The List of Seven

by Mark Frost

  Shots from inside. Doyle moved to the man they’d come for, took Barry by the hand, and led him away. He offered no resistance or recognition, following as docilely as a child. Sparks gestured Doyle to take him quickly down the path. He remined behind, near the door to the abattoir.

  Doyle and Barry were out of sight of the door when he heard its hinges crack open, followed by a volley of shots and screams from within. Doyle stopped. Barry stared vacantly at the ground. Eileen moved up the path to join them; they turned toward the building and waited.

  The shots ceased. Nothing moved. The sudden silence of the moors seemed as vast as the span of stars above.

  Sparks appeared over the rise. He discarded the rifle as he drew near. His face and clothes were awash with blood, which looked black in the moonlight. Doyle had never seen such an expression on a human face: pity, horror, rage, like nothing so much as a god who had just destroyed a world of his own creation that had spun insanely out of control. Behind him, a column of flame shot up into the sky; Sparks had set fire to the buildings.

  Sparks walked right by them, gathered Barry tenderly up in his arms, and carried him toward the railroad tracks. Eileen sobbed once, involuntarily. Doyle put an arm around her, and they followed.

  As they neared the tracks, a curious sight appeared: an engine and two cars backing toward them down the tracks from the west.

  “It’s our train,” said Doyle. “It’s our train.”

  Hurrying to catch up to Jack as he climbed the embankment, from a distance they saw Larry leap from the cab and meet Sparks as he gently laid his burden down. Larry fell to his knees. The single, simple cry Larry gave out when he saw his fallen brother rent the still surface of the night like a spear.

  Doyle and Eileen made their way up the slope. Larry knelt on the loose cinders, Barry in his arms, brushing an unruly cowlick of hair off his forehead.

  “Oh law, oh law no, Barry, oh my boy, look what they’ve done, look what they’ve done to you…look what they done to him, Jack, oh my boy, my poor boy.”

  Sparks stood over them, eyes lowered, face hidden in shadow. Eileen turned away to bury her sobs in Doyle’s shoulder.

  Larry shifted, and a slice of moonlight fell across Barry’s face. Doyle saw Barry’s eyes go up to meet his brother’s and focus there. They seemed to momentarily sustain the dimmest filament of life.

  Barry moved his lips. A sound came out. He repeated it.

  “Fin…fin…ish,” Barry had said.

  Then Barry drifted back down into the void that now possessed him.

  Tears streaming from his eyes, Larry looked up at Jack, who gestured to himself. Larry slowly shook his head. Sparks nodded, understanding, gave a look to Doyle, and moved away. Doyle put both arms around Eileen and guided her farther down the tracks.

  Doyle looked back over her shoulder. Larry bent down to kiss Barry’s cheek. He whispered something to him and then slid his soft hands around his brother’s neck. Doyle turned aside. Eileen trembled violently in his arms.

  A short time passed. Doyle and Eileen looked at each other, but the intimacy of their shared distress felt insupportable. She looked away. Doyle sensed she had of necessity retreated to higher ground inside herself. He wondered intuitively if the resulting gap between them would ever again be breached.

  Larry closed Barry’s eyes. He cradled the body, rocking it slowly as if trying to soothe a child to sleep. Sparks stood over them, looking back toward Ravenscar. Dancing lights, lanterns, great numbers of them, moved along the tracks in their direction.

  Doyle took Eileen on board the train. She collapsed onto one of the seats. Through the windows, Doyle watched Sparks crouch beside Larry and speak to him. Larry nodded, lifted up his brother’s body, and carried it to the front of the train, out of sight.

  Doyle heard shots, moved to the rear of the car and out onto the platform. The lanterns were a quarter-mile away. Bullets whistled through the air, pinging off the steel. Doyle steadied the rifle on the handrail and fired at the lights until he’d emptied its chambers.

  The wheels of the engine engaged, and the train accelerated, pulling away from the pursuit. Before long, the lanterns faded to pinpricks of light that disappeared entirely into the darkness.

  chapter nineteen

  V.R.

  EILEEN REFUSED THE BRANDY DOYLE OFFERED. SHE MOVED somnolently to the berth in the rear, turned her face to the wall, and lay silently, without moving; sleeping or not, it was difficult to tell.

  Doyle did not spare himself a glass, draining it in two pulls. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror above the bar. The haggard, muddied, bloodstained visage staring back at him resembled no human being of whom he had memory. There are certain untoward advantages to shock, exhaustion, and grief, thought Doyle; a point is reached where one is no longer capable of feeling anything.

  Opening the connecting door, Doyle climbed along the side of the tender, hand over hand along the guard line to the engine. Barry’s body lay on the floor of the cab. Jack’s cloak served as a shroud; a boot extended from under its cover, rocking casually with the motion of the train. Larry stood at the throttle, staring straight ahead at the rails.

  “We’re ten miles from the main spur,” said Sparks over the roar of the engine. “The track’s clear ahead.”

  “London?” asked Doyle.

  Sparks nodded.

  Doyle looked out at the desolate, downy moors, alien and unforgiving as the surface of the moon, lifeless as the body under the shroud. The cold bite of the air whipping through the open cab felt cathartic.

  “I’ll be inside,” said Sparks.

  Sparks climbed back to the passenger car. Doyle loaded coal into the fire from the scuttle, refilled it from the fuel car, then stood by in silence, ready to offer support only if called upon.

  “You never heard him sing,” said Larry after a while, without looking at him.

  “No.”

  “That boy could sing like an angel. Had a voice like to…”

  Doyle nodded, waiting patiently.

  “He told me to go.”

  “What’s that, Larry?”

  “We drew ’em away from the ruins—that was the idea. Half those bastards went down ’fore they got near us. But a few doubled back behind. Had us pinched, dead to rights. He tells me to run. I says never, no sir. He says Jack needs least one of us can drive the train. I say it should be him. He says he’s the oldest, and I has to do what he tells me.”

  “Was he the oldest?”

  “By three minutes. He kept the gun, see. And I got off that hill.…” Larry wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Took a mess of them buggers down with ’im, didn’ he?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “We talked about it occasional, you know? Which of us would go first. He always said it would be him; Barry, see, he took chances. And he weren’t afraid of the end, not at all. From what Mr. Sparks taught us, he always said maybe death was just the start of something. What do you think, guv?”

  Larry looked at him for the first time.

  “I think that it is very possibly just the start of something,” said Doyle.

  Larry nodded, then looked down at his brother’s form beneath the flapping edge of Jack’s cloak.

  “Mr. Sparks says you killed the man wot did this to him.”

  Doyle nodded.

  “Then, sir, I am…forever in your debt,” said Larry, his voice breaking.

  Doyle said nothing. He wasn’t sure he could speak. Time passed. Larry wiped his eyes again.

  “If you don’t mind,” said Larry, apologetically, “I’d like to be alone with him now.”

  “Of course.”

  Doyle put out a hand. Larry shook it, once, without looking at him, then turned back to the throttle. Doyle worked his way back along the siding to the passenger car.

  Sparks sat at a table, the decanter of brandy open, two glasses set out. Doyle took a seat across from him. Sparks filled the glasses. They drank. The warmth of the liqu
or spread through Doyle’s belly, allotting some small distance from the horrors.

  Doyle told Sparks how Alexander had appeared in the courtyard of the inn, how they had then come to Ravenscar, leading to the confrontation in the great hall. Sparks listened intently to his thorough account, asking questions only about Alexander, Doyle’s impressions of him. When Doyle was done, they sat in silence for a while.

  “Are they just all mad?” asked Doyle finally, his voice low. “To believe they’ll bring this…being back to life.”

  Sparks thought for a while before answering. “What about those things in the basement of the museum? Can you offer an explanation?”

  “Can you explain the life force?”

  “One can have an opinion.”

  “But an explanation may be one mystery that’s beyond us.”

  Sparks nodded. They drank.

  “The story the old fisherman told Stoker, when he saw them come ashore from the schooner,” said Sparks.

  “They brought a coffin. Your father’s remains.”

  “He said they brought two coffins. What was in the second?”

  “We never found it.”

  “If this being they spoke of had in fact lived previously, presume for the moment they had some means of discovering the person it had been. Is it inconceivable Alexander and the Seven believed they required those remains in order to return it to life?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “The reason for Alexander’s sojourns in the East becomes the discovery of this person’s identity and the acquisition of its body.”

  “That follows.”

  Sparks nodded his agreement. “Then that second coffin becomes the key to their entire enterprise. I imagine that whereever he might be, Alexander even now has it in his possession.”

  Doyle saw the silver insignia in Sparks’s hand; he was turning it over, studying it, as if the riddle of his brother lived within like a scarab in amber.

  “But what did they mean to do? Practically. How could such a plan have worked?” asked Doyle.

  “To reason it out, it helps if one is able to simulate the thoughts of a madman,” said Sparks, with a slight smile.

  Doyle felt a blush of shame redden his cheek.

  “A child was to be born to the Duke of Clarence, on the assumption they first found a woman to marry him who satisfied the royal prerequisites.”

  “No small task.”

  “No, but assuming so. A child, a son, who as a result of whatever ritual the Seven invoke, is no more than an empty vessel bearing the incarnate soul of this slouching beast. What follows logically?”

  “Remove the obstacles remaining in the line of succession,” said Doyle.

  “Precisely. Since the boy requires some years to grow into his majority, they would be in no particular hurry that would arouse undue suspicion. The Queen’s been on the throne nearly fifty years—they know she won’t live forever.”

  “The Prince of Wales then.”

  “The boy’s grandfather and next in line. But it’s likely they leave him be for the time being; why remove the apparent heir from the scene and throw the regency into chaos? No, they can afford patience; Victoria passes on eventually—perhaps by the time our fair-haired boy reaches his adolescence—and Eddy, already a man of late middle age, takes the throne. Now who stands between the boy and the crown?”

  “Only his father.”

  “And no one in their right mind will ever allow that misbegotten sot to assume the globe and scepter. Prince Eddy has to go, and not long after his son is born, I’d guess. His death given the appearance of natural causes. Wouldn’t be difficult to arrange. Not with his medical profile.”

  Doyle agreed.

  “Leaving his son the Crown Prince, half-orphaned, adored by all, to take his place in succession behind his grandfather the King. Then it’s a fairly simple matter; shuffle King Bertie and any inconvenient heirs off their mortal coil and it’s Bonny Prince So-and-so in the coronation coach on his way to Windsor.”

  “But it could take twenty years.”

  “Raising the child from infancy takes that long regardless. Meanwhile, our friends in the Seven consolidate their positions as peddlers of influence to the royal family. Before the accession, the young King is made carefully aware of the lineage of his left-handed path to power—initiated into the fold—and so begins his thousand-year reign at the head of the most powerful nation on earth.”

  Sparks sat back. Doyle was astonished at how the scenario could sound so practical and at the same time utterly insane.

  “Why would they do it, Jack?”

  “A king can wage war. They’re in the business of building weapons. There’s a pragmatic reason. Perhaps the only sort with which we should concern ourselves for the moment.”

  Doyle nodded, the coolness of this rationality as refreshing as spring water. “And the land. The convicts. Vamberg’s drug.”

  “Man as rough clay. Playing at god,” said Sparks with a shrug.

  “There must be a more practical use.”

  Sparks paused. “Building a private militia.”

  “For their defense?”

  “Or some more belligerent purpose.”

  “But the treatment didn’t work. Not with any reliability,” said Doyle, thinking of the ruined men being force-marched to their deaths.

  “Man’s a very difficult creature to enslave finally. Try as we might.”

  Doyle finished the brandy. He paused, treading lightly now.

  “Jack. When we were last in London…the police told me you’d escaped from Bedlam.”

  “You gave them my name?”

  Doyle nodded. “They said you were mad.”

  Sparks cocked his head at an angle and looked at him askew. Was there a trace of a smile?

  “What did you tell them, Doyle?”

  “Nothing more. I must admit there’ve been moments when it didn’t seem altogether out of the question.”

  Sparks nodded calmly and poured himself another brandy.

  “I was confined to Bedlam. For a period of weeks six months ago.”

  Doyle felt his eyes grow to the size of teacups.

  “Against my will. So ordered by a prominent physician, a man I was investigating. Dr. Nigel Gull. In the course of my investigation, I posed as a patient of the doctor’s. We became friendly. I was invited to the man’s home one evening for dinner; I accepted as an opportunity to gather what I could about him from his place of residence. A lapse in concentration. A dozen men—police among them—waited for me as I stepped inside. I was subdued, strapped into a straitjacket, and taken to Bedlam Hospital.”

  “Good Christ.”

  “It’s not difficult from our current vantage, is it, Doyle, to imagine who might have been directing the Doctor’s actions?”

  “No.”

  “I was kept alone in a cell, in pitch-darkness, the straitjacket never removed. I frequently felt someone observing me. Someone I knew. I realized then that Alexander was the man I had been hunting all along.”

  There was one additional burden Doyle longed to lay aside. “Jack, you’ll forgive me. The night we traveled to Whitby. In this train car. I saw you self-administer an injection.”

  Sparks didn’t move, but the words scalded him with shame. His cheeks drew in, rendering his long face more gaunt and wearied.

  “That first night in Bedlam a hood was placed over my head. The jacket shackled to a wall. And the injections began. They continued around the clock, each applied before the previous one wore off.”

  “Vamberg’s drug?”

  Sparks shook his head. “Cocaine hydrochloride. Within a week, they had created in me a…physical dependence.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “Before long I lost all sense of time—an entire month passed before there was any change in my routine: My captors assumed by then I had similarly lost the power of cognition and muscular strength as well. They were mistaken. I had conditioned myself to resist the eff
ects of the drug to a greater degree than my behavior led them to believe. On this particular day, the morning injection administered, I was taken from my cell and driven away. As we neared our destination, they removed the straitjacket. The three men escorting me did not live long enough to regret it. I jumped from the moving carriage. Nearly blinded by daylight, I was still able to complete my escape.”

  “What did they mean to do with you?”

  “The carriage was riding through Kensington. Toward the palace. I believe that their intention, having created this craving in me, was to implicate me in the execution of some terrible crime.”

  Sparks drained his glass and stared at the corner.

  “So as to what you witnessed on the night we rode to Whitby…in spite of my best efforts in the intervening months, I have not altogether rid myself of this…dependence.”

  “Is there anything I—”

  “Having said just that much… I must call upon you as a friend and a gentleman and insist that we never speak another word of this matter again.”

  The muscles in Sparks’s jaw clenched tight. His eyes went hard, his voice hoarse with emotion, withdrawn.

  “Of course, Jack,” said Doyle.

  Sparks nodded, rose abruptly from the table, and moved out the door before Doyle could react. The weight of this new knowledge added to Doyle’s oppressive weariness. He staggered to the rear of the car and looked in through the drawn curtains at Eileen in the lower berth. She hadn’t moved from the position he had first seen her assume, her breathing slow and regular. As quietly as he could manage—holding at bay a befogged awareness that this decision carried more import than could possibly seem apparent—Doyle climbed to the upper berth. Sleep—a sonorous, black, unconscious deep—came and took him quickly.

  Doyle opened his eyes. No sensation of movement; the train was not moving. Daylight filtered into the berth. He looked at his watch—quarter past two in the afternoon—and parted the curtains, squinting against the brightness: a train yard, the one they had used before in Battersea, south of the city. He swung his feet over the side and climbed down. The lower berth was empty, as was the rest of the car. He exited.