The List of Seven

  Waiters were turning down the gas jets in the dining room. A small orchestra in another room began to play a Strauss waltz. Handsome couples took to the dance floor. The gay mood prevailing in the room, the dancers swirling about them, made no inroad to the core of Sparks’s private burden. He stared into his drink, face drawn, his eyes haunted and febrile.

  “And so we went along. The letters. Our yearly Easter visit. The only interruption to our exchanges came when travel to Europe with my family began. Even then there was always a packet of letters waiting upon my return. Alexander was absolutely faithful to me and I to him, always eager to hear of my growth and progress, never overstepping the bounds our parents so vigilantly maintained. Never exhibiting anything but loving interest in my development. Or so I assumed. I realize now he was measuring my progress against the meticulous records he had kept of his own—like a rat in a laboratory experiment—to see if his methods for the development of the Superior Man were verifiable. And not least to reassure himself that my rate of advancement lagged well behind his; by no means would the student ever be allowed to surpass his master.

  “As he entered his last year of school before university, and I neared the age, and nearly the size, he’d been when we’d first met, his letters stopped, without warning. I wrote to him repeatedly, with increasing desperation. No reply. Worse yet, no explanation. I felt as if a limb had been cut from my body. I wrote again and again, pleading with him to answer; what transgression had I unknowingly committed? Why had he forsaken me?”

  “His work with you was finished.”

  “No. His intention was to shock me, by demonstrating how swiftly his favor could be withdrawn, to plant a seed of terror in me that tightened his grip and rendered me even more dependent. Four months went by. A thousand scenarios of doom flowered in my imagination, until finally I was able to absolve myself of responsibility: It must have been my parents, I decided. They’ve discovered our link and taken decisive action against us; they’ve had Alexander moved, quarantined somewhere out of reach. Perhaps they really were as devious and vengeful as his letters over the last year had subtly begun to suggest. Their absolute steadiness of disposition with me did nothing to allay my suspicions, but only increased them. Whenever I inquired into his well-being, which I dared not do too frequently, they assured me Alexander was well and thriving. I knew it was a lie! He must be languishing, cut off from me at their command, every bit as bereft and miserable as I was. I wanted to retaliate, without giving them the satisfaction of knowing I was stung, so I began to willfully conceal my feelings from them, to put up the same stone wall of polite but distant self-sufficiency I’d seen Alexander assume in their presence. They sensed immediately that something was not right with me, but I refused their entreaties and denied any discomfort, all the while counting the days and hours until that Easter, when Alexander and I would be reunited. To my great surprise, our parents made no effort to deny us that meeting, which only served to confirm my conviction that their treachery was of a high and exalted order.

  “When we finally did meet, Alexander betrayed not the slightest uneasiness or dissatisfaction with our parents, and he was as pleasant and convivial with me in their company as always. Sitting on the veranda sipping hibiscus tea, we looked the very model of the upright English family, spending most of our time discussing Alexander’s entrance to university that fall. Calling on the reserves of self-control Alexander had taught me so well, I restrained every impulse to pull him aside and beg for the truth about his withdrawal. The long afternoon was nearly passed before the opportunity came, once again on the walk through the gardens after dinner, ritualized now through the years of our visits, the two brothers ten paces ahead of their parents. Our faces and gestures betrayed no urgency; his words to me were few, but they were resonant with that conspiratorial tone of affiliation that I had longed all these months to hear. ‘See your way clear to Europe this summer. In July. Alone.’ He suggested Salzburg, famous for its music academy. I was stunned. How shall I manage it? With what resources? It seemed entirely beyond me. He said all that was up to me, but however I should do it, this was by far the most important assignment he would ever give me. I would try, I swore to him. I would try my best. You must succeed, he said, at any cost. Our parents appeared behind us, and that was the end of our exchange.”

  “He wanted to meet you there,” said Doyle.

  “That, of course, was my assumption. Immediately upon our return home, I threw myself into what had up until that point been, at best, my desultory efforts to master the violin. What had been compulsory now became compulsive; I spent hours in practice every day. My dedication to the work was never questioned, only encouraged by my music-loving parents. To my amazement, I discovered that I possessed no small aptitude for the instrument, almost to the point of prodigality. I was able to coax from those strings the music of a private universe, as if I had discovered an entirely new language that in many ways I found more eloquent than speech. From time to time, I would bemoan the lack of instructors adequate to the rapidly advancing level of my playing. I let mention that I had heard of a musical conservatory in Austria where the great talents of our age had found nurturance for the skills that carried them on to their splendid international careers.

  “When some weeks later my parents presented the idea of my enrolling at that very academy for the coming summer, I feigned astonishment and showered them with boundless gratitude for their perceptiveness and generosity. I didn’t know which gave me more pride: my cunning in securing the appointment or my actual achievement with the instrument. The next day I wrote Alexander the last letter I would ever send him, one cryptic sentence: ‘The job is done.’ I received no reply. In the middle of June, my parents accompanied me to Brighton—along with the valet who was to be my traveling companion—where they saw me off on my first solitary European adventure. I set sail for the Continent, arrived in Austria two days later, and was straightaway enrolled in the Salzburg lyceum, where I busied myself in my studies and waited for July and word from Alexander to arrive.”

  The dance floor was by this time filled with revelers. The orchestra began to assay the sentimental favorites of the day, as the hour of the New Year drew near. A frantic, angular energy animated the crowd, their enjoyment of the occasion hovering uncertainly between bona fide excitement and dutiful obligation.

  “Did he send word?”

  Sparks looked up at Doyle, his eyes transparent and cold. Doyle saw further into Sparks’s private reaches than he had ever been previously allowed.

  “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 cacophonously. 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.”