by Jerico Lenk
“The ladies here,” Clement went on, “profess they hear their dead friend singing at night. A client of this fine establishment recently claimed to have been welcomed into a room by dear Miss Maude, only for the room to be empty. There is the smell of her perfume. She’s been seen in mirrors on numerous occasions.”
My eyes shot to Cain—but he’d moved on from the mirror, arms folded tight.
“Echo,” Quinn suggested.
“What does Miss Ophie want with it?” I pressed.
With a pout, Clement dug from the equipment trunk the St. Peter’s arrows about which O’Brien had told me before, then reached out to nudge Quinn. With a sigh, Quinn said for him, “She only wishes to validate the occurrences.”
“So, don’t you worry your little head about re-killing a ghost.” Clement hoisted up what looked something like a spirit talking board. He tucked it under one arm and I made a very dissatisfied face once he turned away, more for my own pleasure than for anyone else to notice.
In the reception room, we set up our bells and the Arrows around a small table pulled to the center of a few seats. Eyeing the little spirit board, I stepped over our bell strings and took a seat next to Quinn on the loveseat. I’d never seen one like it before, with its large dial in the center, circled by the usual alphabet and numbers. Yes. No. Don’t Know. Good-bye.
“This is a talking board, isn’t it?” I asked meekly.
Cain glanced at me without lifting his head. Clement didn’t look at all, focused on rolling up his sleeves and draping his patchwork coat across his lap.
“Yes,” Quinn answered me. “A Tuttle Psychograph. More efficient than planchette boards, smoother, doesn’t break so easily.”
Perhaps not in theory, but the Cross psychograph looked as if it might have been used long enough to contest that.
“At least they’ve finally stopped lending out the Pease Telegraph Dial,” Cain said. “That thing’s ancient.”
Clement lit a cigarette and waved out the match.
“Perfume is a complaint,” Quinn grunted. “Don’t recommend tobacco smoke.”
The tip of Clement’s cigarette glowed bright and hot in the darkness as he stretched his arms up above his head, fingers laced. “Which one of our two little mediums would like to start us off, eh?”
Cain slid his eyes to me, looking rather wan. I returned the glance with knotted brow. Clearly none of us were strangers to ghost conjurings and séances, but I’d only ever been a quiet audience member; I was far from ready to host my own session. And Cain …
“I will,” Cain said curtly, pulling his chair closer with a scrape against the floor. “Shall we join hands for the opening lines?”
Quinn’s big, rough hand practically swallowed mine. Cain’s was cold in my other. It was so very still between the four of us, I could hear the gentle hiss of tobacco and paper as Clement’s cigarette burned itself slowly.
The dial was big enough for all of us to rest the tips of our fingers with ease. “We wish to call on Miss Maude,” Cain began with an impatient sigh, still rather uncomfortable, it seemed. “Miss Maude, are you here? There is an empty chair—Clement, there is an empty chair?”
“Yes.”
“Take a seat, lovely, we’d love to chat.”
“You are the most informal medium I have ever had the displeasure of conjuring with.”
“Well, I’m not a medium by the definition, so there you have it.”
“Stop,” Quinn said.
We sat for the better part of an hour in ringing quiet. After a while, I closed my eyes, on edge as I tried to let all my senses drift into the dark. Someone’s pocket watch ticked away. Muffled ruckus from the street. Quinn shifted a bit beside me with a creak of the loveseat.
“Open yourself up, Kingsley,” Clement pressed.
“Unfortunately, I’ve been open since we arrived.” The candlelight shivered on Cain’s face as he narrowed his eyes. No stately charm there.
“So, are you the petulant one, or the spirit?”
“The ambience here is overwhelming, Clement. I have a terrible headache and my stomach is a mess. Alas, the joys of being a conduit.”
“I thought you had means to keep closed to potent energy,” Clement murmured, brow knotting.
“The defence doesn’t seem completely agreeable tonight.” Cain’s eyes veered to the psychograph. “Clement,” he reproved, exasperated, “you moved the dial.”
“I did not!” Clement half-whispered back.
“You did,” Cain argued. “I watched you.”
“Well, if I did, it was not intentional. My arm is tired.”
“So, rest your palm on the table, then.”
“What’s the difference?” I whispered timidly, looking up at Quinn. “They say I’m a clairvoyant, but Cain is a conduit?”
“No, I’m still a clairvoyant, too.”
It was Cain who answered me, not Quinn, as he held his free hand out for Clement to pass over the freshly-lit cigarette for an inhale. The drag was short and gentle, smoke rolling out from Cain’s nose as he sighed through it, mouth in a tight line. His drastic polarity of demeanour tonight was slightly cowing, and I felt like a travesty of a friend for staring at the way the flame of the candle flickered in his bad eye.
“You don’t know the difference?” Quinn said, voice gravelly. “Have they not reviewed that yet in your training?”
“Quinn … ” Clement sighed, letting Cain just keep the cigarette. “His training was waived.”
My eyes jumped between the two of them, mildly attentive to pronouns today. As he shifted about again, like he felt too big for the loveseat, Quinn uttered a little wordless sound that didn’t seem too disapproving.
Creak …
I turned a bit to look out into the hall, then snuck a peek at Cain. He didn’t seem to look at anything special; his gaze just rested on the candle as the cigarette burned slowly between the first two fingers of his free hand, the other draped daintily on the psychograph dial. And the reflected candlelight turned the milky grey of his bad eye a shimmering gold.
“We’ve come to hear from you,” he went on blandly. “Can you move this dial beneath our hands? There is an alphabet. Perhaps you might spell out your name?”
Clement crossed one leg over the other, watchful eyes flickering from the slowly-moving ambient compass to Cain. My stomach pinched. Cold. I felt very cold suddenly, head to toe. I waited, for the visions, someone else’s memories. Mild possession. Was it not about to come on?
The scent of French perfume filled my head. I squinted at the others. Did they smell it? The world spun—throbbed just a bit. I was still at the table. No, I was upstairs. Girls in a room. Girls like my father’s girls. Sunlight. A syringe. Hanging out the window waving and calling down to the knocker-uppers below. Hallo, boys! Images jumping across my mind like the first drops of rain against the window. Looking in a mirror. Miss Maude pinning up her auburn hair. She was pretty in a simple way. Pale and thin in that sleeveless blue gown. Rosewater and zinc to cover the freckles, pompadour powder, singing below her breath as she trimmed her eyelashes and plucked her brows. Bottle of stinking gin. Bottle of wine. A balled-up fist in a leather glove, with a cameo on the thumb, fingers knotted in the rings of that bronze syringe. Pink conch shell cameo ring, delicately carved and filigreed in gold …
I gasped hard, lashes fluttering, as all the images vanished as swiftly and roughly as though they’d been yanked out of me. How odd. Bewildered, I stared across the table at Clement. He raised his brows, popping a new cigarette for himself onto his lower lip. He leaned across the table for Quinn to strike the match one-handed and light it for him.
Creeeak … creak-creak-creak …
Quinn dropped the unlit match. One of the golden St. Peter’s Arrows wound its way around to point at the door to the hall, but it did not stay still. It continued to drift along until it faced our general direction … following something unseen, it seemed.
Cain stared the golden arrow down,
head tipped, with an eerie, serene curiosity.
The psychograph dial shifted, tickling the tips of my fingers as it began to drift on its own below our hands.
Cain was unmoved, that same dark frown ghosting across his face. Clement watched with heated eyes, and Quinn waited to document the message as the dial moved torturously slowly from one letter to the next.
H … E … R … E … C … A … I … N
My eyes widened.
Clement leaned forth again for Quinn to successfully light his cigarette this time. Hiss of the match. Quietly, he issued a sigh of tobacco smoke, the stream of which suddenly swirled off towards Cain as though something sucked it forth. Cain went stiff; his hand slid off the psychograph dial as the last bit of smoke rolled off Clement’s lower lip.
“Cain?” he prompted.
Bam!
Cain kicked a foot up to prop against the side of Clement’s seat and fixed him with a sinful look. His fingers fiddled at his knee as if with the hem of a dress, his eyes hooded and his head tipped back.
“Sir, you flatter me … ” His mouth curled in a slow, suggestive smile. His foot scraped back down to the floor and he craned forth towards Clement. “Oh, we met at the park. It’s so bright out! May I use your pearls? Kiss me and touch my waist, sir … I’ll treat you right and proper—”
Clement snorted, laughing on a throatful of smoke and coughing into his hand. “Oh, dear, I certainly hope so!”
“She’s not talking to us,” Quinn snapped as it occurred to me that the possession had drifted on from me to Cain. “She’s replaying moments.” Clearly not accommodating of Clement’s flippancy, Quinn shoved our investigation notes my way with a tap of the finger, directing me to take over recording the events.
“Well, it’s certainly Miss Maude, isn’t it?” Clement cried with a devilish grin.
“Yes,” Cain rattled off in a dazed whisper, voice cinched to a slightly higher pitch, but still his own voice. “Who is that, on your ring, the pink ring? ‘Miss Urania,’ hmm, well, shall I be your muse tonight … yes, I would love that, I don’t know how to do it, sir, I’ve never but smoked it … ”
Clement looked to Quinn with a flick of the brow. “She injected the tincture?” he half-mouthed.
I couldn’t look away from Cain. It was him, but it wasn’t him, and it was a terrible, disconcerting thing to witness. Some hired medium I did not personally know at a séance party was one thing; this was another entirely.
Suddenly Cain straightened up, face dimpling in feverish confusion. His lashes fluttered like little butterflies against his cheeks as his eyes began to roll back. Madly, he itched at his arms, fingers clawing against his sleeves.
“Death by excess of opium tincture,” Quinn confirmed for Clement.
My brow knotted over wide eyes. “Is that what that looks like?”
“Keep up with the notes, Winchester,” Clement demanded.
“Take her away!” Cain scratched and scratched at his arms. “Ugh, take her away, take her away!” It was him again, thank God. But he was not back to stay.
Creak-creak-creak-creak-creak!
Every one of the golden arrows lurched suddenly and violently around to face our little party at the table—and each pointed directly at Cain.
His face had darkened. An ominous light glinted in his narrowed eyes. It was a look quite distinctly that of some consciousness other than Miss Maude’s and … other than his own.
He slammed his hands to the table. I jumped, dropping the pencil. It bounced off my knee and then my toe, rolling away under the loveseat.
With his eyes still cradling candlelight, a spill of sharp, rhythmic words sprang forth from Cain’s tongue.
“Fuge, ar-keta—prekraschay, moy mastiir govorit—ma Apollona, sh-sh!”
His voice cracked and his maddened gaze shot about the room, lip curled in a soft snarl. Gasping, hissing the strange words through clenched teeth. Voces mysticae, utterly foreign and venomous as some ancient curse with its deeply rounded vowels, susurrating shh sounds and trilled r’s that made the words come alive in a sinister way once they leapt from his mouth—
“Sh-sh! Sh-sh, kun! Ma Apollona!”
A dark bead of blood peeked from Cain’s nose. Dread pitched in me with a sickening wallop of the heart and I looked to Clement in a perfect panic.
“Dostatochno! Prekraschay! Prekraschay! Suka!”
But Clement just sat perched on his seat, one knee hugged to his chest. His eyes were ruthless in the candlelight, hazel borrowing some of the sparks and turning to gold as he watched Cain with an unfeeling sort of intent. I didn’t think he’d notice my pleading look, but then he slowly slid his glance over to meet it. Unmoved. Unmoving. Focus narrowed for the end of the case, per usual, and indifferent to anything else.
“Ma … sh-sh … tikho … ”
As the breathless chant faded away in rustling whispers, Cain’s mouth softened into the shadow of a smirk and from the back of his throat purred a ghastly but giddy chuckle, which in turn died out into a sleepy sigh as he leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. The little bit of blood finally rolled down from his nose towards his lip.
And whatever had spoken through him just … drifted away.
Quinn stood roughly, skirted the table and hurried to Cain’s side. Clement lit another cigarette, smoking like a chimney tonight. After a moment, he murmured, “Kingsley.”
Cain drew a breath. His lashes fluttered rapidly again as if to clear his vision; finally, he noticed Quinn hovering over him.
“Oh … ” He looked so dazed and embarrassed. “Well, hello again. It’s Miss Maude. She’s just an echo. Repeater. Not intelligent, but very strong energy. I mean, she died so recently, did she not?” Wearily, he took the handkerchief Quinn offered and cleaned the blood from his face.
That was it. As if this were not a surprise to him. As if this were not a surprise to any of them. I didn’t even try to keep up; I was deeply stricken, heart pounding yet. And … feeling very guilty for being so fascinated by the things that frightened me.
“Well,” Clement said, checking his pocket watch. “We’ve made excellent time tonight, haven’t we?”
“Are we still seeing Mr. Zayne?” Cain asked, staring idly at the psychograph.
I shot Clement a look. “Miss Ophie only requested validation.”
Clement snapped his tongue against the back of his teeth and eyed me sideways, clinging to patience. “Indeed,” he muttered, “and Mr. Zayne requested I deliver his monthly cheque tonight.”
I didn’t have the capacity for his battle of wit after such a disturbing scene. Still shaking weakly but dizzied by relief for it to be through, I slumped back in the loveseat and sighed, offering him a repentant smile that slowly dissolved into the winded, dumbstruck sort of giggling that came with the rush of leftover panic.
On the stoop of the tiny Stygian Society shop, Cain waved out a match and puffed twice on the cigarette Clement had so graciously donated, then passed it to me. Tentatively, I took a turn with it as we sat together in the damp night air, watching Fleet Street keep busy around us.
With a shuffle on the step, Quinn ducked out of the shop to join us, standing there like a guard dog with his spectacles in his coat pocket.
“Was Miss Maude the only spirit you encountered?” he asked, looking down at Cain from the corner of his dark eye. He was worried, always so attentive to the wellbeing of our team.
Wearily, Cain took a long pull from our shared cigarette. “I don’t know,” he murmured, meeting Quinn’s eyes without lifting his head. “You tell me. Was it?”
Laughter echoed from inside Mr. Zayne’s warm, dully-lit shop.
Quinn nodded. “It seems as though you made contact with an unrelated entity.”
“How uncomfortable for you all,” Cain said thinly. “I apologise.” For some reason, I got the feeling he didn’t truly care. But how could he not be deeply frightened by an unbidden and unknown spirit invading him like that, especia
lly without his knowledge?
“It spoke in unrecognisable tongue,” Quinn went on. “I recorded it best I could. The linguists at the Natural History Museum should assess the phonetics before we submit to the daemonology department.”
“Oh—” Cain looked up at him quickly. “I don’t believe that’s necessary! It did not feel like a daemon. Perhaps an elemental, if anything. It’s all right, Quinn. I’m all right. Undue fuss. It happens sometimes. I’m not technically a medium, after all.”
Quinn’s face settled in a deep frown, unyielding and unconvinced. But he said nothing by way of agreement or disagreement.
We left not long after, piling into a coach with very sleepy-looking horses and a sleepier-looking driver. As our ride lugged itself forwards from the shop, going even more slowly as foot-passengers parted for it, I watched from the window a turtle-chinned fellow who’d been loitering near an alley slip into the now-empty Stygian Society with Mr. Zayne’s littlest man, Marius.
The turtle-chinned fellow didn’t look like the type to frequent Fleet Street alleys, all tweed and expensive topper, fine fur-lined Ulster coat. Wait … those beady eyes and that dissatisfied lip were familiar …
Dorland.
What was he doing there? He was an Officer; Officers were scarcely assigned fieldwork. His accompanying us to the girls’ school had been an exception, and as far as I’d observed, only field inspectors associated regularly with the resurrectionists.
“Look,” I said, elbowing Cain as we were off. “Dorland’s with Marius.”
Cain nodded, distracted but far less agitated now. “Research for a case, perhaps.”
I settled back into my seat. That made sense. I couldn’t vilify a man just because he seemed the perfect villain, anyway.
***
“What in the world is this?” I said as I threw down my coat, baffled. While we’d been out at Miss Ophie’s Parlour playing audience to Cain’s possession, my room had been all rearranged.
“I thought I’d surprise you,” the Missing girl with the pigtails chirped from the opposite corner.