"So my correspondence with my brother began. It was from the start voluminous, the contents academically vigorous and far-reaching. Alexander's interest in and ability to penetrate the deeper workings of the world, and in turn make them explicable to me, was astonishing. His command of history, philosophy, art, and science, prodigal. He was able to
engage his schoolmasters on a level of discourse that far surpassed what most had experienced at university and to do so in such a charming, unassuming manner that Alexander was generally regarded as more colleague to them than student. His school had in its halcyon past produced generations of MPs and a handful of prime ministers—you can see how effortlessly this sort of thinking takes root; here was the sort of boy, they swooned, who appears once in a generation.
"Alexander had polished himself to a shine very bit as supremely dazzling in the social graces as he was natively in the academic. He realized his ultimate goals, which were at this stage of his life already remarkably articulated, would require of him an uncommon brilliance of form as well as mind: manners, voice, wardrobe. As a result, he could at the age of twelve not only pass muster but positively thrive in any class or social setting far exceeding his years. To develop the physicality he would need to meet his objectives, he followed a brutally rigorous regimen of exercise, spending the hours other boys squandered in play or with their families alone in the gymnasium. He stayed to this discipline so single-mindedly that by the time he reached thirteen Alexander was frequently mistaken for a man of twenty. The full, lustrous benefit of his effort at self-improvement—his religion, if you wilclass="underline" The conventional observances of Christianity he was required to endure he treated as an inconvenience, if not an outright joke—he of course passed on in his letters to me. He portrayed himself as the avatar of self-perfection, the first of a new breed: the Superior Man. In crucial but unobtrusive ways, by design untraceable to him by my parents, I embraced his guidelines for self-improvement; they became the keystone of my early life. I wholeheartedly intended to recreate myself in his image. I became his disciple."
"Not altogether to your detriment."
"By no means. The developments and skills he outlined have been in and of themselves supremely beneficial. I would without hesitation recommend their employment as the foundation of any ambitious educational system. But having once achieved them, to the pursuit of what ends these advances were to be employed my brother never went so far to say. Nor did his instructors ever bother to inquire; dedicated excellence in and of itself is so rare and bewitching a quality in the humdrum world that they were blinded by Alexander's radiance."
"What was his purpose, Jack?"
"That has only become clear with time," said Sparks. "He never divulged a hint of it during those early years to me, let alone anyone else."
"You must have had your suspicions."
"I had no inclination to question his motives—"
"But surely his nature must have revealed itself, even inadvertently."
"There were signs along the way, but they remained so cleverly obscured that any connection between them or interpretation of them would have proved impossible for even the most determined observer."
"What kind of signs, Jack?" asked Doyle, feeling a collar of dread draw close around him again.
"Accidents. Happenstances. A month before we met, one of the boys in Alexander's class died mysteriously. They raised honey bees on the campus, part of a science study course. The boy was found one night near the hives. He'd been stung to death, stung thousands of times. A clumsy boy, given to pranks; he must have stirred the insects up in some way, provoked them, the school concluded. The boy had been a close confederate of my brother's, but not in a way that would generate undue scrutiny. No one knew that they had quarreled recently. No one knew that the boy had balked at one of Alexander's imperious commands, threatening to leave his circle of intimates and expose their secrets."
"What sort of secrets?"
"Blood oaths. Violent hazing of new schoolboys admitted to the group. Torture of small animals. All done in the manner of boys being boys, but each act consistently and progressively carried beyond the norm. That is, until this incident. No one knew the boy had been lured to the hives that night by a note from another of Alexander's lieutenants—written by Alexander himself in exact approximation of the boy's hand. Requesting a meeting. Voicing a similar desire to defect from Alexander's influence. When the boy arrived, he was knocked unconscious, the note removed, and his body hurled into the hives."
"He must have told you all this," said Doyle.
"I'll come to that. When we first met, I remember being drawn to a curious necklace Alexander was wearing: a bee, preserved in amber."
Doyle shook his head in wonder.
"There's more. In the fall of Alexander's thirteenth year, in the town near the school, a series of strange sightings were recorded. A number of young women, all from respectable homes—this was for the most part a comfortable, upper-middle-class community—reported that while walking late at night they felt they were being followed. Some thought they were being watched inside their bedrooms. They never saw a face, and only on rare occasions a dark shape, dressed all in black—a man, a good-sized man, of this they were certain. He maintained distance, never approached them, never directly posed a threat, but the sense of menace the figure imparted was nonetheless considerable.
"One night, one of these girls awoke to find this shape standing over her bed: She was paralyzed with fright, unable to cry out, and the figure fled silently out an open window. This incident was sufficient to incite the local constabulary to swift, collective action. Young women were forbidden to walk at night alone. Curtains were shut, windows locked tight. Patrols organized in areas where the figure had been seen. It seemed effective; the sightings stopped abruptly, did not recur over the course of the winter, and as spring approached, the urgency of these extra measures taken months before grew tiresome: Windows were thrown open to the welcoming air, evening walks undertaken again with presumptions of safety.
"Until one night in early April when the town's comeliest young woman was assaulted near the banks of the river. Sexually assaulted. After satisfying himself upon her, the attacker flew into a rage, and she was beaten savagely. She never saw his face. He never spoke, never made a sound; she could identify him only as 'a black shape.' "
"Was Alexander suspected?"
"In the course of their investigation, town officials routinely questioned authorities at Alexander's school—although everyone felt certain a grown man was responsible, as his size and strength would indicate, most likely the same man who'd been seen the previous fall. Students themselves were sequestered on the campus after dark. And all of them accounted for, in their beds at the time of the attack."
"Easy enough to arrange that. It was your brother, oi course."
Sparks nodded. "His interest in the fairer sex was asserting itself, and he had a new hunger to feed. Alexander had seldom chosen to moderate his appetites, and then only as an exercise in self-discipline. He had nothing but contempt for the fumbling chaperoned introductions school and society offered as the rituals of courtship. He stalked these girls and then struck without hesitation or remorse. Moral reservations for such an act fell completely outside the tenets of his philosophy; such considerations were, as he wrote to me, a childish refuge for the weak and indecisive. Most people lived with all the courage and conviction of Jersey cows bred for the slaughterhouse. The Superior Man took what he wanted from the world—and often the world was only too willing to award it—without any concern for the consequences."