The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim

by Shane Peacock

  Fear, Edgar began to realize, was everyone’s biggest hurdle to success. Easing it even somewhat changed everything dramatically. Who would have known that such a thing, not even a real thing, just a feeling, could mean so much in someone’s life?

  Eventually, he grew a few inches beyond Fardle and much taller than Tiger, who almost unaccountably didn’t add an inch in their last year and a half.

  But then everything changed again, this time, in an instant.

  It happened on the field during their last semester of school. Edgar and Tiger, born in the same month and set to graduate a year early, were approaching seventeen. They were on opposing teams: Edgar on Fardle’s side, Tiger with the Fardle Followers. The two friends liked to tackle each other now and sometimes had spectacular collisions. Edgar still didn’t truly enjoy violent contact but Tiger seemed to thrive on it. But on that day Edgar was the aggressor, soon aided and abetted by none other than Fardle himself.

  Tiger was playing wing, as usual, always one of the fastest boys on the pitch, almost impossible to catch. He took possession of the ball after a series of quick passes and swung outside and made for the goal line as if he were riding the howling wind that was blowing across the moors that day.

  “Got you!” cried Edgar, coming for him.

  “Not in your dreams!” shouted Tiger.

  Edgar wasn’t going to let him get away. He would show them all. And so, in an action he would later deeply regret, he found speed that even he didn’t know he possessed. He powered across the field after Tiger, urging himself to new heights, competitiveness surging through him. “I will catch him! I will catch him!” he cried inside his head.

  And he did. But all he could grasp was his friend’s thick shirt, or more accurately, shirts. For some reason, and for some time, Tiger had been wearing two layers of the College’s rugby shirts, even when it was warm. Edgar grabbed a fistful of cloth in his hand. It seemed for an instant that Tiger had slowed, as if he wanted to be caught.

  Edgar violently pulled and ripped the shirts clean off Master Tilley’s back.

  Beneath them, Tiger was wearing something that none of the boys had ever seen before. It was a piece of material almost like a bandage, wrapped tightly around his chest. When it was revealed, Tiger actually screamed, his voice rather high, certainly higher than usual. Still running, he dropped the ball and thrust his hands across his chest, as if to hide something.

  Then Fardle arrived, panting, only catching up because Edgar had slowed Tiger. He saw his chance. He reached out to seize his opponent and spear-tackle him to the ground like an American cowboy pulling down a calf. With his left hand, he caught that strange piece of bandaging that ran across Tiger’s back and around his chest from halfway up the rib cage to just below the collarbones. In a vicious yank, he tore it, ripping it from Tiger’s body.

  This time the fleeing boy was knocked down and landed hard on his back. He screamed again, just as high-pitched but very loudly, and sprang to his feet. They all saw Tiger Tilley’s chest for an instant. That is … they saw her chest. It didn’t look anything like theirs.

  10

  Two Deaths

  Tiger Tilley was expelled the same day. She was allowed just one request. She had ten minutes with Edgar Brim to say good-bye.

  The knock on his door was gentler than in the past. Edgar knew it was him … or her, but he didn’t want to answer. She knocked again.

  “Please, Eddie, let me in.”

  Her voice was higher than usual, more like the way she had sounded when they first met. It was obvious to Edgar now that she had been speaking in lower tones for a while, on purpose. He thought of all the time they had spent alone together in his room.

  He got up and opened the door. He hadn’t intended to even look at her, but it was impossible not to. Standing in front of him was a young woman: black curly hair now washed and combed out, black eyes sad and downcast, her skin soft and without a trace of fuzz. (He had wondered about that.) Even the little bump on her twice-broken nose, the lean muscle in her neck, seemed different now. But most shocking was her dress. Tiger stood there in women’s clothing, an old frock that must have belonged to the cook. Long ago, Mrs. Shakewell must have been much slimmer, for this dress fit Tiger perfectly. Her figure, now apparent, was having an effect on Edgar that he tried to ignore. It was the strangest of emotions.

  “I owe you an explanation.”

  “I should think so,” he said bitterly.

  “May I sit?”

  Edgar turned and sat on his chair at his desk, so he only saw her peripherally. He wasn’t about to get on the bed with her again.

  “I suppose.”

  She dropped onto the bed. She did it with an athletic little dart, quick as lightning, just like the old Tiger. Edgar stifled a smile.

  “I am not who I said I was.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I deserve that.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I wish my parents were here.” She sounded like she was ready to cry.

  That softened Edgar. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She smiled at him for a moment, but then her face tightened again.

  “It’s all right. They’ve been dead for a long time, so I really shouldn’t feel that way.”

  “Not that long. At least they got to bring you to the school.”

  “That wasn’t them, and they didn’t die in a train crash.”

  “So you lied about that too.”

  “They weren’t my parents. They just came here and went home.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Edgar, I was born in a workhouse in London. My real name is Edith Hoffman. Or at least, that was what I was told.”

  “Edith?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good change.”

  Tiger couldn’t stop another little smile, but then her face darkened again. “They said my mother was a prostitute who died the minute I entered the world and my father, well, he was who-knows-what. I’m guessing, though, given that he was my father, that he was probably a rather special person, maybe a duke or a prince?”

  She was trying to be humorous, but Edgar didn’t react. Her tone dropped again.

  “I was on my own from the time I was born. But I always had spirit. I left the workhouse when I was small and lived on the streets with other pickpockets and purse snatchers. I was a clever one, so maybe my father really was someone important, who knows? I never went without food in London. I could steal better than others; I could pretend I was anything or anyone. Some of the thieves even took to dressing me up and using me to fool folks. But what I really wanted was to be like the people we stole from. To do that, I knew I needed an education. I knew that was the key to everything. And I suppose I wanted to be a man, because that is how you get places in this world.” She stood up and marched a few strides away from him.

  “I lived for a while with about a dozen other street urchins in one room on the third floor of a rookery house in the East End. There wasn’t a toilet, not even a hole in the floor. You got to the house down a filthy alleyway and then up a rickety wooden staircase. But I wasn’t like them. They spent everything they stole. I saved and waited for my big chance. And it came one day when I was used in a robbery at the Bank of England. I was small enough to crawl up a pipe from the sewer into the cellar to a vault that the gang knew how to open. But I didn’t come back with the money. I went up into the ground floor of the bank and escaped out a window. Then I climbed a drainpipe and took off across the roofs until I was miles away. I took all the loot with me.”

  Edgar remembered how Tiger could steal the tarts from the larder, almost out from under the giant nose of Griswold himself.

  “I wasn’t proud of my actions but I did what I had to do. I moved to Brixton south of the Thames after that and lived in disguise. But it wasn’t long before I could be myself again—the gang that had helped me get into the bank must have been desperate after what I did and within weeks they were caught
doing their next job. You can’t be sloppy. They’ve been put away for decades.”

  “You were fortunate.”

  “Fortunate and devious, and I was never afraid. The things you are afraid of usually turn out not to be so frightening at all. We’ve talked about that.”

  Edgar knew he had learned a great deal from his friend.

  “What I did wasn’t right. I know that. But I had to survive. I dreamed of being someone, of making something of myself. There was only one way to do it.”

  “You are wrong there,” said Edgar. But he knew he sounded full of himself. What would he have done in her situation?

  “I knew actors. Folks in my business are acquainted with all kinds of them, not Henry Irving or anyone like that, like I said, but I knew a few who acted in lower parts. I paid a couple of them a bag full of money to play the roles of my parents—”

  “You did?” He turned toward her.

  “I’d heard things about the College on the Moors, an exclusive school in the far northern Highlands that made men out of boys. It had a winning reputation. Graduation from here meant you could do nearly anything you wanted. I decided I’d come here disguised, toughen myself even more and be a man. With the bank job money, I had enough funds to finance my whole education. I made up the story about my parents dying on their way home. They were effectively out of the way, no questions asked. The school only cared that they had my money.”

  “What did you intend to do after you left here?”

  “I don’t know for certain.” She paused. “I had dreams about starting a business, maybe working in a bank in a high position, I don’t know.”

  “As a man?”

  “Maybe. They don’t give such jobs to women.” She paused again. “But then I met you.”

  “I think you should go.”

  “I met you and I never had such a friend. I knew many awful boys and men. I never thought one could be like you. You really care about things. I started thinking that maybe I could become a woman anyway and go back to London … with you.”

  There was a knock on the door. It was the grim porter, Usher.

  “Master … Miss Tilley, it is time. Driver has brought William Wilson around to the doors. You cannot miss the train.”

  “Go away, Tilley,” said Edgar. “You deceived me.”

  As she turned to leave, he noticed that Tiger was almost crying. But then color rose in her face. “Is that all you have to say?” she muttered and slipped out the door.

  After that, Edgar moved about the halls a truly different and dangerous boy, sometimes downright nasty. One day he even dropped his books to fight Fardle when the other purposely squeezed him into a doorframe as they entered a classroom. Edgar Brim would not be ridiculed anymore—he wasn’t in the mood.

  He wished that meant that his nightmares would go away too. But they kept coming, defying him as he confronted them. And so did the hag. The hideous old woman did not appear as often, but she didn’t vanish. And she was still terribly real.

  As he struggled through his final months at the college, there were, thankfully, other things to distract him. The first and most important was a little boy named G. Lancelot Newman, who had arrived at the school just before Tiger left and had been ill almost every day since. The child nearly lived in the school’s infirmary. He was said to be of a “nervous disposition.” He had nightmares and couldn’t sleep, and he intrigued Edgar Brim.

  One day, Edgar knocked on Lovecraft’s door.

  “Ah, Brim, how are you this fine morning?” asked the ever-cheerful little teacher.

  “Might it be possible, sir, for me to keep poor Newman company some evenings? I could read to him. It might help him fall asleep.”

  Lovecraft smiled that electric smile of his. Sometimes, it was almost mesmerizing. “What a lovely idea, Brim. How kind.” He kept grinning at Edgar from under his long mop of wildly curling salt-and-pepper hair. “Now, don’t you worry about Griswold,” he said under his breath. “I shall work my magic on him and procure permission!”

  The infirmary was a strange place: on the ground floor at the far eastern end of the building, it was three times the height of the dormitory rooms and classrooms and an extra floor taller than the Great Dining Hall. It was a damp stone place with tiny high windows and not a spot of decoration. Few boys spent time there because it was essentially not allowed. Being sick was considered a disorder of the brain more than the body and one owed it to their family, school and country to get better as quickly as possible. A “nervous disposition” was thought of with great disdain. But G. Lancelot Newman, tiny for his age, cried out even louder in his sleep than Edgar had ever done. He disturbed the other boys, even from the distant infirmary. Thus, when Lovecraft asked Griswold to allow Brim to help Newman fall asleep, the old man did not hesitate to give permission.

  The door to the big room, itself about ten feet high and five feet across, creaked as Edgar opened it and echoed when he closed it behind him. His footsteps sounded like heavy slaps to the face, each offering its own reverberation. There was no one in there but the little boy, lying in one of about a hundred cots, alone in the middle of a sea of white. There was no nurse at the College on the Moors. Most of the aid administered to the boys was simply in the form of pep talks delivered by various members of the dismal dozen.

  G. Lancelot Newman’s little eyes widened as he saw Edgar Brim approach.

  “May I sit down, my friend?”

  “Y-yes. What do you want?”

  “Want? Nothing.”

  “I will try to be well.”

  “You shall do nothing of the kind. You shall simply relax.”

  The boy almost smiled. His hair was like straw, his skin pale and his frame skeletal. Edgar had heard that he never smiled. He was six years old and appeared about three.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Not at all. I was once like you, you know.”

  “You were? There is no one like me, sir. I am worthless.”

  The word alarmed Edgar, but he collected himself. “Nonsense, no one is worthless, especially not you. You are unique, Lancelot Newman.”

  “I am named for the great knight.”

  “Excellent, but you do not have to be him, you know.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You are G. Lancelot Newman and no one else, and you shall be a fine knight of your own sort.”

  “I will?”

  “Of course. Do you have nightmares?”

  A cloud gathered over the boy’s face.

  “I am sorry, sir, very sorry, but I do.”

  “No cause for sorrow. Are you unable to move sometimes when you wake up?”

  There was terror in the boy’s eyes but he found his voice. “Are you?”

  “Yes,” said Edgar.

  “YES?” It was the first time Newman had ever raised his voice at the College on the Moors, at least while awake. The sound echoed in the huge room and frightened him. “I am sorry, sir.”

  “Do not be. Let your big voice be heard.”

  The little boy giggled. That startled him too, for he had rarely heard that sound either.

  “My father is an important man in India in the Empire government and my mother is a beauty.”

  “I am sure she is.”

  “Father has no time for weaklings.”

  “Then he is a fool.”

  The child shot up to a sitting position on his cot and looked around. “Quiet!”

  “He can’t hear us, Master Newman, not from India, and we shan’t worry about him anyway. We shall tap him on the nose if he disturbs us.”

  “We shall?” The little boy paused, then smiled and lay back in the bed. Then he rose onto one arm. “What is that you have in your hand, sir?”

  “I am Master Brim, not sir, and it is a thin book with a fiction inside.”

  “Oh! I don’t like those. Are there monsters in this one? I can’t abide them. I shall die if you read it!”

  “There are no monsters, and what if ther
e were?”

  “They are real!”

  It was Edgar’s turn to be startled. He wanted to say “nonsense” but couldn’t.

  “Perhaps they are,” he said.

  “There is no perhaps about it.”

  “And what if they are, Master Newman? You know, there are frightening things in life. There always will be. All of us have fears. Our response to them is what matters. Even Headmaster Griswold is afraid of something.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he isn’t.”

  “He is likely afraid of himself. And that fact, like many other things about Spartan Griswold, is kept hidden from the world. That is why he is so mean to others. You must fight your fears. Do not be afraid.”

  He had never said it out loud. But when he did, it sounded marvelous. It sounded like the truth. It made G. Lancelot Newman beam.

  “I think I should like you to read the book.”

  “It is just something by a man named Poe. He wrote the most frightening stories the world has ever read. They are marvelous.”

  Lancelot Newman pulled the covers up over his head. “Then I’ve changed my mind. We shan’t read this.”

  “But this one is not so frightening. It is a poem. He wrote many of those too. And he wrote happy and adventurous stories, as well. He always told the truth, sometimes very difficult truths. Human beings need that. This is a love story and rather sad, extremely sad, actually, but awfully beautiful too.”

  This little boy lowered the covers from his face. And so Edgar began:

  It was many and many a year ago

  In a kingdom by the sea …

  He read with such feeling that it calmed the boy. Yes, it was sad, but it told of real and abiding love, and the boy so reveled in hearing it that he fell asleep. Edgar sat there watching him, observing the little fragile face with the darkness around the eyes. He was so still that Edgar imagined him dead, a porcelain corpse like in a Poe story. He stopped those thoughts and turned away. And when he turned back, the boy’s eyes were moving under his lids! He began to toss and turn.

  Edgar fled.

  But he came back every night for weeks. Each time, he brought another book. He read the boy things that challenged him: Lewis Carroll’s second Alice story, Through the Looking-Glass, keeping in some frightening parts but leaving out the scariest; Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, with its fantastic underwater scenes featuring Captain Nemo; and one by the master, Robert Louis Stevenson, called Treasure Island, remembering not to say too much about the one-legged pirate Long John Silver. Edgar was building toward the monsters. He wondered not only if Master Newman could stand them, but if he too would be able to remain within the room.