Demon Read online

  “Morley is dead,” says Edgar.

  “No!” cries Berenice and she rushes toward the coffin and reaches in, weeping as she touches the corpse. Edgar smells that perfume again.

  “He cannot be!” shouts Shakespeare, rushing up to see him too. “He visited me, wearing these very clothes! He conjured up snakes in your beds! He transported Dr. Berenice here through an act of black magic! HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT HE IS DEAD! This is simply his body! He is inside us! He is the greatest monster ever!”

  “Then we must resist him!” cries Lawrence.

  “If he is alive in here,” says Lucy, pointing a shaking finger to her head, “then…we should kill ourselves.”

  It is quiet for almost a minute. There is only the sound of the alienist’s gentle crying.

  “Get that woman out of the way, Edgar,” says Tiger, “and prop him up! I will put a cannonball through him. Let us see what powers he has when there is not a single piece of him left!”

  “NO!” cries Berenice. She glares at Tiger, as if she wants to eat her.

  As the sound of her shriek fades, there is a pounding on the stairs, like something galloping upward, and this time it is evident that everyone hears it.

  Edgar and Tiger stare at each other. Neither says what they are thinking.

  Hooves!

  There is a rustling too, like the beat of gigantic wings. The sounds are multiplying.

  “He has summoned his army!” shouts Shakespeare.

  “Or it is simply him, freed from his body!” cries Berenice, and there is another smile on her lips. “I am here, Alex,” she whispers, but loud enough so everyone can hear. “I am here, Satan.” She drops to her knees and turns her young body and old face to the ceiling.

  “PROP HIM UP!” shouts Tiger. “We must disintegrate him!” She seizes the cannon and points it at the covenant box. Her face is devil red. “This will explode his very soul!”

  Edgar, however, does not make a move to lift the corpse into position or push the mind doctor aside. A realization has come over him. He looks at Berenice acting like a schoolgirl waiting for her dangerous lover.

  “You!” he says to her.

  Lucy stares at him in disbelief. “Edgar! Do as Tiger says and get out of the way! We must wipe him from the face of the earth! His spirit may live in his corpse! He may gain his powers from it!” She rushes toward the coffin.

  The door opens with a crash behind them and they all turn to it.

  The man who calls himself Mephistopheles is standing there. Slowly Morley’s other followers materialize behind him, flowing into the room in robes and long dresses, staring at the covenant box on the floor, Lucy reaching out for the putrefied corpse as Edgar holds her back, and Tiger at the cannon no more than ten feet away, her weapon trained directly at the coffin.

  “What are you doing?” shouts Mephistopheles.

  “We are about to destroy your devil forever,” snaps Tiger. “You can watch!”

  Mephistopheles smiles. “Go ahead, attempt it.”

  “Attempt it,” say Morley’s followers in unison.

  Tiger turns back to Edgar. “Lift him up and get yourself and them out of the way or I will blow you all to hell with him!” She reaches for the cannon’s cord.

  “Move,” says Annabel quietly.

  “No, Tiger,” says Edgar, “there is no need for that.”

  Berenice rises up from beside the coffin, towering over Lucy and looking straight into Edgar’s eyes. She places her left hand on the side of his head at his temple, its soft, warm surface feeling as though it is touching his brain inside his skull again. She runs it down his cheek to his chin and smiles, then turns and regards the others in the room, without releasing Edgar.

  There is the sound of something moving on the other side of the wall. It is like a two-footed creature walking on hooves. There is no doubt. Morley’s followers drop to their knees. Standing in front of them, Mephistopheles stares at the wall, transfixed.

  “Come, oh holy beast…come Lord!”

  “Get out of the way!” screams Tiger again. “I will blast him to the underworld and then I will turn this weapon on the wall if that doesn’t end things. This is for Jonathan!”

  “ATTEMPT!” shout the followers.

  The footsteps grow louder and move closer.

  “COME SATAN!” shrieks the crowd.

  Edgar reaches a shaking hand up to Berenice’s. Her hot flesh feels as if it will burn him. He pulls the hand off his face and steps back from her.

  The footsteps stop.

  “I…” says Edgar, his voice shaking, trying not to look into Berenice’s eyes, “I know who you are.”

  “Of course,” says Tiger, “she’s—”

  “And I know what that is,” he adds, pointing at the coffin. “It is merely the rotting corpse of a man named Alexander Morley, a misguided human being with an ego the size of this room, who actually believed that he was Satan in the flesh.” He points at Berenice. “There is your devil!”

  “Nonsense,” she says, but not with much feeling.

  “You want me to believe that Morley is the devil, don’t you, Dr. Berenice? You want all of us, even these pitiful people at the door, to believe it. You want us to blow him sky-high and believe we are done with him. That way, we will not know that it is you. You have been behind all of this. If we believe that this man is the culprit then you can go on doing what you do, in anonymity, like the monster you are.”

  “You are not a fool, Edgar Brim,” says Berenice with a smile. She reaches a hand out for him but he slaps it away.

  “You learned about William Shakespeare and his hag phenomenon pamphlets through Alex Morley. You learned about us. It was you who began to believe that you were like the creatures we hunted, more than human. Morley’s claims were always nonsense to you.”

  “Not necessarily. He may indeed be what he thinks he is…but I am more.”

  There is a gasp from the crowd behind Mephistopheles, who stares at Berenice, his mouth wide open.

  “You were in Scotland,” says Edgar to the alienist.

  “At your door, whispering that the hag on your chest was the devil,” she says quietly.

  “It was a woman’s voice. You may even have been in Spitsbergen, howling in the arctic air.” Berenice merely smiles. “You got yourself into the London Hospital, into Andrew Lawrence’s life and heart, and into mine, and my friends’. You entered our unconscious. It is you who really understands the power of the human mind.”

  “And the gateway to its control…fear. The electricity of fear!”

  “It was you, really you, on my chest in my bedroom at Thorne House, with your long dark hair flowing down, your breath like strange perfume. Beasley saw you. You brought the snakes too.”

  Edgar can see and hear it now as if it were happening at this instant. He hears someone gently waking him, his door open and close, her distinctive floating footsteps descending the stairs, and he sees the lurid green skin of the snake writhing in his bed.

  “AH!” he cries out.

  “I am inside you,” says Berenice.

  Edgar shakes his head. “Not if I know about it, about you. That is how I will defeat you.”

  “We shall see.”

  “It was you who wrote the note to William Shakespeare in Morley’s hand after he died…and it was you who appeared in Drury Lane the next day.”

  “No!” cries Shakespeare, “I saw him.”

  “I made you see him,” says Berenice, glaring at him. “I was him right before your eyes.” The little man shrinks back. “I can do it again!”

  “You did not pray to Alex Morley to come here from Hindhead in an instant, you did it yourself!”

  “Or perhaps I was never there…in Lawrence Lodge.”

  Mephistopheles takes in his breath.

  “And it was you
who murdered my friend,” says Edgar.

  Tiger begins to turn the cannon toward Berenice. Lucy pulls out the kukri blade.

  “It was a WOMAN!” cries Shakespeare. “I remember now! I heard a voice in the night in my bed! It told me to get up, put on the Zouave clothing and meet her in Kentish Town! It was a woman’s voice! But I have no memory of her being with me!”

  Berenice smiles again.

  Now Edgar can see it. William Shakespeare knocking on the door like a zombie. Jonathan, bursting with fear and anxiety but hiding it, coming to the door and opening it to his strange little friend in relief. Then Berenice stepping in front of him…doing…what?

  “There are many ways for me to kill,” she says, “if I have my victim primed correctly. I saw the beautiful Jonathan Lear in the hospital searching for you the day before. I knew what I could exploit. I do not need physical strength! I have greater power. Men are such fools.”

  Shaking with anger, Tiger points the cannon’s barrel directly at Berenice’s head, but Edgar steps between it and her intended victim.

  “No, Tiger,” he says, “that is not the way.”

  “No,” says Lucy, stepping forward with the big blade out, “this is!” She rushes forward and swings at Berenice, who deftly dodges her, missing her swipe. Edgar seizes Lucy by the hand.

  “That is not the way either,” says Edgar. “Let me finish with her first.”

  Lucy steps back.

  “If we kill her, then that means we are afraid of her,” says Edgar. “We are afraid of the power that resides within her. It will live on then, inside us.”

  “It is inside all of you anyway,” says Berenice. “I made you hate each other, want to kill each other. It was easy. I have my finger on your fears!”

  “Why?” asks Annabel. “Why?”

  “I am Lamia, I am Lilith and I am Hecate. I am in other stories not so easily found, not so popular, the ones you do not know. I am Adam’s wife, who showed him what life really was since God would not; I am the spirit in the woman who seduced Zeus and had my children killed by his jealous wife; I am the goddess of the underworld and witchcraft. I am the child eater. I am the witch beyond all witches. I have the power of evil inside me. I understand the human mind, how to control it. I can navigate inside your unconscious. I can enter it on the pathway of fear. Edgar Brim was perfect for my experiments. I set out to control him, to control his very reality, to control those around him.” She looks at Edgar. “Would you like to see your father?”

  “Hello,” says Allen Brim, pushing his way through the crowd at the door and emerging into the room. “Edgar!”

  “LEAVE ME!” shouts Edgar at him, and Allen Brim disappears.

  “Ah,” says Berenice, “but he will return. He is your fears, your conscience. He told you to suspect your friends.”

  “What about Morley?” Edgar is anxious to change the subject.

  “He is my inferior. I knew that when he betrayed me! I had no idea of my powers when I met him. I did not know who I was. He was my teacher. He taught me so much. We were lovers. Then he began to take others for his pleasure.” She glares over at the women at the door. “That told me that he was mostly just a man. They are weak: guided and controlled by their maleness.”

  “That isn’t true,” says Lucy. “You are weak!”

  Tiger stares at Berenice in fascination.

  The mind doctor ignores them. “We had a child.”

  “A child?” asks Annabel.

  “A boy. It is gone now, was not needed.”

  “By what means is it…gone?” asks Lucy.

  “Never mind,” says Berenice. “I took my place as just one of Morley’s women, but I began to control him, help him believe that he was Satan, whether he was or not. I took the position at the hospital and told him I would use his techniques to control the minds of Lawrence and all of you, but I did more than that. I learned of Lawrence’s childhood errors, of the crimes, the murder he committed.” Lawrence drops his head. “One day, I will have more than his body, I will have his fortune. I will blackmail him and he cannot stop me. I will use my body, my young body that I nourish, to enjoy myself, and have his fortune too. Then I will move on to others. This world is a fearful place.”

  “No, you will not have my—” begins Lawrence.

  “Yes,” replies Berenice. “You cannot resist me. You will not.”

  “How did Morley die?” asks Edgar, shaking.

  “Ah!” cries Berenice. She looks toward the people at the door. “I convinced him to kill himself. It was easy to do. I entered him and made him try the experiment of living on after life to prove he was Satan or had similar powers, controlling others from beyond the grave…instead of becoming the rotting corpse I knew he would be, and that you all see now.”

  “How did he die?” repeats Edgar.

  “He and I went to his rooms. We had an intimate moment. Then I took out his big kitchen blade and put it into his hand. He grew frightened. He would not do it. Weakling. So…”

  “You need not go on,” says Annabel.

  “There was a great deal of blood,” says Berenice with a smile.

  “Be quiet,” says Tiger.

  “Satan was an angel,” proclaims Berenice, ignoring her. “He revolted against God. I revolted against Alex Morley. I butchered him. I was more powerful.” She smiles. “The secret to it all is fear. It is God’s little secret. Without fear, He rules the world. With it…my spirit rules.”

  “I do not know exactly how you have done all of this,” says Edgar, “how you flew from Lawrence Lodge to here, how you made all the servants disappear, exactly how you caused life to slip from the soul of my friend, but I do know that you cannot do it unless we let you. We are giving you your power, and you will count on others to do the same.”

  Berenice turns around. She unbuttons her dress, her back to them. She lets it fall to her waist. From behind, she looks to be in her twenties, those many taut muscles in her back like a beautiful road map. She raises her powerful arms to her sides.

  “Butcher ME,” she says. “We will see what happens.”

  Lucy steps forward. Edgar has never seen such an expression on her face: potent and resolute. Her eyes focus on her foe, on her neck. She raises the blade.

  “Do not be tempted,” says Edgar. “She will elude you, somehow, even if her head falls from her shoulders…and leave you fearful.”

  Lucy swings the blade down hard at Berenice’s neck. It cuts through the air like a bow whip. Somehow, however, in a feat of strength well beyond her size and muscle, she arrests it inches from Berenice’s thick jugular vein, standing out like a river on her neck. “You are right,” Lucy says and drops the sword with a rattle to the floor. She smiles at Edgar.

  “We are not afraid of you,” says Edgar to the back of Berenice’s head. “We want you to live as you are, for the years or few decades you have left on earth, no matter how much you care for your body, and then you will die a natural death. For our part, we will not be suspicious of each other, hear hooved devils in walls, see our dead father or give all our wealth to you. We will take away your electricity, your power. We will contain your spirit, at least inside this body you now inhabit. We will do it by leaving you alone.” He turns to Lawrence. “Where can we put her? Alive and impotent?”

  “I have enough friends on the police force,” replies the chairman, “and we have enough witnesses here to her tale of at least the assistance in the murder of Alex Morley, to quietly put her away, alone, in a cell.” They all look toward the people at the door. Mephistopheles is trying to appear brave but several others are weeping. “I can arrange to have her held in solitary confinement in Bedlam, in the section of the Bethlem Royal Hospital for the criminally insane. There, she will wither and then expire, no one near her, to ever look at her or receive as much as a glance, no one to speak to her or hear her, no one on whom s
he can practice her deadly arts. No one to fear her.”

  Berenice keeps her back to them and covers herself up. She seems smaller and older.

  They take Berenice down Thomas Street and across Whitechapel Road to the hospital, where they summon the police. An hour later, Edgar Brim walks along the streets of the East End, arms around his friends but with a pounding heart. He did not think this was possible. He has banished evil and yet he is still afraid.

  There is one last thing he must do. If he fails, all will be lost.

  Annabel invites everyone to Thorne House the next day, even Andrew Lawrence. In fact, she spends a good deal of time with him. Beasley and the other servants have returned after the two-day holiday Annabel secretly gave them while she explored her adopted son’s situation at Lawrence Lodge. Everything in Thorne House shines: the chandeliers, the cutlery, the plates and even the people. Their meal is sumptuous—pork and beef and lamb, blood pudding and wine. There is a good deal of laughter.

  Annabel leads it all, her laugh ringing off the ceiling as she throws her head back, her smile nearly splitting her face as she glows at the wealthy and handsome Andrew Lawrence, finally getting her wish that everyone around her stop thinking and worrying and being sad.

  Even little William Shakespeare is happy. He sounds more lucid than he has in years.

  “I had no real fear of the devil,” he cries, “that was merely a pose, I tell you. Had he actually risen up from his sarcophagus, I would have seized that blade from you, dear Miss Lear, and smote him through the chest and head like a knight of old! But I knew it was the mind doctor all along!”

  The laughter, at this, is nearly as loud as the cannon’s blast.

  “What?” the little man cries. “You doubt me? You infections that the sun sucks up! O gulls, o dolts, as ignorant as dirt!”

  Edgar Brim’s joy is forced. He sits between Tiger and Lucy wearing a new suit Annabel has purchased for him, his wild red hair somewhat tamed, pretending to be happy, but his greatest fear still inside him. It is not Alexander Morley or Hilda Berenice. The devil remains banished from his mind and he refuses to allow her or him back. It is something else. Someone else. Nighttime is approaching. Bedtime.