Dan Simmons - Drood

Turning to flee, I pounded down the stairs, reached the second- storey door, shook it while screaming, looked up over my shoulder, screamed again. I fired the pistol at least twice, knowing that it would do no good. It did not. Running and clattering down the stairs again—the first-storey door also locked from the other side—I screamed as something moist and foul dripped from… from above… and then I was hurtling down the stairway again, ricocheting from wall to wall. I dropped the candle and it went out. Something brushed my hair from above, curled along the back of my neck. Whirling in the absolute darkness, I fired the revolver twice more, tripped, fell headfirst down the last dozen steps.

I do not know to this day how I managed not to lose the pistol or shoot myself with it. Screaming more loudly now, I lay in a heap at the bottom of the steps and pounded at the ground-floor door.

Something strong and thin and very long wrapped itself around my right boot and ripped it off my foot. If I had buckled the boot properly before coming in, I would have been dragged back up the staircase with it.

Screaming again, I fired a final shot up into the darkness, tore open the door, and—blinded by the light—fell forward onto the long boards of the kitchen floor. Flailing wildly with both feet, I kicked the heavy door shut behind me.

George ran in despite my earlier commands for no one to be in the room. I could see Caroline’s and the other two female faces staring white and round and open-mouthed from the doorway to the hall.

I almost pulled George down to the floor as I fiercely grabbed his lapel and whispered wildly to him, “Lock it! Lock the door! Lock it! Now!”

George did so, throwing the totally inadequate tiny bolt home. There was no sound from the other side. My panting and gasping seemed to fill the kitchen.

Getting to my knees and then to my feet, the pistol still raised and cocked, I pulled George back tight against me and hissed in his ear, “Get as much lumber as you need and as many men as you need. I want all the staircase doors nailed shut and then boarded over within the half hour. Do you understand? Do… you… understand? ”

George nodded, pulled himself free from my grip, and ran out to get what he needed.

I backed out of the kitchen, never taking my eyes from the far-too-frail door to the stairway.

“Wilkie…” began Caroline, setting her hand on my shoulder but then jerking it away as I jumped.

“It was rats,” I gasped, uncocking the pistol that was suddenly too heavy for me to hold. I tried to remember how many bullets I had fired but could not. I would count the remaining ones later. “It was only rats.”

“Wilkie…” Caroline began again.

I shook her off and went up to my bedroom to vomit into the basin and find my flask.

Caroline played her trump card on Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of April, the day before the Russia, carrying Dickens and Dolby on the last leg of their long voyage, was scheduled to drop anchor in Queenstown Harbour.

Caroline knew that I was in a good mood, although she had no idea of all the reasons why. Those reasons were clear enough to me. When Charles Dickens had sailed for America the previous November, he had been the master and I the eager apprentice; now The Moonstone in serial form was the hit of the nation, crowds at the Wellington Street offices of All the Year Round were larger with each number released, and commoner and nobility both were hanging on each new instalment to see just who had stolen the diamond and how. And I was secure in the sure and certain knowledge that even the cleverest reader among them would never be able to guess.

When Charles Dickens had sailed for America the previous November, my play No Thoroughfare —and it was, indeed, my play, after all the rewrites, revisions, and fresh ideas I had poured into it since the previous autumn—had been just a dream in early rehearsal. Now it was a bona fide hit and had already run at the Adelphi Theatre for more than one hundred and thirty sold-out evening performances. There were eager negotiations under way for a Paris production.

Finally, Mother’s death, while saddening me (and horrifying me with its insectoid aspects and uncertainty of cause) had also liberated me. Now, at the age of forty-four, I had finally and fully become a man unto myself.

So Caroline sensed that despite the incident of the servants’ stairway (after two weeks I still would not go into the kitchen or any part of the upper hallways near the heavily nailed, boarded over, and fully sealed doors), and despite frequent relapses and the continuing pain that required larger doses of laudanum and morphine just to allow me to work a few hours each day, I was in the best mood I had enjoyed for years.

Dickens had left in November thinking of himself as the Master and me as protégé; he was returning (ill and disabled, from all accounts) to find me as the popular-selling novelist, successful playwright, and fully independent man I now was. We would meet this time as equals (at the very least).

And, I was increasingly convinced, we both carried Drood’s scarabs in our skulls. That fact alone brought a grim new equality to our relationship.

CAROLINE CAME TO ME that Wednesday morning while I was in the bath. Perhaps she thought this was when I would be at my most mellow… or at least at my most pliable.

“Wilkie, my dear, I have been thinking about our earlier conversation.”

“Which conversation is that?” I asked, even though I knew full well. My spectacles had steamed over and I reached for a nearby towel and squinted while I wiped the lenses clear. Caroline became a great white-and-pink lumpy blur.

“The one about Lizzie moving into society and about the future of our own relationship under this roof,” she said, sounding very nervous indeed.

I, on the other hand, was completely calm as I set the tiny spectacles back on my nose. “Yes?”

“I have decided, Wilkie, that for our Lizzie… Carrie… to have the proper advantages in life, her mother really must be married and she part of a stable family.”

“I could not agree more,” I said. The steam from my bath rose to the ceiling and curled to all sides. Caroline’s face was flushed red with it.

“You do?” she said. “You agree?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Please hand me that towel, my dear.”

Speechless, she handed me the towel and I proceeded to pat my rather pleasing rotundity dry.

“I did not know… all this time… I was not sure…” spluttered Caroline.

“Nonsense,” I said. “Your well-being… and Carrie’s, of course… have always been my primary concern. And you are correct. It is time for a marriage.”

“Oh, Wilkie, I…” She could not go on. Tears ran down her steam-reddened cheeks.

“I presume you are still in touch with your plumber,” I said, tossing aside the towel and pulling on my velour robe. “Mr Clow. Joseph Charles Clow?”

Caroline froze. The flush seeped out of her cheeks. “Yes?”

“And I assume that Mr Clow has proposed marriage to you by now, my dear. In fact, I presume that you were going to mention that fact to me in this very conversation.”

“Yes, but, I did not… I have not…”

I patted her arm. “There is no need for further explanation between two such old friends,” I said merrily. “It is time for marriage—for Carrie’s sake, as well as your own—and our Mr Clow has proposed it. You must accept at once.”

Caroline was pale down to her fingertips now. She took two blind steps backwards and bumped into the washbasin.

“I shall have Besse pack your clothes at once,” I went on. “Your other belongings, books and so forth, we shall send along in due course. I shall have George go fetch a cab as soon as you’re packed.”