The Infernal Aether

by Oxley, Peter

  “I suggest you make yourself scarce,” said N’yotsu. “I suspect we have a long night’s cleaning and repairing ahead of us, and if you linger much longer there is a risk that Kate will press you into service.” We shook hands and bade each other farewell.

  After N’yotsu had stepped back inside and shut the door I stood there for a moment longer, leaning against the doorframe, unsure exactly what to make of what had just transpired. There was far too much for my overworked and overwrought brain to comprehend. I finally summoned up the energy and walked away, trying to shake the feeling of dread and fear which I now could not help but associate with my friend N’yotsu.

  PART FOUR - MEN OF CLAY

  CHAPTER 15

  The mist wrapped round my arms and body, clinging to me, pulling me in. All around was grey, punctuated by the odd hint of forms, creatures which flitted near me but never strayed close enough for me to do anything more than sense them.

  Sounds reached out to me in my isolation: scratches, shuffles and moans. I whirled round at a sudden sound from behind, only to see yet more curling mist. Again and again this happened, making me feel like a demented dancer.

  Something loomed out of the mist, a form which coalesced into a figure. “Rachel?” I asked.

  She stopped a few feet away, recognisably her and yet also very, very different. Her skin was stretched tightly over prominent bones, her eyes two small black orbs which regarded me blankly. I wanted to call out to her, but my mouth and throat were rigid with fear.

  She raised a thin, spindly arm and pointed past my shoulder. I turned to see a portal, a window into a room where Maxwell and N’yotsu stood staring back at me. As I watched, they brandished some device which shrank the portal down and down until it disappeared altogether, leaving me stranded in that place.

  I turned back and was face to face with Rachel, but her skin had stretched even further, exposing yellowing bone around the eye sockets and a glimpse of teeth behind rotting lips. The shuffling sounds around us grew to a crescendo, heralding other ghastly creatures which drew into view around us.

  I tried to scream.

  I awoke at a table in The One Tun, a jerk of my arm sending my ale crashing to the floor. The landlord cursed me from behind the bar but otherwise no one paid me the slightest heed. In that particular tavern in that particular part of town, it paid to mind one’s own business.

  The landlord grudgingly gave me another ale and I settled back down into my corner, trying to hide my shaking hands. My head was numb and foggy and it took all my effort to keep my eyes open. I felt like I had not slept in days, which was indeed the case; since my aborted suicide attempt, rest had been a distant stranger to me. What sleep I had managed had been plagued by an endless stream of nightmares, a nightly torture which was slowly driving me insane. I was very much alone in this; Maxwell and N’yotsu had thrown themselves into investigating the fresh theories which had been revealed by our brush with the Aetheric Sound Conduit. As a result I had resorted to laudanum to help me forget or at the very least send me into a dream-free oblivion. So far I had managed neither.

  I shuddered as my latest nightmare flashed across my mind’s eye once more. A long swig of ale simply served to deepen my mood. I glared at the mug, wondering if I was wasting my time, and pondering where I could get hold of something stronger and more effective.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone approaching my table. I gripped the mug tighter and hunched my head down; I was in no mood for conversation.

  “Gus,” said Kate. Then, louder: “Mr. Potts. We need to talk to you.” She sat down without waiting for a response.

  I sighed and slowly looked up. She was looking at me expectantly, accompanied by a rather nervous-looking old man.

  “Shouldn’t you be working?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “This is Mr. Jones,” she said. “He’s an old friend of my family, and he needs our help.”

  I stared at them both for a moment and then took a long swig of ale. “You may not have noticed,” I said. “But I am the last person you should be asking for help. In fact, if there is anyone offering assistance around here, I would put myself at the front of the queue for their services.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “This is all about that fight you had with Maxwell, isn’t it?”

  “It was not a fight,” I muttered, still smarting from the exchange earlier that afternoon.

  I had gone round to Bedford Square in search of company and had mistakenly thought that my brother would provide it. He had greeted me with the words: “I suppose you should come in,” and the visit had gone downhill from there.

  “Are you actually going to talk to me?” I asked after ten minutes of feeling like one of his discarded pieces of machinery. In point of fact, the simile was not quite accurate; in that place his odds-and-sods were much more likely to receive attention than me.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  “I have come to visit you. The usual convention is to at least attempt to be civil and polite toward your visitors.”

  “But I did not invite you. And I am rather busy here. Idle chit-chat merely serves to divert my focus away from more important matters.”

  I shook my head. “Do you not wonder why I have come to see you?”

  He made a big show of putting down the device he was holding and then glared at me. “Given all I know, I surmise that you have run out of money.”

  “No. Well, yes I have, but I have not come to beg money from you.”

  “Wonders never cease,” he muttered, his attention once again engaged in his equipment.

  I threw my hands in the air. “I have nowhere else to go. I needed to talk to someone and you were the only person I could think of. Even you must realise how desperate a state of affairs that is for me.”

  “What about your friends? Those wonderful drinking companions of yours?”

  I felt my cheeks burn and looked down. “They are otherwise disposed.”

  “What, all of them? At the same time? Seems unlikely.”

  “In point of fact, I have tried approaching them, but with little success. We do not quite mix in the same social circles these days.”

  He frowned at me, and I knew from the expression on his face that he was treating our exchange as another of his confounded logic problems. “Ah, so it is about money after all. As soon as you ran out of money, and therefore could no longer buy them drinks, they were no longer interested in maintaining their acquaintance with you.”

  “Please, spare me the whole ‘I told you so’ routine. I really need someone to talk to.”

  “If I gave you money would that mean that your so-called friends would once again welcome you in to their fold?”

  “Maybe, but that is not the point. I should not wish to speak to them in any case.”

  He smiled. “Ah, so you have at least learnt something. Congratulations, brother! You are maturing.”

  “I give up,” I snapped. “You are no better than those machines you tinker with!” I turned to leave.

  “Thank you,” he said, already immersed in his work. “Remember to shut the door on your way out, will you?”

  And so it was that I found myself in that tavern, nursing a solitary ale, my desire for company sucked out of me by the emotional void that was my brother when engaged in his experimentations.

  “You’ve been moping around like a spoilt little child for too long,” said Kate. “Now shut your trap and listen to what we have to say.”

  I opened and then closed my mouth, my cheeks and ears flushing. For want of something better to do I took another swig of ale and glared at the two of them.

  Kate nodded at Mr. Jones, who cleared his throat and then spoke in a quiet voice. “Mr. Potts, I work a stall in the market down on Commercial Road. Nothin’ much, just some fruit and veg when I can get them. But the thing is, there’s been some trouble lately. This feller, Silas, been hasslin’ us, makin’ us pay ’im to leave us alone. It’s got so bad, I’m pa
yin’ ’im everythin’ I earn. My family are starvin’ so that bastard can live the high life.”

  I waited for something more, but they both just stared at me. “Have you tried the police?” I asked.

  Kate nudged Mr. Jones, who in turn stared at the floor. “Not that simple,” he muttered.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Then, when I got no response, I said to Kate: “I don’t have the time for this. I have some intense moping around to do. So if you don’t mind.” I gestured for them to leave.

  “Don’t be an arse,” she said. I had known Kate for a few weeks, yet was still not accustomed to her rather unladylike manners. I stared at her, cheeks burning afresh.

  “Come with us,” she said. “That’s all I ask. Have a look at what he’s talking about. Bit of a walk might do you good. There’ll still be plenty of beer here when we’re done.”

  *

  Against my better judgment, but in the interests of being left alone as soon as possible, I found myself walking the streets of the East End with Kate and the old man. It was late afternoon and the combination of exercise, daylight and my slightly drunken state flipped my mood so I felt as light as air, as though I were one of the dirigibles floating above us. I squinted into the sunlight, fancying the idea of journeying somewhere far away.

  For a moment I thought I recognised The Old Lady amongst the traffic of airships above us, the familiar patchwork of its balloon matching the scarred arrow of its gondola beneath it. I blinked and then shook my head; it was just the wrong shade of blue, too new to be the flying prison which I had grown to love all those years ago. I allowed myself a smile at the thought of all the places I had seen and the people I had met during my time as a traveller of the skies. The memory was so fresh that I almost fancied I could hear Freddie’s cruel but infectious laughter around me.

  We arrived at Commercial Road and were immediately thrust into the bustle and cacophony of the afternoon market. Costermongers shouted their wares from a seemingly endless stream of carts, wagons and makeshift stalls, all of which were arranged haphazardly throughout the neighbourhood without care for the needs or desires of either pedestrian or horse. As a result, we fought our way through crowds of customers, eager sellers and other perambulists, as well as keeping a watchful eye out for any horses, carriages or omnibuses which might at any moment brush us aside or even trample us underfoot. This was a dance to which all three of us were accustomed, although friends from out of town had often commented with terror at the unmitigated chaos of the arrangement.

  The sheer volume of the market drowned out any attempts at conversation, even when shouting directly into each other’s ears. I signalled to my companions that I wanted to talk and we made our way to an alley which offered some small respite from the noise, although the clamour reaching our refuge was still enough to force us to shout to make ourselves heard.

  “Should I be looking out for anything in particular?” I shouted.

  “’e’ll be ’ere soon,” replied Mr. Jones. “Market’s just winding down; that’s when Silas likes to do ’is rounds.”

  At first glance, the mass of humanity and industry in front of and around us seemed to belie the idea that anything was “winding down.” However, when one took a closer look it was true that the crowd was thinning; in some areas there was clear air between people, achieved without the use of elbows. Many of the stalls were emptying, with those still piled high the subject of much shouting and haggling on the part of the increasingly desperate stallholders.

  I sighed and leant against the wall, instinctively pulling out my hip flask and unscrewing it. I was about to raise it to my lips when a bizarre sight arrested my movement.

  “What are those things?” shouted Kate.

  A man, who I presumed to be this Silas character causing Mr. Jones so much trouble, was making his way through the market, his approach scattering stallholders and customers. He seemed relatively unassuming, dressed in a smart but not overly ostentatious manner, although his face and bearing betrayed the arrogance of a natural bully. It was his four companions though which caused most of the kerfuffle.

  They were shaped like men, but that was where the resemblance ended. They were huge: eight or maybe nine feet tall. Their tread was such as to make the ground vibrate beneath our feet. Their eyes were slits which glowed a deep red, while the rest of their faces were largely featureless, with bumps and curves to suggest where nose, mouth and ears should be. Their bodies were lumpen and massive, such that we did not need to see them in action to ascertain their considerable strength. And they appeared to be made entirely of clay.

  Mr. Jones had shrunk back even further into the alleyway. “I told you,” he said.

  “Golems,” I said in answer to Kate’s earlier question, hardly believing the word I was saying, let alone the evidence of my eyes. In spite of Maxwell’s teasing, I was relatively cultured in some areas, and as a young man had taken an interest in the folklore of various religions and cultures. One of the Judaic myths which had particularly fascinated me had been the story of the golem: a creature made from mud or clay and animated by the insertion of a holy word, or shem. Many Jews believed the story to be fact, something which I had treated with understandable scepticism until now.

  “Is that some sort of costume?” asked Kate.

  “I hope so,” I said.

  Silas had stopped at one of the larger stalls and engaged in conversation with the stallholder. It was clear from their mannerisms that the exchange was anything but cordial, and after a few moments Silas stepped back and gestured to his companions, who set about destroying the stall. One of them picked up the entire cart one-handed and threw it over the nearest building, while another dealt with the horses in a particularly grisly and yet effective manner.

  Having witnessed this display of preternatural strength, I said: “I think it is safe to say that those are not costumes. These creatures are not human.”

  “Can you help us?” asked Mr. Jones.

  I looked back at the golems, which had ceased their work and were now standing stock-still, looking for all the world like four human-shaped mountains.

  “Not I,” I said. “But I know a man who can.”

  CHAPTER 16

  We entered 17 Bedford Square to find Maxwell glaring at us from behind a device which was smoking vigorously. Our companion Mr. Jones gasped as he took in the sight before us: a busy chaos of books, papers, tubes, flasks, engines and other miscellany.

  “I’m a bit busy right now, Gus,” Maxwell said. “Can this wait until later?”

  “Actually it’s N’yotsu we’ve come to see,” I said. “Is he in?”

  “Oh,” said Maxwell. “Yes... He’s in his quarters.”

  Kate led us up the stairs; after a pause Maxwell followed us.

  “I thought you were busy?” I said to him with a smile. Getting no response other than a frown I continued: “You’ve sacrificed some laboratory space to give N’yotsu his own room? Are you getting soft in your old age?”

  “We have been working so closely together recently that it was only logical that he should lodge here,” said Maxwell. “It seemed appropriate that he should have some privacy.”

  “Yeah,” said Kate from over her shoulder. “And with the sorts of things he likes to gather round him, it’s best he’s kept out of sight.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Kate answered me with raised eyebrows and a smile before knocking on the door to N’yotsu’s room. He answered it almost immediately, his body filling the doorway. There was something different about him, and it took me a moment to comprehend what that was. I had only ever seen him dressed in the most immaculate evening wear, yet he stood before us looking decidedly slovenly, having discarded his top hat, jacket and tie in favour of a decidedly louche open shirt. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “We have a situation which would benefit from your particular expertise,” I said and nodded to Kate.

  “This is a friend of m
ine, name of Mr. Jones,” she said, gesturing to the old man, who was cowering in the corridor behind us. “He’s been troubled by some coves who’re menacing money from him.”

  “I believe the usual protocol is to call for the police,” said N’yotsu. “I am rather busy here.”

  “Busy doing what, exactly?” asked Maxwell, peering round the door.

  “That’s not all,” continued Kate. “There’s something about this which you’d definitely be interested in. The cove in question has these bruisers that ain’t human. What did you call them, Gus?”

  “Golems.”

  “Golems? As in the Jewish folklore?” asked Maxwell. “Are you quite sure?”

  “They were huge man-shaped pieces of animated clay,” I said. “If you can think of another explanation then I would be more than willing to listen.”

  “It has been a few years since I last encountered a golem,” said N’yotsu, turning away and walking inside, leaving the door open.

  We followed him into the room, which was even more sparsely furnished than the rest of the house, the only nods to comfort or amenity being a table and chair crammed into the corner of the room. The floor put me in mind of a maze in the grounds of a stately home, but designed perhaps by a demented librarian. Varied arrangements and piles of books were laid around the room in an order which seemed completely chaotic save for the pathways created, presumably, to permit N’yotsu to navigate from one end to the other without treading on them. Something, though, was bothering me about the lack of furniture.

  “Where do you sleep?” I asked.

  I was ignored as Kate stood in front of N’yotsu, arms folded. “So what are you going to do?” she asked.