The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim by Shane Peacock

Author:Shane Peacock [Peacock, Shane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77049-700-9
Publisher: Tundra
Published: 2016-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

20

Hiding Place

The next morning, Professor Lear climbs the staircase that leads to the top floor and beyond. There, in the black turret that sticks up high above the rest of the College, lives an ancient man he wants to interview. Edward Emeritus had been the headmaster at the College on the Moors for sixty years. Griswold is eighty himself, though one wouldn’t know it when he is whipping a boy, his few wisps of white hair flying up, spit coming from his mouth below his hooked red nose as he whacks children with blood-drawing roundhouse strikes accomplished with more flare than the best blows of the boys’ bats on the cricket field. He had spent nearly all of his six decades at the college waiting to succeed the old man. But in a sense he never did, for the legend of Headmaster Emeritus lives on, so much so that he is allowed to stay in the college, kept there in that room above everyone else’s, his counsel sought on every issue until just the last few years.

Lear is breathing heavily by the time he reaches the great man’s room. There is no answer to his knock. For an instant Lear wonders if Emeritus has expired. The old man’s one hundredth birthday was toasted the previous year, though he had been too frail to come downstairs. In fact, no student currently at the college can be certain to have ever seen him, and most professors, Lear included, haven’t spoken to him in years. Lear gently pushes open the door.

And there the old headmaster is—sitting at his desk with his back to the door, staring out over the moors, mumbling to himself, still wearing his robes. Lear needs him to be sane, not perfectly sane, not bright with awareness and suspicion, but somewhere in that unguarded state that very elderly people reach, almost as if they were between sleeping and life, in their own sort of dream.

“Headmaster Emeritus?”

The old man keeps staring out the window, muttering.

Lear walks around so he can be seen. His presence doesn’t startle the ancient man in the least.

“Yes, my child, have you come to be whipped?” Emeritus speaks in explosive bursts in a thin, hoarse pitch.

This man had been the king of whippings. He made Griswold look like an amateur. Though his body is withered and shrunken today, his face fallen as if it is beginning to melt, his hands, resting on his lap, are as big and powerful as ever. He is said to have left scars on some students that will last lifetimes.

“Sir, it is Professor Hamish Lear.”

“Oh. Oh, Lear. Yes, I recall you, young man. Are you settling in nicely?”

“Sir, I have been here for forty years now.”

“I see.”

“I have a few questions for you.”

“Questions!” The old man tries to get up, but he can’t and falls back into the chair. “Questions about discipline? Do you have a problem I must straighten out? Send me the boy!”

“No, sir, there is no boy involved.”

“No boy!

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