The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim
Page 17
“You have changed, Master Brim.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Griswold fixes him with a stare. “But don’t grow too bold. That wouldn’t be wise.” He jingles something in his pocket, a habit of his: the master keys to the college, which open every door, including the one to the infirmary.
“We shall be on our way, sir,” announces Lear, shepherding the others away with his arm.
As they leave they notice Driver. He somehow sneaked unseen to the top of the gallery while they were ascending the stairs and is in the shadows, his head deep in his hood, only his mouth apparent. He points a long bony finger directly at Griswold’s back.
They spend the night splitting the watch. Nothing happens, until sunrise. Edgar is on duty when he hears the scream. It comes not from the cellar but somewhere high in the college and is gone in an instant. It sounds like a man’s voice. In fact, Edgar could swear it is Griswold’s.
At breakfast they hear of Edward Emeritus’s death in the night. But it is graduation day and the show must go on. There must be a ceremony and the boys must be readied to leave for their homes. Driver cleans the ancient headmaster’s corpse and builds him a crude wooden coffin. While he works in the stable, the dismal dozen gather on a dais in front of their students on the back lawn, handing out certificates, the headmaster presiding. Tiger has made it through another night in the cellar and slipped out through the tunnel to the lake at dawn. Now she sits halfway across the moors, watching the ceremony with her binoculars. Edgar is observing Spartan Griswold closely as he takes his certificate from the headmaster’s huge hand.
His imagination is racing. Could it really be him? He thinks about the fact that the headmaster is always the last to leave the college at the end of each year. Is he daring them to stay behind and confront him tomorrow when everyone else but the speechless driver is on the train heading south?
Driver brings Emeritus’s body down from the tower and places it in the coffin he has made. He sets the coffin on a table in the Great Dining Hall and opens it for viewing. Another night descends. Tiger crouches with her gun in the cellar. The other four lie awake or stand on watch, but no one comes.
The next morning, everyone files past the coffin to offer their respects. Griswold chooses Lear to help him bid farewell to the staff and students, and late that afternoon, the two of them stand on the front steps and watch the others depart. The cadaverous headmaster merely nods to his charges. Lear says good-bye to a few and shakes his colleagues’ hands. He keeps his distance from Griswold. Down in the cellar, Tiger folds up the cannon. Edgar, Jonathan and Lucy are staying close together, ostensibly helping clean up the laboratory. They’ve made a vow to not let each other out of sight.
Every year, a remarkable scene occurs on the last day of school at the College on the Moors. Most of the students walk all the way from the dark building to the Altnabreac Station, more than one hundred and fifty of them, all but the youngest students, trekking miles across the moors on the rough gravel road, the professors and other school employees with them, trailing their possessions on ancient homemade carts that the students leave at the station for Driver to bring back. He also takes some of the smaller boys to the train in his black carriage.
The snaking procession is a quarter-mile long, observed surreptitiously by the wildcats and moles, and by the hawks and vultures that hover up above.
In Lear’s classroom, Edgar, Jonathan and Lucy put away test tubes and mortars and pestles, but their talk is of something else.
“We can’t just kill him,” says Lucy. “We have no proof it—”
“Sure we can,” says Jonathan.
“What if we were merely murdering a man named Spartan Griswold?”
“Big loss.”
“This would be a perfect place for an aberration to hide. He’s been here forever. Maybe that’s why Grendel came here,” says Edgar. “It really could be him or he’s somehow under its power. But Lucy’s right. I can’t imagine—”
“Blowing his head clean off,” says Jonathan.
“Yes, that.”
“I can imagine it. I’m imagining it right now. We can’t let him attack us.”
“He’s out there with grandfather on the front steps, isn’t he?” asks Lucy. “So he isn’t in his office. It’s empty, unguarded.”
Edgar immediately understands what she is thinking.
Tiger can’t sit still. Whatever might be happening is happening without her. She creeps out of the room in the cellar, wondering if she should chance sneaking up the stairs and into the entrance hall to take a look. In the darkness, she spots something at the foot of the stone staircase, a bag or a sack. It is blocking the way. She approaches … then freezes. Usher! She stares down at him. His bald head is bloodied and bashed in from behind. There’s a dark pool under him near his chest. Tiger bends down and gently touches his pale face. It feels cool; he’s been dead for a while. She turns and strides back toward the room and is soon rushing the cannon up the stairs to the cellar door, thudding it on each step, not caring about its heavy weight.
“Come with me to the headmaster’s office,” says Edgar to Lucy.
A slight wave of uncertainty crosses Jonathan’s face. “We should stick together. I mean, I’m all right with being alone, of course, but grandfather said we shouldn’t be apart, didn’t he?”
“You have the rifle, don’t you?” asks Lucy.
Edgar is getting excited. “Griswold’s office is on this floor. We can be there in seconds. He doesn’t lock his door. We can go through his files. If he’s more than just the headmaster, it might be obvious quickly.”
“I don’t know,” says Jonathan.
“Then we can shoot him,” says Lucy, “without thinking twice.”
“Well, if you put it that way,” smiles Jon, turning to get the rifle from where it lies under his coat at the back of the room. Each classroom’s door has a window in it. The lab is at a T in the hallways and from it Jonathan, gun out and ready, can see all the way to the headmaster’s door. “I’ll watch from here.”
Almost instantly, Edgar (pistol concealed in his pocket) and Lucy are out in the hall and down to Griswold’s office. They open the door and sneak inside.
Tiger moves quickly along the ground floor, rolling her weapon behind her. When she reaches the bottom of the staircase, she looks to her right to the open front doors and sees the headmaster’s long back at the top of the steps, Lear just below him, the snaking procession of students in the distance winding through the moors. She heads up the staircase, her lean muscles straining, dragging the wheeled, boxed-up little cannon with her. She goes up to the third floor and finds Lear’s classroom, not seeing Edgar and Lucy moving in the other direction toward Griswold’s office. Jonathan is standing just inside the lab door, on guard at the window, rifle held at the ready. He smiles, lowers the weapon, and opens the entrance.
“Usher is dead—murdered,” Tiger says grimly as she pushes past him. His smile fades. He turns away from the door, forgetting about Lucy and Edgar. “But I’ve brought this,” she says, motioning to the cannon.
When the last student has left, Griswold turns to Lear.
“We are alone, Hamish, just you and I.”
And I am unarmed, thinks the professor. Why did I put myself in this position?
“Oh, I’m sure the students could still hear us, sir, were we to shout.”
“Yes, perhaps you are right. Well, almost alone.” He offers a smile. “Staying long?” He takes a step toward his underling, his right hand thrust out.
“No … no need to say good-bye now, sir,” says Lear. “I will take the evening train tonight. See you then?”
Griswold stops and seems disappointed. Then a thought appears to come to him. “Are your lot within earshot as well?” He glances toward the open door and then out to the disappearing students, as if calculating when they won’t be able to hear them.
“I believe,” says Lear, stepping around Griswold while he is turned and
adroitly getting past him before he turns back, “they are upstairs, perhaps in the hallway watching for my return right now.” He hopes that sounds believable. With his back to Griswold, he moves smartly up the steps and into the college.
“Wait for me?” asks Griswold.
“Ah, much work to do, sir. You know me, busy bee!”
He almost races the headmaster up the stairs. They ascend two flights before Lear turns around near his classroom. He can call out to his allies from here, and they have the rifle and pistol. Oh, that they had Thorne’s cannon too!
He notices that Griswold’s face is awfully red. He is heaving with the effort of climbing, not like him. Or is it something else?
Edgar and Lucy haven’t gone through more than a few papers when they hear a noise in the hallway. It sounds like a door opening and closing.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she says, freezing.
“Jon is on the lookout. He’d do something if Griswold were coming. He has the rifle.”
They turn back to the papers, but in a minute they hear another sound: two people, four feet, moving fast, reaching the top of the stairs in this very hallway!
“Two people?” asks Lucy. “Everyone is gone except—” She looks terrified.
We only have a pistol, thinks Edgar, but he doesn’t say it.
“Are you all right, sir?” Lear asks Griswold.
“I … I am fine, just heading to my office.” He barks it out with great effort.
Edgar, Lucy, Jonathan and Tiger all hear Griswold utter those words and for an instant they can’t move. Lear smiles and bids farewell, but he checks over his shoulder as the old man walks toward his office. He doesn’t want to be attacked from behind. Lear opens his classroom door and is shocked to see both Jonathan and Tiger moving toward him: he cocking the rifle, she reaching for the cannon to unfold it.
“They’re in his office!” exclaims Jonathan under his breath.
Edgar pushes Lucy behind him and takes out the pistol. I’ll be killed first, he thinks. It has to be me, that’s the right thing to do, and maybe she can get away. Do not be afraid.
He puts his finger on the trigger.
Jonathan reaches the door first, though Tiger has the cannon unfolded in a flash. Fully confident in her ability to use it to the height of its deadly capability, she is ready to take off a skull. Jonathan can fire the rifle well. It has six expanding bullets. Every one to the head, he thinks. But as he is about to rush through the door into the hallway to get a clean shot, Lear pushes him back into the room, motioning for both Jonathan and Tiger to stay away from the door. Griswold has stopped just a few feet from his office.
Lear wonders if he can either steer his boss away or at least draw his attention until Edgar and Lucy can escape.
“Sir, may I be of assistance?”
Griswold turns to face him. “Not feeling well, Lear. I think I may descend to my chambers and lie down.”
The professor has never heard Griswold say such a thing. The headmaster returns to the stairs and heads toward the ground floor.
Two minutes later, they are all in the lab, trying to take in the news about Usher. Lear tells them to stay calm and Edgar nods at him and draws a deep breath. Then Lear lets all his charges know how displeased he is that they disobeyed him, and quietly sets out instructions. He too wishes he could take Griswold by surprise and destroy him, but the old headmaster actually looks vulnerable now, ill and tired. Is he really the force that did all this, the creature they seek?
“Brim, you and Lucy go back to his office and see what you can find. Tear things apart if you must. If you can’t discover anything in a few minutes, come back.”
“What about me?” ask Tiger and Jon together.
“You two stay here with the cannon ready and the rifle cocked. I want you to be prepared to fire accurately at a moment’s notice.”
Jonathan and Tiger both smile.
“What about you?” asks Lucy.
“I’m going upstairs.”
Lear ascends to the highest floor at as quick a pace as he can manage. From there, he’ll climb to the turret formerly occupied by Edward Emeritus, and search the stacks of papers scattered around that room. Records, private records. Emeritus saw, heard and recorded everything that happened at the College on the Moors for most of the last eighty years. Lear thinks there may be a Griswold file with information about where he came from, or something else. Surely, there is a great deal to discover about the headmaster, easy to find in minutes. That, along with what Edgar and Lucy can uncover should tell them what they need to know. If not, they must simply act.
But before Lear reaches the top of the last flight, he glances behind and notices something moving up the stairs, a tall figure coming after him at a brisk pace.
Griswold!
The headmaster’s face has turned purple, he is perspiring, the cords on his neck are standing out, and he is making horrific sounds, groaning and moaning as he glares up at Lear. His giant frame and skeletal head seem to be transforming!
“STOP!” Griswold shrieks. It is an almost inhuman sound.
Lear runs. He reaches the final little staircase up to the Emeritus turret. It ends right at the door, just a small landing in front of it. He is cornered!
“LEAR!” the demon bellows.
The professor looks back over his shoulder. The face is completely unlike Griswold’s. Lear feels this is what has been watching him ever since he came to the moors. This is what it looks like. It isn’t anything he recognizes, no villain from a novel. Or is it? Does it have the powers of something well known? Why did it make holes in its victims’ chests?
The guns! But they are far away.
Down below, the others hear Lear shout and take off running. Tiger and Jonathan leave the heavier cannon behind but bring the rifle loaded with expanding bullets. All four meet at the stairs. They hear a loathsome sound up above. Griswold, the monster, is grunting and wheezing, thudding up the stairs at Lear.
The professor is right next to the door now. Opening it and going inside won’t help. He turns to face his killer.
“LEAR! I WILL STOP YOU!”
Griswold staggers up the last three steps and towers over his enemy. Lear remembers how he fought another monster long ago. That was what made this one come after him. But Lear had a weapon then and was young and vigorous. He wishes now that he had never done it.
The headmaster’s face turns gray.
“You can’t … I don’t want you to see …” His hand is on his chest, clutching at it. He is gasping for breath. He reaches for Lear.
“NO!” cries Lucy from below. Tiger rips the gun from Jonathan and trains it on Griswold’s skull. Take off the head, she thinks. But the target disappears.
Griswold’s left hand falls down at his side and quivers. He bends forward, swoons and collapses on the floor.
“Are you him?” asks Lear, standing back.
“H-him?” gasps Griswold up at him.
“Are you the monster?”
“I … I am ill … embarrassed … you cannot see our records … we did immoral …”
“Ill?”
“What are you after, Lear? … Why?” His eyes fill with tears. “Where is Usher?”
“You’re dying!” exclaims the professor in shock.
“I am sorry,” Griswold gasps. “It’s bad … form.”
Tiger lowers the gun and all four run up to the landing. Lear is bending over the headmaster now, his hand over his heart.
“He’s dead,” he says.
“He can’t be,” says Lucy.
“He’s had a … heart attack?” Lear stares at Griswold in disbelief.
“It wasn’t him,” says Edgar. Supernatural creatures don’t die of weak hearts. Edgar rips open the old man’s shirt. There’s no hole in the wrinkled skin on his chest over his heart. He’s just an ancient human being, cruel at times and with secrets, but dead the way every other mortal will be, one day. All five of them sink to the floor.
Lucy is trembling. “It’s Driver,” she says.
“But if that’s so, why didn’t it kill us all when it had us alone in the carriage the day we came back to the moors?” asks Tiger.
“Because it’s smart,” says Edgar. “There were others waiting for us at the college.”
Lear’s voice is low. “It wanted clean kills, incidents that seem like accidents.”
“Like with Master Newman,” adds Edgar.
“That don’t have to be explained, my dear,” says Lear.
“It has us alone again,” says Lucy, “completely alone now.” Her eyes are large.
They leave Griswold’s body on the landing outside Emeritus’s door and sneak down the stairs as though every one of their steps is being heard and are relieved to make it to the laboratory alive. “Bolt the door,” commands Lear. They do, and then Edgar and Jonathan shove the professor’s big desk in front of it. They don’t hear a sound anywhere in the college. The building feels like a corpse, without a beating heart and no blood in its veins. The creature has them cornered.
25
Meanwhile
Far to the south, Bram Stoker is sitting in a front row seat at the Lyceum watching Henry Irving in the final dress rehearsal for Faust. The banners have been out for more than a week. It opens tomorrow. The master had tried Richard III last month and it had been one of his few failures, his portrayal too depraved for even the child-murdering hunchback king. They had stopped the production and substituted Faust—they still have the costumes and the black-and-white set from the long run that had electrified London in the 1880s. In rehearsals, Irving has been brilliant. They will do it for just a few weeks.