The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by H. G. Parry

  “If Mum and Dad knew about this—”

  “You haven’t told them, have you?”

  “Not yet. I’m about to. Tonight. I think this concerns them too. I think—” I hesitated, then resolutely pushed on. “I think Mum might be a summoner as well.”

  “She is,” Charley said. “Well, sort of. She summoned something once, when she was four. She hasn’t done anything since.”

  I almost drove the car off the road. “What—how on earth do you know that?”

  “She told me. A long time ago, when I was small—how do you know that?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was six. She asked me not to.”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that it might be relevant now? Considering we’re searching for someone else who can read things out of books?”

  “Someone trying to bring about a new world and possibly kill us in the process,” Charley reminded me. “It’s not likely to be Mum, is it? And she’s the only one in her family who can summon. She told me that too.”

  “And you just decided to leave it at that?”

  “Not quite. It’s been in the back of my mind. So far it hasn’t sparked anything. For all we know, she’s one of the many people who summon one thing in their lives, usually without knowing it, and never do so again. I mean, yes, there’s the possibility that it runs in the family, some long-lost relative has tracked us down, discovered I existed, and proceeded accordingly, but if that’s the case, they’ve done so under Dorian’s radar.”

  “Dorian is looking for our family?”

  “Dorian’s looking for a lot of things. Too many, probably. It’s difficult to keep him from knowing more than Millie wants him to know.”

  Now I felt like an idiot. I was so tired of feeling like an idiot around my brother, when I knew I wasn’t.

  “You can’t tell them,” Charley said. It took me a while to remember what it was we had started to argue about. “Not now. We’re so close.”

  I grasped at the familiar argument almost with relief. “That’s more reason than ever that they need to know. We’re not kids anymore, Charley! This isn’t me trying to get you into trouble. This is serious.”

  “Yes.” There was nothing childish in his face now. “It is. And that’s why I need to understand. I need to know what can be done, and what can’t. I need to know what these things are, the things that I can make and that somebody else can make too. And I can’t know anything if I don’t try things out.”

  “Don’t give me that,” I said. “You’re enjoying it. You don’t care how dangerous it is to you; I don’t think you even care how dangerous it is to anyone else. There’s a threat to the Street, fine, but that’s an excuse. You’ve been wanting to push deeper into your abilities for years.”

  “All my life,” he said immediately. “And I’ve been holding back all my life. I don’t know if I’d still be holding back under other circumstances—probably—but I’m not sorry I’ve stopped, no. I want to understand. I need to, but I want to as well.”

  “You and bloody Frankenstein. You’re two of a kind.”

  Charley frowned. “Who?”

  I hurried past that. “You know what your problem is? You don’t really believe you can fail. How could you? This kind of thing—books, reading, critical thinking—it’s always been easy for you. You don’t realize what’s beyond you, because you’ve never been there. You’re headed there now. You can’t do this.”

  “Someone out there can, and is.”

  “It’s going to kill you. I don’t even mean the summoner, though he may well get to you first. This isn’t right. People aren’t supposed to play around with story and reality. You can’t live in two worlds like this indefinitely.”

  “I won’t let it kill me,” he said. “I just won’t. It’s too important.”

  “You don’t get to decide things like that. You’re talking about the complete unknown.”

  “And do you know how rare that is?” he said. “The complete unknown? Even if nothing else was at stake, that should be enough to justify any amount of risk.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. I never do, when my brother gets that look on his face. It’s like part of him is already somewhere else entirely.

  “I’m missing lunch with Lydia, to come pick you up,” I said instead. I knew it was a mean, guilt-tripping tactic, and I knew I said it partly to see the light dim in his eyes, which made it worse.

  “I know.” He sounded very quiet suddenly. “I told Beth not to call you.”

  And now I felt terrible. “Look, it’s all right,” I said as carelessly as possible. “That’s not important. But you’ve got to be more careful.”

  He nodded, without speaking, and I knew I’d blown it.

  We had almost reached the house when Charley’s cell phone rang. He snatched it up quickly, grateful, I suspect, for the break in the silence.

  “Hello—Millie, hey,” he said. “Is everything okay?” I was watching the road, so I didn’t see his face, but I heard his voice tense. “What? Seriously? Okay, don’t worry, we’ll be right there… Rob’s here too; we’ve got his car… Ten minutes? Look, I know, just try to distract it. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “What is it?” I asked, alarmed now myself.

  Charley ended the call, and turned to me. “The Street’s under attack.”

  “But—what kind of attack? As in with weapons?”

  “Sort of,” Charley said. “As in by a Jabberwock.”

  XIX

  The Street was on fire. I felt the heat even before I was completely through the wall; when the Street came into focus, the buildings on both sides were awash with green flame. It glowed with the eerie phosphorescence that had spilled from the mouth of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and colored the fog that wreathed the ground. One of the houses, halfway down, had been torn open at the seams. In the midst of it all, there stood a Jabberwock.

  I knew the poem. I remembered the old Tenniel illustrations from my childhood copy of Through the Looking-Glass, showing a comical, bucktoothed dragon in a waistcoat. I remember being read the book, sitting in my parents’ laps before Charley was born. I remember giggling as Mum reached the fourth stanza and tickled me playfully.

  And, as in uffish thought he stood,

  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

  Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

  And burbled as it came!

  It hadn’t been enough to prepare me—at least, not for this one. The Hound had been the size of a carthorse; this was bigger than any creature I had seen alive. It towered above the two-story buildings that lined the Street. Its claws were half the length of its body, its jaws as large again: not surprising, I suppose, when the “jaws that bite, the claws that catch” were the only features Lewis Carroll described. Oh, and the “eyes of flame.” There was certainly flame. Green fire gushed from beneath its eyelids and spilled from between its teeth.

  It was wearing a waistcoat. But it wasn’t so comical in person.

  “Oh God,” Charley said quietly. He had been brimming with reckless urgency on the other side of the wall; now, surveying the destruction and the monster in the thick of it, he was very still.

  “If you can’t do this,” I said, “then we can just go. It hasn’t seen us yet.”

  Charley gathered himself. “No, I can do this. I have to. Where’s Millie?”

  It was a good question. The Street looked deserted. I scanned it for a while before a flicker of movement caught my eye.

  “There!” I pointed. “Rooftop.”

  “Oh, of course.” Millie must have climbed out the upper window of the pub. From the slope of the roof, she waved at us, her curls bouncing. Charley waved back before I could stop him. Fortunately, the Jabberwock ignored both.

  “She’ll keep it away from us until I can read it into something harmless,” he said. Millie had stood, and was climbing back through the window. “Or at least, away from me. You don’t have to stay, Ro
b, really—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said. “Quick—it’ll see us if we just stand here.”

  There were limited hiding places along the narrow Street, but we ducked down outside Dorian’s front door. Smoke was choking the air. Through it, I saw the pub doors open; the glint of armor showed beyond it. Lancelot, presumably. They had the Scarlet Pimpernel too. What happened when characters from different books clashed? If both were written to be undefeatable, what decided the victory?

  “Do you need the book?” I asked Charley. “You don’t have it, do you?”

  “I don’t need the book. I know the poem by heart—I have for years. I love the poem. That’s not going to be the problem.”

  “What is the problem?”

  “The problem is that the poem’s nonsense! It’s a semiotic nightmare. People have tried to read all sorts of things into it, but I’ve always maintained that it’s just pure, perfect gibberish. The Jabberwock is just a word.”

  “Well, can’t you just twist it to mean something? Something harmless, preferably? If the summoner can—”

  “I’ll try, obviously. But I don’t think I’ll convince myself. Um—you don’t happen to have a piece of paper and a pen on you, do you?”

  Astonishingly, I did. I had a tiny notepad in my coat, and a stub of a pencil. I’d put them there one desperate day when I forgot to charge my iPad before a meeting and needed something to write with. I handed them to Charley, and received a look of such astonished admiration I felt as though I’d casually pulled a sword from a stone.

  “There,” I said. “Go wild. But hurry up. It’s looking at us.”

  “Don’t tell me that.” He was already scribbling, as fast as he could. The poem was taking shape on the paper in scrawled handwriting. I had a feeling, as he drew tighter into himself, that he was trying to forget he existed.

  (“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! / The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”)

  “Okay,” I heard him say to himself, very quietly, “what does make sense? There’s a quest structure, to start with…”

  I looked away, and kept my eyes on the Jabberwock. It hadn’t moved, but it knew where we were. We were in the open out here. The Street, which I’d found claustrophobic before, now seemed to expose us for all to see. My heart was racing so fast it hurt to keep still.

  (“And, as in uffish thought he stood, / The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame…”)

  I almost missed it, when it happened: a shiver ran through the Jabberwock, and then a quick blink of movement I can’t explain. Like the flicker of a light, or the ripple of wind across grass. The creature gave a sharp, startled sniffle, and its head whipped in our direction.

  (“Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, / And burbled as it came!”)

  “Charley.” I grabbed his arm, and hauled him to his feet. “Come on, we’ve got to get under cover.”

  He blinked as if I’d pulled him up from underwater. “Where?”

  I gave him a push in the direction of the ruined saddlery. It was ripped open, but the Jabberwock would never fit inside, and I had a vague idea that the rubble might afford us something to use as a weapon. “There. Move!”

  The characters inside the pub had seen it too. Lancelot and the Scarlet Pimpernel burst from the door; their swords flashed as they jabbed ineffectually at the creature’s legs. It ignored them entirely. It was after us.

  We were almost too late. I had just thrown myself against the door to wedge it shut when I felt the Jabberwock’s weight crash against the outer wall. The whole building shook; I ducked instinctively and covered my head. Outside, I heard the creak of rafters and the concussion of bricks hitting the ground, and then screams.

  Charley had turned amid the rubble, horrified. The building next to us had collapsed.

  “Don’t look,” I told him fiercely.

  “But—were Lancelot and Sir Percy under the—?”

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t hear them anymore. “Don’t think about it. Keep reading.”

  He nodded, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and looked back at the notepad. Somehow, he’d managed to keep his place.

  (“One, two! One, two! / And through and through / The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!”)

  The claws that catch were scrabbling at the broken wall. I could feel the Jabberwock’s hot breath in waves through the gaps, and hear the mad, incessant burble as it dug. The stones were already flying; it would be through in a moment.

  I searched frantically among the bits of wood on the ground—this was a saddlery, there had to be something deadly and sharp somewhere—but found nothing. Plainly, this was a saddlery in name only; nobody was forging horseshoes. I found a particularly sharp piece of wooden scaffolding, ripped from the wall, and seized it in desperation. A stick, basically. I had a stick.

  “If you can’t read it away,” I said to Charley, “can I at least get a vorpal sword?”

  “If you can tell me what a vorpal sword is,” Charley replied, without looking up, “then you can have one.”

  “I assumed a really sharp sword.”

  “Everyone assumes that. But there’s no textual evidence.”

  Blinding light. The boarded window had smashed in. I saw the glare of a flaming eye, then felt the heat of real, true flames. I strongly suspected the building was catching fire.

  “Charley,” I said, as calmly as I could. “You’d better read faster.”

  “I’m trying,” he protested. His voice was tight with panic. My own calm, really, was only a different kind of panic. “It’s a bit hard with all this going on. I can’t think.”

  “Are you telling me you can’t do it? Now?”

  “No! I’m not! I’m just—Rob, please, just let me read, will you?”

  “It was working for a moment. I think I saw it start to change, right before it came at us.”

  “I nearly got a New Historicist reading to take, but it doesn’t hold up. I’m trying to see if I can get it to be a rather sinister bildungsroman. But—”

  “What has the summoner made it?”

  “Honestly? I think this is an archetypal monster. It means nothing, so it means whatever you take a monster to be. That’s why that green flame’s left over from the Hound of the Baskervilles, I think. It’s plugging the gaps in description. Rob, I really, really need to think here.”

  I heard a shout ring out from the fog. Outside, the Jabberwock turned from the wall, and snarled. Curiosity pulled me forward against my will. Tightening my grip on the stick of wood, I stepped forward, just enough to see through the holes in the damaged walls.

  It was Heathcliff. The Brontë hero was approaching the Jabberwock at a walk, his knife-gun raised. Against the green flames, the black flames of his own eyes burning, he looked striking and powerful: a creature made of human passions, as the creature in front of him was made of suggestion and wordplay and fear. He fired. The bullet bounced harmlessly from the Jabberwock’s waistcoat; it gave no sign of having been hurt by the shots, but it clearly felt them. Fire spilled from its eyes, and it roared. Even Lewis Carroll would have had to describe that sound as a roar: deep, elemental, furious. It chilled me to the core.

  Heathcliff only laughed. “Do you think to frighten me? I am a demon, too, you know. You may best me, but we are the same.”

  It towered over him, tall and lithe and ridiculous. The claws snatched for him; the head with its grasping jaws came for him. Heathcliff, his teeth bared in a grim smile, threw the pistol aside and struck it, hard, on the snout.

  The Jabberwock let out one startled cry, then its eyes flared. As Heathcliff drew back to hit again, its fangs flashed, crunched down on his torso, and flung him to one side like a rabbit.

  I gasped. I couldn’t stop myself, even though I knew it would catch Charley’s attention and pull him out of the close-reading trance he was trying to enter. Heathcliff hit the ground, hard, and lay there limp and broken as an old doll. I thought I heard him groan.

  “What’s happening?” Charley demand
ed from behind me.

  “Heathcliff. He just hit the thing in the face. Don’t look,” I added sharply as he started forward. “Keep reading.”

  “Is he safe?”

  I looked again, dreading the answer. The Jabberwock slunk toward the prone body, burbling green flame. The Street was a crumble of crushed stone and acrid smoke. There was no sign of the two swordsmen. There was no sign of anybody.

  At once, the door to the pub crashed open. Matilda Wormwood stood there, her thin legs braced determinedly. Her head was beneath the level of the doorknob, and her face looked very pale and remote. She reached out her hand; Heathcliff, on the cobblestones, gave a convulsive twitch that wasn’t his own.

  I swore quietly.

  “What?” Charley demanded. I didn’t answer. The Darcys were at Matilda’s elbow now, one crouched, waiting. She narrowed her eyes, and reached out further. Heathcliff’s limp body gave another jolt; then the invisible force spilling from her eyes wrapped around him and lifted him up. He rushed forward, jolting over the cobbles. One of the Darcys scooped him up, hand under Heathcliff’s arms. The Jabberwock curled back its lip in a shriek.

  “Rob…”

  “The others have got him,” I said, but that wasn’t answering the question. They had him, but they had drawn the Jabberwock’s attention. It would be on them soon. It would be on all of them, those hidden out of sight in the pub. Heathcliff, if he wasn’t dead already, would almost certainly be torn apart; so would the Darcys, and little Matilda. Millie would, too, if she was still inside, along with God knows who else.

  Unless someone distracted it long enough to buy Charley more time to save them.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. It would be monumentally stupid, not to mention reckless. Probably it would eat me in the blink of an eye without any good being done at all.

  “Definitely an Emily Brontë,” Charley said, with a very quick, very shaky smile.

  “What?”

  “She used to punch her dogs in the face.”

  I had no idea what he meant, and had no intention of stopping to ask. I was about to do the stupidest, most reckless thing I’d ever done.