Ghosts by Gaslight

by Jack Dann

  “Awful business either way.”

  “Indeed. But it makes you think. Both versions may be correct. The poison could have been a sedative and Pentewere awoke in darkness to find himself entombed alive.”

  “Yes, well.” Now Herbert Kray was the one to bring out his timepiece, an impressive gold one, and check the time. “Elleston will be here soon. This mechanical mummy of yours will really take his fancy. He has always loved automata.”

  Again I pretended to sip my port. “I’m pleased to hear it. And do excuse my rambling on like this. It’s having that casket in here. I’m not one to worry about mummies coming back to life, but the darkness now, that is another thing. It bothers me. Have you ever wondered what might happen in total darkness, Dr. Kray?”

  Irritation showed briefly in Kray’s eyes, though it was brought quickly under control. “Presumably nothing, sir. The workings of air and silence, I suppose. Time doing its thing. In windowless rooms the movement of dust particles. In caves the drip of water, I suspect. The formation of stalactites. You tell me.”

  “But that is unconsidered darkness surely. The darkness of nature, chance, and random circumstance. What of the considered kind?”

  Herbert Kray had no idea how to respond to such a question or, ultimately, even what it meant. Things were taking a definitely queer turn, but if there were treasures, even trinkets, to be gained, he had resolved to be politeness itself. “If you mean to tell me, sir, pray do. I admit that your exact point escapes me.”

  “If I consider it, I change it.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “By the participating mind, Dr. Kray. Our minds, our very thoughts, galvanise the thing observed at its most basic level. There are religions that turn on this way of thinking. Someday it will be proven beyond doubt as a scientific fact as well.”

  Kray chuckled. “I’m sure. So I might argue that I could affect this rather fine port by reflecting upon it.”

  “You may not be able to measure the shift enough for it to matter, but yes. First, you are unconvinced, sceptical. Second, it would take more time than I believe you would care to give it.”

  Kray chuckled again. “You probably need to do better than that, Mr. Trenton. That’s the refrain of mystics and charlatans the world over. You must believe! You must allow time! Have the correct discipline. Oh, and a small donation will help to purchase paraffin for the lamps during such a vigil. Your support will be ever so greatly appreciated.”

  I made sure that I smiled before pressing my subject again. “I ask my question because the rage and anguish, the despair and agony felt by Unknown Man E waking in his coffin could have been enough to change the imprisoning darkness, if you follow my drift. That darkness would have been the intensely considered kind, I suggest.”

  “Doubtless true, old fellow. We can only wonder what Maspero and his assistants must have felt when that particular coffin was opened. The pharaoh’s curse of the melodramas!”

  I turned my glass in my hands. “Or simply sufficiently changed darkness. Nothing more.”

  “Well, let’s pray that fellow behind you had a peaceful and easy time of it.”

  “On the contrary, Dr. Kray. I have it on good authority that the fellow within was definitely buried alive. Unlike Pentewere, or whoever Unknown Man E happens to be, this mummy had an accompanying papyrus telling his story.”

  Kray’s eyes widened. “You have this papyrus?”

  “I do, and had it translated some years ago. Best of all, it is that rarity amongst Egyptian funerary texts, not the usual fragments of the Amduat, not a list of personal accomplishments, but an actual account of a nonroyal burial.”

  “Nonroyal?”

  “And of a desperate reckoning. His name is Panuhe, Dr. Kray, a luckless courtier who murdered the lesser princess with whom he was smitten when he could not have her for himself. Her slighted husband was high vizier and dealt with him accordingly, had him sealed up in a rough-hewn annexe in her own modest tomb. All very sordid, I know, the very stuff of melodrama in any age!”

  Suddenly the clock in the hall began chiming. At the same time, the bells of St. Paul’s started sounding across the river. Bendeck’s knock came mere moments later.

  Kray’s relief was palpable, yet quickly replaced by a natural concern. “There were other things in the annexe, did you say?”

  I heard Mrs. Danvers answering the door, heard voices in the hall. “You are being mischievous, Dr. Kray. I deliberately did not say.”

  Kray grinned. “Of course. Of course. Look, old man, about this three o’clock thing. Do you think—?”

  I anticipated him. “Best we say that you arrived just a few minutes ago. The keen enthusiast arriving a tad early.”

  Kray nodded. “Splendid. Greatly appreciated.”

  Mrs. Danvers showed Elleston Bendeck into the room and left us, closing the door behind her. It was her final duty for me. Her salary was paid; I would never see her again.

  Bendeck was a portly man in his late fifties with grey eyes and steel grey hair and as well turned out as Kray was, though wearing one of the new American suits that had become all the fashion lately. Again the pleasantries were hardly started before he was crying out in astonishment and delight as Ramose repeated his earlier performance, stilting over to fetch the final port tray.

  Then, with both men seated before the fire holding their glasses, sharing first in the bewildering eccentricity of my toast to the King, then to the success of our negotiations, I prepared to enter our final phase. This time the port contained a strong-enough sedative, though one sufficient to cause mere muscular debilitation rather than unconsciousness. I wanted my guests awake.

  “Dr. Bendeck, while awaiting your arrival I was just now showing your colleague that casket behind you and suggesting that it is quite likely the handiwork of the reburial commissions of the Twentieth Dynasty.”

  “Indeed. Twentieth Dynasty, you say?” Bendeck craned his neck to see, pointedly ignoring any social impropriety in our apparently having commenced proceedings without him. He dealt in antiquities, not always from reputable suppliers. He knew to go with the flow of events if ultimately to his advantage.

  “I was also suggesting that it is effectively a Shaddowwes Box, such as Dr. John Dee was said to possess and even William Shakespeare. Not a Shaddowwes Box in intention, mind, more by circumstance, purest chance.”

  “Right.” He turned to his partner. “I see that you have the advantage of me, Kray. Perhaps, Mr. Trenton, you might care to—”

  But the door to the drawing room slammed open then and stopped his words. Through that doorway came an old bath chair in which sat slumped none other than Charles Minchin, clearly in a torpor, as if just now roused from an opium sleep. And that wasn’t the only cause for amazement. The chair was being pushed by another mummy, stilting and propping as best it could, and the door was now being closed by yet another.

  “Minchin!” Bendeck cried, and Kray did too, more in astonishment at the sight of additional clockwork manikins appearing in the room than at seeing their colleague like this, both men rising to their feet, and doing so unsteadily, I noted, as the sedative took effect.

  “Our final guest, gentlemen,” I announced, watching as Ahmose wheeled Minchin in alongside Bendeck’s armchair. Senawe had closed the door and now came prop-stilting over to join Ramose and Ahmose. Then, in startling unison, the three mummiforms began hooking away the bandages across their stomachs, each drawing forth a golden dagger concealed there, all three brandishing them in an inevitably comical but clearly menacing fashion.

  “Trenton, what’s going on?” Bendeck demanded.

  “Not Trenton!” Minchin slurred the words. “That’s Salteri! Lucas Salteri.”

  “What’s that you say?” Kray cried. “Salteri?”

  “Left ’im in the tomb,” Minchin managed, drooling as he spoke. “Left ’im in the bloody tomb!”

  “You did, Minchin,” I said. “Took everything and sealed it up again. But the fell
ah I’d bought the papyrus from had sent his brothers to follow us. They meant to loot the place themselves, you see, but wanted to have this document translated first before attempting it. That’s why they sold it to me. They were being cautious. I mean, gentlemen, how many tombs have a papyrus in a sealed canopic-style vessel deliberately left at their main entrance, right beneath the traditional seal of the nine bound captives? Our vengeful vizier wanted posterity, possibly the great gods, to know Panuhe’s story. Anyway, the brothers released me, and we found this casket in its hidden annexe.”

  “The brothers—” Kray could barely manage the words. “Not these?”

  “My three friends here? Hardly. Well, parts of them at least.”

  I was now moving to the doorway, about to close and lock it behind me. Mrs. Danvers had long since departed the premises. The mummies stood with their gilded daggers between the three men in the chairs and the room’s only exit.

  “You surely do not hope to scare us with a few sideshow gimmicks, Salteri?” Bendeck called, his words slurred.

  “No, Dr. Bendeck. They are mere diversions, window dressing to distract you from the sound of additional clockwork now operating at the casket behind you. If you turn your heads, if you can manage it, you will notice that a special mechanism has already been activated, is even now preparing to apply pressure to the casket.”

  “What, an’ set ’nother mummy on us?” Bendeck said. The words were still recognizable.

  “Hardly. Just as the papyrus says, the body in that coffin was never mummified.”

  “I don’t follow,” Kray said, slumped heavily in his chair.

  “Unlike Unknown Man E, this sorry fellow truly was interred alive in that casket, bound and helpless. He filled that darkness, gentlemen. Surely changed it in more than a casual way. I now give you that darkness. It is my gift to you.”

  And with that I extinguished the remaining lights, closed and locked the heavy mahogany door, and arranged the special bolster at the bottom to shut out all hope of illumination.

  All timed. All of it. The pressure edges would be touching the wood by now, relentless. A true full minute to the splintering point, so far as I could judge. But now it was ten seconds to step through the front door, eight more to turn the key behind me. Five seconds for the front steps. Twelve paces along the pavement, fifteen, possibly twenty.

  Then darkness in darkness.

  And the screaming.

  Afterword to “The Shaddowwes Box”

  As so often happens, “The Shaddowwes Box” came from a blending of things. First there was a lifelong interest in Egyptology, and more specifically in the circumstances surrounding the fate of Unknown Man E in the 1881 Maspero cache and how it must have been for the poor wretch whose burial it was.

  I already had the opening line from earlier in 2010 and fancied doing a mummy story at last, but where to take it? The invitation from the editors brought the Maspero connection to mind and some even earlier reading on the mind’s effects on the material world. If we can allow that the properties of water and ice crystals can be changed by the human observer, why not other things?

  Completing the inspiration package were Shakespeare’s spelling of shadow as “shaddowwe” and the Italian word for tomb robbers: tombaroli.

  —TERRY DOWLING

  Garth Nix

  Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. A full-time writer since 2001, he has previously worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. Garth’s novels include the award-winning fantasies Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen and the YA SF novel Shade’s Children. His fantasy books for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence; and the seven books of The Keys to the Kingdom series. His books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, and the Australian, and his work has been translated into thirty-eight languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children.

  GARTH NIX

  The Curious Case of the

  Moondawn Daffodils Murder

  As Experienced by Sir Magnus Holmes and Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike

  HOLMES IS HERE, Inspector,” announced the sergeant, peering around the door of Inspector Lestrade’s office, which was currently occupied by the newly promoted Inspector McIntyre, as Lestrade was on his holiday. “In a manner of speaking, that is.”

  McIntyre, aware of the susceptibility of those risen from the ranks to pranks from those less fortunate, chose to play a straight bat.

  “What do you mean, in a manner of speaking?” he asked calmly, placing the file he had been reading slowly down upon Lestrade’s desk. “Is he or is he not present in the antechamber?”

  “Well, he is present,” said the sergeant. His name was Cumber and his intellect was not particularly finely honed. “Only it isn’t Mr. Sherlock Holmes, as you invited.”

  McIntyre set both his hands flat on the table, as they trembled with visible tension.

  “You don’t mean to say that Mr. Mycroft Holmes has come to see me!”

  McIntyre was well aware of Mr. Mycroft Holmes’s importance within the government, and the range and power of his influence. He also knew that the elder Holmes never left his club, and he could not even begin to consider just how much more serious the case before him must be if Mycroft Holmes himself had come to consult upon it. Why, it was more than the mountain going to Mahomet, it was unprecedented, it was—

  The sergeant broke into McIntyre’s slightly panicked thoughts.

  “No, it isn’t Mr. Mycroft Holmes. It’s a Sir Magnus Holmes.”

  “Sir Magnus Holmes . . .” muttered the inspector. “I don’t believe I’ve even heard of the fellow.”

  “He has a woman with him,” said the sergeant darkly. “One of them modern women.”

  “What!?” exploded McIntyre. “If this is all some sort of joke, Cumber, it’s gone too far.”

  “Not a joke,” said Cumber. He paused for a moment to reflect, then added, “Least, not that I know of. Shall I send them in?”

  “No!” roared McIntyre. He thumped his fist on the desk, making the file jump and his half-empty teacup rattle on its saucer, the tea inside almost slopping over the edge.

  “Very good, sir,” replied Sergeant Cumber. He started to close the door, but just before it snapped shut, he added, “ ’E did say Mr. Sherlock sent him over, sir.”

  The door shut before McIntyre could answer. He sat there with his mouth open for an instant; then with an explosion that this time did send his tea slopping over the saucer and on to the desk, he erupted from behind the chair and stalked to the door. A big man, who had fought heavyweight for his uniformed division before joining Scotland Yard, he flung the door open with a weighty fist and was all set to bellow again when he saw that he was being stared at by a lady and a gentleman, and by Cumber, who clearly had not quite gathered the intellectual power to tell them to go away in a nice fashion suitable to their obviously superior social standing.

  McIntyre saw a relatively young man, perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, with a not very memorable face, short pale hair, and something on his upper lip and chin that could charitably be viewed as a Vandyke beard. He was only of medium height, had a slight build, and was wearing a very well-cut grey morning suit, made somewhat eccentric by a curiously shaped and very heavy gold watch-chain visible on his waistcoat, which was surmounted by a pearly white stiff-necked shirt with a dark red ascot tie, again made odd by the large and peculiar tiepin that was thrust through it, which had the appearance of being made of a bundle of small golden sticks and so looked rather raffish.

  The woman next to him was a very different matter. She was of a similar age, but where he was very much of average appearance, she was striking, dark-haired, and blue-eyed. Her charms were subdued under her not very flattering black-and-white dress that was somewhat reminiscent of a u
niform, though it was drawn in tightly at the waist and had an elegant ruffled neck of obviously very expensive lace. She carried a small leather Gladstone bag, which was not at all a normal item of apparel for a lady of quality. McIntyre automatically noted she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “Inspector McIntyre!” called out the man. “We were just trying to impress on the good sergeant here that we had come to call upon you, at the express request of my cousin Sherlock.”

  “Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” asked McIntyre warily. “He is your cousin?”

  “Second cousin, actually,” said the man. “Something to do with our grandfathers. I can’t quite recall, but my father grew up with Sherlock, and when my grandfather gambled away the old place and my father had to turn to trade, Sherlock was one of the few who stood by him, or so Father always said, though I don’t—”

  “And you are?” asked McIntyre, cutting short what otherwise seemed likely to be a long discourse on Holmes family history.

  “Oh, I’m Sir Magnus Holmes,” said the man happily. “Just plain Magnus Holmes till Father dropped off the perch last year. He was made a baronet in ’87, services to the Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers . . . Lucky for me, if they’d left it any later I’d have missed out inheriting. Makes it easier to get a decent table, don’t you know, and theatre tickets—”

  “Indeed,” said McIntyre. He looked at the door to the corridor, which had a glass window and thus might show the shadows of any observers, as he was beginning to wonder whether Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself was playing a trick upon him. Seeing nothing untoward, he glanced at the lady, who had maintained her station a pace or two away from Sir Magnus and was looking with detached interest at both the inspector and the baronet.

  “And Miss . . .”

  “Allow me to introduce Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike,” declared Sir Magnus. “My . . . um . . . keeper.”