Ghost in the Cogs: Steam-Powered Ghost Stories

by Unknown

  At last, satisfied with himself, Ajith kissed his creation goodnight. He gave no indication of when or if I would be relieved of my post. We waited until his footsteps disappeared down the outside corridor and both collapsed. I sagged against the door; Laksha draped over the arm of the chair. Its shoulders heaved, but when it lifted the wooden face, its eyes were tearless. After a long, painful moment, Laksha said, “I never thought I would miss the box.”

  “I wish there was something I could do for you,” I said.

  Laksha hummed, a lungless sigh. “This is far from the first time I have longed for you to be my master.”

  “I didn’t know.” I drifted away from the door, reluctant to get close despite myself. I had the queerest feeling that the automaton would smell of rotting flesh. “I thought you were . . . content.”

  “I would not have said so before. Even now, I feel most disloyal. I would never want to hurt Ajith Sahib. Nor you. And I can see it does hurt you. I should have held my tongue.”

  “Blast it!” I slammed my fist against my thigh, the only thing I could be sure of not damaging. “I should have never sworn that oath!”

  “I am most glad you did,” Laksha said. It lowered its face, pressing steepled fingers against its veil where the motionless mouth was hidden. “I am most glad you are here still. But if it presses your honor too much, please do not suffer on my account.”

  “It is not my suffering that concerns me.”

  Laksha’s head turned, looking at the bed where a corpse had lain not long ago. “I wonder if he expects me to pretend to sleep. Have you thought about how much Maina Sahib would hate this?”

  “How so?” I asked. There were so many distasteful things about the situation. I could not guess which would bother the late woman most.

  “Do you not recall the quarrel she waged with Ajith Sahib when the British came? When he would not use me to support the resistance?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “He was more bothered about spies catching wind of her talk. But it seems to have been a wise move on his part.”

  “Wise, perhaps,” Laksha said, “but it makes this seem all the more foolish. After his effort to avoid dangerous wishes, she would be furious to see him do a thing like this. To preserve her memory in the most perverse way imaginable.”

  “I care little for a dead woman’s fury at present.”

  There was a hiss like steam let free. We turned our heads toward the darkness of the wall niche. Free of its dented cage, the automated bird hopped forward, light glinting off the copper beak. With a crack of breaking glass and a splash of spilled oil, the lamps went out, and the room fell to shadow.

  “Erom!” Laksha’s wooden hands pawed at me in the dark. I gripped its arm and pulled it to its feet. Flames sputtered in the broken lamps, casting shapeless swatches of gold across the floor. The bird chirped down at our feet. It was a ball of fire, its feathers burnt to black wicks. The bird threw itself into the folds of Laksha’s skirts. Flames licked up, devouring embroidery and sinking into the fabric. The jinni screamed, the huge and hollow keen of a creature facing a fate never meant for it.

  I yanked my knife free and slashed at the fabric, dragging smoldering sections away from Laksha and stamping them out. The bird, featherless now but still chirruping sweetly, launched at the automaton. Laksha stumbled back, caught a foot on a rug, and tumbled, meeting the floor with a crack. The bird dove after, clawing and biting, tearing the veil and scoring the fresh paint from the wood. I grabbed the flapping machine, searing my fingers on the metal, and threw it out into the hall, bolting the door after it.

  Laksha scrambled up. The automaton was half-naked, jagged-edged scraps fluttering around it. “Your hand—”

  “Later,” I said. “I have to get you out of here. I don’t know who . . . how that bird . . . it must have been tampered with, cursed—”

  “Possessed.” Laksha staggered back and leaned against a bedpost. The voice behind that unmoving mouth filled the room with ancient prayers. All I wanted was to sit at its feet and listen, but I took a deep breath, choking on the smell of burnt faux feathers, and turned away. First, I searched the chest at the bed’s foot for a cloak. Laksha stood spellbound as I draped the cloth over its hunched shoulders. The prayers went on while I led Laksha to the door, holding it behind me as I nudged my way through.

  No sign of the bird. I grabbed Laksha’s hand and ran.

  “What are we doing?” Laksha asked in gaps between prayers.

  “Ajith.” I tugged it down the next hall, yanking it to keep upright against our speed. “We need to get you out of that—”

  Something huge and golden bounded around the corner, the wide maw yawning toward us. I jerked back, skidding and slamming into the wall. A metal lion from the gates stalked toward us, gears clanking in limbs that were never designed for this.

  “You will not find my husband,” the lion said, Maina’s voice ringing hollow in the metal chest. “He dishonored the dead, and now, he has joined them.” The giant head lowered, turning the lion’s open mouth into a wicked grin. “Be a good wife and throw yourself on the pyre.”

  I knocked Laksha to the ground as the lion sprang. The metal tail lashed my arm. Blood seeped down my sleeve. The lion skidded, claws squealing on the tile. Grunting, I got to my knees and scrambled for the nearest door, Laksha tucked against me. The lion came loping after us. We slammed the door, catching Laksha’s cloak underneath. The lion pounded at the wood; claws snagged in the cloak, yanking Laksha down. The automaton struggled to get off its knees, wooden fingers trembling at the clasp that would have freed it. I yanked the cloak off. The fabric disappeared with a vicious rending noise.

  We collapsed against the door, our shoulders pushing back against the battering of the metal lion. Laksha sobbed, tearless, face still. “Shankar Sahib, dead! Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.” It turned to me, glass eyes half-closed. “Leave me, my Erom, if you love me at all. You have no oath to keep anymore. We cannot hope to escape a spirit, not while bound in matter.”

  “Then we unbind you,” I said. “If we get you out of that monstrosity, maybe Maina will—”

  “How could we?” Laksha asked, voice soft and unsteady. “Ajith was the only one with that power. If he is dead, the mastership passes to . . .” It faltered, glanced at the door, and clasped its hands to its chest. “Perhaps . . .”

  “What?”

  Laksha stood and absently brushed off the remains of the torn, ashy dress. “Get up and hide yourself.”

  I pulled myself up, braced against the door as the lion continued the assault. “Please, do not let her kill you.”

  “I hope very much to avoid that,” it said. “Go, and do not reveal yourself. If I die, at least I am a slave no longer.” Laksha laid a hand on my cheek, and for a moment, I felt neither wood nor leather but its own flesh, searing with smokeless fire. I drank in the heat as long as I could, then stepped away.

  Concealed behind a pillar, I watched the jinni throw open the door. The lion crouched at the threshold, face and shoulder dented and claws trailing curls of shaved wood. The metal haunches swayed, ready to strike.

  “Mistress of my fate!” Laksha cried and fell upon the threshold. The lion hesitated. “In honor and memory of the departed Ajith Shankar, I present myself to you, prepared to fulfill the desires of your heart as I am able.”

  The lion bolted upright, teeth bared. “What is this?”

  “You are the heir,” Laksha said. “While you are here to command me, I am yours. What is it you wish?”

  “That abomination melted to nothingness!” Maina’s words were nearly lost in her echoing shriek. My ears popped as if I’d gone up in an airship.

  “I will gladly comply,” Laksha said. “But before I do this, be sure you have no other wishes. To destroy the machine, I must either die or be freed of it.”

  The lion’s tail swished, grating across the floor. “Free yourself, then. I want nothing else but to see my Ajith again.”

  Laksh
a rose on creaking knees, eyes closed and hands open to heaven. “I will guide you to him, so you may be together in your next life. Say these words after me, and we shall both be free.”

  Ancient language roiled through the room. As Maina repeated the words, her replica began to glow, a singeing light that made me hide my face. The air smelled of clean fire. A fingerprint of heat pressed against my cheek. Find me. But not too soon.

  When the song ended, the metal lion lay stiffly on its side. Where the automaton had been, there was nothing but a smudge of silver ash.

  I left India that night.

  Parker Goodreau is a writer and artist from New England. Since they were eight years old, they’ve been pleading for scary stories. Back then they got an ad-libbed rendition of “The Cask of Amontillado,” which may explain a few things. Now, after being raised on vampires, hauntings, and 3 AM horror movies with more screaming than dialogue, they’re writing their own stories. It was the next best thing, after they learned they couldn’t make a living as the next Poe Toaster. They are most comfortable writing about teenagers, monsters, and teenagers who are monsters. Their free time is split between a busy schedule of goofing off on the internet and creating a weekly webcomic about superpowers and lying.

  City of Spirits

  Christopher Paul Carey

  I drift in the City of Spirits, borne on currents of soul-stuff and dreams. Below, soft moonlight glints on canals ringed like the waterways of lost Atlantis. In their center, a maelstrom of phantasms swirls around a massive turret. I, too, am drawn toward the tower, eddying among vaporous wisps that have yet to move on from the domain of the living.

  A susurrus of anguish builds the deeper I sink into the vortex. Had I lips to part, I might cry aloud, but the abode of my consciousness is as aetherous as the undertow of souls. Instead, as my masters in the order have taught me, I align my awareness with the celestial macrocosm. The radiant warmth of the Most Holy Sun Absolute permeates my essence, and I return gently to my body.

  Beside my bed, an orgone wheel whirs in the darkness, its spokes gently fanning my face with cool spring air and a pleasant hint of ozone. Has the mechanism drawn the deleterious elements from the atmosphere and somehow increased my sensitivity to the netherworld? I am unsure. I have felt unsettled since arriving yesterday evening in this utopie des fantômes. But then, my training puts me in deeper sympathy with the living; should it be so strange I am more attuned to life’s opposite?

  I swing out of bed and switch off the wheel. A moonbeam glances upon the wall clock, whose hands trudge pitilessly toward daybreak but a short hour away. I tie up the tangles of my dark hair and tread barefoot across the uneven floorboards on my way to the water closet but pause before the room’s tall window. A half mile from my hotel, across a bull’s-eye of canals, rises the dark turret from my dream body’s nocturnal excursion.

  A thrill quavers through me, and for a moment, I forget my morning breathing exercises. I begin to chide myself but stop. It is not every day one has arranged for a visit to the Odic Forge.

  Mr. Boisgilbert himself greets me as I step off the platform at the docks and set foot at last on Nininger’s innermost island. Gondoliers cry out behind me as heavy traffic plies the canal. Above, schools of fish-shaped aerolifts swim lazily through the cerulean sky.

  “Miss . . . Meteora!” The short, podgy man lifts his high hat, his smile crooked with uncertainty in whether to call me by my given name or my surname. I shine back at him to banish the awkward moment, accustomed to the unease my sole appellation thrusts upon new acquaintances. Blast the monks who took me in as a babe and christened me thus. One day, I shall dream up my own patronymic.

  Boisgilbert clasps my hand warmly as I rest my parasol on my shoulder. “It must be a long and tiring voyage from Athos.”

  I sigh with not-so-feigned fatigue, discerning no crease of suspicion on the man’s round face that he knows of my true homeland in the Himalayas. “A worse trip for the looming war, what with the Protectorate’s thugs all about.”

  The man nods, but I cannot fail to notice his furtive glance at the young man untying the boat that has brought me here, as if he thinks the gondolier may be a spy eager to report us to his superiors. Nininger, though a neutral city-state, lies surrounded on all sides by the Industrial Union of America, a close ally to the Protectorate. I am relieved at the outcome of my little test. Boisgilbert exhibits no sympathy toward the saber-rattling Gilded nations.

  “Put your mind at rest, Miss Meteora,” he says. “No war will ever besiege Nininger. We’re a peaceful folk here. We wouldn’t think of tearing down anyone else’s dreams, so who would think to tear down ours?”

  I smile politely, though my trained ear hears the lie within the inner octaves of his voice. “Why indeed? C’est le meilleur des mondes possibles.”

  The man brightens and motions me to accompany him. We walk across the wooden boards to the edge of the docks and pass up a high rise of steps to a pedestrian-filled embankment circling the tower. Here, a young man with amazing blue eyes flags down Boisgilbert and takes him aside. It is clear the two have pressing business.

  While they speak, I catch Boisgilbert’s eye and motion to a bench some distance along the embankment. My guide, listening intently to the young man, smiles and nods me on.

  I walk along the smooth white tiles, noticing the distant looks in the eyes of the passersby. In recent years, Nininger has become something of a lodestone for the psychically inclined. Those who stroll the court are doubtless mediums in the service of Boisgilbert, charged with maintaining the Odic Forge.

  I sit down on the marble bench, placing my handbag with its precious contents beside me. Clasping my hands in the manner of the Third Requisite Exercise, I draw my attention inside my body, moving it along the microcosmic orbit to cultivate my relationship with my inner unity. I will need to be as focused as possible for my encounter with the forge. In the stark daylight, my astral aura should go unnoticed by the mediums about me, their crude psychic abilities being of such a low order they cannot possibly penetrate my spiritual refinements.

  A shadow falls over me, and I open my eyes. A rugged-faced man in a dark denim suit looms above, his mouth gaping. My eyes fall to his rough, callused hands and then rise to take in the bulges of hardened biceps straining against the arms of his jacket. Instead of looking on with the blank stare of a medium, he rakes me with an almost lustful gaze.

  My pulse races as the Third Requisite fails me. I have been rash to practice my exercise in public. The shadow has allowed the man to discern my astral body’s lavender glow.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt, ma’am, but I don’t recognize that style.” The man’s voice twangs with the rural accent of the Industrial Union. He extends a gloved hand. “I apologize, miss. The name’s Meinhof. Captain—retired—of the Industrial Army.”

  “The secrets of the spirits are not to be discussed, Mr. Meinhof,” I say firmly, hoping to dissuade the man from further conversation.

  He continues undeterred. “Most folks here go in for a séance or use the speaking dial to communicate with the spirits, ma’am.” The man’s thick, joined eyebrows rise. “And here you is, chattin’ it up in the broad daylight by your lonesome. You one of them Odic channelers? I seen you strollin’ with the big man himself over yonder.” His arm moves strangely as he motions to Mr. Boisgilbert across the court, a hiss of ozone-scented steam escaping from a shoulder vent in his suit. I suddenly realize the man’s arm is mechanical, like the thousands of prostheses I saw being mass-produced in the factories during my stay in Altruria while journeying from the Himalayas—a grim promise of the coming war.

  “Oh, this?” he says, lowering the arm. “Don’t let it scare you none, ma’am. A souvenir from my days in Lomellini’s army. The plutocrat as took it from me, he ain’t among the living no more.” He raises his gaze to the tower behind me, a gruff laugh escaping him. “Fact, for all I know, he’s cursed to swim ’round that forge for all eternity.”

&
nbsp; I gather my bag and rise from the bench, a shiver running through me at the memory of this morning’s dream sojourn.

  “Now before you go, ma’am, mightn’t I make an offer?” I begin to protest, but he speaks over me. “Now hear me out. Whatever Boisgilbert is paying you, I’m on good terms with someone out east in the union who can double it.”

  “You think me a mere channeler for hire?” I cry in protest, my indignation not entirely false. With my hands, I mimic a meaningless arcane gesture at the man. “Now be gone before I call forth the spirits of the forge and strip your mind bare of its wits!”

  The man backs away, fear dwarfing his indignation. He makes a warding sign and stalks off just as Mr. Boisgilbert appears beside me.

  Boisgilbert swears and then begs apologies. “I’m not sure how that I.A. goon got on the island, but I’ll make sure he’s escorted off immediately.” He signals to his companion, the young man with the icy blue eyes. The pale fellow rubs his hands together, then holds out his palm—fingers pointing in the direction of the departing man—and blows on it. Instantly, the man who accosted me stops in his tracks, his shoulders slouching as if all will has left him.

  “Headhunters!” Boisgilbert curses under his breath. “Industrial Union goons buzzing about like gnats, wanting to buy off my mediums—to use them as living weapons in their infernal war, of all things! Bah! They know nothing of what we do here!”