Ghosts by Gaslight

by Jack Dann

  “I doubt the barbershop, or your Radziwill, is actually involved,” said Susan. “Think about it. They’ve been there too long, and it’s too public. I expect we’ll find they’ve a new odd-jobs man who lurks in the cellar, or something like that.”

  “Maybe,” replied Magnus. “But it could be they’re all in it, a secret society of barber-illuminati.”

  “Yes, it could,” admitted Susan. “In which case, I will give you the blue pill.”

  Magnus looked at her very seriously. “I really would prefer it didn’t come to that.”

  “Dadd is sure that occasional use of the blue pill will actually advance your cure,” said Susan gently.

  “Dadd is sure of more things than he should be,” said Magnus. “But it’s you I’m worried about. You know I can’t control—”

  “I have the necklace, and the antagonist. I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t hand this over to Dadd?”

  “Yes,” replied Susan, with considerable certainty. “Here we are. Do we go in?”

  “I suppose we do,” said Magnus.

  “YOU WISH ME to shave the beard?” asked Radziwill. “It has barely had a chance to begin.”

  “Cut off in its youth,” sighed Sir Magnus. He rolled his eyes to where Susan was sitting primly on a chair, apparently reading the copy of the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine that she had taken from her bag. “But it has to go.”

  “Interesting place you have here, Mr. Radzorwell,” said Susan over the top of the magazine. “I’ve never seen anywhere like this.”

  “Ladies do not usually come inside,” said Radziwill in a very dampening manner. He began to strop his razor, which both Magnus and Susan noted was silver handled, and possibly the blade was silver too. “It is a gentlemen’s establishment.”

  “Where does that charming little stair go?” asked Susan. She pointed past the row of curtained booths to the far end of the room, where a brass-railed stair curled down beside a wall of massive, ancient stones.

  “The cellar, ma’am, where we store our scents and oils,” said Radziwill.

  “Oh, I should like to see that!” exclaimed Susan. She got up and started to walk towards the stair. But she had hardly taken a step when the curtains of every booth on either side slid back, to reveal twelve other barbers, each holding a silver razor. Radziwill made the thirteenth, and there were no customers in sight.

  “Damn,” exclaimed Magnus, delivering a savage kick to Radziwill’s groin at the same time he leapt out of the chair. The barber grimaced and swung back with the razor, which Magnus countered with a swirl of the sheet that had been around his shoulders a moment before.

  Susan sat back down and opened her bag with a click. Reaching quickly inside, she pulled out a large blue pill.

  “Magnus!”

  Magnus turned his head and opened his mouth. Susan threw the blue pill unerringly down his gullet and immediately reached into the bag to withdraw a necklace of shimmering blue stones, which she dropped over her head.

  “I really wish you weren’t involved in this, Radziwill,” said Magnus, parrying another swipe. “You’re an excellent barber . . . argh!”

  Radziwill looked at his razor in puzzlement. He had swung, but as far as he could tell had cut only the sheet which Magnus had been employing as something between a baffle and a main-gauche.

  Magnus screamed and raised his arm. Only it wasn’t an arm anymore, but a loathsome tentacle, lined with huge suckers that were ringed with glistening fangs.

  Radziwill was clearly the adept, for he immediately recognized what Magnus was becoming. He shouted a word of power that had no effect whatsoever and ran for the door, only to be shot in the head by Susan. She stood on the chair with her back pressed to the wall, the glowing necklace on her breast and a lady’s purse revolver in her hand, the barrel smoking.

  Magnus’s screams quickly became no longer human, many more tentacles manifested out of what had once been his body, and within a minute at the most, there were no more living barber-illuminati.

  The thing that Magnus had become slid across the floor of the shop, squelching through blood and torn flesh towards the front door and the street.

  Susan put her revolver away, took a twisted paper packet from her bag, and stepped off the chair. The monster paid her no attention. One long tentacle began to caress the door, feeling for how it might be opened.

  Susan lifted off the necklace with her left hand. Instantly the creature swung about. Two tentacles shot towards her, sucker-rings protruding, all the teeth out. She calmly ducked aside and threw the contents of the paper across the tentacles, creating a cloud of blue dust that very slowly twisted and danced about on its slow way to the floor.

  It took a few minutes for Magnus to become human again. Susan spent the time preparing a slow match to the store of hair oil in the cellar, being careful not to disturb the daffodil brew that was bubbling on the iron stove in one corner, though she did pocket the comb that was on a worn marble plinth next to the stove. It was a very fine ivory comb engraved with a crest that she recognized at once, though it was not a royal one.

  When she came back up, Magnus had managed to get most of the blood and matter off himself and was wearing a clean robe with a towel wrapped around his head. He had not managed to completely clean the vomit from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were wild.

  “He . . . the adept . . . put a s-s-s-ilence charm and interrupt-me-not on the d-d-door,” he said, teeth chattering. “It will break when you pull it open. N-n-n-ice of them, don’t you think?”

  “Very handy,” agreed Susan. She took him by the arm and pulled the door open, putting two fingers in her mouth to whistle for Carstairs. The cab was just down the street and it came smartly up, so that Susan and Magnus could jump inside and be away at least thirty seconds before smoke began to billow from the underparts of the barbershop.

  “What was I this time?” asked Magnus, as they sped away.

  “I don’t know,” replied Susan. “Something with tentacles. A lot of tentacles.”

  Magnus was silent for a while. He looked out the window at the city and all the people and the life beyond. Susan watched him. Finally he turned to her and spoke.

  “Sometimes I think you are too ready to employ the blue pill.”

  “No!” protested Susan. “I really didn’t expect to need you to transform. I never thought they’d all be in it, or that they would suspect us and be ready. I mean, how could they know we were coming . . . oh, I see.”

  “Yes,” agreed Magnus. “Much more convenient for Mycroft if all the barbers were eliminated. He, too, finds feeding me blue pills useful. Especially when I can be directed against enemies of the state. Sometimes I wonder if he has told Dadd to tell me they are helpful, when I fear that in fact they prolong my condition.”

  Susan nodded and reached out to pull him down, so that his head was on her lap. Magnus resisted for a moment, then relented. Susan took off the towel and lightly scratched his head through his hair.

  “I’ll get better,” whispered Magnus. “No blue pill then, and my nights will be my own.”

  “Yes,” said Susan. “You will get better.”

  She did not look at her bag, and its box of Krongeitz pills, the blue . . . and the yellow. Magnus did not know about the yellow pills.

  Susan hoped he never would.

  Afterword to “The Curious Case of the

  Moondawn Daffodils Murder”

  The genesis for this story came from a recent visit to London. I had just flown in from Australia, and one of the first things I did was to have my hair cut at an old barbershop in Mayfair, at least in part just to stay awake and stave off jet lag. While my hair was being cut I wondered who else might have sat in that same chair over the years. As the barbershop has been in business since 1875, my thoughts naturally turned to the late Victorian era, and of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. Following my tonsorial shortening, I walked t
hrough the Green Park. It was the wrong time of the year for daffodils, and there were no sinister wielders of silver razors, but from that haircut and a short walk in the park, a story idea was sown.

  —GARTH NIX

  Gene Wolfe

  Gene Wolfe was born in 1931 and served as a GI in the Korean War. After many years working as an engineer—both a practicing one and an engineering journalist—he turned in 1984 to full-time fiction writing, having already laid the basis for an acclaimed creative career with his early masterpieces, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, and four-volume The Book of the New Sun.

  Subsequent works, always extremely ambitious and highly praised, have included The Urth of the New Sun, There Are Doors, The Book of the Long Sun, The Book of the Short Sun, The Wizard Knight, and three linked novels set in Ancient Greece and Egypt: Soldier of the Mist, Soldier of Arete, and Soldier of Sidon. Wolfe’s major story collections are The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, Endangered Species, Storeys from the Old Hotel, Castle of Days, Strange Travelers, Innocents Aboard, Starwater Strains, and The Best of Gene Wolfe. His most recent novels are The Sorcerer’s House and Home Fires.

  Gene Wolfe has lived in Barrington, Illinois, for many years, with his wife, Rosemary, and a dog called Bobby.

  GENE WOLFE

  Why I Was Hanged

  [The following account was supplied by a man who owns a great many books but searches fearfully for another, a yellowing pamphlet he may already own. In looking for a quite different title, he stumbled upon this remarkable narrative, which he had never read and could not recall buying. He read it, and says he remembers it almost word for word.]

  MY NAME IS James Brooks. I was brought up in service and trained by my father, himself a valet of some distinction. At the age of eighteen I had the good fortune of obtaining a position with an elderly gentleman, of a good Yorkshire family, whose valet had died. I served him faithfully, and as I believe skillfully, for upwards of three years, at which time he himself closed his eyes for the final time, much mourned by his relations. Young as I was and knowing far less than I then believed of the ways of the world, I hoped for a substantial legacy. He would, I thought, have inserted into his final testament some clause bequeathing a considerable sum to one styled by him my faithful valet. Conceive then, of my disappointment when the will was read. The clause I had so hopefully envisioned was indeed to be found there; but its wording cast all my hopes into that darkling pit from which they have never emerged. My master had accorded the not inconsequential sum of one hundred guineas to my faithful servant Samuel Satterfield, this Samuel Satterfield aforesaid having been, as may be supposed, the one whose passing had, as I thought, so greatly benefited me. My master’s testament had been written, it transpired, some ten years before his demise and had lain untouched in his solicitor’s box until the soil had been heaped upon his grave. Samuel Satterfield having predeceased his master, it was ruled that the sum vouchsafed him should go to his widow, an ill-favoured and ill-tempered hag who had begun life, as I have been reliably informed, as a scullery maid. In short, I received not a whit more than the stable boy, which was nothing.

  Greatly embittered, I left domestic service and went to sea. My misadventures there I shall pass over in silence; but four years later, having suffered more than a sufficiency of horrid weather, bad food, and kicks from the mates, I resolved to return to my profession, registering with an agency that offered to supply domestic servants of good character to employers for a fee.

  Months passed. My savings, never large, dwindled to nothing. I did whatever work I could find, and rough and dirty work it was for the most part. At last, when I had resolved to return to sea, which I must do or starve, the agency informed me that I was to appear for an interview with a prospective employer. It was only by the generosity of an acquaintance of my late father’s that I acquired decent clothing for the occasion, he having grown overstout for the trousers, shirt, and waistcoat that hung so slack upon my wasted frame. A jacket was, providentially, provided by the agency.

  My employer-to-be was a young gentleman of fashion, high coloured and good humoured, and so clearly wealthy and well tailored that my gaze fixed upon him as a starving cur’s upon a beefsteak. After several prosaic questions regarding a manservant’s duties as I understood them, questions easy to anticipate, he inquired, “What do you know of foxhunting, Brooks?” The intensity apparent in his voice and the narrowing of his eyes showed me plainly that this question was of greatest importance: that the entire affair hinged upon my answer. I would gladly have proclaimed myself an expert if I could, but I knew that the most trifling enquiry would at once reveal any such imposture. “Nothing, sir,” I replied. “I fear that I know nothing at all of it.”

  “Thank Heaven for that!” was my future employer’s rejoinder. “After discovering me ignorant of it, my last man would speak of nothing else. If I hadn’t discharged him, I should have been forced to throw him under a train.”

  My joy was complete and perfectly unbounded, so that the latter part of his remarkable statement made but small impression on my mind at the time, though it was to return with great force.

  He had commodious rooms in the West End, and in them I discovered items of apparel well suited to my duties, items abandoned, as it seemed, by my predecessor in his service. These I examined with delight and at once made my own. As soon as I could, I repaired my scant wardrobe from my wages and from the gifts, sometimes generous, accorded me by my master’s friends. I should mention that I was our entire staff, save for a fat and rather pleasant woman, styled the housekeeper but in fact a cook, whose services we enjoyed but three days per week.

  Parliament adjourned, the season ended, and the heat and dirt of the city, which had been most mercifully swept aside, resumed. Wealthy families and single men of fashion alike retired to the country or the seaside, and we with them. My new master’s parents resided in Westmoreland, not far from this antiquated town of Windermere in which my life must end. The house is large and old, and in part ruinous. It is said to have been occupied for a time by Cromwell’s Roundheads, and boasts what is called a priest’s hole, this though in my judgment it looks more like a Necessary Closet. Here there was a large staff, at first distrustful but quickly welcoming when it was seen that I was adept at my duties and disinclined to shirk.

  In London, I had gloried in my return to service, in light work I well understood and the entire absence of hectoring officers. Here my life was indeed delightful. I would, I resolved, hold to my post at all costs. My new master and I would grow old together; and should death come first for me I should bless him as I breathed my last. Little did I know what was to come!

  There is not one of the visitations I endured that is not burned forever in my memory, but none is seared more clearly or more deeply than the first. I lay abed, having slept soundly, I believe, for some hours. Waking, I saw bending over me a maiden of mist whose hair was night and whose eyes were stars. Her hand moved toward my face—it stroked my brow, and I was conscious of no touch but only of a sensation of cold, as though I slept before an open window through which snow had blown.

  I sat up, and she was gone. I rose and lit the gas, opened the door and looked out at the empty hallway, and in short did every foolish thing that may be imagined, all of them achieving every success that might be expected. That is to say, they availed nothing at all.

  It may have been a week or a fortnight before she returned; I recall only that I had nearly been persuaded—this by my own arguments, for I had confided in no one—that the apparition had been a dream, the waking fantasy of an ill-ordered mind.

  My master was in the habit of bathing before he retired each Saturday evening. Upon that occasion, his bath had not been ready at the accustomed time, this due to a mechanical difficulty with the apparatus employed to heat the water. He, being still rather in his cups, had berated me soundly for it, and had at last struck me a good, solid blow with his fist. I had suffered worse aboard t
he Jack Robinson, yet the injustice rankled. Thus I, who most frequently welcomed the embrace of Morpheus while the wick still smouldered, as the expression has it, lay awake that night staring at the ceiling, foolishly tormented. How might I have repaired the geyser, as the apparatus is styled? How might I have heated water upon the kitchen stove in more timely fashion than I had? Might I have lit the bedroom fire and employed that? And many more such questions, equally futile.

  After lying sleepless for an hour or so, I chanced to glance to my left and beheld her melting through the door. Although dressed in nothing more substantial than an old linen nightshirt, I sprang from my bed. Indeed, I do not remember it, yet surely I did so, for I found myself standing and trembling before her. Should I have shouted? To this day I do not know; I know only that I was so unmanned by astonishment, and, aye, by terror, that I could not speak. My mouth opened, I believe. And closed, too, more than once. But not a sound did I utter.

  I saw her as one sees moonlight, thin and lacking all substance, yet undeniably present. Did I think I dreamt? you ask. No, not that or any other thing; write, rather, that my mind was emptied of all thought, every thought having been driven out by fear.

  She smiled, and my fear would have grown greater if it could. She gestured; at first I knew not at what, but when she repeated the gesture I saw it was at the stocking I had been darning while the light lasted. I had hurried the work, I confess, in the hope of completing it ere darkness fell; in that I had failed, and thus had left it, still incomplete, by the window, upon the only chair my room in that house afforded. When at last I understood what it was she indicated, I picked up the stocking and offered it to her. Let me say here, sir, and say now that there was no odour as of brimstone nor any such thing about her. Nor did she smell of grave-soil, decay, or the like. No, it was as though in that soft July I had winded a winter’s night, cold and silent.