by H. G. Parry
“I’m sorry I was so useless there,” Charley said, pulling me back to the present. “It was just that I’d read that book so many times—”
“Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t tell him that I’d been terrified too; if he had somehow missed it, I would rather he didn’t know. “Are you all right?”
He rubbed his eyes, looked up, and nodded. “Mm. I’ve never done anything like that with the hound before. It’s fascinating. I’ve only ever had my own readings—now I know there must be some that are stronger than others. I suppose it’s exactly like Mr. Holmes said: it’s an academic dispute with some else’s interpretation. I’ll have to try it myself—I mean, when my head’s not spinning so much. Not with somebody else’s reading, but if I could read out an interpretation, then try to refine it in some way—”
“You’re not supposed to be reading out anything! For God’s sake, Charley, can you not just let things alone? You’re not a child anymore. You should be able to refrain from reading things into my home city by accident. You should definitely refrain from doing it on purpose.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with this one. It wasn’t me. I told you that this morning, you know. That something was happening.”
“I know.” I sat down next to him, and leaned my head against the back of the couch. I was starting to feel as if I’d run a half marathon in the last quarter hour. “And I’ll say I’m sorry for not believing you, if that’s what you want. But don’t start reading things out, all right? We have enough trouble when you do it by accident.”
“We might need it. If we’re up against someone who can do what I can do, I might need to be able to do it better.”
“We’re not up against anyone,” I said firmly. “Whatever’s happening, we need to distance ourselves from it, quickly.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” Charley pointed out. “My front door’s missing.”
“Exactly. Let’s take that as a warning, and back off. If that thing had come ten minutes earlier, you would have had people here, do you realize that?”
“Maybe,” Charley said. “Or maybe whoever it was was waiting until they left. There’s only one road out of here. It would be easy to see the cars leave.”
“But my car hadn’t left. I was still here. Are you saying that was a mistake on their part?”
“I don’t know. But either way, I’m already in this. I’m a part of it. It is my business. You don’t have to be involved—I understand if you’d rather not. But I am.”
“Why? Why does the word of a Dickensian sociopath and a visit from a phantom hound involve you in anything?”
“Because of the impossible street. The one Mr. Holmes spoke about, the street where there is no street, the knowledge that makes no sense.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Firstly, I fail to see how knowledge of any kind of street constitutes an obligation to fight the Hound of the Baskervilles. Secondly—I know the area Holmes mentioned. There is no impossible street. There’s not even an improbable street. Holmes is wrong.”
“Sherlock Holmes is wrong?”
“Why not? He might be infallible in his book; this is the real world. However well he knows Victorian London, he doesn’t know this city.”
“Neither do I,” Charley said. “Not as well as I should, definitely not as well as you do. But he isn’t wrong. I’ve felt it, too, exactly the way he described. I’ve never quite put it into words, but I know there’s something there.”
I felt a shiver down the back of my neck—although, that could also have been because it was a cool night, and Charley’s house now had no door.
“You never said anything.”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t even think it. I almost said something to you this morning, but—I knew that whatever it was, it was tied up with everything I wasn’t supposed to do or think about. I know you believe I don’t try hard enough to be normal—”
“Oh, don’t give me that. Nobody asks you to be normal. You make it sound like we hold you back—you had everything. You went to Oxford at thirteen, for God’s sake.”
“I didn’t mean that!” Charley caught himself. Honestly, he doesn’t have a temper to rein in. It’s almost funny to see him try: like watching someone work very hard not to drown in a puddle. “All right then. I know you believe I don’t try hard enough to be… I don’t know, an ordinary, plausible sort of abnormal. Does that work? I promise, I do try. I just don’t think this is something I can make go away by trying very hard not to think about. I’m sorry, I really am. But this is my problem.”
And then, of course, there was no way I could back out. There never was. I had left him alone to deal with his own problems once before; I knew I couldn’t face doing it again.
“God, you’re a pain.” I drew a deep breath, exhaled, and felt my world tremble around me. “All right. We’ll have a look at this street—assuming there is a street. If this starts getting too dangerous, though…”
Charley nodded, too quickly. “Absolutely. I understand. Thank you.”
“And I think we should tell Mum and Dad. They need to know about this.” I tried not to sound as though I desperately wanted our parents to tell us what to do. Perhaps I really wanted them to tell Charley what to do. They’d always been better at getting him to stop than I was.
This was probably exactly what Charley was thinking. “Please don’t—not yet. Perhaps after we find the street—if we find the street. They’ll only tell us to stop.”
“They’d be right.”
“They’d be wrong. This is important.”
“Important to who? To you?” I shook my head. It was an acquiescence, but an unwilling one. “Your friend Brian was right, you know. You do drive people insane.”
“I know,” he agreed.
The unnatural dark the Hound had brought with it had lifted from the sky outside. The real night would come soon. It had been a very long day.
Millie
The Street was quiet in the early evening. The wind from the world outside had chased her home, but here the air was still and crisp with the promise of frost. The sky above was steel blue; the gas flames burning in the lampposts barely showed against the lingering light. Millie Radcliffe-Dix drank it in with pleasure, and with satisfaction. So often, when she returned from her day job, crises rushed to greet her—she rather braced herself to meet them, if truth be told. Sometimes she even enjoyed them. This time, the line of crooked houses seemed already asleep.
One, however, would be only just waking up. She knocked on the door to the house nearest the wall: one of a row of near-identical doors that lined the quarter mile of cobbled road. When there was no answer, she opened the door, and stuck in her head.
“Dorian?” she called. It was always best to give warning, in his case.
“Up here,” the languid voice called back. “Just in time. I was on my way out for the night.”
“I bet you were,” she said, possibly too low for him to hear, but then it wasn’t really meant for him.
The room at the top of the stairs was more of an attic than a second-story bedroom: dark, dusty, low of ceiling, and creaky of floorboard. In the middle of it was a laptop on a desk, lit by flickering candles. The man at the laptop was beautiful enough to stop a heart at fifty paces. To all appearances, he was young, perhaps seventeen years of age. Seventeen, though, has an unfinished quality, and this man was a work of art. His hair was a wave of softest gold. His skin was polished ivory. His cheekbones were sharp enough to pose a flight risk. His eyes defied all metaphor. People who looked into them without fair warning tended only to report, incoherently, that they were blue.
Millie was aware of this effect, of course. She tried to contain it by encouraging him to stay away from the general public as much as possible, or at least to wear sunglasses. Fortunately, she had a daily reminder of what lay beneath it. It enabled them to stay on friendly terms, or at least for her to remember to watch her back.
“Dorian,” she greeted him.
“Millie.” Dorian leaned back in his chair, stretching his perfect limbs. “How very industrious you look this evening.”
“Thank you very much.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.” She leaned against the desk next to him. “Anything to report? Before you disappear into the world?”
“You say that so disapprovingly,” he said. “As though there were any better place to go during the night, and any worse place to go during the day. In fact, there was one of those very dull disturbances reported in the Prince Albert University English department last night. You know, campus security going up with little flashlights, finding things slightly rumpled and nobody in sight. You always like me to tell you those.”
“I do,” she said cheerfully. “And you have, and I like it. Nobody in sight at all? How about nothing?”
“Well,” he conceded, “there did seem to be a medieval sword lying in an unlocked closet.”
“Jolly good. Anything else?”
“Just this.” He turned the laptop toward her. The light from the candle opposite, burnt almost to a stub, cast a reflection on the screen. “It came up in the police reports. Possible Fagin sighting?”
Millie tilted the screen away from the glare, and read the lines there briefly. She nodded in satisfaction. “Good show, Dorian.”
“It’s what I live for,” he said. “Oh wait, it’s not. But it’s what you live for, and you have my soul in a wardrobe, so…”
“It warrants a couple of hours out of your misspent nights.” She scrolled down the page a little, taking in the details. The police had apprehended a man attempting to pick a pocket down on Vivian Street in the small hours of the morning. The victim had chosen not to press charges, given that nothing was taken and the man appeared drunk. Innocent enough, but Dorian had noted a few Dickensian traits, such as the man’s predilection for calling the arresting officer “my dear.” Dorian had a good eye for such details. “Interesting. I’ll have a look before I go to bed.”
“Excellent. One should always have something sensational to read in bed. Does this business with campus security have anything to do with the rumors?”
Millie was startled out of her thoughts. “What rumors?”
“You know what rumors.” She did too. “The change in the air. The ticking of the clock. The coming of the new world. All that.”
“No,” she said. “This has nothing whatsoever to do with all that. But I would very much like to know what does. I have no idea where all that nonsense is coming from, and nobody seems to be able to tell me.”
“You don’t believe there’s truth to it then?”
“There’s truth to everything,” she said. “What I would appreciate are some facts. Why? What do you believe?”
Dorian shrugged. “I believe anything, provided it is quite incredible. One of the things I happen to believe is that truth is always independent of the facts.”
“That’s the spirit,” she said. It was the only thing to say when Dorian started in that vein. She pushed the laptop toward him, careful not to knock over the inkwell. “E-mail this to me, will you? Before you pop off to your Tinder date or nightclub or other regularly scheduled corruption.”
“The Street shifted again last night,” he said. “Only a few inches. Most of you were asleep; I don’t think anybody else noticed this time. Perhaps Heathcliff, if he was brooding at the window. But I felt it.”
She had felt it too. Unusually for her, she had not been sleeping soundly the last few nights. “Well,” she said, “I would very much appreciate some facts about that too.”
VI
The next day, I showed Eric around. Frances and Carmen, too, but it was Eric who consumed my attention.
As I’d told Charley, he looked younger than the other Uriah Heep, and he had the crisp suit and haircut that any burgeoning lawyer might be expected to have. If I hadn’t met Charley’s version of the same character, I would never have seen anything odd about him. Since I had, I could see that his face was thin and waxy, and his thick-rimmed glasses did not entirely conceal lashless eyes the color of blood. Under his suit, I could see how thin and elongated his limbs were. And I could see the same crawling, wheedling manner that in the other Uriah had alternated with flashes of murderous fury. The other interns recoiled from him instinctively when he came close.
I approached Eva about him when I was supposed to be going to my lunch, and caught her on the way to her own. It was when she was least inclined to chat about random interns, but also least inclined to question my interest.
“He just seems a little odd, that’s all. Where does he come from?”
“He comes from the School of Law, like the others,” she said around the manila folder between her teeth. She was using both hands to fight her way into her coat. I helped yank it over her shoulders.
“I meant before that. Who are his family?”
“You sound like an Eton schoolmaster. ‘Is he the right sort?’” She tucked the folder into her massive leather handbag, and turned to face me. “I have no idea, off the top of my head. I’ll e-mail you his CV. Actually, I was going to do that anyway. He’s asked if he could shadow you for the rest of the week—subject to your approval, of course. But it makes sense. His interests fit.”
Of course they did. That would have been the entire point. If I hadn’t recognized him, I would have had no reason to say no. The question was, should I say no now? It would sensible, and safer. I didn’t know what he wanted, but it couldn’t be good.
I thought of Uriah’s glowing red eyes, and the cold press of the blade on my throat.
“Sure,” I said. “No worries. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
At least I had the advantage of knowing who he was, when he didn’t know I knew. If there really was something going on, I might not be so fortunate next time.
He was a good worker, I had to admit. If I hadn’t known who he was, he would still make my skin crawl, but I probably would have formed a favorable opinion of his prospects. He stuck to my side like glue throughout three meetings that afternoon, listening intently all the while. Given a data collation task to do, he set to it with a vengeance, his head bent so his nose was almost touching the laptop in front of him. The tap of his keystrokes filled my quiet office. When I suggested he take a ten-minute break for coffee, he took it as might be expected.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Sutherland. So kind of you. But really, that’s not necessary. No, I’m fine as I am, thank you. I want to finish all this before I go home this evening.”
“Where do you live, Eric?” I asked, just to hear what he’d say.
“Oh, here and there, Mr. Sutherland,” he said whimsically. “I share a flat at the moment, with some like-minded people. Very like-minded. Almost like family. I hear you have a younger brother, Mr. Sutherland?”
A shudder went down my back. If I’d been hoping to throw him off guard with my inquiry about his homelife, he had beaten me at that game.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked as casually as I could.
“Oh, someone must have told me.” His eyes glinted behind their spectacles. There was no way he could realize I knew who he was. I was sure I hadn’t given myself away, and he certainly hadn’t. And yet…“He works at the university, doesn’t he? Up there on the hill?”
“He does.”
“It must be nice,” he said, “to have family so close. You must see a great deal of each other.”
“Not if I can help it.” I’m not sure quite how much I meant it. Sometimes I did mean things like that. This time, I just wanted to tell him, whether he understood or not, that he wasn’t getting to Charley through me.
“Really, Mr. Sutherland?” was all he said. “I would, if I were you.”
I stayed late, making sure Eric had left, and because Lydia had the car I had to walk down the road to Cuba Street. Still, I waited half an hour before I heard the distinctive buzz of Charley’s yellow moped. A 49 cc engine probably can’t b
e expected to sound very good, but it should be able to compete for audibility with a broken hair dryer.
“Sorry,” Charley called as he wedged the death trap into a small parking space. I sometimes think he apologizes reflexively whenever he sees me. “I had a couple of students stay late to talk to me after the tutorial, and then Natasha needed to see me about the conference we’re organizing for November.”
“They have you organizing conferences? Have they seen the state of your fridge?”
“Luckily, the conference won’t be held in my fridge,” Charley replied. “And the committee doesn’t need me to remember to buy milk—at least, if it does, I’ve forgotten.”
I think he was joking about the last part.
Cuba Street is the bohemian end of Wellington, a cascade of cafés and comic book stores and secondhand record shops that smell of dust and incense. On a Friday after work, it was bustling with students and young professionals, and had the atmosphere of an evening street market. The bucket fountain, its gaudy primary colors bright in the fading sunlight, splashed water over the pavement, and the chatter of diners eating outside was interwoven with heavy metal blasting from a nearby pub and the sound of a busker’s guitar. The sky was pale blue, and went on forever. Some of the eeriness of being alone in my office with Eric drained away. This just wasn’t the kind of place where Dickensian villains crawled out of the woodwork. It looked too young to have bred them.
“We should go for lunch here some weekend,” I heard myself say. God knows, I didn’t consciously intend to take advice from Eric. “You and I and Lydia, I mean. She keeps saying she wants to see more of you when you’re fully conscious.”
