Demon

by Shane Peacock

  “I…I am pleased to meet you, sir.”

  Lawrence straightens up and pops the monocle back into his eye socket. “And I to make your acquaintance, as well. Do not be swayed by my money or position, my boy, or anyone else’s. Most rich folks inherited their wealth and power and deserved none of it. They are fortunate, nothing more. I am pleased to say that I earned my filthy lucre through a combination of brains and effort, but that does not make me anyone special. Take me as I am. Judge me for how I treat you, nothing less. I asked you to come because I was told that one of the gentlemen who died was your uncle and the other was your mentor.”

  “I…I wouldn’t say mentor, sir, if I may.”

  “Of course you may, you may say anything you like.”

  “He was my superior.”

  “It sounds as though Godwin was superior to most of us, at least in mental capacity, and his disappearance is a great loss. We were well aware that he was working upon momentous scientific experiments that could have been of lasting benefit to humanity.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Edgar quietly.

  “You do not sound convinced.”

  “Yes, sir, absolutely, sir,” he says a little louder.

  Lawrence chuckles. “I like you, Brim—a man of his own mind. I thought it right that someone at the hospital, and in a sense I AM this hospital—chairman of the board, chief investor, you know, and the like—should at least say hello to you and offer our condolences.”

  “That is very kind of you, sir.”

  There is no response from Lawrence. He is staring over Edgar’s shoulder as if he has seen a miracle. The monocle pops out of his eye. Edgar turns and sees Annabel standing in the doorway. She is wearing another black dress, this one remarkably form-fitting for a widow’s gown; her blonde hair somehow showing to extraordinary advantage under a bonnet with the word Love stitched into it, and her ankles on display again above gray high-heeled boots with white laces.

  “Mother!”

  “This is your mother?”

  Annabel marches forward. There is not a drop of perspiration on her face in this terrible heat, but her temper is heated. “Edgar, I am not pleased with you, no no no! You slipped out of the house this morning without saying a word to your mother. You were to tell me more about your adventures this past week, and then I had to suffer the dreadful news that there was an intruder in our home last night. Another one!”

  “An intruder?” says Lawrence.

  “SHUSH!” snaps Annabel.

  Lawrence glows.

  “Mother, you shouldn’t…do you know who this is?”

  “I do not care if he is the Queen of Sheba. I want answers from you, Edgar Brim, answers. Well, young man, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Mother, may I introduce you to the chairman of the board of the London Hospital, Mr. Andrew Lawrence. This, sir, is Mrs. Annabel Thorne.”

  “Sir Andrew Lawrence, actually, though I would never insist.”

  Annabel has stopped in her tracks, still staring at Edgar, her back to the chairman of everything at the London Hospital. “Do you mean to tell me that the man I just shushed is Sir Andrew Lawrence?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well then…I should close my mouth.”

  “Not at all,” says Lawrence, “not to worry.”

  “Oh,” exclaims Annabel, turning toward him, “I shan’t worry. That is not my way. I move forward, always forward. A smile is always the best remedy.” She gives him a dazzling one. “I am never a worrywart, like this one.” She motions toward Edgar. “Now, let us start again.” She extends a hand. “I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Sir Andrew Lawrence.”

  He takes her gloved hand and kisses it. “Andrew will be sufficient.”

  Annabel pauses for a moment, not removing her hand from the grip of the tall, handsome billionaire with the tanned face and black hair only slightly touched with gray, and a miracle occurs: her face turns red. She pulls her hand back.

  “I am a busy woman and I must be going. I am sure you gentlemen have things to discuss, not that I could not discuss them with you. The day shall come, very soon, when not only will this hospital be peopled by female doctors but a woman shall have your place, sir!”

  “I have no doubt,” says Lawrence, “and I hope to live to see it.”

  “You do?”

  “I do indeed. Especially if that woman were someone such as yourself.”

  Annabel looks flustered.

  “Well then…good day to both of you. Edgar, we shall have that talk as soon as you get home.”

  “Your son, madam,” adds Lawrence, “seems like a fine young man”.

  Annabel pauses. “That is very kind of you to say.” She regards Lawrence, who has briefly put his hand on Edgar’s shoulder. “Especially since you just met him. Perhaps you have plans for him? I believe he has the ability to go places.”

  “I see evidence of that already. One cannot have too many fine young men in one’s employ.”

  Annabel regards the chairman again and narrows her eyes a little as if contemplating something. Then she turns and strides from the room, her heels clacking forcefully on the wood floor.

  “Good day, Mrs. Thorne,” says Lawrence after her, “and my condolences for your loss.”

  She stops and, without turning completely around, says, “One must go on,” and moves off down the hallway.

  Edgar turns back to Lawrence to see that he is still gazing at Annabel’s retreating back, and smiling.

  * * *

  —

  Edgar spends the day cleaning up his uncle’s and his “mentor’s” rooms, which have not been attended to for more than a week. Lawrence has told him that he will be assigned as an apprentice to a doctor soon, to help ready him for his medical studies in Edinburgh the following year. Edgar wants to tell Lawrence that he has no interest in being a doctor, and that it is only Annabel’s future financial needs that make that profession his only choice. It is books that intrigue him, stories, plays, and works of art, but he keeps quiet.

  Just being in his uncle’s room and Godwin’s laboratory gives him strange sensations. It is as though their ghosts and the ghosts of what happened to them, and what might have happened to him and his friends, linger in the air. The copies of the sensation novels Frankenstein and The Island of Doctor Moreau are still on Vincent Brim’s desk, their presence more poignant now that Edgar knows that his uncle, far from being the villain he had thought him to be, had been studying those texts because he feared what Godwin was planning. Uncle Vincent had given his life for Edgar in that fire.

  The laboratory in the basement is more problematic for Edgar to enter. He can barely bring himself to open the door. The operating table with the light above it is there, where Godwin had mutilated animals—Edgar shivers at the memory of what the surgeon forced him to do to a quivering little rabbit. They had also taken apart dead human bodies here, put limbs into formaldehyde jars and kept others on ice, ready for transportation to Godwin’s secret lab at the hotel. At the time, Edgar had known nothing of their destination or their fate. He sweeps and cleans up the room like an automaton, trying to resist any emotions, but wondering, again, what in God’s name could be worse than a Frankenstein creature.

  He is glad to see his three friends alive and well outside the hospital and especially pleased that Tiger seems to be more her old, vigorous self again. She is dressed in trousers and appears impatient, her entire leg vibrating as her foot taps the pavement while waiting for Edgar to appear. Jonathan is standing close to her and Edgar wonders if she likes that.

  “Edgar!” shouts Lucy as she runs up to him and takes his hand. “I’m so happy to see you!”

  “Yes,” says Jon, “it must be at least half a day since we saw your shining face.”

  “Any news?” asks Edgar.

  “About what
?” asks Jonathan.

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Creatures,” says Tiger.

  “Oh God, Brim, that is gone and done,” groans Jon. “We have triumphed! Can you never be satisfied? You are such a pessimist! You are not seriously worried about anything the lunatic Shakespeare said, are you? If I had a penny for every brain cell he has that is abnormal, I would be richer than the chap who owns this hospital. I am ready to move forward in life!” He looks at Tiger.

  She isn’t smiling. “We need to remain vigilant,” she says. “I’m feeling better now. I’ll spend some time with the Lears over the next while, and we’ll keep both the cannon and rifle up there. I’ll look out for these two, Edgar.”

  Jonathan chuckles. “That won’t be necessary, though I like your plan of staying with us for a while.”

  “Just a while,” says Tiger. “If nothing comes in a few days, I think the threat will be greatly reduced. The last one attacked right away.”

  “There was that sound,” says Lucy, a hand on Edgar’s elbow.

  “Sound? What sound?” says Jonathan.

  “The one we heard on Spitsbergen Island.”

  “That was a bear! And we seem to have made it back to England without Satan descending on us.”

  “I don’t like your choice of words,” says Edgar.

  “You can’t be serious. Satan?”

  “Something happened last night.”

  “What?” demands Jon, sticking out his chin, almost challenging his friend to offer evidence of another monster. Sometimes it seems to Edgar that Jonathan is playing at being brave, trying to convince himself of his own courage. Edgar looks to Lucy, then Tiger. He cannot bring himself to tell them. “Nothing,” he finally says, “nothing actually happened. I just had a bad feeling.”

  “Listen, sunshine,” says Jonathan, “if you didn’t have bad feelings, you wouldn’t have any feelings at all.”

  “No feelings?” asks Lucy. “That sounds more like you, brother.”

  Tiger takes a step away from Jon. “I would trust Edgar’s sixth sense about anything. Always have. But—”

  “I like people with feelings,” says Lucy.

  There is silence for a moment. “As I was saying,” continues Tiger, “we have to be realistic. Being too anxious about all of this isn’t helpful, being prepared is.”

  “We should call on Shakespeare and at least tell him what happened,” says Edgar. “He’s the one who has always claimed to know so much about all of this.”

  “Oh, Lord,” says Jon. “Maybe we should consult Sherlock Holmes and the Hunchback of Notre Dame while we are at it?”

  “I’ll come with you,” says Lucy.

  “I will too,” says Tiger.

  * * *

  —

  Little William Shakespeare opens his door to the four of them before they have a chance to knock—as always he appears to be ready ahead of time to meet anyone who even approaches his residence. He is dressed in a pair of riding breeches that are so tight as to be obscene as they stretch on his skinny legs and up over his bulging belly. For some reason, though he is not going out (and seldom does, it seems), he is also wearing a tall stovepipe hat, and a jacket, its color best described as pink, without the company of a shirt. The white hair on his naked chest is as furry as a polar bear’s; under the absurd hat, his big head is glowing with excitement at the appearance of his four young friends. He is perspiring so profusely in the heat that Edgar almost expects to look down and see a pool of sweat at his feet.

  “Enter! Enter, you knights of modern days! It is a glorious morning indeed when I see you upon my doorstep.” It is actually late afternoon. “Come, come! Messrs. Sprinkle, Winker and Tightman are present, holding forth on issues of grave importance, pronouncing pearls of wisdom seldom heard anywhere else in the British Empire. We are in full expectation of news that you have conquered the Frankenstein creature, shall be simply thrilled to hear of it, and veritably swollen with enthusiasm to contemplate what might come next.” Shakespeare often seems as though he is standing on a stage, projecting his carefully chosen words. He has stepped to the side and is ushering them down the stairs, but as he says his last sentence, he looks closely at Edgar.

  In the main room of the Crypto-Anthropology Society of the Queen’s Empire, full of masculine wood, rows of novels, severed animal heads on the walls and an enormous painting of Queen Victoria, eight empty chairs sit at the big oak table; four pulled back with blank papers, pens and inkbottles resting on the surface in front of them. A meeting of the mysterious investigators into the existence of monsters seems to be in session.

  “My esteemed colleagues, I give you my esteemed colleagues! You all know each other!”

  Edgar, Lucy and Tiger dutifully say hello to three of the empty chairs. Jonathan says nothing.

  “Well! Well well well well well well well well well well!” exclaims the little man. “A report! I believe we are to be the recipients of an actual report, the story of your manly—and in that adjectival description I include Miss Lear and Miss Tilley—actions in defeating another creature, another aberration! Was it indeed upon the arctic ice floes?” He motions to four of the chairs. “Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit!”

  Tiger, Jonathan and Lucy take places, steering clear of Shakespeare’s imaginary colleagues.

  “As you may have noticed,” adds the little man, “Mr. Sprinkle has not yet returned, though he shall be out shortly.”

  None of the four friends bothers to ask what this might mean. Jonathan rolls his eyes.

  “I am in such a state of discombobulated anticipation that—” begins Shakespeare, but he is interrupted by a noise coming from somewhere beyond the door that allows entrance into the rest of his residence. He pauses and looks in that direction, frowning. “As I was saying, I—” The noise interrupts him again.

  “SPRINKLE!” he cries. “SILENCE IS THE PERFECT HERALD OF JOY!” He turns back to his listeners and smiles. “Excuse Mr. Sprinkle, if you will. He is within the confines of my apartment employing the water closet.”

  “Shakespeare has a cat?” mouths Jon silently at his friends, grinning. Edgar, however, is not smiling, and the noise comes again.

  “Perhaps you have an intruder?” says Edgar, his voice sounding a little shaky.

  “Or a cat?” says Jon, this time out loud.

  “No, no, just Sprinkle,” insists the little man, “adjourned to make his toilet. He is terribly clean, you know, fixes himself up multitudinous times a day. Tall and spotless, that’s Mr. Sprinkle. Let me cast my gaze down the hallway and see if he has completed his hygienic tasks.”

  An intruder, thinks Edgar, a creature. Listening to us.

  The little man waddles over to the door that opens into a narrow hallway and peeks in.

  “Sprinkle! I say, Sprinkle! Blasted man, are you not done yet?” There is a pause. “Momentarily? I should think so. There is not a man on earth more relieved and more clean than yourself. Sir Edgar Broom and his colleagues are here and you are disturbing us. Come! We are to be entertained with an account of monster hunting!” There is another pause. “What’s that you say? One minute and twenty-two seconds and you shall return? A fellow should be more precise than that, but I shall let our guests know.” Shakespeare looks back toward the others. “He—”

  “There is someone in there,” says Edgar.

  “Yes, I—”

  “Not Sprinkle!”

  “Pardon me?” The little man stands there holding the door open, as if inviting his questioner to investigate.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Edgar,” says Jon. “It could be anything.”

  Lucy looks concerned. Tiger gets to her feet.

  Edgar is quickly past Shakespeare. The door, on some sort of spring, closes behind him as he steps inside. Immediately, he hears the noise again, somewhere deeper in th
e apartment. He walks toward it, passing the unoccupied water closet just beyond the end of the short hall. As he turns a corner, he sees someone glancing back at him and immediately disappearing around another corner in Shakespeare’s labyrinth-like living quarters. The man is tall and lean, dressed in the absurd crimson outfit of someone who is about to ride after the hounds. His clothes are immaculate and his face shining with cleanliness. His shaved head glistens in the dim light.

  “Excuse me,” says Edgar, his heart pounding, walking briskly toward him. However, the man is instantly gone. “Sprinkle?” he says to himself.

  Edgar searches the apartment and finds it empty. When he turns back toward the door, Tiger is standing there, watching. He notices that one of her fists is clenched.

  “Everything all right?” she asks. He says nothing and walks past her back into the meeting room. Tiger follows.

  There is silence for a moment as he settles into his chair.

  “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” says Lucy.

  “No,” replies Edgar, “I’m fine, just a little under the weather. There was no one in there.” He glances at Shakespeare, who is staring back at him, examining his expression. Then, the little man lifts his eyes toward the apartment. “On the contrary!” he exclaims, “for here is Mr. Sprinkle, relieved and at the end of his ablutions and ready to hear your marvelous story. I cannot imagine how you did not observe him.”

  First, I see the hag as real as life, thinks Edgar, now I encounter one of Shakespeare’s imaginary friends. I am losing my mind. But the hag isn’t a fiction, Beasley saw it, or did I imagine the butler speaking to me about it too?

  “Cats are elusive,” says Jonathan quietly to his friends. Then he lifts his voice. “It is just nerves, as always with our lad.”