakes hands with the others, who are now smiling at him, and moves to the door. “And Edgar, you should speak to Dr. Berenice again. She is the best there is at what she does, the top of her class when she was studying medicine and psychology. I believe she can help you a great deal, whether these creatures exist or not.”

  Edgar goes that same afternoon. Lawrence seems to be directing him to this mind doctor and he needs to know why. The moment Tiger and Lucy are in another room, he slips out the door without telling them and heads south. It is just past noon and the sun is straight above in another unusually hot London day. The heat feels positively unnatural. Edgar does not want to encounter Lawrence, so when he gets to the hospital, he sneaks up to the third floor and knocks on the alienist’s door, perspiring inside his black suit coat and trousers. She opens it immediately, almost as if she had been expecting him.

  “Edgar Brim,” she smiles. “How nice to see you. Come in and lie down.”

  He goes into the room without comment, but when he gets to the sofa, he sits on it instead of reclining. It is cold in here again.

  Berenice stands at the door for a moment regarding him. Then she strides across the room in her silent way, swaying her wide hips under her tight brown dress, the same one she had worn the last time Edgar was here. If it is a uniform, it is a
very strange one. Her face looks even older today, but her body somehow younger. “How have you been?”

  “Not well. There are more problems.”

  “I see.” She looks at him intently. “So, you do not want to lie down and tell me. You want to sit?”

  “I have come here as part of seeking the truth about myself and my situation. In order to do that, I must ask you some questions first.”

  “Are you sure you would like the truth, even if it is difficult to bear?”

  He clears his throat. “Yes.”

  “Ask me what you will.”

  She sits on the sofa beside him, very close. He can smell her perfume again, but this time it is different, or at least, much stronger. It is unlike any he has ever smelled before.

  He gathers himself. “Tell me more about yourself, who you are and how long you have known Sir Andrew Lawrence. He has not been entirely honest with me and I believe it is part of his plan to have me speak to you again. I want to know why. I need to know more about both of you before I can allow you to probe my mind or before I do anything more with him. A mysterious caller murdered my colleague and good friend a few days ago without laying a finger on him…” He regards Berenice. “I believe you met him.”

  “Oh?”

  “A young man, late teens, dark-blond hair, came here looking for me?”

  “Oh…yes, I recall now. Handsome young man. He was murdered? How terrible.” She says it without much emotion, a doctor’s clinical response, fixing her hair as she speaks.

  “Things are becoming awfully strange and desperate,” says Edgar, “and suddenly, Lawrence is offering to help me find the creature. In fact, he seems extremely interested.”

  “A creature? The devil?”

  “Yes. I will say it no matter what you think of me. Lawrence is going along with that idea, came over to my side without giving it much thought, in my opinion.”

  “Your side? You really should lie down.”

  “Tell me who you are.”