Ghost in the Cogs: Steam-Powered Ghost Stories Page 9

  He looked so anxious that she didn’t press. “Well, thank you for escorting me,” she said.

  “Sure, it’s no trouble,” he said, fidgeting. “I’d best get to work . . .”

  As he left, Lucinda slipped between the tent’s canvas panels. In the shadowy interior, she felt the spirits react to her proximity. They perceived her more strongly in darkness. Pain bloomed in her temples at the sudden surge of spite and malice. Before, she could brush aside their attentions, but the more vital energy she lost, the closer she came to their realm.

  As Lucinda approached the room housing the most vital, delicate equipment, she heard voices: Mrs. Winchester and Mr. Gaut.

  “Do neither of these girls know how to tell time?” Mrs. Winchester said.

  “I expect them any minute, Sarah.”

  “I suppose Lucinda moves slowly, these days. Are you quite sure of your measurements?”

  “Her vital energy is very low. Another capture, and . . .”

  “You’re certain, Arvin? Have you seen this ‘tipping point’ occur? If we’re to continue capturing these infestations, I require a medium with enough strength to attend to her duties!”

  “Now, you know as well as I that Lucinda is the first medium I’ve worked with, so I haven’t been able to make a direct observation . . .”

  “Then how do you know she’ll die? Terribly awkward if she lives on, even more sickly, while we must explain that there was never a situation for her in this town, don’t you think? We must be certain to finish this and contain her spirit, so the new girl can advance the work properly.”

  “As I’ve explained, Sarah . . .”

  Lucinda missed the explanation as her heart skipped. She found herself rising upward, looking at her own crumpled body on the hard-packed dirt below. Wailing and shrieking rose with her as the spirits clamored at her sudden emergence into the ether. They flailed at their enclosures, trying to cast tendrils after her—Lavinia most of all. Her burning, staring intensity focused only on Lucinda—

  And with a snapping noise, she was back in her body on the ground, looking fearfully up toward where she had just been floating. Her lungs drew rapid, shallow breaths above the tightness of her corset as she wondered if they’d heard her fall. She tried to slow her respiration as she eased up to her feet, afraid she might stand too quickly and slip into astral projection again. The voices continued inside, but although she needed to know what they were planning, she also needed to get away and think. Where to go? To her autocarriage? They would only send Oswald again. She scurried along behind the tent, glancing around like a mouse expecting a hawk, so preoccupied that she bumped into someone, stumbled, and fell.

  “Oh, my goodness!” The voice was young and feminine, but Lucinda couldn’t see much more than a shape and the glare of the sky. “Are you all right?”

  Shaking more than usual, Lucinda pushed herself backward and tried to stand, but it was all too much. She sagged and couldn’t hold back a quiet sob.

  “Now, now,” the girl said. Her shape moved forward and settled toward the ground. Lucinda raised a hand to block the light and realized that her shaded spectacles were missing. Her vision adjusted slowly, and a dark-eyed, olive-complexioned face came into focus.

  “You must be Miss Blake,” the girl said. “Aren’t you? I’m Emeline Mabry. I was just on my way to meet you. Did something happen? Are you ill?”

  “I can’t . . . I can’t go back there!” Lucinda said. “Oh, what am I going to do?” Then she was distracted by a motion from behind Miss Mabry, the strange slithering flicker of a ghost. Reflexively, she tuned her inner vision to the spirit’s presence. It was a bad one, roiling with sullen, yellow-tinged greens and grays and bursts of black, barely maintaining a human shape at all. She glimpsed moments of cohesion: an angry man’s face bleeding profusely from the temple, a mouthful of unnaturally pointed teeth, clenched fists. Lucinda gasped. It had been several months since she’d seen such a one. Extreme fury sometimes twisted them and made them monstrous.

  “Oh, you can see him,” Miss Mabry said. “That’s Uncle Ivor. He tried to impose himself on me on my thirteenth birthday, and when I pushed him away, he hit his head on the mantelpiece. He hasn’t let me alone since.” Her casual tone startled Lucinda more than the apparition’s demeanor.

  “Don’t worry about me, though. I’m getting rid of the old bastard tonight,” Miss Mabry continued, her expression darkening. “Then everyone will be able to see what a monster he is and stop acting like I was the bad girl who tempted him.”

  “But listen! I can’t capture him. I’ll die!” Lucinda said. “I heard them. They were talking about it. They’re not going to let me go. They’re going to let me die and keep me here. We have to get away. They’re bad people!”

  “You don’t understand,” Miss Mabry said, her expression going cold. “I need to get rid of Uncle Ivor. You can’t leave.”

  Lucinda understood completely. She remembered the years with Lavinia constantly by her side, the ghost of her stillborn twin, feeding from the ever-more-sickly Lucinda and growing alongside her as a ghostly feral child. Lavinia had been a playmate and an enemy, demanding constant appeasement. She could shriek in Lucinda’s ears all night, every night, forever. A beloved, hated sister whose presence was denied by their parents until Lucinda was sent to the asylum for her lies and hysterics. Lucinda knew exactly how desperate a person could be to rid herself of a haunting.

  It happened again: Lucinda flew from within her body. The hatred from the captured spirits was there as before, but directly ahead of her was the dead molester, Ivor, twisting his agitated coils through the ether around Miss Mabry, whose aura—visible here—smoldered with palpable deceit and manipulation.

  It was the first time Lucinda had faced an uncontained ghost in the ether. She had never managed astral projection purposefully. Her mediumistic ability and Mr. Gaut’s clever equipment let her capture spirits and place them in the shielded chambers that kept them from plaguing the living. They became curiosities to study, their vengeful hauntings cut short. Here, though, outside the limits of her physical body, Lucinda lost herself to sudden, ravenous hunger.

  She stared at the specter, transfixed with the desire to consume it. Nothing about it frightened her at all. She would have it. Lucinda flew at the ghost, reaching with the entirety of her being and stretching around it like a serpent’s hyper-extended jaw, snatching it from the ether in an urgent, unstoppable strike. Crushing down upon it, she absorbed its vital energies in an instant, also pulling along some of Miss Mabry’s entwined aura. She immediately knew all that Ivor knew about the nature of his death.

  Lucinda snapped back into her body, invigorated, and said to the staggering, pale Miss Mabry, “He never touched you. You killed him for no reason at all. Just to see if you could. And you made it look like self-defense.”

  “No! No, I . . . he grabbed me! He said such terrible things about what he wanted!”

  “Liar,” Lucinda said. “I saw it. He’s with me now, and I know.”

  Strength and health coursed through her body, a river in springtime gushing with renewal. The contrast to her shaky weakness of only moments before astonished her, making her realize how close she had come to death, to be so energized by the vital energies of someone already dead. She had drawn a little from Miss Mabry, but still . . .

  They almost let me die. They would have let me die! This horrible girl would have helped them!

  Ivor stirred within her mind, bolstering her confidence and providing Lucinda with words. “Here’s what will happen,” she said, stepping close and making full, unblinking eye contact with Emeline Mabry. “You will leave without speaking to anyone else here. You found out that you could kill someone, and you found out what it’s like to be haunted. Your haunting is finished now. I advise you not to try it again. If you spend the rest of your life making amends, perhaps, your own afterlife won’t be a time of eternal torment. You should consider yourself very lucky to have this chance.”
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  Shocked at herself, she watched Emeline stumble backward a few steps and turn to flee, kicking up dust as she ran. Lucinda tried to take it all in. Within perhaps fifteen minutes, she had gone from trembling exhaustion in her autocarriage to mortal terror to somehow eating a ghost and regaining her strength.

  A voice murmured in the back of her mind, I am not eaten. I am redeemed. And soon, I will be free. Ivor’s presence was milder, softening.

  “But it felt like eating you,” Lucinda whispered.

  You were near death, Ivor replied, fading more. It will be different with the others. Thank you. His presence receded.

  “The others? Wait!” Lucinda whispered frantically. “Don’t go! What do I do now?” There was no answer. The surge of strength she had received did not leave with him, but it settled.

  The others. For the first time, Lucinda wondered about the collection of spirits in the menagerie. Ivor had been murdered for no reason and falsely accused. His obsessive rage after death made sense. Emeline had deserved to be haunted. What of the other spirits Lucinda had lured in, one by one, to be captured with Mr. Gaut’s inventions, using the “harmonizing frequencies” she didn’t understand? Each of them might have been wronged twice—in the manner of their death and in their imprisonment.

  And what of Lavinia? Lucinda hadn’t killed her. But to an infant spirit, envious of her twin’s life and parental love, why would that matter?

  This will end now, Lucinda thought. She strode around to the side of the tent and lifted the canvas to duck under, aiming for the back side of the containment pods. The ghosts in the menagerie went wild, throwing tantrums and filling her mind with violent noise.

  The pods of brass and copper stood in solid rows, their functionality made into sculptural beauty by artisans hired with the inherited fortune Mrs. Winchester had poured into the venture. Each contained several spirits that visitors viewed by peering through the round windows while wearing goggles they could plug in to ports on each unit. Lucinda reached for the circular handle on the back of Lavinia’s pod, turning it to open the access port with amazing ease and marveling again at her sudden strength, but then, she heard voices approaching and dropped to the floor with the access port hanging open above her head.

  “. . . and then she attacked me, just rushed right at me and scratched my face!” a feminine voice said. Emeline Mabry. Lucinda peered around the edge of the pod as Mr. Gaut entered with Emeline, who was gesturing with Lucinda’s dark spectacles in her hand and had scratches on her face that had certainly not been there minutes earlier.

  “My dear, how shocking! I wouldn’t have thought she had the strength for such a thing . . .” Mr. Gaut said. “But this matter will be finished before dawn, and then, you’ll feel much better. I’m sure.”

  It was too outrageous. Lucinda stood. “Oh, yes. After you’ve killed me, you’ll all feel so much better.”

  Mr. Gaut turned quickly, one hand dropping to his side. “My goodness, Lucinda, you startled me! What’s all this about killing? How could you have gotten such an idea? Now, you must apologize to Miss Mabry for this paranoid attack, and perhaps, we can have Oswald run to the druggist for a dose of laudanum. You know how awful your nerves have been lately . . .” His familiar directing tone nearly convinced Lucinda to listen, but he was sweating and fumbling with his coat pocket.

  “You’re both liars!” she said. A tool cart sat nearby. Lucinda reached for a hammer, planning to bash the gears she’d exposed in Lavinia’s containment pod. As she grasped it, Mr. Gaut pulled a strange pistol from his pocket and pointed it at her. There was no sound, but a sensation boxed her ears, and Lucinda’s mind flexed with the impact. Her energy level dropped.

  “My new set of harmonizing frequencies,” Mr. Gaut said. She heard him as if through mud. “They don’t affect normal people as such, but it seems that the proper arrangement can work on mediums.”

  Lucinda, dropping to her knees, saw that Miss Mabry had lost consciousness and collapsed.

  “Now why, in your weakened state, would you still be awake,” Mr. Gaut said, leaning down to peer into Lucinda’s eyes, “while our fresh medium has fainted? I shall have to perform more tests . . .”

  But when he got close enough, Lucinda used all her remaining strength to crush his nose with her forehead. It was the one useful skill she had learned from observing other patients in the Ataraxia Institute.

  After binding Mr. Gaut and Miss Mabry with wire from the tool cart, Lucinda gazed at the layers of gears turning inside Lavinia’s containment pod—so delicate and precise—and took up the hammer once again. She had to hurry because someone else could come in at any moment. Doubt seized her. What if she couldn’t perform astral projection by choice? She would have to. There was no time to practice.

  Lucinda raised the hammer, bashing as hard as she could again and again. She felt a sudden stillness when the unit’s harmonizing frequencies broke. Then Lavinia emerged at full force, rage concentrated, manifesting claws that tore at Lucinda’s skin and clothing. Lucinda, in desperate terror, threw herself from her body and up to face Lavinia in the ether.

  For a moment, Lavinia’s ghost froze before Lucinda’s unexpected appearance in that realm. She appeared as a collage of jumbled faces, potential selves incompletely formed and collected like a swarm of wasps, buzzing and vibrating in place. Lucinda tried to speak—to say wait, please, let me apologize—but she had no voice, and Lavinia launched herself forward to attack again. Lucinda could only defend herself by consuming her.

  She fell back into her body, plagued by the layers of conflict and anger absorbed from Lavinia. In contrast to Ivor’s adult appreciation of Lucinda’s help, Lavinia tore through her mind, zigzagging madly, uncomprehending. Lucinda struggled to organize the experience as she took in the surge of vital energies that came with her sister’s ghost. Incoherent stabs of feeling came and went. Lucinda sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking and squeezing her eyes tightly shut, trying to regain control.

  The storm began to recede. She sought a connection with Lavinia, something like the communication from Ivor. This time, there were no words. Lucinda absorbed emotions from her sister: confusion, weariness, relief, acceptance. She tried to project back regret and caring as Lavinia faded. It was the only thing she could do for Lavinia in their final moments together.

  There were thirty-six more spirits in the menagerie, all of them wild and unknown. Lucinda wasn’t weak anymore, and she wouldn’t be a victim.

  She would set them all free, and no one could stop her.

  Nayad Monroe wrote her first story, a Fantasy Island-inspired mermaid tale with a twist ending, at the age of eight. She likes to think her work has improved since then. Her short fiction has been published in several anthologies, including Steampunk World and Sidekicks!, both edited by Sarah Hans, and The Crimson Pact: Volume Two, edited by Paul Genesse. Nayad is also the editor of two mixed-genre anthologies: What Fates Impose and Not Our Kind. Her author page on Goodreads.com has all the info: www.goodreads.com/author/show/3250170.Nayad_A_Monroe. But if you just want to see her get silly, follow @Nayad on Twitter.

  T-Hex

  Jonah Buck

  Carthago delenda est,” the phantom said as it meandered through the aerodrome hangar.

  “Carthage must be destroyed.” Charlotte LaFitte mentally translated the Latin. Benefits of a classical education.

  Clad in Roman armor, the apparition swirled toward the audience, its body little more than mist. With each step, the spirit left gooey footprints. After a few seconds, the grey-green ectoplasm evaporated.

  The audience watched in rapt attention. Ladies with oversized hats placed velvet-gloved hands over their mouths. Gentlemen in severely tailored suits tugged at their mustaches in macabre fascination.

  Moving like someone who had just cut himself free from a trolley accident, dazed but uninjured, the apparition approached the hundred-odd onlookers. Charlotte looked for all the signs, but she didn’t see any lights, strings, or
hidden vents that could create the effect. The audience began to clap.

  “Carthago delenda—”

  Prescott Blasko pulled a lever on the huge machine behind him, and the spirit collapsed into a pool of diaphanous vapor. The pale aether dissipated as the lights came back on inside the hangar.

  Charlotte blinked. She sat near the back of the crowd, directly under a painting of Abraham Lincoln’s seventeenth inauguration. As always, Lincoln was turned in three-quarters profile to hide most of the steel plate clamped over his forehead from the failed assassination attempt in 1865. The artist had tastefully minimized the tubes and wires that poked out of the president’s skull, pumping tinctures into his bloodstream day and night. In another bout of artistic liberty, the painter depicted the light that constantly poured out of the president’s pupils as a muted, benign-looking blue instead of the more realistic seasick green.

  Even Lincoln seemed to be watching the demonstration of Blasko’s reverse transmigrator.

  Blasko opened a hatch on his machine, and chilled air billowed out. Blasko waved the ghost smog away and plucked out the Roman-era amulet inside. The owner was now in his wife’s arms, having fainted dead away.

  Charlotte was impressed. She was in the process of writing her second book debunking frauds and charlatans who used séances to fleece the lonely or the gullible.

  Some fraudsters simply claimed to have psychic powers, regular old fashioned mediums. But an increasing number used the fruits of the new mechanical age to trick the public.

  Blasko’s “reverse transmigrator” stood almost twenty feet tall, the size of a small house, with dual boilers on either side. It reminded Charlotte of a gigantic laundry press, the big industrial kind that occasional sucked in hapless workers and spat them out as bloody gobbets. A small aperture, roughly the size of a bread box, served as the machine’s mouth.

  If it was hokum, it was very impressive hokum. Two big Pinkerton guards stood to either side of the machine, tri-barrel carbines slung over their shoulders.