Ghosts, Gears, and Grimoires Read online

  Alistair was studying the medium with a scientific eye. This must be a hoax. How was she creating her manifestations? It was rather fascinating, actually…in an objective, referential sort of way. He might have to write a paper on the subject.

  The medium was becoming desperate in tone. “Please, spirit…speak to us!”

  “Quit yer fool yammering, woman,” ordered a creaky, cantankerous female voice. “I’m here. What d’ya want?”

  Alistair blinked. The words were coming from Jo.

  * * *

  Leonora ushered Madame Mariscova out of the house as soon as humanly possible. The banker and his wife were thanked and sent home. Catherine volunteered to take Aunt Emily and Vanessa home in her carriage, and they were waved off as well.

  So they were down to Leonora, Alistair and Jo…who wasn’t herself. She didn’t look any different, except for something unquantifiable about her posture and expression. Alistair couldn’t quite figure it out, but he knew she wasn’t herself.

  For one thing, there was almost a leer on her face as she patted the seat of the settee beside her. “Come sit beside me,” she invited—in that same oddly different voice that had ended the séance in confusion.

  He sat in one of the armchairs beside his mother instead. Jo was disturbing him.

  Jo pouted. “What’s the matter? Don’t you find this body attractive? I sure do.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  Beside him, Leonora sighed, and reached over to pat his hand. “Let me, dear.” She clasped her hands in her lap and leaned forward. “Whom do we have the honor of addressing?”

  “What pretty manners,” Jo said, with a chuckle. “My name is Abigail Clegg. What are you people doing in my house?”

  Leonora gave Alistair a look of triumph. “Well, you see, Mrs. Clegg—”

  “No need t’be so formal, child. Call me Abby. And you are…?”

  “My name is Leonora Conn, and this is my son, Alistair.”

  “Ain’t he the handsome thing?” Jo/Abby rose to her feet and circled his chair. Her voice was a rusty purr.

  Alistair felt his face heating. It was most disturbing to have these words coming out of Jo’s mouth. He knew she was fond of him…as he was of her, to be honest. But this was almost distasteful. She shouldn’t put on like this.

  “Abby,” Leonora continued gently, “I’m afraid that this is no longer your home.”

  Abby spun toward Leonora, arms akimbo. “Why? Because I am dead? That’s no reason to drive a body out of her house!” She stormed over to the sofa once more and plopped down, arms crossed across her chest.

  “Well…yes. I am afraid that it is. This was rather a valuable piece of real estate to leave empty. I’m also afraid that it is my house now.”

  “Mother, don’t humor her. Josephine is obviously playing one of her games—”

  “Look here, youngster—you may be a pretty boy, but you ain’t too schooled in the manners department, are you? I don’t know who this Josephine is, but I ain’t her.”

  He shook his head. “Of course you are!”

  She surged to her feet, somehow smaller and more compact than Josephine’s usual stance. “My name is Abigail Clegg, and I have never been so insulted in my life! Who do you think you are, boy?”

  Leonora rose as well, crossing to put a supportive arm across the younger woman’s shoulders. “There, there, dear. Alistair is of a scientific bent. He is just having a hard time processing this. After all, he is quite enamored of Josephine.”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, it is true, dear, whether you know it or not.”

  “All I know is that I like it here. This body is young and strong, and I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

  “But think of the poor girl you are displacing,” Leonora chided her. “She has a life of her own to lead. You’ve finished yours.”

  Abigail sighed. “But I didn’t really get to live mine. I was always someone’s daughter, or wife, or mother…I was never just me. I had dreams too, y’know. I wanted to see the world, but I never even got to California.” Her eyes filled with tears, like swimming emeralds.

  Despite himself, Alistair was moved by her words. “I can sympathize, Madame…but I really do need Josephine back.” A thought occurred to him. “Perhaps, I can offer you an alternative.”

  Leonora looked at him quizzically.

  “When I was creating Phaeton—that is the automaton I built, Madame—I went through several intermediary steps. If you could make do with a mechanical form, I believe I might be able to provide you with a new home. Though it might be a bit smaller…”

  “What exactly do you mean, young fellow?”

  “Well, my experiments started with a mechanical dog.”

  * * *

  Alistair flew home and tore apart the storeroom searching for the chassis he had never thought to need again. At least he hadn’t destroyed it. Finally, in a small crate in the far corner, he unearthed the mechanical beagle that he had been tinkering with before Phaeton. It was small, but well-articulated. He hoped it would do.

  When he returned to Leonora’s, he found his mother and Jo/Abby having a cup of tea and a discussion of the differences in their childhoods. They appeared to be getting on famously, but he was still disconcerted hearing Abby’s voice coming out of Jo’s mouth.

  “Mrs. Clegg, I hope that this will suit until I can build you something more appropriate.” He sat the bronzed beagle down on the floor in front of the women.

  “Oh, how clever it is!” Leonora cried, clapping her hands. “Does it move?”

  “It has the capacity, but not the impetus at the moment. I abandoned the project early on in favor of Phaeton’s more practical applications. This chassis never got its ‘heart’ as it were.”

  Jo’s body rose to its feet and walked around the metal dog, hands clasped behind its back. “Mite smaller than I am used to,” Abby said thoughtfully, “but it will be better than flitting about without any body at all. Will I still be able to communicate?”

  “I don’t see why not. The mouth opens and shuts. Of course, dogs don’t have the physical anatomy required to speak actual words—”

  “Never mind.” Abby cut him off with a groan. She stepped in front of him, took him by the lapels, and pulled him into a long, lingering kiss.

  When she finally let him go, Alistair blinked in astonishment.

  “Son, I’ve been wanting to do that from the moment I laid eyes on you.” She winked, and then there was a subtle change in Jo’s expression.

  Alistair caught her as she slumped towards the floor. “W-what happened?” Jo asked, her voice completely her own again.

  “Sorry about that, Miss Josephine,” came an oddly metallic voice from somewhere near the floor. “I should at least have asked permission a’fore taking you over.”

  Jo looked at Alistair in bewilderment. “What. Happened?”

  Leonora bent down and scooped the little metal dog into her arms. “I think all of us could do with a good night’s rest. Take Jo home, dear. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  As Alistair helped Jo into the carriage, he snuck a look back toward the house. He would have to retrieve his device later. It was too awkward to do it now.

  Leonora stood on the stoop, cradling the little metal dog like a child…and he could swear that they were singing, “Home! Sweet Home!”

  Muzzling the Monster

  Leigh Ward-Smith

  We will have the Ten Hours Bill,

  That we will—that we will

  Or the land shall ne'er be still.

  We will have the Ten Hours Bill.

  Protest song by marching child factory workers

  May 1833, Leeds, England

  Had he been asked to testify on working conditions for that Sadler report he’d been hearing so much about, he’d have bloody well said it. William Busker, one of the mill’s owners, had told him to “beat her brains out next time.”
>
  Her referred, in that instance, to little Lizzie Newstead, six years old and a so-called mule scavenger at the cotton mill. The waif’s offense had been to fall asleep near the cotton billy where she worked twelve or—more often of late—fifteen-hour days.

  Today, Saturday, instead of watching Lizzie scuttling for life and limb, Joshua Crabtree dragged a toil-toughened thumb across the cicatrix starting at the fleshly inner bend of his elbow and corkscrewing around his forearm. Still slightly raised, the scar seemed to pulse from time to time, eleven-odd years removed from the genesis of the injury. A billy-roller’d done that.

  Now eighteen-years old—and employed at the mill as an overlooker—Joshua was expected to wield the strap and the roller, to whip and curse as the master’s minders before him had done. Misery begetting more misery.

  All of six-years old, the flaxen-haired girl looked like her older brother, Matthew, who at twelve was already a skilled piecer for the mill. If any fluff remained on the floor, it was Lizzie’s job to gather it, for she was the smallest child working there and could crawl under the dangerous machinery easier. If she did not find the excess cotton or oil the machinery, fell asleep, or neglected her work in any other way, Joshua’s masters had compelled him to school her, or any other child under his authority, most severely.

  This Saturday was different.

  With a stiff brush, Lizzie was fettlin under to clean the wheels of Anne's machine when a strand of her hair got caught up in the mule spinner, between the roller beam and the carriage. Even though Matthew was nearby, he was powerless to save his young sister.

  Had the mill-room not been so noisy, Anne and the other child laborers might have heard Lizzie’s piteous shriek as her tresses were wound up into the roller in an instant. All would have heard it, but none did. Not that the others would have cared one iota, desensitized as they were.

  Little Lizzie’s head was mashed instantly, and separated from her small body through the coarse winding motion. It was Joshua’s duty to record the accident in the Mill Records Book that afternoon.

  His left hand shook uncontrollably as he painstakingly scratched down the details—so much so that he had to encircle his own wrist with his other hand to force it to stillness. How his scar throbbed that day, and the nightmares didn’t end until he rose at 3 a.m. the next morning.

  * * *

  Busker was in no mood to be trifled with. Least of all by a twelve-year-old boy. He set upon his mill minder, Joshua Crabtree, first thing Monday morning after feeding his pigs just outside the factory. The timepiece on the mill’s wall reminded the workers it was 7:13 a.m.; Joshua had already been at work for a few hours by then.

  “Crabtree, see here, what’s happened to the boy?”

  “No idea, sir.” Joshua had been a doffer, a piecer, and even a mule scavenger before rising to overlooker. He’d learned the painful, arduous way that generally the less said to the boss, the better.

  “You know which one I mean. The Newstead boy.” Continuing, even though he didn’t need to, the corpulent Mr. Busker showed his distaste by a marked sinking-in of his face.

  It reminded Joshua of the moors he’d heard talked about, with sandpits to drag you down, hidden mires, ill-tempered spirits and devil dogs, and bogs that could pull you under the surface in the blink of an eye.

  “The brother of the dead girl,” Busker went on, muscles just visible floating disembodied within the sheaths of his drooping jaws.

  Joshua knew what was coming, although he wanted it never to come. It didn’t need to be said.

  He would have no choice but to retrieve Matthew.

  If the hours ticked by and the boy was nowhere to be found by afternoon, he would have to go out and fulfill his duties. Once a slave, now a slave-driver. No use lamentin’.

  “Young Matthew Newstead needs a lesson in the law of the mill.” Those were Busker’s words. It was no good to wish that the man’s own side-burn whiskers would suddenly lengthen, become ivy creeping down his cheeks, shadows drizzling upon the sides of his neck, then slithering about his generous Adam’s apple, and squeezing.

  Constricting. Tighter. Tighter.

  Instead, Joshua hoped the boy—a workhouse orphan sold as a pauper apprentice, just like his younger sister Lizzie—had made it out alive.

  Somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere but here, that is.

  * * *

  Everybody knew the last two hours of the day were the worst. Overwrought was the term.

  Mr. Busker or Mr. Chubb routinely oversaw the overlookers—young men like Joshua, or some even older—and, if they had been humane mill owners, they would have let the workers have a breakfast before work as well as a dinner in the evening. Most toiled for twelve- or, sometimes, as long as nineteen-hour days, Monday through Saturday.

  But Messrs. Chubb and Busker were men who insisted on clocks and locks. Woe betide any employee who was fifteen minutes late—sometimes only ten.

  She, or he, would be quartered—getting a half-hour deducted from their salary. Other workers got only room and board. Almost all of them, at least at the Busker and Chubb Cotton Mill, wore chains and were required to stay within the factory’s confines. The doors were also barred shut a majority of the time, and only the overlookers or the masters themselves had the keys to relieve the suffering once maximum profits were achieved.

  Still, despite knowing the consequences, Matthew Newstead had shown neither hide nor hair at the factory since his sister’s grisly accident. He was not given time to undergo proper mourning, and there was no one with whom he could mourn his sister’s untimely end.

  In fact, later accounts would euphemize his sister’s fate as she met a lonely, melancholy end.

  Well, some knew differently. Matthew, and Anne the piecer, and Joshua among them.

  They knew the abattoir of the loom, the factory, and the mill. Joshua was given leave just before sundown to go out and locate Matthew, if he could.

  Although other child laborers could sometimes be used as replacements, at this time of year good quantities of workers had been hard to come by. Many had been taken by the miasma, were sick a-bed, or just too frail to report to work. Or worse. And Matthew, owing to his three years of previous service, was the best piecer now working under overseer Joshua Crabtree.

  “Never mind the little one lost,” George Chubb had said to Joshua, jabbing a finger at him—for a moment making him seriously consider the existence of the man’s soul. “My money’s tied up, as it were, in the boy. I want you to retrieve him, Crabapple, by any method you deem feasible. Keep me or Busker apprised.”

  Joshua did not bother to correct the tall man. Instead he stood there, his own lank, calloused hands thrust into his pockets, one of the only three pairs of pants he owned in the world. Two for work, one for the Sabbath. He stood there and listened, and then he turned on his flopping heel and left.

  * * *

  The workhouse was a dead end. Yet Joshua had heard from other working men that a march in support of children getting a ten-hour workday was being planned.

  Could it be that Matthew would take part?

  Still, Joshua had to show progress. His masters wouldn’t want him to search forever, no matter how adept and, thus, valuable, their youthful slave Matthew. Time away from Joshua’s job as minder meant that the factory was losing profits, no matter the reason.

  He thought about simply reporting Matthew as dead, having been seen jumping into the river out of utter despair, drowned in his own chains, but he did not think Mr. Chubb would believe him.

  Chubb would demand proof, and Busker would go so far as to force a resurrection of the body, dross and all, especially if it meant he could earn something from it. After all, if rumors were true, bodies could be sold to medical men for a decent turn, maybe even a few shillings.

  And dead children on the rock bank outside a steam- and water-powered mill were far easier to obtain than those meters down in the churchyards’ hallowed dirt.

  Joshua consoled himself with
a thought. Maybe he could convince the boy to come back with him, if he promised the mercy of the masters.

  But could it be done?

  He didn’t know, not having much in the way of book education, but for the boy’s sake, he wanted to try.

  * * *

  Looking for Mr. Chubb, but discovering only Busker, he knew he had to report his progress. Regardless. “Please, sir. I’ve an idea where I might find the boy.”

  “Yes, well, time’s money. Out with it already,” Busker said.

  “Sir, there’ll be a procession this week, or so I’ve heard it tole.” Joshua knew how to plead—as both boy and man.

  “A procession, you say? That wouldn’t be one of those ‘muzzle the steam giant’ miscarriages, would it?”

  “I know nothin’ of that, sir, but ’tis a good chance we’ll find the young fellow there. His friend here at the factory…said so.” Joshua thought it better in the end to not mention the friend’s name, lest there be repercussions.

  Busker patted longingly at his bulging midriff, which blustered over the top of his pantaloons and plowed his frock coat to the side. “And when might this travesty be taking place?”

  “Tomorrow, sir. They’ve been handing out bands for boys’ hats. So’ve heard.”

  “I see. At what time?”

  “Roundabout three in the afternoon.”

  “I will have Chubb or myself mind the mules or the slubbing then.”

  “Oh, and sir?”

  The man raised a crooked brown eyebrow.

  “May ’t please you to show mercy to the boy Matthew? His sister’s just died most horrible, good master. It wouldn’t do to hurt ’im or anythin’.”

  Joshua felt Busker deliberating, and the man spoke at last.

  “I will go easy on him, if you find him tomorrow, and bring him back, quickly.”