The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by H. G. Parry

  That part is the magic, in that it’s a step further than most people’s reading or analysis goes. It all feels one and the same to me, but that’s where the line crosses from the accepted to the extraordinary. (I like the word “extraordinary.” Extraordinarius. Out of the common order. More than ordinary. Ordinary plus extra. It looks like “extra-ordinary,” but is in fact just the opposite. If I could make that a noun, the way “magic” can be made a verb, then that would be a good word for what I’m talking about.)

  Rob thinks I can’t stop it from happening. That’s true, often. If something strikes me unexpectedly, and I don’t catch myself in time, then whatever it is has come into the world, and it’s too late. But I learned when I was very little that I could also do it deliberately. If I just concentrate very hard on the character or object, their role in the book, their purpose or meaning or textual composition, they can come out. And honestly, I do that more than I should. I’ve told you how it feels. It’s a shadow of that, when done deliberately, but still. Even if I can technically stop it, how can I help it? And why should I? It doesn’t hurt anybody.

  Putting them back hurts, sometimes. Not always. If they go back willingly, they just slip away, back into textuality. I’ll feel a wash of dizziness, but only for a moment, like a tide pulling out and crashing back in again. But sometimes, especially if they’re accidents, they resist. Then, putting them back is like willingly taking a hammer blow to the skull. It’s difficult, too, because it feels counterintuitive. To pull them out, you think of them, or some facet of them, as close and as deep as you can. To put them back, you think of their place in the wider story—it’s a little like adjusting a camera lens from deep focus to wide focus. It requires you to know the whole book, not just the tiny fragment you’ve brought to life. It also requires you, right at the moment you know the character best and have taken possession of them, to unknow them, to let them fade out of your sight and concentration, to lose them in a wider story. And it’s hard, when your brain has an idea, to force it to let it go. I’m used to it, so it doesn’t bother me in any practical sense. It bothers me, though, because I don’t know why some of them resist, or what they believe themselves to be resisting. It feels, momentarily, like dying. I wonder what it feels like for them.

  So that’s how I think it works. It’s about interpreting, understanding, visualizing, connecting. Basically, still reading a book.

  I never sent that paperweight back, the one from my four-year-old Nineteen Eighty-Four. I still have it, on a high shelf where nobody can stumble on it. Sometimes I get it down, and watch them in their safe, fragile, perfect world that is smashed in the narrative, but not as an idea.

  (“How small, thought Winston, how small it always was!”)

  IV

  There were two cars parked outside my brother’s house when I arrived. When Charley opened the door, I could hear the low murmur of voices inside.

  “Oh, hi, Rob,” Charley said. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Well, no,” I said, probably irritably. I don’t think I realized how worried I’d been about not being able to get hold of him, until I saw him there completely oblivious. “No, you’d have to be psychic to know, because you weren’t answering your phone. As usual.”

  “Did you call?”

  I didn’t quite trust myself to answer this. I had, of course, been calling all afternoon. I’d tried his office phone and, when he didn’t answer, assumed he wasn’t in his office. I’d tried his cell phone and, when he didn’t answer, assumed everything from his untimely death to the theft of his phone by magpies. I tried the English department reception, where I learned he had finished classes at three and gone to work from home for the rest of the day. I tried e-mail, knowing I might as well try a message in a bottle. When five thirty came, and he still hadn’t replied, I’d finally given in, rang to tell Lydia I’d be home late, and came to knock on his door.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did call. Are there people here?”

  “Well, yes. Sort of. I mean—it’s the rest of the History of the Novel course. We always meet on Thursday afternoons to talk about next week, and sometimes we come back here rather than use one of the offices.”

  “And… that was a ‘sort of’ because you’re uncertain they’re here, or that they’re people?”

  “Because they’re technically here, but they were just on their way out. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I need to ask you something.” I hesitated, then lowered my voice. “Uriah Heep—has he come out again since this morning?”

  Charley frowned, and glanced over his shoulder. He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “No,” he said, matching my near whisper. “No, of course not. I haven’t had any time to work with Dickens today at all.”

  “What about before? Was that the first time you’d read him out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Definitely. Why?”

  “Because he’s just started work as an intern at the firm.”

  He was silent for a long moment, then shook his head. “But—how can—? Are you sure?”

  “Definitely,” I echoed him, without thinking. “I know him now, trust me. He’s calling himself Eric, and he’s wearing modern clothes—but it’s definitely Uriah Heep. I hate to say this, but that feeling you had? I’m starting to think you were right after all.”

  Charley was silent a moment longer. “You know, I think I probably need coffee at this point in the conversation,” he said finally. “The others really were just leaving. Do you want to come in?”

  The truth is, I sort of love my brother’s flat. It’s hopeless, but it’s hopeless with style.

  It’s a tiny one-bedroom town house further up the hill from the university, right on the outskirts of Highbury, so while the university and the city are nestled within walking distance, there’s nothing around it to walk through but a lot of bush and a few other houses winding up a long, steep road. And that’s fine—that goes for a lot of houses around these parts—but this one manages to combine isolation and limited square footage with total lack of understanding of the laws of home design. Its one bedroom is an attic up a rickety staircase; the kitchen, dining room, and living room are all one wood-paneled space; the bathroom, tucked behind the stairs, is both freezing and ungainly. And, of course, Charley has filled every spare inch of it with books. Books cascade over the surface of the desk in the corner by the window, climb in staggering towers up the walls, pack the bookshelves, crouch on the stairs. They hide in the kitchen amid the pots and pans, frame the old fireplace that hasn’t burned in years, bury the coffee table in front of the couch. I found one in the fridge once, though he swears that was a mistake.

  This time, the books on the coffee table were doubling as coasters for a ring of half-empty wineglasses, and three people were gathering their belongings: a bearded man in a checked shirt, a younger, lankier man with glasses, and a gray-haired woman in a pink cardigan.

  “This is my brother, Rob,” Charley introduced me. “Rob, this is Brian, Troy, and Beth. Troy’s tutoring on the course, and Brian and Beth are lecturing.”

  “Oh!” The older woman, presumably Beth, looked at me with interest. “A pleasure to meet you. Charles has often spoken of you.”

  I shook her proffered hand. “Really? What does he say?”

  “That you’re a lawyer in the city, and that you’re intimidatingly organized.”

  “He also says he suspects he drives you insane,” the bearded man, Brian, added.

  “Well, he’s right.” I tried to speak normally, when really all I wanted was for everyone to leave. “I think he says something similar about you. At least the last part.”

  “I think I say things like that about everybody I know,” Charley said. “Beth, you wanted those books back from me, right? I’ll see if I can dig them out.”

  “Don’t let me chase you all away,” I said, praying very much they would let me chase them away. I was in no state
to make polite conversation with academics—at the best of times, possibly, but certainly not now. I wasn’t convinced that Eric wasn’t going to come knocking at the door.

  “No, no. I need to get back to the kids, anyway,” Brian said. “I’ll run you to the train station, Troy, if you like. Good to meet you, Rob. I’ll see the rest of you next week.”

  “Second to last week of term,” the younger postgraduate sighed. “Thank God.”

  I waited, with increasing impatience, as Charley rummaged through the shelves while Beth studied me curiously with blue-gray eyes.

  “Here’s one of them, anyway,” Charley said at last. He emerged from the shelf, a red hardcover in his hand. “It was on the mantelpiece. God knows why. Beth, I kept meaning to ask you—have you seen a box of notebooks, about twelve of them, all different sizes? I know they were there by the potted plant when you and Troy were here last month, because Troy asked about them, and I know they were here after you both left, because I put them somewhere else. But I have no idea where that was, and I haven’t seen them since.”

  “I remember the box you mean,” she said, with a wry glance in my direction, “but I have no idea where it could be. Frankly, Charles, in all the times I’ve been here, I’ve never once been able to work out where you put anything.”

  “No,” he conceded. “Neither have I, and I live here. I’ll dig out the other two books and give them to you next week, I promise.”

  “There’s no hurry: it was this one I wanted over the weekend. I’ll leave you two to talk.” She hesitated, as if she might be about to say something more, but all she said was, “It was nice meeting you, Robert.”

  “You too,” I said.

  I waited until I heard the sound of the car pull away down the long, winding road before I turned to Charley. The house suddenly seemed very quiet.

  “I’m sorry I missed your call,” Charley said, before I could speak. “I don’t know how that happened. I only had an hour’s sleep before the morning faculty meeting, so I’m a bit all over the place this afternoon. Would you like coffee? Or there’s tea, I think, somewhere.”

  I didn’t want to test Charley’s definition of “somewhere,” so I accepted coffee. The last of the afternoon sun was fading from the room; outside, the trees were beginning to press about the house. The bush surrounding the city always does that at night.

  “Tell me about Uriah Heep,” Charley said.

  “I didn’t really talk to him.” I sat down carefully amid the wobbling paperbacks on the couch. “We only saw each other for a moment. He’s one of the three new interns we have at work—they’re shadowing us for a week before they come back for the summer at the end of November. Eva introduced us. We shook hands; we parted ways. That was it. Is there any way you could have brought out Uriah Heep without knowing it? You’ve done that in the past, with other characters.”

  “Not since I was about six.” He stopped rummaging in the kitchen to look at me. “I know the feeling too well now. I don’t have a Uriah Heep out there, Rob, I promise.”

  “I believe you,” I assured him. “This is going to sound strange, but I knew right away it wasn’t you. I’ve met your Uriah Heep. This one felt different—it was cruder, somehow, and less well formed. I know those things can shift if your reading of them does, but they never grow lesser, do they?”

  “No,” he said. “They don’t.” He was silent. “So what exactly are you suggesting? Someone else read out their own version of Uriah Heep?”

  “Exactly. And… call me paranoid, but it’s a little odd that he ended up, of all the places in the world, in my office.”

  “After what my Uriah Heep said this morning,” Charley said slowly, “I’d have to agree.”

  He came over with a mug in each hand, and handed me one.

  “Here,” he said. “It’ll have to be black, sorry. Milk goes off really quickly, doesn’t it? But at least I found the phone. It was right next to the milk bottle.”

  “In the fridge?”

  “I don’t know how that happened.” He settled himself cross-legged in the armchair opposite me. “Could you tell me exactly what he said to you?”

  “There isn’t much more to tell. Like I said, it was a quick meeting.”

  “Still.” His eyes were thoughtful. “If you could talk me through it…”

  I took him through the meeting, prompted occasionally by his questions. Uriah Heep had appeared suddenly. I’d seen his over-red hair, his corpse-like pallor, his long limbs. I’d felt the clamminess of his hand when I’d been forced to offer mine. I’d heard a London accent when he’d said he was pleased to meet me, oiled over by the obsequiousness that seemed to go with the territory. When I mentioned his surprising youth—he could have passed for eighteen—Charley nodded.

  “Alfred Grossman,” he said immediately. “He did an article on Uriah Heep as a perversion of Victorian childhood innocence.”

  “You think it was him?” I asked, surprised.

  “Oh God no,” Charley laughed. “I’ve met him; there’s no way he summons figures out of books. He’s the most boring man imaginable. Besides, he lives in Michigan. I just meant that whoever it was, they might have modeled this portrayal from his article. That would explain his name too. Eric; or, Little by Little—it’s a school story that was published eight years or so after David Copperfield. Grossman uses it as a template.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “You’re lucky. It’s like slow torture—unless you really like Victorian morality tales where everyone dies at the end, then it’s hilarious. Eric also means ‘ruler,’ of course. I wonder if that’s relevant.”

  None of that sounded particularly promising. “Does that help us? Is that article hard to find?”

  “Nothing’s hard to find these days,” Charley said. “As long as you can navigate search engines. It’s something to look into.” He hesitated. “Do you think you’re in danger?”

  That startled me into laughter. “Actually, Charley, I was more concerned about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Well… yes.” I set my cooling mug down on a nearby hardcover. It was still full. I don’t drink black coffee. “I mean, I’m a good lawyer, I’m decent at pub quizzes, and I can cook excellent pasta, but none of that’s likely to garner interest from literary characters come to life. I have a feeling that if they’re beginning to show up at my work, it’s probably because my brother is a linguistic genius who can bring them to life.”

  “But they don’t need to be brought to life,” Charley pointed out. “They’re already alive. They need to be put away again, if anything.”

  “Maybe that’s what bothers them.”

  He nodded slowly. I could see him turning my words over in his head, as one might handle a potentially lethal reptile that must be studied for the good of science.

  “Do you think—?” he started to say, then stopped short.

  So did I. Over the faint rustle of the wind in the trees outside, the evening had been split by an unearthly howl. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. I suddenly realized how dark it had become, just in the twenty minutes or so we were talking. Too dark for half past six on a spring evening in October.

  “What is that?” I asked him.

  “I think,” Charley said slowly, “that’s the cry of a gigantic hound.”

  V

  Between the darkness and the reflection in the glass from the lights inside, it was difficult to see out the window. I would have grabbed a flashlight, gone out, and checked around the house myself, but Charley gave me a look as though I had lost all reason when I suggested it.

  “One howl doesn’t necessarily herald the Hound of the Baskervilles,” I said. “You’re right by the bush out here. There’s a wildlife sanctuary around the corner. It could be anything.”

  “Like what?” Charley asked—reasonably, under the circumstances. It was getting colder. Fog was beginning to curl from the grass outside. Perfectly natural animals howled all the time; they di
dn’t affect the weather.

  I didn’t get a chance to answer, because then we both saw it. A green luminescence in the darkness, coming from the gully. A second later, I realized that the light had been flames, and that the flames wreathed the head of an animal. I saw a glimpse of red eyes, flashing teeth, bunched muscles beneath black hair. The head was at the height of the lemon tree in the garden. Dog shaped, roughly, but like no dog I had ever seen.

  “What is it?”

  “I told you,” Charley said. “It’s the Hound of the Baskervilles.”

  I couldn’t really argue anymore. It was.

  “Why is there fog outside?” For some reason, my mind was snatching at irrelevant details. “It was warm a moment ago.”

  “There’s always fog,” Charley said distractedly. I had a feeling he didn’t mean in Highbury.

  We’d been rural kids, Charley and I. We grew up on a large section surrounded by dairy farms. We knew how to deal with vicious dogs; I’d even dealt with a few vicious cows. But this looked bigger than any dog I had ever seen. And it was breathing fire.

  On cue, the howl came again. This time, it was much closer; a harsh, rhythmic rasp, which I had barely registered before, became a little louder in its wake. It was the sound of a dog panting.

  “Did the front door just shake?” Charley asked very quietly.

  “I don’t know.” I found myself whispering as well. “Look—I’m sure it will go away. But if it doesn’t go away, can you put it back?”

  “It’s not mine,” Charley said. “I don’t know how.”

  “Well, how do you usually do it?”