by Ciar Cullen
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Steamside Chronicles
Copyright 2010 by Ciar Cullen
ISBN: 978-1-936394-09-8
Cover art by Dara England
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC
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Steamside Chronicles
Ciar Cullen
DEDICATION
My heartfelt thanks to Wendy, for going Steamside with me, even when it seemed dangerous to do so. This is for my grandmother, Lil Cullen, born in 1890. She would not have approved of this book, but she always approved of me.
Chapter One
In which our heroine meets an occultist and is mysteriously transported to another dimension.
Since the night I traveled to 1890, I’ve tried not to obsess over where I might have turned left instead of right, or not opened a door that should have stayed closed. Perhaps if I were a Sex in the City kinda girl, things would be different. I can’t imagine ever chatting about shoes or my romantic escapades over mojitos. I don’t think I’ve even had an escapade—aside from being thrown back in time. I don’t drink mojitos, whatever they are.
It’s not that I never had a boyfriend or alcohol, but the guys I met and beer were alike—you knew what you were getting into, and that the effects wouldn’t last long. You were best to combine the two. You could blame the sex on the booze and pretend you didn’t care about the guy. A loathsome existence, I know. My theory was, a female cop’s odds of meeting a straight, attractive nonfelon in New York were about as good as a large meteor dropping into the Hudson.
I went to Central Park on a hot August Saturday night fantasizing about a Tom Hanks You’ve Got Mail type guy strolling with his dog—not that I ever thought Tom Hanks was hot. Yeah, that’s just how it worked out. I met a guy all right, and he’s way hotter than Tom Hanks.
A few of my friends were moonlighting as security guards at a festival, so I had a good excuse to wander and mingle. New Yorkers love a feel-good event, especially in a year when a recession has a death grip on everyone’s nerves.
I typically avoided festivals, carnivals, and oddities. I hate the stuff—freak shows, clowns, and carousels with their creepy music. The older I got, the worse it got, and I chalked it up to work stress manifesting in a weird way.
This event was full of the creepy stuff, it had an historical theme, a lot of Victorian stuff. I wandered alone for a while away from the crowds, hanging on a bench near the Needle, an Egyptian obelisk, watching the Ferris wheel lights twinkle in and out above the trees.
I finally grew bored and joined the throng. I strolled by one striped tent, intrigued by the vague smells of old lady, old liquor, and recently snuffed candles. Annalise Pettigrew’s hand-lettered poster pronounced her purveyor of the finest crushed mummy for both cures and pigments; retrocognition, hypnotism, and séance for enhancing the understanding of the spirit world; proven herbal remedies for all disorders; and finally, soothsaying, with a specialty in questions of a romantic nature. The last one hooked me.
The woman was a hoax, I reminded myself, and wouldn’t know anything about my future love life. But I was bored, a little desperate, and there were worse ways to get gypped out of a twenty.
Ha.
Expecting an aging New Yorker with the voice of lifetime smoker, I had to force my mouth closed when I saw Miss Pettigrew, or Petti, as I call her these days. She was not only young and not a gypsy, but she looked a lot like an alternative Mary Poppins.
She sported a crisp white shirt and vest, a long black skirt, a pocket watch, and a little top hat. Her short hair stuck out in magenta and black points, like she stepped out of a Japanese cartoon. She smiled and patted the table with her black lace gloves in a merry fashion.
“Huh,” I managed. I surveyed the tent and wares—strange metal loops, dials, and gears soldered in complex configurations. It looked like an antique science lab gone awry.
“Huh, indeed! Are you enjoying the festivities, Miss Fenwick?”
She was good. Better than the chick at Coney Island who told me I’d be married with two kids by twenty-five.
“How’d you get my name?”
“Have a seat.” She pulled off her peculiar little round glasses and tucked them in her vest pocket.
Here it comes, I thought. Cough up a twenty. Buy a crystal.
“The name on your badge. That is your badge? Emily Fenwick.”
Miss Pettigrew giggled, dimples popping into life on her rosy cheeks. She was cute, I had to admit. I don’t think I was ever cute, not even as a toddler, so she’d already pissed me off.
“Yeah, it’s my badge. Aren’t you clever?”
“You are ‘moonlighting’, as they say?”
“No, I’m not working tonight. I got the badge so I wouldn’t have to pay to get in.”
“Are you able to use firearms? You can handle yourself in a prickly situation?”
“I’m a cop. How prickly are we talking?” What the hell? Perhaps it was the woman’s attempt at sounding mysterious or foreign. Maybe she was a theater student. I wasn’t going to tell her how well I could shoot, that my father had resigned himself to turning his daughter into his son by taking her to the range. No, Detective Fenwick, retired NYPD, never got over having a girl. I probably joined the force as a kind of penance. That my mom nearly died giving me life and couldn’t have more children, cemented the disappointment.
“Shall we get right to it, then? I’ve prepared a few questions to help guide us.” She pulled out a leather bound notebook, flattened it open to a fresh page, and dipped her quill pen in a bronze inkwell.
“How much to get you to predict I’m going to meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger?” Wow. I generally wasn’t so upfront about my sad personal life. Something about Miss Pettigrew was bringing the pathetic out into the open.
She met my eyes without offering an answer. Her stare chilled me. and I was tempted to call off the reading, but didn’t want her to think she intimidated me. The things we do to avoid the judgment of complete strangers. God, to have that moment back. Would I do anything differently?
“One. Are you afraid of heights?”
“No.” Heights scared me to death, but this wacko wasn’t going to hear about it. She nodded and scribbled a note in a feathery script.
“Two. Are you averse to killing?”
“Killing? I arrest killers.”
“How about those who kill in self-defense?”
“That’s up to the courts. Are you trying to hire a hit man? I don’t get what…”
“Do you have children?”
“You’re the psychic.”
She smiled and scribbled again.
“Now think before answering, Miss Fenwick. If you saw a lightening bug the size of a horse, what would you do?”
&
nbsp; Strains of the X-Files theme…
“Will it eat me?”
“Let’s pretend that we have no idea whether or not it poses a threat.”
Pretend? We have to pretend this? “Why would I kill something that isn’t going to eat me? I mean, unless it’s so gross I couldn’t stand the sight of it. Am I being Punk’d?”
I glanced around for cameras, but the place was a jumble of brass widgets and dim lighting. I was ready to leave, I swear. I still don’t know what made me stay. Maybe that awful carnival music hypnotized me. It sounded like it was coming from inside the tent one moment, but far away the next, tinny and old. My arms and legs deadened, and I wondered if someone had rufied my Coke.
Miss Pettigrew tapped her pen against her lips before making another notation in her book. I watched in a trance as the ink trail dried. Her hand grew translucent, her cute face shimmered in and out of existence.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m your new best friend forever. And you are about to meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger.”
The floor fell out from under me. My skin ripped away in long strips as I tumbled around the universe, banging my head on clouds and scraping my feet on mountains. Have you ever been thrown to the bottom of the surf, dashed around by a big wave and unable to figure out which way is up? Multiply that panic and disorientation by a million and add excruciating pain. I’m sure I screamed before passing out, even though I don’t remember hearing it.
I woke in a train car, alone. Not Amtrak, not New Jersey Transit, or the Long Island Railroad. This car was full of wood and brass and elegance, except for the soot-covered windows. I managed to sit upright as it pulled into the station with a mind numbing screech and whistle. The sign said ‘Grand Central Depot’.
I didn’t need a sign to tell me what my soul knew. I’d boarded the express train to insanity. Miss Pettigrew met me, waving from the platform as if we were old pals paying an overdue social visit.
“Welcome to New York,” she chirped, dimples springing to life.
I stumbled down the steps onto the platform, clutching the railing so I wouldn’t fall or vomit from the ride to sometime else. A couple of characters joined her—a young guy of Asian descent with what looked to be leather dreadlocks, expensive clothing, and a smile that pulled at your libido—Pettigrew introduced him as Screw. Screw kissed my hand. He still does sometimes, and I pretend to hate it.
His pal, a tall lanky Black guy with a dozen visible piercings, wore clothing with straps everywhere, most of them sheathing short knives. Barber, his name was, nodded at me as he sized me up like he might use one of the knives on me.
“Nice tat,” he mumbled and broke into a friendly grin at odds with his appearance.
“I don’t have a tattoo.” Did I? Or was I someone else, someone with a tattoo and friends named Screw and Barber?
Pettigrew waved them away and linked her arm through mine, pulling me across the platform to a stairwell. She stood on tiptoe and whispered, like an adolescent girl sharing a secret. “Miss Fenwick, a TAT is a new recruit. It means Torn Away from Time. That was high praise coming from Barber.”
“Great.” I choked back the bile threatening to erupt. Screw pushed past us and mounted the brass railing to ride backward down the winding staircase. “Get her to the Man, she’s really pale. She needs juice.”
Juice? I needed my freaking sanity. I needed heavy sedation.
As it turns out, that’s what juice is. I must have met the Man—his real name is Jack—that day, but I don’t remember anything about it. I do remember falling asleep to the distant sound of marching music, and watching a lightening bug the size of a horse fly past by a grimy window. It didn’t look like it was going to eat me, so I didn’t bother reaching for my pistol. Which is good, because that was still in my locker at the station. In 2010.
That was over a year ago.
Chapter Two
In which Miss Fenwick develops affection for her captor.
It was almost my twenty-sixth birthday, but I hadn’t told any of the Punks. I don’t dislike attention, but I didn’t want to learn that no one cared. My birthday was always hot, and as I waited in the sweltering sun in my widow’s regalia—layers and layers of black (all female TATs wore black until they graduated)—I yearned for it to be any other August. I glanced out at Central Park’s Great Lawn as I waited for the Man to return to collect me, trying to avoid the bad habits—21st Century habits—that plague me and annoy the hell out of Petti. Hair twirling, finger tapping, foot wiggling—none of them appropriate for a lady.
Waiting for the Man set my nerves on edge. I was anxious to just see him, to be in his presence; at the same time knowing his appearance would signal a return Steamside, as my companions had christened our own slice of late Victorian hell. The Punks love naming things, including calling themselves punks. It fits some of them. But you have to cut them a break. I mean, we’re stuck in 1890, at least half the time. I’m not sure when the other half is, or if it is a when. Even the hardiest psyche—that would be the Man himself—sometimes has trouble adapting to the little details of our existence.
Petti told me I’m fitting in Steamside, and sometimes I believe her. You don’t know how important fitting in becomes until it’s all you can cling to. I thought I’d left that worry behind in high school. Since no one Steamside seems to understand why or how we got here, we’re all in the same leaky boat. I know I’m the weakest link. I cry a lot.
If Jack—the Man’s real name—saw me crying, he’d run his hand through his black hair in annoyance. I know enough psychology to chalk up my crying to post-traumatic whatever. When a guy rounded the corner, I bit back a groan, it wasn’t Jack. I knew this stiff, a constable or whatever the 19th Century called cops. He rubbed at his chin with one hand and swung a Billy-club with the other as he approached me. In my full widow regalia, I didn’t have the look of a prostitute, so he settled on a slow formal nod.
Do not look annoyed. You are pleased with his concern for your wellbeing. A subtle smile is allowed.
He tipped his hat and moved on, no doubt assuming I waited for a lover. In a sense I did, but Jack was my lover—no, my love—only in my dreams and fantasies. Yeah, he was talk, dark and handsome. Petti’s a scream. Jack is her brother.
In the distance, I heard the strains of a brass band practicing in the park. Anytown, USA, except it happened to be the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The crap that goes for Normal entertainment is astonishing. I don’t mind the opera so much, and the Punks go in for it. The Punks also love to dance, and waltz lessons had been part of Petti’s initiation. But the total fixation on marching music is too much. The word “Sousa” makes the female Normals swoon. Of course, everything seems to make them swoon, including the sight of a bare table leg. I can’t imagine how they procreate.
With thoughts of sex, thoughts of Jack inevitably followed. I’m sure I wasn’t alone. Jack was hot, and I often tried to imagine him tinkering back home in his shop—at least the rumor was he’d been a carpenter. Sigh. The Man in a t-shirt and worn jeans. Would it make him more approachable if he didn’t wear crisp white collars?
I don’t know why he intimidated us all. I don’t think he tried to, or if he did, he didn’t try hard. The Punks respected him, and always avoided gossiping about him, or questioning how he came to be their leader. No one seemed to remember a time when he wasn’t in charge.
The Man didn’t flinch, no matter what came down the pike. It was unnatural, saintly, and very puzzling. The men wanted to be like him, the women wanted to be with him, and as far as I could tell, no one came close on either count.
Where the hell was he? He’d gone off to investigate the newest gaping hole in time or space, or whatever was getting shredded and threatening the world. And the future. Whatever, you get what I mean. If there’s no 1890, then there’s no 1891, and ultimately, no 21st Century. Which is a problem for someone who wants to go home.
I looked at my tiny pocket watch for th
e umpteenth time. A newsboy, no older than eleven, waved his paper pleadingly before me. Women typically didn’t buy the news, but I couldn’t resist the child, with his Oliver Twist looks, scuffed up shoes and scruffy hair. I rummaged through my drawstring bag for a few pennies, and dropped them all into his hand. Hell, it wasn’t my money, and the kid looked thrilled. He broke into a run before I realized I didn’t know how much a newspaper cost. I glanced at the headline—something about Germany and Kaiser Wilhelm that didn’t mean squat to me. Would I be here during the First World War? I didn’t even know when it would start.
The tap of Jack’s peculiar quick pace on the path hit my nerve endings like lightening. What would he say? Did we have something else to do before shredding Steamside? Would I throw up this time? His waistcoat tails flapped in the warm air as he rounded the corner from under Gothic Bridge. His pale cheeks flushed as he pointed to the sky and hurried to my bench. I stood, terrified that…that what? I wasn’t sure what to be terrified of anymore, but Jack was about to tell me.
I stared up through the trees and saw the tail end of a blimp.
Jack turned me with a hand on each shoulder to face him from inches away. His deep brown eyes flashed in anger. He was going to kill me.
“What?” My blood boiled from the contact of his hands, my preemptive anger at whatever tongue-lashing he would dish out, and my terror that I’d screwed up somehow and might cry in front of him.
“Did you do that?” He pointed to the blimp, which glided over the Park with a faint hum. “Did you imagine it into existence, Fenwick?”
“Do what? It’s a blimp…” No, idiot, it’s not a blimp. It’s the blimp. Or more accurately, dirigible. A chill broke August’s hot hold on my body. I’d seen a lot of interesting things in 1890, but the Hindenburg shook me. Knowing how many people would die, perhaps. How many? I couldn’t remember much about it. Just the terrible footage of the devastation made more eerie by the swastikas.
