The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim Read online

  But the rest of them know that Lucy is the one for the job, or at least, she’s the one to attempt it. She is slimmer than Tiger and wearing a heavy blouse with a loose cotton skirt like a peasant girl’s with no hoops or crinoline underneath.

  Edgar turns to Lucy. “Will you?”

  “O-of,” she stammers, “of course.”

  No one says it out loud, but they are all thinking it is one thing to simply make it through the hole, another thing to be on the other side. What will she find there? If she succeeds, she’ll be alone and perhaps in imminent peril, perhaps sealed off with the demon. Lucy is holding her mouth tightly closed.

  “But I’m not sure—” begins her grandfather.

  “It makes the most sense for me to go,” she blurts out. “You can boost me up.” The consequences of not trying could be deadly, for everyone.

  “I’ll get her up there,” say Edgar and Tiger at the same time. And a moment later he has one of her feet, Tiger the other, and Jonathan’s hands are near her rear end, down low on her back. They push her up. Her head comes even with the hole. She has her lantern in one hand and grabs the rough edge of the opening with the other.

  “Look in first,” whispers Lear. “Can you see anything?”

  “It’s pretty dark, hard to tell. It smells awful. I’ll just have to chance it.”

  The other three glance at Lear, who pauses for a second and then nods.

  “Toss the lantern in first. Don’t worry if it extinguishes. You have matches in your dress pocket, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  They see the hole in the secret room dimly lit for an instant and hear the lantern crash on its floor and then the hole goes dark again. Silence.

  “It went out.”

  Lear is solemn for a moment and then nods again. They boost her up higher. Her chin is now at the hole.

  “Push me up farther!”

  They shove upward again and she gets her arms, head, shoulders and the curve down to her waist through the hole, but her hips catch.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a woman up there. Imagine that, my little sister, a real, live woman,” declares Jonathan.

  A look of resolve comes over Lucy’s face. She twists and turns and struggles, trying to force her way in. Her sides scrape against the rough rocks. But she breaks through and plunges forward and disappears like a big stone dropped down a well. They hear a loud thump on the other side.

  “Lucy?” asks Jonathan.

  There is silence for a second and then the sound of a match striking. The hole is dimly illuminated again.

  “Oh, my God!” Lucy sounds like she has her hand over her nose.

  “What is it?” asks Lear.

  “Someone has been in here. There’s … there’s a table here like, like an operating table or something, and chairs and all sorts of tools.”

  “Tools?”

  “They’ve been used recently. No cobwebs. Chisels and scalpels and knives and a sledgehammer and … wait a moment … there’s something on the floor.” They can hear her start to move but then she stops. “There … are … shadows on the wall. I think there’s something in here!” She sounds terrified.

  “You have to get out!” cries Lear.

  “No. No, it may be just the lantern throwing shapes. I’m going to walk over now and see what that is on the floor.”

  Her footsteps echo as she crosses the room. They all hold their breath. She stops suddenly. Then her quick bloodcurdling cry pierces the air and there is silence.

  “LUCY!” cries Jonathan, and he and Tiger attempt to scale the wall on their own, leaping for the hole, trying to scramble upward in desperation.

  “I’m … I’m all right,” says Lucy. “I’m sorry.”

  They all stop and listen, but she’s stopped talking. They can hear her breathing loudly and rapidly.

  “Lucy, try to breathe normally,” says Lear in what is as close to calming tones as he can accomplish. “Take a breath or two and then tell me what you are seeing.”

  “It’s … it’s—”

  “It’s what?”

  “A—”

  “A what?”

  “A skeleton.”

  “What kind?”

  “It’s human.”

  They hear her sob and then stifle it.

  “It’s not very big.”

  22

  The Secret Room

  Inside the sealed catacomb, Lucy is trying to hold herself together.

  “Don’t be afraid,” says Edgar.

  But the monster may be in there with her. She swirls around, flashing the lantern’s light through the room.

  “We have to get in!” says Lear.

  “Lucy, pick up the sledgehammer and hold it up to the hole so we can reach through and get it,” says Jonathan. “Can you lift it that high?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll get on your shoulders,” says Tiger to Jon. “See if you can hand it to me, Lucy.”

  With a heave, Tiger is standing on Jonathan. They can hear Lucy groaning as she tries to lift the big hammer up to the hole.

  “I—I can’t.”

  Tiger peers down into the room. “Just a little higher; you can do it.”

  Lucy grunts. “Excuse me,” she says and grunts again, good and loud, and gets the hammer even higher. “Perfect,” says Tiger and reaches down into the hole and seizes it. The two girls work together to raise it all the way up and through the opening. “Beware!” cries Tiger as she drops it over her shoulder. It crashes to the cellar floor.

  “Oh, don’t worry about the NOISE!” says Jonathan. Tiger doesn’t seem to care.

  “We’ve already raised quite a ruckus,” says Lear, “and no one has come. Let’s proceed.”

  “I’ll do it,” says Edgar and grabs the hammer. But then they hear a sound behind them, this time like the shuffling of feet. They swing their lanterns around and examine the cellar as far as they can see, holding their breath.

  “What’s happening?” asks Lucy.

  “Nothing,” says Lear who nods to Brim. “Continue.”

  Edgar begins to pound on the wall above his head with the sledgehammer, working on the bottom of the hole, swinging from shoulder height and upward with as much strength as he can muster. Each blow sounds like a gun going off.

  “If they haven’t heard us yet, they’ve heard us now,” says Tiger.

  Ten blows knock a few inches off the hole and render Edgar spent.

  “Hey, Goliath, let me have a chance,” says Jonathan.

  Edgar gladly hands over the hammer.

  “Good work, Master Brim,” says Lucy from the catacomb. Tiger puts her arm around his waist and gives him a hard squeeze.

  Jonathan makes progress immediately. He swings the sledge like Hercules and powers it at the wall. After a few strikes, he wipes his brow and unbuttons his shirt, baring his muscular chest. Tiger stares at him, but when he notices, she turns her attention back to the hole. He begins again and soon the opening breaks down and enlarges.

  “You must have loosened it up, mate,” Jonathan grins at Edgar.

  A half dozen more blows and the hole is crumbling: three feet across and five feet tall, the bottom edge now low enough to climb over. They can see Lucy standing on the other side, looking relieved.

  Jonathan sets down the hammer and they all step through, Lear helped over by the boys. The acrid smell is stronger in the room.

  It is an eerie scene. With all their lanterns brought to bear, they can see that the catacomb is about a dozen feet by a little more, with a grisly table at its center and tools lying about, some on it, some on the ground.

  “There’s dried blood here,” says Lear, as they shine a lantern directly on the table’s surface. “This looks like a human fingernail, a whole one, and … part of a nose.”

  “Wh-what do you think happened in this room?” asks Edgar.

  “I don’t know, but whoever—or whatever—was in here has been here more than once.”
Lear is pointing at the ground where footprints, large and clearly evident, mark the floor as if whoever came to this chamber carried grime on his footwear; some of the dirt is dry while other clumps are still damp. Someone has recently been inside this sealed room in this forbidding cellar and has been coming back and forth for a while. But how could that be? Did a phantom walk through the wall or squeeze through that tiny hole? All five hunters are quiet, but they are thinking the same thing.

  The creature came here.

  And there, in the corner as if tossed to the side, is the skeleton. Lear kneels at it while the others gather above him. He examines it, as if it were a specimen in his lab. “A boy’s,” he says, “about five feet tall, maybe thirteen years old, dead for decades.” The professor’s hands begin to shake. He has noticed the skeleton’s foot.

  They hear another sound outside the room. They all turn. They see a shadow looming on the wall, moving slowly but without hesitation directly toward them! Tiger had set Thorne’s rifle against a wall. She picks it up and aims it at the opening. Jonathan pulls his pistol from his pocket. The shadow grows. Edgar steps in front of Lucy and turns to face it. Do not be afraid, he thinks.

  The footsteps stop and they can hear breathing. It is close, just beyond the opening and slightly to the side. It moves again, dimming its lantern’s light and then they can make out the shape of its head clearly in shadow, huge and round

  “Wait until you can see it clearly,” whispers Lear, who has risen next to the skeleton and is staring in the direction of the approaching creature. “I told you, Brim … it wants us.”

  Tiger and Jonathan cock their guns.

  It reaches the opening and peers in at them. The lantern held to its chest below its chin casts a round face in a ghastly light.

  Usher!

  “Stop or I’ll fire,” says Tiger.

  Edgar steps toward the menacing porter. He isn’t wary of him now and is ready to fight him with his bare hands, to the death.

  “Miss Tilley?” says Usher. “I heard you had returned.”

  His voice doesn’t sound right. He seems frightened. Edgar stops.

  “Why are you pointing those weapons at me?”

  “Why are you here, Henry?” asks Lear.

  “I was about to ask you the same question.”

  Lear nods to Tiger and Jonathan to lower their guns.

  Usher steps into the opening and enters the room. “I’ve never had the courage to come past the wine cellar.”

  “You haven’t?” asks Edgar. Why had he always assumed that Usher wouldn’t be afraid of the depths of this cellar? He is just like the rest of them, afraid of demons.

  “What is that?” Usher motions to the skeleton.

  The bones are just behind Lear, whose hands are beginning to shake again. “It’s a friend of mine,” he says.

  The four young people look at him with surprise. Edgar shines his lantern at the skeleton too, bringing it clearly into view. A foot seems deformed. He notices something else on its chest and it nearly causes him to gasp, but he keeps it to himself.

  “A student of mine named Erasmus Scrivener.”

  “Scrivener?” says Usher. “Why, he drowned himself in the lake many years ago. It was very sad. He was a delightful lad. I know you cared for him, Lear. But this can’t be him.”

  “I know how tall he was, his age, that club foot, and the skeleton is decades old.”

  “You were away having your arm mended when he died, weren’t you, Lear?”

  “That’s a nice way to phrase it, Mr. Usher,” says Jonathan, glancing at his grandfather’s empty sleeve, “but I don’t think they quite mended it.”

  “But Mr. Usher just said he committed suicide in a lake, sir.” Edgar is trying to sound hopeful. Maybe this skeleton is centuries old.

  “They never found his body.”

  “Grandfather,” says Lucy, taking his hand, “that doesn’t mean this is him.”

  “Emeritus said it was murder.”

  “Yes, well, he’s a lunatic,” says Jonathan. “Based on what you’ve told us, he’s a few slices short of a full fruitcake.”

  “Sometimes it’s the lunatics who tell us the truth.”

  “And sometimes they are simply off their nuts. Listen, if he said it was murder and no one else thought so, then maybe he did it and left the body here. He was a right old sadist around the boys, wasn’t he?”

  “He wouldn’t kill one of them. He was too careful. He knew when to stop.”

  “So why did he say it was murder?” asks Tiger.

  “I think, sometimes, when you are losing your mind, you say things you have had suspicions about, things that are deep in the lower consciousness of your brain. They just come out. He must have wondered why they couldn’t find the body in the water. They dove for it. That lake isn’t very deep. Maybe there were particularly disturbing things going on that year here, eerie things, perhaps boys talking about seeing a figure walking the moors, strange sounds coming from the cellar.”

  Usher glances around, as if something might be coming out of the darkness.

  “Well,” sighs Lucy, “there were certainly disturbing things happening the year before.”

  “Yes, my dear.” The old man puts his left arm up to his right shoulder and touches the empty socket. Then he motions down at the skeleton. “And maybe that was why this happened the next year.” His face is gray.

  “The monster came here, searching for you,” says Edgar, not disguising the concern in his voice.

  “The monster?” asks Usher. He sounds frightened again.

  “I believe so,” says Lear.

  They don’t speak for a moment as Usher gazes down at the skeleton and around at the room, his mouth open.

  Edgar is still looking at Lear. “It killed your beloved student instead.”

  “And I was afraid.” The old man seems ashamed. “So I concocted my plan to keep it away from me, to save my life.”

  “Look!” says Tiger. She has been examining the room with her lantern as the others talk. “There’s another hole here, down low, a big one!”

  They advance to where she stands at the far wall and gather round her. There, illuminated now and as obvious as the nose on Spartan Griswold’s face, is the entrance to a tunnel.

  “I’m going in,” cries Tiger and jumps like a rabbit into the hole.

  “Keep up,” says Lear quickly. “Lights at front and rear. Use your eyes and ears and noses. If you suspect anything and I mean anything, come to a complete halt and remain absolutely still. Brim, you go second with the gun cocked.”

  “Stop!” cries Usher.

  Tiger backs out of the tunnel. The others turn to the porter too.

  “A monster?”

  “We can’t say more, Usher, not yet,” says Edgar.

  “And you cannot tell others about anything you are seeing tonight,” adds Tiger.

  “Tell them what? That I have seen all five of you sneaking in and out of the college ever since the day you returned? Had I wanted to tell others I could have done that long ago. The others you speak of are angry and unhappy old men who have their fun terrorizing and injuring boys while pretending that they are making men of them. They have not an ounce of kindness or decency in their souls. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them was this monster you seek!” Lucy reaches for Edgar’s hand. “I have no desire to tell them anything that you have done. I have always admired you, Professor Lear, far above the others.” He turns to Edgar. “I have had the utmost respect for you too, Master Brim, and always thought well of you, brave Miss Tilley, though you were, to say the least, not quite what I thought you were.”

  “All of this is for a most honorable purpose, Usher,” says Lear.

  The porter takes a few steps around the room. “Over the years, I have heard horrible sounds coming from here.” He pauses. “You have my blessing. I shall not interfere. In fact, I shall be your ally.”

  “That is much appreciated,” says Lear.

  “Tell
me one thing. Was the little boy, the one in the infirmary, murdered too?”

  “We think so.”

  He nods. “I shall lock the cellar door for you at the top of the stairs; rap hard on it tonight or anytime you might need to come out. I shall hear you and make sure no one else attends. Carry on.” He turns and makes his way slowly back along the cellar toward the staircase up to the ground floor.

  The other five soon vanish into the tunnel: Lear crawling on his knees like the others, Tiger in the lead, Jonathan bringing up the rear with his pistol. Edgar imagines the demon appearing in front or behind them in here, where they can’t escape.

  It seems that they crawl forever. Their knees ache. It defies belief that the tunnel could be this long: running out under the moors for a mile or more from the ghastly catacomb beneath the college. What is on the other side? Edgar wonders. Finally, the tunnel turns sharply upward. There are iron rungs here forming a vertical ladder. They climb.

  Tiger peeks out at the surface. “There’s brush or something up here,” she says. “I’ll clear it out.”

  They emerge into a starlit night. A wildcat yowls. A heavy wind is blowing, but the sky is miraculously clear, a big dark dome over the land at the end of the world.

  “It’s right here,” says the old man in a quiet voice.

  They all turn to see what he’s referring to. It is directly in front of them now, the water almost as black as the night. The lake.

  They stand looking out over the water for a while.

  “We could wait for it here at night,” says Edgar.

  “And render it seriously dead!” says Jonathan.

  “But are we sure we know how to do that?” asks Tiger.

  “I don’t think waiting for it is the best plan,” says Lear. “It may have purposely drawn us to the college. It’s likely watching us. It may want us to leave someone here.” The others survey the moors. “Who knows how often it comes here anyway. It doesn’t seem to be living in that room. It may be trying to control us, lead us places.”

  “There was an indentation on his breastbone too,” says Edgar.

  “A what?” asks Lucy. “What are you talking about?”

  “Scrivener’s remains,” says Lear.

  Edgar is trying not to think of what this thing may have done here long ago, using the student’s boots to make the prints that lead to the lake, perhaps with the lad’s feet still in them, attached or severed.