by H. G. Parry
“It’s David Copperfield again, isn’t it?” I asked.
Charley shook his head, too briskly. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” I corrected him.
I approached the dead man carefully. It wasn’t as horrible as it might have been. The blindfold over his face obscured most of his features. Apart from the wound at his throat, he looked almost peaceful, as if death had come as a release. His hands and feet were bound, so perhaps it had. Something about the dark, tousled hair looked familiar.
Oh.
My breath caught. I understood why Charley was trying so hard, for the first time in his life, not to think.
“He’s here because of you, isn’t he?” I said slowly. “He’s here because he is you.”
“I think so,” Charley said. The words seemed to hurt.
“That’s why you could sense him through the door that night. You didn’t read him out. You were read from the same character. He’s the Eric to your Uriah Heep. That’s why he lived his life blindfolded, and in the dark: so you couldn’t see through him.”
Charley nodded tightly. “But I wasn’t blindfolded.”
For a moment, I didn’t know what he meant. Then I did. “He was here to watch you. The way Uriah Heep could watch Eric, through his own eyes. Because—”
“Because I am David Copperfield,” Charley finished. “Yes. The monster in the cellar. The secret at the heart of the new world. That’s how she knew where the book was for the Artful to steal.”
“That’s how she knew you were on your way to her right now too. And, when she knew you were here, she slit his throat.”
She hadn’t even bothered to read him away—too much effort, probably, with everything else going on. Like turning off a device that was no longer needed. Only with more blood.
“‘David Copperfield as Narrator,’” Charley said.
“What?”
“It’s a lecture I give in my third-year course.” He took a deep breath. “Um.”
As I said, it used to be my job on long car journeys to watch for the signs. I wasn’t surprised when he ducked quickly behind the moldy sofa, and I heard the harsh, painful sound of him throwing up again and again. Nor could I blame him. I felt my own stomach churn.
The sounds of gunfire and shouts from outside were growing louder. I bent down by David Copperfield, removed the blindfold, and closed the staring dark eyes that were far too familiar. He was still warm to the touch, but barely.
This was who Charley was. As much as he was the child upstairs—more, perhaps—he was this. Maybe I really couldn’t do this after all.
When Charley emerged, he was shaking, and deathly pale. That seemed to be his near-permanent state today.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right,” I replied. I should, of course, have said much more.
He took another breath, and ran his hand through his hair. “Okay. We need to find Beth again, and we need to find her fast. Once she gets into that battle, the damage she’ll inflict will be catastrophic.”
“She’ll kill you,” I said. “She’ll kill everyone.”
“I think—if I can get there, just close enough to see her, I should be able to read Beth back into Moriarty. The textual Moriarty, or at least my reading of Moriarty. Exactly as I did to the Hound, and the Jabberwock. And then I should be able to read her—him—back into the book. If I can do that—”
My heart jumped. “Seriously? You can just get rid of her?”
“I can try. I have to. And then I can take control of the city. It’s mine as well. I can make it all go away.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.” He said it very quietly; then he raised his head and his voice. “Yes, all of it. I promise.”
“All right then.” I hesitated. My hopes had soared a moment ago. Now I felt uneasy. Something was going on in his head, but I didn’t know what it was. “Charley—about what Beth said—”
“Let’s not talk about that,” he interrupted. “We don’t have to. I understand why you didn’t tell me; I shouldn’t have been angry. It’s fine. All of it.”
It wasn’t, of course. It was the opposite of fine. But we didn’t have the time, and I at least didn’t have the words.
Charley opened another garden door, onto the stairwell; this one, we left swinging behind us. The tiny patch of Edwardian children’s literature looked oddly beautiful in the shabby Victorian Gothic.
The room from which we had fallen was deserted when we ventured up the stairs—deserted, and devastated. The walls were blackened and scorched; the floor was now half-wooden and half-hard-granite. The ghost of cruel childish laughter danced around its edges, so faint it sounded like a sigh. The place could have been gutted and abandoned for years. The sounds of the battle below—it really was a battle now—drifted in from the wide-open window.
The body curled up in the center of the room was smaller than David Copperfield’s had been, and less recognizable as a human being. Nonetheless, this time I saw it at once. The damage all radiated from it. It lay in a clear circle of concrete surrounded by ashes, like a macabre fairy ring.
“Charley…” I said. I was speaking to my brother, not the diary creature, but to my surprise the body in the circle twitched slightly in recognition. He was alive.
“I know,” Charley said. He kept his distance. “Beth’s done with him. She’d nearly exhausted him anyway. If she wants to use him again, she’ll just read another one out.”
I bent down by his side, wincing as my bruises protested. He was alive, but I saw at once that he wouldn’t be so for long. His eyes were closed; that one twitch and the slow rasp of his breathing were the only indications that he was still with us. He was burnt almost beyond recognition. Parts of his face and hands no longer had the texture of flesh but of charred paper. I didn’t want to touch him in case he crumbled into ash. I didn’t, if I were truly honest, want to touch him anyway. I was afraid to.
If you have difficulty believing your brother isn’t real, try seeing him dead or dying in two vastly different forms, as two vastly different people, while he’s standing behind you both times as the person you grew up with. And then try to tell yourself it isn’t killing you inside.
“Send him back,” I heard myself say. “Quickly.”
“I don’t have his book,” Charley said. He still hadn’t come forward. “Beth does, somewhere.”
“So? It’s your book. It’s your diary.”
“From fourteen years ago! I don’t remember what I wrote.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “You remember words, especially important ones. And I have a feeling those ones are seared into your brain.”
He sighed, and didn’t deny it. “He wouldn’t thank me. He doesn’t want to go back. I don’t blame him. I would rather die here than go back into that moment—assuming there’s even anything to go back to.”
“He’s twelve. He doesn’t get to choose.”
“Yes. He does. He’s twelve, and he’s not real, and he’s nothing but anger and fear, but unless he’s a danger, he still gets to choose. He’s no danger to anyone at the moment.”
I bit back my instinctive retort, because I knew it would be the wrong one. “Okay,” I allowed. “You may be right, in principle. But he can’t choose. He’s dying. You can’t know what he’d want, or if he’d be right to want it. So save him. Just in case.”
“I really don’t think I can. I don’t understand him. I never understood him.”
“Try.”
Charley sighed again, but he bent down next to me. The diary Charley stirred again as his older self laid his hand gently on his shoulder, and he made one tiny sound, somewhere between a whimper and a moan.
“It’s okay,” I said to the child, on reflex. I nearly reached out and touched him then, but restrained myself; I didn’t know how that would affect him going back. “You’re okay.”
His eyes opened slowly, just a little, so I could see the glimmer beneath his eyelash
es. He tried to speak, but his voice was gone. I don’t know what he wanted to say.
“It’s okay,” I said again. “It’ll be over in a minute.”
It was. The broken child gave one shiver, then his eyes closed with a long, tired sigh. Charley blinked, and sat back on his heels.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried. I couldn’t do it.”
I looked at the tiny figure. I couldn’t seem to feel anything at all, except that someone had grabbed my chest and was squeezing very hard. “He’s dead?”
“I set him on fire, Rob. The fire that killed Miss Havisham. Yes, he’s dead.”
In that same moment, the city rocked. The floor shuddered as if struck by an earthquake; the sun flickered like a light bulb; the skies above screamed. I put my hand to the ground quickly to stay upright, and felt it quiver beneath my palm.
“What the—?”
“I told you, he’s gone,” Charley said. Once again, I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “Part of the city was being created by him. It’s all Beth’s now. And mine, if I can take it back. She’ll be struggling to hold it without his help.”
I reached out and touched the shoulder of the diary Charley. He didn’t crumble into paper. He was warm and substantial, and I wished I had touched him earlier, so he wouldn’t have spent the last seconds of his life utterly alone. I wished I had caught him that day at the courthouse, when I’d felt his eyes asking for my help. I wished a lot of things. My eyes were hot then, and I blinked and quickly looked away. He deserved better than that, I know. There wasn’t time.
“Why has Beth just left us?” I asked. I stood, and limped over to the window. The streets were darker now, and the sound of shots was like thunder in the sky. The courtyard was spilling with people. They had broken down the barred gate, and were running forward to crouch behind the old beer barrels and gravestones spotting the ground. (I have no idea why there were gravestones, or even if they had been there when we crossed the yard. It seemed to make sense at the time, and still does.)
The Witch’s motorcycle was at the head of the charge; she stood in the saddle, teeth bared, dark hair streaming like a comet behind her. The Scarlet Pimpernel sat behind her, raising his rapier high. Beth’s creations were coming out of the house to meet them: the same blank-eyed criminals we had seen in the streets, weapons of their own in hand. The Witch pointed her wand at a burly, square-jawed man, and he turned to stone as he raised a pistol. It didn’t matter. There were more of the same man, piling out behind him.
Somewhere beneath it all, I realized with a stab, were the lights of Courtenay Place, with its partygoers and commuters and diners. And Lydia. Somewhere, beneath all this, was Lydia.
“She thinks that if she sends men to take us, she’s likely to lose them,” Charley said, answering the question I’d almost forgotten I’d asked. “They’ll be read away by me, or altered beyond use. I’ll do my best, at least. And if she comes herself, I’ll try exactly what I want to try now. She knows that. She was ready for it before Millie came and interrupted. Now she’s just hoping we’ll wait it out, and let her fight this battle before our war begins.”
He joined me by the window. He was limping too, though he scarcely seemed to notice. His face was pale, and utterly remote. I wondered in that moment how I could have ever missed that he wasn’t real.
“Is Millie there?” he asked. “Can you see her?”
I squinted through the dark and the rain that was beginning to fall. It only took me a moment.
“There,” I said, pointing. “There by the oak tree. Holmes and Dickens are with her.”
She was pressed against a tree, her head turned to shout something to Dickens, a pistol in her hand. I wondered where she had found it, and if she knew how to use it. It wasn’t the sort of thing one learned in a Millie Radcliffe-Dix Adventure, or in urban New Zealand, but I wouldn’t put anything past her. She stood next to a slight, muscled Polynesian man with a weapon made of curved bone in his hand—a man I recognized immediately. Not for the first time that day, I felt I spike of pure, perfect wonder.
It only lasted a moment. Something else caught my eye.
“Charley,” I said suddenly. “There’s Beth.”
“Where?” he said, then followed my finger. “Yes, I see her!”
Beth-Moriarty had just entered the field. Her people fanned out in front of her, crouching behind armored shields and the kind of assault rifles I was surprised to see until I remembered the action thrillers I’d found in her basement. She, sheltered by them, looked as though she were going for a stroll in the Botanic Gardens. Her hair was crisp, and her cardigan was in place. Her hands were empty of weapons. Instead, they held a stack of books.
“Oh God,” Charley said, a second before I too realized what was about to happen.
I didn’t see the title of the book she opened, but I know what it was. I know because I saw Sherlock Holmes disappear. One moment, he was at front of the line near Millie, a revolver in his hand and every long limb wired for attack. The next, he was gone. There was barely a chance for him to falter, flicker, and look toward the wall of characters behind which hid Professor Moriarty; though I’m sure that he did, and that he recognized the feel of his own nemesis taking possession of him and throwing him away. He was simply gone.
Beth threw his book to the ground, and opened the next.
“He’s not dead,” Charley said. “She’s just sent him away. I can bring him back.”
“Holmes, perhaps,” I said. “Dickens too; perhaps Millie, in some shape or form. They’re yours. Not the others. If she keeps going, you won’t be able to save them.”
“No.” He shook his head. “She did that in seconds. It took me ages to reread the Jabberwock to the point where I could send it back—and that was just from a poem.”
“She’s been reading a very long time. But you read the Jabberwock back in the end. You can read her back too.”
I’d hoped to remind him why we were here; it worked. New resolve flushed into his face. “Give me a second.”
He had the paperback in his hand, but he didn’t open it; just held it, loosely, like a touchstone. His eyes were fixed on something very far away; his voice, when it came, was a whisper almost too quick to be heard over the gunfire.
“‘It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished…’”
I looked out the window again. Beth had paused in her reading away, and new people were materializing. These were harder, meaner—and less human. I didn’t recognize the characters, if they were indeed named characters, but I recognized their type: gargoyles, gremlins, goblins. A horde of flying monkeys rose from what must have been The Wizard of Oz. They grabbed Lancelot, lifted him in the air, and dropped him like a stone. He flailed with his sword as he fell.
“Look out!” I called—uselessly, on instinct. The instant before he hit the ground, he stopped; suddenly, with a snap that must have wrenched his back, but he stopped. Matilda was standing a few feet away from him, her eyes wide and her face pale. She lowered him gently to the ground—ignoring, to my horror, the tall, cloaked figure approaching who could only have been Count Dracula.
I didn’t have time to call out this time, even instinctually. With a high, fierce war cry that carried over the battle, the man wielding the bone leaped in the air. Between one second and the next, he was an eagle, beak and claws poised to tear. He descended on the vampire like a bolt from the sun. I saw them go down, and lost sight of them in the rush.
“You really need to hurry up,” I said to Charley.
He ignored me, and kept his focus on the book. He wasn’t reading the story, exactly. His voice leaped from line to line as though skipping stones.
“‘—the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone know
the absolute truth of the matter—’”
“I didn’t know Moriarty had a brother,” I said, startled.
“Rob, please, I’m trying to do a reading. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t—”
“Okay, point taken. Carry on.”
The courtyard was filling up with statues as the Witch circled; the Scarlet Pimpernel held the handlebars now, and she stood on the back like a Roman charioteer. Matilda, now with a cut across her cheek, hurled the statues toward Beth; her living shield took the blows. The Darcys moved across the battlefield as one, canes in their hands. The eagle soared, swooped, claws scattering blood. Distorted monsters sprang out of the air near Beth’s head, howling and snarling. Beth-Moriarty stood as she had before, before the chaos, another book opened in her hands. She raised a hand to turn a page.
And then, so briefly that I almost missed it, I saw her change. As the Jabberwock had a few hours ago, she flickered, her shape morphing into something taller and thinner before snapping back to her more usual form. My heart gave a leap.
“I think it’s working,” I said.
“Moriarty’s so complicated,” Charley muttered, more to himself than to me. “So many cultural connotations beyond his actual function in the text. Doyle really just created him to kill off Holmes so he wouldn’t have to write any more stories…”
Suddenly, he gasped; a sharp, painful gasp, as though he’d been surprised by a dagger. He stumbled forward, dropping the book, and caught himself against the window ledge. I looked at him and then out at the courtyard. Beth’s head was raised to look directly at our window. It may have been my imagination, or it may have been a metaphor, but I felt the force of her gray eyes strike us.
“What is it?” I said to Charley.
“I don’t know,” he said tightly. “She’s doing something.”