“Downstairs, indeed,” says Tiger, and she turns toward the stairs with the rifle in hand, trailing the cannon, moving quietly but on the double.
“Why does she always get to have all the weapons?” asks Lucy.
“You try to get one from her,” says Edgar.
At the stairs, however, Tiger lets Edgar and Lucy help her, giving up the cannon for them to carry, so she can hold the gun at the ready.
They all descend, Tiger out front.
It takes them a long time to go down this single set of wide stairs. It is a good thing that the steps are covered in rugs and that the beautiful polished wooden balustrade is thick and easy to grip with trembling hands.
They reach the ground floor with Tiger still in the lead and her rifle pointed this way and that in the darkness, the half-moon in the windows casting shadows everywhere here too. They head toward the big living room. Edgar and William Shakespeare know that there was a dim light of some sort here, but when they reach the room, it is dark and they can barely make out the sofas, the love seat with the knitting or the animal heads on the walls.
“Someone has turned off the light,” says Edgar. “It was on when we were here just a short time ago.”
“Did you actually see a lamp that was lighted?” asks Lucy.
“Perhaps your father turned it off,” says Tiger.
Edgar wishes she could see the intensity of the glare he gives her.
“Quiet,” says Annabel. They all listen. She squints into the dimness in front of them. “It seems deserted here now.”
Their path lit only by the moonlight, they carefully make their way farther into the room, look around as much as they can, and still finding no one, gather on the seats, Lawrence groaning as he lowers himself near Annabel, Lucy sitting next to Edgar, and Tiger on a love seat alone, pointing the rifle into the darkness. Shakespeare remains standing in the middle of the room, as if ready for escape at a second’s notice.
There is silence for a while. If there was an intruder down here, then he, she, or it, truly seems to be gone.
“Perhaps we can try to make sense of things now,” says Annabel.
“Well,” says Lucy quietly, “I need to explain my actions. We all do.” She takes a deep breath. “You see, I was only trying to help. I thought if I left home without you two…” She looks at Edgar and Tiger. “Maybe it would help somehow. Maybe that was not rational. After Jon’s death, I was terrified, though I eventually tried to pretend I was all right, but I could not get away from the terror and it made me so anxious I just had to flee. It was an awful feeling. I had to run…somewhere, I did not know where…and I had to do it secretly. It was almost as if I felt it wasn’t just the devil who was after me, but you two as well. I was ill with it. Once I got out onto the streets though, late that night, the air against my skin seemed to make me come to my senses, at least a little. I could not go back, admit what I had done, I thought that would just cause more problems, create more suspicion among us, so I went to the hospital to see Mr. Lawrence. He had seemed so kind and his offer of help had stuck with me. It was almost as if he was calling to me. He was there even though it was the middle of the night, and Mrs. Thorne was with him—”
“He had asked me to come away with him,” says Annabel.
“I am sorry,” says Lawrence. “I am not sure what I was thinking. I needed this knock on the head!”
“And I was fine with that,” says Annabel. “I can look after myself, Edgar, and the more suspicious Sir Andrew’s actions were, the better, since to my way of thinking that meant that he was doing something that might shed some light on your situation. He was telling me more and more as time went on.”
“Dr. Berenice has been counseling me,” says Lawrence, still holding his head in his hands. “I have some difficulties still, about my childhood, all that I saw, the poverty, other things, the people I stepped on to get ahead and now have such regrets about. I often try to forget all of that, not admit that any of it ever happened. I…” He looks around at his friends and drops his head. “I am a bit of a sham…I was a thug in my youth, my hard-bitten youth, in Ireland. I was a criminal, to tell the truth. I made the beginnings of my fortune that way, by threatening people, hurting people…even killing. That is long past me now. Once I came to England, I began a long road to being a better person. I try with the very fiber of my being to be a good man, at least most of the time. I changed my name, I invested in the hospital, the world’s greatest, and I help it with everything I have, my finances, my soul. I want to heal people, like I learned to heal myself.” He pauses. “Berenice found out about me. She asked me many personal questions in casual conversation when we first knew each other, rooted out some of the details of my past and then told me she could help me learn to live with the difficult parts. It was magical, how she did it. She found out more when she had me on her psychiatrist’s sofa. I…I realize now as we speak of our situation…that she may have been using me. I believe she made suggestions to me. She suggested I draw in Edgar Brim, I know that, his mother, his circle. As I say, I am not sure exactly how she did it, though I recall she often focused on my guilt, which haunts my life. She must have discovered that and gone right to it, right into that pain to use me. It would be terrible if any of this information about my past ever got out.” He takes the monocle, tosses it on the floor and grinds it to dust. “I was somehow compelled to do some things that were not right, especially in squiring about and compromising Mrs. Thorne…whom I adore, who is a fine and beautiful lady.”
Annabel blushes.
“As I was saying, there they were,” says Lucy, “in the middle of the night in Mr. Lawrence’s office. They told me they were going out to his country estate, that it would be safer there. They said I should come with them. When I suggested to Mr. Lawrence that perhaps I shouldn’t leave Tiger and Edgar behind, he said that he felt Tiger was acting strangely and I could not trust her, and that Edgar could fend for himself, that his stories about the devil and the eight-foot man were worrisome anyway. He said Edgar was dangerously unhinged. I argued with him but he said the doctor, a specialist in the hospital, had confirmed it all. I was still feeling terrorized too. He said I should escape with them and save myself.”
“I am sorry for—”
“I thought that a little strange,” says Annabel, “to say the least, but it thickened the plot of your situation, Edgar. I even made it appear to them, to Sir Andrew especially, that I too was deeply worried about your sanity, and suggested that maybe you could not entirely be trusted. I told Sir Andrew that my son had begun to frighten me. It seemed to embolden him.”
“I couldn’t believe she said that,” says Lucy, “but I was in an awful state and beginning to accept almost anything. You will do that when the devil is after you…or in you.”
“He isn’t,” says Annabel.
“Yes he is!” says Shakespeare.
“You were talking to your father, Edgar, your dead father!” says Tiger suddenly. “He was walking around the streets with you! I heard you speaking to him at the Lears’ door, even though you pretended to me that you were just talking to yourself. When I went into Lucy’s room that night and she was gone, when I realized she had run from us and that I was alone with you, mad as you were, spouting outrageous things, I knew I had to deceive you, say she was still in her room. I had no idea what I should do next. I have always been able to summon courage, but a sort of terror was growing in me as well and it was making me think awful things. It was a horrible feeling, unlike anything I had ever experienced. You must know I was traumatized by Jon’s death!” Her eyes fill with tears. “I wanted to take you to that devil-worship room on Thomas Street, Edgar, and do something…perhaps to you, eliminate you…I don’t know.”
“I felt that, deep down.”
“The day we were in that room, I heard the footsteps too, the hoofbeats!”
He nods at her, but do
es not say anything. Then they smile at each other. Edgar wants to embrace her and she looks like she wants the same.
“When we got here,” says Lawrence, “the place was empty! I have a dozen servants in this estate. They were all gone! It was as if something had not just harmed or scared them off but made them vanish, destroyed them!”
“It is a trap,” says Shakespeare. “We have been drawn here for a purpose!”
“The three of us went upstairs and secluded ourselves in a room there,” says Lucy, “and we talked, everyone suspicious of everyone else, though not saying it, and terrified of anyone who might be coming here. It was as if our talk was getting darker as the hours passed. You, Edgar, and you, Tiger, because you were not with us, started to seem more like our greatest enemies, in league with whatever was after us. It is amazing now to think of it, of what possessed us! We wondered about the weapons, who had them. I was glad I had this.” She pulls her grandfather’s big kukri knife, nearly as long as a sword, curved and as sharp as a guillotine, up from her side. She had been carrying it all along, holding it close to her leg. She drops her head. “I was ready to use this on anyone!”
Suddenly, the lights come on in the room. There was no click from an electric light switch, no hiss from gas. Everything, however, instantly illuminates in an intensely bright glow. It hurts their eyes and they all look down and shield themselves from it with their hands.
When they try to look up, they begin to realize that rows of people surround them, gathered there in dead silence. There are black-robed men with shaved heads on chairs at one end of the room, an eight-foot man with his gigantic legs propped nearly up to his chin sitting at their center, a big thug with a big black beard and squashed nose beside him. There are rows of women against the other three walls, all with long luxurious hair, dressed in plain brown dresses that reach the floor, fitting them tightly to emphasize their shapes. Sitting in the center of them at the end of the room opposite from the men is Dr. Berenice. She holds a portrait of Alexander Morley in her hands.
Edgar stares at Berenice, but she seems incapable of looking back at him. She avoids his eyes and gazes down at the portrait. Lucy and Lawrence gape at the sight in disbelief, Annabel gasps, and little Shakespeare drops to the floor holding his hands over his big head. “Thou art boils, plague sores!” he cries, but there is no force to his words.
Tiger leaps to her feet and tries to train the rifle on everyone at once, pivoting around, locking onto one head and then the other until she settles on the eight-foot man, who is now rising way up to his feet. Tiger raises the rifle as he looms above her. His red face seems small on his gigantic body, but his features are remarkably sharp—thick, black eyebrows on a face caked with makeup, his shaved head somehow glistening in the dim light. There are markings on his black robe, red symbols representing eyes and crosses and pyramids, the number 666 evident right over his heart. He twirls a huge black cane in his hand and pulls back his robe to reveal his long black trouser legs.
Edgar turns toward him. “Mephistopheles,” he gasps, “the servant of Satan!”
“Fire at will,” says the tall man to Tiger Tilley in a deep voice. She hesitates. “You may kill me, that is true, but the holy beast is immortal. You cannot kill him as you murdered the others. He is alive though he is dead. He is in the air and in your brains.”
Tiger fires. The expanding bullet strikes the eight-foot man below the left knee and explodes his leg. He instantly collapses, falling face forward onto the floor, hitting it with the crack of bone on hardwood.
“Change your mind?” asks Tiger.
There is no blood, however, no shards of bone or splatters of ligament or muscle against the wall, at least not from the tall man’s leg. The bullet, which has made a crater in the wall as a small meteor might, has simply blown off a short wooden extension, a stilt covered by the bottom part of one huge trouser leg. The tall man groans and lifts his head. There is blood dripping from his face and his nose is smashed against his cheek, but he smiles and sits back in his chair, the other extension still on his right leg. He is a tall man indeed, but not eight feet. He smiles and licks the blood that is dripping from his nostrils toward his mouth.
“Shoot again, abominable young lady who takes the form of a male; shoot a hundred times, a thousand times, a billion. You will kill us, but you will never slay what torments you and your friends! We brought you here. We have you!”
Tiger trains the gun on his head, and then turns it on the other men, all those shaved heads, all those black-robed bodies dressed similarly to Mephistopheles. Then Tiger turns the weapon on the women, all looking passive, no expressions on their faces, their backs arched and strong against their chairs, their chests thrust out. She focuses on the woman who appears to be their leader, clutching the portrait of Morley.
“No!” says Lawrence, “that is Dr. Berenice!”
“Then,” says Tiger, “she needs to speak, explain herself and all of this, or I will take her to hell, which is where it seems she belongs. We may not be able to defeat the demon that haunts us, but at least I will have the satisfaction of destroying his wife!”
“I am NOT his wife!” shouts Berenice.
“Then, what?” asks Edgar, getting to his feet and taking a few steps toward her.
“I believed in him,” says Berenice. “I still believe in him.”
“What…do you believe? Who is he?”
“SATAN!” cries Shakespeare.
There is a murmur of approval from the others but Berenice says nothing at first.
“It seems it may be true,” she says eventually.
“Seems?” asks Edgar.
“I do not know if I want it to be true, but I know he is dead, and I know he is somehow here. I told you that he came to understand the power of the mind. We human beings, most of us, have no idea what rests within our brains and in our souls. He knew. Why did he know, why did he understand when no one else did? That is an important question. He may be the chosen one. There was a time when I thought he loved me and that intoxicated me. But as you see, there are many more who love him.” She glances at the other women and does not look pleased. “He taught me things and then he abandoned me, but he said it was because he had higher goals…it seems he may have been correct. Neurology was just child’s play for him, then the occult and black magic were much the same. He joined the Order and then ascended past it so quickly that he believed he had powers. Kinetic strength, astral projection and an understanding of the universe…of evil…and perhaps now…much more.”
“It is reality,” says Mephistopheles.
“Reality,” say all the women and men in unison.
“He slaughtered himself,” says Mephistopheles, “in order to prove who he is. He told us he would return. He said he would live in our minds, in other minds, as alive as he has always been since before the beginning of human life. We saw him perform miracles many times. He is not dead. He is Satan. He is immortal. Seek and you will find him.”
Edgar notices a man sitting two seats from Mephistopheles. The man stares straight ahead, his head shaved, looking long and lean with a skeletal appearance. He seems familiar and Edgar struggles to place him. Then, it comes to him. He could easily pass for Mr. Sprinkle, at least as that apparition appeared in William Shakespeare’s apartment not long ago.
“He used me,” says Berenice softly.
“What did you say?” asks Edgar.
“He used me to mold you and your friends,” she says, staring at them. “He discovered who you were, Edgar, and your susceptibilities, your knowledge of monsters. He found you through little William Shakespeare. He sent me to the hospital to convince them they needed someone like me, where I could do what was required. He knew he and I could influence you there, Edgar. I used Andrew Lawrence and his low Irish birth and his secrets, and he delivered you to me and attached himself to your mother. Alex used the power of his unp
aralleled mind, the electricity of fear, the use of tinges of mescaline and other potions in my perfume and drinks, and the psychological techniques I could bring to bear to influence all of you, to make you think yourselves insane, to make you distrust each other, hate each other…want to kill one another.”
“That is nonsense…the last part,” says Lucy.
“Did you not do all of that? Did he not locate the evil inside you all? Did he not locate the truth?”
Edgar wants to object, but he knows she is correct.
“You were brought here to destroy each other,” says Berenice.
“But we are all still here!” exclaims Tiger.
“Yet he made you do—” begins Mephistopheles.
“We are all here!” shouts Tiger again. “We did not, in the end, turn on each other. We are all alive and united, and we will kill him. We will destroy Alexander Morley, just as we did Grendel and the revenant vampire and the Frankenstein creature.”
“How?” asks Mephistopheles.
“Yes…” says Berenice, her hand on Morley’s face in the portrait. “He is still inside you, not finished with you. How will you kill him?”
“Will you shoot him?” shouts another man.
“Will you hunt him down?” cries a woman.
“He cannot be found!” they all shout. “And yet he is here!”
“He is somewhere,” says Edgar quietly.
“He made a covenant with us,” says Mephistopheles. “He told us what he would do, how he would destroy his earthly body, how he would experiment with you all and prove who he is, and then return in his darkest glory.”
“Return!” shout all of the others in unison.
“It was all just tricks!” shouts Annabel at the women. “Can you not see that?”
“He used you!” says Lucy, glaring at Berenice. “You said it yourself! He used you as a woman the way a twisted MORTAL man would!” Berenice cannot look at her and instead stares at Morley’s portrait, gripping the frame with shaking hands. It seems as though she wants to smash it.
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