Grave Voices

by Gail Z. Martin

  Just like the golems at the Conservatory Jacob thought. So even if the Dollmaker doesn’t have the magic to animate them, he’s making the bodies for whoever can. Nearby stood life-size hollow wooden bodies, the front halves and the back halves neatly separated, with the same rough articulated joints. Jacob wished he could use the new-fangled small spy camera Farber had given him, but the light was far too dim for the camera’s limited abilities, and Jacob had no desire to call attention to himself by setting off flash powder to get a good image.

  Whatever the Dollmaker was up to, Jacob didn’t want to linger in the dark workroom any longer than necessary. He opened the rucksack he carried on his back and grabbed several of the mechanical pieces, including one of the wax cylinders. On impulse, he looked around and stuffed one of the small dolls into the backpack as well, tying it closed.

  A shuffling sound made him freeze again. The dolls had done more than shift position this time. Perhaps, their subtle movements had been a warning. Now, more than a dozen of the large dolls stood up, their movement jerky, their malice unmistakable.

  Jacob was surrounded.

  There goes any chance of sneaking out without leaving a trace, he thought. The door was on the opposite side of the room. In between were dozens of dolls. Most of them hadn’t moved—yet. The others were clearly oriented on Jacob, meaning their sudden activity wasn’t a fluke. He heard the whirr of gears and the clunk of wooden feet against the floor. The dolls raised their arms, hands outstretched. This wasn’t a trick of the light, or a puppet master hiding in the rafters. Jacob was close enough to his opponents to see that no strings moved their bodies.

  The dolls came after him.

  Jacob fired, blowing a hole in the wooden chest of the nearest life-size doll. It knocked the mannequin backward, taking out half a dozen of the other figures, but the rest kept coming. A second shot tore through the metal of a wind-up doll which rattled and shuddered, then kept on moving. Six shots in his revolver, but dozens of dolls. Jacob had a second gun in a shoulder holster, but it would take a Gatling gun to mow down all the dolls that shambled toward him. He had no desire to find out what they intended to do if they caught him.

  Click, whirr, clunk. Closer now, the dolls leered at him with their painted faces and garish features. Some had real human hair, increasing their resemblance to walking corpses. Glass eyes glimmered fixed and staring in the light of the single kerosene lantern. The wind-up dolls marched stiffly, like toy soldiers, while the wooden mannequins flopped with their hinged joints. Jacob got in four more shots, stuffed his revolver through his belt and grabbed for the nearest animated rag doll. The doll squirmed and twisted in his hand, tearing at his flesh with straight pins that poked through its mitten-shaped fingers like claws. Jacob ignored the pain and blood.

  “Get back!” he warned, and held the rag doll up near the flame of the kerosene lantern. A few yarn hairs singed, and the smell of burn string carried in the musty air. The attacking dolls hesitated, though the rag doll in Jacob’s hand stabbed him with the pins, and he had to keep his hand turned to keep the attack from opening the veins in his wrist.

  Thuds and muted cries came from the direction of a door Jacob assumed led to a storage closet. He hoped the lock held; the odds were already in the dolls’ favor without them gaining reinforcements. If the Dollmaker had other creations that even he felt necessary to lock up, Jacob had no desire to meet them.

  Jacob thrust the vicious doll into the flame, igniting its cloth head. Whatever animated the poppet let out an unholy shriek. Wielding the writhing doll like a torch, Jacob forced the other dolls to back away, clearing a path toward the door. He expected his shots to bring someone bursting in at any moment, either police or the Dollmaker himself. He saw ruin impending either way.

  Jacob ran for the door, and his left hand went to the Maxwell box that hung from his belt, banging against his leg. He found the switch and turned the box on, and spun the knob to the left, desperately hoping he had remembered the instructions correctly. Right to call the ghosts, left to push them back, Farber had said, though why anyone sane would want to attract spirits was more than he could fathom.

  A sudden, piercing wail went up from the attacking dolls and they fell back, twisting as if in pain. Some of dolls fell to the floor, their porcelain heads cracking with the impact like ruined crockery, while others backed away so hurriedly that they knocked over other mannequins in their clumsy retreat, ending up in a tangle on the ground. The small doll he had imprisoned in his rucksack howled and bucked, trying to tear its way out of the backpack.

  Jacob didn’t stop to watch. The rag doll had nearly burned out, and he tossed what was left onto the pile of fallen mannequins and bolted out the door. As soon as he was out in the street, he ripped the rucksack from his shoulder and fired a single shot into it, stilling the vicious poppet inside.

  Sirens sounded in the distance. Jacob holstered his gun, grabbed his damaged rucksack, and ran, keeping to the shadows. He did not turn off the Maxwell box until he was blocks away, and even then, his hands shook as he worked the switch. Jacob’s left hand looked like it had been scratched by a wildcat, and his fingers blistered from the heat of the burning rag doll. He leaned against a brick wall in the shelter of a dark alley, certain that any mugger lurking there could not possibly be as terrifying as what he had just escaped.

  What the hell is the Dollmaker up to? Considering the dramatic effect the Maxwell box had on the menacing dolls, Jacob had no doubt that ghosts were somehow involved. Are the mannequins haunted or possessed? How did they get that way? The Dollmaker’s never been more than a smuggler and courier. Whatever’s going on, he’s got to have a partner, someone who’s pretty damn good with dark magic and clockworks, too.

  A few names came to mind, ambitious criminals or remorseless men who were willing to kill to get what they wanted. As Jacob headed for the rendezvous site, he eliminated one suspect after another. One was known to be out of the country, another was in prison, and a third lacked the financial backing to manage the clockwork inventions Jacob had seen. The few possibilities that remained were the worst of the bunch.

  We haven’t seen the last of the Dollmaker. He’ll know we’re onto him now.

  Part Five: Bad Dolls and Clockwork Monsters

  “Tell me again why we’re freezing our butts off down here by the riverfront?” Jacob muttered. Della grumbled in agreement, her face hidden by the fur ruff around the hood of her heavy coat.

  “Because we got a tip that there were ‘monsters’ down along the docks,” Mitch returned under his breath.

  “How good of a tip?” Jacob returned.

  “Very good, I’d say.” Drostan Fletcher sauntered out of the shadows beneath the huge steel bridge over their heads. His Scottish burr was clear in his voice, and with his collar turned up on his Macintosh coat, he looked the part of a private investigator.

  He chuckled at Jacob’s raised eyebrow. “Yes, Mitch brought me in for extra eyes,” Drostan said. “And the truth is, there have been stories for a couple of weeks now about strange people down by the river. Some people swear the drowned men of the rivers are returning home.”

  Jacob repressed a shiver. Three rivers met at the triangle of land locals called ‘The Point’, the Allegheny River, the Monongahela River, and the Ohio River. Boats of all kind traveled these waters, including plenty of barges, steamboats, fishing vessels, and cargo ships. The swift waters and strong current made for sometimes dangerous navigation, and changes in depth meant navigating the dozens of wicket dams that helped keep ships from running aground. Sometimes, even experience and caution could not prevent tragedy. The river bottoms were littered with the wrecks of unlucky crafts, and their waters were the final resting place of their dead crewmen.

  This stretch of river was between the big docks, and near the waterfront. The hulking steel skeletons of a passenger bridge and a railroad bridge shadowed the banks, making it nearly impossible for travelers to see what might be going on beneath them,
even if they had cared to look.

  “Smuggling?” Mitch asked, watching the riverbank for movement.

  “Doubtful,” Della replied. “Smugglers have their pick of anywhere along the rivers to unload. They wouldn’t choose the busiest part of the waterway.”

  “Isn’t this the stretch they call The Cemetery?” Jacob glanced up and down the river. Few boats were in sight this late, and the water looked black, its rippling surface barely reflecting the glow of streetlamps far above. “Because so many ships have sunk here over the years?”

  “Yes it is,” Drostan said. “And that’s why we’re here. I’ve been working on a case for a shipping company that was having problems with thefts in this stretch. I found the ring of thieves and busted them, but along the way, I saw something else that seemed odd—men coming up out of the river late at night. I didn’t think too much about it until Mitch contacted me. Now, I have a suspicion what I saw might be connected to your case.”

  “Shh!” Della warned. “Something’s going on near the water’s edge!” For tonight’s work, Della had forsaken her long skirts for bicycle bloomers, which her coat covered should anyone notice. She carried a rucksack with additional weapons and supplies over one shoulder, along with two pistols and a rifle in a back holster.

  They pulled back to the shadows and waited. The surface of the black water rippled and then a man’s head rose, silhouetted against the lights from the far side of the river. He moved like a man in armor, with jerky, stiff motions, and he looked like he was wearing a jointed suit. The wind shifted, and an awful stench hit Jacob hard enough he nearly gagged. Not the smell of dead fish or the effluvia of the river; no, this was the smell of meat gone bad in the sun. That’s when Jacob realized something else wrong about the river man. For having been completely submerged, he wore no diving suit.

  Two more bedraggled men climbed onto the riverbank, and then three others. The smell was enough to make his gorge rise, but Jacob swallowed down his urge to vomit and kept his shotgun ready.

  “Stop!” Mitch shouted. With a hiss and a roar, Della and Drostan lit kerosene torches, illuminating the area under the bridge. In the torchlight, Jacob could see that the men were all carrying objects that were encrusted with mud and muck from the river bottom.

  It was also very clear that they were jointed wooden life-size dolls.

  Ten of the figures now stood along the riverbank. They paused briefly at Mitch’s shout, then began to walk forward at a steady pace. Their glass eyes did not blink and the carved features showed no emotion. Water coursed from their joints, making Jacob wonder if the suits were hollow. The wet slap of their feet echoed from the stone bridge supports.

  “Government agents! Stop now or we shoot!” Mitch shouted. He held the torch in his left hand and his revolver in his right hand. His rifle was slung across his back, just in case. The flickering flames of the kerosene torch gave the area a hellish glow.

  The wooden men kept on walking. Drostan and Jacob opened fire, followed a second later by Della and Mitch. They shot for the head, after their experience with the golems, and Jacob expected to shatter a hollow sphere of wood. Their bullets burst open the wooden shell of the man-sized dolls and splattered the concrete with decaying flesh and bone shards.

  “They’re hollow! Wooden dolls with corpses inside!” Drostan yelped, but the shock did not slow his fire or make his aim waver.

  Della muttered something decidedly unladylike as she took off the top of one wooden doll’s head, then braved the shower of gore to thrust her flaming kerosene torch at two more of the creatures, waving it between them and forcing them to a stop. “I will never get the smell out of this coat!” she growled, and spent her pique on the nearest two wooden men.

  Ten shots, ten kills, and the bodies of ten broken dolls. What leaked from the ruined wooden heads and the real skulls inside them smelled of embalming fluid and rot. Drostan stood guard over the riverfront, playing his torchlight across the swift, dark water in case more of the abominations rose from the waves. Jacob watched the roadway, sure that even at this hour their fusillade would draw unwanted police attention. Della and Mitch bent to examine the fallen wooden soldiers and the corpses inside of them.

  “They didn’t drown inside those wooden doll shells,” Della murmured. She poked at one of the corpses with a stick. “Not fresh dead.”

  “More damn zombies,” Mitch said. “Just like at the cemetery.”

  Della frowned and picked up what the fallen doll-man had dropped. “Interesting,” she said, holding it up in the glow of the torch. “A silver platter.” She brushed a hand across the engraving, trying to read it. “The Ariella,” she made out.

  “That was a steamboat,” Drostan said over his shoulder. “Went down in this area several years ago. Passenger ship headed from Pittsburgh down the Ohio River. Pretty swanky.”

  “This one’s got a bunch of odds and ends,” Mitch said, gingerly opening a canvas bag and spilling out its contents. Out poured a collection of old coins, some dirt-encrusted jewelry, silver flatware and other oddments.

  “The ones back here were more ambitious,” Della said, moving to examine the next row of felled zombies. One carried a small, rusted safe, like the kind found in the captain’s cabin of a ship. Another carried a wooden crate that was in good enough condition it must have come from a recent wreck. A third carried a single gold bar. So did several of the others.

  “Well look at that,” Mitch said quietly, and let out a low whistle. “Not a bad haul for a night’s work, especially when you don’t have to pay the help.”

  “The gold bars are likely from the Fortunato,” Drostan supplied. “Alfonso Luigi Russo was a bigwig in the South Side Mafia. Ran a lot of the gambling, dog fights, and horse betting. Made a lot of money. Then he disappeared. Word on the street was that he didn’t pay his percentages to the bosses and someone found out. He ran for it one night in his boat, which suddenly exploded. Rumor had it, he took his gold to the bottom with him.”

  “Guess someone finally found it,” Jacob replied. Anything else he might have said was cut off as a gunshot from the darkness narrowly missed his shoulder. Mitch and Della immediately cut the fuel to their torches, abandoning them among the corpses as they dodged for shelter. The fading orange glow of the still-hot wires and burning rags was barely enough for them to make out shapes in the darkness.

  Drostan clung to a steel girder atop a massive stone bridge pylon, and swung out to shoot in the direction of the attack. An answering bullet clanged against the steel just an inch away from his head. Della had pistols in both hands, and she answered the shot with two of her own, though the only clue to the position of the shooter was the spark from the muzzle of his gun.

  Mitch signaled Jacob and slipped through the darkness to circle around behind their attacker. Jacob dove from cover and fired off a stream of shots he hoped would keep their enemy from noticing Mitch’s absence.

  Even with their torches dark, the reflected light from the river put them at a disadvantage compared to the assailant in the deep shadows beneath the bridge. And in that dim light, Jacob saw a sight that made his stomach churn. Like obedient puppets, the savaged doll-zombies struggled to their feet.

  “Oh hell no,” Della muttered. “Cover me!” she shouted to Jacob a second before she dove and rolled, coming up in front of the two kerosene torches. She sloshed something toward the row of staggering figures from a small can, and the smell of kerosene vied with the stench of decay. Flames surged from the wands as Della opened up the feed full blast, setting the spilled kerosene alight. Wet as the doll-zombies were, the kerosene-fueled flames rose like a bonfire, engulfing them.

  Jacob and Drostan were firing shot after shot to keep their unknown attacker from easily sighting on Della, silhouetted by the flames. Shots cracked into the stone and concrete, sending up a shower of slivers. Della flattened herself against the riverbank and crawled for cover, as a few of the bullets tore through the hem of her coat and grazed the fur ruff of her h
ood.

  For an awful moment, the corpse-dolls shuddered and crackled in the wall of flames, and then fell to the ground. The smell of burnt wood and rotted meat was overwhelming. Behind them in the shadows, Jacob heard a single rifle shot, then the clatter of horse hooves and wagon wheels, followed a moment later by the rumble of Mitch’s steambike.

  When no other shots came, Drostan swung down from his perch, joining Jacob and Della. The charred figures on the riverbank bore little resemblance to men. Parts of the hollow wooden shells had been burned away, revealing the corpses inside. The last of the kerosene flames sputtered out. Della retrieved one of the torches and gave them enough light to appraise the damage.

  “No doubts anymore that the Dollmaker is working with Kasmir, is there?” Jacob asked.

  “And now we know why. Salvage,” Drostan added.

  Jacob shook his head. “That’s part of it, but I don’t think we know the whole story yet.”

  “What now?” Della asked.

  Jacob tapped a code into the odd bulky wristwatch he wore, a Morse Code transmitter/receiver that carried its signal through the aetheric waves. Like the steambike and so much of their gear, it was another fine invention from Adam Farber. “Hans should be here in a few moments with the wagon,” Jacob said.

  Just then, Mitch slewed his steambike to a stop at the edge of the carnage. “Lost him,” Mitch said, muttering a few curses before he remembered Della was present and mumbling an apology. She rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll let you know when I hear something new,” she replied. “Seriously boys—we shoot up a bunch of corpses, and you think I’ll be shocked by your language?”