Demon

by Shane Peacock

  “I am fine now. I believe, in fact, that I am ready to leave.” He begins to sit up, but she puts a strong hand on his chest and presses him back down.

  “Tell me about the monsters.”

  “I was mistaken.”

  “I see. Well then, at least tell me what you told Sir Andrew.”

  Edgar repeats parts of what he said, but qualifies every comment, saying that he was upset when he was talking to Lawrence and that he realizes now he was simply reacting in an extreme way to a very bad day, that he has had some tragedies in his life, a terrible one recently, and the problem is simply his nerves. She follows his story with her eyes, in pursuit of his when they turn one way or the other. “A temporary malaise,” he adds. “I am not mad.”

  “Well, Master Brim, I must tell you that is for me to decide.” Though her voice is soft, her gaze is intense. “And I shall.”

  Edgar wonders if she too is working for the devil, then realizes that he cannot even think something like that, even if it is true, since his face will betray him, and this woman will see that he is afraid of her, and absolutely no good can come of that. He pictures himself either locked up somewhere or sent south of the Thames to Bedlam—the Bethlem Royal Hospital, to which lunatics are confined, never to see the outside world again.

  “Yes, Dr. Berenice, you will decide.”

  “That is an excellent start, acknowledging my position and your situation.”

  “I understand. I am beginning to have a clearer picture of what was plaguing me.” Edgar is now using every fiber of his being to appear calm.

  “Most would say that you experienced a brain fever. Do you believe that to be correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or do you think your condition more than that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind, for now. You may indeed have just a temporary problem, but if your difficulty is deeper, there are many ways to proceed. Conventional wisdom is that the miasma in the air or problems with your brain from birth or a growth on it cause conditions that have symptoms like yours. That or any of a number of material origins. In my days as a neurologist, I believed that sort of thing too. We in my new world, the one to which I have ascended, the psychological world, have different views. We study the soul. Psychology is a science of the soul and psychoanalysis is a voyage into one’s mind. We can adjust the mind and heal it. We can navigate within your unconscious. It takes time, however. If it were up to me, I would have you committed for at least a short while to the Bethlem Royal for observation. The lunatics who are kept there are well looked after and some of them are able, after a good deal of rest and treatment, to resume ordinary lives.”

  Edgar holds his face firm.

  “I do not think Mr. Lawrence would allow that, though. He wants a quick analysis. He wants you released and back to your mother, Mrs. Annabel Thorne, if at all possible.”

  Edgar relaxes a little, although he is surprised to hear that Lawrence has mentioned his adoptive mother to this woman, revealed her full name too. He is still hoping that he imagined that embrace.

  “Sir Andrew wants to know if your mind is in trouble and is dearly desiring that it isn’t. What do you think?”

  “No.” It is all he can muster.

  “Look at me,” she says.

  Edgar looks into her eyes with what he hopes is an expression of sanity.

  “What do you see?”

  The black eyes are mesmerizing. They peer into him.

  “I see you, Dr. Berenice.”

  “Not a monster, not someone who could turn into one?”

  “No, nothing like that, just an ordinary person, though I know you are extraordinary in your ability to help people like me who have had…temporary problems.”

  She seems pleased with this answer.

  “Is the devil in pursuit of you?”

  “No,” says Edgar, and attempts a laugh.

  She looks at him again for a while. “Come with me.” She gets to her feet and takes him by the hand. Her grip is strong but her hands soft. She presses his hand and guides him toward her desk and the sofa, moving silently again. She is at least his height, perhaps a little taller despite possibly being in bare feet under her long plain dress. “Lie there,” she says.

  “On the sofa?”

  “Yes. I am a quasi-devotee of young Professor Freud of Vienna and I have my patients lie down while I investigate them.”

  Edgar gets on the sofa.

  Dr. Berenice glides around the room turning off electric lights and lowering blinds. Then Edgar hears her opening a drawer at her desk. She returns to him in the dark and switches on a dim lamp over the sofa. Then she pulls up a chair and sits close to him, behind his head, a pad and pen in hand. He can smell the perfume more now, as if she has just added some. Its strange scent invades his nostrils and for some reason seems to relax him a little.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you calm?”

  “Yes.” That lie seems like the right answer.

  “Good. You will talk and I will listen. That is always the best way. Tell me how you found yourself in this situation?”

  Edgar begins to talk, almost against his will. Somehow, nearly everything flows out of him. He tells her many secrets. He starts with the death of his mother at his birth, his father’s dreams of being an author, writing unpopular happy stories while harboring a love of the darkest ones and their truths. He speaks of Allen Brim’s belief that the monsters in stories are real, his time with his father in broken-down Raven House, his father’s death at the hands of something sinister, his struggles at the College on the Moors and with the bully Fardle and the menacing teachers. He tells of Tiger, how she was once a he, how he loves her, of Professor Lear and how that one-armed gentleman slew the creature Grendel, and lays out in detail how he and his friends killed the vampire monster and Dr. Godwin, the Frankenstein creature, of Lucy and how he loves her as well, and Jonathan Lear, of his own intense interest in books and writing. He tells the doctor that he is being pursued by the devil, forgetting that he had told her the opposite.

  “Now we are getting somewhere,” she says. He looks up at her and sees her face glowing in the dim light. “You believe that the devil is real. Is it Satan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your life is dominated by fear, Edgar.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is important that I tell you the truth about your mind. That will help you heal. Fear is indeed a great power and fearing the devil is the ultimate terror.”

  “Yes. I know that.” He almost feels as if he were in a trance.

  “You should fear him. We all should. Whether he exists as a living thing or not.”

  “Yes.”

  “I will not discount your belief that there are monsters, in general. It is not my place to do that. You tell me that you saw them in flesh and blood, so who am I to contradict? You must not run from your fear of them or of anyone or anything else.”

  “Yes, I believe that. My father told me that—”

  “You must struggle with your monsters. Then, you and you alone must decide whether the world they are giving you is real or a delusion.”

  “Yes.”

  “Delusions are powerful. The mind is the most powerful force in the world. It can even make you believe that fiction is reality.”

  “I…”

  “Struggle with it, Edgar Brim. Do not attempt to destroy the devil before you, not yet. Experience it!”

  “Yes.”

  “I know about fear,” she says suddenly.

  “You do?”

  “I was once afraid, but I have learned that there is nothing to be afraid of, there is just life. I have lived a full one. I have explored my own mind and its potential. I have summoned the courage to experiment. I
have met extraordinary people and they have taught me to take pleasure in everything.” She sits erect in her chair, caressing her thigh with one hand, gazing off into the distance. “Do you think that your solution might be to accept the devil in your life?”

  “Should I?”

  “Satan is omnipotent.”

  “Pardon me.”

  She hesitates. “At least, the thing that we say is the devil has indescribable power. Perhaps Satan is merely part of us, something we need to reject or somehow embrace. The classic story of him is that he was a dark angel.”

  “I know.”

  “An angel who quarreled with God and became his opponent. Perhaps our wise forebears made up that story to tell us that evil is part of us, not some man dressed in red.”

  “Or perhaps that isn’t just a story,” says Edgar. “It has been told so many times in books! What if the devil is among us? What if he is real and walking the streets of London?”

  He was hoping for a quick rebuttal, but she does not say anything for a while.

  “Dr. Berenice?”

  He hears her sigh. It is almost a moan. “Monsters are one thing, but what you just said, at least to my way of thinking, is not a sane idea. Is your mind unhinged, Edgar Brim?”

  He can feel her staring at him. He turns toward her. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I—”

  “I want you to struggle with all of this. Explore your madness, your fears, this devil who is in pursuit of you and your friends.”

  “Should I not resist?”

  “That will not heal you, not in the long run. I must tell you that you are on the brink of a great danger and running from it will make it worse.” She is quiet again for a while. “I am going to turn off the last light and leave you to your thoughts for a period of time.” She caresses his shoulder. “I want you to try to relax every part of your body, from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. Concentrate on your breathing, slow and relaxed breathing.” She gets up and switches off the lamp. Edgar closes his eyes but hears her settling into her chair at her desk and then there is silence. He continues to concentrate on being quiet and calm, effecting a silent sanity, though his mind is still boiling underneath. He cannot decide if he should follow her instructions and is fixated on the fact that she seems to think that he is in deep psychological waters. He tells himself to trust her. She is a professional.

  The lights stay off for a long time, perhaps half an hour. Dr. Berenice shuffles in her chair from time to time and occasionally sighs. Suddenly, she rises and turns on the dim light, which seems bright now. She sits on the sofa beside him this time, her hip touching his again.

  “How are you feeling now?”

  “Calm,” he says in his very best imitation of a normal, quiet voice.

  “Hmm,” she says. She gets up and walks around the sofa, glancing at him from all angles.

  “I feel well now, quite well, very calm. Do you think, ma’am, I might go?”

  “Are you ashamed of yourself?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Are you ashamed of being weak and thinking such ridiculous things?”

  Edgar is not sure how to answer this. He has the feeling that what he replies may be the deciding factor in this examination.

  “Yes,” he finally says, “I am ashamed. I was unmanly, I was fearful, and I do not like myself for that. I believe it was a passing fit.”

  “I must tell you that I know now that it was not simply temporary,” she says, “and you must not think that. You cannot oppose your own mind that way.”

  “Yes,” he replies.

  “I am going to allow you to leave, but I am doing it with some reservations and because you are a friend of my superior. I would like to see you again. For now, take with you the things I have told you.”

  Edgar nods.

  “All right, then. You may proceed to Sir Andrew Lawrence’s office and bid him farewell. If you can do that and not break down, then you may leave the hospital.”

  Edgar gets up from the bed and walks toward the door. “Thank you,” he says just before he goes out, but when he turns to see her, she is rolling up a blind and staring out the window into the distance. She hasn’t heard him.

  * * *

  —

  Sir Andrew Lawrence races across his room and answers the door when Edgar knocks. He looks terrible.

  “Edgar! Are you well? Are you all right? Perhaps I should not have sent you to Dr. Berenice, but I was so worried. Those things you said! I thought she might help you get over that little fit. It can happen to anyone.”

  Edgar knows now that he could not have seen Lawrence secretively embracing Dr. Berenice and her caressing him, for the billionaire’s concern, his look of deepest sympathy, is genuine. Sir Andrew is a good man, not a liar. Edgar summons every power he has within him and musters a smile. He holds his hands in fists behind his back. He can still smell Berenice’s perfume on his clothing.

  “I am fine, sir, just a few personal difficulties were influencing my behavior, things which perhaps I may share with you some day. I realize now that what I said to you in this office was absolute nonsense.”

  “Was it?”

  For an instant, Edgar wonders if he can be even more frank with Lawrence than he was with Dr. Berenice. In measured, not hysterical terms. Something tells him he needs to do that. However, when he looks at the chairman’s pleading expression, he sees a stranger who really knows nothing of what is going on inside his head, and realizes that he actually has few real friends in the world, and this apparently kind man isn’t one. Despite Lawrence’s apologies, it is still true that he walked out with his bereaved mother, sent him to the alienist, and embraced her…Edgar stops himself. You imagined that. He still cannot trust him, though, not now, not anyone, really. Not even Tiger or Lucy, not completely, or even Annabel Thorne. He could never bare his soul to any of them the way that he did in that downstairs room. Why did I do that? The insane idea that everyone around him is working with the devil slips into his mind. Is everyone I know manipulating me, he asks himself, driving me insane? It is beginning to feel like it.

  “Yes, it was all nonsense indeed. I think I should go home now. I may take a day away from here, if that is all right?”

  “Yes, yes, absolutely.”

  “But I shall see you the next day, sir, bright and early, ready for work.” He tries the smile again.

  Lawrence does not appear convinced. For a moment, it looks like he wants to embrace Edgar, but he settles for a handshake.

  When Edgar turns away, his face crumbles. He wants to run down the hallway. Flight! He has no idea where he wants to go, but he needs to get away, from Berenice, from Lawrence…from everyone and everything.

  Shaken, Edgar descends the stairs as quickly as he can, though he cannot resist glancing down the hallway on the next floor, looking toward Berenice’s office. He sees someone entering it, so tall that he has to lower his head to get in, but Edgar keeps moving, down three more sets of wide stairs, taking several steps at a time, until he reaches the basement, and enters the dark hallway near Godwin’s laboratory, which is now empty. There is no reason for anyone to be down here. He staggers into a dark corner to hide, curls up into a ball on the stone floor and stays there throughout the rest of the day, and long after evening has fallen.

  Finally, Edgar struggles to his feet and goes out the back door, walks up Turner Street and moves quickly under the dim lamps in the black night along Whitechapel Road, looking back, wondering if Berenice or Lawrence have sent anyone after him. The sky is like a dome, like a false ceiling on the world. Jack the Ripper is passing by him in the darkness, many Rippers, one after the other, and so are his victims, in legions, bleeding and disemboweled. He stops, shuts his eyes hard and holds them shut. Then he opens them and glances back again toward the
regal brown-brick hospital, so out of place in this desperate neighborhood. Something catches his eye on the roof. It is on all fours and barely visible since it is as black as the night. It comes to the edge of the roof and looks down on him, its dark shining eyes staring out at London. It has the face of a black ape and the body of a panther.

  He turns and runs, racing blindly, knocking into the few pedestrians who are out in Whitechapel in the night. The unusual ones have left their lairs at this witching hour—drunks, prostitutes, people with diseases and deformities. Some curse at him, others try to seize him but he keeps running.

  Then someone has him in a grip, an iron grip, a gloved hand over his mouth, ushering him down the street just past the Pavilion Theatre and into an alleyway. When they are a good dozen strides down it, in a spot where it has narrowed almost into a V, whoever has him throws him to the cobblestones. The surface smells of urine. Muffled sounds from Whitechapel and other nearby streets are all he hears—a distant shriek, horses, carriages and the pop of a gun. His attacker stands over him, blocking out much of the light. Edgar dares to look up.

  The man, if it is a man, stands eight feet tall. His face is red, his eyebrows thick and black, every inch of his visage caked with some sort of makeup. A crooked stovepipe hat sits at an angle on his shaved head and he wears a navy-blue peacoat and twirls a huge cane in his hand. He holds it high in the air as if he is preparing to strike. Edgar is sure he is about to die.

  “I won’t hit you, sunshine, if you don’t open your gob!”

  Edgar cannot talk anyway.

  “My name is Mephistopheles. Heard of me?”

  Edgar nods. A character from a story! He remembers Henry Irving playing this devil on the stage at the Royal Lyceum Theatre again.