Doctor Illuminatus Read online

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Landing an Airbus 300 at Boston Logan,” Tim replied.

  Pip, knowing he hated to be interrupted, watched over his shoulder as the aircraft turned; she could see the runway in the distance through the virtual cockpit window, the approach lights drawing nearer. Tim, turning from keyboard to joystick, held his course, increasing the flap angle and slowing himself by lowering the undercarriage. As soon as the aircraft touched down, he paused the game.

  “Tim,” Pip asked, now that Tim and his passengers were safely on the runway, “have you kept the pages you gave me on hard disk?”

  “Every one,” he confirmed. “As HTML files.” “Can you call one up?” She held out the page. Tim called up Windows Explorer and double-clicked on the folder, then on the file.

  “Blow that picture up,” she requested.

  Tim opened Paint Shop Pro and did as he was told. As the picture appeared, filling the screen, Pip sucked in her breath.

  “What’s up, sis?”

  “That flower,” Pip said, pointing to the screen, “grows in the garden. I found it just before the butterfly stung me. If you sniff the flower, it makes you instantly dizzy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. The flower’s huge — at least twenty centimeters long. When I sniffed at it, I got all giddy. Go back to the file.”

  Tim returned to the HTML file, clicked on Print and, when the printer had produced the page, read the text out loud.

  “Brugmansia grandiflora, the Angel’s Trumpet. Perennial evergreen originally from South America, may grow as high as 3.5 meters. Large hairy leaves, pendulous white trumpet blooms which usually last only one day. Prefers partial shade or partial sun and moist soil. Hardy to 20 to 25°F or -7 to -5°C. Poisonous. Known to be used in Native American rituals, the powdered seeds mixed with corn beer. Was used in Europe in the Middle Ages mixed with wine or beer; was considered an ingredient of ‘flying ointment’ used by witches and facilitated shape-shifting.” He scrolled up the page. “Flying ointment?” he exclaimed. “Shape-shifting? What’s that?”

  “I shall show you.”

  Pip spun round. Tim almost fell off his computer-desk chair. Standing behind them was Sebastian.

  “I have returned,” he announced unnecessarily, closing the door behind him, “and I must speak urgently with you.”

  “Where have you been?” Pip asked.

  Sebastian sat on Tim’s bed, leaning forward. He looked tired and wan.

  “I have been walking in the footsteps of evil,” he said matter-of-factly, without any sense of drama. “I have been to the edge of darkness. And you, I believe,” he glanced up at Pip, “have been not far behind me.”

  “I was attacked by insects,” Pip said.

  “And a blackbird,” Sebastian added.

  “Yes.” Pip was surprised he knew. “It tore my hair out.”

  “It was de Loudéac, or his ally,” Sebastian declared, “yet I dared not intervene for I did not wish him to know of my whereabouts. I am sorry.”

  “Where were you?” Tim asked.

  “I was nearby,” Sebastian said evasively, “unseen but all-seeing. I was there as you caught your fish, as you crossed the river to meet with Splice, as you walked to the quarry, as you returned.”

  For a moment, Tim cast his mind back to that afternoon, then said, “You were the kingfisher.”

  Sebastian gave a brief but knowing smile before his face became serious once more.

  “De Loudéac is striving greatly to achieve his end. I know not where he is conducting his experiments, but it is surely not far off. He is seeking possession.”

  “Possession of what?” Pip ventured.

  “At present, possession of anything that might aid him.”

  “Such as insects?” Tim suggested.

  Sebastian nodded gravely and said, “The insect vortex was one such possession.”

  “But why is he going after me?” Pip asked.

  “As yet I know not,” Sebastian admitted. “It may be that he knows you are in league with me and, therefore, regards you as his enemy. Perhaps, because you live in my father’s house, he believes you are for us.”

  “For us?” Tim queried.

  “On our side, in support of our cause.”

  “You’d better believe it!” Tim replied, grinning. Sebastian glanced at the printout on the desk. “I see you have discovered the herbe aux sorciers — the sorcerer’s plant.”

  “There’s one growing in the garden,” Pip said.

  “As with many other plants hereabouts, my father planted it. At his trial, it was used as evidence against him, for it was said that one who partook of the plant danced with the devil.”

  “What about all this flying ointment and shape-shifting?” Tim said.

  “The plant contains powerful poisons called alkaloids,” Sebastian replied, ignoring Tim’s request for an explanation. “Consumed by the unwitting, they can be very dangerous, stimulating the nervous system but depressing peripheral nerves such as those in the hands or feet. A man partaking of these poisons turns into a fool and may remain thus thereafter, lingering between sanity and insanity, between joy and sorrow, even between life and death, until the day when Our Lord shall call him to His presence. The plant is an ingredient of my father’s aqua soporiferum, for it relaxes the muscles of the chest and lungs. You see, in the hands of the skilled alchemist . . .” He paused, as if reluctant to speak further on the subject.

  “You’ve still got to say what flying ointment is and . . . .” Tim replied.

  “Shape-shifting,” Sebastian said. “Observe!” Sebastian pressed his two index fingers together and blew hard through the space between them, producing a brief, high-pitched squeak. Pip and Tim stood watching him. Waiting a few moments, he repeated the action.

  “Thus come the tiny creatures,” he stated, and pointed to the skirting board under Tim’s window.

  Close to the woodwork was a field mouse, hunched down with its whiskers quivering, its tail wrapped round its side.

  “The Pied Piper of Rawne Barton!” exclaimed Tim. “Quite so,” Sebastian said. “It is possible, if one knows how, to call up any creature, for one has only to know its limited vocabulary.”

  “And what did you say in mouse-speak?” Pip asked. “I cannot know. But this sound always calls them hither. Now,” Sebastian stood up, snapped his fingers and went down on his haunches, “watch the mouse. Do not take your mind from it.”

  Pip and Tim gave the mouse their undivided attention. For a moment, it was just a timid mouse crouching against the wall, but then, gradually, it started to change both size and shape.

  “Wow!” Tim whispered in awe. “It’s . . . it’s becoming . . .” His eyes were wide with amazement. “Do you see it, sis?”

  “Yes,” Pip said, her voice filled with wonder.

  The mouse was now at least four times as big as it had been, its tail was thicker and longer and it had changed color from dull gray to a dark, glossy brown. Its whiskers had grown to at least four times their previous length and its eyes, which had been barely visible, were now jet-black beads set in its inquisitive face. The tiny mouse ears were now not only larger but, instead of being set flush against the side of its head, were pricked up and listening.

  “That’s wicked!” Tim said, bending over. “Come here . . .”

  At the sound of his voice, the mouse turned its head and looked straight at him. The tip of its tail flicked once.

  Sebastian snapped his fingers. In an instant, the mouse went back to being a plain mouse and ran for cover, vanishing down a slim crack in the floorboards.

  “That was awesome!” Tim exclaimed. “How did you do it?”

  “I did not,” Sebastian answered. Then, turning to Pip, he asked, “What did you see?”

  “What did I see?” Pip replied. “Well, it was a mouse, but then it changed into the most beautiful rat I’ve ever seen.”

  “Rat?” Tim exploded
.

  “Yes, rat.”

  “Sis,” Tim said, with more than a hint of exasperation, “it was a cat. Brown, long tail, whiskers, perky ears.”

  “It was both,” Sebastian interrupted. “The mouse itself did not change. It was a mouse all the while. What altered was your perception of it.”

  “Look,” Tim said, “I might be as thick as an elephant omelette, but I think I know the difference between a cat and a rat.”

  “Of course,” Sebastian agreed, “but you saw what you wanted or expected to see. Thus it is with shape-shifting.”

  “So,” Pip said, “shape-shifting is not a matter of actual transformation, but . . .” she sought for a way to explain her thoughts “. . . of somehow making us think we see something. Like hypnotizing us.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Sebastian replied. “It is more a method of manipulating your emotions and thoughts.”

  “So,” Tim reasoned, “what you’re saying is that when Pip was dive-bombed by a blackbird, it was really de Loudéac who made her think he was a blackbird.”

  “Precisely!” Sebastian declared. “He makes you see something else so that he may draw near to you unobserved — or, rather, unrecognized. It is but a way of being invisible.”

  All that evening, the rain lashed against the windows. After supper, the family sat in the living room. Tim and his father were watching highlights from the previous weekend’s motor racing on TV while Pip read and her mother did some sewing.

  Despite herself, Pip could not concentrate on her book. Her mind kept wandering and she found herself repeatedly thinking of Sebastian’s father’s trial, which had been held in this very room. Every time she looked over at her mother, sitting in an armchair by the huge inglenook fireplace, Pip thought of Sebastian’s father seated in exactly the same place, facing his accusers, who occupied chairs where the Sony digital television now stood. And de Loudéac, she thought, had he been where she was now, watching his enemy beginning his inexorable descent into the flames of the execution pyre? The panels around the walls, the heavy, carved oak beams holding up the ceiling, the frame of the door, the stone mantelshelf over the fireplace: they had all witnessed the trial. She wondered if, in the deepest atoms of the stone and wood, there still lingered the slightest sound wave of the words spoken and if, one day far into the future, someone would develop the technology to pick up those words and replay them.

  At ten-thirty, the lights in the living room were extinguished and the family went up to bed. Mr. Ledger had to leave before breakfast the following morning for a business meeting and wanted to get an early night. Pip went up to her room and, after a shower, got into bed and went to sleep.

  Tim, not feeling tired, sat at his computer desk, went into his ISP and read an e-mail from a friend at his last school. He replied to it, logged off, booted up Flight Simulator and prepared to fly a Boeing 777 from London Heathrow to Rome Leonardo da Vinci, in real time. He chose the Delta Airlines livery, plotted his route and lined up at the end of runway 27L. Lightly holding his joystick, he throttled up the engines, released the brakes and began to roll. In twenty minutes, he was over the French coast near Caen, at his initial cruising altitude of nine-thousand meters. The way-points set, he put the jet into auto pilot and sat back watching the virtual French countryside sliding by, the clouds far below but some high-altitude cover coming up. If, he thought, he was a real pilot, he would now be putting on the seat-belt warning light and instructing the cabin director to tell the passengers to return to their seats because they were in for a little turbulence.

  With no necessity to be in the cockpit for another thirty-five minutes, when he would need to fly over the Alps near Grenoble and enter Italian airspace, Tim stood up, undressed, put on his pajamas and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Returning to his room, he checked the flight data — the aircraft had just altered course at a radio beacon over Tours — and went to the window to draw the curtains. The rain was beating against the glass, carried on a stiff wind.

  As he pulled one curtain across to meet the other, the glint of a pinprick of greenish light caught Tim’s eye. At first, he thought it was the power diode on his computer reflected in the window, but it was not. It was outside.

  Opening the window against the torrential rain and wind, he saw it again. It seemed to be winking, like the eye of a predator caught in the beam of a headlight. And it was coming from the direction of the copse on the knoll.

  “Pip!” Tim hissed, drumming his fingers lightly on her bedroom door. “Pip!”

  “What?” came the drowsy reply.

  He opened the door and asked, “Pip! Are you awake?”

  “No, I’m fast asleep,” Pip retorted, sitting up and reaching for her bedside light.

  “Leave it off,” Tim said quietly, closing the door behind him. “Come and look at this.”

  He went to her window and pulled aside a curtain. Pip stood beside him, rubbing her eyes.

  “What?”

  “Over there, in the trees by the river.”

  She peered into the darkness. The green light flashed off and on.

  Immediately, she was wide awake. “What is it?” “Like I know?” said Tim. “I only just saw it.” He let the curtain fall and switched on the bedside light. “We’ve got to tell Sebastian.”

  “Yes,” Pip agreed, then she paused. “How? We’ve never contacted him. He’s always got in touch with us.”

  “Knock on the paneling,” Tim suggested, and he knelt by his sister’s bed, tapping very gently on the wood. He hoped it might echo, that somehow the tunnel was there after all, not just the lath-and-plaster wall. His knock, however, was not met with any resonance. He tried again. In vain.

  “Maybe we could go out to the coach house,” Pip suggested, regretting it the moment the words were out of her mouth. The last thing she wanted to do was leave the security of the house.

  “No point,” said Tim, without admitting how he knew. “If he isn’t here, he isn’t going to be there. Maybe,” he added, “the light’s his.”

  They heard a soft footstep outside Pip’s door. A cat’s paw would not have made such a faint sound. A floor-board creaked.

  “Tim ... ,” Pip whispered. She reached for Tim’s hand and gripped it so tightly his fingers hurt.

  There was another step. Someone was making their way along the corridor on tiptoe. Or something.

  “What do we do?” Pip mumbled, her mouth going dry.

  Tim shrugged and looked around the room. Against the wall was Pip’s tennis racket. He removed his hand from hers and, picking it up, positioned himself beside the door. It was not, he admitted to himself, much of a weapon. His bat would have been more effective but that was in the wardrobe in his room.

  The steps halted outside the door. There was a snuffling sound, as if a dog were running its nose along the bottom of the door. A scratching at the door was followed by the handle beginning to turn. Pip hid behind her bed. She wanted to scream but, instead, pressed her hands over her ears as if not hearing what was outside would somehow cause it not to exist.

  Raising the racket over his head, Tim held his breath. The door opened. Four fingers covered in fur, like those of a bizarre ape, the nails small, the skin wrinkled and black with the ends blunt and grimy, appeared round the edge. Tim wondered if he should smash the racket down now or wait a moment until he saw the creature’s head.

  “Pip,” came a barely audible but gruff voice. “Tim.” As he looked, Tim saw the fingers beginning to lose their hair, the black skin turning ashen.

  “Pip, Tim. Are you there?” The voice was marginally less gruff. “It is I.”

  Tim lowered the racket. Sebastian entered the room. His hands, and everything else about him, were quite normal.

  “Your hands . . . .” Tim began, then he realized. “Were you shape-shifting?”

  Sebastian smiled and said, “I am sorry, Tim. What you saw was what you did not want to see.”

  “Like, what?” Tim exclaimed.
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  “To put it another way,” Sebastian added, “what you saw was what you were afraid to see. I regret that I may have influenced your imagination through the door.”

  “You mean, hypnotized us?” Tim suggested. Sebastian answered, “In a manner of speaking,” and nodded in the direction of the window. “You too have espied the light, have you not?”

  “Yes,” Tim replied.

  Going to the other side of Pip’s bed, where she was still hunched up, her hands to her ears and her eyes screwed shut, Tim touched her on the shoulder. She jumped as if someone had just shocked her.

  “It’s okay. It’s Sebastian.”

  Pip got up, feeling a little sheepish.

  “Be not ashamed,” Sebastian said. “Fear comes to us all and we each deal with it in our own way.” He parted the curtains and glanced out. “The light remains and I must go forth to discover its cause.”

  “We’ll come too,” Pip announced, hoping to regain some of her self-esteem and vowing never again to hide in the face of whatever might come.

  Five minutes later, the house alarm system deactivated, they crept out of the kitchen door and, heading across to the coach house, paused before setting off across the field.

  “Stay close,” Sebastian ordered unnecessarily. “If we are as one, de Loudéac will think twice before acting upon us.”

  As they stepped around the corner of the coach house, the wind struck them hard, momentarily stealing their breath away. The rain pelted their faces. Despite wearing fleeces with the necks buttoned tight, the rain seeped inside quickly, running down their backs and chilling them. The tossing grass thrashed their legs. In less than thirty meters, their jeans were soaked through, their feet sodden in their sneakers.

  Halfway to the knoll, the field became waterlogged. Although the river had not burst its banks, the water table had risen, turning the field into a temporary grassy swamp. Their progress was heavy going; the only light they had to guide themselves by was that in the copse and the faint glow reflecting off the clouds from Brampton, a few miles away.