The Lamplighter (28 page)

“You two go back downstairs,” he ordered. “And if she returns, hold her up at once, and one of you head up to warn me.”

Left alone, he stood in place for perhaps two minutes, slowly turning his head, listening to the rat gnaw at the ceiling, and trying to read the place with his nerve ends, his preternatural senses. But in truth it was difficult to perceive anything beyond the heat of his own blood.

He started with her bed linen, turning back the obsessively boiled sheets and hunting under the pillow for talismans, locks of hair, amulets. He searched around the floor for droplets of wax. He checked her eating area for signs of an unnatural appetite: baby livers, cat entrails, predigested hair. He examined the walls and ceilings for some sign of an aperture, a secret door, through which a visitor might enter. He picked up a rag doll and examined it for signs of voodoo manipulations. And finally, and with great reluctance, he turned his attention to the unavoidable centerpiece of the room, the bookshelves and their range of intimidating texts.

He could find no familiar titles, and his lips pursed in disdain. He ran a fingertip along the embossed spines, hoping to find something damning: a grimoire, a book of magic, a missal bound in wolfskin. A few of the volumes were marked with prices and stamped by Arthur Stark, and he wondered if she had stolen them. He inspected her damaged Holy Bible, and he levered from the end of the shelf a thin, untitled notebook like those purchased by students. Flipping it open, he found meticulous transcripts of speeches from the University, including a lecture attributed to Professor Hamilton, whom he remembered as having something to do with philosophy.

“Gentlemen, I want you to look at me now and ask yourselves if I exist. I want you to consider the possibility that I might be no more than a shadow, or something else of completely immaterial value. Not, I hasten to add, because I regard myself as a ghost, or indeed a shadow. In fact, I would be recognized as human in any number of venerable faculties…”

His nose recoiled, as though having inhaled some toxin, and he was about to slide the book back into place when he noticed the sliver of another book, hidden flat against the back of the shelf. Curious, he pushed aside the other titles and worked it from its hiding place into the light.

It was a ledger book, in appearance much like the one in which he recorded his own memoirs. He opened it distastefully.

He found numerous diagrams inside, most seemingly aborted or even scrubbed out with a sense of shame: grotesqueries such as resided in the margins of Gothic prayer books, gargoyles, strange birds, winged mammals, and increasingly bizarre hybrids. Repeatedly there were the hazy beginnings of a dragonlike creature—a head, or a sketchy outline, or a set of claws—but never more, as though she would not permit the beast to escape fully from her imagination. There were attempts at stories and poetry, all quickly abandoned, the handwriting invariably exhibiting an initial confidence but quickly fading to wavering lines and ultimately dissolution. Halfway through the book a page had been ripped out, and he remembered that the message
Ce Grand Trompeur
had been inscribed on similar paper. Chilled, he was about to snap the book shut when a soiled and folded page fell loose. He plucked it from the floor and unfurled it with instinctive trepidation.

The handwriting was vaguely innocent and the ink much faded, so he could not be certain when it was written, but he had little doubt as to the author's identity. He read the text with mounting revulsion.

But Groves could read no more. He could barely credit it, but it was as though he himself were tasting those vile creatures, as though they were churning and seething in his own stomach. Feeling a burst of sweat on his forehead, he shoved the letter back into the book, and the book into the shelf, and was so busy wiping his brow that he did not hear the door creak open behind him.

It was the shivering lamp flame that alerted him. And of course his own celebrated senses.

He wheeled around to find a chimney sweep standing at the open door, staring in at him. A shock that was compounded seconds later with the realization that it was not a sweep at all, but Evelyn.

Stepping into the library Canavan was seized with dread, for everything about McKnight's manner suggested a true revelation—a final surrender to the Apocalypse.

Shelving his lamp, the Professor gestured to the bookcase facing them. “Observe the titles,” he said, and Canavan did so:
The Republic, The Literature and Curiosities of Dreams, The World as Will and Idea,
and three volumes of
A Treatise of Human Nature
—some of the very books in Evelyn's possession.

“I've not moved them an inch in months,” McKnight said. “They appear before you conspicuously identical to their order on Evelyn's own shelves.”

Canavan could not apprehend the meaning of it, and he shook his head indifferently.

“Have a look at one of them,” the Professor urged, and he selected one of the
Human Nature
volumes, pressing it into his friend's hands.

The Irishman fanned through the pages absently. It was an imperfect edition. There were gaps on certain pages, the print haphazard and the ink frequently faded.

“Purchased at a discount, I hope,” he said.

The Professor smirked, retrieving the book and replacing it on the shelf. “Then try this one.” He handed to Canavan his
Rituale Romanum.
“From a more distant shelf, and not in Evelyn's visible collection. Open it,” he suggested, “at the marked page.”

Canavan turned to the Rite of Exorcism, finding a woodcut of cowled monks gathered around a possessed man, a winged serpent fleeing through a window. The text was a mixture of vibrant red and black inks.

“Try the previous pages,” McKnight said. “The Last Rites. The Rite of Marriage…”

When Canavan turned to these pages he noticed what appeared to be more serious printing errors, though here in even greater abundance: whole pages blank or decorated with just a few strings of blurred sentences. He still could not comprehend it, though he was beginning to feel uneasy.

“I found it in the very depths of the labyrinth,” McKnight said. “In a bookcase I barely knew existed. Where there are whole books—entire shelves—filled with blank pages, isolated phrases, disappearing words. The diagrams remain in good shape, generally, but the text…” He smiled. “Mine is a library from which even the words have drained.”

Canavan shook his head protestingly. He turned the
Rituale Romanum
over and over in his hands, hoping to find some button, some note, that might reveal its secret.

McKnight finally pried the book from his grasp, but only to replace it with another.

“Leibniz's
Monadology,
” he said quietly. “The book, you'll recall, that Evelyn claimed she has not yet read…”

Canavan had little doubt what he would find, and indeed the book seemed to sigh with shame when he opened it. The pages shimmered, practically sparkled at him with their immaculate whiteness. First page, tenth page, hundredth page. All completely devoid of text. The words had never been read by Evelyn, and it was as though they had never existed.

In the elongated silence Groves found himself grappling for the wisdom of the good Piper McNab, but instead of inspiration he found only a savage irony. Because rather than feeling like the aggressor, he felt like the one who had an instant to decide if he was a tiger or a hare.

“What…what do we have here?” he asked, a stupid response, but all the words he had rehearsed for this moment had evaporated behind uncertainty as to which of the two Evelyns he now faced, or indeed what powers she had at her disposal. “Where have you been?”

She tugged the door shut and stepped sideways into the corner of the room, where the light was weakest. She did not look at him directly.

“I…I have been walking,” she replied, in a voice pitched somewhere between self-reproach and umbrage. “And what are
you
doing here?”

“Aye?” Groves raised his head, as though he had no right to be asked. “I am here,” he said, drawing himself to his full, defensive height, “with stout constables, who are posted outside.” But he spoke optimistically, because he could not be certain that she had not already accounted for Pringle and the plainclothes policeman.

She gave no indication either way. She removed her cap, and what there was of her hair fell free. “Has there been more tragedy?” she asked quietly.

“Tragedy?” He felt rooted to the floor. “And why…why do you ask? Have you dreamed of some tragedy?”

“I have dreamed of nothing.”

“Aye?” He made an effort to hold his gaze on her, but the nightmare image of her glistening fangs returned to him insistently, and he tasted bile in his mouth. He tried to distract himself with visions of his forthcoming diary notes:
There was no telling what powers of darkness she had at her call, but I had as many powers of my own….

“But you are surely not here,” Evelyn added, “to wish me well.”

“Is that right?” He drew courage from the genuine note of regret. “You make it sound like you have been expecting me, lass.”

“I fear,” she said, “that you have sniffed my blood.”

“I am a predator, is that it?”

“I…I did not say that.”

“Then I target you unfairly? Or are you confessing to me?”

She dropped her cap on the table and seemed to drag the darkness around her. She was barely a couple of arm's lengths away, but she seemed at the other end of a stadium. “I am no longer sure of anything,” she said.

With further effort Groves managed to roll on his heels. “I came here simply to clarify some matters,” he said. “I did not expect you to be absent.”

Nothing.

“Can you explain why you were out, woman? And why you are dressed in that manner?” He had always disliked sweeps—the only thing blacker than their faces was their souls—and on Evelyn the effect was especially disagreeable.

“When I walk…at night,” she said, “it is better not to be a woman.”

“It is a grand thing,” he returned, finding fortitude in scorn, “that a woman is ashamed of her sex.”

“I'm not ashamed….”

“Aye?”