Ghost in the Cogs: Steam-Powered Ghost Stories Read online

  His mother fainted. The butler carried her to the other lounge and went for the smelling salts. His father muttered to himself, “I’d have vouched he was wholly dead.”

  Esther shrugged off the cook’s arm and crossed the room to hand Fitzhugh the journal, glaring at them all as she went. Fitzhugh jotted down everything that had just transpired and looked up to see his father’s sputtering face reach breaking point.

  “Who the blast are you?”

  “Sir Alvey, you have my sincere apology for this predicament. I shall be out of your parlor and on my way at once,” he said. He did not trust himself to actually stand yet, but he sounded confident.

  His father, for all his awkwardness, could still be an intimidating man. The muttonchops had that effect. “That still does not explain who you are or why you are here or why you were . . . unconscious.” Sir Alvin’s specialty might not have been biology, but he knew when he touched a dead man, and he did not wish to alarm the wait staff, whom he had dismissed as soon as he had discovered the body of the man in the garden after lunch.

  Fitzhugh said, “A distant relation, tenuously. I came seeking employment and your good grace, sir.”

  Esther cocked her head, but he placed a hand upon her arm, hoping she would remain quiet. He was being familiar, but he had no other idea how to communicate with her in front of everyone. His father’s eyes narrowed.

  “Do you always bring along a young lady to your inquiries?” Sir Alvin remarked dryly.

  “Oh, Esther is, uh, is my wife,” he stammered. “And I brought her because, well, you see, I—”

  Esther interrupted. “Excuse him, he’s embarrassed. My husband has the rare condition called narcolepsy. As a scientist, perhaps you’ve heard of it? Quite a new diagnosis, but we’re relieved to finally know why he has such horrible sleeping spells, and when he did not return directly from his inquiry an hour ago, I thought he might have had trouble, so I came looking.”

  Everyone stared at her, including Fitzhugh. Narcolepsy had only been named a year or so previously, quite ingenious of her to think of it. To even know of it, really, Fitzhugh thought with admiration.

  “I see,” Sir Alvin said, though he clearly did not.

  “But I can see how disastrously this has gone and shall bother you no more, sir,” Fitzhugh said and rose with Esther’s help. They walked toward the front door.

  It was strange to feel things. Esther’s hand leading him toward the door was soft and warm. He wondered if the rest of her felt as nice.

  Under her breath, she said, “Dr. Alvey—”

  “Fitzhugh, my dear. I did just call you my wife,” he whispered back with a wink. She colored lightly. The door to the brownstone shut firmly behind them. They walked around the block toward the portment chamber. Fitzhugh tried not to become apprehensive, having only just regained his body.

  “I am afraid there was a mishap with the machine. They did not find me loitering. I was looking for you,” she said.

  He froze. “What is it?”

  “It’s gone. It started up while I was waiting and poof!” She threw her hands up to demonstrate.

  The color drained from his newly healthy cheeks. “Poof.”

  She made the hand motion again. “Poof.”

  Fitzhugh thought he might cry. They would need to petition his parents after all, and how did he possibly exist here as a young boy and as himself? And the technology! It was ten years outmoded from what he was used to. He’d have to compensate somehow. And what of Miss Windless?

  They rounded the corner, and there sat the portment chamber. “It came back!”

  He turned to Esther.

  She did not look astonished. Her eyes twinkled. “It never left, so you needn’t fear another malfunction. But I saw the look on your face, Fitzhugh, when I said it had gone, and that is precisely how I felt in there with your parents! Your wife! I should say!”

  “Oh, Miss Windless, I am sorry,” he said. “Shall we go home now?”

  “Indeed.” And then she said, “Oh, dear, but how will we fit?”

  Fitzhugh blushed. “In the interest of science, you might sit on my lap.”

  “Science,” Esther repeated. Her eyebrows rose, and she blushed as madly as he did.

  He climbed into the chamber, so she could not see his face. She sat down and closed the door. Fitzhugh was very glad to have his body back to appreciate this. He reached around her to operate the machine and added, “Well, mostly science.”

  Dot hit Esther on the shoulder with her fan. She didn’t even wait for them to be seated in the parlor before she launched herself verbally at her cousin. “How long have you been back? What happened? Why were you gone so long? Why are you smiling like that? Esther Mallory Windless, you answer me! I had to tell your parents something.”

  “Yes, and about that little excuse.”

  Dot sucked in her breath.

  Esther waited until her cousin squirmed with the anticipation.

  “You were not lying,” Esther said and sat back to watch her cousin sputter.

  Jessica Corra is an American writer living in Canada with her Scottish husband. She is a former acquisitions editor for Samhain Publishing, and her work is represented by The Bradford Agency. Jessica believes in wonder, love, and words, and she is a big fan of snowflakes and kittens.

  The Ghost Pearl

  Howard Andrew Jones

  And the best thing,” Applesby said, “is that there’s no catch.”

  Gentleman Jim took the pipe from between his teeth and arched an eyebrow. I’m pretty sure it was more for Applesby than me. He was seated across the table, and I was at Jim’s side, usual like, so Jim had to turn to face me, like an actor mugging for the audience.

  The three of us sat in one of the little private room’s of Captain Thorne’s, the window behind us. There was a lot of green carpet and a lot of stained bamboo simulating dark wood—real wood being rare in dirigibles on account of the weight—and a little wine. Jim was a hospitable sort when folk came calling.

  Applesby fussed with his waist coat. I figured he was exactly what he said, an under butler. He had the look. Soft and well-dressed, but no gentleman. He had huge brown mutton chops and eyes blue and hard as glass.

  “I’ll leave the clock tower window open.” He deposited a brass key on the table with a thunk and picked up the wineglass by the stem, his pinky outthrust. “That’s a key I had made of the lord’s storeroom. That’s all you need. That and the maps.” He nodded at the papers face down on the dark table top in front of Jim. They were extremely detailed floor plans of the mansion where the fat man worked. They’d looked pretty thorough—almost as good as I usually drew myself.

  Jim barely glanced at the key. He watched Applesby.

  Now, it might be you never saw Jim. Six two, he was, without even putting his shoes on. Fair-haired and fit. He could talk like a gentleman, and he looked fine in those dapper clothes. He had a trim blonde mustache and long thin sideburns, and that day, he was dressed in a swell black coat and a white shirt with silver cuff links. They were real silver, too. I was there when he nicked them.

  “Applesby,” said Jim, “it’s a fine plan.” Jim could sound all sorts of ways, depending upon who he was talking at. With Applesby, he sounded like an aristocrat, though not one with his nose too lofty. “But there’s a problem.” Jim tapped the ivory stemmed pipe against his palm. “Jane?”

  “We plan our own jobs,” I said.

  From Applesby’s pop-eyed look, I figure he hadn’t heard women talk very much.

  “But it’s a good plan,” Applesby objected. “A fine plan.” He leaned forward and shoved a whole hand toward Gentleman Jim. “You said so yourself!”

  “It’s true. But imagine I wandered on to the estate where you worked and planned your day. I’ve a fair notion of what you do, but I’d probably miss some obvious things, wouldn’t I?”

  “So you won’t do it?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Jim settled the pipe back into his mou
th and puffed once. He never smoked the thing long. He used it for effect and because he liked the sweet smell.

  “So you will do it?” Poor Applesby didn’t know whether to look excited or disappointed.

  Jim slid the key toward Applesby. “Jane and I will talk it over.”

  From Applesby’s stare, I sensed he just generally disproved of the idea of talking women. He reached tentatively for the key as if he wasn’t sure he’d really find it there and pocketed it, his lower lip hanging out like a puzzled bulldog.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Jim said.

  “But…” Applesby blustered. “You have to be careful, eh… contacting me. You could give the whole thing up.”

  “We’ll be careful.” Jim rose, taking the pipe from his mouth as he leaned forward to shake Applesby’s hand.

  Still looking bemused, Applesby left. He was a sufficiently well-trained servant that he closed the door after him.

  “What do you think of him?” Jim asked.

  “I think he’s desperate.”

  “Desperate men make mistakes.”

  “Right. Probably, he’s made some bets he shouldn’t have.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So his plan’s bosh. We can still go after the lord’s pearl.”

  Jim settled back in the chair, twisted it to face me, and puffed his pipe.

  “And not cut him in,” I added.

  “That wouldn’t be fair. We wouldn’t know about the pearl if it wasn’t for him.”

  “I suppose.” If we weren’t going with his plan or his key, I wasn’t sure we owed Applesby anything, and that pearl almost as big as my fist he’d promised us sounded grand. But Jim had an over-developed sense of fair play. “When do you want to do it?”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  Baneridge is one of those old suburbs stuffed with mansions of moss-caked, gray stones lost behind huge lawns. Even in sunlight, the place looks dreary and downcast, like the moorlands of Calveny, so you can imagine how it looked at two that morning when me and Jim sneaked into the neighborhood to break in through an attic window. Lord Grevon’s home felt more like a tomb than a manor.

  We hadn’t followed Applesby’s plan, but we’d made careful note of the times Grevon’s various lackeys were supposed to be in various places. Two o’clock is always a good time for burglary. Folks are sleeping their deepest then and are slow to rise.

  That floor plan was twenty carat. We could have navigated blind. We nearly did, moving through the dark halls with only one little glow eel lamp between us. By the hazy blue light from its squirming occupant, we maneuvered down to the windowless room on the main floor where I sprung the lock on the room and the vault behind the painting. No key required.

  After that, we lowered ourselves out through a first floor window and headed across that lawn. They didn’t have any guard dogs, silly fools, although that might not have been as much an oversight as we thought at the time.

  You might have expected I was going to tell you all about the heist and how clever we were and like that, but I’m not going to bore you with all the details about how skilled I was or how nimble Jim was despite being a big fellow.

  No, this here’s a tale about that pearl.

  We first knew something was strange as we were making our way out of the Baneridge area. You know how those places are. The black cloaks are out even in the morning, making sure rich folk don’t lose any riches. The best way into Baneridge if you’re not wanting to be noticed is through the old cemetery. There was an old bush concealing a sizeable crack in the wall, and me and Jim slid through that and into the cemetery. It’s a rambling big stretch of ground, and we wound up and down through the hills and past the crypts and the grim-looking angels that long-dead rich folk threw up for their relatives. Some of them lean a little, so if you come upon them sudden-like when you’re sneaking around, it seems they’re swooping down to get you.

  There’s owls hooting, too, or sounds you can’t place. A scratching in the bushes, say, or a low growl Jim told me was a dog, or the low moan coming from the tomb we passed on the right.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Jim looked that way himself and grinned. “Must be a spook.”

  That’s when the thing drifted into our path.

  One minute, I was following Jim’s gaze, my heart racing a bit on account of the moan. The next thing, a white figure draped in fluttering clothing darted across the path. My blood chilled at the same time my heart slammed into my ribs, and I was surprised enough I didn’t notice there weren’t no wind for that clothing to be blowing in until after I noticed the figure didn’t actually seem to be running on the ground.

  I’m not generally a screaming sort. Instead, I cursed me a blue streak. “It is spooks, you great lummox!” I said.

  “Come on!”

  We ran, and I’m glad I didn’t get too good a look at that white thing. I wish I hadn’t gotten a good look at the face with the missing eyes that thrust out at us from behind one cracked gravestone or at the limping child that was partly see-through or at a couple of other things that were even worse.

  We were so busy running, neither of us said much until we were up and over the wall on the far side and changing out of our skulking clothes in Madame Taval’s cellar.

  “It’s the world’s end!” I said.

  Jim’s black pants was fine for his outfit, but he chucked his shirt and pulled on a white one and threw on a red overcoat and shoved a black angle cap down over his crown.

  I fussed my way into a lady’s gown. “The dead’s rising up!”

  “I don’t think the world’s ending,” Jim said.

  “You got an explanation for what just happened?” I asked.

  All Jim said was “Let’s keep moving.”

  I grumbled, though he was right. When you’re on a job, you stick to the plan and the schedule, and part of the plan was getting out of the neighborhood and well on the way in case we was followed. Madame Taval was sort of a friend, like, so long as we paid her, and wouldn’t take kind to spending a few years in the lockup on account of us lingering to gab.

  I finished dolling up like a lady, and me and Jim climbed into the hansom cab we’d left with Madame Taval. There weren’t no ghosts lurking about, just Madame Taval’s crook-toothed son, hooking our horse up by lantern light.

  In moments, we were on our way. Our skulking blacks and our filchings was shoved into my bag where they’d give a surprise to anyone expecting to find proper lady’s stuff.

  With Jim in his cap and coat and me in my proper dress with my bonnet cocked just so and a red veil hanging down, I looked just like a woman out to pay respects to a dying relative, which was our cover story. Proper ladies, of course, didn’t lean forward from the passenger bench to talk to their cart drivers.

  “Well?” I said.

  The horse snorted, and Jim guided us through the cobblestone streets. It was a prosperous neighborhood with streetlights even over the bridge. I thought it was a little strange that a stiltsman should be out so late, but there one was, right along the old brick bridge crossing a Skein tributary. His oil pack was on his back and a long pole in his hand and, naturally, the ten foot stilts strapped to his feet so’s he could reach the lanterns that hung way up over the road.

  Except this stiltsman turned toward us, and his face was all bloated, like he’d been lying dead at the bottom of the Skein for a week, getting nibbled by fishes and crabs.

  The horse whinnied in terror and reared. Jim whipped the poor beast’s backside ’til it ran fast enough to win at the downs. What with me and the horse both screaming, we didn’t do too good of a job of being discreet, but we got past the dead man on the stilts.

  The horse took some coaxing before it slowed.

  “Did you see that?” Jim said. “We passed right through his left stilt!”

  “Of course we did! It was a ghost!” I was digging through my lady’s bag, trying to ignore the fact my hand was shaking. I had a small green
case for emergencies. I unsnapped it and pulled out two witch bullets, grey like normal bullets but with silver swirls. I slipped my revolver out of my skirts and was opening the chamber to trade out two of the rounds when the horse whinnied again.

  Damned if there wasn’t a coal black dog standing in the shadows of a graveyard tree and almost as big as our horse. It weren’t normal black. It was more like the shadow of a dog, and it had two blazing eyes like windows onto hellfire.

  I never did fire the gun, though, ’cause the cart jumped so bad with Jim driving us so fast.

  We lost the dog around the next turn where Jim announced he was taking us to the temple. The plan had been to head straight back to Cliffside and the airship docks, but I figured Sister Toomey might just be able to help. I couldn’t think of anyone else who could.

  I’d stopped thinking it was the world’s end. Near as I could tell, the ghosts weren’t wandering down any other streets, and they weren’t after the horse. They were after us. And the only reason they could be was that me and Jim had done some filching: the gold and silver necklaces, a fancy watch, and that pearl.

  “The pearl’s cursed,” I said. “Applesby set us up!” I dug through the bag.

  “What’s your plan, Jane?”

  “I say we throw this damned pearl in the Skein!” Hell, I was ready to just toss it into the street.

  “You think it’ll be that easy?” Jim asked.

  I paused, the cloth-wrapped pearl in my fist. “What do you mean?”

  “Applesby set us up, alright. I just don’t think it’s going to be that easy to get rid of.”

  “Watch me,” I said. But I didn’t throw it because I trusted Jim.

  “Suppose,” he said over his shoulder, “you need the pearl to break the curse, and you’ve thrown it in the ocean?”

  I frowned and settled back on the cushioned bench. I supposed it was possible. I mean, why set us up if the curse was so easily gotten rid of? And then there was the thought we might simply be able to pawn the thing onto some unsuspecting boob and get our value out of it.