Machina Mortis: Steampunk'd Tales of Terror

by Derwin, Theresa

  A few of the passengers shot away instantly, reinvigorated by the contact and the direction. Maximus pushed harder on the others, but he could not tell if his extra motion helped or not.

  He suddenly felt the world closing in around him. A blackness was molding his ectoplasm in on itself, contracting it into a tight ball. His surprise attack had freed the others from Lafayetta’s control, but now he was trapped inside her darkness.

  Maximus pushed his will outward creating spikes along the outside of his ectoplasm shooting them into the blackness of the substance that held the medium’s spirit.

  It had felt like hours since Maximus had sat in the chair and fell into the stupor of the Black Banshee’s power. Kate placed her hand on the shriveled up skin of her husband’s face and prayed for his safe return.

  Suddenly, the train began to slow down considerably. Kate smiled, “Whatever you’re doing in there, Darling. It seems to be working.”

  Maximus didn’t quite understand what was going on around him, but he knew that he was losing. The black demon-like shape that was the conjurer had been pushed away by his spikes, but it quickly regrouped and surrounded him once more.

  Kate heard her husband moan from deep in his throat just as the first of the passengers started to wake up. She kissed his forehead, “Keep fighting, Sweetheart. You’re doing it.”

  She left him there to help the others. The needles were retracting and the black braces moving away to let many of Blackburn’s chosen guests free of their sacrificial chairs.

  Kate helped them orient the best that she could. The train was slowing even more and Kate believed it would be stopping any moment.

  The black mass that surrounded his spirit had sprouted teeth. It was devouring his ectoplasm, absorbing the physical manifestation of his spirit.

  As Kate felt the train slow almost to a stop, she led the fearful party guests to the door of the car. She opened it and the cool air of the Fall night flowed in. They were west of the city and she could see the lights off in the distance.

  Maximus fought with all his might against the devouring force of the medium’s will. Suddenly, he understood what he had to do. Instead of pushing through the dark mass, he reversed his momentum and pulled Lafayetta with him into the engine of the Black Banshee.

  Kate felt a jerk in the locomotive and the train started to speed up once again.

  “The train is moving faster!” she told the gathered guests. “You have to jump!”

  One by one the elite of St. Louis society leapt from the door to the ground below. Dr. Albert was the last of them to step up for his escape. “You must come with us, Katie!” He pleaded.

  “Maximus and I will be along!” She told him.

  “God bless you!” is all he could give, then he turned and hurled himself from the train.

  Maximus was not prepared for the pain that would accompany his movement through the engine of the Black Banshee. He knew that it was not physical pain in any real sense—that his ectoplasm did not contain nerves and that without a body there should be no feeling. Yet, there was still the sensation of pain and his feelings screamed around him.

  His improvised plan had worked; however, and the black mass of Lafayetta was torn away from him as they were propelled through pipes and over the gears of the engine.

  He only needed to keep himself together enough to push back to his body when his ectoplasm fulfilled a full revolution.

  He pushed his will forward and saw the pipe he needed ahead of him. Then, he felt the gnashing of teeth at the ends of his spirit and knew that the conjurer had returned.

  Kate moved back to where the dried up husk of her husband sat trapped in the black chair. She kissed his forehead once more and tried to will his spirit back to her.

  The locomotive was running at a sped that Kate had never felt before and she knew that it must be indicative of the battle within the Banshee’s bowels. Fearing the worst she stood and walked back to the crimson control chair that housed the body of the medium.

  “I don’t know if this will cause good or ill,” she shouted at no one, “but it will damn sure make me feel better!” She raised the gun up level with Lafayetta’s head and pulled the trigger.

  The Black Banshee bucked and Kate was thrown to the floor as the speeding train car skipped off the track and started dragging through the earth.

  She braced her herself as best as she could as the train crashed onto its side and started to slide across the ground. There was a huge snap as the engine and the cars in front of the one that held the black chairs broke away.

  Kate could hear the final scream of the Black Banshee as it moved further away from the car in which she sat. After she knew the car had stopped sliding, she rose and moved to where her husband was still connected to his chair. His frame now rested on his back as the side his chair was on had become the floor of the car.

  Kate knelt down and saw that his body was still a husk. The brace was still in place and the needle still punctured his navel.

  “I’ve killed you, Maximus!” she cried through her tears. She brushed his hair from his forehead and held him as best she could. She looked into his face for a moment more and then, realizing that he was no longer there, she stood and raised her arms to the heavens. “You promised me,” she screamed, “you would find a way back.” Kate shook her fists at the sky and let the tears fall. “No matter what it takes, Darling! You… come… back… to…”

  “Please stop that incessant screaming, Dear”

  Kate’s face turned to an instant smile as she turned to find her husband rising from the chair that had been holding him fast.

  “Those tears have made a mess of your eyeshadow, Love!” Maximus forced out as he struggled to stay standing.

  “You bastard!” Kate screamed back as she flung herself into his arms. The held each other close for a long passionate moment.

  “I thought I was done for,” Maximus told her. “Then, something yanked her away.”

  “I had to do something,” Kate returned. “When I thought you were lost to me, all I could think about was your ridiculous promise.”

  He kissed her, “And what, My Love, was so wrong with a promise to return to you. I thought it quite romantic.”

  “Oh it was. I just had this vision of going home after your heroic funeral and finding that my husband had transferred his spirit into a killer automaton.”

  “Now that,” Maximus laughed, “would be an team of socialite snoops worth the price of a dime novel.”

  The Garretton Ghoul

  By Christine Morgan

  In a dark, cold place that stank of a slaughterhouse, Alan Harmons opened his eyes. His head throbbed like a rotted tooth. He ached all over.

  Where the devil was he?

  What the devil had he been up to?

  Had he been hitting the gin? No stranger to that, of course, but he’d never in his life wakened with a hangover the likes of this.

  Or in a place such as this. Where the devil was he?

  What was that awful stench? Slaughterhouse, he’d thought, before his mind was all the way to consciousness, and a slaughterhouse reek it was … blood and shit, piss and meat, rot and death.

  Alan knew the slaughterhouse, had worked there as a boy. Following in the footsteps of his father, uncles, brothers, and cousins. Before the advancements came, the mechanizations, getting more done in less time with a fraction of the manpower, so that most of the Harmons men found themselves out of a job.

  He blinked but saw only blackness.

  Was he blind?

  Dear God, let him not be blind. Anything but that. His eyes, he needed his eyes and his hands. The rest of him, he could do without. Strike him deaf, cripple his legs, geld him even, but for the love of all the saints, leave him his eyes and his hands!

  As he blinked again, he discovered – with inestimable relief – that he could see after all.

  Then he wished he couldn’t.

  His relief turned to terror. He tried reaso
ning … then begging. As a shrill and hideously eager whine closed in, he tried screaming.

  With the gnashing teeth, and the pain, and the sound of cracking bone, he realized he was going to die.

  Moments later, Alan realized he was wrong about that.

  It was too late.

  Although still conscious, he was already dead.

  **

  A talented quicksketch could make a tidy sum in a good spot at Riverfront on a fine, sunny spring Saturday.

  Jack Blint was, as it happened, a talented quicksketch.

  He also had himself a prime spot staked out, there along the park promenade, just a stone’s throw from the hurdy-gurdy gazebo on the greensward, where vendors sold hot snacks from steam-carts and cold drinks from ice-wagons.

  Today, being a Saturday in spring but far from fine and sunny, Jack’s pockets stayed as empty as his easel, and his mood was fouler than the weather.

  In that, he was hardly alone. The chalkarts had long since given up, their colorful tools of the trade no use at all with the pavement gone to puddles. Only a single watercolorist remained, hunched under a tarpaulin shelter to slop at a painting of the river view, drear and bleak, a gloomy grey scene that no one would want to hang in their parlor. The Portnoy brothers, caricaturists both, sat shoulder to shoulder in their matching fisherman’s slickers, passing a brown bottle between them as the rain dripped from their hoods.

  The last few vendors looked to be packing it in, closing up the folding sides of their steam-carts. The mechanical wonder that was the hurdy-gurdy sat silent, its brass calliope pipes dulled, its dancing clockworks motionless and dispirited. At the stand where bicycles, pedal-craft and velocycles could be rented, the shutters were drawn over dark windows.

  No nannies with their young charges picnicked on the grass. No university students gathered under the trees, discussing politics and philosophy. No well-to-do folk strolled the walkways, gentlemen in top hats and ladies with parasols, taking the fresh air. They were where the best money was to be had … what courting swain or new husband could be so heartless as to refuse the flattery of spending a few pence on a portrait of the lovely lady on his arm?

  Times like this, Jack on occasion caught himself wishing he’d done like Charcoal Pete and others had done … given it up, gone off to try their fortunes elsewhere. Some went ‘round to say their goodbyes, make their well-wishes to their fellows. Others, why, others just went away and never did come back. Left to find work, poor blokes. There were jobs aplenty to be had in the city, jobs that paid rain or shine, indoor jobs where a man could have a roof over his head. Honest labor at an honest wage.

  Yes indeed, times like this when he felt fair soaked through from his cap to his boots, Jack Blint did have to admit the prospect had a certain appeal. But he always came to his right senses soon enough. He liked being his own man, answering to no one, having the freedom to come and go as he pleased. That surely was worth more than being cooped up in a factory or foundry long hours at a stretch.

  Thunder rolled a slow rumble across the sky, as if a fleet of massive airships moved just above the low-lying clouds. What had been a steady downpour heavied into a sheeting torrent, chopping the slate-dark river’s surface into white froth and lashing sodden leaves from the trees.

  Jack Blint knew when he was beat. He’d be earning nothing toward his overdue rent today, let alone enough for a tavern meal, a pint or two of stout, and a length of the lace-edged ribbon he’d had his eye on as a surprise for pretty Molly Blossom.

  In a trice, he had his kit collapsed and folded all together – easel, stool, the case of art supplies – into a compact barrow-cabinet with a single front central wheel. An expense it had been and that was for certain, but he’d never begrudged it. Over all, he draped and secured the sheet of oilcloth, he’d been sitting under, its corners twine-tied to a bough to make a crude tent. Jack had gotten quite adept at steering this arrangement even through the most bustling crowded streets, and it was a sight easier than bearing the bulk and weight on his shoulder.

  The Portnoy brothers nodded at him. Jack nodded back. He flipped up his collar, tugged down the brim of his cap against the rain, and set out away from Riverfront.

  The tree-lined greensward gave way almost at once to the city, to grimy brick walls with soot-stained stone cornices, to iron rails embedded in cobblestones with the cable-lines strung above, to chimneys spewing desultory smoke black against grey clouds, to mudwater coursing sluggish in the trash-filled gutters. The lamplighters had been to their task early on this day of premature darkness. Shopfront windows glowed a beckoning welcome. Telegraphy wires hummed and sputtered. A line of edison-bulbs flashed in unison, framing a signboard advertising a talkie-movie that promised explicit scenes of the perils and pleasures of Lost Worlds … which, as far as Jack could determine, consisted of scantily-clad native girls and great toothy lizards. Henry Duchamp’s artwork, unless he missed his guess. No one could do menacing monsters like Henry.

  The sidewalks jostled with hats, coats, hoopskirts and umbrellas. In the streets, horse-buggies and auto-buggies vied for advantage, cutting ahead of one another if a space opened, or even if it merely appeared likely to. Drivers shouted, laying heavy on their bells, shaking fists. When the shriek-blast of a trolley whistle split the din, they would have to make way of the tracks to let the trolley-car chug through, crammed to capacity and with passengers clinging to the side-bars. Traffic of all sorts was thickest at Ainsleigh Station, where several trolley lines, two elevated train lines and a substreet line converged.

  Jack kept an eye peeled as he passed the station, but could not spot Molly Blossom among the flower girls selling their bundled posies from baskets. He smothered a sigh. Seeing her sweet smile would have brightened his day, it would, but no luck.

  He turned toward Garretton, a neighborhood of tall and narrow brownstones that were boarding-houses, rooming-houses and cheap-lodgings. A fairly little room could be had there for fairly little rent. The topmost ones, attics and garretts – hence the name – could be had for even less, and were most prized by artists, poets and playwrights. To languish starving in a garrett, awaiting discovery, fortune and fame, was but part of the dream.

  A cold, drafty part of the dream, to be sure … Jack had such a room, so small that he could touch both walls if he stood in the center with his arms outstretched, barely space for a cot and a chair and a tiny table, with a slanted dormer window that rattled in the wind. Or, he had such a room provided he paid up his rent, already almost a week behind, and the landlady was an uncompromising sort.

  If he could slip ‘round the side and up the fire escape, he might avoid Mrs. Whitte until he had what she was owed.

  So thinking, Jack ducked down an alley between his building and the next one over. Some ragged lines of washing that hadn’t been taken in before the storm hit hung soggy between windows. A rat tried to drag a scrap of melon rind into a drainpipe.

  The fire escape was no easy thing to ascend even without having to wrestle his barrow-cabinet, but Jack decided it would be worth his while. He hunted about the alley in hopes of finding a stout piece of rope with which to fashion a rough strap.

  As he stooped, sudden rushing movement came from behind. Something large and dark, which Jack half-glimpsed before a heaviness fell upon him, rough and coarse and wet. He choked on a vile, suffocating stench.

  His senses swooned away, and then Jack Blint knew no more.

  **

  “It isn’t like him, I tell you, isn’t like him not at all!”

  Eliza Whitte tried to muster some pity in her soul for the girl, but Lord help her, it was a difficulty. Here she’d been, just about to sit down to a nice pot of tea …“Isn’t like any of them, is it? Until it is.”

  “Not Jack!”

  They never did learn, did they? Not until they’d gone and got themselves in the thick of it with some no-account wastrel … thick in debt and thick in the belly, more often than not. Eliza swept Molly Blossom’s figur
e with a practiced eye and decided that if such were the case this time, it was too soon to tell.

  A shame, when here Molly had been of goodly enough reputation before being taken in by a charmer the likes of Jack Blint. No doubt he’d told her how she was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen, him with his sketches and his sweet-talk, and fair dazzled her romantic little head.

  Oh, Eliza knew that tale well enough! Hadn’t her own daughter fallen for the very same, letting a good marriage go to ruins over it? And see where it had gotten her? A wealthy, well-spoken husband, but she’d gone and thrown it all away because of a handsome young painter. A fine way to show her gratitude to the widowed mother who’d scrimped and saved to keep a roof over their heads. Now, instead of easing off the cares of the world, a comfortable dowager welcomed into her son-in-law’s home, Eliza remained stuck here working her old fingers to the bone, renting rooms to the very type who’d spoiled everything. While her Abigail was God-knew-where, never bothering to write home even once.

  Artists. Artists and poets, what was a body to do? They were same one and all. Dreamers. Full of pretty words and pretty pictures.

  “So he’s run off, he has,” Eliza said, flapping a wizened hand. “Owing me more than a week’s back rent, the vagabond, and him not the first --”

  “He wouldn’t! Not without telling me, without so much as a goodbye!”

  “Wake up, you goose. Your fancy-boy Jack, he’s skipped out.” Searching for some greener pastures or following some other flip of petticoat, she shouldn’t wonder, but didn’t add aloud. That would only set the girl off again, wailing and indignant.

  Artists and poets, oh yes, with their big dreams … glad enough to take even the smallest attic rooms, paying more than such modest spaces were worth. When they did pay, that was. More often than not, they’d make grand promises based on hoped-for commissions from rich patrons, or offer her pieces of their work, swearing it’d be worth a fortune one day.