Demon

by Shane Peacock

  He says good night to Tiger at the door, while Lucy talks to Annabel. The dear friends embrace each other. Tiger feels so lithe and strong, and he admires her so much. It is difficult for him to believe that he ever doubted her.

  “Now that it is all over,” she says softly into his ear, “come with me.”

  “Where?”

  She pushes him gently back and looks at him. He loves her dark eyes.

  “To America,” she says.

  “America?”

  “Yes, that is the only place for the likes of me. It is the land of opportunity! I can do what I want there. I can be whatever I choose to be. We could go together. I would look out for you.”

  It is such a tempting offer. His anxiety subsides a little as she gazes at him. He feels like a child in her arms. Then his heart begins to speed up again.

  “No,” he says. “America is the place for you, not me. You must go alone.”

  She appears shocked for a moment and he thinks he detects a slight reddening in her eyes.

  “You do not need me,” adds Edgar. “I need you. I must stop that…going away with you is not what I should do.”

  She takes in a breath. “You are right,” she says, stepping away from him and turning her face so he cannot see it. “I do NOT need you. I do not need anyone.” Then she turns back, her expression softens and she kisses him on the cheek. Then her lips tighten again and she goes out the door without another look.

  “Edgar?” says a voice behind him. Lucy. She walks up to him, shy, looking down, her face reddening a little. He takes her hands in his.

  “What will you do?” she says.

  “That’s what Tiger was just asking.”

  “Well, now I am.”

  “I’m not certain.” He glances upstairs, thinking he hears something moving around in the dark hallway outside his bedroom. “Mr. Lawrence has made it known that he would have me. He would groom me to run the London, a chance to help heal others, a life at the helm of a great science. I am uncertain, though, what I am capable of, what my fate will be.”

  “You spoke of writing more than once.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know those stories your father read are still alive for you. I know you think about them all the time. All sorts of other tales too. Books are your strength, Edgar, perhaps your fate. No one has an imagination like you.”

  “I…I don’t know,” he says, glancing upstairs again.

  “You would write frightening stories, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he says in a small voice, and gulps.

  “Meaningful ones.” She pulls him close to her and hugs him tightly. “Come and see me. Read them to me. I’ll listen,” she says into his ear.

  They slowly pull back from each other.

  “What do you want, Lucy, in your life?”

  She simply smiles at him. When she goes out, she glances back with a look. Edgar watches the door for a while after it closes, then sighs and turns toward the stairs. For a wonderful moment, he had forgotten what he must face. His greatest challenge is before him now. He starts up the steps and realizes that his legs are trembling. In fact, they are shaking so much that he stops halfway to the first floor. He hears a noise downstairs behind him, laughter, and turns to see Annabel and Andrew Lawrence heading toward the front door. When they get there, the chairman of the London Hospital takes her hand and kisses it, but she seizes him and plants a long smooch on his mouth. Lawrence almost staggers, but then goes out the door singing. His pitch seems to have improved.

  “I know you are standing there, Edgar,” says Annabel, turning to look up at him. Her smile is resplendent. “Mr. Lawrence is truly a charmer, my son. He is a gentleman and devilishly attractive, and that is how that adjective should be employed! It was truly not his way to try to push me in any direction—that woman put thoughts into his brain just as she put them into yours. Perhaps now though, I shall do the pushing. I really do not care a fig for anyone’s reaction to that. Not even yours! I shall not be a slave to my late husband, as much as I deeply loved him, or to any role society asks of me. I shall live for today! In the moment! It is good advice. You, Edgar Brim, should heed it.”

  She walks past him up the stairs to her bedroom, so enamored that she does not notice the terror in his eyes.

  He comes to his door.

  The hag.

  She was there before Berenice and the others and she will be there again. Tonight. He is sure of it. This is his final battle. If he loses it, he loses everything. He will be back at the beginning or worse. Berenice may rise from her cell. All the monsters had proved to be real, in their way, and that was good because he and his friends could fight them. He did fight them. He faced them and won, just as his father, his real father, told him to do. This, however, is different.

  Edgar starts removing his suit and putting on his nightclothes and discovers that his whole body is quivering. He stands over his bed, looking at it, not wanting to get in, and remembering his days at Raven House, the sensation stories that came down through the heat pipe, the panic they put into his mind.

  “Father?” he asks, but Allen Brim is not in the room, nor anywhere else. He is indeed dead, fully and completely. Edgar must do this on his own.

  He thinks of the College on the Moors, of the bullies, of Fardle, of Spartan Griswold and the frightening teachers. He thinks of Professor Lear, of killing the vampire creature, of destroying the Frankenstein beast with the harpoon gun. He thinks of Alex Morley and Hilda Berenice, trying to exert power from here and beyond the grave.

  Then Edgar thinks of the hag. She has been with him for so long. She is as real as all the other monsters. He thinks of how easily Berenice controlled him, how quickly he slipped into a fantasy world of eight-foot men and friends who intended to kill him. The hag is the very oxygen behind all of that. The hag allowed it all to come alive.

  “I need to live in reality,” he whispers, and a tear rolls down his cheek. “If I cannot do that, then nothing else will matter. I will die.”

  He lays his head on the pillow and tries to stay awake. He knows he cannot sleep again, ever.

  He drifts off.

  She comes at him unlike before. He can see her, hear her and smell her. She descends from the ceiling, her weight upon him before she even lands on him. This is not Berenice. It is not the devil. This is much worse. Her stringy hair hangs down like white, dying vines and touches him first. Then her bony knees, then her wizened chest, then her toothless, wrinkled face.

  “Be afraid!” she cries. “Let fear be in you and control you!”

  He tries to twist and turn under her, sick to his stomach from the putrid smell of her breath.

  “Look at me!” she shrieks. “Look at me!”

  He wants to fight her and flee from her at the same time. His mind is on fire. He cannot move though. His arms and legs, everything, is paralyzed again. She clutches at his throat.

  “The time has come to kill you,” she says softly.

  In seconds, he cannot breathe. The force on his chest is like the weight of a whale. He becomes very still. It is the moment, finally, to give up.

  His father is somehow near again, though not alive, and Edgar cannot see him. For an instant, he struggles with that. “Where are you? I need you!” he hears a voice say, and realizes it is his own. Allen Brim is invisible.

  “Do not be afraid,” says someone. Edgar cannot pinpoint who is speaking. It is not his father and not his own voice. It seems, however, to be bearing the truth, telling him what matters in life.

  “Do not be afraid!”

  He moves his head and looks the hag in the eyes. He stares at her, boring a hole into her face. Slowly, the weight on his chest gets lighter. The old woman lifts from him. Her body begins to dissolve and her face registers the pain. She cries out as she disappears, sucked upward in a spiral, taken fro
m his world for good.

  Edgar Brim falls asleep.

  * * *

  —

  When he wakes in the morning, he is refreshed and alone. He smiles, gets up, pulls back the drapes and lets the brilliant sunshine pour into the room. It illuminates everything. He looks around and sees rays of light glowing on his desk. Several novels rest on a shelf above it. The characters inside start calling out to him. They whisper, cry and scream. An inkwell and pen sit on the desk’s surface next to a stack of blank paper, rustling in the breeze, as if alive.

  He sits at the desk and picks up the pen, fearless.

  Interviewers sometimes assume that I wrote The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim trilogy because horror stories intrigue me. Though there are certainly books in the genre that I find interesting, my motivation was different. I wanted to write about fear. It sometimes seems to me that it dominates our modern world, gets politicians elected, informs our moral decisions and has begun to enter the hearts and minds of so many of our young people (and the rest of us) in the form of anxiety. I did not want to write conventional novels that contained obvious discussions of this problem, but instead chose to create stories set in another time, before any real awareness of anxiety existed, or interest in the power of fear was prevalent, and follow a boy who is struggling with these issues, trying to kill his terrors. These fears, of course, take the form of famous monsters in The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim. Telling these stories also gave me the opportunity to explore literary art, and certain literary achievements and present my conviction that great art is, in a sense, alive. Demon, this third book in the trilogy, brings everything to a conclusion, exploring the role that our own minds have in giving us our fears, and the power they may have to eliminate or at least control them.

  There have been a number of people involved in helping me bring this unusual tale to the page, right from the beginning. Tara Walker from Tundra Books and Penguin Random House Canada was there at the start, helping me develop the idea. Lara Hinchberger then did a great deal of the heavy work, editing these books with her unending grace and insight. Copyeditor Shana Hayes made sure it all made sense in the end, and Peter Phillips read and re-read each text, adding his invaluable input. I would also like to thank Rachel Cooper and Jennifer Lum for their wonderful cover designs.

  The books would not have existed without the work of the legendary Edgar Allan Poe, who unknowingly (or not?) lent some of his style and vision, and his two first names to my stories. The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven play specific roles in this installment. Other literary giants and their works appeared in the books, and this time, in Demon, in order to explore evil and the devil in literature, I reached all the way back to Dante Alghieri and John Milton, and leaned on their art. Re-reading The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost was a great pleasure.

  I want to thank, once again and most importantly, my family—Sophie, Johanna, Hadley and Sam—all of whom understand the horrors involved in making a life and a living out of the arts.

  The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim was at times a difficult world to inhabit, but it has certainly been worthwhile for me, a fascinating journey into the world of fear and its powers. The arts, I think, should explore everything, even those things that daunt us.

  Praise for

  The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim

  “Peacock weaves the frissons of classic Gothic horror into the reality of a culture entranced by its own dark creations. This thrilling historical mystery will have readers anxiously turning pages and checking under their beds.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Peacock calls up the ghostly haunting atmosphere of the moors with graceful prose and quiet but vivid imagery…the portrayal of Edgar as a frightened, anxious boy and his growth into someone who acknowledges fear but doesn’t give in to it makes him an appealing hero, and his triumph over evil is sure to garner applause. The final chapter ensures there are more monsters to be caught and more books to come.”

  —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  “The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim is good fun, loaded with thrills and discoveries, old journals and secret connections, hidden rooms, and mysterious, cloaked figures. By including real-life personalities from the period, such as Bram Stoker and celebrated actor Henry Irving, Peacock captures the feel of the late 19th century, and doesn’t neglect the shadows and fog so essential for a book of this sort.”

  —Quill and Quire

  “The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim is a thrilling story that includes fantastic gruesome imagery, moments of unexpected humour, and plenty of surprises.”

  —CM Magazine

  “The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim…is a creepy, action-packed adventure. Filled with references to classic horror stories, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Premature Burial’, and, of course, Stoker’s Dracula, at times the novel feels like an enthusiastic homage to gothic fiction.”

  —National Reading Campaign

  THE DARK MISSIONS OF EDGAR BRIM

  Edgar Brim has suffered from nightly terrors since he was in his cradle, exposed to tales of horror by his novelist father. After the sudden death of his only parent, Brim is sent by his stern new guardian to a grim school in Scotland. There, his nightmares intensify and he is ridiculed for his fears. But years later, when sixteen-year-old Edgar finds his father’s journal, he becomes determined to confront his demons and his bullies. And soon the horrific death of a schoolmate triggers Brim’s involvement with an eccentric society that believes monsters from famous works of literature are real.

  With the aid of an unusual crew of friends, Brim sets about on a dark mission—one that begins in a cemetery on the bleak Scottish moors and ends in a spine-chilling climax on the stage of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in London.

  THE DARK MISSIONS OF EDGAR BRIM: MONSTER

  After vanquishing the terrible creature that stalked the aisles of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edgar Brim and his unusual crew of friends return to their mentor only to discover that he has been brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. The group go into hiding, Edgar desperate to protect his friends and family from what may be a second horrific creature torn from the pages of literature. Meanwhile, Edgar’s guardian, Alfred Thorne, forces him to pursue a trade, and so Edgar begins working with his uncle, Doctor Vincent Brim, and a renowned vivisectionist, the brilliant yet mysterious Doctor Godwin.

  The more time Edgar spends in the company of Godwin, the more he begins to wonder about the doctor’s motives. And time is running out for Edgar and his friends. A monstrous creature is chasing them, a beast seemingly impervious to Thorne’s weaponry. Can Edgar Brim once again defy the horrors that pursue him and protect those dearest to his heart?

  Accolades and praise for Shane Peacock’s Boy Sherlock Holmes series:

  Finalist, Governor General’s Literary Award (Becoming Holmes)

  Winner, Arthur Ellis Award’s Best Juvenile / YA Crime Book (Eye of the Crow, Becoming Holmes)

  Winner, Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People (Vanishing Girl)

  Finalist, TD Canadian Children’s Literature Prize (Eye of the Crow, Death in the Air, The Dragon Turn)

  Winner, IODE Violet Downey Award (Eye of the Crow, Vanishing Girl)

  Honour Book, Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year (Eye of the Crow, Vanishing Girl, The Secret Fiend)

  Shortlisted, Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year (Death in the Air, The Dragon Turn, Becoming Holmes)

  Shortlisted, OLA Silver Birch Award (Eye of the Crow, Death in the Air)

  Junior Library Guild Selection (entire series)

  “Creative references to Doyle’s characters abound…and Sherlock himself is cleverly interpreted…. [made] both fascinating and complex…. plenty of readers will like the smart, young detective they find here, and find themselves irresistibly drawn into his thrilling a
dventures.”

  —Starred Review, Top Ten Crime Fiction for Youth, Booklist (Eye of the Crow)

  “The details of the plot are plausible, the pacing well timed, and the historical setting vividly depicted…. On balance, the characters enrich the book and help give Holmes’s storied abilities credence.”

  —Starred Review, School Library Journal (Eye of the Crow)

  “Shane Peacock has created…a thrilling, impeccably paced murder mystery. Peacock reveals the budding detective’s very real fears and insecurities, providing just enough detail about the young Sherlock’s methods to make him an entirely believable teenage precursor to the master detective. Peacock also neatly creates a sense of the bustle of Victorian London, making the squalid grunginess of the East End almost waft off the pages.”

  —Starred Review, Books of the Year 2007, Quill & Quire (Eye of the Crow)

  EYE OF THE CROW

  It is the spring of 1867, and a yellow fog hangs over London. In the dead of night, a woman is brutally stabbed and left to die in a pool of blood. No one sees the terrible crime.

  Or so it seems.

  Nearby, a brilliant, bitter boy dreams of a better life. He is the son of a Jewish intellectual and a highborn lady—social outcasts—impoverishment the price of their mixed marriage. The boy’s name is Sherlock Holmes.

  Strangely compelled to visit the scene, Sherlock comes face to face with the young Arab wrongly accused of the crime. By degrees, he is drawn to the center of the mystery, until he, too, is a suspect.