Society for Paranormals

by Vered Ehsani

  “Can it talk?” Bobby asked as he grabbed Liam’s arm and tugged at it. “Say something. Talk. Now.”

  Liam’s head slowly swiveled about, well past the point a normal person with an intact neck could manage. Its dark-blue eyes peered over its own shoulder, down at Bobby. The boy quickly pulled his hand back and reached for mine, and Cilla reached for my other arm. I could feel both of them shaking at the bizarre sight.

  “There is an audio device, but I haven’t yet programmed words into it,” Dr. Cricket enthused, completely oblivious to his guests’ discomfort.

  Gideon smirked at me and drifted until he was floating right in front of me. “Ask him how to program it,” he suggested.

  “Why?” I breathed softly.

  “Oh, I just haven’t had time,” Dr. Cricket explained, frowning at the oversight. “But I will, I will.”

  Gideon chuckled and whispered into my ear, “Because we’re both bored and curious. A deliciously dangerous combination, wouldn’t you agree?”

  I most certainly didn’t agree as I was too distracted by his voice floating through my head with a delightful promise held loosely in his tone.

  “So… um…” Goodness, I thought, pull yourself together, Bee. This is no time to get all weak around the knees.

  I cleared my throat and tried again. “How do you program it? Him?”

  Dr. Cricket waved a finger at me as if I were a naughty child asking for a sweetie before dinner. “Now, now, Miss Knight, an inventor must have a few secrets. Otherwise what would stop others from copying his work?”

  “Of course.” I smiled back, even though the last thing I wanted was another Liam wandering around. One was creepy enough.

  “I’m hungry,” Bobby whined. “This is boring.”

  “I could use a bite to eat too,” Cilla said as she waved her paper fan with greater vigor than before.

  Clever girl, preparing herself with a fan, I thought. A stout walking stick and a bag of powdered cinnamon, while useful, weren’t much assistance in the stuffy warmth.

  As we murmured our good-byes, I remembered the vial of lion blood.

  “Dr. Cricket, you’re a scientist, and I’m sure you have a number of clever devices at your disposal,” I said demurely, thinking of his blood testing invention. “Could I bother you greatly with a little favor?”

  “Of course, anything,” the man spluttered out.

  “I’m a bit of an amateur zoologist, and I’d be grateful if you could test this blood sample I collected.” I handed him the vial that had remained in my jacket pocket. “It’s dried up but hopefully still useful. I think it’s from a lion, but I’m not sure.”

  “Fascinating,” he breathed out. “I shall get on it immediately.”

  I smiled to encourage him further. “How kind of you.”

  He escorted us to the door and sent us off with a courtly bow and a wave. Liam had followed us and stood behind its creator, its glass eyes fixed on Gideon. Or perhaps, I scolded myself, I was making up a story. For really, Gideon was invisible to all save me.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the idea.

  Chapter 14

  We loaded up wagons as if we were moving house again, but in reality, as camp superintendent and hunt organizer Mr. Adams had explained to Cilla, “I have sworn to let nothing stop me in my quest to rid the camp of those goat-devouring lions. However, this is the Christmas season, my dear. And we would be very amiss if we failed to have suitable celebrations and a feast on hand, lions or no.”

  It was the first week of December, and I was astounded that we were already speaking of Christmas. Then again, any man who put such thought into food was perfectly agreeable to me. In fact, I would dare go so far as to say I would have to like him prodigiously.

  Unfortunately, not all the men in the party were as gracious and well bred. Of Mr. Timmons I need not elaborate, and I ignored him as politely as social norms allowed, despite the fact he was Cilla’s chaperon. Fortunately, he was far more interested in chatting with Mr. Adams, an unlikely pair of friends as I’d ever seen.

  Oblivious to the demerits of his conversational partner, Mr. Adams was expounding on the virtues of the railway, the loss of good goat meat courtesy of the lions, and the antagonism toward him from the workers whose goats had been devoured.

  I couldn’t fathom why anyone would be overly fussed about the lack of goat meat, apart from the goats’ owners, of course; it had a most repulsive, pungent smell that unsettled even my stout appetite.

  Kam also maintained a certain distance from me, apart from an initial nod in my direction. I wondered what mischief he was up to. His warning regarding Mr. Timmons also flitted through my mind.

  Goodness, I thought, there’s far too much to keep track of. And I thought life would be simpler here.

  As to be expected, Cilla and I were offered a covered wagon. I preferred to ride, even if it was on Nelly, who alternated between falling asleep while walking and generating rude bodily emissions that caused everyone in hearing distance to send scandalized looks at me. Beyond that, the nag was incapable of any significant exertion.

  But apart from these minor nuisances, both Cilla and I were of the same opinion: it was a grand idea to ride and I congratulated myself for ignoring Gideon’s plea to stay at home and Mrs. Steward’s horror at the very idea that two ladies could go off on a hunt. Cilla, for her part, had reminded Mrs. Steward that we weren’t in London anymore.

  “As if any of us needs reminding,” Mrs. Steward had huffed.

  And we certainly didn’t, what with the zebras and giraffe that littered the grasslands. They weren’t fussed at all when we rode up close to the herds, even with a horse whose digestive system was the noisiest in all of creation. I was relieved to note that the possessed zebra hadn’t follow me, despite the evil eye it gave me as I left the house. I knew it was too much to hope the beast might wander off into the night and be eaten by lions in my absence, but I did cross my fingers.

  “Oh my,” Cilla said, interrupting my pleasant reverie. “I think that’s a runaway wagon.”

  I glanced behind us and saw a small, two-wheeled wagon bouncing behind a rather excited ox, which was an odd state for any ox to be in. The oxen I had encountered were the complete contradiction of excitement. What this one could be so energetic about was beyond me. The creature was willfully ignoring the efforts of the sole human occupant to slow it down.

  “Is that…?” Cilla asked.

  I sighed. “It is.”

  Dr. Cricket’s wagon almost crashed into us, and it was only the quick footedness of Cilla’s horse that prevented such an unfortunate event. With great determination, her mount shoved Nelly to the side and out of harm’s way. Nelly jerked awake and continued chomping grass, oblivious to the commotion.

  A thoroughly rattled Dr. Cricket nodded at us, eyes blinking furiously as he tugged at the reins, which the ox clearly ignored. Fortunately, the stubborn beast had decided to go at our pace, in our direction, having achieved its goal of joining the caravan.

  “Good morning, ladies,” Dr. Cricket said in between gulping air as if it were he who had pulled the wagon at breakneck speed.

  I smiled politely and noticed a coffin in the back of the wagon. “I see you’re prepared for any eventuality,” I noted with more than a small degree of approval.

  “Oh, that,” Dr. Cricket said.

  He looked quickly around and leaned close to us as if anyone was near enough to hear him above the crunch of dry grass beneath heavy wheels and people shouting at each other. Basically, everyone and everything was conspiring to make as much noise as possible, thus chasing away any creature we might actually be interested in hunting.

  “Truth is, it’s Liam in there,” he whispered, his face tense. I had to strain to hear him over the grunts and wheezing of his ox and Nelly’s belching. “Last night, someone broke into my place and tried to steal him.” He sat back on the narrow plank that served as a seat and nodded at us seriously.

  I was about to ask
who could possibly want to steal his contraption in this country, when Cilla gasped with compassion.“How ghastly!” she said. “Did you catch the thief?”

  Dr. Cricket frowned and blinked with superhuman speed several times before replying. “Sadly, no, Miss White. I heard someone rattling the chains securing the cupboard, but when I ran into the room, the person had fled without a sound or trace. It was most alarming. And I couldn’t in all good conscience leave him there, undefended, now could I?”

  “Absolutely not,” Cilla said, her hat bobbing energetically around her face.

  “And,” I added, “there’s always the benefit of having a coffin at our easy disposal if need should arise.”

  Dr. Cricket stared at me blankly while Cilla coughed to cover her laugh.

  After the initial excitement of Dr. Cricket’s news and the thrill of riding amongst the wildlife had worn off, we settled into a sort of dusty, heat-induced stupor. I can’t say how many hours we plodded along, but when we finally reached our campsite near a stand of trees and a river, I was more than ready to leave the confines of the hot saddle and enjoy the cool shade by the water’s edge.

  The site had been used previously. A large fire pit still retained charred bits of wood in its maw. Porters quickly set up camp, including a number of tents. The wagons were maneuvered to form a circle around the area just as dusk extended itself across the land.

  “Why are they doing that? Are we expecting an attack of some sort?” I asked as I joined Cilla and Dr. Cricket near the fire pit, which was full of comforting flames and a giant kettle hanging over them. I could smell tea. Ah yes, gallant Mr. Adams really was the civilized sort, for as everyone knows, the only substance more potent in its rejuvenating powers than tea was chocolate.

  “Why, Miss Knight, surely you know of the legendary man-eating lions of Tsavo?” Dr. Cricket enthused.

  “You mean the two lions that were shot dead halfway across the country a year ago?” I asked. “By now they’ve been skinned and stuffed.”

  Dr. Cricket looked put out by my bored tone. “Well, my dear, if you’d been residing here for those nine months last year when they were alive and eating men, you’d be a tad nervous yourself.”

  I wasn’t too enamored with his patronizing tone. After all, had he ever faced down an angry vampire or cleaned up after a shedding werewolf? Where did he imagine all that hair went to once the full moon passed? It made a right mess, I can tell you. But I didn’t inform Dr. Cricket of all of that, since most civilians weren’t privy to such information.

  “Do tell,” I said instead, almost biting my tongue in half in the process.

  Somewhat mollified, Dr. Cricket continued. “Those two lions terrorized the main railroad camp and ate over a hundred men.”

  “I heard it was no more than thirty-five,” I interrupted.

  Dr. Cricket stiffened. “One hundred and thirty-five, actually. They were so famous they were even given names: The Ghost and the Darkness. They were huge, over nine feet long. One was almost ten feet and took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp.”

  I still wasn’t impressed. I’d seen hellhounds bigger than that. Maybe Prof. Runal’s interest in the local paranormal wildlife was misplaced. Certainly, I had observed nothing too exceptional apart from a possessed zebra that did nothing but eat grass all day.

  Dr. Cricket droned on. “If not for Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson, they’d still be out there.”

  “And far away from here, at the Tsavo River,” I pointed out. “But now it seems we have a problem with their ghosts, who aren’t limited by geography.”

  Dr. Cricket huffed and blinked fiercely at me. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  I raised my eyebrows. For a brilliant inventor, he really was a simpleton.

  “They’re just another pair of hungry lions and we’d best take care,” he continued. “During the last three months of that previous reign of terror, those lions attacked almost every night, and the laborers refused to work.”

  “Can’t say I blame them,” Cilla murmured.

  “Well, the British Parliament certainly did,” Dr. Cricket said. “Such a delay on the train project was most undesirable.”

  “Indeed,” I added. “It must have presented quite an inconvenience, what with all those dead laborers refusing to work.”

  “Well, be that as it may,” Dr. Cricket said, clearly not paying me any attention, “the construction crews tried everything to scare the lions off, including campfires and thorn fences, but nothing stopped them.”

  “Then how’s a circle of wagons going to help us here?” I asked innocently.

  Flustered, Dr. Cricket rose and left us, mumbling some excuse about needing to check on Liam as if the automaton needed a babysitter.

  “You are terrible,” Cilla scolded me with a laugh.

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Chapter 15

  I’d always been a light sleeper. It was a curse, actually, since I would have much preferred to sleep through any trouble that occurred at night than to be pulled into it. When I was asleep, no one could hold me responsible for ignoring various nocturnal creatures. Quite frankly, as long as their behavior didn’t involve me, I didn’t much mind what they did, as long as they let me sleep without biting me, or worse, shedding near me.

  Sadly, whenever the paranormal world interacted with the normal, there tended to be produced an unpleasant level of noise, usually of the screaming sort. This was quite sufficient to wake me up and lure me out of bed. And that was exactly what happened that first night of the hunt. Something woke me: a whisper, a shuffle perhaps. At least it wasn’t a scream. I lay on my camp bed, staring up at the darkness, and strained my ears and my nose.

  While my ears and nose revealed nothing more, my eyes adjusted to the gloom as one side of the tent—the one with the door flap—was a tad brighter from the slight glow of the nearby fire pit. In the pervading darkness, that glow seemed bright and welcoming, so I rolled over to face it. I was just wondering if there was any tea brewing over the remains of the fire when a shadow stepped up to my tent.

  Fortunately, I was too distracted contemplating the possibility of tea, so I didn’t shout aloud, but only pulled away from the tent wall. The shadow remained there, blocking some of the firelight and an arm rose as if to knock on my door. The shape of the arm looked familiar, but so did the manner in which the hand hung suspended between action and inaction. And the two—the shape of the arm and the tilt of the hand—reminded me of two very different beings who couldn’t possibly inhabit the same body.

  At least it’s not a lion, was all I could think of and then someone screamed.

  “Oh bother,” I muttered, kicking off my blanket and flinging on my traveling coat. I hesitated. Should I take the walking stick or bow and arrows? I settled on the bow. After all, if I was close enough to a lion to make effective use of my walking stick, then I was far too close.

  On the other hand, I suspected the only danger we were in was of losing some sleep. And for me, that was a terrible dilemma indeed.

  I fumbled with the ties holding my canvas door in place. By the time I pushed the tent flap aside, the shadow was gone. Instead, I was rewarded with the unappealing vision of Mr. Adams in his nightshirt. He was running around the small camp in great excitement, his long nightshirt flapping unattractively about his plump knees, his jowls quivering below his mouth. In a bizarre effort to dress, he had put on his waistcoat, which strained to contain his great belly. He could barely draw breath, yet he was using it all for shouting.

  Lanterns were lit and torches were thrust into the sparking embers of the fire as tents spewed out their bleary-eyed occupants. A few of the tents had partially collapsed.

  “We’re under attack,” Mr. Adams bellowed between wheezes.

  “Good thing we have the wagons circled around,” I said to Cilla, who had stumbled out of her tent when I did. Her head was wrapped in a pretty scarf and despite the early hour and her hasty efforts at coverin
g herself, she still managed to look quite presentable. Mrs. Steward would’ve been suitably impressed.

  I sighed as I pulled my overcoat around me, just as Mr. Timmons trotted over to us.

  “Are you ladies all right?” He hugged Cilla but looked intently at me.

  I gazed briefly up at the night sky, the stars so thick I could barely see the space beyond, and twitched my bow against my leg. “Yes, Mr. Timmons, we’re quite all right,” I informed him as I once again pondered the shape of the shadow’s arm. “As is the camp. It’s just Liam.”

  “Protect the women,” shouted Mr. Adams, swinging his rifle around for emphasis and nearly knocking one of the porters into the fire pit. “Hide the goats!”

  “There’s no need to panic, sir,” Dr. Cricket called out amidst the noise and confusion, his hair sticking straight up and his glasses on crooked. But no one paid him much attention, for Mr. Adams was by far the more entertaining spectacle, and amusement trumps logic any day.

  “Load your rifles, men,” ordered Mr. Adams as a button popped off his waistcoat. In response, men scattered in all directions, searching for their rifles in collapsed tents.

  “Well, if there are any lions in the area,” I muttered to my two companions, “they’ll be long gone by now.”

  “But Mr. Adams, sir,” Dr. Cricket said, running after the camp superintendent just as Liam appeared around a tent. The automaton had a collection of tent pins in each hand. “Somebody stole Liam from my tent and set him loose.”

  “Stop or I’ll shoot, I really will,” screamed the camp superintendent, his voice jumping up an octave as he raised his rifle to his shoulder.

  “Oh my,” Cilla gasped and she grabbed my hand as if that could be of any assistance against a bullet.