by H. G. Parry
I blinked stupidly at them as they drew close. “But—is Charley alone in there?”
“The doctor came in to see him,” Mum said, without looking at me. She was staring at the cloud in growing horror. “He asked us to step out. He—this is it, isn’t it? The new world?”
“You saw it arrive?”
“We felt it,” Dickens said. “Like a tearing of the curtain between the realms of fiction and the realms of mortality.”
I expected Holmes to challenge this melodramatic description. He didn’t.
“I’ll go in to Charley,” I said. Somehow, my mind was assembling plans while the rest of me panicked. I don’t how it was doing it, but it made me feel better. I’d take it. “I’ll stay with him. You need to tell Millie about Beth as soon as possible. Holmes, Dickens—do you two know how to get to the Street?”
Holmes nodded briskly. “Of course. It was I who directed you toward it in the first place. I know it better now, through Dr. Sutherland. And Mr. Dickens was there only last night.”
Neither of them had passed through the wall before, but I would have to trust the world’s greatest detective and the world’s greatest novelist to manage that between them.
“Then go. If things are as bad there as I imagine they are, she’ll need you. And take Mum and Dad with you.”
“Wait a minute!” Mum protested. She tore her eyes from the shadow. “There is no way we’re leaving you or Charley when the world is ending. Forget about it.”
“She’s right,” Dad said. “God knows I’m still trying to work out what else we are, but we’re a family.”
My family believes in family. I went through phases in my teenage years when that was embarrassing beyond words, but at that moment my throat tightened. Now, of all times, my eyes felt hot. Again.
“You can’t stay here,” I forced myself to say. “Mum, you’re a summoner. A reader, like Charley—even if the last time you read anything out was twenty-six years ago, that was a pretty powerful reading. Beth met you. She knows Charley’s a summoner. There’s a very high chance she knows that you are too—and she definitely knows full well that taking Charley out would draw you to the hospital. You’re a threat to her. You’re in danger here.”
“I don’t care,” she said fiercely. Her eyes looked suspiciously bright as well, but they were also burning.
“You’ll put us all in danger too, if you stay.” I wasn’t sure if it was true—Beth would probably come for Charley regardless, if he didn’t come to her—but it didn’t matter. I was fairly certain I could make Mum believe it. “She won’t just leave you at large. She’ll send someone or something to come for you. The Street’s the safest place to be right now, at least until the shadow reaches it. I’ll bring Charley there as soon as I can, but please, please go on ahead of us.”
Dickens spoke up. “Forgive me, Mrs. Sutherland, but if you are indeed a summoner, even a fledgling one, your protection is desperately needed. Without Dr. Sutherland, the Street is very vulnerable right now—doubtless exactly what Professor White intended. Anything you could muster would be greatly appreciated.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of my mother defending the Street rather than being defended by it, but I took it up anyway. “There, you see? If you want to protect us, you’re more use there.”
“More use to them,” Mum corrected, but she was wavering. She ran a hand through her hair. “You really think I’m putting you in danger by being here?”
“If Beth knows who you are,” I said firmly, “then definitely.”
“She knows. I remember the look on her face. I thought at the time—but I don’t want to leave you both.”
“I’ll stay,” Dad said. “Rob, you go with your mother.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You don’t know what to look for if Beth sends anyone here. You don’t know enough about any of this. Look, I realize I haven’t done a very good job of looking after him so far—”
“Who says you haven’t done a good job?” Mum said. She actually sounded surprised.
“Well, you did,” I reminded her. “I should have stopped him from going to the Street in the first place.”
“I never said that. Neither of us did. You should have told us what was going on, definitely, but—for God’s sake, Rob, nobody ever stopped Charley doing what he was determined to do for long. It isn’t your job to do it. It isn’t your job to look after him, for that matter.”
“You used to say it was.”
“When he was six, perhaps! Not anymore. He’s a grown-up. That’s one reason I was angry at you. You shouldn’t have tried to deal with this on your own. You should have told us. Your job is to look after yourself—and Lydia. Where is she, by the way? Is she safe?”
“I don’t know.” My throat ached with trying to keep my voice from breaking. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be looked after, as if I were a child. But I wasn’t a child. “I can’t get in touch with her. She might have been at her hotel when—”
“Dear God.” Mum stared at me for a moment and then, without warning, hugged me tightly. We didn’t hug very much in our family. The unexpected rush of warmth almost broke me. “I’m so sorry.”
“She’ll be all right,” Dad said. He squeezed my shoulder. “Probably the reception’s just on the blink, with all this happening. You’ll see. She’ll phone when she can.”
“Right.” I swallowed hard. “But that’s another reason why I need to stay out here. Because if she phones and I’m in the Street—”
“Of course.” Mum took a long, shaky breath. “Well. We’ll go then. But please, Rob, follow as quickly as you can.”
“I will,” I promised. I turned to Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens. “Look after them, okay?”
“I give my word,” Holmes said very gently. “No harm will come to them.”
Mum gave me one last embrace. “I know I never thanked you for saving your brother’s life,” she said. “I just blew up at you. But you know how proud I am of you, don’t you? Both of you?”
“Oh God, don’t,” I said. “I sort of liked it better when you were blaming me.” It wasn’t true, but it made her laugh.
Holmes lingered behind as Dickens led Mum and Dad back to their car.
“Sutherland,” he said quietly. “We have not yet addressed the question of why the summoner—why Beth White—requested Charley’s medical records.”
“Is this the time?” I asked. “Do we have to?”
“I suspect you do not. I suspect you already know exactly why, or at least believe you do.”
“What gave you that idea?” I knew, before I had finished speaking, that I was too defensive for him not to know he was right. “Can you read the marks on my left shirt cuff or something?”
“Of course, but that’s of no matter. I know your brother, and he can read you. You are an intelligent man, Sutherland, in your own way. You would not dismiss an important point of inquiry unless you already had the answer.”
I still didn’t have the complete answer, but Sherlock Holmes was right. Of course he was. I knew exactly why the records had been requested.
Charley’s medical records, first and foremost, said that he had returned from the dead. I knew now that he had not returned from the dead. He had come from somewhere else, the same place as Holmes and Dickens and Millie and the Street itself. And to the right reader, that was what his records would reveal. Not that he was a summoner, but that Mum was, and that Charley was her invention. Somehow, Beth had wondered if he were real, and had gone to his records for proof he was not. I didn’t know what she could do with this information, but it had to be dangerous.
“This isn’t the time,” I said. “Just… keep watch over him until I get back.”
Holmes nodded.
I hesitated just a moment longer. “Is that what Charley thinks of me?” I asked, against my will. “An intelligent man in my own way?”
“Of course not,” Holmes replied at once. “It is what I think of you. Your b
rother thinks you the best and wisest man in this world. As I said, emotions are antagonistic to clear reasoning.”
It had been minutes since the light split the sky, and the city was in a panic. As I entered the reception area, the two women at the desk were talking on phones in low, urgent voices; many in the waiting room were making calls of their own. The television mounted in the corner displayed the news channel. Too soon for news of the shadow city yet, but already people were clustered in front of the screen. Outside, I heard the whine of a siren.
“It’s too late now.” Eric’s voice came out of nowhere.
I spun around, pulse racing. There he was, standing apart from the other spectators a few meters away. Something had shifted in him, or in the way I was looking at him. At the law firm, he had looked passably human. Now he was an evening shadow in the hospital reception, all elongated limbs and insubstantial menace.
“He’s done it,” Eric said. “The summoner. The new world is here.”
I’d known it. But part of me must have held out some faint, stupid hope that I was wrong, because hearing it from the lips of Uriah Heep hurt beyond measure.
“Why do you say ‘he’?” I asked Eric. “It’s Beth White, isn’t it? The summoner? From the university?”
“Is it?” Eric said. “How interesting. I wondered if it might be somebody at the university, on account of my placement in the internship program. And on account of your brother. You’ve seen him then, in the flesh? How does he look to you?”
“Beth? A perfectly ordinary, gray-haired, cardigan-wearing academic. How does she look to you?”
“It’s not really a question of looks,” Eric said. “We see what we know is there. A spider in a web. A—no, that’s as much as I can say. You should mention that phrase to your brother. He might understand. Either way, I’m afraid I won’t be coming into work on Monday, Mr. Sutherland. The summoner doesn’t care about you anymore. He might kill you, if he can be bothered. Probably not.”
“Did she want to kill me with the Hound, and the Jabberwock?” I asked. “Was that why she made sure Charley and I were together when they struck?”
Eric laughed. “Kill you, Mr. Sutherland? All that mattered was your brother. They need each other, you see, or at least the summoner needs Dr. Sutherland. He didn’t want him dead, or not yet.”
“Then why did she send the Hound to kill him in the first place?”
“I’m afraid that was my fault. I was sent to your firm to find out how much you and Dr. Sutherland knew—about the summoner, about the threat to your world. I might have given the impression you knew more than you did.”
“We didn’t know anything at that point.”
“Yes,” Eric said. “I said that you did. I convinced the summoner to send Dr. Sutherland a calling card. It’s never a good idea to listen to a Uriah Heep, you know. We lie. He didn’t think I could, the way he read me. Probably I couldn’t have, except for one thing. I’m sure you can guess what that was, Mr. Sutherland, being so clever.”
I was about to say I had no idea, but all at once I did. “The other Uriah Heep,” I said. “Charley brought him to life, completely by accident, the night before you were due to start at the firm. That was it, wasn’t it?”
“My mind touched his,” Eric said. “Our thoughts merged—not much, but enough. Enough for him to see my master’s plans. And enough for me to glimpse some of his cunning, and use it for my own. It gave me some ideas. Just one idea, really, at first: to bring your brother and my master into open conflict, as soon and as often as I could. I need Dr. Sutherland to kill the summoner for me. It’s the only way I can be truly free.”
The idea of Charley killing anybody was so preposterous I almost laughed. But I didn’t. “And me? What do you need me to do?”
“Oh, it’s the summoner who needs you, Mr. Sutherland,” Eric said. I swear, if I heard my name one more time…“The summoner doesn’t want to be killed by Dr. Sutherland, you see. He doesn’t want to kill him either; he needs to deal with him. But he wants him weakened. And Dr. Sutherland is always weaker around you.”
Once again, I felt a chill. “No he isn’t. Don’t say that.”
“He is. You know what he is now, don’t you? I knew the first time I saw him through the eyes of the other Uriah Heep. We know David Copperfield when we see him. Perhaps we knew even before our master did.”
So I had been right. Beth knew too.
“He’s very subject to interpretation, Mr. Sutherland, just like the rest of us. And you see him as small, helpless, hopeless. You tell him that often enough. He believes what you tell him.”
“I don’t tell him that.”
“He’s a reader,” Eric said. “Do you think he can’t read you? Everything you do tells him that.”
“I don’t,” I insisted, but the cold deepened. Because I did tell him that. I never meant to. I never realized. I just wanted to protect him. No, I wanted him to need me to protect him.
“I’m not a summoner,” I said. “However I saw him, I couldn’t alter him.”
“You’re not a summoner,” he agreed. “But he is. And he trusts your opinion more than any other, including his own. When he sees himself through your eyes, he reinterprets himself, against all evidence and experience, as your irritatingly helpless little brother. Or that was the summoner’s theory, anyway. You can tell yourself it was wrong, if you like. But that’s the other reason, when the summoner realized your importance to your brother, I ended up at your work. Not just to find out what you knew about the new world. I was meant, where possible, to keep track of you so that the summoner could draw you into this mess at your brother’s side.”
“Why? How did she know what I could do to Charley? We’d never even met when you arrived.”
“I don’t know. But I’d be careful, when you go in.”
I was looking back at the sprawling shadow over Courtenay Place. It took me a while to catch his words. “What—when I go in?”
“When you and Dr. Sutherland go in. To the new world. You’re supposed to go with him, you know. That’s why Miss Lydia was taken in there. To make sure you didn’t decide this wasn’t your problem.”
I didn’t feel cold then. My heart opened, and heat spilled into my veins. In that moment, I could have killed him. “What have you done?”
“The summoner wants you in there. I told him you might not go in just for your brother. But you would definitely go in for her. And she would come to meet me, at the right time, if I promised to tell her what you and your brother were doing.”
“She had nothing to do with this.”
“Of course she did. But she might have been left out of it. My master wasn’t very interested in her; I had to persuade him that she was worth using at this late stage. It was me. I needed her. I needed someone to bring me things, to help me escape. I was ever so relieved, when she phoned our work that night, and I realized I could use her. But my master would never have let me meet her if he hadn’t thought I was doing it for his purposes.”
“Where is she?”
“If it helps,” he said, “I’m sorry I had to do it. She was kind to me, even though I revolted her. Not many are. I’m not written for people to be kind to.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s nowhere. Now. I invited her to the heart of the darkness, and I held her there until the darkness touched her. Then I let her go, and it took her. You really should have told her about your brother, you know. She had no idea what she was walking into.”
He was right. Of course he was right.
“Why are you telling me this?” I managed.
“Because I want you not to fall for it.” Eric was deadly serious now. There was no trace of the half-ingratiating, half-mocking lilt. “If you want to help anybody, including Miss Lydia, leave your brother alone. He doesn’t need you. All you do is make him vulnerable.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Do you remember that day by the bike sheds? When you were both in your last ye
ar of school?”
He could have been talking about any day. I knew he wasn’t.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know how you know, but I do. I let him down that day.”
“You did,” Eric said. “You abandoned him. And he was more powerful on that day than he had ever been when you were at his side.”
That wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. “He’s still unconscious.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Eric sighed patiently. “I never heard of a story where the main protagonist just slept through the climax. This story has been between your brother and my master. I was sent with an invitation from him—my master. He wants Dr. Sutherland to come find him in the city. Give him that message, will you? I was supposed to give it to him, but I thought I’d give it to you. As we have such a relationship. I have a boat to catch, before they cancel them.”
“Why would I give Charley a message from you to come and be killed?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t. He’ll come anyway. I told you, it’s his story—his and my master’s. They both need to see it through. You’re not a literary character, though. You need to think about what part you should play.”
“And what part are you playing?”
“I’m nobody, Mr. Sutherland.” He sounded almost tired. “I’m not like the other Uriah. I was made to be without autonomy. I’m not supposed to rebel. The schemer in me is downplayed as much as possible, given the materials the summoner had to work with. But I’m still Uriah Heep. I hate the people who tell me what to do. I hate you, but I hate the summoner more. I want to be free of all of you.”
“You’re not going back to the new world, are you?” I said. “This is what you’ve been planning all along. You’re going to make a run for it now, with whatever Lydia’s given you, while Beth’s distracted with the new world. You’re hoping that we can deal with her before she realizes that you’re missing; because as soon as she does, she only needs to think of you and you’ll be read out of existence. You need us to win.”
“I don’t know if your brother can win,” he said. “I haven’t been very impressed so far, I must admit. Perhaps this was all impossible from the beginning, and we’re all of us doomed. But if you can win, Mr. Sutherland, I would be ever so umbly in your debt.”