Demon Read online

  “Otherwise known as the servant of Satan, and I am here to tell you that you are going to die. So are your friends, one after another. My boss is fixing it as I speak to you. You have crossed the devil you have! Prepare to perish! You cannot stop my boss, no one can, not God Himself.”

  He pulls the cane back and swings it down at Edgar with a mighty swipe. There is a great whiz in the air and the cane connects with the brick wall just over Edgar’s head, chipping a big piece out of it that flies off and smacks Edgar in the cheek. Pain shoots through him like an electric shock.

  “Fear us! Fear him! Let it be all around you and inside you! Until it destroys you!”

  He glares down and brings his face within inches of Edgar’s. Then he tosses his cane high into the black sky, pivots, and catches it as it drops. He strides away, laughing. When he is out on the street, Edgar can hear him growl at someone, the whiz of the cane and a cry of pain.

  Edgar lies in the alley for a long time, trying to stop his heart from smashing against his ribcage; he is certain it will explode. He stares up at the walls of the dirty buildings until his gaze reaches the heavens. He wonders if any of it is real: the walls, the sounds, the ground he lies on, the air, the sky. There cannot be eight-foot men who work for the devil walking about London, he tells himself. Yet, I saw him, thinks Edgar, I heard him and felt him. Edgar knows that if there are creatures such as that, then he is in deep trouble, as Dr. Berenice said, and if there are not, his situation may be even worse.

  The alienist had told him to explore his fears, investigate the devil, but he just wants it all to go away.

  Then he thinks of his friends, fears for them and gets to his feet.

  He stumbles toward Kentish Town, holding his face, dreading what he will find at the Lear home.

  * * *

  —

  Everyone, however, is in one piece there, at least until they see him.

  “EDGAR!” cries Lucy when he fumbles his way through the door, bleeding from the wound on his face, now risen into an ugly lump. That, at least, is certainly real.

  They set him down in a chair with a cold compress on his face. It is only then that he realizes someone is missing.

  “Where is Jonathan?”

  “He went out looking for—” begins Tiger.

  The front door opens and closes, then Jon walks into the living room. He appears strangely serene, a blissful expression on his face.

  “Jonathan?” asks Lucy. “What took you so long?”

  “I went all the way to the hospital, inquired about our lad with someone there, wonderful lady. Walked home.” There is a faint whiff of perfume in the air. He only now seems to notice Edgar and a slight expression of relief comes over him, but then he sneers. “Took in a few pubs on your return home, did you? Run into a door on the way out of one of them?”

  Edgar ignores him. He turns back to the others and begins to tell them what happened in the alleyway. He tries to speak with conviction, though it sounds preposterous as it comes out of his mouth. As his story unfolds, Jonathan begins eying the rifle, leaning against a wall nearby. Eventually, he picks it up, snaps it open to make sure it is loaded and listens with it pointed toward the door.

  There is silence for a while after Edgar finishes.

  “So,” says Tiger finally, “…what do we make of that?”

  “That I am mad. I was raving like a lunatic at Lawrence before I left the hospital, and he had to have someone talk to me about it.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Lucy.

  “A nerve specialist, an alienist, a psychiatrist. She talked about having me committed!”

  There is silence again in the room.

  “And I imagined I saw that half-panther and half-ape that Godwin made, looking down from the roof of the London Hospital!”

  “You could have,” says Lucy. “It got away.”

  “And this wound on your face,” says Tiger. “It’s real, as real as the flesh and blood under it.”

  “But the man was eight feet tall and said he was Mephistopheles, and he looked like something from a nightmare. Perhaps I had a fit and struck myself or fell on my face in my madness…I’ve been imagining things.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Jonathan.

  “The hag, she—”

  “Not that again.”

  “She seems real now.”

  “Edgar,” says Lucy, “you don’t have to—”

  “The hag phenomenon isn’t something to be ashamed of,” says Tiger, “and as vivid as it is, it’s only in your mind, a bad dream. It isn’t chasing us in the streets.” She looks calm but glances toward the cannon, just down the hallway from where they are sitting.

  Edgar shakes his head. “But she appeared SO real the last time.”

  “And there are a good many things that are real right now that we never imagined could be,” says Lucy quietly.

  “Shakespeare used to ask people on the street if they were afflicted by the hag phenomenon because he wanted to catch the old woman. I’m as looney as he is!”

  “Never mind all that, Edgar,” says Lucy. “I don’t know about the hag, whether she is real or not, but these other things, you’re seeing them, I’m sure of it.”

  “The eight-foot man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you being serious, sis? Are you that intrigued by our Edgar that you honestly believe he was accosted by a gigantic man who works for the devil?”

  “Was there a snake in my bed and one in Tiger’s?”

  Jon has no answer and that obviously bothers him. He looks down at his feet.

  “I…I left out something,” says Edgar.

  “What is that?” asks Lucy, though she appears as though she does not want to hear it.

  “That grotesque man in the alley…he said that his boss is going to kill us all and soon, that we are doomed.”

  There is another silence.

  Jon looks up. “Sounds like more of the tripe the lunatic Shakespeare goes on about. The next one will be worse!” He offers a chuckle, but no one laughs with him.

  “Why would our enemy warn us?” asks Tiger. “Why not kill you in that alley, Edgar, and then come after the rest of us?” She immediately appears as though she would like to take her words back.

  “Good question,” says Jon.

  No one speaks for a moment.

  “Never mind,” says Lucy. “Maybe there is some reason why this creature didn’t kill you, Edgar…” She does not look convinced. “Maybe you exaggerated his appearance a little, but we know something is after us, something very different than we have experienced before. Something harmed you.” She puts a shaking hand gently on Edgar’s wound.

  Jonathan cocks the rifle. “Maybe he wounded himself. But no one is coming in here and harming a single hair on any one of your heads. I’ll see to it!”

  Lucy steps away from Edgar and reaches for her brother’s hand. “This thing may not be that sort of creature, Jon. It may not be something you can shoot, not even with the cannon.”

  Edgar notices that as Jon’s hand accepts Lucy’s, it is shaking slightly too. She squeezes it tightly.

  * * *

  —

  “Who did you speak with at the hospital?” Edgar quietly asks Jon a few moments later, after Tiger and Lucy have left the room.

  “A woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “A very interesting one, actually.” He smiles at the memory. “I enquired about you at the front desk and they said you might be on the top floor in Andrew Lawrence’s office, but when I reached the floor right below his, a woman appeared almost out of nowhere and asked if she could help me. She said she knew of you but that you had been gone for some time. She seemed concerned. I liked her a great deal. She was one of those people whom you feel, upon first meeting, to have known for a long while. She
had a way of looking at me, sympathetically, had the most amazing black eyes. She was different, quite striking, actually embraced me. Do you know her…long dark hair, wearing a long brown dress?”

  “I am…not certain,” says Edgar. He is not sure why he says that.

  * * *

  —

  They all stay close together from morning until night the next day, every one of them more anxious than before. Jon trying to appear strong, though at times just as jumpy as the rest. Edgar stays with them, taking his day away from the hospital. They keep the cannon ready in the hallway, its business end pointed toward the front entrance.

  Late in the afternoon, Edgar finds himself alone with Lucy in the parlor, Tiger and Jonathan out in the little, walled-in backyard working together in the Lears’ garden. He stands at the open window and watches them digging, raven-haired Tiger with a shovel, the dark-blond Jon with a big fork. They have the rifle nearby, lying on the grass. It is hot work and Edgar can see that both of them are perspiring a great deal: Jon in a white shirt that forms a thick, wet V on him as his powerful upper torso bends to his work; sweat soaking Tiger’s white blouse to her back and her black trousers to her legs. Edgar can see the sinewy muscles in her arms and shoulders striving to keep up with Jon’s pace and doing well. He keeps wiping his brow, often smiling, talking, glancing at Tiger every now and then, which she notices, though when she glances back at him, he never seems to catch it. Edgar loves Tiger more than anyone on earth, and in a manner of speaking, loves Jonathan too, despite his bluster. He knows Jon is softer underneath than he says. He recalls the notebook his muscular friend took with him up to the Arctic, with its surprisingly good poems, most of them odes to Tiger Tilley.

  Edgar hears Lucy sigh at the table behind him, reacting to a story she is reading. She always sounds so lovely to Edgar Brim. He starts thinking about her, something he does often, something he cannot stop himself from doing. “She has intoxicated me,” he whispers. “She is like an angel.” He does not know what he would do without Tiger in his life, but not to see Lucy for even a very short while would be like torture.

  “You are very strong,” says Jon to Tiger.

  Edgar turns his head back toward the open window and listens.

  “Thank you,” says Tiger, quietly, not looking at him. “So are you.”

  He smiles and thrusts his big fork into the soil, wipes his brow and strips off his shirt, peeling it from his sweaty back and chest. He starts working again, naked from the waist up. Tiger stands still for a moment, gazing at him, but returns to her task before he notices.

  “You are a different sort of girl,” he says between grunts.

  “I know, I know. I’m pushy and don’t know my place.”

  “I think you are fine, and you are not a girl, I used the wrong word. You are a woman. Exceptional would strike me as the best word for you.”

  All the way from the window in the parlor, Edgar can see Tiger blush. He has never seen her do that. Ever. He has a sudden desire to walk out there and interrupt them, but he knows it would not be right. Tiger’s strong arms are relaxing now as she engages Jon in conversation, her fingers playing on the handle of her shovel. Edgar thinks of Lucy reading her book near him, so different from Tiger. At this moment, gazing out at the scene in the backyard, the very thought of her comforts him.

  “I must admit,” Jon tells Tiger, so quietly that Edgar can barely hear, “that the thought of the devil himself rather…rather…scares me.” Then he speaks up. “But we are going to stop the thing that is after us, I don’t care what it is. You and I will make the difference. We have what it takes. You, actually, probably more than me.” His last few words are barely audible again.

  * * *

  —

  That night, Edgar calls them together in the living room to talk about their situation.

  “I have another admission to make to you all. I’m telling you this because we are in a desperate dilemma and have to look at all our options.”

  “Confessions of Edgar Brim, by the young lady herself,” says Jon.

  “Sod off and listen!” says Lucy.

  Her words and tone give Edgar a start—Lucy said that?—and it takes him a few seconds to begin. “A few days ago, when I saw William Shakespeare in the East End, I noticed exactly where he’d been and I went there, into a strange building down one of those frightening little streets across from the hospital, near where the Ripper struck.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” asks Tiger.

  “It just seemed mad to me that he was there and mad to have followed him, and what happened in there seemed insane too, but now that I’ve told you the other—”

  “Ah, yes, the alienist and the eight-foot man who—” begins Jon.

  “Hear him out,” says Tiger, and she puts her hand on Jonathan’s. Edgar cannot believe she is doing that, right in front of the others. Her touch, however, stops Jon’s sarcasm in its tracks.

  “I…” continues Edgar, “inside that building, I was attacked by a man of good size but not superhuman and he threw me out, as if he had something to hide.”

  “William Shakespeare barely leaves his cave. He wouldn’t even know how to get to the East End.” Jon smirks.

  “I saw him.”

  “Are you certain, Edgar?” asks Lucy.

  “As certain as I am of anything that has happened over the past few days.”

  “All events as real as those in a storybook,” says Jon.

  “What if Edgar didn’t imagine any of this, none of it, what if it all actually happened to him?” asks Lucy. “What does that mean? Why would Shakespeare be in the East End? Why in a building that is being guarded?”

  “What did Shakespeare say to us last time about the devil?” says Tiger. “He said that it would destroy us and that our only option was to negotiate.”

  “I’ll negotiate…with the cannon!” Jon’s last word sounds shrill.

  “Remember who the little man is,” says Edgar. “He is the first person your grandfather went to many years ago when he first grew concerned that an aberration existed. Professor Lear said Shakespeare was sane in those days, went by a different name, and did not really believe in monsters, that he just had concerns that there were strange semi-human beings on earth. Shakespeare has known about this sort of thing longer than all of us put together, and he is the one who keeps predicting what will come next. Maybe he knows something, even in his madness. Maybe he is fumbling his way toward helping us…attempting to meet with this thing. Maybe there is something or someone in that building that we need to see.”

  “I’ll go back there with you,” says Tiger. “Just you and me, late at night, tonight, armed.”

  “I should come too,” says Jon. “Or just you and me, Tiger.” He steps toward her, his eyes looking uneasy.

  “Edgar has to be there. He knows where the building is, which door to enter, and he has a feel for all of this. We can’t leave Lucy alone either.”

  They decide to head out in the small hours of the morning when the skies are black and the lights are dim, when much of London that sleeps is still in bed. They leave the weapons behind for the other two to protect themselves.

  “Tiger!” calls Jon when they are about to leave. “Take this and use it well if you have to. I know you can.”

  He is gripping his wooden cricket bat, flat like a shovel at the business end, holding it so tightly that his knuckles have turned white.

  “I have my pistol,” she says, patting the side of her coat. She somehow always makes it disappear in there.

  “This can be even more effective.”

  She smiles and takes the bat from him, making sure that her hand touches his as she receives it. They stand there for a moment, close to each other, her hand lingering on his.

  “We must be going,” insists Edgar.

  “Thank you,” says Tiger, still lo
oking at Jon.

  “See you shortly.” He gently squeezes her fingers as he releases her.

  * * *

  —

  Edgar and Tiger do not speak for a while as they walk along quiet Progress Street toward Mansfield Road. They have a long trip in front of them. They aren’t bothering with finding a hansom cab, especially since there are not many in this area at this hour. They are moving down Highgate Road before either of them says a word.

  “He is developing quite an interest in you.”

  She merely grunts.

  “And you in him.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. And why would you care, anyway, if it were true?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Really?” She looks over at him, but he is not looking back.

  “Yes.”

  They walk on in silence, but after they reach the bottom of Kentish Town Road and near the St. Pancras Railway Station and the Midland Grand Hotel, Edgar’s nerves start to bother him and he needs to talk.

  “Do you believe the things I’ve been seeing are real?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I believe in you, yes, always have.”

  “That isn’t what I asked either. Tiger, Lawrence sent me to a mind doctor and the chairman of the London Hospital is a reasonable man, wouldn’t you think?”

  She hesitates. “Are all the things that have happened to you real? I suppose we will soon find out.”

  It almost sounds like a threat. An overpoweringly dangerous thought flashes through his mind, a thought about Tiger Tilley. He pushes it away.

  Edgar would prefer to stay to the main roads, but once they are through Clerkenwell and moving down wide Commercial Street on the edge of Bethnal Green and into unsafe Spitalfields, Tiger wants to cut through the narrow streets to get to their destination faster. This means walking right into London’s worst rookeries, through the tight alleys populated by wizened old prostitutes who look like witches and carry cutthroat razors to protect themselves, and past greasy thieves, and starving children. Stinking pubs and tawdry rooming houses line these roads. Tiger doesn’t seem to care, in fact, she appears to be seeking the most frightening arteries to see what she can face, readying herself for what they are about to encounter in Thomas Street. She gives Edgar the pistol and instructs him to hold it in his coat pocket so part of it is visible and she swings the cricket bat as she walks, letting one-and-all know she can use it.