A life-long New Englander, Kristin aspires to follow in the footsteps of the local masters, Messrs. King and Lovecraft. When not writing or rotting her brain with cheesy horror flicks (preferably creature features!) she can be found scaling rock cliffs, zipping around Vermont on a motorcycle, or gallivanting around the globe. Her first novel, Trinity is available now. “Sacrifice Island,” a new novella, should be coming out around the same time as +Horror Library+ Volume 5.
-Whispers in the Wax
by Tonia Brown
I wasn’t always a believer in such things. Once, a long time ago, I considered myself a learned man–a man of reason, of knowledge, of science. Everything in the world could be explained; nothing was left to the metaphysical or the mystical. My chosen occupation all but forbade me the belief in the supernatural, or the ‘more than natural’ as Oliver chose to describe it.
Oliver Maxwell.
Just the act of writing his name sends shivers throughout my very being.
Even though my learned mind could not, or rather would not, put faith in the extraordinary, my cohort was positively smitten by the notion. Oliver was fascinated with this ‘more than natural’ world that he claimed existed. Ghosts, demons, magickal powers, he put whole stock and faith in them all. But it was more than just belief that he invested in this poppycock.
Oliver made proper study of these subjects.
As another might follow the works of Pythagoras or Plato, Oliver congressed with the works of foreign spiritualists of unpronounceable monikers, and occult masters whose titles are best left unspoken. The words of many a mad Arab and lunatic German lined his bookshelves from floor to ceiling, some so rare in their antiquity that he was oft left a poorer man for their purchase. I regularly found myself lending him pocket change until he could get his finances under control again.
The energy, time and capital he devoted to this obsession left me to marvel. One had but to name any occult practice, no matter how vile or gruesome, and Oliver was not only able to recite the origins of said practice but also the formulas and incantations that were required to perform such hedonistic acts. His knowledge of the occult was uncanny, as well as unsettling; that a man as young as he should gain so much familiarity with things so black of heart seemed perverted, to say the least.
Thankfully, the occult wasn’t his first love. Oliver’s true passion in life was in metalworking. The beautiful things he could create with cold iron and hot steel made the very angels themselves weep with jealousy. I had the fortune to watch him work, many times over, for he and I attended university together, and in our off hours, we enjoyed partial employment by a famed workshop in London whose name I shall withhold from this telling. (No need to drag down the reputation of those who made the mistake of befriending me, though I am sure after this account, you will recognize the workshop from the resulting mayhem and destruction.) I was second apprentice to the master draftsman, while Oliver was happy amidst the metallurgists. When we weren’t busy with school or hard at work, we designed and created things together.
A clockwork nag was our first joint project, an aim that proved useless once it became apparent that the great metal beast required manual winding every few feet of travel. Our second development, a pair of telescopic goggles, ended up in the scrap heap as well. This time it was the weight of the final piece that made it impractical. And so went most of our forays into the world of invention. Youthful ambition and childish daydreaming kept us from achieving any real goals, yet we took pleasure in the effort and camaraderie all the same.
We were always quite the pairing, he and I. His craftsmanship with iron was beyond compare while my skills of design…well, I hesitate to fall into the art of bragging, so I will leave the description at ‘adequate.’ And it shames me to say that it was this very same set of adequate skills that killed my best friend.
The original notion was Oliver’s. He was always attempting to express his love for mysticism through his talents in metallurgy, and his last scheme was no exception. When he first approached me concerning the concept, I laughed. While he was both a brilliant blacksmith and an impressive occult scholar, it seemed to me a silly idea to attempt to meld the two. But he wouldn’t rest until he could marry one talent with the other, and it came to pass that he required my assistance to complete the process.
“I have an idea for a contraption,” he said one fine November morning.
“I am all aflutter,” I teased. “Will this idea of yours bear fruit? Or shall it wither on the tree yet again?” I was apt to jape about his poor luck with design concepts. Though he produced the most fantastic of thoughts, Oliver couldn’t grasp just how implausible most of his ideas were. Again, his talent lay in the crafting of plans, not the drafting of them.
My tender tweaking turned his mood sour and his words cold for a moment. “I’m being perfectly serious. Now will you listen like a gentleman or not?”
“I apologize, my friend. Of course I will lend you my ear as willingly as Brutus did unto Caesar.”
“Good. Listen closely then, before you stab me in the back. I want you to design a machine that will allow me to speak with the recently departed.”
I sat up from my relaxed position on the chaise. “A machine that will what?”
“You heard me the first time. I said a machine that will allow me to hold communications with the deceased. Will you help me design it or not?”
I blinked in disbelief, unsure what he was asking of me. “I…I don’t think I’m getting you, Olly. You want a device that will…let you talk to the dead? As in ghosts? Spirits?”
Oliver nodded with just the hint of a grin about his lips, but said nothing more.
I, on the other hand, was flabbergasted. While I knew he made habit of engaging in all sorts of unsavory rituals as part of his unusual studies, I never expected him to draw me into them. I chuckled, sure he was joshing. “Ah, now, now. You always did have such a splendid wit. For a moment there, you almost had me.” I laid a finger aside my nose, to let him know I was wise to his prank.
“I assure you, this is no jest,” he said, his voice firm again, bordering on anger. “I have need of your skills in design, and thought I could rely on your assistance as my oldest and dearest friend. But if you would rather mock me with derisive laughter, then perhaps I should find pairing with another draftsman. I hear Thomason is quite good, for a first-year student, and is in need of a partner at the moment.”
In truth, Thomason couldn’t sketch his way out of a linen knapsack, but that was neither here nor there. Oliver had every right to be angry. He had come to me with a request for help, and though his appeal was as outrageous as one could expect to hear, I was still his friend, and I should have behaved toward him in a more civilized fashion.
“You’re absolutely correct. I apologize for my poor choice in words, my friend, I was just unsure if you were being serious.”
“I have never been more serious.”
“And that I can see, now. So before we fall into argument over which is greater, my contrition or your seriousness, why don’t you tell me all about this contraption of yours?”
For a moment, I thought I had offended him again. He stared at me, almost to the point of blankness, as if he were seeing straight through me. Then his demeanor softened, and he smiled. “Yes. I shall.”
It was his belief–though I gathered over time that the notion did not originate with him–that the voices of so-called spirits were drifting freely through the air all about us, and that they required little more than amplification to be heard. Amplification, it would seem, of both the aural and mystical varieties. Oliver sketched for me, both in words and in his crude artistic style, a device that closely resembled the existing schema for Edison’s most recent patent, the phonograph. Deviations from the original design included a collection of odd crystals to take the place of some minor parts, a mandrel constructed from various alchemically enhanced metals, and what he labeled a “spiritual conduit” to replace the stylus.
With these changes, he alleged that one could, upon playback of a specially prepared wax cylinder, hear the words of the dead. He gave these voices beyond the veil a strange acronym.
WVP. Wax Voice Phenomenon.
I was, of course, hesitant to agree to the project, not just because I put zero faith in these spirits of his, but also because I was sure if word of such a thing were to circulate among our peers, we would both become the laughingstocks of the workshop and our university as well. For me, this held little worry, as I was attending at the financial burden of my parents and could withdraw to another school as I saw fit. (My parents paid little heed to my comings and goings. As long as it didn’t draw them from the tortoise shell of their insulated world, I was able to do as I pleased.)
My real worry lay with Oliver. He was attending university by means of a special financial arrangement, one that could be revoked at any time, not only for poor grades or attendance, but also for behavior unbefitting a student. And dabbling with spirits was bound to fall into that final and abysmal category. Though Oliver’s love of the occult was no secret, he maintained the outward appearance of a pure scholar, interested in nothing more than the linguistics or historical aspects of the workings in question. Only a few people were aware of his deeper practices, and the knowledge of such would have seen him released from university long ago, had anyone of importance found him out.
Now this machine, this WVP contraption, was bound to cause an unwanted stir.
“I’m not sure your plan is such a good idea,” I said.
“You don’t think it can be done?” he said. “How can you doubt me? I have shown you the theory. I have done the computations. It is not only feasible, it is so simple a child could build one.”
“You mistake me. While I agree that such a machine is indeed feasible, there is no way we can create such an oddity without drawing unwanted attention.”
As I explained before, Oliver and I had quite the reputation for wild inventions. Our entire campus, our professors and fellow workshop crew always took an open interest in what little project we might come up with next. (Once there was even a pool to see how viable our next scheme would be. I understand the headmaster himself made a hefty sum from our subsequent failure.) If we initiated a new project, especially on the sly, the ensuing gossip would be enough to bring about the heads of our departments, demanding a closer look.
I said as much to Oliver, at which he balked like a mule.
“Nonsense!” he shouted. “You, my friend, are far too honest a man for this wretched day and age.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We don’t have to tell others our real reasoning behind the apparatus. We can build it at our leisure as long as we do so under the pretenses of some less than brow-raising hypothesis.” Oliver paused to gnaw upon the tip of his thumbnail, a signal of deep thought for him. After a few moments , he snapped his fingers and pointed to me, eyes wide with inspiration. “We will tell everyone we intend to increase the fidelity and amplificatory output of the phonograph. Of course there will be those who suspect more, but once they grow brave enough to question our research, we shall have undeniable proof from our real experiments. And if we fail, then we have nothing of which to be ashamed.”
“Then we shall lie about it?”
He waved away my concern and piffled my doubt. “The way you describe it, you make it sound like a mortal sin.”
“And what if it is?”
“Then it’s a strange postulation from a man who puts little faith in hell or heaven.”
He had me there. While the very concept of this machine disturbed me on a level deeper than I was willing to admit at the time, my lack of belief in all things spiritual extended into that of a religious nature as well. I was doomed by my own hubris. Yet still, something about the whole proposal nagged my conscience.
“Can I pose just one inquiry before I commit to this?” I said.
“You may ask as many things as you like,” Oliver said. “Please don’t mistake my dismissal of your concern as a callous disregard for your input. I don’t just crave your support; I need your genius for this to succeed.”
His words were well chosen, designed to stroke my ego and fluff my spirit, which I must admit they did. But I still suffered an underlying edge of dread. I put my concern into a question. “Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Why do you want to talk with the dead? It seems…a most gruesome practice.”
He thought about this a moment, thumbnail between his teeth, before he finally answered. “Why not?”
I huffed in frustration.
Oliver chuckled at my annoyance. “I know you don’t put much stock in the idea, but just imagine for a moment, if you will, that there are disembodied voices out there. Imagine there are departed spirits willing to share their experiences. What wonders could they teach us about existence after death? What secrets would they dare reveal to those brave enough to ask? What timeless knowledge could they bestow upon us?”
“That attitude leaves me to wonder if you are seeking counsel with a particular spirit.”
“Of course not. Don’t be silly.” His words were brief on the matter, but to my discomfort, they were accompanied by a small twitch at the left corner of his mouth, betraying his lie. Yet what could I do? I couldn’t deny him. He was, after all, my closest friend. “What do you say? Can I rely upon you?”
“We shall build your blasted machine,” I said after a heartfelt sigh of regret.
Oliver all but pounced upon me with a joyful hug.
The machine took less than a week to construct, as Oliver had all of his so-called mystical components ready at hand. I wondered at his unusual level of preparedness, as he was never one to rush a project. As our work neared completion, he even produced a set of cylinders that he had prepared on his own time. Oliver was very guarded about the makeup of these cylinders. I inquired as to their construction, many times, but he brushed aside my curiosity either with trite comments or by ignoring me altogether. I should have worried then that something was amiss, but I trusted him, not only as a friend but also as a fellow architect. This was his project, and he had every right to reveal his methods in his own due time.
The last piece he furnished was the “spiritual conduit.” This mysterious item was composed of a yellowing, calcified material and measured a few millimeters or so in length. Whereas a normal stylus was quite narrow, this conduit of Oliver’s bulged in the middle and tapered at both ends, with one end filed to a point to serve as our needle. The moment I laid eyes on this conduit, I was struck by its odd familiarity. Though, after his reluctance to tell me about the composition of the cylinders, I decided it would do no good to inquire about the needle substitute.
At last the machine was complete, and it became time for our first tests.
“I must admit,” I said as I stared at the completed thing, “now that we have assembled it, I am still at a loss as to how this will work.”
“It’s very simple,” Oliver said. “While recording, I will ask questions aloud, addressing any possible spirits that might be about. As I speak, I will leave pauses to allow the spirits a chance to answer. Then, upon playback, if all goes as planned, we should hear the spirits answering our inquiries on the wax.”
I smirked. “And we don’t require any special rituals to bring this about? No magic circles to cast or archaic summoning to perform?”
Oliver was not amused by my impertinence. “I am glad you find this so entertaining. Or do you? Perhaps I should experiment with this on my own? I would hate to bore you with it.”
“Not at all! I was just teasing, old friend.”
He slumped over the contraption and shook his head, as if trying to dislodge an idea or uncomfortable feeling. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid my anxiety over the success of this project has me on edge.” Looking back up to me, he gave a sly grin, and for a brief moment, he seemed himself. “Please forgive me.”
“No need. Sha
ll we begin?”
I’m unsure what I was expecting from our first experiment, but what occurred changed my entire outlook. Oliver spent a good five minutes or so asking his questions and sitting in silence to allow the so-called spirits space on the wax to answer. At first I was, as Oliver suggested, amused by it. He looked quite the fool seated before this machine, talking, essentially, to himself.
But the audio on the cylinder playback almost snapped my mind.
At first there was Oliver’s voice, asking, “Are there any spirits about us now?”
Here there should have been a space, a blank pause left by Oliver. Instead, to my amazement, from the flowered bell of our strange contraption, there came a low and ominous voice, hissing a single word.
“Yes.”
My eyes went wide. “What on earth was that?”
Oliver switched off the machine. “It is as I said. I realized you doubted me, but now you see. Or rather you hear. The spirits are all around us, and they are willing to share their knowledge.” He cranked the machine to life again, and the ensuing conversation astounded me.
Again there was Oliver’s recorded voice, asking, “Are there any spirits about us now?”
Again came the low voice answering, “Yes.”
“Will you identify yourself to us?”
There was a pause, followed by, “Mas’ud Nasir.”
I couldn’t help but notice Oliver’s body tense at this answer, but neither he nor I made comment. He then scratched a series of notes surrounding this response, keeping his shoulder turned to me so as to hide his writings.
From the machine, Oliver’s recorded voice said, “Are you alone?”
The mystery voice answered, “There are many of us here. Many…many…many.” The spirit spoke these last three words in a hollow, drawn-out breath. The very sound of it left me with chills across my arms.
Horror Library, Volume 5 Page 34