The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim Read online

  “There was a hole,” says the professor, “in Scrivener’s chest.”

  A few hundred yards away, out of sight in the darkness, a large figure in a cloak is watching them, gripping William Wilson by the harness.

  23

  Back in the Graveyard

  “Where on the moors will you be?” Edgar asks Tiger as they part company at the lake. He can’t imagine staying out there in the darkness.

  “Nowhere.”

  “You’re heading home?”

  “Absolutely not. I’m going back down the tunnel.”

  “You’re what?” asks Lucy.

  “I’ll stay the night in that room.”

  “No!” Jonathan blurts but then closes his mouth quickly.

  “I’ve made up my mind. I’ll find a way to lug the cannon down there. I can go in and out through the tunnel or Usher will get me in by the cellar door. I’ll see this thing if it comes and I’ll kill it if I can. I’ll be well equipped.”

  “I don’t think that is a wise idea,” says Lear.

  “It may not be, but I’m doing it.”

  “No, you’re not,” says Edgar.

  “And who is going to stop me? I’ve faced awful things before, Edgar Brim.” In an instant, she is gone.

  “I’ll go after her,” says Jonathan.

  “And do what?” asks Lear. “Try to bring her back kicking and screaming? I don’t think that is wise either.”

  “She’d shoot you,” says Edgar.

  Jonathan smiles. “Yes, she would.”

  Edgar stares up at the ceiling of his dorm room listening for noises from the cellar but hearing only Jonathan’s slow pacing in the hallway. It is the bigger boy’s turn on watch, but instead of sleeping Edgar is thinking of Tiger. What would this creature do to his dear friend? He imagines himself down there with her, the thing approaching, attacking like lightning. He sees it breaking their necks, cracking holes in their chests. Why does it open its victims’ bodies at the heart?

  He has to distract himself. He turns his head and sees the novel on his bed table. Dare he read it at night? At first, he looks away, but when he closes his eyes, he hears and sees Tiger being brutally murdered in the cellar, so he lights his lantern, picks up the book and begins to read. Immediately, he is inside the story again.

  The hero escapes from the European castle. Back in England, his fiancée awaits his return. Her beautiful best friend is having nightmares, sleepwalking, and something has been entering her bedroom through her window. She is seen in a graveyard at night talking with a tall, shadowy figure. Her nightmares grow worse. The frightening old man from the castle seems to be in England now, observed in the streets! Edgar stops reading and rises. He decides to go out into the hallway to keep company with Jonathan.

  “Do you want me to take your place?” he asks Jon. “I can’t sleep.”

  “No sugar plum fairies dancing through your dreams?”

  “Go to bed. I’ll get Lucy up at three.”

  Jonathan hesitates. But then he turns to his room, opens the door, retrieves the rifle and hands it to Edgar, who sets it inside his own door. When he turns back, Jonathan is still in the hallway. “Do you think Tiger is going to be all right?” It is a hard question for him to ask.

  “I’ve known her a long time, Jonathan, and I think she will be fine,” says Edgar.

  Jon offers a slight smile and turns back to his room. “Just asking. Enjoy yourself, Brim!”

  Edgar doesn’t pace in the hallway, but stands still, listening. He hears the wind howling over the moors and thinks there are sounds coming up from the cellar again. What if he went down the stairs into the entrance hall and then into the cellar, down those long stairs to the secret room? What would he find there? Would he see Tiger’s corpse, her eyes still open, a hole in her chest? Would the monster be waiting for him? Do not be afraid. He must help his friend.

  He begins to walk toward the stairs.

  He hesitates on the landing, unsure whether to continue. If he leaves, the rooms up here will be unguarded. If Lear is correct, their group is being observed, and this phantom might somehow know that he has left and murder Lucy and Jonathan in their beds, two unexplained deaths just like the boy’s in the infirmary, swept under the rug by—he thinks about it—Griswold.

  There’s a window on the landing that looks out over the back grounds. Is that a light? He leans over the stone sill, the surface cold on the palms of his hands, and squints through the thick glass. There it is again. Someone is out there! He doesn’t know what to do. Go downstairs to the cellar or sneak out to the graveyard or wake Lear?

  He hits on a plan. He turns back and approaches Lucy’s door and quietly opens it. There she is in bed, her lovely form wrapped tightly in her blanket, her arms bare. For a moment, he just stares at her: Lucy Lear, dreaming. The sensation of being in her bedroom with her as she sleeps mixes with the adrenaline already shooting through him and thrills him. He thinks of the young woman in the novel he’s reading, attacked by a creature who craves females, attacked in her nightdress as she sleeps. He shakes it from his mind.

  “Lucy!” he whispers.

  She rouses and sits up, pulling the covers over herself.

  “Edgar? Why are you in here?”

  “There’s someone in the graveyard,” he says. “Get up. I’ll wake Jonathan. We’ll bring the rifle and pistol. We’ll need you out there.”

  “Get my grandfather.”

  “No. It’s too risky. We’d have to go down to the professors’ chambers, past the others, and rouse him. We have to do this alone.”

  Ten minutes later, after sneaking out the big front doors, they turn the corner around the far side of the building and head toward the graveyard.

  “Look!” says Jonathan.

  There it is: a light, very still, near the back of the cemetery, past the disintegrating old granite crosses and stones, black from the unforgiving weather.

  They approach carefully, Edgar with the rifle, Jonathan his pistol and Lucy with her senses alert in the night. As they get nearer, they can see a shadowy figure, vaguely human and down on its knees beside the little boy’s grave. They stop and nod at each other. Edgar puts the weapon to his side but silently cocks it.

  They move slower now. Edgar wonders why in the world they came without Lear. They should have chanced waking the other professors. But they can’t turn around. The figure in the graveyard might hear them and they can’t put their backs to it. They draw within ten feet and one of Jonathan’s boots connects with a stone and kicks it across the yard. The thing turns. They halt. Edgar raises the gun, pointing it straight at the figure’s head.

  “Who’s there?” it asks and rises to its feet, towering over them, some two heads taller than even Jonathan. They shrink back, but hold their weapons steady.

  A pale face glares at them, lips scarlet, long teeth in a wet mouth. It is a remarkable transformation. Lovecraft is three feet taller than his normal height. An image from the yellow-covered novel flashes through Edgar’s mind.

  “I said, who’s there!” The professor sounds angry.

  “It’s … it’s me, Edgar Brim, and the Lears. What are you doing here?” He slides the gun back to his side but keeps his finger on the trigger.

  “The grave looked as if it was disturbed,” says the vampire, turning back toward the little boy’s resting place again. “Or is it my imagination?” He holds his head as if it will burst and Edgar sees the skull’s strange, almost inhuman shape. Is that its real shape? It certainly isn’t Lovecraft’s. He thinks of what the professor is impersonating and of the holes in the two young chests, right over their hearts … where the blood pumps from the body’s vital organ.

  “I—I doubt it’s … it’s been disturbed.”

  “Why are you here?” says the creature. “You should not have come!” It doesn’t sound like Lovecraft. Maybe it isn’t him? thinks Edgar. Maybe it never is.

  Lucy moves behind Edgar, and Jonathan steps forward, trying to stand u
p straight as an arrow. His voice shaky, he calls out, “Why? Do you intend us harm?” His hand is on his pistol. “Because we will—”

  “Harm? Why no, Master Lear.” Lovecraft’s voice is instantly sad. “Why would I mean any of you harm?”

  “You sounded upset,” says Edgar, pulling the gun behind him.

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  Lovecraft sighs. “I suppose I must tell you.”

  “You will,” responds Jonathan, “or I will force you.”

  “Jon, let him speak,” says Lucy.

  “It’s about this little boy.” He turns to the grave again and a sob erupts from him and when he turns back his eyes are filled with tears. Lucy goes to him and puts her hand on his arm. The other two stay put.

  “Thank you, my sweet child. You are a true granddaughter of Hamish Lear, a dear man.” Lucy can see now that Lovecraft has done something to his head with rags and bandages to create its unusual shape and painted it to make it whiter. “I was sure there were boys in the halls tonight whom I needed to shoo back to their rooms.” He drops down onto his knees again and pulls up his cloak and starts unfastening something at his feet. He glances up at Edgar. “You were very kind.”

  “I was?”

  “To my nephew.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “I wouldn’t tell any student but you, Master Brim, but I can trust you, I know.” Lovecraft stops working on his feet and turns back to the grave. He starts to sob again. “The dead boy was my sister’s son. He should never have been here. You yourself know it is not easy to gain admittance to the College on the Moors, but I arranged it at the insistence of my brother-in-law, the fool!” He looks down. “No one knew the child and I were related, not even Griswold. That sort of thing isn’t allowed, so I couldn’t say anything. It broke my heart when he died and I wept terribly at the funeral.”

  “That is nothing to be ashamed of, sir. You showed you cared.”

  The little professor tugs on his boots again and finally unfastens something. He stands up and has lost three feet in height! He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, spits on it, and rubs his eyes and mouth. Gobs of white paint, makeup and lipstick come off on the cloth. He rips off some tape and takes down the bulbous shape from the top of his head. Reginald Lovecraft is not only the college’s superb literature professor but also master of the Drama Club and director of the school plays, with access to all the greasepaint and costumes he can lay his hands upon.

  “Your impersonation is extraordinary, sir,” says Lucy. “But how—”

  “This is how, Miss Lear.” He holds up the two items he has unhitched from his feet—stilts, each nearly a yard high. “I was a stilt walker as a boy, quite good at it; father said I should have been in the circus. I can practically glide on them!”

  Edgar remembers him swooping down the halls like a ghost.

  “I won’t forget your kindness to my nephew, Master Brim, I won’t.” He is on the verge of tears again.

  “It was nothing, sir.” Edgar steps closer to Lovecraft. “I felt for him because I had struggled too. He did not deserve what happened to him. He was the victim of …” he pauses, wondering what Lovecraft might say.

  “It was a rare heart condition, Brim.”

  Edgar doesn’t respond.

  “But you didn’t answer my question,” says Lovecraft. “Why are you here?” He examines them closely. “Is that a gun, Brim? A rifle? What sort of … Why are you …” He stares at Edgar. Again, the boy doesn’t know what to say.

  “We—”

  “We couldn’t sleep,” says Lucy. “We saw a light down here from our hallway. We thought there was an intruder. The gun belongs to a friend of Jonathan’s. I know it has an unusual appearance. It’s for shooting … wildcats.”

  “Wildcats?”

  “Yes, sir, wildcats and hares. It could kill a wolf too.”

  “There are no wolves on the moors.”

  “Shall we make our way back?”

  They walk together: Edgar carrying the rifle out of sight; Jonathan holding the pistol in his pocket; and Lucy keeping Lovecraft talking, charming him with her smile.

  Partway along their return Edgar sees that the light is on in the driver’s stable. For an instant, it seems there are two figures in there, both cloaked, exactly the same size. Must be Driver’s shadow, thinks Edgar.

  24

  Graduation

  The Vampyre, the Frankenstein monster and the devil are walking the hallways of the College on the Moors the following evening. So are Captain Nemo, Scrooge and the Red Death, everyone heading downstairs to the Great Dining Hall where the tables have been pulled to the walls for the Moors Ball. It is the night before graduation. No one ever dances. An orchestra made up of several members of the dismal dozen, among them John the Baptist, Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry VIII, is playing what are supposed to be lovely tunes. Tasty treats of iced sweets, biscuits, chocolates and lemon drinks are in abundance.

  But Professor Lear and his four young colleagues aren’t enjoying themselves. In another day and a half, everyone will be gone from the college, and that may be all the time they have to find and kill their enemy, or for it to kill them. Tonight, it could come here in disguise.

  Edgar isn’t sure whom Lear is portraying and he doesn’t ask. But the professor is disturbingly like the villain in his yellow book, dressed up in an evening suit, his face white as if he were undead. Edgar read more of the novel during the day, its old villain lurking in England, taking on different shapes, appearing and disappearing near the hero’s wife and her beautiful friend. The friend has grown so pale and weak that they fear she is dying. Edgar knows it will happen soon. The old man, the demon, is somehow slowly killing her.

  Tiger spent a wary, sleepless night in the cellar and is with them at the ball. She couldn’t resist coming and they need her. She’s here as the Invisible Man, the lead character in H.G. Wells’s latest novel. She has wrapped her face in gauze, gloved her hands, tucked her hair up under her hat and is wearing men’s clothing. In her characterization, the Invisible Man doesn’t speak, so though several students and professors try to guess her identity, she simply waves them off.

  Lucy is Cinderella, and Edgar thinks she makes a lovely one, especially with her wrist in the arm of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s ridiculously popular character. It didn’t take much for Edgar to put that persona together, as hair dye, suits and pipes were easy to find in Lovecraft’s Drama Club wardrobe. Vampires are all the rage in the hall tonight. Grendels, a Big Bad Wolf and even witches approach him to see how he will react. The legend of the younger frightened Edgar lingers at the college. But he merely glares at them, even shoves them away, though he may be sorely tested if a hag floats by.

  The dashing Allan Quatermain, hero of thrilling African adventure novels, is keeping close to the Invisible Man. He is wearing his wide-brimmed hunter’s hat, his billowing white shirt has several buttons undone, bullet belts cross his chest, and tight trousers and high boots grip his strong legs.

  “We need to circulate,” says Edgar. “Figure out who everyone is.”

  They move through the crowd and spot Fardle and his followers. Wearing a floppy hat and brandishing a sword, the large boy makes a beeline for Brim. His pencil-thin mustache curls upward as he grins, the sword in ready position. But Lucy begins to laugh and can’t stop, and neither, inside her gauze, can Tiger. Maggett, Smith and Jones as the Three Musketeers are ridiculous enough, but Fardle as the romantic D’Artagnan is just too much for a girl to take. Embarrassed, Fardle backs off. He points his sword at the Invisible Man and hisses, “I’ll find out who that is!”

  “You can’t stay long, Tiger,” says Edgar, as soon as his old enemy disappears. “Someone is sure to figure out who you are.”

  Griswold doesn’t seem to be in the room, though he may be ingeniously costumed. Some years he doesn’t dress up at all. Where is he? Edgar wonders.

  “It could be one of them,” says Jo
nathan, eying several tall vampires clustering near the red punch decanter.

  “Look,” says Lear, motioning upward with his head.

  In the gallery at one end of the Great Dining Hall, a lone figure has appeared—Driver. He jams his long frame into a seat a few rows back and begins observing, un-costumed, emotionless.

  “He’s the one always watching,” says Edgar. “I’m going up there!”

  “No,” says Lucy, reaching out for him. But he is gone. The others follow through the Great Dining Hall to the door that leads to the balcony and pound up the creaking wooden stairs like an army. Jonathan has his hand on his pistol.

  “Too fast!” says Lear partway up. “We need to be ready.”

  They slow and Edgar opens the door at the top cautiously. He slips through and sees the lone figure, now sitting in the front row, observing people below. They approach. The figure turns.

  “Headmaster!” says Lear.

  “What are you doing here?” asks Jonathan before he can stop himself.

  “Well,” says Griswold, “I am the headmaster of the College on the Moors and I’m allowed to attend our functions. This is quite a search party. What do you want?”

  “Nothing.”

  He eyes them. He is wearing dark monk’s robes, his head partially covered. His bone-colored, insect face peers at them under wisps of white hair, studying their expressions.

  “I would prefer if all of you would confine yourselves to your rooms tonight,” he says.

  “Where else would we go?” asks Lear.

  “Oh, I don’t know—perhaps for another stroll on the moors to the farmhouse or an exploration of the graveyard?”

  They don’t respond.

  “I could have sworn there were five of you.”

  Tiger, who was in the rear, has slipped away and already descended the stairs and will soon re-enter the cellar with Usher’s help.

  “No, only four,” says Edgar. “Just came up to greet you, sir.”