Ghosts by Gaslight (50 page)

She opened her mouth again and this time, with considerable effort and in a voice that fluctuated between Jane’s firm contralto and Christine’s higher, frailer tones, she said, “Have you come to frolic? It is much too early. We risk being interrupted at our play.”

This brief speech so horrified me that I remained half lying on the bed, propped up on my elbows, incapable of answering her.

“Yet risk may add spice to our pleasure. Was that your thought? Naughty Jeffkins!” She turned her back and lifted her hair away from the nape of her neck. “Won’t you help me with my buttons?”

I came to my feet and turned her to face me. “Jane!” I said, and shook her. “Jane!”

She fought against me, but I shook her again and again, each time more violently, and continued to call her name. Suddenly she went limp and would have fallen to the floor in a swoon had I not supported her. I laid her down on the bed and patted her cheeks until her eyes fluttered open—
her
eyes, devoid of unnatural movement, and not Christine’s. She was at first confused, then angry when I told her about Christine, refusing to accept my version of events.

“Do you remember me entering the room?” I asked her. “Or anything that was said?”

“I . . .” She put a hand to her temple. “No, but . . .”

“What is the last thing you recall?”

“I was . . .” A look of consternation cut a line across her brow. “I was in my room. Reading, I think.”

“You never wear this dress in the house. Not to my knowledge. Were you wearing it while reading?”

She examined a fold of fabric that she pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “I had not finished dressing. I thought of a quotation—from Jane Austen—and I recall opening my book to search for it.”

“Can we assume your lapse of memory encompassed a span of, say, ten minutes or thereabouts?”

“I’m not sure. Everything’s cloudy.”

She started up from the bed, but I held her down.

“We must tell Jeffrey,” she said.

“Do you feel up to it?”

“I’m fine.”

“All right. But you must promise that no matter how he reacts, you’ll leave with me at once.”

“He may need our assistance.”

“If you remain in the house, you will be at risk. This may not be the first time that Christine has possessed you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you may owe Dorothea an apology.”

After a moment she said, “Oh, God! Is that possible?”

We went downstairs, collected Dorothea, and bearded Richmond in his study, where I explained things to the best of my ability.

“Well now. That should remove the sting from Samuel’s infidelity,” he said to Jane, bemused. “It would appear that he was unfaithful to you
with
you.”

“I see no humor in this,” I said.

“No?” His smile broadened. “Let it be noted that you are a particularly humorless young man.”

“I can’t speak for Dorothea,” I said. “But Jane and I intend to leave before a tragedy occurs.”

“Oh, you have my permission to speak for me,” Dorothea said. “I’m half out the door.”

I leaned down to Richmond, resting my fists on his desk. “If you insist upon staying, a tragedy is inevitable. You are in grave danger.”

“Nonsense! Christine is indifferent to me.”

“Yet less than an hour ago, in a tone of voice I would describe as playfully seductive, she referred to you as ‘Naughty Jeffkins.’ Does that strike a chord?”

“Did she say that? But this is wonderful, don’t you see?”

“Damn it, Richmond! She’s confused me with you. Can you have forgotten what you told me? That she is a mad fraction of her former self with whom true communication was impossible?”

“I may have been in error,” he said.

“Jeffrey, please!” Jane laid a hand on his shoulder. “You must leave.”

“All you have done is to strengthen that fraction,” I said. “And what of that shadowy creature? It seems you have strengthened it as well. Do you have any understanding of its potential?”

“No, I do not,” Richmond said. “Nor do you. And because you do not understand, you are afraid.”

“It’s conceivable that the entity is harmless . . . or inimical in a trifling way, like the ghost of a demonic house pet. But when dealing with something of so menacing an aspect, yes, I deem it wise to practice caution. As would any responsible person.”

“Go then!” Enraged, Richmond jumped to his feet and pointed to the door. “Go and practice caution! Be responsible! Leave me to my researches.”

“You’ve done no research! You built your machines and left the research to me. Research, I might add, that would be much further along had you been open with me from the outset.”

I held out my hand to Jane, but she looked to Richmond instead. “Do you want us to stay, Jeffrey?”

“I cannot ask it of you,” he said. “But yes, of course. A resolution is at hand and I would hope that you see me through it.”

“Jane,” I said.

“How long will this resolution take?” she asked.

“Perhaps a few hours. A single night. Now that she is stronger, I doubt things will go unresolved for long. Yet I cannot be precise.”

“I’ll be pushing along,” Dorothea said. “I’ve given you my all, as it were. Mister Richmond. All this talk of possession, though . . . it’s not a dance I care to do.”

Jane turned to her. “We can spare him one more night, can’t we?”

Dorothea said flatly, “I’m sorry.”

“I won’t leave without you, Jane,” I said.

“I swear to you, Samuel.” Richmond came out from behind his desk. “I will shut down the machine in the morning, whether or not . . .”

“Why should we believe anything you have to say?” I stepped away as he made to approach me. “You’ve done nothing but lie and dissemble since the beginning. If a resolution of the problems between you and Christine is what you actually seek, how will our presence assist in that? It will achieve nothing other than placing us in peril.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m frightened. I’m afraid of being alone with her. If you feel you must leave, I understand.”

Judging by the sympathetic expression on Jane’s face, I recognized there was little hope of countering Richmond’s self-serving statement; but I tried nevertheless.

“You are afraid, yet you wish us to stay,” I said. “And you care so little about our well-being, you expect us to join you in this dangerous folly. How noble!”

Jane shot me a reproving look.

“He’s manipulating you,” I said.

“He’s right,” said Richmond with a hangdog expression. “You should leave.”

“Good Christ!” I slammed the flat of my hand against the desk, making a loud report. “Now he’s feigning weakness to rouse your sympathy. Can’t you see?”

Both Jane and Richmond regarded me sadly, as if they were aware of some nuance, some shading of the truth that I had yet to comprehend.

S
CIENTIFIC CURIOSITY MAY
have played a part in my decision to remain in the house. I was genuinely anxious for Jane, and I wanted to keep an eye on Richmond—I insisted that we wait out the night together, thinking that should Richmond begin to behave erratically or Christine attempt to possess Jane once again, I would take decisive action. But as we sat at a bench on the sixth floor, speaking minimally or not at all, I came to ponder my missed opportunities. Had I not become involved with Jane and focused the bulk of my attention on the ghosts that passed through the chamber, I might have arrived at some firm conclusions about the spirit world. As things stood, I could make only the most general of suppositions. I vowed to devote myself henceforth to uncovering material proofs pertaining to everything I had observed.

Not until that night did I realize how unseemly a perdition the sixth floor was. With its mouse droppings, dusty spaces, and raw boards; its gray canvas curtain, iron walls, and benches laden with machine parts; and its ghosts and the vibration of the attractor, it had an ambiance that was part futuristic charnel house, part wizardly lair. I could not wait to relegate it to memory. My dislike for the place was augmented by Dorothea’s absence. Her pragmatism and humor had been necessary to the sustenance of the unusual family we had become during the past months, and I felt a corresponding disunity. Jane leafed through a book of poems, occasionally offering me a nervous smile. Now and then Richmond glanced at the ceiling. He may have been alerted by some aberrance in pitch of the attractor, though I detected none. During the initial hour of our vigil, Christine materialized in her several guises on fourteen separate occasions, never for more than seconds, but made no effort to possess Jane or to do anything other than look morose. After that she appeared no more. I was nonplussed by her withdrawal and Richmond’s manner grew funereal, sitting with his hands clasped and eyes downcast. Every so often he would blurt out a question such as “Where do you think she is?” or “Do you think we should move downstairs?” Our response to these and other questions was essentially the same: I don’t know. Another two hours passed in this fashion. Finally, during the fourth hour, he told us that he was going up to the roof.

“For what purpose?” I asked.

He drew himself up to his full height, presenting a stern pose. “I will not answer to you in my own house.”

I blocked his way to the trapdoor. “In this instance, one in which our safety is at issue, I’m afraid you must.”

“Are you threatening me, sir?”

“I am attempting to ensure that you are not going to place us in greater danger than you already have.”

“I need to inspect the machine,” said Richmond. “Something may be wrong.”

“It seems to be running smoothly.”

“Idiot! You can’t tell by listening to it! I have . . .”

“Yet you were listening to it earlier, were you not?”

Richmond hissed in frustration. “One cannot make such a judgment
merely
by listening. I have to see the instruments.”

Jane closed her book. “We should allow him to do what he needs.”

“I don’t trust him on his own,” I said. “And I will not leave you alone down here.”

Richmond tried to force his way past me, and I shoved him back.

“I’ll go with you,” said Jane. “It may well be that something has gone wrong. We’d be foolish not to let him attend to it.”

I argued that venturing up onto the roof would be incautious, but with Richmond attacking me verbally and Jane supporting his basic argument, I relented. I insisted, however, on taking the lead. Nothing out of the ordinary met my eye when I cracked the trapdoor, yet when I threw it open I saw that something had gone very wrong, indeed.

Streamers of fog trailed across the rooftop at eye level, but above the house a bank of thicker fog lowered, though actual fog was not its sole constituent. Its uppermost reaches stretched across half the sky and, depending from its bottom, a funnel had developed, extending downward toward the tip of the new attractor, itself visible above the roof peak, its silver rings glowing with a bilious, yellow-green radiance. At first glance the bank was like a great cloud whose bottom was cobbled with faces, but I saw on its underside a myriad images of not only disembodied faces, but torsos and limbs as well—they roiled up for an instant and were subsumed into the fog, replaced by the other revenants. Rags of filmy, opaque material were disgorged from the mouth of the funnel and these battened onto the attractor, fitted themselves to one or another of the rings, and slid down out of view. Whenever this occurred, and it occurred with increasing frequency, a silent discharge of yellowish-green energy shot upward from the attractor, spreading through the bank like heat lightning, permitting me to see shapes deeper within the fog. I thought that some of the shapes so illuminated were inhuman, yet they passed from sight so quickly that I could not swear to it.

Urged on by Richmond, I clambered up onto the roof, still partly in shock, dismasted by the sight and by the silence as well. Oh, there was the omnipresent humming, loud and variable, but this apocalyptic scene, that of the ghosts of Saint Nichol, the relics of the damaged and the poor lured by the attractor, perhaps to their doom, for God only knew what Richmond’s improvements had wrought . . . it should have been accompanied by an explosive music, the final pyrotechnic symphony of a mad Russian who had devoted his life to its creation and then, having awakened to the worthlessness of his work, of all creative labor, had chosen self-slaughter over the ignominy of existence. Jane came up beside me and Richmond scrambled to the roof peak and stood, one hand on the chimney for balance, his hair feathering, superimposed against that insane sky. He let out an agonized shout and pointed—filmy bits were being torn away from the fog, spinning down away from the attractor.

I climbed toward the roof peak, Jane at my heels, and reached it just as Richmond disappeared into the hole into which the new attractor had been set. At the edge of the roof stood the demon, the shadowy, headless thing—I could make out no more of its features or form than I had previously, yet I noticed that its dark substance whirled more slowly, perhaps because it was feeding, absorbing the opaque scraps that were ripped from the underbelly of the bank. That was my interpretation of its actions, that it must also be an attractor, albeit of a vastly different and less potent variety, a living version of Richmond’s machine. Some credence was given this viewpoint by Christine, who stood on the slant of the roof fifteen or twenty feet distant, her figure elongating, bending sideways at the waist and seeming to flow partway toward the shadow before snapping back to true, as though she were made of an elastic material and barely able to resist its pull.

We climbed down the slope of the roof toward the hole so as to learn what could be done to help Richmond. I saw him below, his hands busy with the switches on a brass box situated between two of the rings. He shouted and beckoned for me to join him. Whatever hesitancy I felt was erased by the garishly lit fog bank, lowered to within a few feet of the attractor, spewing forth its ghostly issue—the moil of limbs and faces over our heads was supremely grotesque, Dantean in scope, yet the multiplicity of forms also put me in mind of the rococo ornamentation I had seen on the walls of a temple in Udaipur, only in this instance the ornaments were animated by some occult principle. Bursts of yellow-green light now flickered across the breadth of the sky.