Demon

by Shane Peacock

  “What are you doing?” asks Edgar.

  “Oh,” whispers Tiger, “just checking on Lu. I won’t be a minute.”

  But she is. Edgar goes back into his room, lies on his bed and listens. Tiger seems to stay in Lucy’s room for a long time, making no noise. Finally, Edgar hears her sneaking back past his room and then creaking her door open again. Then there is silence. Edgar shakes his head. He is not sure if he has stayed awake for the last little while: he has no idea whether Tiger was in Lucy’s room for ten seconds or ten minutes. Then he falls into a deep sleep. So many dreams come to him that he cannot keep track of them—shaven-headed, black-eyed devils fly about, and so do vampires, Frankenstein creatures, Mr. Hyde and other monsters—but none are in coherent stories. They merely rush through his mind in a kind of Walpurgis Night, vague and unrealized, like beasts seeking forms, born of his fears. The hag does not come. He wakes to dead silence.

  He gets up, takes off his socks and pads out into the little kitchen at the back of the house. Tiger, never much for the culinary arts, is standing over a couple of burnt pieces of toast she is trying to butter. She looks up at him and smiles.

  “Edgar. Are you ready for action now?” Both the rifle and the cannon are in the kitchen with her, within her arm’s reach.

  “Where is Lucy?”

  “Not with the land of the living yet. Haven’t heard a sound from her.”

  “That is strange.” Lucy is always the first one to rise in the morning and usually makes breakfast for the others.

  “Oh, I don’t know. She is awfully frightened right now and perhaps cannot face this day.”

  “I will check on her.”

  “No,” says Tiger.

  Edgar pays no attention. He pivots and returns down the hall.

  “Edgar, let her be!” cries Tiger, rushing after him.

  Edgar stops before opening the door and turns so he can see Tiger clearly. She is standing there, unarmed, with a pleading look on her face. Edgar opens Lucy’s door and goes in.

  It is neat and tidy, extraordinarily so, filled with beautiful colors and things—two lovely little lamps on either side of her bed, a photograph of her grandfather on her white dresser, and a warm rug where her feet first touch the floor in the mornings. The lights are off and the drapes are drawn shut. Everything is as it should be, except…her bed is empty.

  Lucy Lear is nowhere to be found.

  Edgar stands there with his mouth open.

  “She may have just gone out,” says Tiger.

  “And told no one?”

  “Perhaps she was up very early.”

  “You said you hadn’t heard a sound from her room.”

  “Well, I may have slept through her departure.”

  * * *

  —

  There is no sign of Lucy for hours.

  “Something is wrong,” says Edgar, breaking another long silence as he and Tiger sit on the settee again. She is cleaning the rifle, seemingly completely unconcerned about their friend’s absence.

  “You are jumping to conclusions. Don’t worry about Lucy, for she can take care of herself. We have better things to do. You promised you would come with me to Thomas Street.”

  “I didn’t promise.” Why would she say that?

  “When I have this gun cleaned, we are going, whether Lu is back or not. If someone has abducted her—”

  “Or murdered her.”

  “Whatever has happened, then all the more reason to take a weapon to that room and search it from top to bottom.”

  Edgar wonders again why she has become so anxious to go there. He thinks for a moment. “All right,” he finally says, “just give me a moment.”

  He gets up and heads to his room.

  “Who knows why Lucy is gone,” calls out Tiger, “maybe she has cracked and is helping whomever is opposing us, maybe her disappearance is all about survival.”

  Edgar wonders if Tiger really said that. He gets to his room, his jaw set and his hands sweaty on the doorknob. Once inside, he opens the window and wedges himself through the tiny opening into the two-foot-wide walkway between the Lears’ house and the neighbor’s. Then he scurries along it and out onto Progress Street and runs as fast as he can, far away from Tiger Tilley. A half hour later, he is in an alleyway in central London, bending over and out of breath. “I am running from my dearest friend!” he exclaims. “What is wrong with me?”

  “Nothing,” says a gasping voice near him, “and she isn’t your dearest friend, not anymore.”

  He looks up to see Allen Brim standing near him, bending over too, with one hand on a knee, the other over his heart.

  “Father!”

  “You were moving very quickly, my son. What is going on back at the Lear house? You appeared to be running from it.”

  “Lucy has disappeared.”

  Allen straightens up, hands on his hips now.

  “Things are coming to a boil, Edgar. You need to—”

  “I am almost certain he is inside my head.”

  “Who?”

  “The devil. Satan!”

  “You look perfectly—”

  “He may be turning me against Tiger. I cannot believe what I am thinking about her, imagining she is saying. He may have taken Lucy! He may have killed her!”

  “Calm, Edgar, calm. You must trust yourself and your thoughts. Now, you spoke of two things you might do in order to oppose your enemy yesterday. The first was speaking to William Shakespeare and that got you nowhere; the second was going back to that room on Thomas Street, was it not?”

  “I cannot. I am unarmed. Tiger may be heading there too, bearing the rifle!”

  “Not to worry. You shall have me. You must explore that place more thoroughly, Edgar, it may be your only hope. We shall deal with Tiger if we encounter her.”

  * * *

  —

  Edgar believes that no one is a match for Tiger Tilley, and he is terrified about what he might find in that upper room on Thomas Street, so he makes his way to the East End with his father with great reluctance.

  They enter through the big door with the black-horned handle and find no one to intercept them when they step inside. Edgar wonders if Tiger could have gotten here already and disposed of the big thug. They walk up the stairs to the fifth floor as quietly as possible, concerned by the creaks they are making on the steps, eyes upward for an attack coming down at them.

  They reach the top floor in safety and are surprised to find the big door there unlocked. It is almost as if someone is inviting them back. Inside, everything is as it appeared before, waiting there in the dim light cast by the rows of candles and the few high windows, stained in red and black. They walk slowly forward past the frescoes of pyramids and staring eyes on the walls, up the center aisle between the carved wooden chairs and the jars filled with red liquid, all still arranged there as if waiting for an audience. They approach the stage with its black throne.

  “It doesn’t seem as if Tiger has been here,” says Allen.

  “But she said she was coming.”

  “Perhaps she was lying or perhaps she was only coming if she could draw you here. Did she seem to want to be alone with you in this place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let us examine everything in the room. There must be something in here that will give us a clue. Look at the colors, the carved snakes and horns, the eyes. It is a room for devil worship, there is no question; and remember, William Shakespeare came here. Tiger wanted to bring you to this place, the devil speaking inside her head. This is your enemy’s lair!”

  They search the whole room, examining the walls, looking for disguised doors, but they find nothing.

  “What about this column?” asks Edgar.

  He is standing next to the dark marble pole that goes from the floor nearly to the ceiling at the front
of the room, topped with that oblong box, decorated with images similar to those on the throne and chairs.

  “I wish we could climb up to that thing,” says Allen.

  They run their hands around the pole looking for anything that might help them ascend it, but it is smooth like marble, and they cannot find switches of any sort, or levers that might move the column up or down.

  “How did they get it up there?” asks Edgar.

  “I don’t know, but if we could look inside it, maybe that would answer some questions.”

  Lately, when his father speaks, it is as if his voice were right inside Edgar’s head, clearer than a human voice, as though Allen’s mind was speaking directly to him.

  They spend another half an hour searching the room, looking for trapdoors, false walls, anything. “There’s nothing here,” sighs Edgar, standing in the center of the room, gazing around, “nothing that tells us anything.” He has not heard the sound of the hooved beast either. He still feels a presence though. He keeps thinking he is missing something.

  “Hello?” he shouts. “Hello!” His voice echoes in the room.

  They wait a long time for a response, certain one will come, but there is only silence.

  “Well, we aren’t coming away empty-handed,” says Allen, picking up one of the jars of red liquid. “Take this,” he says, giving it to Edgar. “Bring it to your Mr. Lawrence at the hospital and get him to have it examined so we know exactly what is inside it. His attitude about it may tell us something too.”

  Edgar looks at the jar.

  “Blood.”

  “We don’t know that for certain, though if it is blood, whose is it?”

  An image of Lucy’s smiling face flashes through Edgar’s mind and then an image of someone hurting her. He closes his eyes to shut it out.

  “Watch for Lawrence’s reaction. You must be wary of him at all times.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. And the worst of my concerns may be his sending you to that alienist woman, the strange one with the dark ways.”

  “Dark? Why do you say that?”

  “Do not trust her either.”

  * * *

  —

  They leave the building cautiously, descending the stairs slowly with as little noise as possible, Edgar keeping the open jar of red liquid under his black suit coat, moving gently so he does not spill it. They get out onto the street but then see someone coming along the pavement toward the door from their right, head turned in the other direction as if concerned about pursuers.

  Tiger Tilley.

  They slip into an alcove next door.

  Tiger turns back to her destination. She still looks wary and has the rifle tucked under her arm, holding it vertical so it appears to be part of her coat. She moves in that stealthy, Tiger way, quick in her trousers and low hard-soled boots. She comes to the door, looks behind her again and enters.

  “Let us remove ourselves,” says Allen Brim. “I shall wait for you outside the hospital.”

  Edgar turns back to the door that Tiger has just entered. She is alone in there. Then he has another thought, perhaps worse. Maybe she isn’t.

  As Edgar enters the London, he wonders why he is having anything to do with Sir Andrew Lawrence, but despite his concerns, he reminds himself that the chairman offered to help them, and he has resources that might save them from destruction. It is a tantalizing offer he knows he should be considering. Edgar climbs the flights of stairs to Lawrence’s office, the precarious jar of blood still in hand, though held under his coat, and when he reaches the top floor, sees the door wide open way down at the end of the hall. That is not surprising since the chairman likes literally to have an open-door policy. He is available to everyone in the hospital at any time, whether doctors, nurses or even patients. Edgar senses something different this time though. He can see right through the doorway and into the room. Lawrence’s big gleaming wooden desk is straight ahead and behind it one of his nearly floor-to-ceiling windows. The midday sun shines in and lights up the office with a sort of heavenly glow. There is no one, however, in Lawrence’s chair.

  “He is always here at this time,” says Edgar. “He must be somewhere in the room.” He moves quickly down the hall and enters, but there is not a soul in the office. Edgar wonders what to do with his jar. He does not want to give it to anyone other than Lawrence. What it is and what he wants done with it would be difficult to explain. He needs the chairman’s clear authority—his request to his best doctors to have something tested without any questions asked.

  Ignoring the doubts he has about this puzzling man, Edgar dips a pen in ink and writes him a message on the stationery he finds on the desk, placing the jar on top of it when he is done, but when he turns to leave, he hears someone coming down the hallway behind him. His senses are acute and he picks up the soft gait and knows who it is. He slips the jar and the paper into a drawer and turns.

  “Dr. Berenice.”

  “Edgar,” she says with a lovely smile, her long black hair framing that aging but exotic face. It occurs to Edgar that she is like a raven, a large, beautiful olive-skinned raven, striking, intelligent and dangerous. She glides into the room, moving like a ballerina or a ghost, shoulders back, chest out, chin up and focused on her prey. Hilda Berenice, navigator of the mind. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

  “Well…I…I came to see Sir Andrew but it is obvious that he is out. Might you know where he is? Is it not rare for him to be away from his desk at this hour?”

  “I suppose, yes. I believe he had an emergency.”

  “Then why are you up here?” He says it quickly, without thinking. It takes her a while to respond.

  “Yes, why indeed, I get so used to coming to see him that I forgot that I’d heard he had left the building.”

  “Do you know the nature of the emergency?”

  “I try not to pry. Neither should you.”

  Edgar nods and slips past her, their shoulders almost touching as he tries to evade her. He gets nearly halfway down the hall before he hears her call out.

  “Edgar?”

  He stops and considers running, but turns back to her. Do not trust her either, he hears his father say. She seems to be floating toward him.

  “How are you today?” she asks.

  “Fine, just fine.”

  “No more devil in pursuit?”

  “A temporary malaise.”

  “Back to that, are we?”

  “I am working my way through my difficulties.”

  “Well,” she coos, “stay at it.”

  It sounds like a command.

  She does not follow him down the stairs and he imagines her returning to Lawrence’s room, looking through his desk and finding the jar of blood. Then he remembers the word she used in reference to him. Paranoid. He knows what that is. Used by a mind doctor, it has a clinical meaning.

  Edgar walks through every hallway as he makes his way down to the ground floor, but there is no sign of Sir Andrew Lawrence. He stops by the matron at her high imposing desk near the main entrance and asks after him. She glares at this impudent youth.

  “It is not your business to know the whereabouts of the most esteemed man in this institution.”

  “I am his assistant.”

  She takes in a long breath. “I received a note saying that he had left for the day but—”

  “Is that not unusual?”

  “…I did not see him leave the premises.”

  * * *

  —

  Allen Brim is dutifully waiting outside.

  “What did he say? Was he acting suspicious?”

  “He wasn’t there.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Why would he not be in his office at this hour?”

  “Why do y
ou keep asking me the questions that are already in my head?”

  A puzzled look comes over Allen Brim’s face. “I do not know, son. Perhaps because I am your father, I love you, and we think alike.”

  “Well, I appreciate that, but I need more than your love right now.”

  Edgar is thinking about the fact that Dr. Berenice told him he must encounter his father and speak with him. Then, there was Allen Brim in flesh and blood, not long after the words had come out of her mouth.

  “We will defeat this thing, together. I keep telling you that.”

  “I want to see Annabel Thorne, my mother.”

  “She is not your mother.”

  “She has been for a long while and she loves me, just like you.”

  “And yet she has been running about with this insolent Lawrence fellow, a scant month after her husband’s death. She and your mother were best of friends but I can assure you that Virginia would do nothing of that kind. If I had passed from this life and Lawrence were attempting to seduce your mother, your real mother, and I could return to earth to deal with it, I would challenge him to a bloody duel. He and his fancy motorcar!”

  “She is unusual, extraordinary. If she wants to enter into a romance with a wealthy, handsome man, then she has every right—”

  “But you do not agree with it, do you, Edgar?”

  He does not want to answer the question. They have been moving westbound along Whitechapel Road. He picks up the pace.

  “I will not enter Thorne House with you, Edgar, but I will come along and wait somewhere down the street.”

  * * *

  —

  As he promised, when they reach the Thornes’ street in Mayfair, Allen stops a good ten houses away and leans against a lamppost.

  Edgar makes the familiar trip alone along the footpath feeling better with every stride. Yes, Thorne House is his home, his real home, and Annabel might as well be his real mother. Just the sound of her voice will make him feel safer.