Demon Read online

  The house looks dark and silent. He creaks open the black-iron gate and rushes up the steps to the front door, but it will not open. He pulls the cord and waits. No one comes. Then he notices the shutters pulled across the windows.

  “Shuttered?”

  It does not make any sense. In all the years he has lived at Thorne House, he has never once seen the windows boarded up. Even Beasley is not about. Then Edgar wonders about the butler. “Is he part of all of this?” he says quietly into the door. “Is he part of a conspiracy to drive me insane? Did he make up the story of the hag walking down the stairs in Thorne House?” Edgar hammers on the door with his fists.

  “Mother!” he cries. No one comes.

  He feels a slight tap on his shoulder and whirls around.

  “Son, you are shouting. There is no one here.”

  “But…but have they abandoned me? Has she abandoned me?”

  “I am not sure that is the best way to state it…though it certainly has that appearance. It seems strange that she would unaccountably be away when you need her the most. Not in our interests to speculate though. We do not know exactly what has happened here, and we must not stay and be conspicuous on the street. That isn’t a wise thing when you are being pursued by a powerful enemy, an all-seeing and all-knowing—”

  “But what else can I do, Father? Where else can I go? William Shakespeare knows nothing that can help me, the devil-worship room told us nothing, and Andrew Lawrence seems to have vanished! I do not trust Tiger anymore, so I cannot go back to her.” It is difficult for him to believe that he is saying this.

  “Well, you could—”

  “Lawrence! He has a home in Kensington! He might be there! I think I can find it!” Edgar has suddenly remembered Annabel gushing about Sir Andrew’s fashionable address on one of the richest streets in London, Phillimore Gardens, in a wealthy neighborhood on the western side of Hyde Park. Lawrence had shown it off after walking out with her one evening.

  Edgar races south to Piccadilly Street leaving his father far behind. When he turns on that busy street and heads west, he sees several hansom cabs pass and an omnibus rattles by, but he does not want to wait for them and keeps flying on foot until he gets to Hyde Park Corner. He slows a little to cross into the great park and then cuts through it, rushing along Rotten Row, the wide dirt path where fashionable Londoners still sometimes come to ride their horses or carriages and “be seen.” Soon he is sprinting again, perspiring heavily in the still hot late afternoon, his father nowhere in sight behind him, a sinking feeling overtaking him as he thinks more of the disappearance of Lucy and Annabel, wondering if they are dead, anxious to get to Lawrence. He feels the blood pulsing through his body, his feet pounding on the ground, fear chasing him westward. It is as if he is trying to run to the end of the world and right out of it: away to an impossible place that is safe. He reaches the Albert Memorial, passes Kensington Palace and is finally in the posh streets where Sir Andrew Lawrence has his city residence. He turns north onto Phillimore Gardens and slows to a walk, nearly half an hour after he started out, his chest heaving. The houses here make the ones in Mayfair near Thorne House look ordinary. They are mostly white, in fact everything here is pristine and white—houses, doors, stone fences, even the footpaths—it is like walking into heaven. Only the gleaming wrought-iron low fences are black. Annabel had said it was the biggest house on the block and Edgar has no problem finding it, easily the most spectacular of many spectacular residences. He rushes up to it, leaps over the short fence, climbs the few outdoor steps on shaking legs and uses the knocker, black and iron in the shape of the letters A and L, pounding so hard on the door that he can hear the thuds echo in the house. He glances up and down the street and sees nothing suspicious behind him.

  The entrance opens in seconds. A large footman stands there glowering at him, dressed in a spotless red-and-cream outfit that looks a century old. His breeches are velvet, his knee-high socks silk.

  “Yes?” says the sour man, looking down his nose, barely able to observe the perspiring visitor.

  “My name is Edgar Brim. I am a friend of Sir Andrew Lawrence’s. I must see him!” He begins to push past the man but feels a heavy hand on his chest.

  “Entrance has not been granted to you, sir.”

  “But I must see him.”

  “You cannot.”

  “But—”

  “He is not in.”

  “Not in to me…or not in at all?”

  “He is, actually…not in at all. He usually comes home for tea, but for some reason, he never appeared. He seems to have been delayed.”

  Edgar’s heart pounds.

  “Delayed?”

  The door closes in his face.

  * * *

  —

  Edgar walks up and down the street for hours and is careful to keep an eye on Lawrence’s residence, but the chairman does not appear. At one point, the footman comes out onto the street and walks up and down it too, as if looking for someone. Finally, as the day begins to grow dark, Edgar gives up.

  Where will I go? he asks himself. Back to Tiger Tilley? It seems like the only option. I need to trust her.

  “Don’t do it,” says his father, who has been sitting on a wrought-iron fence a few homes south of Lawrence’s for a while now, watching Edgar pace back and forth. “Stay with me, out on the streets. We will find a place to hide. The devil wants you to go back there. Miss Tilley will kill you, Edgar. You know how capable she is.”

  “That is insane,” says Edgar under his breath. He starts to move toward Kentish Town, trying to find it in his heart to believe in his oldest friend. His father does not follow him. Edgar could find himself a ride, but he has to think, decide if he go can through with this, so he remains on foot again, walking all the way back along the southern edge of Hyde Park, past the great palace, the monuments, and elegant trees and into Mayfair, everything dreamlike in the dimly lit night. It is a dazed, two-hour nighttime stroll and he tries to make his mind up with every step. Should he spend the night on the streets out in the dark with his father and risk an open-air attack from the devil or keep making his way back to the Lear home on Progress Street and spend it with Tiger, who may mean him harm?

  He moves north through Marylebone, up Baker Street, past Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum with its famous Chamber of Horrors advertised in red letters and farther north along the edge of shadowy Regent’s Park and on and on to Kentish Town. He cannot bring himself to turn back. He approaches the Lears’ home, but its appearance shocks him.

  He had imagined a single light on, perhaps Tiger staring out a window with the rifle in hand, but it looks dim and empty as if only the ghosts of his dear friends were lingering inside. If the creature has murdered Tiger and is in this house, then it will have the rifle and the cannon at its command too.

  Not that Satan would need a weapon.

  Then again, perhaps Tiger is in there, lights off, ready to ambush him.

  He opens the door quietly and steals into the nearly pitch-black interior. It seems to take him a minute to land each footstep though his head swivels quickly on his neck like a buoy in rough sea. He goes through the living room, the parlor, the little kitchen at the back, and then dares to turn on a light. No one. If Tiger were here, surely she would show herself by now, even if she meant him harm. He heads down the hallway. For some reason, he investigates his room first and then poor Lucy’s. Finding both empty, he approaches Tiger’s place. He puts his ear to the door. It seems deadly quiet. He opens her entrance ever so carefully.

  Tiger’s room is deserted, her bedsheets disheveled, her portmanteau open on the floor, her few clothes strewn about in it. If she were going somewhere, why is it still here? He remembers her untidy room at the College on the Moors. Is this normal, he asks himself, or has she rushed out…or been taken? Or did she meet the devil in that room on Thomas Street?

 
He cannot find the rifle anywhere and assumes that either Tiger has brought it with her or it too has been taken by their enemy. The cannon is gone as well. Again, he thinks that Satan would not need weapons. He wonders if he should leave, go back out onto the streets and find his father, or stay here where perhaps the beast will return to finish its dirty work. He is exhausted and cannot decide what might be best, so he simply remains. He goes to bed expecting to awake to the attack of a creature so horrible that he cannot even imagine its appearance. What form will it take now?

  The empty Lear home at night is everything he thought it would be in this situation and he cannot bring himself to fall to sleep. Instead, he gets up and sits in the living room, still fully clothed, nodding off once or twice only to come violently awake, and each time reaching out for a nonexistent weapon. There are creaks and groans in the house and the distant sounds of voices and of people moving on the street outside. Several times, he thinks he sees a shadow at the door. There is absolutely nowhere for him to flee now, and no one to run to. He is alone. Even his father appears to have disappeared.

  “They are all dead,” he says in a monotone.

  He begins to believe that he is asleep and dreaming all of this. After all, he is an expert at nightmares, this must simply be his worst, or a particular sort of insanity where dreams and reality mingle. It is not possible that all of his friends are suddenly dead or have vanished into the air; it is inconceivable that his dead father has been walking the streets with him. It is madness that the devil is after him. He convinces himself that he is awake but still cannot stop his mind’s downward spiral. He sits next to the imaginary cannon, hallucinating. First, he thinks that the devil is actually in the room and that he cannot move a muscle and it is somehow sucking out his soul. Satan appears before him in black clothes with a hideous, shifting face, taking on different forms, eight feet tall, hag-like, then in red like Henry Irving on stage as Mephistopheles, cloven hooves banging on the wood floor.

  Then he realizes that someone is actually knocking on the front door.

  “You forgot something,” says a voice behind him, and he turns to see Allen Brim standing in the entrance to the kitchen. He must have slipped in during the night.

  The knock comes again. Edgar swings back around toward the front door with its little glass window, thick and translucent, and observes that it is raining outside, but cannot see anyone at the door; some spirit is knocking.

  “You forgot something he said,” continues Allen Brim.

  “Who?”

  “Our little friend.”

  “What did he say?”

  The pounding grows louder.

  “He said that his dark-minded visitor asked him to report to him. Now, how might he do that? How would the little man know where to go?”

  “He would need the address.”

  “Indeed. Open the door.”

  For the first time in his life, Edgar fears his father, whose words sounded ominous, who stands there dry as a bone, fresh from a rain-soaked night, glowering in a dark coat. Is this really Allen Brim? There is no avenue of escape. Edgar must open the door to the invisible creature or face his menacing father.

  He advances toward the entrance as it almost bursts inward with the incessant knocking. He peers out through the thick glass and sees nothing there but rain, hard pelting rain in the hot, humid night. He opens the door.

  “Master Brim!”

  Edgar looks down to see William Shakespeare, short like a child, his big head not even reaching the window. He is drenched and wearing the Zouave clothing. Edgar gasps and steps back. Is this how Jon died?

  There is no old woman present, though, and the little man does not lay a finger on him. He is clutching something, something small, to his chest, and he slips past Edgar and into the living room, trailing a river of rain behind him until he reaches the settee and slumps down on it. Shakespeare’s eyes look even wilder than usual, darting around in his head. Edgar approaches him cautiously and Shakespeare extends the small item in his hand toward him. Edgar takes it. It is a calling card, a black one with red lettering, its borders marked with snakes, pyramids, eyes and horns.

  “What is this?”

  “What…I should…have given you…when you graced me with your anxious presence some eighteen hours, forty-six minutes and twelve seconds ago. Take it, Sancho Panza! You lump of foul deformity!”

  There is a name on the card and an address.

  “I don’t know this person,” says Edgar.

  “It is HIM! The devil-man! He gave me his card, you roast meat for worms!”

  William Shakespeare’s eyes look as though someone is shining a bright light through them from the inside of his head. Edgar expects his father to say something but he seems to have left the room, perhaps the house too. Edgar looks at the address on the card again: 13 Thomas Street.

  “Is this the devil-worship room?”

  “Next…next…next…door!”

  Edgar looks at the name again.

  “Alexander Morley.”

  “You cannot go there, Edgar Broom!” shrieks William Shakespeare. “It is HIM. He is not just a messenger! He is Satan. I KNOW it! HE SAID SO!”

  “He did?”

  “YES! I could not bring myself to tell you that!…Where are the others?”

  “Gone.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “They have vanished.”

  “That is what he wants. You are ALONE! Do NOT go to him!”

  “But you brought me his card.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know. I could not stop myself.” He looks down at his bright apparel. “I do not know why I am wearing these clothes either! I have no memory of putting them on!”

  “You have worn them before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Jonathan greeted you at the door!”

  “Yes. No! Yes.”

  “You and the hag killed Jonathan and now you are sending me to see the devil!”

  “The hag?…I did not KILL him!”

  “Tell me what happened now or I will put a bullet through your brain with this rifle!” Edgar points the barrel of Alfred Thorne’s extraordinary weapon at the little man’s big head.

  “But you have nothing in your hands.”

  Edgar looks down, realizes it is true, and it horrifies him. He remembers that Tiger must have the rifle…or someone else. He staggers toward the settee and falls onto it next to William Shakespeare.

  “I do not remember how I got here that morning,” says the little man in a voice so small that Edgar can barely hear him, “though I do know now, through some vague and hideous memory, that I was wearing these clothes. I knocked and Jonathan looked through the window and then opened the door to me. I could see a wild look in his eye when he first peered out, but then he saw it was me and his face relaxed, at least a little. He looked terrible, Edgar Broom, terrible! Oh my Lord sakes almighty! Then he looked out toward the street and his face changed again. That is what I remember. I could not have killed him. NOT ME!”

  “You do not recall Jonathan lying at your feet, you little beast!”

  “I remember scurrying away and I think I know who sent me.”

  “Who?”

  “The devil.”

  “This Morley fellow.”

  “I believe so. I tried to resist coming, Edgar, I know I did.”

  “What about the hag?”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “She was with you!”

  “No one was with me…the hag is a figment of—”

  Edgar seizes the little man and throws him across the room and his head smashes into the ridge on the top of the baseboard on a wall. Blood comes from a sickle-shaped
wound on his forehead and tears from his eyes.

  “When I fled,” says Shakespeare, looking pitifully up at Edgar, “I mounted my noble steed, Rocinante, and galloped through the streets of London all the way home to the Crypto-Anthropology Society of the Queen’s Empire, windmills at my back, my gallant friends Messrs. Sprinkle, Winker and Tightman awaiting me to soothe my fevered brow!”

  Edgar walks to Shakespeare and stands over him. “When did you last see him?”

  “Who?”

  “Morley! You told me two days ago that he had been to see you a few days before that. Has he been in your presence since then?”

  “He has been to see me three times this week…the last time was yesterday, and I had a note from him just hours ago, telling me that if I ever revealed his identity he would deliver me to hell. Something good inside me, Edgar, something deep down, made me come to you tonight. I have seen his handwriting. The note was in his hand! I believe he brought it himself! I burned it upon my fire!”

  “Hours ago?” Edgar gulps. “He might be in the streets now? Near us?”

  “The note said he could be found at home.”

  Edgar turns his back on Shakespeare. “Thirteen Thomas Street,” he says quietly. “He’s there.”

  “FLEE, Sir Edgar Broom, there is room on my horse!” Shakespeare struggles to his feet, the blood dripping down his big face.

  “No.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I am going there.”

  “NO! NO, SIR!”

  “And you are going with me.”

  The little man’s big head looks as if it will explode.

  “I would rather descend into hell.”

  “Perhaps you will be accommodated, and shortly. You know the truth, William Shakespeare, and it is that you cannot run from fear. You must face it. Now, come with me!” He grabs him by his collar and escorts him out the door, realizing as he goes that they are unarmed.

  * * *

  —

  Edgar and his tiny companion move at a good pace south and east toward the East End in the now-dry early day through crowded streets. Shakespeare keeps pulling back and even trying to run away, but Edgar maintains a grip on him. The little man mutters at high speed, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief.