Ghostly Echoes

by William Ritter

  “Questions are good,” Jackaby said. “Questions are to the clever mind as coal is to the stoker. I will worry more when we run out of them.”

  “Be that as it may, I would be happier if we had at least a few satisfying answers to go with them when we report back to Commissioner Marlowe.”

  “Detective work is neither a happy nor a satisfying business, Miss Rook,” said Jackaby, settling in as the amber buildings sailed past our window. “Marlowe will understand.”

  “I don’t understand at all.” Commissioner Marlowe kept his voice low and even as we sat across from him the following morning.

  “What I mean to say,” Jackaby explained, “is that our excursion yesterday was very instructive indeed.”

  “You found your missing woman?”

  “Not exactly. Not remotely. No. We did manage to find a woman who was not missing.” Jackaby’s optimistic humor found little purchase on Marlowe’s granite countenance. “And then we misplaced her,” Jackaby admitted. “So now there are two missing women. Also there is a baby.”

  “What? A baby? Where did you find a baby?”

  “We did not find a baby. The baby is also missing.”

  The commissioner’s eye twitched as he set both palms on the table and took a deep breath.

  “We’re still looking into the matter, sir,” I cut in. “We will be certain to keep you abreast of any developments, but in the meantime, my report should detail more clearly the results of our inquiry in Glanville.” I passed the pages I had typed up that morning across the desk and Marlowe accepted them with a curt nod—high praise from the stoic commissioner.

  “Hm,” he said as he looked over the report.

  “Strange and unsatisfying seem to be the tone of this case, sir, I know,” I said.

  “It’s been no more satisfying on our end,” Marlowe grunted. “My boys followed the money trail for Spade’s project, like I told you. It seems his fund-raisers got a few donations from legitimate businesses, but the lion’s share came from a corporation called Buhmann’s Consolidated Interests. Turns out the exact same company bankrolled major portions of Poplin’s project a decade ago.”

  “Buhmann?” Jackaby shook his head. “Not the most creative façade.”

  Marlowe rolled his eyes. “I know. German for bogeyman. I looked it up. The group is more than just children’s stories and nursery rhymes, though. They own some legitimate real estate downtown, including an impressive-looking building in the Inkling District.”

  The bogeyman. Jackaby nodded sagely as though it were perfectly ordinary to hear that the bogeyman has been inconspicuously funding major municipal science projects. I shook my head. Every new clue just seemed to stir up the mud in the already murky waters of this case.

  “It’s a start,” said Jackaby. “Chasing fresh leads has left us empty-handed. I would say it’s definitely worth our while to pursue a much older one. We’ll have to go and say hello to the mayor’s mysterious benefactors.”

  “Good luck with that.” Marlowe tucked my report into his desk and shut the drawer. “On paper the Buhmann building is their head of operations and the beating heart of another fine example of American industry. In reality—much less so.”

  “Empty?” Jackaby said.

  Marlowe nodded. “The place is a dried-out husk. It’s like a set from a vaudeville production about depressing old factories. There’s nothing there.”

  “Sounds like somewhere we might find a few more questions,” I said.

  Jackaby grinned.

  “Seriously,” said Marlowe. “It’s cobwebs and rats.”

  “We’ll have a look around anyway,” Jackaby declared, rising to his feet. “Miss Rook loves cobwebs and rats.”

  Chapter Seven

  The sun beat down on us as we made our way across what felt like the entire length of the city before we came to the Inkling District. The Inkling was a channel that wound lazily eastward through New Fiddleham, looping north and south in wide arcs as though it were dodging the buildings that had grown up around it. When all of this had been farmland, the Inkling might have provided irrigation for row after row of healthy vegetables. Today it served the far less noble duty of rushing the city’s waste out of sight and out of mind, and the townspeople had affectionately dubbed it the Inky—not an imprecise descriptor on its worst days. The Inkling District was a collection of businesses and factories tucked into the widest loop of the snake.

  The air was thick and heavy, and it tasted like wet clay and coal fires. The sky was cut with streaks of black from the smokestacks of the factories around us. It was already past noon by the time we had marched through the rows and rows of tall brick buildings and finally approached our destination. The Buhmann building had a gothic façade, broad and imposing with black spires running along the rooftop. Billowing steam from a street vent puffed whirling clouds into the air in front of it, giving the building a haunted atmosphere.

  “That sewer line runs directly under the building,” Jackaby observed as we passed through the steam cloud, “and I would wager it empties out very near to where the professor’s body was found.”

  “I wouldn’t bet against you, sir,” I said, not feeling any better about entering the ominous building. It looked like precisely the sort of place where a living body might go if it wanted to become a dead one.

  A fence ran along the perimeter, but the front gate hung ajar, and Jackaby and I stepped through without obstacle. The Buhmann building’s double doors were ten feet tall and set with big brass handles in the shape of a double B. They were unlocked and weighted, swinging open with only a low creak at Jackaby’s tug.

  The inside of the structure was less than abandoned; it was barren. There were no old bookshelves or deserted desks. Granite floors lay bare from the front door to the far end of the building. Where one might have expected a broad foyer to give way to hallways and offices, the whole structure was simply hollow. Windows ran along the exterior at about the height one might expect a second floor to sit, but there was not so much as a landing to reach them. Through their dusty glass the afternoon sunlight seeped in, sickly and sallow by the time it spilled onto the floor below.

  More eerie than its jaundiced light or staggering emptiness was the building’s familiarity. “This is it!” I said, with a sudden realization. “Pavel was here, and Carson and all the rest. This is where they took that tintype of the pale man. ‘For posterity,’ it said. This is it, I’m sure of it! Look at those pillars against the wall, and the shape of the windows.” I had pored over Jenny’s file enough times to commit the photograph to memory.

  “Interesting,” said Jackaby.

  “Well, sir?” I said. “Do you see anything I can’t?”

  “Constantly,” said Jackaby. It wasn’t exactly arrogance—but by the same token, it wasn’t not arrogance. I waited for my employer to explain his paranormal perception of the cavernous room.

  “Anything . . . supernatural?” I asked.

  “No. Yes.” Jackaby rubbed his eyes. “Everything. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling . . .”

  “What?” I said.

  “Ha!” He shook his head and spun in place, marveling at the dark, dusty cobwebs hanging over us. “It’s been scrubbed clean, every inch.”

  I looked around. “This might be why you and Jenny rarely see eye to eye about housekeeping,” I said.

  “Not scrubbed clean of dust or droppings,” he said. “There are plenty of those, of course.” I decided not to look too closely for confirmation about the droppings. “Scrubbed clean of magical residue. I can’t pick out any unique otherworldly auras in this space.”

  “Couldn’t that just mean that this place doesn’t have any?”

  “Hardly. When you were young, did you ever spill red wine on your parents’ carpet?”

  I blinked. “Er—yes? I knocked a bottle of merlot off of the table once.”

  “And what did your mother do to clean it up?”

  “Nothing. My mother never did the c
leaning. She always had a maid handle that sort of thing.”

  “Precisely—white vinegar! Nothing better for a stain. Except that the carpet is never quite like it used to be, is it? Even if you can’t see the red anymore, there’s always something about that spot. It’s a little too clean for the rest of the rug, and it keeps that lingering vinegar smell, right? Now a healthy suspension of sodium bicarbonate might help with that, but there’s always something left behind.”

  “You know a lot about cleaning carpets for someone whose floor looks like a topical map of the East Indies.”

  “I know the Viennese waltz, too, but I don’t waste my time doing it every day. Focus, Rook. Someone has layered this space with an essence of natural spirits.”

  “They cleaned the whole building with alcohol?” I said.

  “Not that sort of spirits—actual spirits. There are countless varieties of fairy folk, oddlings, and minor deities residing in the world at any given time. Most are confined to the other side of the veil, but nature spirits are especially prevalent on our side. They are largely innocuous. I see them perpetually, so I tend to ignore them, the way you might take no notice of dandelions in a field or clouds in the sky—but in their simplicity they are also a pure source of magic.”

  He gazed around again, breathing in the dusty air. “There is no reason for an industrial building in the middle of the city to reek of nature spirits in exactly the same way that there is no reason for a carpet to reek of vinegar. Someone or something has been here, Miss Rook, and they went to great lengths to scrub themselves from my sight—which means they knew that I would come looking. Whoever was here, they are far more aware of me than I am of them.”

  I swallowed. The already meager sunlight drifting through the dirty windows seemed to dim as if responding to the mood. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I would not care to find myself back here after dark. “Perhaps we should be heading home, sir,” I said. “It’s getting rather late and we have a long walk ahead of us.”

  The streets of New Fiddleham were never empty, but by the time we had made our way out of the Inkling District, the usual bustle of afternoon traffic had ebbed, giving way to the quiet trickle of evening life. Our shadows grew longer and longer as we walked, and the tired sun leaned heavily on the rooftops. I tried to distract myself from my aching feet by running over the moving parts of the case in my mind. Jenny and Howard Carson, the McCafferys, the Hooles—Pavel was the one thread that seemed to tie all three couples together—but loose ends stuck out at every turn.

  We passed through a neighborhood of tired old buildings, the sort that had once been big family estates, but whose ostentatious halls had long since been divided and repurposed into overflowing tenement apartments. Networks of creaking stairs and landings now hid most of the regal architecture. A man in an undershirt puffed cigar smoke from an open window and spat onto the pavement two stories below. Jackaby was striding past at his usual lightning pace when a sound caught our ears.

  “Grab him. Grab his hands! Hold still, you little—”

  My employer froze mid-stride. His head turned slowly. The voices were coming from a slim alleyway between the buildings.

  “Yeah. That’s what you get, freak!”

  I have seen a monstrous dragon narrow its eyes to golden slits as it rounded on its prey. Jackaby’s gaze as he spun toward the alley was slightly less friendly than that.

  This was one of those neighborhoods that knew more shadows than light, without a doubt. I swallowed the lump that was climbing up my throat. We were walking the sort of streets my mother would not ride through at a gallop. So of course Jackaby was going in for a closer look. I bit my lip.

  “Sir?”

  Jackaby ignored me. The curtain of shadows within the alley welcomed him in, and I found myself suddenly alone on the sidewalk. “Sir?”

  I took a deep breath. With all the willpower I could summon, I plunged after Jackaby into the dark.

  “Hit him again! Hey! I said hold still, freak!”

  Jackaby was not far ahead of me. He reached into his coat and produced three little red rocks as he stepped farther into the alleyway. “There is a story,” he announced loudly to no one in particular, “that comes from the heart of the Chilean mountains.”

  Three men were leaning over a prone figure in the dark. “Who the hell are you?” said the largest, standing up straight. He was an inch or two shorter than my employer, but easily a hundred pounds heavier. His shirtsleeves were rolled up over thick muscles, and he cracked his neck as Jackaby approached.

  “It tells of a monster,” Jackaby continued, “a powerful elemental creature with a hide of dripping flames and bones of solid rock. It is said that this monster lives in the molten lava of an active volcano, and that it hungers for human flesh. Do you know what sort of human flesh it favors most?”

  The men looked at one another, unsure how to respond to the uninvited storyteller. A whimper issued from the figure at their feet.

  “Young women.” Jackaby’s voice was cold. “Virgins. Curious, isn’t it? How the monsters always seem to prey on the innocent and the weak? Perhaps it’s because goodness and love are so unlike monstrosity. It is the ugliest aspect of human nature that we fear what is most different from ourselves with such violent contempt.”

  The figure lying on the ground slapped away the men’s hands and curled into a ball against the brick wall. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, and I saw that it was a woman. Her hair was pinned up in tight black curls and her skin was deep brown. She wore a pink, sleeveless dress with high-cut skirts, like a dancer from a burlesque show. Her dress was muddied, and just one pink shoe lay at her feet.

  “What, you mean this filth?” The big man sneered. “Ain’t nothing innocent about him.”

  “Her,” Jackaby said evenly.

  “Psst!” One of the other men nudged his comrade. “That’s that detective. The one who sees things. They say he caught a werewolf who was pretending to be a policeman.”

  The third man swore derisively. “You believe that load of—”

  “There were witnesses. Lots. He’s the real thing. I hear he sees through walls and things.”

  “He can’t see through much,” said the first man, “if he can’t see that’s a damned boy. Freak show in a dress.” The pink dress shuddered and the figure let out a whimper. “Sicko makes his money off walkin’ the streets. Now he’s learning a lesson about what happens when his kind walks down the wrong street—so why don’t you two just keep walkin’ before we teach you the same lesson?”

  “The thing about the legend,” Jackaby went on, seemingly oblivious of the scene before him, “is that monsters like the Chilean Cherufe are never satisfied. You can keep sacrificing young maidens until you’ve burned through them all, but the monster will still be there, will still be waiting, will still be a monster. I’ve ceased appeasing monsters. Young lady? Shall we?”

  A face peered up in the darkness, eyes rimmed with red and full of fear and anger. The woman glanced between her attackers, and then pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. She left the shoe behind and limped forward on torn stockings. Her hands were shaking and she glared daggers at the big man. She was larger than I had expected, tall enough to look her attacker in the eye. I half expected her to lash out and strike him, but she gritted her teeth and walked away as steadily as she was able. Jackaby held out a hand as she approached, but she shied away and stepped past him.

  As she reached me, I saw her face in the light at last. Tears had streaked down her dark cheeks, and her lip was bloodied. She had a strong jaw and broad shoulders for a girl. She looked at me with suspicion as she drew near. I offered her a sympathetic smile. “It’s all right,” I said. “You can lean on me.”

  Her lips shook and fresh tears welled in her eyes, but she nodded and put an arm around my shoulder. She was a foot taller than I was, so I don’t know how much support I actually provided, but she seemed to rally a fraction as she turned back to watch Jackaby a
nd the other men.

  “So you’re a freak, too, huh?” sneered the big man.

  I couldn’t see Jackaby’s face, but I could almost hear the broad grin in his answer. “I’m not generally one for titles, but that is one I’ll embrace with pride.”

  “Whatever,” the man spat. “You can have him. That sick bastard ain’t the innocent virgin from your fairy tale, Mr. Detective Man. And we ain’t the monsters here.”

  “Oh, you seem to have gotten the wrong impression,” Jackaby replied. “The metaphor may be appropriate—but I wasn’t simply speaking figuratively.” He held up one of the little red rocks. “I was explaining what you’re up against. Cherufe’s tears are rare relics, and more than I care to waste tonight. When I packed I was anticipating more menacing monsters than the likes of you. I think we are both fortunate we could conclude our little encounter on reasonable terms. Good day, gentlemen.”

  Jackaby turned and walked away.

  “You are a freak!” the man yelled after him.

  Jackaby kept walking.

  “Better not let me see that sicko around here again!” the man hollered. “His kind don’t deserve to walk free! You should’ve let us finish teaching him a lesson! It was for his own good!”

  Jackaby stopped. His fists were clenched.

  “If I ever see him again, I’ll—” The man never finished his taunt.

  The first red rock hit the ground with an ardent blast. The cobblestones liquefied on contact, and, with a splash of flame, the alleyway in front of the thugs was suddenly glowing with heat, bubbles of bright orange spattering and sizzling as they popped.

  The men fell backward, but Jackaby let fly another stone before they could rally. It arced over their heads and erupted on the other side of the thin alleyway, locking them between two glowing pools of magma. Terror danced across their faces in flickering reds and yellows.

  “If you ever see her again,” my employer growled, “you will remember that monsters pick on the weak and the harmless because it is the monsters who are afraid.” He held the final stone in his fingers and stepped to the edge of the bubbling pool. “And they are right to be afraid.”