Fantastic Mr Norris

Horace paused at the door. He swore that he did this in order to taste his moment of victory, and not because he was afraid.

The chase had gone on for half a year. His bones ached with the weight of remembered centuries. The work of a Hunter was never-ending. Once the Oath was taken, it was a constant battle keeping up with the ruthless slaughter-and-possession routine of the Hosts. Now, finally, he was about to catch his monster.

In more ways than one, he was a stranger. Nevertheless, he wasn’t unknown to Mr Norris, no matter how dearly the magician might have wished he was.

Horace Barrister was a sleuth.

For weeks, he had followed the rumours, which had eventually led him here. Norris bargained with the Devil, the Londoners said. He kept books of spells and unspeakable things in his apartment, where he permitted no-one to visit him. Regardless, his neighbours sometimes overheard him speaking in tongues. To whom, they could not guess.

These were the breadcrumbs in Horace’s trail. In a small, red leather notebook which would have appeared empty to anybody else, he wrote down his observations in the sacred wax, which had been used since the days when cloth was precious, dyes unstable and paper and ink not yet conceived of. Wax sticks, he thought approvingly, could write on anything. They weren’t like crayons– not thick leads of colour to be scrawled gaudily, but delicate rods that inner fire lit and melted into blood red, elegant streams.

Horace flipped open his notebook now. His cane, when his fingers alighted from it, stayed upright. The skull that topped it was more obedient than any dog. Its eyes gleamed, many-faceted, its beak catching the light from his fingertips like a hook.

By this light, Horace read.

The notes were meticulous and chronological, with times recorded down to the second. At precisely one second past 4.01pm on October 15, 1859 (ITOC- ‘In the Time of Our Chase’), Emmanuel Norris, London’s most adored magician, was seen entering the Velvet Fox, a gentleman’s club of ill repute.

Horace had followed him there. He could still remember the stench of tobacco, and the haze that masked rooms the thick, tasselled drapes didn’t shield.

Without removing his hat and gloves, Norris had darted past pool and poker tables, drawing stares from the monocle-squinters and the women whose tailcoats covered only fishnet stockings or bare legs. They had tried to tempt him with brandy and cigars, but he would not be delayed.

He had gone upstairs at five seconds past 4.08pm, to the filthy room where the carpet was a single wine stain, its original colour unknown. In a low voice, he had conversed with a man whose smoking jacket did not disguise the traces of mud on his boots– foreign mud, and sand, as if he had recently returned from abroad. The pipe he placed down on the end table by his armchair smouldered with some exotic herb. He had a long, tangled beard.

This, Horace deduced, was a man thirsty for adventure, on whom culture had left its imprint. He had a brown paper package, all tied up in string.

Mr Norris accepted it eagerly.

‘Is it…?’ he asked, at thirty-five seconds past 4.12pm.

The other man nodded. ‘It is.’

A corner of the paper had been peeled back, revealing the unmarked spine of a book, and something that could have been a clay tablet. Mr Norris was a known purveyor of books, but this was something different. The rest of his collection, Horace surmised, was not a testament to his learning or his wealth, as people speculated. Rather, it was a monument to the quantities of each Norris had wasted in searching, fruitlessly, for this very item.

The rest of his priceless books could rot, for all he cared. He had turned them over and over, and inside out, and discovered not a clue… About what? Horace did not find out that day.

The next entry in his notebook, which occurred on October 16, 1859 ITOC at ten seconds past 2pm, described a sighting of Mr Norris at the London Museum. He had been dressed ordinarily, in a bowler hat and overcoat, but he was nonetheless easy to spot. Everywhere he went, adults hung back in awe, and children scampered at his heels. Horace suspected he was beginning to resent his popularity. He must have known how easy he was to follow.

The museum was cavernous. A solid ocean of tiles gleamed with puddles of light and shadow. Footsteps echoed, and the mammoth skeletons of whales were suspended overhead. The whole labyrinth, through which legions could have marched, was filled with a reverent silence imported from all over the world.

This silence had originated in tombs, in burial chambers where sarcophagi had been found, in ruins from antiquity, in the drowning pits of shipwrecks, quiet offices where lithographs were made and caves from which fossils had been unearthed. The museum was a gulping void which swallowed men whole. It was a constant reminder of their mortality as well as the splendours they had collectively created, and it was an easy place to follow a man.

No footfall was unheard here. No thief went unobserved. The very structure of the building was as effective at deterring sneaks as were the bells, locks, guards and trip wires.

Mr Norris strode through the grand foyer, flaunting his undercover costume, because he could not hide inside it.

The different kind of black he wore –a black that was for absorbing shadows rather than projecting them– was merely a signal to others that he did not wish to be approached. It couldn’t prevent Horace Barrister from watching as he stepped under the sandstone archway that that led to the Pharaohs of Egypt exhibit. It didn’t stop the Hunter from stalking him all through that otherwise empty wing, where dead men, their masks and their likenesses observed his prey’s every step.

Though he thought Norris was aware of what he wanted, Horace had to be sure. Eventually, at ten seconds to 2.30pm, the sneak stopped in front of a glass case where a selection of clay tablets were displayed on a bed of papyrus.

There was a bronze plaque fixed nearby. On it, the following words were inscribed in a font resembling the strokes of a reed brush:



Norris studied these for a moment. His haste betrayed his knowledge that he was being watched, though Horace was concealed better than any thief of jewels of priceless artefacts had ever been. It was only the magician, with his uncanny mastery of the tricks the Hunters used, who could have detected him.

He next traced Norris at the Cad House, which was a house of cards. There, the magician appeared to take a shining to a budding performer, a young man of not exceeding twenty years. The Hunter couldn’t imagine what they had in common, except, perhaps, their astonishing handsomeness. The younger man had no apparent aptitude for making performances or impressions. As far as London knew, Mr Norris was not known to fancy boys.

Horace Barrister knew more, of course. He knew that the magician fancied no-one. Despite this, he regarded his stoked young companion with an eye that scrutinised flesh.

Lastly and most recently in Horace’s journal, Norris had visited a cramped, leaning cottage on the outskirts of the city, where the countryside pressed up against the poorer districts. Here, the walls of the cobbled streets were low and stony, and ivy choked the windows of the thatched and shingled houses so that they were reduced to peering at their small world.

The cottage was timeless. It might have been thirty years old. It could just as easily have been three hundred. A section of the wall that ran around its sides had crumbled, and the garden was overgrown with violets, clover, nasturtiums, lupins, moss and all other manner of vegetation found in cool, shady places.

Otherwise, however, it was in good repair, and certainly habitable. Somebody lived there, and had hung the lacy curtains behind the cataract-blinded glass in each of the upper story windows.

There was washing on the line. Horace counted breeches, bonnets, shirts, skirts blouses and bedclothes. The cottage was home to more than one person, but apparently to no children.

When Norris pushed the gate open and walked up the narrow, flagstone path, which curled like the shells of the many snails that lurked in the garden beds, the Hunter stooped down where the house’s side wall was still in good repair. There, he crouched, and caught snippets of conversation.

‘I have something for you,’ he heard. He identified Norris. The other, muffled voice belonged to a younger man.

‘Is it… real?’

‘Most certainly it is real. A friend of mine travelled a great distance to acquire it, and yet, I think that it can only truthfully be appreciated by people like us. Should you like to see the rest?’

‘I should like that very much. I am immensely grateful to you for showing me these things. Do you really believe I have what it takes?’

‘Oh, yes.’ The voice was soft, almost poisonous. ‘You will suit me very well. Nobody has ever heard of you. You have no living relatives, besides a grandmother who barely remembers your name. She needs looking after, and you need a future. Like a meteor, you will come from nowhere, taking them all by storm.’

‘You mean you wish to make me your apprentice?’

‘I wish to make you my heir.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘For truth?’

‘I speak nothing else,’ said Norris. ‘You may always hold me to my word. I grow weary of fame, young Abel. I did not lie when I told my public that my next performance will be my last. Henceforth, I will by acting through you.’

Horace couldn’t make out the response. Shortly thereafter, he heard a dramatic bang, as of fireworks exploding, and was forced to flee. Hunter, he might have been, but he was only un-aging, not invincible. He did not have the benefit of shifting bodies, and his original one left speed and strength to be desired.

His ankles strained beneath his bulk as he scuttled up the street, shifting into raven form again and propelling himself into flight. It was only a matter of time, he thought, until Norris learned that one of the Hunters’ secrets, too. His choice of mascots implied that he already knew of the power, though he had yet to discover how to harness it. He was certainly a formidable foe, and would take some caution in slaying.

Horace shut the book, reflecting on his methods as he stroked the door knob tentatively.

Just now, he had come from the crowded marketplace. He had roosted on the rooftop, with the dumber ravens, waiting for his moment. When Mr Norris had fled, he had recovered the lily from the ground, before it could be trampled. It was a fine thing, he thought now, as he stroked its length. Its stem was like a rod of green glass, its single, fluted petal smooth as fur and white as cream.

It was not of natural make, although its maker was still a natural man. He had been naturally born, and he could die naturally.

As the blood pounded in his own, sweaty forehead, Horace tried to remind himself that his target was also a creature of blood and flesh. The only difference between him and an ordinary animal was that his flesh was reinforced with spells, like Horace’s own.

He could still die.

He would still die.

Horace gripped the doorknob tightly. There was no answer, which meant perhaps that Norris was asleep. Suddenly, the sleuth found himself wishing that his kind were not so few and far between. For the first time, he was terrified.