The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by H. G. Parry

  I didn’t have time for this. The world was ending. The last person I wanted to be with was Uriah Heep.

  “You people are all insane,” I said, and went to find my brother.

  The television screen cut to the studio in a flash of color as I started toward the stairs. The broadcaster’s immaculate voice followed me down the corridor.

  “Reports have come through of an explosion in downtown Wellington. Police are warning residents not to approach. Nobody within the affected area has yet emerged, or made contact with teams of rescuers waiting for permission to move in.”

  XXIV

  Charley’s bed was empty when I entered the intensive care ward. The first thing I saw was crumpled blankets, with equipment and IV tubes hanging limp to the side. A second later, I saw him in the aisle, a ghostly figure in pale hospital pajamas. In that moment, pure, perfect relief washed everything else away. He was alive. Whatever else he was, he was awake again, and he was alive.

  “Hey, idiot,” I said.

  Perhaps Eric had a point. You might be considered a little hard on your brother when that was the most affectionate term that came to mind.

  Charley didn’t seem to care. His face lit at the sight of me, as though I were a new metaphor he’d uncovered. “There you are.”

  “You’re awake,” I said, redundantly. He was so awake it was exhausting.

  “They took my clothes. I think it’s to keep me here.”

  “That happened to me once at the swimming pool,” I said. “When I was twelve. You could say hello back, you know. Before I get the impression that I’m not welcome.”

  That did raise a smile, though a quick one. “Hello. Sorry—you are very, very welcome, believe me. It’s just that nobody will tell me what’s going on. There was a doctor here for about a minute, then something started happening outside. He told me to lie back down and stay quiet.”

  “Well, that’s probably standard business in hospitals.”

  “The instruction, perhaps. I don’t think doctors usually run out the door immediately after giving it and not come back. It’s here, isn’t it?”

  “It’s here,” I said. “There was a flare of light, and now Courtenay Place is filled with smoke. It looks like a great cloud spilling down the road. Like the Oliver Twist house, only more tangible.”

  “It’s even further through. I felt it come into existence, I think. At least—something jolted me awake, like when you open your eyes to the blinds swinging and know an earthquake just hit. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.” I felt my stomach tighten, but kept my voice normal. I knew then that what Mum had said was true. “I suppose it was like when the Street came into being. It called to you then, didn’t it?”

  “Characters from all over the world will be flocking to this one. I can still feel it, the way I can feel the Street, and it’s far stronger. It’s not just calling them, it’s pulling.” He shook his head restlessly. “I need to be there. They can’t legally keep me here, can they?”

  “Why? What can you do?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Where’s Millie?”

  “The Street, I assume. I can’t get her on the phone. I sent Dickens and Holmes to her.”

  He frowned. “You sent whom?”

  “Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes. You made them—don’t you remember? Dickens said he was the part of your mind that made it out.”

  “Did he?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. What did they tell you?”

  “Just that you’d worked out who the summoner was. After that, we put it together ourselves.”

  “The fact that she doesn’t have a class this afternoon?”

  “That, exactly. And a few other things.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, mostly in the hope that he would too. He was wearing me out. “Look, calm down. They can’t legally keep you here, no, and I will make sure they don’t. Take a breath. I know this is urgent, but—why Beth? How did you know it was her?”

  “I should have known earlier, really. But—it doesn’t make sense. Why would she do something like this?”

  “I don’t know. It’s insane. But she’s definitely done it. I was practically on the phone with her when she made the city. How did you—?”

  “The archetypal monster,” he said. “It was a paper Beth gave at a Victoriana conference at the National Library, last year. ‘The Claws that Catch: Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock as Archetypal Monster.’ She isn’t a Victorian specialist really, or not officially; she only came to do me a favor, because I was on the committee and we were short on submissions.”

  “Still,” I said. “The summoner might have used her paper.”

  “Unlikely. It was never published. Besides, it was too perfect. The Jabberwock was her work, and so was Henry. The critics she uses, the interpretations she favors… they had her brushstrokes all over them. I can’t believe I didn’t realize sooner.”

  “Maybe you didn’t want to. She was your friend.”

  “She started at the university about the same time as me,” he said, after a pause. His face had gone quiet. “From London. She took a lower pay grade to be here. She came because of me, didn’t she? She knew what I was.”

  “That sounds likely,” I had to agree.

  “I should have realized,” he repeated. “It was only when you told me, in the car, that she lied about having a class this afternoon. I could see it then, but I—I don’t know, I just couldn’t focus. I was so cold. Did I talk to you? I can’t remember.”

  “We nearly lost you,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.” I knew he had heard more than my words, and that he meant it this time. “You were right. I thought I could do this. I didn’t believe it could kill me.”

  “You were right,” I corrected him. “You didn’t die.” He didn’t respond, and after a moment I moved on. “I told them I’d bring you back to the Street, if you’re up to it. It would probably be safer there.”

  “I wish I could go,” he said with a sigh. “I promised to protect it. But this isn’t about the Street; it’s about the whole city—maybe the whole world. And it’s about Beth and me. She made it about us when she sent the Hound of the Baskervilles to my door. I need to find her.”

  “She’s waiting for you,” I said. “Eric was outside the hospital just now. He told me. He also said you’d go.”

  “He was right.” He looked at me. “You don’t have to come, though. I know you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I do!” I said, stung despite myself. I tried not to think too hard about what else Eric had said. I didn’t take advice from any variation of Uriah Heep. “Have to, not want to. I’m not letting you enter a nightmare version of Dickens on your own. And besides—”

  Charley waited.

  “Lydia’s in there.” It hurt almost as much to say it as it had to realize it. “In the city—in the cloud. It swallowed her up.”

  His eyes went round. “I’m sorry.” He finally sank down onto the bed beside me, and I realized I hadn’t wanted him to. The frantic energy I’d come into drained away at once. It was frightening how quickly he could shrink back into the person I usually thought of him as. “I should have asked—but the doctor said you two had both come in, I just…”

  “She left,” I said, without further explanation. “And now she’s gone.”

  “We’ll get her back,” he said. “I promise. God, I’m so sorry…”

  “What for?” It was that kind of apology: an admission of guilt, not an expression of sympathy. “You didn’t do it.”

  “I did,” he corrected. “I didn’t bring out the city, precisely, but… I know I ruined things when I moved here, Rob, even from the first. You had your whole life here; you didn’t want me in it. I knew that, and I came anyway. Uriah Heep, the Street, the new world—I brought it all with me, and I brought it to you.”

  The terrible thing was, that was almost exactly the narrative that ran through my own head—at the worst of times, in
the dark hours, but still, it was there. It was startling to hear it repeated back in Charley’s voice.

  “Why did you come back from England?” I asked. This wasn’t the time for that question, but there might not be another. In the three years since he’d arrived, I’d never asked him.

  “I don’t know.” This time, I waited for him to continue. “I was homesick, I suppose, but it wasn’t just that. It was just… I was thirteen when I went to Oxford. I never even thought about it. It was just planned for me, and I was happy to go along with it. I loved learning, and I wanted to make people proud. I did both, and it was fine, for a while. Then—I don’t know. I wanted something more. And I realized I didn’t know what more there was.”

  “I think you wanted this.” I gestured, which was pretty stupid, since we were in an intensive care ward. But he knew what the gesture encompassed. “The Street. The written world.”

  “I did,” he said. “And I knew that was ungrateful. You were right. I’ve always been given everything I ever wanted, in terms of my normal abilities, even when it did nothing but inconvenience the rest of you. It was stupid to want more. But I did.”

  “It wasn’t stupid,” I said. “And it wasn’t ungrateful—I was stupid to say that. I’ve always wanted everything.”

  He shrugged. “Anyway. I went through a month or so when I didn’t do much of anything—I could barely read, much less research, and certainly much less summon. Oxford’s a suffocating place when you’re in the wrong mood, and I was. I had enough old material that I could keep working, but still—I think a lot of people who knew me over there started to get disappointed in me, which frightened me, because I’d never disappointed anybody before. A few more started to get concerned, which frightened me more, because people looking too closely at me means they might find out what I could do. Right at that point, a job came up here. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew it wasn’t in Oxford. I thought perhaps it might be at home.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He looked surprised. “What for? I was fine, really. But that’s why I came, since you asked. I knew you didn’t want me, and I was being selfish. I promised myself I would leave you alone. But somehow I broke that promise, again and again—whenever something came through that I was having a hard time dealing with on my own, I picked up the phone and called you. I could deal with it on my own—I did for years, over there. I don’t know why I kept calling you.”

  I remembered at once something I had overheard my parents say, when Charley was preparing to go to Oxford. They didn’t know I was listening; I wasn’t listening, until I heard my name. Mum was talking about how she wasn’t convinced Charley could cope with going to the university emotionally, even though the work had probably been within his capabilities for quite a while. He was still painfully unsure of himself.

  “He’ll be fine,” Dad said. “Honestly, part of what you’re talking about is just called being a younger brother. I was one myself, you know. He’ll be a different person without Rob there all the time.”

  A different person. Those were the words he used. He didn’t mean what Eric had meant, of course—nothing that literal. He hadn’t known what Charley was any more than I did. It didn’t mean Eric was right. But still…

  “You can’t do this,” I had said to him in the car, only hours ago. “It’s going to kill you.” And almost at once, it nearly had.

  I felt sick.

  “I didn’t not want you here,” I said to Charley, as firmly as I could. I’d thought it was a lie when I said it, but I realized it was true. Funny how words do that. “I just—I didn’t know you anymore. I still don’t, perhaps. We’ve been on opposite sides of the world since we both left home. I saw you grow up in glimpses, a week every Christmas. We both kept changing in between times.”

  He smiled, very slightly. “‘We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on.’”

  “I assume that’s Dickens.”

  “Great Expectations. He wasn’t really talking about that kind of change. But sometimes I think he was. The book is.”

  As usual, I had no idea what to say. “This isn’t your fault,” I said finally. “This isn’t your city covering mine, like your stuff encroaching on my side of the room when you were seven. It’s Beth. She did this. You tried to stop her before, and you’re going to stop her now. We both are. Right?”

  He nodded.

  “So let’s stop wasting time, and go find her.”

  I stood. Charley stayed seated.

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” he said hesitantly. “With Uriah Heep, back in the Street. I was fading in and out, but I do remember that.”

  “No worries,” I said. I didn’t want to dwell on that, so I changed the subject. “Eric said something else outside—about Beth. He said that her characters couldn’t see her as we do. They see something else.”

  “I know. We had one of her characters come to the Street—he said the same. But they can’t name what it is they do see.”

  “Eric tried. He said it was a spider in a web. Does that mean anything to you?”

  He frowned. “No. That is—I don’t know what it might mean to Eric. It’s not an uncommon phrase.”

  “Well. He said to mention it.” I paused. “We have another problem, you know.”

  It took him a moment to pull out from his thoughts. “What problem?”

  “Mum and Dad are here. Dickens and Holmes have taken them to the Street.”

  For a second, Charley looked completely, genuinely horrified. Then he laughed, tried to stop himself from laughing, and ended up giggling so infectiously I smiled myself. I hadn’t heard him laugh in a long time.

  “Oh God, they’re going to be so mad at me,” he said.

  “They’re never mad at you. They’ll say this is all my fault.”

  “That settles it. We should both go into Beth’s world. It can’t be more dangerous than facing Mum and Dad in the middle of the Street.”

  “I agree,” I said. “So come on.”

  Millie

  When the new world came, it cut through the Street like a knife through paper. Wind roared. Cobblestones rippled like scales underfoot. Walls breathed in and out like the sides of a monstrous serpent. It was the shift that everyone had been building toward.

  Millie and the others were still in the public house, where Heathcliff’s body lay on the floor behind the counter. Night had fallen early, for no reason that they could fathom, and all the lamps in the building were lit. The room had been alive with their arguments. In the wake of the shift, the silence was devastating.

  Darcy One was the first to speak. “It’s here, isn’t it?”

  “It’s here,” Dorian answered. The light from the lamp gleamed on his hair, as light was wont to do. He looked as though he were posing for a portrait.

  Millie found her words again. “Wait here,” she instructed the room. She looked at Dorian, and forced firm bossiness into her voice. “I mean it, Dorian. I won’t have you causing a commotion in the pub like a common drunk. It’s beneath you.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Dorian said, “what may or may not be beneath me.”

  He didn’t say it with much fire, just as Darcy One had spoken with neither pride or attractive haughtiness. Everyone was very quiet.

  Millie slipped through the wall, out into the dusk of central Wellington. The air was warm out there, despite the breeze. She went down Cuba Street, and turned onto Courtenay Place.

  To a point, the street stretched out as it usually did: grand old theaters, restaurants, redbrick walkways lined with metal sculptures and leafy green trees. After that point, it just stopped. Instead of the hills in the distance, Millie found herself looking at a wall of darkness. It was moving, inch by inch, toward them.

  “I say,” she said, very quietly. It was all she had been given to say.

  She was still standing there when the others began to come through the wall. Dorian came first,
followed by a handful of characters: the Artful, Uriah Heep, Lady Macbeth, and the Implied Reader. Normally it would be dangerous for so many to leave the wall at once, at this time of the evening. Now, the Left Bank Arcade was deserted. Everyone had flocked to see the shadow spilling across the city or flocked just as fast in the other direction. Nothing was dangerous now, or everything was.

  Dorian had sighted her too. He motioned to the others to wait a little distance apart, and came toward her. She saw a covered square tucked under his arm, wrapped in a cloth, and knew immediately that her suspicions had been right. Her heart tightened.

  “Hello, Millie,” he said as she drew near. In the darkness, he was a little less glowing, a little less larger than life. “Come to say goodbye?”

  “That’s your portrait, isn’t it?” she said, with a nod at the covered frame under his arm.

  “The agreement was that you would hold it for as long as I resided in the Street,” he said. “I’m taking my soul back now. You were fortunate I didn’t ask you to hand it over. A soul is such a heavy thing when it passes from hand to hand.”

  “I didn’t realize you had a key to my wardrobe.”

  “I have no key to anything concerning you, I assure you. The Artful picked the lock. He’s coming too, you know. And the Implied Reader, for some reason, although what he expects to find waiting for him out there…”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “It’s here, isn’t it?” he said. “The new world. We all felt it come.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s here. It’s devouring everything.”

  He smiled a little. “Glorious.”

  “Dorian…” She paused until she could trust her voice. “What’s this about? Don’t give me all that posturing out there; I want to know what’s really going on. I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, Millie. Of course you don’t. You’re Millie Radcliffe-Dix, girl detective. Always strong, always loyal, always brave. I’m Dorian Gray. I’m frightened for my own life. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s all this is about. I want to stand with the strongest party, because I’m afraid to stand against them.”