The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by H. G. Parry

  I knew I was right. It still didn’t make sense. “But I didn’t inherit it. She never showed any sign of worrying that I had.”

  “She had, after all, just seen him return from the dead. Perhaps that told her. Perhaps that is what whoever requested it was also looking for.”

  “But even if that’s true, so what? So what if she knew he’d grow to be a summoner? Why would that stop her from letting him be taken to the hospital as a newborn? He wasn’t going to perform close analysis in the infants’ wing. He couldn’t read.”

  “Might there be some other physical sign she was worried they would detect?” He answered his own question. “Foolish. There would be nothing to indicate a summoner in any physical exam—a brain scan, perhaps, but they would be unlikely to perform one of those. And even then, they wouldn’t know what they were looking at. Sutherland?”

  My breath had caught. All at once, I knew. I knew what must have happened, and what my mother had known. And I thought I’d felt sick before.

  Frankenstein pounced on me. “What? What is it?”

  With great effort, I pulled shattered fragments of myself together tightly enough to say words. They weren’t particularly good words. “Nothing. Look, thanks for showing me this. I’ll ask Mum about it when they get here, all right? It’s probably nothing.”

  I don’t think I fooled Victor Frankenstein—I don’t think “it’s probably nothing” fools anybody—but perhaps a man who built a monster in his attic has some degree of respect for personal secrets. At least, to my eternal gratitude, he nodded. “Very well.”

  I rubbed my eyes, trying to collect myself. “I owe you a hundred dollars still, don’t I?”

  Frankenstein snorted. “I care for knowledge, not money. I’ve had payment enough. I need but one more thing, and I will consider myself in your debt. If your brother did indeed return from the dead, and you find out anything more about it, will you promise to tell me?”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “At least, not in the way you mean.”

  “Disappointing. But thank you.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get any closer to the secret of your life.” In the wake of my gratitude to him for not questioning me further, I actually meant it.

  “No. Don’t be.” He closed the laptop, stood, and paused. “Will you permit me to tell you something?”

  “What is it?”

  He seemed to be groping for words, as someone might for an unfamiliar door handle in the dark. When he spoke, he was uncharacteristically hesitant. “There used to be a Nancy who lived homeless around Vivian Street. Nancy of Oliver Twist, I refer to. We would help each other now and again. I’m not sure why she never chose to go to the Street when it came. Perhaps the idea of living on the fringes was too deeply embedded in her character for her to overcome. She should have gone. She was a lovely young woman. Too kind to be on the streets.”

  “Were you friends?” There was a note of grief in his voice, but I wasn’t tactless enough to ask if he was in love with her. Still, he was a Romantic.

  “If I were,” Frankenstein said, without change of expression, “I should have known better. I don’t exactly have luck with friends. One day she told me about a dream she kept having, a glimpse of a dark place that changed sometimes to a glimpse of thievery or prostitution or blackmail. She was the first person I ever heard speak of the new world.”

  “She was seeing through another Nancy,” I said, with a rush of realization. “One belonging to the other summoner. As Uriah Heep was seeing through Eric.”

  Frankenstein didn’t ask about Uriah Heep, or Eric. “I believe so. It’s rather difficult to verify.”

  “Why? Where is she? Millie would like to talk to her, I’m sure.”

  “As would I.” His gaze was fixed carefully on the steel fridges. “Two weeks after she told me of her dream, she was found dead in an alley. Her skull was caved in. I had the honor of viewing her body right here in the hospital mortuary.”

  “God.” My brief excitement turned cold in my stomach. “She was killed for talking to you?”

  “I doubt it. I doubt the summoner knows or cares that I exist. I would imagine she was killed because, willingly or not, the other Nancy revealed her existence. Through no fault of her own, she was a person who could be eyes in the summoner’s camp. Had Nancy—the Nancy I knew—been more protected, the summoner would probably have merely stopped using her own. But she was a nobody, and easy to dispose of. And that is how I know that the summoner’s promise to respect the lives of freeborn characters is a lie. It’s how I know that the summoner, whoever he is, is driven not by that desire for knowledge which might supply a reason for experimenting with one’s powers, but something altogether more monstrous. It’s the reason why I am, despite my general disinterest in politics, quite glad to have been able to aid you. And it’s also why I think it’s perhaps time to absent myself from this city before the new world comes. I have no desire to be a part of it.”

  “And go where?”

  “Anywhere. Preferably some lonely castle or vast snowy wasteland, but in this country I may have to make do with a beach. Don’t leave your brother unwatched, Sutherland.”

  At that moment, I wanted nothing more to do exactly what he was doing: retreat, as far and as fast as I could. A beach would be fine. More than fine. He’d been right about knowledge. I never wanted to see or know anything, ever again. But at the last sentence, I nodded.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  I went back through to the waiting room, after a while. I had to; I couldn’t stand in the mortuary forever. Perhaps I should have stayed there longer, though, because when Lydia saw me, I wasn’t ready to talk to her.

  “I was just about to come out and find you,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. Obviously, my nod was a lie, but it was an expected one. “Mum and Dad are on the way.”

  “Good. A doctor stuck his head in the door. They still don’t have anything definitive about Charley, but they’ve got him admitted to intensive care and wired up to things I can’t pronounce, and they said he’s stabilized. He’s not a medical emergency anymore. More of a puzzle, they said.”

  I laughed, painfully, before I could help it. “They have no idea.” The rest of her words caught up to me a second later. “That sounds hopeful, anyway. Can we go see him?”

  “We can go in anytime, they said. The doctor wants to talk to you properly, when he has a moment. Rob…”

  My heart sank at the look on her face. I should have known I wasn’t going to get away with this for much longer.

  “Rob, what the hell is going on?” She must have been dying to ask this for the last hour; really, it’s amazing she held out this long. “What kind of family business puts your brother in a coma that you won’t even explain to the hospital?”

  “I told you, I don’t know why he’s in a coma,” I said, knowing how lame it sounded. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “And I’m not an idiot. I know you requested his birth certificate last week, after we got back from your parents’.”

  “What…? Have you read my e-mails?”

  “I don’t have to read your e-mails. You downloaded the form on our home computer. You never remember to clear the search history.”

  “I’m not usually trying to hide things from you.”

  “Is Charley adopted?”

  “No.” I ran a hand over my face wearily. My head was pounding. “I thought he might be, but no. There are a few things I need to ask my parents, though, when they get here.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Family things.”

  “And when do I get to become family?” She folded her arms. “Because we’ve been living together four years. We’ve bought a house together. We’ve been… I thought we were thinking about having a family of our own. I’ve met your parents. They’re lovely. You’ve met mine. They love you. And I’ve just helped you rush your brother, about whom I happen to care deeply, to an emergency room in a coma. I
think I’m entitled to know a few things.”

  “You are,” I said. “I just—look, can we have this conversation another time? I can’t really deal with this right now.”

  “And by ‘this,’ you mean…?”

  “Lydia, please, for God’s sake, just leave me alone.”

  That sounded a lot more irritable out in the open than it had in my head. From the look Lydia shot me, I knew she thought so as well.

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I think I’d better go home. I’ll call you tomorrow morning from work, and see where we’re at. Call me if anything happens with Charley, won’t you? I can know that, at least?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course. Lydia, I didn’t mean to sound—”

  “I don’t mind how you sound, Rob,” she interrupted. “You’re worried, you’re upset; you can sound however you like. But you don’t want me here, do you? You don’t want me part of this, whatever this is. Tell me you do, and I’ll stay. But you don’t.”

  I desperately wanted her to stay. The trouble was, I needed her not to stay. There was a hurricane raging, out of control, and there were too many things flying around—Millie, the Street, the summoner, Eric, Dorian Gray, Uriah Heep, Charley—to risk adding Lydia to the mix. I didn’t want her to collide with any of them. At best, it would break the last thread of normality I had left. At worst, it could put her in terrible danger, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that, not when I had just come from seeing the Street in tatters and my brother on a hospital gurney, struggling to breathe.

  I was still thinking of something to say when she shook her head.

  “Well. I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll see where we go from there. Give Charley my love when he wakes up, all right?”

  I managed a nod.

  She hesitated, then touched my arm briefly; it might have been a compromise between a hug and nothing at all. Then she was gone.

  Lydia

  Lydia had gone as far as the parking lot when she realized she was more or less trapped in the hospital suburbs. They had come together. Even if she’d wanted to take their car—and while she was frustrated enough to leave Rob stranded, she wouldn’t have risked it when Charley was in intensive care—he still had the keys. She liked walking, but it was a long way from Newtown to their house, and she was wearing her very highest heels, the blue ones that Rob had thought would be impossible to walk in. He was wrong, but not for several kilometers. That left a bus, and she had no spare change. She could have screamed.

  She bought an unwanted bottle of water at the nearby convenience store for the sake of getting five dollars cash out, and managed to squeeze into the aisle of an old bus that was rapidly filling with afternoon commuters. Over the rumbling of the engines, she almost didn’t hear her phone ring in her handbag. An unknown number. She didn’t think it would be anyone from the hospital, if it wasn’t Rob or his parents, but her heart still pounded and her fingers fumbled as she answered. “Hello?”

  “Miss Lydia?” She recognized the voice at once. “This is Eric Umble, Mr. Sutherland’s intern. I was so sorry to hear about his brother.”

  “Thank you,” she said reflexively, to give herself a chance to collect herself behind the pleasantry. The bus turned a corner; she lurched sideways and mouthed an apology at the harassed-looking woman next to her. “Can I help you?”

  “Actually, I was thinking I might help you.” She had to press the phone tighter to her ear to hear his voice. It buzzed close to her skin. “I said on Sunday night that I might be able to help you. I don’t know if you remember our conversation—”

  “Of course I do,” she said. She remembered more than that, of course. He had told her that he couldn’t speak freely on the phone: he was being listened to. This was the call he had promised her. The timing, though, sent a chill down her spine. It wasn’t a coincidence. Somehow, Charley’s collapse and Eric’s escape were connected.

  “Then you remember what I said,” Eric was saying. “That I could tell you what was going on. I still can. If you meet me in town in an hour, I can tell you everything.”

  Trouble, Rob had said. Lydia wasn’t afraid of trouble. She had worked in hotels since she was in her early twenties; she had worked part-time in bars before that. There weren’t many species of trouble she hadn’t served drinks to or booked a room for in her time. Still…

  “Can’t you tell me right now?” she asked, just to test the waters.

  “I’m afraid not, Miss Lydia. It’s the sort of thing that really needs to be told in person. Face-to-face. I could meet you at the café outside your hotel, if you have the time. It should be convenient.”

  “How do you—?” She cut off the question. How did he know any of this? Where she worked was the least of it.

  A boat ticket, and a few hundred dollars. It wasn’t a good deal to ask—it wasn’t a good deal to give. It wasn’t as though any harm could come to her, in a public café right outside her own hotel. It was just all deeply, troublingly strange.

  He clearly heard her hesitation. “Please,” he said. He said nothing more, but the sincere note was back in his voice. Perhaps it was that note that decided her. Perhaps it was just that she couldn’t bear not to know for a moment longer.

  “All right,” she said. “The Black Finch, right? I’ll be there in an hour.”

  XXI

  There’s something very naked about intensive care wards—not that I’d ever been in one before, but that was my impression when I was escorted through the door to find Charley. The industrial-looking machines displaying heartbeats and respirations for all to see, the tubes and pipes snaking from bodies like plastic intestines, how small everyone looks suspended in a swathe of blankets and equipment. I had a sick flash that the patients had been turned inside out, their organs on display, and wondered if perhaps I was one of those people who fainted in hospitals after all.

  Charley was in the third bed down. I was relieved to see him wired to less machinery than many of the other patients. Drips piped liquid into his veins, as Lydia had said, and a couple of monitors beeped rhythmically above his head. But he was breathing on his own, and more easily than he had been in the car. That had to be a good sign.

  The doctor came through quickly, as the nurse who’d shown me in had promised, looking extremely harried. It was getting late in the day, and the hospital had been bustling as I stood outside. Also, from what he told me in his kind, professional way, Charley was a stress-inducing patient.

  “Frankly, Mr. Sutherland,” the doctor said, “your brother makes no sense at all. His blood sugar levels are almost nonexistent, and yet he has no history of hypoglycemia. He’s suffering severe exhaustion, and yet has no sign of muscle fatigue or even physical exertion. When he came in he was mildly hypothermic, which we can’t explain. There’s no trace of any foreign substance or infection. Most puzzling, based on what the university told us when we phoned, his condition has managed to go from slightly run-down to critical in the space of about two hours. We were hoping you could shed some light on what exactly he’s been doing to himself.”

  “I really can’t.” It was true. “Look, how is he? Can you do something?”

  “We can, and we are,” the doctor said. “We’re calling this a hypoglycemic coma for now, and pumping him full of glucose; he’s also on a saline drip, to counteract dehydration. He’s responding well already. We were concerned about the strain on his heart, but his pulse is slowing right down. As far as I can tell, he could wake up at any time. We hope he will. But if we don’t know the cause of all this, we don’t know how to stop it from recurring.”

  I did know the cause, and I knew exactly what would cause it to recur. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to stop it either.

  “Thanks,” I said. “My parents should be here soon. Can I wait here, in case he wakes up?”

  “We have no idea when that will be,” he warned. “Even if all’s well, it may not be until tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. The world could be over by then.
I thought of Victor Frankenstein.

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “I think I’d better be here.”

  The sun was starting to crawl down the sky when my parents finally arrived. It surprised me when I went out to reception to meet them. I had lost track of time in that timeless, sterile room.

  “How is he?” Mum asked as soon as she saw me. Her eyes were wide and anxious. I noticed, irrelevantly, that she was still in the old jeans and wrap she must have worn to volunteer at the animal shelter, and Dad wore his gardening trousers. Neither had bothered to put on a coat.

  “He’s okay,” I said. I had meant to rush to reassure them, but at the sight of them my throat closed up. “He’s still unconscious. There’s a doctor waiting to talk to you. But he’s alive.”

  That was the least reassuring reassurance ever, but Dad managed an encouraging nod. “Well… good.” He squeezed my shoulder. “It’s going to be all right, you’ll see.”

  I looked at Mum’s face, and knew I was in trouble.

  Sure enough, as soon as the three of us were alone, it started. The doctor had talked Charley’s condition over with Mum and Dad kindly, as he had with me, and then found us a room to wait in not far down the corridor. This one, unlike the emergency admissions waiting room, was abandoned; we thanked him politely, and waited for the door to close.

  “What on earth is all this about a street from Dickens populated with fictional characters?” Mum demanded. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, pulling her gray wrap close. She seemed to have shrunk several inches since the weekend—or, more probably, since my last phone call. “For God’s sake, Rob, you know he’s supposed to be staying well away from anything like that.”

  “Calm down, you two,” Dad began, without much hope. He’d been on the sidelines of too many fights between us.