The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim Read online

  Jonathan leaps to his feet, pulling his pistol out. Tiger grabs her knife in one hand, holding out her cross in the other, and Edgar is instantly on his feet too, standing directly in front of Lucy, with his own knife out in a flash.

  Henry Irving stalks toward them.

  “I can do as I please!” he intones in the voice of the monster. His eyes are on fire, red in the dim electric light. His long face seems lit from within and very white.

  Jonathan raises the pistol and trains it at his head. Six shots. They must all hit the mark and then the five of them must fall on the demon together. Lear must drive the knife-sword deep into his heart.

  But then Irving turns away. He had almost reached one end of the room as he neared them but then pivoted and is pacing toward the other, still speaking.

  “Better and better every night. Tell the truth! Be the devil!”

  “He didn’t see us?” whispers Jonathan.

  Irving turns at the far end of the room and comes at them again. They raise their weapons again. But before he reaches them, he pivots once more and turns around!

  “He’s in some sort of trance,” says Lear, lowering his sword. “He can’t see us.”

  “No fantasy,” says the great actor, “just me.”

  “But that voice,” says Edgar. “I am certain it’s the one the creature used on stage! He is speaking in his voice.”

  “He speaks in many voices,” says Lear. “He has for years.”

  They hear the creak of a door. Someone, something, that has remained absolutely silent until now, is entering from another room! All five of them dart behind the big sofa again. They barely fit but are out of the way just as the intruder nears.

  “To bed, mon cher!” says a deep, foreign voice, even more resonant than the one Irving had employed.

  The demon—in the flesh!

  “Heed me once more,” he says to Henry Irving. “You are my vessel. You must sleep.” He sounds upset, thinks Edgar. “There is much to do tonight!”

  The creature swoops across the floor and picks up the gaunt, aging artist in his arms and carries him, not through one of the doors to the bedroom, but to a sofa that sits directly across the room from the other one, no more than ten strides away. There, he sets him down, sweeps a blanket from a nearby love seat with a flourish, puffs up a few pillows, sets Irving’s head on them and covers him up. “Sleep well, my comrade. I may have need of you soon.”

  Between the spaces in the curling designs on the furniture’s wood frame, Edgar can see the revenant’s mouth in profile. It curls into a cruel smile. The lips are scarlet. Then the villain turns and bends down toward Irving and lingers there, the great man helpless beneath him. They hear the creature removing Sir Henry’s clothes, then some sort of sound, perhaps a long kiss, perhaps a slight sucking. The villain’s head is below the actor’s, on his lips or his neck or his chest. Then he rises and sighs, and pauses before turning toward the room he had come from, loosening his cravat as he goes, closing the door behind him.

  The five hunters don’t move for the longest time. No sounds come from the bedroom.

  “We cannot leave,” whispers Edgar finally. “It might hear us. We must use what we have with us now to kill it.” The others nod.

  “It is still dark out,” says Lear. “I do not know if the vampire myths are correct, but I will not take any chances—we will wait until the sun rises and assume that is the best time to act. We will try the crosses again too—we won’t be entranced this time. At the first crack of dawn, we enter that bedroom. We should be able to take him by surprise. Lucy and Jonathan go first, Lucy with both crucifixes held out and Jon shooting at point-blank range at the head, all the bullets. The rest of us will fall upon him: Brim’s knife to the neck, Tilley’s to the abdomen and mine will go into the heart. If I cannot penetrate deeply enough, someone may have to help me, putting more weight down upon the big blade. If we are successful, we instantly sever the head. You all must have a string of garlic around your neck.”

  They nod again, looking grim. “We have just a few hours. At least one of us must remain awake at all times.”

  But none of them really sleep. They stay behind the sofa leaning against each other, coats wrapped around them, trying. The bedroom remains quiet. Jonathan pretends that he has drifted peacefully away, but his eyes keep opening.

  “Now,” says Lucy, as the first rays of light come through the drawing room windows.

  They get to their feet and walk silently toward the bedroom door, exchanging anxious glances. They line up in the right order, Lear’s hand gently on the knob. Lucy holds the two crosses, arms straight out and trembling, and Jonathan cocks his pistol. Tiger is in her bare feet, her heeled boots left by the sofa, her eyes lit up. By her side, Edgar is determined, his mouth set tightly.

  “Ready?” asks Lear.

  They all nod.

  He opens the door.

  35

  The Real One

  The creature isn’t lying down with his head on the pillow in a darkened room, as they hoped. The curtains are open and he is sitting up on the bed, fully clothed in the growing sunlight, unaffected by it, awaiting them. He has a vase in his hand, which he hurls at Jonathan just as he is about to pull the trigger, sending the gun flying. It hits the floor with a crash.

  We needed the cannon, thinks Edgar, as guilt mixes with the fear that invades him. It should have been ready in the other room, waiting to unload an expanding steel ball that would take off this thing’s head.

  But that isn’t possible now.

  The creature leaps to his feet and comes at them. Edgar, Tiger and Jonathan all reach for Lucy and pull her to them. But the revenant doesn’t touch them. Instead, he picks up the pistol and throws it through an open window into the backyard. Then he steps back and lies down on the bed.

  “Do what you will,” he says. “My time has come.” He unbuttons his shirt and reveals his chest, a white breastbone over the heart. They stand together near the door, unsure what to do. Then Edgar thinks of his father. He turns and takes the big blade from Lear’s hand and advances to the bed.

  “You murdered my father,” says Edgar Brim.

  “And mine,” says Lucy, advancing too.

  “Scrivener,” says Lear quietly.

  “But this,” cries Edgar with fire in his eyes, “is for the little boy!”

  He drives the big knife down into the demon’s chest. It enters the breastbone with a scraping thud and goes deep into his vital organ. Jonathan stands helpless without a weapon, but Tiger flies onto the bed, both her hands around the sword, putting her full weight onto it, penetrating him up to the hilt. The demon gasps and quivers.

  And then he smiles.

  With one long spidery arm, almost as long as Tiger, he grips Edgar by the scruff of his neck and sends him sailing across the room. The boy smacks against a bureau and his back smashes the mirror, which shatters into a thousand pieces. He slides down to the floor, his smaller knife still in hand.

  With the big blade sticking from his chest, blood oozing from it, the demon rolls Tiger off and pins her with an arm. When she kicks, he grinds his forearm into her neck. He looks at her and licks his lips. “Ah, this one!” He regards the others. “You can watch. Remember, Brim? This is better, since she is awake!” Edgar gazes at his dear friend, her black hair disheveled around her angry face, her twice-broken nose the emblem of her bravery, still kicking beneath the creature. “Afterward, I shall choose which one of you will be next.” Tiger’s kicking fades as the revenant’s big arm drives into her windpipe.

  “B-but the knife,” stammers Lear, “in your heart!”

  “Oh this?” asks the demon and pulls it from his body, slicked red with dark blood, and licks it clean with a long tongue. He tosses it at the old man’s feet. “Surely you don’t believe in fairy tales. Been reading Stoker’s novel? Polidori’s? The penny dreadfuls? A vampire, that’s the word, isn’t it? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be?” He sees the cross Tiger dropped o
n the bed and picks it up. “Oh, so terrifying!” he says in an effeminate voice. He tosses it across the room at Edgar, where it lands on his lap. “I am undead!” he declares. “That is all. I do not know why I live on, but I do. I cannot be killed. And you cannot know about me!”

  “Where did you come from?” asks Lear.

  The creature glares at him. “You erred when you killed the beast on the moors. You erred! You were going down a path I could not let you remain upon. Had you let it be, I might have let you be.” He directs his hand to the gaping red wound on his chest. “Do you think you should interfere with ME?” Edgar tries to rise to face him, but the demon turns his gaze on him. The boy stays on his knees. “I learned terror from the best. Perhaps I’ll put the lot of you on stakes when I am finished and then throw you into the Thames. It will be a good lesson to others who might find my trail.”

  “You beast,” says Lear.

  “You all smell! Garlic?” he sneers. “Human beings make up such nonsense!” He meets Edgar’s stare again. “Yes, I am real. People want to think the likes of me only exist in stories or paintings or upon a stage. I love that. It keeps them afraid. They don’t know the truth is in their art. Henry knows!”

  He knocks a limp Tiger to the floor, rises and advances on them all. She staggers to her feet behind him, refusing to stay down.

  “Take me first!” shouts Edgar. Perhaps the others can escape.

  There is a sound from the next room.

  “Count?” says a groggy voice. Irving is waking up. “Are you there?”

  “Henry? Go back to sleep.”

  “Count? What are you doing?”

  It strides past them into the other room and speaks to Irving in a soothing voice. “You are going to sleep,” it says. “Listen to the sound of my voice. We are related, you and I. We have powers together. You are going to sleep.”

  “Come!” cries Lear. He reaches down and picks up his big blade and rushes into the drawing room. Irving is on the sofa with the creature, staring at him, and begins to turn his head toward the other five but the demon shouts at him.

  “Look at me!”

  Irving’s face goes back to him. The group races to the door, into the hall and toward the stairs.

  “He needs Irving!” cries Lear. “He provides him with a sea of blood every night. If he has to choose between him and us, he’ll choose him.”

  “For now!” says Edgar.

  They are in the street in a minute. It is a crisp summer morning. Out on Piccadilly, a few hundred yards away, they see pedestrians passing, and carriages beyond them. They run.

  When they reach the thoroughfare, they turn back and see the revenant coming out of Irving’s building. He eyes them. But he doesn’t run. He cannot betray his presence in public. He has put Irving down and put on a clean shirt, all in a flash. He wants them. They have his secret.

  “Oh God!” cries Lucy. “We need help!”

  “From whom?” asks Jonathan. “Shall I stroll up to a bobbie and tell him a vampire is after us?”

  “We could do that,” says Lear, struggling forward, searching up and down the street for a carriage heading east. “And they might put us in a cell where this thing can’t get at us. But it would only be temporary. It will come for us until it destroys us.”

  “We must confront it!” says Edgar. Do not be afraid, he tells himself, but it seems unkillable.

  Lear flags down a cab.

  “I will take Lucy with me to the theater. Lead it there, I hope, where we can corner it. You three return to the hotel and get the weapons. Both Thorne’s rifle and cannon! Meet us. RUN!”

  Lear and Lucy get into the cab. “Lyceum Theatre, fast!” he cries. The driver snaps his whip and they are off. Jonathan, Edgar and Tiger run with all they have along Piccadilly. She is still in bare feet, a strange sight on the street: a woman in an evening dress, holding it around her knees, running full out and keeping pace with two sprinting young men. It won’t take them long. They will turn north at Regent Street and make good time in the early morning on its wide foot pavements. It should be less than five minutes from there up to Oxford Street, and less than that to reach the hotel.

  The creature is coming east along Piccadilly now, toward them in the bright early sun, looking calm, his head nearly a foot above the rest of the crowd, that bowler hat pulled down, his aquiline nose, so like Driver’s and Irving’s, peeking out. They keep glancing back as they run up Regent Street. He doesn’t follow. Instead, he turns in the direction the hansom cab went.

  While Tiger changes her dress, Jonathan and Edgar get the rifle and cannon in hand quickly. They also wipe off the knives. They will not be able to entirely disguise what they have. Edgar brings the rifle, holding it down almost like a walking stick and Jon rolls the cannon, folded up into Thorne’s ingenious box on wheels. Once they are out onto Portland Street, they rush down Regent, and then back toward the West End and the theater.

  When they reach it, Lear and Lucy are nowhere in sight. But they see someone strolling along Wellington Street toward them.

  It’s Bram Stoker.

  36

  Confrontation

  Stoker stops at the sight of them. As he does, Lear and Lucy emerge from hiding in a recessed doorway and the two parties stand some ten feet from each other. Jonathan is in front of the box he has been rolling along and Edgar turns slightly sideways, hiding the rifle as much as possible.

  “We must apologize for our recent conduct, sir,” says Lear finally. “We did not repay your kindness as we should have.”

  Stoker doesn’t respond at first. Then he smiles. “Not at all. You have been in the grip of the master’s spell. I remember the first time I saw Mr. Irving, upon a stage in Dublin when I was a young man. He was mesmerizing. It made me think all sorts of things. I saw the possibilities of art before me. I have gone on quite a journey with him since. I could not have written Dracula without him.”

  “Oh?”

  “But enough of that; I understand your excitement.”

  “I wonder,” asks Lear, surveying the street, “if we might view the auditorium once more. It was marvelous.”

  “I am sorry, but I am not at liberty to allow that, especially on your own. I was not entering the theater myself just now. I am on my way for breakfast nearby.”

  “A pity. I had more thoughts about your wonderful novel. I was thinking of how it is theatrical in a way, a deep way, and it filled me with ideas. The subtext in your work is remarkable. Surely this majestic place here influenced you. I wanted to see the stage again. And I wanted to speak with you in more depth. I am considering teaching Dracula next year, though I know that will be daring.”

  “You are?”

  “Why, yes, of course. It deserves attention. There is more than one great artist at the Lyceum now, more than two including Miss Terry.”

  Stoker’s eyes glint. “He never appreciates me, you know.” He reaches into his pocket for his keys. “I suppose there is no harm in allowing you in for a while. I shall be round in about an hour or so. We can chat then.”

  He walks toward the doors and opens one. They step through, thanking him. He starts to close it and then opens it again.

  “You know, I suppose I did see Dracula in real life.”

  “You did?” asks Edgar.

  “I often hear Irving talking to someone in his room. But he isn’t. It’s just him rehearsing, putting on voices. There is one persona that sounds like the devil. I gave that voice to Dracula. Sir Henry has a painting of Vlad the Impaler on his wall, a sadistic ruler in eastern Europe long ago. He claims to be related to him.” Stoker chuckles. “That’s just him sinking himself into character, pretending that he has the mind of a wild artist who is above morality. I gave that voice to the man in the painting and I put it all together with the master’s black eyes and his long porcelain face. Then …” He pauses. “I saw the demon.”

  “You saw it?”

  “I … I saw someone walking away in the rain. From behind
, he looked like Irving. He filled me with dread and excitement. It was just a coincidence, of course, but the image of that strange man helped me imagine my villain, make my story real. I believed in it even more.” Stoker is staring off as if contemplating something only he can see. Then he remembers himself. “Nonsense!” he says and laughs. He closes the door after them and locks it from the outside.

  A few minutes later, they are huddled in the lobby, making plans. The theater is quiet. Lucy has torn the bottom few inches off her dress so she can move about better, and taken off her shoes again. Somehow, she doesn’t appear disheveled. Lear has dropped his coat and taken off his cravat. Stoker had either not noticed or not been concerned about the item that Jonathan was rolling behind him or the strange walking stick held slightly behind Edgar’s back. They are inside the theater equipped with Thorne’s powerful weapons.

  “We need to stay together,” says Tiger. “But we need to spread out to find this thing and draw it.”

  “How do we do that?” asks Jonathan.

  “It will come searching for us,” says Lear. “Here is what I suggest. We set up the cannon on the stage at the back, fully primed and loaded. We leave one person with it, back to the wall with no chance of being surprised. The other four stay together, bearing the knives and the rifle.”

  “I’m on the stage with the cannon,” says Tiger immediately.

  “But I—” begins Jonathan.

  “No,” says Lear, “I want it to be Brim.”

  Edgar wants that too. His eyes are shining. “All right,” he says.

  Ten minutes later, while the other four search the bowels of the theater, knives out and rifle trained, Edgar stands at the rear of the stage near the grave and the guillotine, adrenaline pumping through him. The weapon is ready, cannonballs loaded in the chambers of Thorne’s ingenious barrel. It is light and moveable. He can swing it around and fire it quickly. He has it trained at exactly the right height to hit the revenant where the neck meets his head.