Ghost in the Cogs: Steam-Powered Ghost Stories

by Unknown

  “Arkright . . .” I started to say as the door opened again, and the light orange glow of candles spilled forth. Our captor, so recently dead of suicide, held them in both hands as he stood in the jamb leading to Carnacki’s kitchen.

  “Hello, friends,” our captor said. His voice was unchanged, but his cadence was different. No longer limned with braggadocio and hinting at violence, it was warm and chipper. “Clever man, coming to the place I love best rather than to the place I died to offer up this vessel to me.”

  Taylor said it first, “Carnacki.”

  “In some flesh, if not quite my own,” the man said. “I . . . oh, I have it! Flint! That was the name of our criminal and, indeed, our savior.” He turned to his gang and nodded toward a door that I had never seen opened in all my visits to this Chelsea bachelor flat. “What you are looking for is in there, men. The key is behind the clock on the mantle.”

  The man—Carnacki—placed the candles on the table, pushing them into the bread and puddings for lack of proper sticks, and looked expectantly at me. I rose from Carnacki’s old chair and took up my usual spot while Carnacki settled into his.

  “The Borders is a marvelous place. I don’t regret having met my doom there. There was an old Roman settlement whose original inhabitants had decided to continue to fight for Hadrian long after their tours of duty ended. I’m afraid my pistol didn’t stand up to their spectral spears and shields, and I could not complete the Eight Signs of Saaamaaa before they were upon me. Pistols do seem to be rather insufficient to the job of putting the dead into the graves and keeping them there, if I do say so myself.

  “I am sure you are curious as to the physical—or should I say metaphysical—and moral layout of the Other World. I’m afraid there isn’t much to report. It was the Greeks who have come closest. Hades isn’t a realm so much as it is a state of being. As the body decomposes in its grave, the soul decomposes in Hades, disintegrating and joining the Abyss. It’s not a painful experience per se, but it is singularly unpleasant. The abnatural as we experience it here on the material plane is the result of this slow dissolution. Some personalities are so fierce, so powerful, that they can leave a vibrational mark here on Earth even as they dissolve into the Eternal. It’s wondrous to contemplate, but no wonder at all that there are hardly ever any pleasant abnatural manifestations.

  “I would have found a way back at some time in the future without the assistance of our man Flint, who so bravely sacrificed himself for the world to come, but by then, it would have been too late. He is where I was, his spirit flaking to pieces, like a waterlogged corpse being dragged through the silt by a strong current. I propose that we have saved him and, indeed, saved all the world’s dead via a positive charge powerful enough to match the immense negative charge of Hades, freeing the dead from their fates and releasing them into the Light.

  “Sounds downright Christian, doesn’t it? You could find similar conceptions of the Other World in virtually all religions. We know something as a species, after all. It’s our birthright to fear death, and for good reason. I do not recommend death, even as a fortnight’s holiday. Flint’s own expertise was theoretical while my experiences were practical. He believed that the Electric Pentacle, mass produced and installed along various ley lines all across the world—Egypt, Rhodesia, Peking, Mexico—would be sufficient to free the world from the dark aether in which it floats. What he lacked was the perspective only death can bring.

  “The Michelson–Morley experiment of which you learned men surely are familiar with disproved the existence of ‘luminiferous aether’ via simple use of the clock. If the aether wind existed, surely the speed of light on Earth would vary based on the planet’s relative position vis-à-vis the aether. Light traveling parallel to the aether would be slower than light traveling perpendicular to it. But the speed of light is a constant! No aether, after all, and much of nineteenth century physics was left out for rubbish.

  “But those American scientists misunderstood not only the aether but also time. Time is not an arrow so much as it is a table. Everything upon the table of time has, is, and will be occurring. This is also why precognition and postcognition are occasionally efficacious. Time is a vibrational state, a constant, and sensitives do not so much predict the future as they simply perceive it, just as you can see the meal before you and the remnants of Jessop’s meal at the far end of the table in one ‘look.’ The aether is real. It is time that is false.

  “This, indeed, may also be why some religious sects believe in praying for the dead. Eternity does not respond to prayer and save a soul from Hades. If a lucky fellow finds himself in Paradise, it is because his relations prayed for him after his death, and this influenced his behavior during his life before the prayers were said. The Electric Pentacle can send a similar aetheric message across, throughout, and within time.

  “Flint was ambitious, but his understanding was still limited by linear time. He sought to eliminate the supernatural from the world at present, but his plan would, in fact, actually eliminate the supernatural forever, including the past. So this is what I put to you, gentlemen.

  “We can set up the Electric Pentacle, and with your help, I can tune it in such a way that it will exist at the dawn of time—at the far end of the table. It will annihilate the aether in which the souls of men are trapped, not just now but always, in the past as well as the future. There will be no aether. There never will have been aether.

  “With a flick of a switch, things will be very different indeed. Are you prepared to walk outside into a different world, one where the abnatural has been collapsed into the natural? You may find life to be quite different.”

  I was surprised to hear Jessop speak first and almost immediately. “Are you speaking of a Utopia, Carnacki? That Greek pun of the good place that is in fact no place. At the risk of being vulgar, I must ask: what’s in it for me?”

  Carnacki worked the mouth of the man he inhabited into something reminiscent of his usual mirthful expression. “Flint was right. The supernatural vibrations I made a career of fighting are only to increase. By mid-century, I’d imagine that even the atom would be torn in two, like a hungry man tearing apart a piece of bread. The energies unleashed would be magnificent. And that is of minor concern. With the laws of physics in abeyance, some hungry man could take two minuscule grains of flour, one on the tip of each forefinger, and bring them together with such speed and power that a loaf of bread would spontaneously generate in his hands. If that sounds appetizing to you Jessop, let me remind you that all analogies are limited. We’re not speaking of bread but of the cosmic forces that keep the ‘uncuttable atom’ in its current state. Rather than a loaf of bread between those two fingers, imagine the Sun.”

  “Incredible,” Taylor said. “But . . . what proof do you have? Are you Carnacki or are you our captor, playing pantomime with the help of spirit gum and stagecraft to mimic a grievous wound?”

  “I have no proof, but I ask you to allow me to set up the Electric Pentacle in your presence. All five of us must be present. It is why I sought you out and formed our club, after all, though I wasn’t aware of my motivations when I first invited you all to supper back when Edward was on the throne. Only now do I understand why I found you, why I made you all my confidants. I have no proof, but if I am a liar, there are no stakes. We set up the pentacle, I flip the switch, the lights flicker, and you walk out the door into the same world you knew this afternoon. If I were here to simply rob you or murder you, I could have done so without this charade. If I am mad, then I am mad alone,” Carnacki said.

  I glanced over at Arkright. “And you?”

  “Aye, let’s humor this man. If nothing comes of it, I’ll be back here with constables and my own gun.”

  Carnacki smiled at me, and I smiled at him. I could not tell you then why I agreed to participate in the construction and activation of the Electric Pentacle except that I had heard so much of it but had never seen it until Flint’s men retrieved it from the other roo
m. We cooperated with them to move Carnacki’s furniture to the corners of the room as Carnacki prepared five bowls of water, taken from the dinner glasses, and chalked a pentacle on the floor. The Electric Pentacle was simple: a pentagonal black battery with five sets of wires coming from each side. Carnacki stretched out the wires and connected vacuum tubes to each, then flipped a switch. The room glowed, not unpleasantly, though it was odd to sit in a place where the light was on the floor and my long shadow on the ceiling with colors shifting from red to indigo and beyond.

  After a few moments, it was over. Carnacki stood, wiped his hands, and reached for his pipe on the mantle.

  “Out you go!” said Carnacki, genially, using the recognized formula.

  And we went out on to the Embankment and presently through the darkness to our various homes. If there was a difference in the world, I did not sense it, and as I speak these words into my voco-stylus, I can see the sun rising in the west as it always does, and I feel safe in the airship bearing me to America as I do every week when I make my trip to consult with the Difference Engineers of Imperial Tabulations, Limited. Carnacki’s supper club disbanded, and truth be told, I cannot recall why I ever felt that tales of disembodied hands and phantom boars contained even a trace of verisimilitude.

  Perhaps there’s something about London that drives men mad. I am considering moving to the colonies, to Chicago, as extensive air travel makes me brood more deeply. Is this all there is?

  Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Love is the Law, The Last Weekend, and I Am Providence. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Tor.com, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and many others. Originally from New York, Nick now lives in California, where he works in publishing. His latest anthology is the SF/fantasy crime story collection, Hanzai Japan (co-edited with Masumi Washington).

  Clockwork of Sorrow

  Spencer Ellsworth

  Observe a simple scene: a bachelor preparing chicken cutlets and potatoes. His hands smell of kerosene, his clothes of oxide. He gives a carefree whistle, for his purse is fat, and such a thing is a rarity. He little notices the dark and the cold.

  Do you see? Between his bedroom and the small kitchen, a light grows. Not a light often seen in sooty London anymore; it has the precise quality of the full moon, soaring from a soft cloud on a clear night in the countryside. The kind of light that makes the old wish for young love and the young lovers pine over those they cannot have.

  It grows. It assumes a shape. A girl, thin and worn. Her ragged dress and her bony arms made of the silvery moonlight. Her hair, the hollows of her cheeks and collarbone, and her deep dark eyes made of the sky that frames such a moon.

  Our bachelor turns to see her and utters a cheery, “Bridget, darling.”

  The ghost hangs silent in the doorframe.

  “How did you do today?” he asks. He dabs his eyes with a worn handkerchief that, like his hands, smells of kerosene and, like his hands, has been tattered by time.

  “I went among the city,” she says, and her voice is the soft whistle of wind catching the leaves of a willow. “I watched. I saw a boy selling to the rag-and-bone man, and a woman buying a brush, and a doctor discourse on the health of the pores.”

  “Wonderful! Mister Rensworth, who runs the toy-shop, often attends lectures on health. He tells me to leave my windows open, to let the pores breathe, no matter the cold.” Perhaps you detect an overly affected cheeriness on the part of our bachelor? If so, your senses are keen. “I was paid from that merchant-man I told you of. There is a puppet show in Bethnal Green next week. We could attend . . . you did love puppet shows.”

  “Puppet shows?”

  The bachelor’s hand clenches, and there is a practiced air to the next words, like a catechism. “Bridget, do you remember the oak tree on the hill above the church? Do you remember that wonderful day when we climbed and would not come down, and there was sap in your hair, and Mother . . .”

  The specter’s night-sky eyes are deep and empty.

  “Do you remember the children’s workhouse? Leashby? I have never seen a man so drunk at ten o’clock in the morning. He called every child by the same names. Do you remember that? Jon and Mary, scrub the floor! Jon and Mary, why is this floor wet?”

  No response from the specter.

  “Bridget, do you remember when you were so ill, and you couldn’t speak for the phossy jaw, and I held you, and I sang . . .” Words go unsaid by the bachelor—the words please, you are the only one who hasn’t left me. “You remember my name, yes?”

  In the consequent eternity, the oven completes its work, and the smell of chicken and buttered potatoes welcome in the cold. But any cheer is long gone. At last, she says, a voice indistinguishable from the night wind, “I am so weary.”

  The bachelor fixes his face as he attends to his meal. It would not help things for the ghost to see him weep.

  Charles Oakley had a tragic history, as you may have guessed. But at the time of this tale, Charles Oakley believed himself a happy man.

  He ran a toy-repair shop where his heart delighted in the tick of tiny clocks, the bursts of jacks-in-boxes, all things with springs and sprockets. He gave three shillings even for bent and twisted hair springs, and at any time, he could be found winding a mainspring, fitting bronze gears into each other. For his heart delighted, even more than gears, in the reward of a child’s smile.

  His conversation with his sister’s specter had unsettled him, on the day our tale truly started. Bridget had lived with him for many years, both before and after her sickness and death. Ever she faded, but she always brightened at his attention. Upon prompting, she always began to remember. Until last night . . .

  Charles Oakley had just gotten up to close the door of his shop when a boy snuck past. “Mister Oakley, toy and tackle! Full watch, guv!”

  The boy held out a watch and chain, so close that Charles stumbled back. “Eustace! What has you so lit up?”

  Eustace, who was a boy not given to restraint, waved the watch in Charles’s eyes as if he were our Lord trying to heal a blind man. Charles snatched up the piece and examined it through his glasses. Oxidized green, ash-stained, but fine workmanship. The watch was marked with a stylized R, and below it, the legend “Ridley.” Charles knew no Ridley watchmaker.

  He reached for his purse. “I’d say you’ve earned some keep for today, Eustace.”

  “Eh, guv, leave off the reader for a moment.” The boy kicked his feet over the floor. “I been good to you, aye, guv?” When Charles nodded, smiling, Eustace went on, “My sister, sister, skin and blister. She en’t never held a proper toy. I hope to bring her down here Saturday, guv, and have a look ‘round. Wondering if I might built up a bit of the old ‘oof?”

  Charles’s own heart rattled, its mainspring over-flexed at the mention of a sister, but he hid it well when he leaned over and said, “Bring her in, and I just might find something that could suit her.”

  While Eustace took in the toys on the shelves, Charles gently began disassembling the watch, scraping away oxidization, removing the pinpoint screws, and prying the housing apart. Its insides were clogged with mud and ash. He pried the alien material from the escapement until he could just turn a gear.

  And then—the world slowed. Eustace seemed caught in molasses as he reached toward a toy, fingers creeping through the air. Charles stood and walked to him, asking, “Are you well?”

  Eustace might have heard him—Charles couldn’t tell by the way the boy turned his head in infinitesimal increments.

  Then he observed through his door, the carriages and passers-by and flocks of sheep in the street all moving at a similarly slow pace. The entire world had slowed.

  Charles returned to the desk to find that the watch had further come apart—the entire apparatus was completely dismantled. Then, most shockingly, the mainspring itself uncoiled, raised an end as if it were a head, and hissed at Charles Oakley.

  He shoved the watch away from him.
When it struck the floor, the mainspring, and the hairspring as well, slithered away. The world righted itself, Eustace suddenly moving at the speed of a man again.

  The boy took down a felt bear, heedless of Charles Oakley’s merry face now gone white. “Oh, this’ll be worth that toy and tackle, right.”

  Charles had a great struggle with his own tongue in order to find the words. “Ridley. Where?”

  Eustace said, his attention still on the felt bear, “Found on West India docks, guv. Warehouses. Foreign workmanship, that is.”

  Rather than going home that evening, Charles closed up and walked to the docks.

  Any who saw him that night would have thought it a peculiar sight, such a bumbling gentleman going from one tough to another, asking questions. Amidst the chaos of rail-carts and ships in port, the small, chubby form of Charles Oakley went from stevedore to stevedore, heedless of their spitting and laughing. Charles only had ears for his quarry. Some averted their eyes at the name of Ridley. None would own up to knowledge of that name. It was dark soon enough, the kind of close dark aided by the soot of London. Charles wandered from warehouse to warehouse among the clanging roar of the docks. The blackened air brought water from his eyes and nose until his face burned. He never considered the idea of home. He would find this Ridley, this maker of magicks, if he had to stay all night and day at the docks. He would discover what other marvels there were in this world than his own and perhaps help Bridget in the process.

  Deep into the witching hour—cold, wet, and shaking—he stumbled past a small warehouse door only to see the same stylized R that had been on the watch.

  Charles gently knocked. The door creaked open, but there was no indication of a hand. He found himself quite frightened, but despite the shaking of his hands and his teeth, the thought of his sister’s peace pushed him forward.

  He stepped into warm darkness.

  His eyes resolved with another throb on a small room: a poor dim oil-lamp, a desk, on which was perched a pair of boots, tall and turned-down, shining with new leather. Next to the boots, a small watch, the more resplendent twin of the damaged one Charles had seen.