by Jerico Lenk
I jumped. I hadn’t seen her manifest in the shadowy room, but I could certainly make her out now amongst the shapes of all the furniture.
My bed had been moved against the wall and rather sloppily made, as if by someone who’d watched their mother or maid but had never tried it before themselves. The things on my desk were sorted to all different places and the chair dragged around to the table, while the revolving bookcase had somehow moved from the corner to the foot of my bed.
“Do you like it?” the vibrant little ghost peeped, clutching anxiously at her pinafore and smiling a shy, sweet smile.
Truthfully, I was too achingly exhausted to care either way. Wild laughter echoed from a room overhead as I flopped down into the small armchair. “It’s fine,” I hummed, rubbing blearily at my face. The Missing girl fiddled at the lamp on the desk. I could see her pale little fingers pinching at the knob. She went paler—faded, almost, so that she was barely there—and then the knob turned to her hand, light swelling up in the room.
“There you go,” she sing-songed. “Now you can see!”
“Thank you … ” Yawning, I shrugged out of my waistcoat. “What’s your name, dearie?”
Oh, why had I asked that? Because I felt guilty, that’s why. Because here I accommodated her only to go out and banish others forever with my team. Because, apparently, after most my life, I’d only just now decided I wanted to care about the Missing’s existence.
In the blink of an eye, she was across the room and beside me. I jumped a second time, squeezing my eyes shut and drawing a sharp breath. “Don’t do that,” I said under an embarrassed laugh, fumbling with the buttons down the front of my shirt. “I’m too tired for that right now.”
Her presence was grey and fragile, as though she struggled not to fade away. “My name’s Mary Ann. What’s yours?” she peeped, big eyes following my hands like a cat following a bird as I reached up my flannel undershirt to peel off my scratchy bandages. And then there she went. Gone, dissipated. But she was still in the room. I could feel her.
“Mary Ann … ” I hoisted myself up out of the chair. “That’s pretty. I’m Will Winchester.”
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
My smile drooped. Wasn’t she perceptive. Rather, I was being watched more than I realised. Discomfited, and suddenly feeling quite violated, I dug around for my big marine-knit sweater and shrugged it on as quickly as I could before hopping up on the bed. I just laid there for a moment, unsure of how to respond—if I even cared to respond. Society was one thing; I’d never expected having to explain myself to a bloody ghost. Charlie and Colette had never asked me, and I certainly hadn’t thought about sharing these things with them. Had they not noticed? Had I not noticed they noticed? Did it even matter in the end?
The truth was, tonight I certainly felt aligned with my anatomy. But to answer that felt a betrayal to myself. I frowned, heavy now with unfair shame and frustration, as if I’d been caught doing something wrong. “Well,” I replied bitterly, “sometimes I am one and then the other. Either way, I’m Will. Say, can you turn the lamp down?”
She didn’t reply. I waited, patiently, wondering if she was trying, or if she might say something or reappear. She didn’t. Clearly, she’d spent herself up.
I sighed, crawling out of bed to extinguish the light. I rather liked the bed against the wall. It was cozier somehow, tucked into the corner like that.
“Good night,” I said wearily to the dark room.
“Good night!” came Mary Ann’s high-pitched call.
***
All Hallows’ Eve at Julien’s-off-the-Strand was, as expected, an indulgent occasion. My father’s girls dressed up in teasing costumes and masks made all the men that much bolder. Really it seemed license to cast away any lingering idea of goodness or manners, to flirt and titillate without real consequence. And, of course, I would spend most of the night serving themed treats and strong drinks, barred from the downstairs drawing room where some public medium was paid to thrill and about whom Charlie and Colette complained because she’d ask for them to play but wouldn’t wait for them before she just made loud knocks and noises under the table herself.
At the Black Cross, the celebration was much more fantastic.
“Cain, really,” I said, sitting cross-legged on his bed while he transformed my face into a skull with white and black theater paint. “We don’t need to be flashy.”
“Nonsense,” Cain hummed. “What else is a masquerade about?”
I tried not to smile too much, so the makeup would dry properly, as I took white chalk to sketch full skeletal anatomy down the fronts of the broadcloth suits he had laid upon the floor, and he sat before the mirror painting his face to match mine—though the smile was a little wistful. I didn’t know that I wanted to draw attention to myself tonight, when I’d probably be endeavouring against distraction with all the ladies swirling about in wonderful costumes and flowing gowns, imagining again someday in some future I didn’t yet know where I might do the same when I so chose.
But I was so unspeakably relieved by how quickly Cain had returned to normal after what had happened at Miss Ophie’s that I just wanted him to do as he pleased. And that meant dressing up with him.
“We’ll be suitably ghoulish,” Cain declared. “Little sprites of death. Just you wait, Will. You’ll see. The whole place will be a zoo in a few hours. Doors open to London, courtyard full of lights. The ladies all become faeries and witches, and the gentlemen … well, the getup trends this year are wild!”
He was right. The Black Cross grounds were only modestly populated on a normal day, but tonight the place writhed with people.
The building was aglow. Lustres and lamps caged in folded paper “bone” shapes threw off a dancing light while candles pulsed in carved melons. The spice of sweet hot drinks drifted about in the autumn crisp of evening, while the band in the upstairs great gallery struck up concertos. Laughter and animated voices layered thick together with frightened shouts, dissolving into good cheer from the eastern hall where trick mirrors and curtains had been set up like a maze.
In the small courtyard, non-confidential Cross cases and their physical evidence spanned the long lengths of two velvet-covered tables. Ritualistic talismans, skeletal specimens on display. Photographs of haunted cemeteries and séances smudged by mist-like anomalies. Bottled spirits brought up for air from Asphodel Meadows and which I certainly avoided. Unaffiliated Londoners strolled along in the midst of men from the SPR and the West London Division of Psychics, galvanized by the grotesquerie and the preternatural as if the place were some grand fair full of exotic imports and zoos. Everyone chose to be a Spiritualist for the night, it seemed.
I was mesmerised; I didn’t know what else to do with myself but wander about in mute wonder as if it all were exotic to me, too. But after a short while, I began to feel very crowded by everyone around, defenceless, and on edge. I wanted to stop worrying about it so badly, but—this was an opportune night, should my father wish to seek me out, when even the Cross was open and vulnerable, wasn’t it?
As inside I turned onto the second floor, squeezing past a small cluster of people who did not seem to notice the way they blocked the stairwell, two hands plopped down on my shoulders from behind and twisted me around as their owner cried, “Kingsley! I thought you were down in the—”
I gawked up at Mr. Zayne, who gawked back down at me.
“You’re not Kingsley,” he said.
I shook my head.
“Well, you’re dressed the same,” he explained.
“Winchester,” I corrected shyly.
“Clement’s backup Kingsley!” Mr. Zayne cried, smelling vaguely of embalming chemicals and gin as he officially greeted me with a choke of a hug. Backup Kingsley? It was either a grand compliment or … really not.
“Everyone’s in here.” Mr. Zayne dragged me off with him into the great gallery, where the band was deep in a lilting Mendelssohn piece. He swung his arm down off my shoulde
rs only once we spotted Clement. And Miss Jessica, and a man I did not know, and a woman of whom I’d also never had the pleasure of meeting, the lot of them talking and laughing as Mr. Zayne strolled up.
I stayed a better number of steps away—where I could still hear, of course—close to the door with my fingers twisting in the ends of my sleeves and my eyes drifting about the room. I’d only ever seen the high-ceilinged gallery unlit and unused throughout the day, but tonight the windows hung open so the music might spill out on the courtyard below, and the gold-painted crown moulding caught the lamplight brilliantly. The floor was buffed sufficiently enough for someone to slip a bit every now and again, between the handful of couples dancing around in little circles.
“You inspected Miss Ophie’s!” Mr. Zayne cried, sounding utterly heartbroken to have been excluded. “Why, I’ve been there a few times. Not fair, Clement! Not fair at all! Were the girls there, too?”
“No,” Clement scorned, “we put them up at Claridge’s, as we always do.”
“Resurrectionists are always such a delight in public conversation,” Miss Jessica simpered around her drink. The man with them chuckled and she beamed up at him in a way I thought a bit misleading, unless she aimed to be on his arm all night.
“Mr. Zayne Lissie here is indeed a delight,” the other woman said, steering away from contempt. She spoke much like Cain did, with smooth, unapologetic dignity. “I’m rather tired of forcing laughter around stuffy gentlemen who force humor in an attempt to be interesting at all.”
“Why, thank you, Miss Ogden,” Mr. Zayne murmured with a tip of the head as though he meant to wink but thought twice about the impropriety.
Talk moved on to something else. Clement looked remarkably quaint and old-fashioned, bypassing a silly costume in favour of a chequered waistcoat and tapered pants. It was almost difficult to believe him the same half-gentleman he routinely appeared. Tonight, he was actually rather adorable—
Under the paint, my face was suddenly afire. Clement, adorable tonight, and how dare he be when he frustrated me so? He wasn’t scowling; he spoke pleasantly, and he laughed, and his eyes were so big and full of feeling. Much different from the usual hazel heat or charismatic temerity. Perhaps he’d administered himself a dose of his good powder. Or gin, like Mr. Zayne. At some point, he’d slicked his hair back, but it was falling loose already.
My mouth was dry. I snatched a drink from the refreshment table and stalked out of the gallery, hoping no one had really noticed my presence in the first place.
Adorable. What was wrong with me? Clement was a willful and temperamental young man with questionable levels of patience and tact. So he could clean up for a Cross sanctioned event. So could Quinn, who, when I’d seen him earlier, had been quite approachable in a pinstriped waistcoat and starched shirt.
I stopped on the stairs to drain half my cock-tail in one chagrined—and stronger than I expected—swallow. My face pinched. Never mind Clement; one day I might want to find someone adorable, and be found adorable in turn. But what was a queer thing like me to do then? Especially one without a mother, or really a father, who could see the dead and much preferred wearing trousers and bandages to a corset and a dress, who was acknowledged in the role of a sir regardless of anatomy? Bi-gendered, ambisexual, half and half. A boyish girl for a man who might want a lady, a feminine-formed boy for a girl who desired a man. Always a betrayal one way or another. Always only half of what someone might want. Never mind sexual inversion; I was just a tangled mess.
How could anyone ever wish to be part of that with me?
“Will!” O’Brien bounded over as I came off the stairs into the hall. I couldn’t help but laugh, startled once I realised it was him in the baggy, tailed pouch of a suit that was his theatrical cat costume. He held the mask under one arm, a slouching hood with a full feline’s taxidermy face, as he grabbed my hand to shake in greeting. “How is your first Cross Hallows’ Evening?”
“Overstimulating,” I replied with contradictory cheer, as I leaned up and he leaned down so as to hear me over the noise in the crowded hall. His face dimpled in swift concern. I laughed again, shaking my head. “But quite all right,” I promised.
“Our awkward little prince,” Cain sing-songed, swooping in from the crowd then to hook an arm in mine. Thank God he’d found me again, because my head was spinning and the usual social ineptitude still crept against the rolling warmth from the strongly mixed drink.
“Awkward?” I thought I’d done splendid lately at being normal.
“Oh!” Cain laughed. “And, O’Brien, hello!”
O’Brien winked, lifting his mask with both hands to hold before his face as if he’d replace it on his shoulders. “Meow,” he replied.
“Good-bye, O’Brien,” I called, waving as Cain tugged me along elsewhere with him.
“I finally managed to shake my family,” he said as he spirited us far to the north wing of the building.
“Your family was here?” I asked, stepping smartly to keep pace with him.
“Well, the ones who care for the Cross.”
Cain swerved into an empty corridor not far from the music hall, quiet and full of chilly shadows, and as he pressed me up against the wall, all the show flitted from his face. My smile faltered; my brow knotted. But I didn’t even have time to wonder on his intentions before his eyes fixed with mine and he breathed:
“I have a key.”
I have a key …
In the cool, quiet hall far from the lights and the All Hallows’ crowds, Cain’s bad eye was all the ghastlier ringed in black paint, though I thought it suited him and his lovely face.
He didn’t elaborate. Just took my hand tight in his own and led me farther down the narrow hall to a thick, dark door under the old rear stairs.
The door bore an unremarkable little plaque with the title LOWER RESEARCH ROOMS. That one was not locked; it opened upon another flight of stairs downwards. My grip on Cain’s free hand tightened until he pulled away to light a long wax taper, which he’d apparently hidden inside the front of his suit.
Into the bowels of the Black Cross we descended. It wasn’t a cellar, per se. But like a cellar, it was distinctly colder and markedly damp, and the stairs led to an underground place I could only assume had at one time been a servants’ pathway. The air was dank with the scent of dirt and stone and mouldering wood, but someone at some point had put forth effort to make the crude passage seem welcoming and up-to-date, adding idle menagerie to old shelving, propping a painting here and there against the patchy grey stone of the wall as if just another corridor above ground.
We took a hard left turn and Cain stopped at a door marked with the Roman numeral one. Its lock was elaborate, quite large and baroque. Around the winding, curling pattern was an inscription in German: JOHANN MARTINGERSTL, SCHWOBACH, 1 NOVEMBER ANNO 1748.
Cain showed me the key. Darkened by time and the touch of many fingers, made of steel or some old alloy, ornately crafted, and about six inches long.
“Bartlett let me borrow it,” he said.
With a great thudding click of the bolts, Cain eased the broad door open on a gulf of shadows and a powerful draft of stinking air.
A rat near the door scurried away at the bounce of candlelight. Water dripped from somewhere in the room, a steady echo like a delicate heartbeat. And as Cain took the candle from me and swung his arm from side to side, trying to illuminate as much of the room as he could, a fascinated chill zipped down my spine.
It was an evidence storage room.
Near a terracotta of the Virgin was a collection of thick coin-like items bearing winged lions with human heads and she-wolves devouring human figures. Rows and rows of shelves held skulls, jarred spines, marble urns. Crowding the floor were old torture devices, even a dirt-caked coffin or two. A random lacy bassinet and an old Italian trunk sat amongst all manner of gadgets, draconian artefacts to gilded relics, some so foreign-looking they seemed otherworldly.
As we eagerly explored,
I slowed before a shelf cluttered with little animal bones and jars of cemetery dirt, flowers and crystals and feathers twisted in rope, a cracked porcelain-faced doll …
Evidence. It was like standing in a silent room with every set of eyes on you. There was no identification on any of the items, so there wasn’t any way to know why the things were there. What they were proof of—what they had been through.
I took a moment to flip through an original index of Black Cross terminology, lingering on the page with official differentiation between echoes, enigmas, and intelligents.
“Cain,” I said, glancing over.
He peered at me from around the terrible spiked door of a Virgin of Nuremburg propped in the opposite corner, with a dark softness to him that brought to mind paintings of martyred saints or cupids.
I closed the old Cross index carefully, almost not sure I could ask what I’d been wanting to ask for quite a few days now. “At Miss Ophie’s Parlour … ”
Instantly, a shadow eclipsed Cain’s face. But perhaps he’d only withdrawn a bit further behind the spiked door, regarding me through his lashes from across the cramped room as though he weren’t really seeing me.
“You know what sort of scene you made, don’t you?” I asked.
Gravely, he said, “Yes.”
“Is that how mild possessions always go?”
He blinked rapidly as if surprised, face softening again. “Oh—oh, no. That was a conduit possession. And I’m sorry it frightened you.”
I was immensely relieved to know I didn’t make such a scene when I saw the Missing’s memories. But I was still a bit lost. Chilled and desperately curious.
Cain leaned back against the wall. “As you’ve only recently observed,” he murmured, “I am a conduit clairvoyant. You, Will, merely experience the ghost’s soul like a vision. You remember the soul. A conduit possession is … becoming the soul.”
“But how do ghosts know whom to choose for that?”