The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim Read online

  Hawkins opens the entrance and they all file in. As they do, Stoker whispers something to the young man. He departs.

  Inside, they introduce themselves and then all move along a dark corridor, Stoker in the lead. It is tight and brick walled and clammy. They hear a thumping sound.

  “We have ghosts, you know,” says Stoker over his shoulder, “many of them. The most popular is an elderly lady who is often seen with a severed head in her lap, stroking it.” He laughs.

  The dark corridor twists and turns. The thumps sound ominous, but after a while, Edgar realizes they are simply behind the stage and hearing stagehands moving props.

  They keep walking, descending and then rising up a stone staircase. This would be a perfect place to kill someone, thinks Edgar. But moments later, he is filled with wonder. As they emerge through a door, the stage is right there! He could take a few steps and be upon it, the very boards on which Irving and Ellen Terry have just trod. It is lit softly now. The workers have moved off and there is a strange silence: awaiting the great artist and the world he will conjure.

  Several strides farther, Stoker leads them up a tight staircase to a large, ornately carved wooden door at the top. He opens it and ushers them in. They enter a wood-paneled room with a low ceiling, full of busts of actors, authors and royalty and beautiful paintings. Flames crackle in a fireplace. A long dining table sits in the center, attended by more than a dozen empty chairs that appear as though they were made for King Arthur and his knights.

  “Welcome to the dining room of the Sublime Society,” crows Stoker.

  Edgar has read about this fabled place—the Beefsteak Room. All of London wants to be invited here where Irving holds dinner parties, sometimes after performances, entertaining the greatest stars of the realm. Prime ministers have sat here, Oscar Wilde, the immortal Dickens and the Prince of Wales. Edgar imagines the bright talk that has flowed in this room. He envisions Irving, the most spectacular of them all, making his entrance fresh from the stage and still in makeup, as if from another reality, ferocious past the witching hour. It is said that he seldom sleeps at night: consumed by his performances, he cannot return to earth for hours.

  “Please sit down,” says Stoker, aware of the awe he has aroused.

  Edgar descends gently into his chair, wondering who may have been in it before him. Stoker pours a glass of port for everyone and then pulls back a seat at the head of the table and takes it, his attitude open and inviting, a hand hanging over one of the arms and the other elegantly holding his glass.

  “You know,” he says to Lear, “some silver-tongued talker who was here said that there was no such thing as an immoral work of art. I liked that. It gave me courage. It allowed me to write Dracula.” Stoker stares off for an instant and then comes around. “What would you like to know?”

  “First, let me offer my compliments upon a remarkable achievement. Your novel strikes me as a groundbreaking work.”

  “Why, thank you, sir.”

  “I would not be surprised if the name of Dracula is still discussed decades from now.”

  “You are too kind.”

  “But how did you conceive of such an idea? A monster, yes, I can understand that, Polidori’s work and Varney the Vampire and all that stuff, but this is truly different. It affects one, how should one say—”

  “Viscerally?”

  “Why, yes, an excellent word. There are currents in it, under the text, that give one startling sensations.”

  “It is the truth!” Stoker’s eyes glaze over when he says it. Edgar tries not to sit forward.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Stoker? It is all true? Surely, you can’t mean that—”

  “I didn’t say it was all true, my good man. I said it was the truth. There is a very great difference.”

  “How so?”

  “It is, may I be so bold as to say, art, and of the sort I was not sure I was capable. Some force guided me as I toiled over it for six long years.” He seems entranced again.

  “Why so long to create it?”

  Stoker turns his eyes on Lear, but they gaze right through him. “It was because it took possession of me and I wrote and re-wrote! I knew that in a way, like I said of Mr. Irving this evening, I was selling my soul to the devil. One shouldn’t write such horrible things. But I couldn’t stop. I could see this revenant, this Count Dracula, this undead man! He was old and foreign and he was trapping me in a dark European castle … and I could see him coming through young women’s windows in England, undressing them and …”

  Lucy shifts uncomfortably in her chair.

  Stoker notices and turns to her. “I must apologize, my dear. It is not something fit for a lady to hear. But sometimes, I realize now, artists must tell dark truths. They are deep in that book. I am not sure I was in control as they came from me!” He stares into the fire.

  “Was there a model,” asks Jonathan, “for your villain?”

  “A model?” Stoker comes out of his reverie.

  “Yes,” says Lear, “did you base your Dracula on a living human being?”

  Their host hesitates. “How could I possibly do that? We are speaking of a despicable creature here, a demon who murders and defiles, someone who feeds children to his female undead!” He shouts the last few words.

  “Of course,” says Lear, “a rather silly thought on my part.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But,” says Edgar, “have you never felt that some of the creatures you have read of, like the Frankenstein monster or Mr. Hyde, might in some way be real?”

  “No, I have not. That is madness.”

  There is a knock on the door.

  “Enter!”

  Hawkins comes in bearing a silver plate with something on it.

  “Oh yes, hand them out, my boy.”

  The handsome young attendant, broad shouldered in his snug-fitting suit and sporting an admirable and manly black mustache, walks around the table handing something to each guest. He pauses slightly at both Tiger and Lucy, glancing down over their shoulders at their bare necks. Miss Lear knows he is doing it and blushes; Miss Tilley fixes him with a steely gaze.

  Edgar looks at what he has been given.

  “Stoker, this is too kind of you,” says Lear.

  “They are in the stalls.”

  Edgar can’t believe it. “Tickets in the front row!” he exclaims.

  “Yes, my young friend,” says Stoker, “for tomorrow night. Now, there, on that stage, you shall experience a real demon!”

  Stoker gets to his feet, indicating that the others are to rise. He walks to the door and returns with them along the shadowy corridor to the backstage exit on Burleigh Street. They bid farewell and are about to make their way toward Wellington Street when they hear his voice in the mist behind them.

  “Come early, about four, and I shall give you a private tour of the Lyceum.”

  30

  The Night Before

  They make their way back to the Langham Hotel. They have two rooms, one for the females and another for the males. The professor feels it is best that no one is alone.

  They have a late supper in the restaurant, a circular room with big windows that face the street. It should be a special occasion for Edgar (and Tiger) but his mind isn’t on the lovely cream-colored room, the finely dressed waiters who tend to their every need or even the roast duck with pigeon pie and potatoes—and stewed fruit for afters.

  “Stay in your rooms,” says the professor, “with the doors locked and bolted. Girls, I want your beds covered with garlic strings, placed on either side of you, above your heads and below your feet, and keep a crucifix in hand under your pillows. It may be nonsense, but if he should come, hold it toward him. Latch all your windows and pull the curtains. Leave your lights on through the night. You will have the rifle, Tilley.”

  “Cry out and I’ll be there in a second!” says Jonathan. Tiger rolls her eyes.

  “I want you three to take every precaution too,” Lucy says, looking at
Edgar.

  “We shall, my dear,” says Lear, “but I am not sure anymore if it is Brim and I who are in most danger, not initially. Remember that in Dracula, the creature wants females.”

  “When you fight a man,” says Tiger to Lucy, “hit him where it matters and hit him hard.”

  “This isn’t a man, Tilley,” says Lear.

  They say their farewells in the hallway, trying not to linger. Edgar feels for Lucy, who seems terribly frightened. Their rooms are beside each other and high on the sixth floor at the top of the building; Lear insisted on that.

  Tiger and Lucy undress one at a time, each taking a turn on watch, holding a crucifix. They’ve placed a string of garlic along the door frame so it hangs down over the entrance. Then they get into bed and lie still, lights blazing, Tiger with the rifle at her side, her hand near the trigger, ready to blast anything that appears in their room, no questions asked. They have agreed to keep talk to a minimum. They need to hear any suspicious sound, and they need to hear each other, even through the walls.

  Edgar, Jonathan and Lear don’t bother to undress separately. Their manliness doesn’t allow them. The professor shows his concerns, but Jonathan pretends it is all good fun. Edgar puts on a tough front, but he is churning inside. When they go to bed, they turn off the lights.

  “Best to draw it to us first, anyway,” says Lear.

  If it wants us, thinks Edgar lying awake in the dark, it will come no matter what.

  The others seem to go off to sleep, but Edgar can’t. He gets up and puts on a hotel dressing gown, goes to a wooden desk near the window and lights a small candle. He wants to find out how Dracula ends. The instant he opens the novel, he is back in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania, this time with a gang of men equipped with Winchester rifles, knives and a sword, racing up a winding road through the forests in pursuit of Count Dracula. The monster is in his coffin on a wagon driven by menacing men, fleeing toward his castle. The sun is setting in the wintry day, and when it is fully down, the creature will arise from that coffin up ahead. Edgar and his friends are urging their horses forward, his wife with the professor near the castle, converging on the beast from there. She is infected, fighting her desire for the demon, hoping they can destroy him. Edgar races his horse around a bend. The wagon comes into view!

  Edgar rises to his feet.

  He thinks he should go back to bed, get his sleep, but he knows he won’t be able to. How can old Lear snore like that? He begins to pace in the darkness. As he walks, he hears sounds from the streets, perhaps as far away as Oxford Street and Regent—drunks crying out, the chime of women’s voices, men calling for hansom cabs, the odd neigh of a horse, a train whistle and a crash or two of unknown origin. It sounds like a regular London night. He returns to the little desk and the yellow book with the red title. He has just a few pages left. He takes a deep breath.

  He opens it and returns to the winding road leading up to Castle Dracula. Snow is falling. They are closing in on the wagon racing ahead of them. But the sun is setting! They reach the vehicle and attack, but the armed men transporting the coffin fight back. One of Edgar’s allies is wounded, sliced open with a knife. Edgar forces his way forward and manages to get onto the wagon and knock the coffin to the ground. They leap upon it and force the lid off. The demon is awakening! It lies there waxen and pale but its eyes are opening.

  Edgar hears the door to the hotel room open and when he turns the hag is there. He bangs the book shut and she vanishes.

  “What? What?” Jonathan mumbles from his bed, then settles.

  Edgar opens the book again. He is armed with a big kukri, a sword-like Nepalese knife as deadly as a machete. Though Dracula is stirring, Edgar doesn’t crumble. He slashes at the monster’s face with the sword and opens a gaping wound across the throat! The blood oozes out, but the villain doesn’t die. It is about to kill Edgar Brim! But his friend leaps forward with a bowie knife and plunges it hard and deep into the demon’s chest, right into its heart. It falls back in the coffin and disintegrates into dust before their eyes. The castle looms above them against the red sky amidst the falling snow. Wolves howl.

  Edgar closes the book. There is still a page or two left. But he knows what it will be like. It won’t be the truth. It will be a happy ending, and the hero will embark upon an idyllic married life, the monster far behind them. Life isn’t like that.

  But why, thinks Edgar, did Stoker not have his characters put a real stake through the beast’s heart? And why did it vanish? Does that mean something? Is Stoker saying the demon is still alive?

  He spends a sleepless night, but nothing comes for them. As soon as the sun rises, he and Jonathan make their way to the girls’ room and are relieved to find them well. They breakfast in the Palm Court room in the hotel, famous for its afternoon teas. There are scones, kippers, sausages and lots of coffee and fruit juice. They are so relieved that the talk is light and there is even laughter. Tiger begins mimicking Numb and Lovecraft, though her imitation of Griswold falls flat, the image of his corpse still in their minds. But they eat well and laugh more as the meal goes on, perhaps because they are tired. Then Lear, who has been somber throughout, steers them to more pressing matters.

  “We shall spend the day out in the crowds. I believe there will be safety there. We will visit the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square, perhaps the South Kensington Museum in Knightsbridge; we don’t have time for the Crystal Palace. It is best to stay in the city anyway, among greater numbers.”

  “I agree,” says Edgar. “It’s unlikely to appear in the streets or among the tourists. It’s the Lyceum—that’s where it wants us.”

  “But why?” ask Lucy. “And how? That’s a public place too, very public: there are nearly two thousand people there every night.”

  “Perhaps it wants to draw us to some particular place within the building?” says Tiger. “Maybe down that dark hallway Stoker lead us through?” Her voice grows softer. “Take us one at a time.”

  “During a private tour?” Lear lets that thought linger over the table.

  “Just say it,” says Jonathan. “Do you think Stoker is drawing us into a trap?”

  “I don’t know. But we will be alone with him and perhaps with someone else.”

  “We just have to be vigilant,” says Edgar. “We must be available to whatever is after us, so we can attack it, but not vulnerable. We need to bring whatever weapons we can conceal—the pistol, the big knife and our crucifixes.”

  “And we must never let Lucy and Tiger from our sight,” says Jonathan.

  Tiger looks like she wants to protest, but says nothing. They hear the tinkling of utensils on plates, of teaspoons stirred in cups and gentle talk.

  “Thank you for adding to our terror, dear brother.”

  “Not at all, Lu.”

  “He is just stating the obvious,” says Tiger. “If it wants young women, like Dracula, then we must face that. I see it as an opportunity. Perhaps the creature will be drawn to one of us and we can use its weakness for our blood to make it somehow vulnerable. Women must use all the power at their hands. It is a power the rest of you do not have.”

  Edgar realizes at that moment how deeply he admires his old friend. He looks at her and smiles. She catches his expression and actually colors a little as she turns away.

  “Well,” says Jonathan, getting to his feet and seizing Tiger by the arm and steering her away from the table and Edgar, “it is time to go out on the town. Museums and art galleries and all of London await us!” She pulls away from him but they head toward the lobby together, Jon, big and bold, actually making her laugh.

  The other three sit silently at the table, Lucy watching Edgar staring at her brother and Tiger Tilley.

  “Just to change the subject,” she says and waits until Edgar turns back to them. “Grandfather, why do you think little Shakespeare is so certain that there are more aberrations about than just this one?”

  “It is something he has gotten into his head. He
believes it fervently.”

  “Well, then it is likely nonsense. There’s no proof of any others, is there?”

  “I have no idea. Sometimes I think he is mad like a fox. But mostly, I just think he is mad.”

  “And yet,” says Edgar, “it seems this thing we are pursuing now is real, which means he was right that something would come after you if you killed the Grendel creature. If we kill this one, then why couldn’t another come too?”

  “I think we should be on our way,” says Lear, getting to his feet. “We can’t let those two have all the fun.”

  They spend a glorious day in London at the museum and the National Gallery, slipping back for a while on an omnibus to the Langham to eat at the Palm Court. They forget their troubles for stretches and couple into different combinations, each pair on their own at times—Edgar with Lucy on his arm, Edgar with Tiger, and Jonathan with the combative Miss Tilley.

  But one moment thrills them more than any other, and it isn’t necessarily because they enjoy it. It happens at the gallery. At the top of the marble stairs leading into the first viewing room, the sun shining in from glorious Trafalgar Square through the windows, a painting sits on an easel for the public to examine. It is new and arousing a good deal of controversy. It is by an artist named Philip Burne-Jones and called The Vampire. It depicts a full-figured woman clad in loosened undergarments, her beautiful dark hair unleashed and cascading down her back and naked arms, black eyes shining, lips blood red, her teeth showing, leaning over a man in bed, smiling while he lies sleeping or unconscious under her, his shirt ripped open, his chest bared, prey for his gorgeous conqueror.

  “It should be removed!” shouts an old woman as they come up the stairs.

  “It is said,” snarls another, “that the artist adores an actress, and it is her, his fantasy come to life, who is upon this poor man in this bed. He should be arrested!”

  “It is influenced by that novel, I’ve heard,” says a stern man. “That hideous sensation trash by Henry Irving’s manager, Stooker or some such name. Sir Henry should dismiss him and all copies should be burned!”