Ghosts by Gaslight (35 page)

They were talking among themselves, paying no heed to the strange voice muttering. I realised then that I alone—in my abnormal mental state, under the influence of the sleeping draught—I alone could hear it.

“This is what fits over his head,” Dr. Kessel was saying.

“Like a crown,” Mother commented.

“Yes, indeed. This is the most important part of the mechanism.”

I rolled my eyes back in my head, trying to focus on what the doctor held in his hands. The thing was above and behind me, and I felt giddy, even nauseated, from the vain effort to bring it into view.

“Be calm, Anthony,” said Mother.

“He’ll be fine,” said Mr. Hungerford.

Only when Dr. Kessel stepped a pace forward did the thing become clear to me. It
was
like a crown—a crown of wires—and also like a bird’s nest. Strands of copper were woven one over another to an incredible degree of complexity.

And there was another voice inside the strands!

It was a low, sinister whisper that erected the hairs on the back of my neck. Faint and distinct, like the muttering but not the same. I traced its movement as it circled round and round in the woven wires. I could distinguish no individual words, but the tone was insidious, sly and horrible.

An association came instantly to my mind: the voice that Mr. Jamieson had heard in his head, telling him to do things. Ugly, cruel, brutal things!

Was it an arbitrary association? No doubt. But the idea was right.

I tried to call out to the adults towering above. “Listen, listen to them!”

The voice in the crown of wires changed to a revolting laugh, a wet and breathy chuckle.

“What does he mean?” asked Mother.

“Something’s going wrong, isn’t it?” said Father.

“Not at all.” Dr. Kessel sounded snappish. “We shall put this over his head and wait for him to fall asleep.”

He meant the crown of wires. But when I saw it coming towards me, I panicked completely. I wrenched my arms free from the blocks, found the buckle, and undid the leather straps. I sat up in the box and gaped at the room around me.

The apparatus was as I had seen last night: tubes, domes, and spirals of glass, contained in rows of frames and cabinets. There was wiring too, more wiring than I had realised. A veritable spider’s web connected every item of apparatus to every other item. But that wasn’t what I gaped at.

Inside the wiring, inside the frames, inside the metal parts were voices—hundreds and hundreds of them. They scurried this way and that, constantly in motion, whispering, murmuring, gabbling, giggling. I even heard shrill squeals, distant yet close, that came from the silvery coils in a particular set of glass domes.

“Anthony! What are you doing?”

“Lie back down.”

“Is he hallucinating?”

Why couldn’t they hear what I heard? “Open your ears!” I cried.

Dr. Kessel put a hand on my shoulder. Before he could force me to lie back down, I knocked his hand away, kicked my legs free from the blocks, and jumped right out of the box.

Mother tried to catch hold of me, but I eluded her.

Her eyes flared. “Stay where you are! This is your last chance, Anthony! Don’t waste it!”

I continued to back away.

“No!” Dr. Kessel shouted loudest of all. “Keep him away from there!”

Attendants lunged forward—too late. I blundered into the very cabinet that had provoked Dr. Kessel’s cry of warning. Even worse, my foot caught in some wiring, and I tumbled over backwards.

There was a tremendous crash, and a sensation like a hammer blow through my bones. I had never experienced an electrical shock before, but I experienced one then.

The cabinet toppled under my weight and I collapsed on top of it. I rolled off sideways, crushing more glass and snapping more wires in the process.

The attendants cried out in dismay. “The control unit!”

“It’s wrecked!”

“What’ll happen now?”

“Will the whole mechanism stop?”

I looked back and saw a cascade of sparks flying out from the cabinet. There were spitting, explosive sounds and a smell of burning.

I crawled further away, like some criminal from the scene of the crime. The light in the room grew dim as the shimmering glows inside the glass apparatus flickered and died. The mechanism
was
coming to a stop.

Dr. Kessel’s reaction went beyond anger or despair. The look on his face conveyed outright terror.

I crawled further and further away. Ahead of me was a brick wall pierced by a jagged archway. No one was watching as I stumbled to my feet and passed through. I found myself in the middle room of massive humped machines—the generators, as I now supposed.

Here too the mechanism was failing. The generators no longer gave off their deep hum, and the silence was eerie, the echoes cavernous. From the next room along I could hear the
click-click-click
of cooling metal and the drip of falling water—but the clanging, pounding rhythm of the engines had stopped.

The only sound was the whispering and muttering of hidden voices. They were in the machinery of this room too. I stood stock-still and clamped my hands over my ears.

I expected someone to come searching for me from the room I had left behind. Instead, a figure entered from the room ahead. I recognised him at once—Norris, the Scottish engineer. He appeared in a further archway, backing away from the engines and boilers. I lowered my hands. He continued backing away for a dozen paces before he caught sight of me.

“What’s happenin’, lad?” he demanded. His face was white, and he looked shaken.

“The mechanism has stopped,” I answered. Guilt or honesty made me add, “I stopped it.”

“I can see it’s stopped.” He hadn’t registered my last sentence. “But what’s this other thing that’s started?”

For a moment, I imagined he was hearing the same voices that I heard. “You hear them too?”

“Them?”

“Voices in the metal.”

He shook his head at me as if I were crack-brained. “What I hear is the metal itself. Stress and strain. What’s makin’ it so?”

Even as he spoke, a bolt that held one of the generators to its mounting snapped off suddenly. The bolthead flew up in the air, then fell back with a clatter.

“It shouldna happen,” Norris said, more to himself than to me. “Not when everything’s stopped.”

A wire that ran across the ceiling broke off and lashed about in front of our faces. It was like someone wielding a whip. Then a cable on the floor started to jump and jerk. Norris took to his heels and fled into the room with the apparatus.

I followed, returning the way I had come. The voices in the metal were no louder, but increasingly urgent and excited. At the same time, I could also hear what Norris heard, a creaking and straining of the metal itself. It was a different sound, but related, surely related.

Mother, Father, and Dr. Kessel still stood beside the box; the attendants surrounded the fallen cabinet; Norris hovered further back, half in and half out of the open partition. They were all motionless yet focused, as in a tableau. At first I couldn’t grasp the object of their attention—or objects, for they stared in several directions.

Then, with a sudden movement, a whole mass of apparatus slid from its shelf. Glass tubes smashed on the floor, metallic coils and plates scattered far and wide. I looked again and saw that the frame supporting the shelf had warped away from the vertical—indeed, was
continuing
to warp. And not only that one frame, but every frame in the room. It was as though some tremendous force were twisting and bending the struts from within.

There was another crash as another shelf tilted and discharged its contents. Then an even louder crash as a whole cabinet went over. And at every crash, I heard—with my
other
hearing, attuned to those
other
sounds—I heard a surge of excitement and an evil thrill. Through wires and cables, through struts and rods, those horrible, hidden voices came hurrying towards the wreckage—whispering, muttering, exulting
.
Like rats they were, converging upon a victim.

On the floor, the metallic fragments continued to twist and bend as if writhing. To my eyes, the process conveyed an impression of indescribable agony.

I broke the spell of horror and shouted at the top of my voice. “I know what it is! It’s the bad thoughts! Inside the metal! I can hear them!”

Mr. Jamieson turned. “
What
can he hear?”

“Your bad thoughts!” I shouted again. “The mechanism is having nightmares! It’s living your hallucinations!”

Father frowned. “It’s only a machine, Anthony.”

At that moment, a sound came from the frame I was standing beside: a shriek of tormented metal. The whole structure contorted and buckled slowly sideways. There were similar sounds from other parts of the room, and the machinery in the rooms beyond.

“Out of here!” cried Mr. Hungerford. “Everybody, move!”

I think Mother tugged me by the arm—it was all a blur. We fled through the open partition into Dr. Kessel’s study. I looked back and saw Mr. Hungerford and another attendant sliding the wooden wings closed. Dr. Kessel came through just in time before the partition slammed shut. Mr. Hungerford and the other attendant pushed home bolts to lock it at the top and bottom.

The partition was solid, heavy wood, two inches thick. No one stood close, but no one ran out of the study either. We listened to the appalling cacophony building up on the other side. Shrieks and screeches—it might have been the sufferings of the damned, but it was the metal itself. We didn’t need to see it to know that in every room the machinery was slowly, inexorably tearing apart.

Then Mr. Jamieson prodded me in the back.

“What did you say just now?” he demanded.

“It’s your bad thoughts that got inside the metal,” I told him.

“My bad thoughts?”

“And all the other patients.”

“Our bad thoughts?” Mr. Jamieson looked incredulous.

“Oh, I feared this,” said another voice. It was Dr. Kessel, wide-eyed and teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Bad thoughts infected my mechanism.”

“So ye knew all along,” Norris chimed in. “Ye knew it was haunted.”

“Suspected. Only suspected.”

“I told ye the design was wrong.”

“No.” Dr. Kessel had never been an impressive figure, but now he seemed pathetically cowed and shrunken. “There
was
no other way to build it. As long as the electricity was running . . . I was
saving
people.”

“
You
never saved anyone,” Mr. Hungerford bluntly. “
It
did.”

He nodded towards the machinery on the other side of the partition. The cacophony had now reached a crescendo. I don’t think any of us will ever forget those unbearable, piercing sounds of tortured metal.

“It’s hurting!” cried Dr. Kessel suddenly. “I have to help . . .”

He ran for the partition and reached for the bolts to unlock it. Norris and Mr. Hungerford were on top of him in an instant. Mr. Hungerford dragged his arms away and pinned them behind his back.

“No one can help anything now,” the American said.

When Dr. Kessel tried to struggle, Norris simply cuffed him over the head and knocked him to the ground. Then the two of them hauled him over the floor away from the partition.

He lay there blubbering and snivelling for a while. Then he turned his attention on me. “It is the boy’s fault. He caused it to happen.”

“Let him be.” Mr. Hungerford spoke up on my behalf. “It was bound to happen in the end.”

The sounds on the other side of the partition continued unabated for ten minutes, then began to die down. It was another half hour before they ceased altogether.

M
Y ACCOUNT IS
almost finished. Only one last thing remains to tell—and now I know I can tell it calmly. I have maintained my equilibrium, have I not? All these dark experiences suppressed for years in my mind—I
could
not
risk reliving them. No one ever had to struggle so hard for their sanity. But finally I have written it out: the nightmares, the box, the crown of wires, the hidden voices, the agony of the metal, and my own guilt.

Oh yes, I accept the guilt. Even if the electricity must have failed eventually, yet I was the one who made it fail
then
. Dr. Kessel and I were both responsible in our different ways. My role was to be the immediate agent and cause. Now that I write it out, the sequence of events seems strangely inevitable—including the one last twist in the story. Make of it what you will.

We waited a long while after the sounds had ceased. Outside, the sun had risen above the buildings of the institute, and Dr. Kessel’s study grew bright with morning light. Then Mr. Hungerford and Mr. Jamieson took the lead in unfastening the bolts. They peeped through the partition and opened the wings a little wider. All was silent. I can’t explain the impression, but it was a
good
silence.

We trooped through in single file and stared at the wreckage in awe and amazement. It was like some twisted, tangled forest. Fragments of glass littered the floor, and wires hung down from the ceiling. The metal frames were still generally upright, but distorted into the most fantastical shapes . . . shapes of pain, it seemed to me. Many of the cabinets had been ripped open as if disembowelled.

I strained my ears as we moved cautiously forward. Faint creaks accompanied the disturbance of our footsteps, but the whispering and muttering voices had gone.

Mr. Jamieson turned to me. “Is it over?” he asked.

I nodded.

I can’t describe the sense of peace, the deep solemnity. I saw tears on Mr. Jamieson’s face and realised that I was crying too. Tears of relief or tears of sadness—I don’t know which. Daylight entering from the high-set windows filtered through the gaunt, racked metal; motes of dust, the residue of so much violence, drifted in the sunbeams.

“Look!” cried Mother, and flung out an arm.

At first I couldn’t see what she was pointing at—though I recognised the spot, where the steel rails terminated. The padded box was there, almost buried under a pile of fallen apparatus.