The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim

by Shane Peacock

  When Edgar woke the next morning, he noticed the silence in Raven House. Had his father gone out without waking him? Edgar searched for him in the kitchen. It was empty, with no evidence of breakfast on the table. He went into the sitting room; also empty, the mysterious journal nowhere in sight. Then he climbed the stairs to his parents’ bedroom. He rarely saw his father there now, though he knew he always slept on one side of the bed, as if keeping the other free for his wife’s return.

  “Father?”

  Allen Brim was lying absolutely still. Edgar approached the bed. The fear that engulfed him when he saw the rigid white face was unlike any he had ever experienced, though fear often dominated his mind. He sat down beside his father on the big bed and stayed there for hours, shaking, the tears pouring down his face. The hag sat in a chair nearby, smiling at him.

  “What shall I do?” he whispered. “What shall I do?”

  Finally, he rose and left Raven House and walked many miles through the countryside until he found a doctor who would return with him. It was the strangest thing, thought the physician: a perfectly healthy man, not yet forty, dead in his bed of a heart attack, his eyes wide open.

  5

  Alfred Thorne

  “My child, my dear boy!” cried Mrs. Thorne, gliding down the staircase of her Mayfair home as if her feet under her bustled purple dress weren’t touching the steps. All the ladies were showing their ankles these days, but just glimpses. Mrs. Thorne’s were on full display. The boy stood silently beside the uniformed footman, head bowed toward the gleaming black-and-white tile floor. As soon as Annabel heard Edgar had nowhere to go, she told her husband she wanted him. Alfred had barely responded.

  Edgar Brim was shabby in his only suit. It was tweed and threadbare and done up almost to his chin. He held a soiled cap in front of his chest in both his hands. He raised his head and looked her in the eyes.

  “Oh! You are such a brave one!” She reached for him and held him close. Then she stood back and gazed at him. “I shall summon Mr. Thorne. You must finally meet him. Beasley, call the master!”

  It took a while. It was as if Thorne didn’t want to see his new son. But eventually Edgar could hear footsteps from high up in the tall, narrow house: first accompanied by the creaking of wood, then coming closer on the grand marble staircase that rose from the hallway. When Alfred Thorne finally appeared at the top of the last flight, he came to a halt.

  Edgar had never seen a man like him. He was of modest height and as thin as a flagpole. He wore a black suit with a cravat, even now in the middle of the day, and on his lapel were bright smudges of unnatural colors. His skin was pale, his hair and mustache dark brown, his brown eyes clear and his head inordinately large, especially in the upper story, as if stretched to contain his big brain. And the left side of his face, from eye socket to jaw line, was scarred. Perhaps something he had done up there at the top of the building had one day gone awry? As Thorne resumed his descent, he turned that side of his face slightly away from Edgar.

  “I shall assume this is Edgar Brim.”

  “Yes, Mr. Thorne, it is,” said his lovely wife, her blond hair and blue eyes and bright dress in marked contrast to her husband’s stiff presence. She leaned down toward Edgar and whispered in his ear. “His bark is much worse than his bite. Take courage.”

  But Edgar began to shake. He hated himself for it but couldn’t stop.

  “He is quivering, Annabel.”

  Thorne brought his hand up to the left side of his face, as if in thought. It covered the scar. But the boy saw the wound fully for an instant and it caused him to gasp. Thorne frowned at him and Annabel came to the rescue.

  “Say hello, Edgar.”

  “H … hell … hell …”

  “The child cannot speak!”

  “He is simply a little frightened, Mr. Thorne. It is reasonable.”

  “There is no reason about it, none whatsoever!” He began to pace about the boy, circling him. “Let me lay down some rules, Mr. Brim.” Mrs. Thorne, from behind her husband’s back, put her hand over her mouth to hide a smile.

  “First and foremost, there shall be no reading of novels. Do you understand that?”

  Edgar shook harder and feared he was about to cry.

  “He is sniveling, Annabel!”

  “I should do the same, Mr. Thorne.” He glared at her but she met his gaze.

  Edgar stifled himself. “You will excuse me, sir.”

  “We shall not raise your son to—”

  “Our son,” said Annabel firmly.

  “Our son, if you will, to read the flighty imaginings of such moral reprobates as Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins or the despicable Ouida! He shall read science and mathematics and self-instruction, self-improvement!”

  “And he shall die of boredom.”

  “Mrs. Thorne, do not contradict me. It is unseemly in a woman.”

  “Yes, Mr. Thorne. Or should I say, my lord and master?”

  Alfred stopped suddenly, as if unsure of what she meant. Her face was unreadable. He turned back to the boy and cleared his throat. “Your bedtime, young sir, shall be strictly adhered to, as shall the time you arise and your study habits. You are weak. That will not do. A manly boy is what you shall be. Do you have that?”

  The boy nodded.

  “I believe he is almost mute. We have adopted a nearly speechless child.”

  “I doubt that, Mr. Thorne. You may go. It is time for you to return to your labors.”

  He paused again, as if to protest, but then turned to the stairs. As he did, his wife seized him from behind and kissed him, loudly, right on his scarred cheek. For an instant, a grin flickered across his face. It vanished quickly.

  “Mrs. Thorne, we are in the presence of a servant!”

  The footman wasn’t watching. Annabel let her smile show this time.

  Thorne climbed the stairs and disappeared.

  That night, long after the house grew quiet, Edgar Brim lay wide awake in his huge bedroom on the third floor. He always tried to stay conscious as long as he could because monsters came to him when he slept: it might be the Frankenstein creature one night, a beast named Grendel that had deeply scared him in one of his father’s stories the next, or a new villain entirely from his own imagination.

  Hours earlier, Annabel had sneaked one of her books into his room and sat on his bedside reading to him. She had chosen Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He had read it when he was younger and still loved it. There was a Mad Hatter always having tea, a talking March Hare and a rabbit with a watch who was constantly late. But he had always skipped over the part with the Queen of Hearts. She was a horror, constantly threatening to cut off people’s heads, even poor Alice’s. This time, Edgar pretended to fall asleep when the Queen appeared. His adoptive mother noticed, as she noticed everything about her new son. She kissed him, turned off their fancy electric light and left.

  Alone in the strange room, he stared into the darkness. Mrs. Thorne’s footsteps faded down the stairs toward the master bedroom.

  An hour later, desperately trying to keep his eyes open, seeing vague shapes floating on the walls, fending off images of trolls and the Grim Reaper and a dead little boy, Edgar heard heavier footsteps, this time descending from the mysterious upper floors of the house. Thorne was finally making his way to bed. Or was he? The footsteps paused. Edgar sensed a hand on the doorknob. But then the footfalls began again, and withdrew.

  Moments later, Edgar arose. He was wearing silk pajamas from India that Mrs. Thorne had purchased for him. They were a little long in the sleeves and trousers and he stepped awkwardly across the room, opened the door and ventured into the hallway. Anything was better than being in bed with the demons. Other than the tick of a grandfather clock, it was silent and dark. He started to move toward the stairs.

  “My husband is an inventor,” was all Annabel had told him about Mr. Thorne.

  “Of what sort?” the boy had asked.

  “Of a milit
ary sort,” she sighed. “Alfred is very scientific.”

  He was a mad inventor, the boy was sure, with a laboratory in which he conjured up experiments that blew up in his face.

  Edgar decided to go upward. But his first step on the wooden stairs brought a creak that seemed to echo throughout the house. He paused. There was no response. It was strange how this house seemed to shut out sounds, even London outside its doors.

  Up Edgar Brim went. One flight and then another. The stairs creaked more as he went. The hallway on the top floor was tiny. In fact, it was really just a landing. There was a door a few feet away. The entrance to the laboratory!

  Edgar tried the knob. Locked. His eyes were focusing a little better in the dark. There was a sign there at the height of an adult’s eyes.

  NO ENTRY!

  He bent to the keyhole, which was rather large. He peered through it and saw a tall window inside and moonlight shining in. In front of it was a table with test tubes and tools and beside it a rack bearing two strange guns and a crossbow in various stages of invention, and just beyond was part of a battered bulls-eye target. He shifted his gaze and tried to look toward the walls and saw the edges of books on a shelf. Thorne needed books for research, he supposed. But when he tried to focus on those that were visible, he could have sworn many were novels—DICKENS read one spine, COLLINS another and LE FANU a third. Before he could consider the meaning of this, he heard a door closing below him, perhaps two floors down. Then footsteps started coming up the stairs. They didn’t indicate the delicate walk of Annabel Thorne. They were much heavier.

  6

  Sent Away

  “Boy!” Thorne bellowed as he approached Edgar, keeping the scarred side of his face turned away, though he was barely discernable on the stairs near the dark landing.

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  “I can see you there, quivering. Retreat to your room and I shall decide what to do with you.” Edgar wasn’t quivering, at least not visibly. He turned to descend the stairs and slipped past his adoptive father. Three steps down, Thorne’s disembodied voice reached Edgar from above. “At the very least you will be removed to a school for part of each year. I cannot have you snooping about. And besides, you need to …” Thorne frowned, “… change.”

  Poor Allen Brim’s effects were brought, via a nag and cart, to the Thorne home the next day and left for Alfred and Annabel to sort out. Beyond Allen’s meager wardrobe and the few paintings, silverware and furniture that had remained in Raven House, there were his many fairy tales, sensation novels and horror stories (at which Thorne snorted) and a sealed strongbox. Inside it was the deed to the house (to be given to Allen’s brother, who had distanced himself as the family’s mansion and fortune crumbled), unfinished manuscripts for more happy novels, and a journal. The latter was black and leather-bound with a latch on it, though no key was found among the effects.

  “I shall force the lock when I have time for such things,” said Thorne, tucking the journal under his arm and turning to withdraw to his laboratory.

  “Is it our right to even have it, dear?” asked Annabel, sitting on her favorite settee in their lavishly appointed drawing room. She had supervised the decor, and the furnishings were brightly colored. The walls and ceiling were white, the fireplace elaborate with carvings, the mirrors gilt edged. “Perhaps the journal is of a personal nature? Might we not give it to Edgar?” She nodded her head up toward the boy’s bedroom where he had remained, silent, since breakfast.

  Thorne paused on the bottom step. “I am sure it is full of nonsense. Brim was a dreamer.”

  “He was a lovely man.”

  “Man is perhaps too strong a term to be applied to Allen Brim, Mrs. Thorne. There was not a great deal of the masculine about him.”

  When her husband turned, Annabel rolled her eyes.

  Up the stairs Thorne went, past Edgar’s room with a slight pause and then beyond. As he fumbled in his pocket for the key to his laboratory, the journal made contact with the doorframe, dislodged from under his arm and landed on the floor with a slam. The lock didn’t disengage, but the impact knocked a small card from the book’s pages. Thorne picked it up and read what was written on it.

  The College on the Moors (for Boys)

  The Highlands, Scotland

  That was all it said, a simple card, the text written in heavy Gothic script. “The Highlands,” said Thorne to himself and smiled. It was a long, long way from London. He had considered sending the boy to Eton College, his own alma mater. “Better, perhaps,” he mused, “to send him far away.” That very night he authored a note to the school and four days later received by post a reply from the school’s headmaster, Reverend Spartan Griswold, detailing the school’s heritage, curriculum and disciplined way with boys. The rod and the whip were not spared at the Moors.

  “It will make a man out of your child, sir, I can assure you,” wrote the headmaster.

  “Aha!” thought Alfred Thorne.

  Annabel delayed Edgar’s departure for as long as possible. She made the excuse that he needed time to settle, that appropriate schoolboy clothing had to be purchased, and that his constitution had to be built up with proper food and out-of-door exercise. But even she could not put off her husband indefinitely and so, one very early morning in September, Edgar was readied in the vestibule of Thorne House, Alfred pulling him from Annabel and handing him over to the footman, who stood waiting with the family hansom and horse. Had the boy left just a few months later, he might have been driven to the station in the motorized steam vehicle Thorne was building. As the weeks of the eccentric child’s residency in the house had passed, the inventor had been filled with a strange desire to show it to him. Though Thorne would never admit it, Edgar Brim, this child who sleepwalked through his house at night pursued by monsters, had begun to intrigue him.

  The sun had barely risen. Edgar sat silently beside the footman as the carriage rattled through their elegant neighborhood, then along Oxford Street, and up Tottenham Court Road near the British Museum where Allen Brim had investigated the origins of Frankenstein. Edgar was then ushered across the hard floor under the arched glass ceiling of the Euston Railway Station and pulled toward the platform and through the door in the first-class car with his luggage. Small for his age, he sat on the cushioned seat with the silent footman, dangling bare legs below the short pantaloons of his sailor suit, desperately missing Annabel but thrilled when the great locomotive lurched forward and steamed out of the station.

  He kept near the window as they zoomed through the many miles of his journey through England, past villages and towns and countryside—somewhere out there was Raven House—past poor people and rich, under rain and sun, all the way to Scotland, and onto Inverness Station, where the footman rushed him to a Far North Line train for the Highlands … and left him alone. Shaking in his seat, Edgar tried not to make eye contact with the few other passengers as the train began to move. Outside the windows, the green landscape soon disappeared and nothing seemed to thrive. It grew misty. A foreboding rose in Edgar’s heart. At distant Altnabreac Station, he disembarked on his own and was met by a tall, hooded man in a cloak and gloves with a scarred face, on a cart drawn by a thick black horse. The driver didn’t say a word. Above them, the sky at mid-afternoon was dim. From there, Edgar was taken out onto the moors.

  He would never forget his first view of the college. You could see it for miles, alone in the pelting rain and mist, a dark turret looming above it, the building shimmering as if a massive black heart was making it pulse.

  But what Edgar found inside was worse.

  Left alone at the front doors, he struggled to open them and then emerged into a huge entrance hall made of stone and lit dimly by a giant chandelier ringed with candles. An ornate staircase faced the entrance. The air was clammy, shadows moved about, and a few dull sounds echoed. A bell rang, loud and shrill, making Edgar start, and students began to appear in a whirlwind of activity: along the stone floor and up and down the stairs. No
one noticed Edgar Brim.

  But then a large boy, coming down the wide staircase in his black school jacket and followed closely by several friends, fixed his gaze on the little newcomer in the ridiculous sailor suit. Fardle’s shining brown hair was luxuriant and his teeth as white as snow. “Look here,” he said loudly, “it’s a sailor!” Edgar knew at that moment that he had a powerful enemy supported by a regiment of lieutenants: one tall and slender, another with white-blond hair and skin like pock-marked flour and a third with a face so ordinary that Edgar forgot it the moment he glanced away. They all gleamed with anticipation at what they might do to this new boy and shrieked with laughter at their leader’s witty comment.

  A round, bloodless face appeared in front of Edgar, materializing out of nowhere, looming there. Its head was bald. In a deep voice that seemed to go up its bulbous nose, it introduced itself as Usher, the porter, and without another word, led Edgar up the staircase to his room on the Early Years floor, one above. Wrapped in black robes with vertical red stripes, Usher barely made a sound. Edgar fell on the bed after the porter left, and heard doors creaking and closing and a whistling wind coming up from somewhere far below in the building. He pictured his father’s kind face and tried to imagine his mother’s, but got through that first evening focused on Annabel Thorne, reassuring himself that she would be there to greet him in London when he returned for Christmas. He even thought, somewhat fondly, of Thorne himself, for despite his cold ways, he seemed a fascinating man.

  But in the night, the monsters came again.

  The cry brought Fardle right out of his bed and onto his feet. His room was just down the stone hallway. He wasn’t a sound sleeper. His father, the Duke of Fardle, often beat him when he came home drunk, so he had learned to be on his guard, even in the middle of the night. There was a sob, then silence. Fardle sat down.