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

  “I completely understand. Think nothing more of it. Please tell me about your wife.”

  His eyes took on a distant look. “Melanie’s mother was lost to me in a zeppelin crash some years ago, but Melanie survived without so much as a scratch or a bruise. The incident itself was horrifying, however, and she never speaks of it, so I haven’t a clue how such a miracle came about.

  “Since the war left me crippled soon before the accident,” he said, motioning with his gloved hands, “I am blessed with a surfeit of free time. I have wanted nothing more than to make a home for my daughter. She is a quiet girl, especially after the accident, and I want to make sure she has a comfortable life and never again experiences such horror. I have a modest pension and a handsome income: my wife invested well while I was away, and I am not wanting for money. I wish simply to rebuild this into a modern and comfortable home for us.”

  “That is quite understandable,” I said. “And I assume that you have run into difficulties in repairing the house due to the spiritual manifestations you mentioned in your letter to me?”

  He nodded. “You have seen straight to the heart of the matter, Mr. Carnacki. I wish you to get rid of these spirits, whether by banishing them or proving that it is nothing more than mortal trickery.”

  I put my napkin to my lips and nodded. “It would please me immensely to do so, Mr. Davidson.”

  I will not recount the conversation and research I conducted throughout the evening. Rather, I will summarize what I learned. Mr. Davidson knew very little about the history of the house, save that it was in his family for several generations. While he himself had little knowledge of the house—he was raised further out of town and only came to visit once in a while as a small child—he had heard stories that the house had been the site of several unfortunate and fatal accidents as far back as the reign of one of the Kings George. What struck me as odd in his original letter came to the fore again in his recounting of his family history: to wit, no one could seem to remember who had been killed or in what room or by what method.

  I moved on to investigating the history of the spiritual incidents themselves. Between the events explained to Mr. Davidson second-hand and my own research of the area’s history in the mansion’s surprisingly comprehensive library, I learned very little about the past incidents beyond the fact that they continued to be vague and contradictory. The events experienced since Mr. Davidson’s arrival, however, uniformly involved blood appearing on the walls. No person or persons were seen, incorporeal or otherwise, but always there was a spray of blood upon the walls that dripped onto the floor as if the very house itself bled. By Jove, if only I had paid more attention to that detail!

  Mr. Davidson had explained that the disturbances were reported primarily in the kitchen, so I decided to start my investigation there. I lit a number of candles and set them all over the room, watching their flames for any sign of a flicker or change of color. I looked in every cupboard and turned over every pot, but there was nothing unusual or occult about the fixtures. Sitting in the middle of the kitchen, I carefully opened myself to any kind of psychic or spiritual vibration that might be present. I could find nothing beyond what one would expect in a very old house that has seen tragedy and death. Nothing coalesced into the animate form of a spirit, nor was there any motivating force permeating the room.

  Undaunted, I repeated my efforts in the dining room, and then the library, and then the parlor. Each time, I saw nothing, sensed nothing, and found nothing to indicate that any ghost had ever walked through this house.

  At this point, Carnacki trailed off, changing the tobacco in his pipe as he watched our reactions.

  “So it was all a hoax?” Taylor asked carefully. He had learned from past mistakes that making assumptions about the direction of Carnacki’s story led to chastisement, but he always had difficulty staying quiet during these pauses.

  “That is what I thought at first. Since there was such a nebulous gap between the house’s history of vague manifestations and the recent, more explicit events, I was developing the theory that someone had been toying with Mr. Davidson.”

  “Perhaps to force the owner to sell the house to an interested party,” I speculated.

  “Quite along my own line of thinking, Dodgson.” He finished packing his bowl and had it going with a cheery blaze before he continued. “And it was this nascent theory I presented to Mr. Davidson when I proposed the next part of my plan.”

  Mr. Davidson didn’t quite believe me and asked me to explain it to him again.

  “I said I wish to tear into one of the walls that you have renovated,” I repeated, carefully.

  “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

  “If I am right and the renovations predate the arrival of these bloody manifestations, it is possible that someone with an interest in purchasing this mansion had something added to the house. Perhaps, he or she paid one of your contractors to add capsules that exude blood at a certain time or through a trigger mechanism. It could be there is a passage unknown to you that your assailants use to stage these elaborate tricks. Either way, it is only through undoing one of your areas of renovation that I shall be able to narrow down the method of falsifying these ghostly incidents and, from there, possibly learn who created such an elaborate plan.” I was sure of my idea, and I knew it came across in my bearing and tone of voice.

  The owner adjusted his gloves and nodded. “Very well. If that is what it takes to show that this house is not really haunted, I will allow it. But I would ask that you do as little damage as possible—while I am not a poor man, this house steals money from my pocket faster than a card sharp.”

  I promised that I would endeavor to do what I could and asked to borrow some of the tools used in the original renovation. He led me to a shed, and from it, I extracted a hefty sledge. I made my way back to the kitchen. As I entered, I found Melanie Davidson standing there, staring at me with a blank look that I am unfortunately familiar with. Reluctant to discard my original theory too quickly, however, I lowered the sledge and stepped forward to speak with her. Mark that, friends! If I should ever again hold a theory more important than the evidence of my own eyes, call me a fool and refuse my invitation to dinner until I learn the error of my ways!

  The girl spoke to me in a calm voice. “Please, don’t hurt the house,” she said. I noted that it was the first she ever spoke to me, and her voice was unusually soft, as if her throat were damaged.

  I put a hand on her head. My gesture was one of affection, but in reality, I was assessing her. I barely said more than a word of acquiescence before my hand tingled. She had no odic force—or rather, her natural energies were pulling on mine, drawing my own odic force out of me and into her.

  Withdrawing my hand, I turned my attention to my client. “You said your daughter survived the accident that killed your wife?”

  Confused, he nodded. “It was a miracle, they said. No idea how she survived.”

  My old theories were ash in the wind, but new ones quickly formed. “I think your daughter may be significant to this incident. If I may, I would like to perform a ritual to confirm my ideas.”

  “My Melanie? Involved with this charade? Nonsense, Mr. Carnacki! Pure rubbish!”

  “If it is indeed rubbish, Mr. Davidson, there can be no reason to refuse my request.”

  He was clearly unhappy, but he nodded. “Very well. As long as you don’t hurt her.”

  Allow me to skip ahead in time a bit. You are all familiar with my electric pentacle and the benefits of it detailed in the “Sigsand Manuscript.” While both have protected me a number of times from all manner of hostile ghosts, what I proposed was a variation on the original intent. That night, I removed the rug in the center of the parlor and asked Melanie to sit inside of a pentacle drawn in chalk. Her father gave her some blocks to play with as I worked. I carefully aligned the wires as I would normally, but I stood outside the circle as I turned on the steam engine that activated the glowing vacuum t
ubes.

  I cycled the light to blue, the color of safety, and I began to recite the Saaamaaa Ritual. However, instead of the Second Sign of Saaamaaa, which I use for personal protection, I instead invoked the First Sign—that of imprisonment. Within moments of the last line being uttered, I saw that I had been correct: Melanie fell over, as if struck dead by an invisible blow. Mr. Davidson leapt up in surprise and attempted to pierce the pentacle. I was only barely able to hold him back—he used to be a strong man, and some of that bulk remains, but I wrestled him to the ground and kept him from breaking the delicate wires of the pentacle.

  “What have you done, you cad?” he snarled as he attempted to escape my grip.

  “I have only restored her to her natural state,” I said. “She never survived the crash.”

  This revelation caused him to stop struggling, and I let him go and stood up. “She died along with your wife, Mr. Davidson,” I explained.

  “That’s impossible,” he said, staring at his daughter. “I held her in my arms, touched her cheek, carried her from the crash . . .”

  “I feel that you, like many others, do not understand the diversity of ghosts. While the romantic notion of translucent figures in white does have some validity, some ghosts can feel as real as you or I. But they are dead, and they cannot stay among the living unless they steal life.”

  “How . . . ?”

  The poor man found it difficult to speak, but I deduced the nature of his question and answered him. “All living things have odic force—a sort of ‘electricity of life,’ if you will. A person is animated by it, much like a Babbage engine works as steam powers its gears and cogs. In healthy, living creatures, the odic force is strong at birth and renews in diminishing amounts until our death. If our death is premature, that remaining energy can be left behind.”

  I gestured to the walls of the room. “The odic force from so many lives cut short over centuries has permeated this house, and . . .” My explanation drifted from my lips as I noticed the walls I was gesturing to. They started to drip with blood.

  Mr. Davidson pointed at the blood as he crouched on the ground. “How do you explain that?” he said, his voice choked out in a fearful whisper.

  “The house has developed a symbiotic relationship with your daughter,” I said. “It is recreating what she saw at the crash.”

  A third voice broke into our conversation. “The walls.”

  We turned and looked. Melanie was writhing as if in pain, but she spoke in a passionate whisper. I could see the grain of the parlor floor through her body. “The walls,” she repeated. “Covered in mama’s blood.”

  “I need to calibrate the electric pentacle to counteract her vibrations!” I said. I realized I was shouting as the dripping sound had become louder, so loud that it drowned out all other noises in the room. “Stay still, Mr. Davidson! Don’t touch the pentacle!”

  But my words were in vain. Here is a father, stricken in grief and broken by war. His mind survived only because he believed he could provide a better life for his surviving daughter, only to watch her literally disappear before his eyes. He crawled along the floor, his hands so damaged that he didn’t even feel the energy flowing through the wires as he tore them up. An uninjured man, or perhaps a saner one, would have dropped the wire in shock. But he pulled them apart as if they were blades of grass before I could reach him. The steam engine burped, pouring out smoke as it ground to a halt.

  The ghost of Melanie reached out to her father. She was almost completely faded now—I could barely make her out. Her stolen odic force was almost depleted, and she needed more in order to regain her corporeal form.

  I managed to kick Mr. Davidson’s hand away at the last moment, denying him his daughter’s touch. It sounds so crass to say it in such a way, but that is what I did. I knew that the ghost’s embrace would mean his death, so in desperation, I did what I could to prevent it. As his damaged fingers slid away from hers, she screamed, and her face twisted into something dark and abominable. The walls bled more, heavy drops splashing onto the ground in cacophonous thuds. She was drawing the energy of the house into her, one final desperate attempt to regain her stolen life. It was then that I reached into my pocket for my last weapon.

  I pulled out a small bag of salt, and I tossed the contents onto her. You all know the purifying nature of salt on ghosts, and the lack of salt in the household—by Jove, if I weren’t so blind!—had reminded me that I should carry my own, just in case. I threw a fistful of crystals at the spirit, disrupting her connection to this world. By a stroke of luck, she was too weakened by my ritual, and the odic force of the house was not enough to sustain her. Her screams faded, and Melanie Davidson was no more.

  Carnacki set his pipe down, his story ended, and stood from his chair to wish us a good evening. I shook hands with my companions and saw them to the door until it was only Carnacki and myself left in the foyer. As I shrugged on my coat, I asked one final question that lingered in my mind.

  “How did the girl’s spirit survive after the crash? Surely, it must have been months until her father moved into the house, and there is no way the ghost could have known she would have a ready supply of life available from the house?”

  He smiled and pointed to my gloves as I pulled them on. “It was his hands. A wound is, in many ways, a hole in our collective odic force. That is why our cuts and punctures eventually heal—our life force itself pools there, ready to be taken. But if something draws that excess energy away, the wound festers and stagnates. When a man realizes that his daughter is the only person left in the world for which he has any warm affection, it is natural that he will stay in physical contact with her: hold her hand, touch her hair, and even caress her brow as she goes to sleep.”

  I nodded, adjusting the gloves. “Which is why his wounds from the war never healed.”

  “If he were a man less proud, willing to accept the kind of mechanical augmentation that veterans such as our friend Arkwright has as a souvenir of her own campaign, it is possible that his daughter would have died along with his wife. But it was his own touch that kept her tied to this plane and led to all his troubles.”

  My cab arrived, and we wished each other well as I departed. As the cab rattled its way over cobblestone streets, my mind kept being drawn to the horrible image of watching the walls drip with the blood of someone you love.

  Eddy Webb (with a y, thank you) is a freelance writer, designer, producer, and consultant for video games and RPGs. He has worked on over a hundred products, including such properties as Red Dwarf, the WWE, Vampire: The Masquerade, Firefly, and the interactive audio drama Codename Cygnus. His work spans over a decade and across dozens of respected companies, and he’s even won a few awards along the way. Today he lives a sitcom life in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife, his roommate, and a sleepy old pug. More information and mad ramblings can be found at eddyfate.com.

  Tipping Point

  Nayad Monroe

  Lucinda Blake parted the black lace curtains and peered from the window of her autocarriage as the small caravan of the Winchester Traveling Spirit Menagerie pulled into the fairgrounds. She’d forgotten the town’s name, and that troubled her. After one final capture, this would be her new home. Roustabouts and drivers hopped down from the other conveyances, preparing to set up the show. She would have liked to watch them work, but the onslaught of outdoor light brought tears; as the color of her eyes had faded away, even cloudy skies had become intolerably bright. Mr. Gaut had promised that with the return of the vital energies he’d held in reserve, her coloring would darken again. In the meantime, her albino appearance intrigued the customers and lent her a spectral air, he said, so why not make the most of it?

  Tremors stirred her hand, so she let the curtain go and felt the relief of the dimness. Despite hardly moving since the start of the day’s ride, she felt enervated and listless. Lately, it seemed that her spirit was more loosely tethered to her body than it should be. She could always sense the menagerie stirr
ing nearby, affixing her with hostile attentions. She looked forward to escaping the constant pressure, despite the fact that irreparable guilt would be its replacement. Lucinda wondered where they had found the new girl—what was her name? Emeline?—and what dreadful help Mr. Gaut had offered in exchange for her ability to see spirits. She must be haunted, surely.

  Lucinda couldn’t be sure that she had done the right thing by taking Mr. Gaut’s help herself, but without it, she would still have been a ward of the Ataraxia Institute with no prospects or chance of release, and no one would believe in Lavinia’s existence at all.

  Just past three in the afternoon, someone knocked at Lucinda’s door. She opened it and blinked down at Mr. Gaut’s fifteen-year-old assistant, Oswald.

  “I’m to escort you to the apparatus, Miss Blake. They’d like to begin Miss Mabry’s training,” he said.

  “Of course,” Lucinda said, taking her shaded spectacles from their cabinet beside the door. She grasped Oswald’s extended hand, stepping unsteadily down the small set of stairs to the ground.

  The outside air refreshed her somewhat as they walked. “I suspect that I will miss you,” Lucinda said. “You’ve been such a help lately, Oswald.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, Miss Blake,” he said, cheeks flushing.

  At the main tent, Oswald walked Lucinda around to the back entrance, to go straight to the apparatus enclosure. He had been with the Winchester Traveling Spirit Menagerie for two years, but she’d never once seen him voluntarily walk through the exhibit, even though no one but Lucinda could see the spirits without Mr. Gaut’s patented lenses. Perhaps, it was worse to know they were there without being able to see them, she thought.

  “Have you ever looked at the specimens, Oswald? Through the goggles, I mean?”

  “Oh, no, Miss Blake. I ain’t gonna, I mean. I’m not planning to either. Doesn’t affect my job.”