Darkus was hanging on his godfather’s every word, and Underwood knew it.
“I used hypnosis to make Alan believe he had never found me. Alan returned to his former life none the wiser, but deep down he knew he had the answer . . . he just couldn’t find it. It made him even more obsessive, even more determined to crack the Combination. It drove him away from Jackie, and away from you. And one day his mind locked up, and he couldn’t handle it any longer. And that’s when he had his episode.”
Darkus felt a throbbing in his temples as the catastrophizer struggled to process what he was hearing. “It was your fault.”
“A coma was the safest place for him. While he was asleep, nothing bad could happen to him. Then something woke him up. We may never know what that was,” said Underwood. “He was perfectly safe until you helped him remember.”
Darkus turned to his father, who was now completely still.
“He’s in a deep, posthypnotic trance,” Underwood went on. “When he wakes up, he won’t remember a thing: not this case, not your budding partnership. You, on the other hand . . . You’re the only one left with the Knowledge. Which means you’ll have to be consigned to history along with it. You were last seen entering a disused Tube station. No one will be surprised when an accident befalls you on the tracks.” Underwood nodded to the manuscript in Presto’s hands. “You know, there is something to that book. In the last few minutes, I haven’t stuttered once.”
Darkus lifted his father’s chin, looking into his eyes, but they remained defiantly, terminally closed.
“Dad,” he said, his own eyes welling up. “Talk to me.” He shook him, but Knightley wouldn’t wake up. Darkus sank to his knees, resting his head on his father’s arm, detecting the familiar smell of his shirt cuff, feeling the familiar rhythm of his chest heaving and falling—but his father was as lost to him as he’d ever been. “Please . . .”
All of a sudden, Knightley’s body seemed to sense the proximity of his son, as if Darkus had an even stronger gravitational pull than the hypnosis. Knightley’s nostrils flared, his brows knitted, and his ears lifted—all unbeknownst to Darkus, whose face was buried in his father’s argyle sweater. Yet these subtle facial movements were as significant as a drowning man fighting his way back to the surface.
Darkus heard the whistle from his father’s nose get quicker and looked up, daring to deduce what it might mean. “Dad?” he whispered.
“Yes-yes,” Knightley answered, as if something deep inside him couldn’t refuse his son’s wish.
At that moment, an announcement crackled over the station’s public address system: “This is SO 42. We have ye surrounded. Release the Knightleys and exit the station with yer hands in the air,” Bill’s voice went on. “I repeat: we have ye surrounded . . .”
Underwood turned in the direction of the announcement. Presto frowned and exchanged a glance with him.
But neither of them noticed the manuscript in Presto’s hands. The pages began to riffle from top to bottom, like a wave breaking. The leathery cover creaked and flew open. Presto looked down, his eyes widening, as the book appeared to tremble.
Darkus stood up, feeling a vibration moving through the ground, affecting the whole station, pushing him off balance.
“It’s just a train,” said Presto, trying to convince himself.
Knightley looked up, his eyes trying to focus. “No . . . ,” he said. “It’s the book . . .” He turned to Darkus. “We have to get out of here, Doc.”
“We’re not finished,” said Underwood, raising his pistol, but the vibration made it impossible to aim.
“The book’s more than just a trick of the eye. The Order was right—it brings death and damnation,” Knightley rattled on, as if to himself. “Don’t you see? It always does!”
“It’s a train,” repeated Presto, a little too vehemently.
“You’re only its custodian, Morton,” shouted Knightley. “It’s an ancient evil. Can’t you see? It’s protecting itself!”
The curved station walls started shaking. The gray switching box came off its hinges and fell to the floor, narrowly missing Tilly, who was sleeping soundly from her concussion. A gust of wind crept in, ruffling clothes and hair. Underwood spun around. The door in the center of the wall flew open, exposing the train tracks beyond the platform, where the eastbound and westbound tunnels met side by side. The gale picked up strength, whirling dust and tearing gray paint flakes from the walls.
Darkus shielded his eyes, picked up the stiletto knife, and cut through Knightley’s bindings.
Presto looked down at the book, which was now thumping and bouncing in his hands. Without warning, his fingers went rigid, as if the manuscript were on fire. “Ouch!”
He dropped it with a dull thud and started blowing on his hands, in a parody of a man searching for a bucket of cold water. He screamed and kicked the book toward the open door.
“No . . .” shouted Underwood.
The manuscript seemed to fly out through the doorway, picked up by the wind, which was swelling into a tornado.
Knightley staggered to his feet as the chair was knocked over and blown clattering across the room. Presto didn’t wait around to witness any more. He dashed for the side door and vanished through it.
Underwood stared into the central doorway, entranced, his eyes bigger than ever. The wind rippled his clothes, as if something inside him was tearing and struggling to get out.
“N-no—” he muttered, and went after the manuscript, descending a short set of metal stairs onto the tracks.
“Morton!” Knightley shouted after him.
But his old friend didn’t listen. Underwood’s face was that of a man possessed. He had the same slack-jawed expression that characterized the faces of miners during the gold rush, or politicians eyeing the seat of power. It was an age-old expression of greed and avarice, and it made Darkus realize that Underwood was deeper under the book’s spell than anyone else.
The manuscript bounced lightly along the tracks like a paper bag in the breeze. Underwood stumbled after it, crossing from the siding onto the main track.
The seismic rumbling through the earth reached a deafening climax as an eastbound train sped through the tunnel, past the room and within inches of Underwood . . . decimating the manuscript.
Underwood was thrown to the ground by the force of it, the lenses in his glasses shattered, and he began crawling along the opposite set of tracks. He struggled to his feet, hopelessly grasping at the strewn pages.
Knightley shielded Darkus’s eyes as the rumbling continued unabated—they both knew full well what was coming next. Darkus peered through his father’s fingers.
A split second later, the Knightleys flinched in unison as a westbound train sped past in the opposite direction, running over the book a second time and soundlessly swallowing up Underwood—leaving no trace of him in its wake.
The manuscript pages flew around the tunnel like a crazed flock of sparrows, soaring and diving. The tails of both trains vanished into the tunnels, leaving a whirling tower of paper, like the column of a storm. For a moment, it seemed to take on the appearance of a gaping skull.
The Knightleys stood together, braced against it, their clothes and hair windblown. Darkus pinned his hat onto his head with one hand. The rumbling died down and the wind abated, only to go into reverse, like the thrusters of a jet engine on landing.
“Hold on!” shouted Knightley over the mounting roar. “It’s not over yet—”
Darkus’s hat took flight and billowed through the doorway onto the tracks.
Knightley held Darkus tight as the air was sucked out of the room and down the tunnels by the departing trains, threatening to take them with it. Their shoes slid over the concrete floor, carrying them toward the doorway and the same fate as Underwood.
The dust and paint flakes dislodged by the first gale were now swirling around them as debris was vacuumed into the tunnels. The switching box clattered and rolled across the room, then took flight. Tilly regained consciousness as she began to travel across the floor after it. She immediately extended her feet and wedged herself into a corner.
The Knightleys weren’t so fortunate, finding themselves in the eye of the storm, drawn toward the doorway, deprived of oxygen and unable to breathe.
“Dad?”
“Close your eyes, Doc,” Knightley shouted over the din.
Darkus obeyed him without question and clamped his eyes shut. It was at that moment—in the reddish blackness of his closed lids—that his mother’s words returned to him.
“Evil doesn’t exist unless you believe in it.”
He heard her voice clearly. He could almost see her holding her mug of tea.
“If you don’t believe in it, it has no power.”
Darkus repeated the phrases over and over in his head above the roar. He felt his father’s arms around him, and his mother’s words in his head, and although they were being pulled toward certain doom, he felt safe. In his world, at that moment, there was no room for evil.
At the same moment, the signal lights over the train tracks flicked from green to red. With a series of loud mechanical clicks, the same thing happened all along the line. The tunnels that stretched into the distance were suddenly bathed in a warm glow. The rumbling receded to an eerie stillness; the wind reduced to a soft breeze.
Tilly got to her feet, rubbing her head, unsure of what had just happened. Darkus opened his eyes to find the tracks empty. There was no sign of the manuscript, or of Underwood. The station was deathly quiet once more. He looked up to his dad for confirmation.
“Let’s go home,” said Knightley, taking Darkus’s hand in one of his, and Tilly’s in the other, and leading them out.
They made their way to the end of the platform and followed a faded sign that read: to the street. An artistically rendered arrow led to a tall spiral staircase with a well-preserved cartouche that read: way out. After one hundred and three steps, they reached a doorway to the outside world.