The List Of Seven (24 page)

"Not in the way I had expected. In the second week of July, I was called out of my private instruction and taken to the headmaster's office. My valet was there; the poor man was terrified, pallid and waxen. Whatever is wrong? I asked, but I knew the answer before a word was spoken."

Doyle hung on his every word. Every other eye in the room was on the large dark clock that loomed over the bar. As the last seconds of the dying year dwindled away, the crowd began counting down.

"Ten, nine, eight ..."

"You will have to return to England immediately. Tonight, the headmaster told me," said Sparks, raising his voice in order to be heard over the mob. "There's been a fire."

"Seven, six, five ..."

"Are they dead? Are my parents dead?"

"Four, three, two ..."

"Yes, John, he said. Yes, they are."

The count ended, and the room erupted cacophonous-ly. Streamers swirled through the air. Noisemakers ratcheted. Lovers kissed, strangers embraced. The band played on. Doyle and Sparks sat through the crescendo of the celebration, their eyes locked, unmoving.

"Alexander," Doyle said, although he knew Sparks could not hear him. He could not even hear himself.

Sparks nodded. Without another word, he rose from his seat, threw a pack of pound notes down on the table, and sliced though the crowd toward the door. Doyle followed after, his passage more reminiscent of a rugby scrum than Sparks's surgical maneuvering, pushed through the mad clamor at the door, and squirted out onto the street. Doyle fought his way upstream to his friend, who stood under a lamppost, out of the flow of foot traffic, lighting a cheroot. They walked down a side street, away from the crowds. Soon they reached the river. Across the Thames, a fireworks display threw vibrant sparklers into the air, reflecting darkly on the black gelid water.

"Two days to get home," said Sparks after a while. "The

house was simply gone. Ashes. Locals said the flames could be seen for miles. A conflagration. Started at night. Five servants lost their lives as well."

"Were the bodies ... ?"

"My mother's was never recovered. My father ... had somehow got out of the house. They found him near the stables. Burned beyond recognition. He hung on to life for nearly a day, asking for me, hoping for my arrival. Near the end, he summoned the strength to dictate a letter to his priest. A letter for me. The priest gave it to me soon after I arrived."

Sparks gazed out over the river. The wind blew cold. Doyle shivered in his dinner jacket, too mindful of his friend to draw attention to his own petty discomfort.

"Father wrote to tell me that I had once had a sister who lived for fifty-three days. My brother, Alexander, had murdered the girl in her cradle, my mother half witness to the deed. This was why they'd kept us apart and never told me of him all these years, and now, as he and my mother were being taken from this life, why he implored me with his last breath to forsake my brother's company forever. There had been something wrong in Alexander from the beginning. Something not human. His mind was as glittering and false as a black diamond. Against their better nature, they had always held the glimmer of some persistent hope that he had changed. They had allowed that hope to feed on the lies with which Alexander had deceived them. And now, for the second time—for which my father blamed no one but himself— they had paid the terrible price of relaxing their guard. That was where my father's letter ended."

"There must have been more."

Sparks looked back at Doyle. "The priest went out of his way to warn me that my father was in a deep state of shock when they had spoken, that he might have been, God rest his soul, even quite deranged in the torment of his final hours. Therefore I should not consequently accept everything he, my father, had said to the man as gospel. I looked into his eyes: I knew the fellow, this priest, I'd known him since I was a child. A family friend, kind, well-meaning. Weak. And I knew he was withholding something from me. I was well versed enough in sacred doctrine to threaten him straight-faced with the damnation of Judas if he lied to me about my father's last confession. That quickly melted his resolve. He handed over to me the second half of Father's letter. I read it. It became clear that what the priest had hoped were the mad ravings of a dying man, his mind ravaged by pain, was in fact the unspeakable truth."

Sparks paused, steeling himself before carrying Doyle the last few steps into the core of his nightmare.

"Theirs had never been an easy marriage, my father wanted me to know. Two strong wills, two independent spirits. They had known great passion and caused each other tremendous sorrow. During their life together, he had loved other women. He offered no apology. He expected no sympathy or understanding. Shortly before Alexander was born, their difficulties reached such an impasse that he accepted the post in Cairo as a trial separation. Stung by his withdrawal, Mother formed an unnatural attachment to the little boy, calling upon Alexander to fill a role in her life for which he was quite naturally ill-suited. The effects were unwholesome.

"During a brief, unsuccessful reconciliation, my sister was conceived. Father returned to Egypt unawares. He did not even learn of the pregnancy until weeks after her birth. By the time he could free himself to return to England, the disaster had already occurred. Mother was severed; she desperately craved the comforting, unconditional love she had come to depend on from Alexander, but she was also unable to deny the horror her eyes had witnessed. Father wanted the boy sent away forever, punished, made a ward of the state. Self-divided as she was, my mother threatened to take her own life if he initiated such an action. Thus stalemated, Father took his leave once again. A year later, in a last attempt to salvage the tenuous covenant remaining between them, my father returned from overseas for good and extracted from her the compromise that resulted in Alexander's banishment, a third pregnancy, and the reorganization of their marriage around a second son. The son they would raise together. A son beloved by both parents, not one exclusively. I don't believe they were altogether unhappy during my early years. Far from it. They surrendered to the life they had forged and made their sorry peace with it."

Sparks flicked the butt of his cigar down into the turbulent

current. Doyle was reeling inside. He braced himself, for he sensed the worst of all was about to come.

"On the night they died, my father retired early to his rooms. He read for a while, then fell asleep before the fire. My mother's voice woke him, crying out in pain. Going to her chamber, he discovered her bound hand and foot to the posts of the bed. He was struck from behind and fell, unconscious. When he regained his senses, he was tied securely to a chair. My mother was on the bed as before. A figure was on top of her, assaulting her intimately. A figure all in black. She was screaming as if she had lost her mind. The figure completed the loathsome act and turned and smiled, and my father was greeted by the face of his oldest son."

Doyle turned away, short of breath, gasping for air. He was afraid he might be ill.

"Alexander was in no hurry to take leave of their company. He had already killed all the servants in the house; with gruesome detail, he described how each of them had died. He held my parents prisoner in that corrupt purgatory for more than four hours. He poured kerosene onto the bed, dousing my mother. He lit one of father's cigars and sat beside her, blowing on the tip, reddening the ash. He held it on her skin and told her not to bother with her prayers: They would not be sent to hell when he killed them for their sins against him. They were already there: This was hell. And he, their tormentor, was the Devil.

"Alexander untied my father and presented him with a choice: You can now either make love to your wife for the last time or fight with me. My father attacked him in a blind rage. He was still a strong and powerful man, but Alexander beat him easily, expertly and unmercifully, taking him time and again to the edge of unconsciousness, each time pulling him back only to begin again, administering more refined punishments. Things were said to my father that made him realize this nightmarish automaton they were in the grasp of was not in any recognizable way a human being. At last he slipped away into the refuge of darkness.

"Father was awakened the last time by a terrible heat. His skin was burning and the room consumed by fire, the bed and my mother's body already destroyed. My father somehow got himself out of that room, into the hall. The whole interior was ablaze. He hurled himself through a window. The fall broke his legs. He dragged himself away from the house, where my friend from the stable found him."

Sparks exhaled heavily. He slumped slightly forward, his face in the shadows. Doyle leaned over the rail and was sick into the river. He coughed and sputtered, but it was not unpleasant to void his body of the liquor and rich food. It all seemed foul in the company of what he'd just taken in. He waited for his head to clear.

"Sorry ..." A half-whisper was all he could manage. "Sorry."

Sparks nodded imperceptibly and waited for Doyle to retrieve his dignity.

"I asked to see my father's body. Again the priest resisted, this time without conviction. My friend from the stable took me to a potting shed, the only structure on the grounds the fire had spared, where bodies recovered from the wreckage lay on rough tables under vulcanized sheets. I did not recognize my father's face. I looked at his hands. The gold of his wedding band had melted and reformed around the exposed bone of his ring finger. Then I noticed that in the palm of that hand a queer pattern was burned into the remaining flesh. I studied that pattern, drew it later from memory, and still later remembered where I had seen it before.

"Over the years, my father had brought from Egypt a great number of ancient artifacts. An entire room in our house was dedicated to his collection. I had always been fascinated by a silver insignia in the shape of the eye of Thoth. Aware of my interest, Father made a necklace of it and gave me the insignia on my seventh birthday. When we first met and Alexander gave me that black rock which he said was his most precious possession, to reciprocate I sent him my prized necklace in a letter. My father soon noticed it was missing. I told him I had lost it swimming in the river, never quite sure that he believed me.

"I knew Alexander had taken to wearing the necklace on his nightly visitations. He felt it possessed some mystic property, that its power somehow helped him remain invisible. So I knew that every word my father had spoken to the priest was true; he had ripped the insignia from Alexander's neck as

they fought. He wanted to die with that necklace in his hand. So I would see it, and I would know."

Doyle had by now regained enough self-possession to speak. "But Alexander must have reclaimed it from him."

"Not before it had left its mark seared into his flesh."

"Did they find Alexander?"

Sparks shook his head. "Vanished into the air. The school never saw him again. Alexander's course had been set for years; now his two most profound goals were accomplished. He was already far beyond the pale. Three weeks after the funeral, a package arrived at our solicitor's, addressed to me. Origin of postage unknown. A letter in a neutral hand described the murder of the boy at the beehives, the attack on the woman by the river, and the assault on the girl in Germany. It explained the origin of the keepsakes Alexander had given me over the years. And he included this: the last and most repellent of his trophies."

Sparks was holding the silver insignia in his hand.

"You kept it," said Doyle, mildly surprised.

Sparks shrugged. "Nothing else was left. I needed something ..." said Sparks, more searchingly. "I needed a way to organize my feelings."

"For revenge."

"More than that. I don't mean to suggest it happened overnight. It took many years. I needed ... meaning. Purpose. To be twelve years old and have in that single blow your entire world destroyed, everything you believe in and cherish eradicated ..."

"I understand, Jack."

"There is evil loose in the world. I had dwelled in its shadow. I had tasted it. I had seen its basest products. It flourished in a body and soul that entered into life through the same passage I had taken here. I had willingly placed myself in its hands, allowed myself to be consciously molded by its bearer into his own image." Sparks looked again at Doyle; he seemed youthful and open and filled by the black wind of his terror.

"What if I was like him? I had to ask that, Doyle, do you see? What if the same vile, twisted spirit that drove him to these unspeakable crimes was alive in me? I was twelve years old!"

Tears filled Doyle's eyes in sudden comprehension of the boy the man who stood beseechingly before him must have been. To face such grief, to suffer such a loss, was unimaginable. He could offer his friend no comfort, there was none to be given, other than his silent, heartfelt tears.

"I had to believe that the skills my brother instilled in me I had learned for a purpose," Sparks said, throaty with determination. "They had no innate moral property; they were tools, neutral, still useful. I had to believe that, I had to demonstrate to myself that this was true: There could be more than one sort of Superior Man. The salient point with which I aligned my compass was my choice alone; justice would be my North Star, not mendacity and deluded self-worship. I would stand for the bringing of life, not death. If it was my fate to share his blood, then it was my obligation to balance the scales his presence here disrupted; I would deliver into this world a force to counter the darkness to which my brother had succumbed. I would redeem my family name or die trying. That was my mission. To stand opposed, to set myself in his way. To become his nemesis."

His words revived the faltering pulse of hope in Doyle's chest. They stood in silence for a time and watched the river.

chapter twelve BODGER NUGGINS

THE NIGHT TURNED BITTER COLD. THE WALK BACK TO THE Hotel was one of the longest miles in Doyle's memory. Sparks withdrew; he seemed hollowed out, emptied. Doyle felt equally flattered that Sparks entrusted him sufficiently to confide and burdened by the weight he would now to some degree have to shoulder. Never had the turning of the New Year left such a feeble impression on him. They made their way past drunks, lovers, hordes of young celebrants cheering and carousing because of this dimly conceived passing—the death of the "old," and birth of the "new," the charade of quickly forsaken resolutions to transform one's petty vices into virtues. Man's arbitrary attempts to demarcate time with this imposed significance seemed as profitless as the scratching of hen's feet in the dirt. And how could one presume that man's essential character was capable of change when a being the likes of Alexander Sparks testified prima facie to the contrary?