The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim Page 25

  There is something magical about the silent auditorium. The seats are waiting. It strikes him that life is like this: an empty theater before we come into it, then there is a show, then we fade and the theater is quiet again.

  “Where is he?” says Edgar into the scene. “He was the other man in the dressing room. He is using the great artist to mesmerize the crowds. But if he is really Irving’s friend or master he knows this building intimately. Perhaps he is—”

  A cold, skeletal hand covers Edgar’s mouth.

  “Good day, Master Brim,” says the vampire. “So glad to see you alone upon the stage of life.” Edgar turns his eyes upward and stares into the creature’s, smiling down on him below those black brows and above that nose and red wet lips. The skin stretched over the skull is pale. He looks like a monstrous Irving with a shaved head. “A lovely soliloquy, but alas, it must end. I am going to remove my hand from your mouth now. If you cry out, I will kill you instantly.”

  Edgar doesn’t say a word. He is trying to keep his lip from trembling, gazing into the revenant’s eyes.

  “Do not be afraid. Can you do it now?”

  Edgar swallows. “I do not fear you.”

  “Oh yes, you do! Or you are a fool.” He points behind him. “Observe.” Edgar sees a door there, now open, disguised as part of the wall. “Mr. Henry Irving has shown me many things in this building, many passages.” He turns to the auditorium. “I first saw him here long ago when he had his first great success in The Bells, which electrified London. The Bells! The horror of the bells!” The creature grins. “I was struck by the way he held the audience in his thrall. I had never seen anything like it. There seemed to be an opportunity there. But I had other things to do, another life on the continent. I had been coming to Britain for more than a decade … since your mentor made his kill on the moors.” The demon is growing angry. He turns toward the boy. Edgar shrinks back, putting his spine against the wall. “I was born in Europe well before Beowulf was conceived, but we Visigoths had roots in Scandinavia. I knew of this so-called Grendel.”

  “How could … who are you, really?”

  “I began as a mere traveling musician and soothsayer with a talent for mesmerizing. That’s what they call it now, don’t they, on the English stage in this century? My people sacked Rome in 410, you know, but I was never really one of them. I am an artist! I believe in art. I was an outcast, a minstrel playing upon my harp! I went from village to village and performed for people. And I told them about their futures, about life after death, and made them believe it: me, a strangely tall Goth with magic in his eyes. I stole from them when I had them in my power. But at one place they found me out and attacked me! They chased me through a forest and brought me down, murdered me with axes and buried me in a shallow grave.” He stares off. “But somehow … I awoke!”

  Edgar knows he must keep the creature talking. It’s his only hope. And it seems that this beast wants to talk. Perhaps he is lonely. He constantly spoke to Irving about his life, having found a vessel he could fill. Now he walks about the stage, as if he were a star performer, emoting, telling his tale.

  “I didn’t die, Master Brim! I don’t know if the devil did this for me or to me.” He pauses theatrically. “I am the one from whom the legend comes, but I cannot be killed with a stake to the chest. How ridiculous. I need blood to live, but I take it directly from the heart! This neck-sucking is pure invention.” He looks out at the empty seats. “I did my deeds and ran: to Bohemia and the Balkans during the Dark Ages. I couldn’t stay anywhere because I didn’t age. I grew tired of hunting and craved easier opportunities to drink the sustenance I needed. And when I was being held in a Budapest jail by the Hungarians in the 1400s, biding my time, I met their great prisoner, a man called Vlad of the House of Draculesti.”

  Edgar’s mouth drops open.

  “You are astonished that I met the Impaler. I more than met him, my young friend, I became him! He was the Voivode, the prince of Wallachia on the Transylvanian border, a tall man with dark eyes and hair like mine. So I took his blood and his life and escaped back to his country to rule!

  “It was long before photography and realistic paintings and no one knew a great deal about Vlad’s true appearance. He had been away for a long while. I saw an opportunity. I could reign in his castle and take the blood I needed by using his methods. I could make people fear me and do what I must! I killed many thousands, Master Brim, impaled them alive. I did it out of need, but I found it thrilled me too! When you cannot die, when God means nothing to you, you experiment.” He turns to Edgar. “Now, what shall I do with you? You, who threaten to reveal my existence!”

  He takes a stride and is instantly upon the boy, ripping his shirt open from neck to belt. Then he places a frigid hand on Edgar’s chest and violently shoves him to the ground. Edgar’s neck snaps back as he lands in the dirt, but he glares up at his enemy. He tries to tell himself that fear is of no use.

  The demon regards him for a moment. “Dig!” he finally says.

  “I beg … I beg your pardon?”

  “I have several options,” says the demon as he clenches his fists. “I could take your blood … or do something else.” The shoulder-high wooden stakes are behind him on the graves, their points sharp. He bends over and caresses Edgar’s chest with his cold fingertips. The boy knocks his hand away. “Or perhaps,” says the monster, smiling, “I will have it all. I want you to dig.”

  A grave, thinks Edgar struggling to his feet, hesitating. He picks up a shovel left behind by the stagehands but stands still, shaking.

  “BEGIN! Or I shall rip you open now!”

  Edgar starts excavating a plot beside the one that is unearthed each night.

  “No one can know I exist.”

  Edgar pivots and swings the shovel at the revenant’s head. The creature catches the blade with his hand, though it slices into his palm. A glob of black blood plops out. He snatches the shovel from Edgar and smacks him across the head with the back of the blade. There’s a dull sound as it strikes bone. Edgar staggers and falls. He sees stars.

  “DIG!” cries the creature, throwing down the shovel and slurping on his wound. Edgar rolls over and climbs to his feet. He shovels, listening for sounds at the door between stabs at the soil.

  “What about Stoker? He knows, doesn’t he?”

  “He is a problem with which I will deal. He does not know, but he has somehow learned bits and written this tract that puts the finger upon me, tells a sort of truth. I am not sure how I feel about it. It gives me a certain fame!” He puffs out his chest. “But it is Irving who fascinates me. In fourteen hundred years I have noticed few people who resemble me. Vlad was slightly comparable and one other had a distant similarity.”

  Driver, thinks Edgar.

  “But Henry—his nose, sloping forehead, black brows and those eyes—that first night it was as if they were all cheering for me! I had been coming to the British Isles to keep Lear at bay. He should have let the Scandinavian beast be!”

  “It killed his wife!”

  The villain ignores him. “I knew the creature had vanished from its home and was being pursued. I tracked it to the moors and found its corpse, picked to pieces by crows. I discovered who had done it: the man with the grievous wound. He knew about us!” The demon stares out to the seats. “I know of one other. It would come for you should you kill me. But that will not happen!” He stamps his foot. “Lear became afraid. I listened to him begging God, worried about the things the lunatic Shakespeare said. Lear was a formidable opponent with his threat to reveal my existence. So I couldn’t kill him, but I watched him. I snatched a German peasant about my height and skull size and worked on him. I cut out his tongue.” Edgar swallows. “I adjusted his features—it wasn’t hard to find the pieces I needed. I deeply entranced him. He is terrified of me! And so he should be.”

  Edgar doesn’t interrupt. Keep him talking, he thinks. The demon turns to the audience and addresses the empty seats with feeling.<
br />
  “I eliminated the driver who had been at the college and left the mute freak on the moors, dressed in a hooded garment. The fools at the college kept him to replace their man, just as I hoped. And then, I sometimes traveled up there and exchanged places with him, keeping him in the cellar room when I was in residence, adjusting him. I could move about as I pleased, listen and keep an eye on Lear.” There are still no sounds outside the auditorium doors. “The imbecile! Even after I killed his student to warn him, he still spoke to Allen Brim about demons.”

  “You murdered him!” Edgar quivers.

  “Lear couldn’t resist you when you came! He told you! So I took his son too. The power to expose me was being passed on. And then you spoke to the child! You spoke of us while I was in the very room, listening! So I took little Newman. I put mouthfuls of my saliva into him when I drained him, so he would live in his grave, so I could excavate him and have more sustenance. I was on the moors a long while and needed it. But then you and Lear dug up the child and took off his head! How dare you!”

  Edgar sees real passion in the creature’s face. Then his voice turns softer, more dramatic in the empty theater.

  “Irving loved his secret, sinister friend, a man of manners from eastern Europe, an aristocrat, related to the Impaler! I gave him the painting. He and I, we like our art deep and dark; the ingredient of evil in his work makes it frightening and real! I hinted I had killed people, that I might have known or been the Ripper.”

  “Were you?”

  The monster merely smiles. “Irving gave me the costume he first wore as Mephistopheles as a token of friendship. He was aroused by the idea that he might be Vlad’s descendant! He could see we had similar profiles. I began to entrance him. And so, he unknowingly mesmerizes crowds for me every night! Crowds of blood! I could never have done it alone, not safely.” He pauses again. “But Irving has great powers. I do not suck his blood! He is my artist! My twin! He is almost too much for me. I must keep him entranced.”

  Edgar, filled with adrenaline, had worked quickly, and the grave is four feet deep.

  “Get in!” says the revenant.

  Edgar’s heart leaps in his chest.

  “In?”

  “I am going to bury you alive, sir, and when your friends arrive, I will show them what I have done. They will hear you moaning. I shall deal with at least one of them too. Unfortunately, more than that would be suspicious.” He turns to the wooden stakes behind him and grips one. “Yes, just you and one more today,” he sighs. His huge left hand caresses the sharp end of the stake. “But believe me, once they have seen how you and your friend die, the others will never bother me again.”

  37

  Buried Alive

  Edgar stands on the edge of his grave. He is inside one of his nightmares: inside a story by Poe. He can no longer help himself or his friends. He pulls open his shirt, fully exposing his bare chest, the breastbone over the heart.

  “I would rather—”

  The monster waves it off. “I have made up my mind.”

  “How will—”

  “Your death be explained? Your friends will be forced to say, if they say anything, that you have disappeared, another death like many others that happen in London every day, dead like those who just happen to expire after being overly excited at the theater.”

  “But … but my body.”

  “Now, now, Master Brim, you are not thinking. I know you did the tour with Mr. Stoker. In fact, I was flitting about here when he was showing you around and droning on. He is such a tearfully boring man, not my choice for a biographer! Recall, sir, what he said. This mound of earth was brought up from below. When they finish the play’s short run, they shall open up the stage boards and let it fall back to the basement where no one goes. You shall vanish, as will the contents of one more grave. But look at it this way: you will rest forever in the Royal Lyceum Theatre with the ghosts. GET IN!”

  Edgar is shaking. He feels as though he will retch. But he has no choice. He drops into the grave and lies in it. He is almost unconscious. Perhaps it is the blow to the head or maybe the mind-bending fear. A face appears at the edge of the plot, peering down at him. The hag! Then the first shovelful of earth hits him in the chest. Edgar sees the creature smiling as he works. He tries to imagine his mother. He can’t see her, so he thinks of his father, of Annabel Thorne, of Lucy and Tiger. It calms him somewhat as the weight of the dirt gets heavier. His arms are at his sides. The vampire is keeping the soil from his face, as if he wants to watch his expression as he dies. Edgar remembers little Newman and tries to have courage. The weight is getting oppressive. He is having trouble breathing. He tries to move his arms and legs but can’t. The grave is filled almost to the top from his neck to his feet.

  The demon begins to drop the dirt onto Edgar’s face. “I wonder,” he says, “if I can infuse Irving with my blood, like in the story books, and make him my follower forever!”

  Jonathan takes his first shot from just inside the doors. It hits the demon in the shoulder near the neck, Thorne’s exploding bullet so powerful that it knocks the beast down. The girls shout in approval. The creature is stunned. But he rises to his feet, black blood in his gaping wound. He sees Jonathan standing in front of Lear and the girls, aiming the gun once more, and drops to his knees, just before the trigger is pulled. The bullet rips over him and hits the mountain of earth, disappearing deep into it. The revenant rises and swoops across the stage and leaps into the aisle. Lucy screams.

  Edgar struggles in the grave, but the hag has jumped down, right on top of him!

  He hears another shot. The bullet zings through the air and thwacks into the earth. Edgar can hear the others running, attempting to get away and crying out. He tries to move under the dirt, the hag with her face in his. “No!” he screams at her.

  Jonathan fires another shot and curses. Four shots, thinks Edgar. He has only six. Two more shots ring loud in rapid succession, the demon cries out at the sound of one. Then Edgar hears Jon cursing their enemy. He can hear them grappling.

  He hears the vampire dragging Jonathan down the aisle toward the stage, his friend making a gurgling sound. They come into Edgar’s view, over the hag’s shoulder. The demon has another bloody black wound, this one in the abdomen, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him. His face is flushed with anger and he has Jonathan by the throat. His fingernails are long and sharp. He’s dragging his captive toward one of the tall wooden stakes.

  “Let him be!” he hears Lucy cry out, and then Lear too, begging the monster to put his grandson down, to take him instead. They all seem to be on the stage now, though Edgar can’t hear Tiger. Where is she? he thinks. Is his dear friend dead? Tiger! Terror engulfs him and he fights, spitting in the hag’s face, frantically twisting and turning beneath the earth.

  “I shall kill him as you watch,” says the demon. “I will show you, Lear, what your curiosity has done! You will see true pain administered to the strongest of you all, and then I will suck him dry while he writhes. You are turning away, old man! Watch!” Edgar sees the villain take a swing at someone with Lear’s big knife in hand! The professor cries out and Edgar hears a thud. Lucy screams again. Where’s Tiger?

  Edgar makes one last twist, using a strength that seems to him to come not from his mortal powers but somewhere else. He hears another shot. Seven?

  The vampire groans and falls from view, just as Edgar rises inside the grave. Drops of black blood splatter across his face. He scrambles out and gets shakily to his feet. The revenant has a hole in the side of his neck, a third of it ripped away, and lies on the ground, gasping, struggling to get up, his white shirt soaking up his blood. Looking across the auditorium, Edgar sees Tiger standing rigid with her mouth set, the rifle still aimed this way. A seventh bullet! He remembers now that she had taken an extra one from Alfred Thorne’s lab. Tiger! The one and only! She had been re-loading. She has made a nearly direct hit! But now all the bullets are gone.

  “Help me!” cries Edg
ar to Lucy as he rushes toward the demon. Lear is groaning on the ground, holding his head. Jonathan is groggy too and Tiger is across the auditorium by the doors. The creature has taken all their knives and thrown them out into the seats. He is trying to get to his feet, struggling, but his strength is returning. Edgar bears down on him. Lucy moves toward them.

  “Help me pull him!” cries Edgar.

  “Pull him where? We need to take off his head!”

  Their enemy gets onto his knees.

  “Pull him!”

  Then she sees what Edgar is planning.

  The guillotine!

  Edgar kicks the vampire in the temple and knocks him down and they both seize a shoulder, pulling him toward the razor-sharp killing machine. The demon’s eyes look like an animal’s being led to slaughter. There is fear in them!

  He tries to resist them. “Another will come after you!” he cries.

  They lug him closer, up the little mound toward the guillotine, Lucy summoning all her strength.

  The creature pushes against them, succeeds in shoving them off and staggering to his feet. Edgar thinks of little Newman wanting to be the hero in the life that he never got to live. He rushes at the demon as if he were against Fardle again on the rugby field. He bends down as he approaches and hits his target low at the knees, sending him flying backward. The creature falls and his neck hits the guillotine right in the head hole and the blade rockets down.

  “Another will—”

  The revenant’s head strikes the soil with a thud. It rolls several feet away and stops, the eyes staring up.

  38

  Another?

  They help Lear and Jonathan to their feet. They move as quickly as they can, Lear sitting in a seat, still groggy. There is a wound just below his rib cage, that he is staunching with his suit coat. They bury the creature in the grave that was meant for Edgar, his head placed at his feet. They find the knives and clean them with handkerchiefs and put the exploded bullets in the box with the cannon on wheels. When they are done, they rush up the aisle toward the doors. One suddenly opens.