The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar

'Edgar?' the knocker enquired. 'Edgar? Come out at once!'

He was breathless from having hiked up the long corridor. Beneath his crop of silver hair, his face was as red as a tomato, with his bristling moustache like a caterpillar gnawing on it. He leaned heavily on his cane, which was topped with a knob like a huge, black pearl, and in his free hand there were two documents. One was neatly folded into quarters. The other was a scrap of paper which had been hastily rolled up. As Lord Edmund knocked once more, he scrunched the second piece of paper, grimaced, and shoved it in his pocket.

'Edgar?' he asked again, pressing forward so that when the door caved in, he nearly stumbled through it. Almost immediately, he recoiled in shock.

'Edgar, my boy!' he declared. 'D-didn't I tell you that you had, er, b-better be looking after yourself?' Although his tone was determined, his stutter betrayed his anxiety. His expression deepened the age rings around his eyes, so that they were more like the pits that surrounded his young protégé’s.

Edgar was silent, as the Lord had predicted he would be. He offered only a shrug, which was unusually stiff inside the formal jacket he was wearing. With his pale face and the high collar clasped around his throat, he resembled nothing so much as a body trussed up for burial. Something about his face, however, was hard in a way that was more fortified than deathly. His eyes were harder than they were watery, his cheeks more chiseled than pinched, and his jaw set in a manner that was at odds with the rest of his appearance.

'Edgar, you need to eat, and sleep...' Lord Edmund despaired, wringing his hands.

'So let me,' Edgar retorted. 'Let me sleep, if that's so important to you. What is this about?'

'W-well,' his mentor began. His voice was shaky at first, but steadier as he straightened himself up, fussing like a bird smoothing its feathers. 'I think you know quite well what this is about, young Edgar. Do you think me a fool?' he demanded, his own, hazel eyes imperious in his otherwise kindly face.

'Whatever do you mean?' snapped Edgar.

'This is what I mean!' Clutching its edge in one fist, Lord Edmund let the first sheet of paper unfold. Though he had expected it, Edgar held his breath as he watched it cascade in front of his nose, unrolling like a notice of eviction. 'Did you expect me to believe this caper? This counterfeit? I don't supply your food and put a roof over your head to be so insulted! This was our gentlemen's bargain. You will write truthful accounts of your dreams, or else...'

'Or else, what?'

Lord Edmund's eyes were evasive. First they were darting, then they were pleading. 'Please?' he begged.

'Do not embarrass yourself,' said Edgar, curtly. 'I suppose I ought to let you show my work about like plunder from a desecrated Egyptian tomb, should I?' His voice was even, but it was punctuated by a dangerous leer. 'I should let you parade my most sacred, frightening visions around as pseudo-scholars exhibiting the most priceless religious relics of that culture? Like circus amusements, in other words!'

The normally uncannily lifeless young man now struggled for composure. It was as though there were maggots attempting to wriggle their way out of that jacket. As Edgar continued his diatribe, which rattled out of him without pause, like the fixed-pace song of a clockwork that had been wound up as tightly as it would go, his animation was just as crude. The emphasis he now placed on odd words was likewise artificial.

'Indeed,' he sneered, jerking like a puppet, 'I suppose you actually do collect such items, in addition to every other hideous thing you horde- plants, skeletons, whatever this disgusting thing is...' He raised a skeptical eyebrow, regarding the tentacle-shaped door handle as though it were a genuine, slimy appendage. When he leaned back in repulsion, he nearly toppled over. 'Like every wretched scholar with sarcophagi to pawn,' he continued, 'I presume you justify yourself by belittling so-called 'heathen' persons and civilisations?'

'Why, I never!' Lord Edmund began. His indignation was cut short, however, when Edgar interrupted. The younger man's vehemence flowed out like an unstopped dam- there could be no halting it.

'Do you think me amusing?' he asked. 'Do you think me godless?' Before his mentor could protest, he was in full flight again.

'Of course, you alone know truth and God, and may decide in your enlightenment what is for mocking! You alone, with all your wealth and privilege, may ascribe to whichever things suit you the role of cheap entertainment, and select for yourself what kinds of subject matter should be treated as serious. I, meanwhile, am a pauper, I suppose. I am a wretched orphan from a family of but moderate standing, who must be grateful whatever your decision is! Hmph!'

Edgar threw his hands up in a gesture which came very unnaturally to him, and was thus additionally shocking. 'If that is how it is,' he said, 'then you must truly think very little of me, Lord Vile.'

For more than a minute, there was silence. Edgar, having run his mechanical course, had wound down and was limp and lifeless once again. Lord Edmund, meanwhile, was stunned. His lips flapped noiselessly- it wasn't immediately apparent whether he was had been touched, and thus felt remorse, or whether he was simply having difficulty deciding which accusation to rebut first.

'This is because of the newspaper, isn't it?' he deduced.

His guest continued to sulk in silence, confirming his conclusion.

Lord Edmund sighed. While one hand rubbed the knob on his cane thoughtfully, the other searched for the pocket where he had stashed the second note, found it, and slung itself inside.

'Edgar,' he said wearily, this time dropping the patronising 'young'. 'You know I mean you no disrespect. This is my fault. I was thoughtless- I simply wished to share my astonishment with a colleague. Of course, nothing would have proceeded from there without your consultation and permission. I do not think of you as something I possess. You are my protégé, and fully capable in your own right. I do not think myself better because of my origins. Indeed, I knew your father well, and admired him greatly. So, too, I admire you.'

At this, Edgar seemed to brighten. The sunny expression that dawned suddenly on his ashen face was like sunrise over a boneyard. 'Really?' he asked, his misgivings already forgotten.

'Verily,' replied the Lord, a small smile twitching on his lips.

'You mean to say that you would never parade me like... like I described?' Edgar sounded hopeful and happy, but there was another quality to his voice that made the old Lord uncomfortable. His writer protégé was too eager for approval; too hungry for esteem. Something else was in there, too- a dangerous arrogance that need only be stroked a little before it would rear up like a beast. Nevertheless, Lord Edmund did not hesitate to affirm his faith in his charge.

'I respect you as an artist, Edgar,' he said.

'You will only ever do what is best for me?'

Though the question was a tentative trap, and rang with the Devil's temptation, Lord Edmund could not help but follow the trail of bait. His eyes glazed with memory, and his expression softened. As he regarded Edgar, he sighed partially, as though he had clapped eyes on an angel.

'I could not do otherwise, in truth to your father's memory,' he muttered, once again without breath. His eyes hovered, watery, over Edgar's cold and suddenly viciously pixie-like visage. 'And you are so very like him...'

The old Lord's eyelids fluttered. For a moment, he seemed eerily transient, as though caught between recollection and dream. Then, he stepped forward, one rough hand outstretched to caress the younger man's features. He was thwarted, however, and startled from his trance, when Edgar leapt nimbly aside.

'Good,' he said tersely, stroking his lapels in a business-like manner.

'Well, er, um,' stammered the Lord, who had consequently lost his bearings. 'Where was I? Um... If the matter is resolved, then I would very much like to hear the other half of your story,' he confessed. 'I know you lied to me. You didn't truly wake up, but that is all forgiven, naturally. If you can bring yourself to tell me the ending, then of course I shall not relay it to anyone else.'

'Do you promise?' Edgar's tone was petulant, his lips unusually pouty and child-like in his thin face.

Lord Edmund sighed once again. This time it was the combined result of fatigue and exasperation. 'I promise,' he assured.

'Good,' Edgar repeated, sounding pleased with himself.

'Very well,' said Lord Edmund, concluding their business, though the longing in his eyes betrayed his desire to do anything but. 'In that case,' he said, with forced conclusion, 'tomorrow morning I will have the honest account, if you please.'

Turning, he seemed to have inherited his guest's clockwork manner as he strode back up the hall. If anything, in fact, his imitation was even more exaggerated. Placing foot after foot determinedly on the dusty carpet, he was stiffer and more consistently jolting than any crude artifice could aspire to be.

As soon as he departed, Edgar withdrew like a spider, closing the trapdoor to his lair with a slam. A minute later, he had fallen upon his prey. Stretched out on his desk, the parchment was as vulnerable as any insect strung up in a web.

Edgar was writing.