The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim Read online

  “Well … Tiger is alone.”

  “She is indeed,” nods Lear.

  “You can’t!” says Lucy.

  He regards his granddaughter. “Tilley agreed to be part of this.” Edgar knows that only too well. It was because of him. “Someone alone in that little farmhouse would be an enticing target. That is why I took Thorne’s biggest weapon out there this morning at dawn.”

  It is some consolation for Edgar, but not enough. He looks through a stained glass window toward the murky outdoors. They have no idea what it will take to bring their enemy down. Would Thorne’s weapons, as remarkable as they are, do anything? Would a bullet or even a cannonball simply pass through it? Need the bullets be silver? But that’s for vampires and the boy had no marks on his neck. Edgar wishes that they knew, at least, what form their pursuer takes. Will they really be able to see it? At least, he reassures himself, Tiger is as tough as nails.

  “Brim,” says Lear.

  “Yes, sir?” He doesn’t like the tone of the professor’s voice. It makes him think of the old days at the college when he feared this menacing man.

  “You need not worry so much about Tilley. You have enough to be concerned about.”

  It sounds like a threat. Edgar thinks of the sound of Lear’s sword-like knife cutting through the muscle and bone of the boy’s neck last night, the little one’s eyes still wide open. He had felt vomit coming up from his stomach and had turned his head. Jonathan had pretended to look, but Edgar is sure he too looked away. He had told himself, again and again, that the ritual destruction of the corpse was necessary.

  “What do you mean, grandfather?” Lucy moves a little closer to Edgar.

  “It is a good plan to involve Tilley as an enticement, but we need to do more than that.”

  “More?” asks Jonathan, leaning forward.

  “Master Brim, you agree it is wise to offer the demon something, do you not?”

  “Yes, sir.” Edgar’s hands are shaking under the table.

  “Tilley is just the tease. There is something else I believe it truly wants. I’ve told you so.”

  Edgar asks anyway. “And what is that?”

  “You.”

  19

  Bait

  Edgar has his book with him, the one with the blood-red title. He sits reading it in the lantern light, the hag peering over his shoulder, as he waits on a hill on the moors for the monster to attack him. Inside its pages, he becomes the hero again, deep in the forbidding forests in the Carpathian Mountains in eastern Europe. But now, he is inside the terrifying castle. Only one man lives there, the same one who picked him up on the road, pretending to be the driver. He is old and ashen and unearthly, as if he were dead; he only appears after the sun sets and doesn’t seem to eat or drink. Edgar sneaks from bed in the darkness of his room in the castle to shave. But the old man is suddenly behind him, causing him to slice himself with the razor. The freakish man reaches for his throat when blood appears, then quickly excuses himself. Edgar is filled with dread. He thinks about escaping, but knows the castle has been locked shut and is on a steep precipice. He is a prisoner.

  Edgar closes the book. He listens and hears a distant wildcat growl. He swings around. He is a prisoner out here on the moors too, for real. Can he escape what is coming? He wishes again that he knew what was going to attack him. And what will it do to him? Kill him instantly or take its time? But he keeps his wits about him, his body still, his heart thudding. He must face this.

  “Can you see Edgar?” asks Lucy. She is lying on the ground in trousers next to her grandfather and brother, who has pocket binoculars trained on Edgar’s little light in the distance.

  “Oh, my God!”

  “What? Tell me?”

  “He is being attacked by something! It’s eight feet tall.”

  “What?”

  “It’s got him down. It’s bending over him. It’s tearing at his head!”

  Lucy swipes the glasses from him. She scans the horizon. There’s the light. There’s Edgar, sitting beside it, his head turning as if it were on a swivel, but securely attached to his neck. He is still alone.

  “You’re an idiot!” she tells her brother.

  “Well, why would you ask me a question like that? Of course I can see him. What do you think I’m looking at?”

  “Be quiet, you two. Give me the glasses.”

  Lear swings them west toward the old farmhouse where Tiger is living. There is a light in its window. All seems well.

  They have positioned themselves on a small mound about a quarter of a mile from the college. They are another quarter mile from where Edgar sits on a hill in an undulation in the moors, and about the same distance from Tiger’s stone house to their left. The three observers could run to either human bait in a short burst and pick off whatever attacked either friend. They have the weapons with them to do it: Jonathan with the smaller of Thorne’s two remarkable guns, the rifle-like item with the chambered cylinder and deadly accuracy, and Lear with his grandson’s pistol. Jon will enter the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst in the autumn and has been training himself with unbending dedication. He is already a crack shot. Lear has always known his way around a gun, but the old man has his big knife holstered to his leg too and has made sure that Lucy and Jonathan have one each, though theirs are not quite as prodigious.

  “If we have to confront it,” he told them before they left the college, “you both must be armed.”

  Lucy doesn’t want a gun. She has something more valuable—her senses and her intuition.

  “I would wager that you will feel the villain’s arrival before either of us sees it, Lucy,” Lear had said as they walked out to their location. “One uses everything at hand in this game and females have powers males do not. Their wariness in the darkness is an antenna of great strength.”

  “Oh, really,” said Jonathan.

  “I would rather have a woman than a man with me in a tight spot,” Lear added, “especially at night.”

  “Thank you, grandfather,” said Jonathan. “One is always seeking a vote of confidence.”

  A few hours before sunrise, Lucy sits up.

  “Something’s coming,” she says.

  “Where?” asks Lear.

  “Over there, near the college grounds.”

  They squirm around and lie flat, Jonathan training his gun in the direction she pointed.

  “I can’t see it!” he gasps. “Tell me where it is.”

  “Wait,” says Lucy.

  Then they all see it. Something large, upright on two legs, moving without a lantern west of the grounds and out toward the moors, black on black.

  “I don’t know if I can hit it!” exclaims Jonathan. He sounds a little nervous.

  “Don’t shoot yet,” says Lear. “See where it goes first.”

  They hold their breath and watch. Lucy runs her hand down to her knife, strapped as if in a garter to her leg. The creature moves well for something without light, floating over the moors, up and down through its undulations.

  “Does a human being move like that?” asks Jonathan. His hand is twitching on the rifle’s trigger.

  “Quiet. Watch.”

  It glides silently, coming to within a dozen carriage lengths of the three bodies on the ground on the hill. It stops when it nears. It turns toward them. Lucy hears Jonathan quietly cock the gun.

  It grunts and then moves on. In minutes it is halfway between Edgar and Tiger. It seems to spot Edgar. It stops.

  “We must do something,” says Lucy. She tries to get up, but Lear holds her down.

  “Wait.”

  Off in the distance, the creature takes a few strides toward Edgar.

  “We can’t wait. Edgar only has a knife! It will kill—”

  “Wait.”

  “The whites of its eyes,” says Jonathan and grins.

  The being stops. It stands still for a moment and then turns toward the farmhouse. It is almost instantly moving at top speed.

  “It’s g
oing for Tilley!” says Lear. “Jonathan, after it!”

  He leaps to his feet. “Alone?”

  “We have to stay here and watch Edgar. This could be a tactic. There could be more than one of them.”

  “Now you tell us,” says Jon, and in a moment he’s vanished into the darkness over the moors.

  The creature stops when it nears the farmhouse and Jonathan stops too. He can see now that it seems to be wearing a cloak or a robe of some sort that is billowing in the wind—human clothing? He knows then that he can’t just shoot it. He needs to get closer, see what it is about to do. He thinks it is fitting that he has this task, saving the remarkable Tiger Tilley.

  He sees the light go out in the house. The creature approaches the door.

  Half a mile away Edgar is startled by a cry upon the moors. It comes from very close to him. He stands: an ill-advised move. He has made himself visible.

  “Show yourself!” he cries. He hopes his friends will hear him.

  “He’s being attacked!” shrieks Lucy. She gets to her feet and runs, Lear stumbling after her, Jonathan’s pistol in hand. They can barely see in the moonlight. This is the worst possible situation: all they have is the little gun and just two of them coming to the rescue—a slender girl and an old, one-armed man.

  Edgar isn’t going to wait for reinforcements, for a shot to come whizzing through the night. And anyway, he must make their prey visible, so Jonathan can train Thorne’s great rifle on it and destroy it. What will this thing do if the bullet can’t stop it? Edgar stifles his vivid imagination, stopping his visions of ripped flesh and blood. He walks toward the sound, the lantern held out to illuminate whatever may appear.

  “I am here!” he cries.

  Lucy and Lear hear him clearly now. But they can’t say anything. They can’t betray that they are nearing. Lucy sees Edgar moving down the other side of the little hill where he had been ensconced. He stops, his head still visible, holding the lantern out.

  “Hurry!” she says to herself.

  Thud!

  The intruder has its back to Jonathan as it strikes the farmhouse door. Jon takes a chance. He gets down and crawls past it in the dark, keeping well away, moving around to the side of the house. From there, he can observe through a back window, train his gun through the glass, and if this being so much as approaches his friend, he can destroy it: a frontal shot to the head.

  Standing on the far side of the hill, Edgar sees the thing that screamed. In fact, he sees them. They are glaring at him, their eyes glowing red in the night.

  “Wildcats,” says Lear, out of breath as he approaches Edgar. It is two males and they have just stopped fighting. The sounds they make in battle are almost unearthly, especially when heard this close. Lucy puts her hand on Edgar’s shoulder. The big cats, ring-tailed and evil-looking in the night, run off.

  Lucy lets out a deep sigh. Edgar stifles his. But then they hear another sound, a thudding, coming from the direction of the farmhouse. Without a word, they start to run again.

  Jonathan can see the back of Tiger’s head through the window. He also notices that the cannon is ingeniously hidden from the view of anyone who might enter the building, behind Tiger and against a wall by the big wood stove but still pointed at the door. She can move back a few steps and fire it. He trains his gun.

  “Let me in!” croaks the intruder at the door.

  “Stay calm,” Tiger tells herself. She undoes the latch with a kick and then stands back, legs wide, one slightly forward, hands not quite balled but ready. The door is instantly driven open from the outside, smacking against the wall.

  Professor Numb stands in the entrance, muscular and hairy. His face is almost purple. He doesn’t seem like himself. It is as if a transformation is happening.

  Jonathan takes aim.

  Despite Lucy’s diminutive size, she is strong. She keeps up with Edgar, who is lean and powerful. The professor is huffing and puffing, struggling to stay with them.

  “Go on!” he gasps, slowly. He tosses the pistol to Edgar.

  The farmhouse door is open and something large is standing in it.

  “I thought so!” shrieks Numb, not sounding like himself. He reaches a beefy hand toward Tiger’s neck. She slashes his arm down and takes three strides back toward the cannon behind her. She pulls the cloth off her lantern, lighting up the room.

  Jonathan keeps dead aim. He sees Tiger strike Sebastian Numb and step back. As far as he can tell, the weird professor has no weapon. As far as he knows, he is just a professor. But he isn’t certain. “Do not intervene unless necessary,” he says out loud. Tiger will understand. But his finger begins to press on the trigger.

  Lear sees Lucy and Edgar come up close to the little stone house twenty or more strides in front of him. Then he hears something approaching from behind.

  When Numb receives the blow from Tiger, he seems dumbfounded. He stares at his former student and the dark color fades from his face.

  “I suppose I should expect nothing less from you,” he says, assuming his smooth voice again. “I was instructed by Headmaster Griswold to come out to this location, Tilley, to investigate whether some person might be inhabiting it. Evidently, it is you—you who were once expelled from our great institution and who are forbidden to come back. You must leave. That is what I was asked to convey to anyone I should find here.”

  Tiger is directly in front of the little cannon and Numb can’t see it. She shoves it with her foot, rolling it behind the big stove.

  “You have no right to evict me. This isn’t the college so I can be here if I like.”

  “No, you may NOT!” thunders a voice from behind Numb. Griswold has entered, out of breath. He has to bend down to get in the door. Lear is beside him and so are Edgar (pistol hidden under his jacket) and Lucy. Jonathan moves from the side of the farmhouse and fades into the night. Lovecraft approaches the house from behind his leader.

  “Oh, my dear Tilley!” exclaims the little man. “Welcome back!”

  “Shut up, Reginald!” says Griswold. He turns back to Tiger. “The college expropriated this house when the peasants vacated it. You are thus upon our property. You shall leave, and you shall do so now!”

  Tiger simply stares at the headmaster.

  “And Professor Lear,” says Griswold, “I suppose you knew nothing of this?”

  Lear pauses. “No, sir,” he says.

  “Just what I thought you’d say. Your grandson appears to have vanished, by the way.”

  “Perhaps he is out taking the air, sir. He has a great interest in astronomy.”

  “Perhaps Tilley will encounter him, then, for she is just about to leave the premises. Such a person cannot stay within a mile of the college. Such a person can make its home out on the moors with the wildcats, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I shall, old man,” says Tiger. “Just give me tonight and I will be gone. I promise you.”

  Griswold hesitates. “I am not sure what a promise from the likes of you counts for, but all right. Make no mistake, however, if we see you here or anywhere upon the property of the College on the Moors after tonight, Usher and Driver shall clap you into William Wilson’s chains and put you onto the train on a short trip to Inverness prison, do you hear me?”

  Tiger says nothing.

  “DO YOU HEAR ME?”

  Lear nods to his former student from behind Griswold’s back.

  “Yes, I do,” says Tiger.

  “Fine decision, Tilley!” exclaims Lovecraft. “Lovely seeing you!”

  “Shut up, Reginald.” The headmaster glares at the happy little man, who barely notices. “Everyone else, leave! Now!”

  Edgar tries to linger but Griswold pushes him from the room, nearly knocking him into Lucy. He steps into the night. All he hears is the sound of their footsteps trudging over the barren landscape. His thoughts spin: Is their enemy watching them? Observing from a distance? Or is it in the air?

  He imagines Tiger alone, cast out on the moors.

/>   Griswold, Lovecraft and Numb are barely visible, well ahead of them as they lead the way back to the college, the low murmur of their conversation inaudible.

  Something leaps from the heather and seizes Lucy … her brother, whom she slaps. Edgar isn’t amused. He’s thinking about Tiger, wondering if he should return to the farmhouse and convince her to go home to London, now. But he knows she won’t.

  “Jon, you are on first watch in your hallway tonight,” says Lear. “Keep the rifle loaded near the door in one of the rooms.” Edgar wonders what he would do if he was on guard when something broke into the college and came into that dim passageway, in that enclosed space, attacking without warning.

  “Aim for the head,” Lear reminds them. “Keep shooting until it is blown completely off.”

  They reach the grounds and pass by Driver’s stable. His dim light is on, as usual. The three professors are entering the college.

  “Ah, we didn’t get to see it attack Brim,” says Jonathan, clapping Edgar on the back. “Rather disappointing, that.”

  “Great fun postponed,” remarks Edgar.

  “We learned nothing,” says Lucy, “and now we’ve lost Tiger.”

  They trudge up to the main doors.

  “I was out there alone, perfect bait, and it didn’t come after me.”

  As Edgar says this, Lucy comes to a sudden halt, her eyes wide.

  “What if it isn’t out there?” she says. “What if it’s inside?”

  20

  Hiding Place

  The next morning, Professor Lear climbs the staircase that leads to the top floor and beyond. There, in the black turret that sticks up high above the rest of the College, lives an ancient man he wants to interview. Edward Emeritus had been the headmaster at the College on the Moors for sixty years. Griswold is eighty himself, though one wouldn’t know it when he is whipping a boy, his few wisps of white hair flying up, spit coming from his mouth below his hooked red nose as he whacks children with blood-drawing roundhouse strikes accomplished with more flare than the best blows of the boys’ bats on the cricket field. He had spent nearly all of his six decades at the college waiting to succeed the old man. But in a sense he never did, for the legend of Headmaster Emeritus lives on, so much so that he is allowed to stay in the college, kept there in that room above everyone else’s, his counsel sought on every issue until just the last few years.