Steampunk Cthulhu: Mythos Terror in the Age of Steam

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Eager to trace the source of these remarkable claims, I purchased several glasses of gin for an out-of-work stable hand, who clung to the edge of the bar as though he were a newly pressed sailor trying to get his sea legs. Even with the aid of the copious amount of alcohol I furnished him, it took a great deal of coaxing before I was successful in loosening his tongue. But loosen it I did, and my efforts were rewarded at last by his letting slip the name Blackwold, which he uttered as though it were a shameful secret. When he realized what he had said, he stood up, his eyes wide with fright, and, mumbling some transparent excuse, slunk away, staggering comically from the gin. As he stood in the doorway, he spared me one final glance, which was filled with pity, as though I were about to be led away to the gallows, and then turned and went out.

  Blackwold, I discovered by scrutinizing a cartographic survey of the county, was a small village in West Devon, a mere speck of a place, just on the border of Dartmoor. The next day, I traveled there by dogcart and secured lodging at a decaying local inn. The thrill of being the first to document a bona fide legend had quite overcome me, and I vowed to wrest Blackwold’s strange secret from the clutches of obfuscation.

  To say that the inhabitants of this village were suspicious of outsiders would be a gross understatement, and having made no headway in my attempts to interview the peasantry, I decided to pay a visit to Blackwold Abbey, the local manor house, and seek an interview with Sir Auberon Duncroft, the ninth Baronet of Blackwold. Quite often the gentry in these isolated areas were themselves amateur folklorists and a treasure trove of regional history.

  Since I could find no one in the village who would provide me with directions, I was forced to strike out blindly, without so much as a compass to guide me, into the barren heathland, in what I believed to be the general direction of Blackwold Abbey. This action proved to be a profound error in judgment on my part, however, for I soon found myself quite lost upon the trackless wastes of the moor, missing luncheon and tea in the process. Finally, just as I was about to give up hope and resign myself to spending the night on a bed of gorse, I descried the peaks of Blackwold Abbey looming in the distance before me.

  As I drew nearer, I observed with admiration the venerable gray archways, mullioned windows and crumbling parapets of a feudal keep. Alas, the encroaching twilight obscured the finer details of the architecture, and I resolved to make a closer study of them when daylight returned. How little did I suspect then that, come morning, architecture would be the furthest thing from my mind.

  I passed through a gate in the fence which formed the outermost perimeter of the estate just as the first drops of rain began to pitter down from the heavens. As I crossed a creaking bridge over a murmuring black brook that wound snakelike through the grounds of the estate, the precipitation intensified considerably, and by the time I arrived at the main house, it had taken on the proportions of a veritable deluge. Quite exhausted and famished, I prayed that Sir Auberon would be gracious enough to extend his hospitality to a wayfaring stranger. I knocked feebly on the great oaken front door, certain that the sound went unnoticed, and growing increasingly desperate at my plight. But to my great surprise, the door creaked open.

  A dour-faced old woman wearing an unfashionable black hoop skirt stood at the threshold, and appraised me with sharp, intelligent eyes.

  “Yes?” she asked me in a none-too-welcoming tone.

  “I really must apologize for disturbing you at such a late hour, madam,” I replied. “But I have become lost upon the moor and find myself in need of shelter.”

  The woman betrayed no hint of cordiality, but nonetheless allowed me to enter. The inside of the house was, if anything, even colder than the outside, and I shivered involuntarily from the dampness.

  “Just a moment,” she bade me after taking my hat, overcoat and walking stick. “I shall speak with my son.”

  As I waited on the ancient stone floor, teeth chattering, I became aware of a peculiar ticking sound, which emanated from somewhere beneath my feet. It was faint, but quite distinct once I became aware of it, and proved impossible to ignore. It was like the heartbeat of some titanic thing coiled in slumber beneath the floorboards.

  The old woman returned and, without a word, ushered me down a long gloomy hallway upon whose walls hung a variety of oil paintings in a lamentable state of neglect. Beneath the murky patina of the paintings, I beheld portraits of nine generations of Duncrofts, who regarded their uninvited guest with haughty expressions of disdain. The hallway led to an eight-sided room, at the center of which rested a large octagonal table. The ticking was even louder in there, for it echoed around the walls of the room until the sound achieved a resonance that was profoundly unsettling.

  There were eight chairs and eight place settings, one at each side of the table. The old woman had disappeared back down the hallway and left me on my own, so I pulled out one of the chairs from the table and sat down. A most extraordinary sequence of events transpired from that action: first, a spindly mechanical arm descended from the ceiling. Then, a jointed claw at the end of the arm took hold of a decanter of wine, lifted it, and carried it towards the wine glass at my table setting. The claw swiveled to pour a measure of wine into the glass, then set the decanter down again in its original place. Looking up, I was shocked to observe eight of these devices lurking in the rafters like the legs of an enormous spider. I gulped down the entire glassful of wine in one go, and the arm returned to fill my glass once more, somehow cognizant that it had been emptied.

  But this was only the first of the ghastly terrors I would witness that night. It was then that I saw something which struck me dumb with fear, a sight that has haunted my dreams every night of the twenty years that have elapsed since the events described in this account. A young man dressed in a tattered black servant’s tailcoat entered the dining hall through a door. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen years of age, but his skin was as pale as a sheet and had the waxy pallor of an embalmed corpse in a coffin. His face was completely devoid of expression, and his eyes stared blankly forward. But that was not the most horrifying thing. A full quarter of his skull had been removed, and embedded in his exposed brain was a clockwork of brass gears which slowly ticked away like the inner workings of a pocket watch. With perfect, mechanical movements, the man—and yes, he was still a man—walked towards where I was sitting, and then stood at attention behind my chair, as motionless as a marble statue.

  “My dear chap!” I cried, quite beside myself with sympathy for the poor devil. “Who on earth would do such a thing to you?”

  “I would,” replied a sneering, cut-glass voice.

  A tall and skeletally thin man entered the dining room. He was clad in a burgundy dressing gown, and wrapped around his head was a turban such as a Hindoo mystic would wear. His narrowed eyes regarded me with the same undisguised contempt as the portraits in the hallway had. This could only be Sir Auberon Duncroft.

  “Forgive me,” I stammered, trying my utmost to maintain courtesy in the face of such abomination. “I meant no disrespect.”

  “The moral judgments of mental inferiors such as yourself are of no consequence to me. Please state the nature of your business here. I am engaged in important scientific research and can ill-afford interruptions in my work.”

  “Well,” I began, trying very hard to make my intentions sound worthwhile to this imperious aristocrat. “I too am engaged in research, although mine is into the local folklore.”

  “The superstitions of primitives are of little interest to me.”

  “Nonetheless, it is my vocation. I am a folklorist. It would be of great interest to me if I might question you about the history of Blackwold Abbey when it is convenient. Perhaps we could arrange an interview for the morrow?”

  “A folklorist, you say? That profession requires an advanced educational degree, suggesting higher mental capacity. Perhaps your arrival may be of interest to me after all. You will of course stay the night.”

  I glanced o
nce more at the servant with the terrible clockwork implanted in his head.

  “That is most kind of you, Sir Auberon. But I wouldn’t impose such a burden on you. I have secured lodging in the village. I can return in the morning.”

  “Nonsense, Mr…?”

  “Whitlock is the name. Wolsey Whitlock, at your service.”

  “Nonsense Mr. Whitlock. The village is nearly five miles’ walk from here. I wouldn’t dream of letting you try to negotiate the moor at this hour. You will spend the night here. After you have eaten, my servant will show you to your room.”

  Sir Auberon would brook no argument to his plan. I could only mumble my thanks as he turned and exited the room. A dumbwaiter rose up through a hole in the center of the table, and upon it rested a covered silver platter. The platform rolled towards me of its own accord on tiny wheels until it was positioned in front of my plate. The clockwork man lifted the cover to reveal a roast quail, which stared up at me with dull, lifeless eyes, its beak permanently open in a silent scream. My appetite had fled as surely as every ounce of sanity urged me to flee from this horrible house. But there I sat, quaffing another glass of the blood-red wine and listening to the terrible ticking coming from beneath the floor.

  After a few abortive attempts to consume the quail, I rose from my seat, and allowed the hideously disfigured servant to lead me out of the dining hall and up a flight of stairs to a guest room which had not been aired in many a year. There was a bed here, but the scent of mildew wafting from the sheets offered little hope of a comfortable night’s sleep. Making a Herculean effort to suppress my revulsion at the gears embedded in his open skull, I attempted to engage the clockwork man in conversation.

  “Can you speak?” I asked, quite certain that my question would be met with a ghostly silence. What happened next astonished me deeply.

  “I…am…capable…of…audial…communication.” His words were mechanical and deliberate, and yet still retained the remnants of a Devonshire burr.

  “What is your name?” I asked, trying to determine if there was any vestige of humanity left in him.

  “My designation is Jack Mark 1.”

  “No, no, before that. Before you became…whatever you are.”

  “I am a cybernetically augmented specimen of homo sapiens.”

  “But isn’t there anything human left in you?”

  “My primary functions have been reconfigured by means of bio-mechanical implants. However, I still retain many secondary animal characteristics.”

  “You must let me out of this madhouse,” I exclaimed, no longer able to contain myself. “Please. Have mercy on me. Can’t you just turn a blind eye while I slip away?”

  “You must remain in this room until I return with refreshment.”

  Before I could protest again, Jack left the room and closed the door behind him. I heard the click of a key turning, and my attempts to open the door confirmed that it was indeed locked. I frantically searched for some means of egress, but found none. In one wall, I discerned the outline of what had once been a window, but had long since been sealed with bricks and mortar. I was as entombed as wretched Fortunato in “The Cask of Amontillado.”

  As if in compensation for the occluded window, a silver-backed mirror was mounted on the wall beside it, and I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass. Disheveled and unshaven though I was, it was reassuring to see something familiar in the midst of this insanity. I stared at myself for quite some time, examining the contours of my features, the knot of my cravat. For a moment, in the flickering shadows of the paraffin lamp, I caught a glimpse of something else in the room, a presence lurking in the shadows. I wheeled around in terror, but there was nothing in the room with me, only the ceaseless ticking, my constant, unwanted companion.

  There was the snick of a key turning in the lock, and the door opened once more. Jack wheeled a tea trolley into the room. The trolley was mysteriously laid for two, although it was clear I would be taking tea alone. One of the teacups was decorated with red roses and the other, quaintly, with bluebells.

  “Jack,” I said, renewing my pleadings for escape. “I beg you. Come away with me. I’ll take you to a doctor. We’ll find some way to extricate that infernal machinery from your head.”

  “Negative,” he replied in his eerie drone. “I cannot disobey my master’s direct command. It would contravene my primary algorithm.”

  “Blast your primary algorithm! You aren’t just some windup toy. Somewhere there is a man inside you. I know there is.”

  “I did not choose to be as I am. However, I shall give you the choice. Drink from the red cup, and you will retain your free will. Drink from the blue cup, and you will succumb to Sir Auberon’s design. The choice is yours.”

  Jack turned and left the room again, locking the door behind him. I was left with two cups of tea for company. My mind raced with the implications of what he had just told me. The red cup or the blue cup. Was he telling the truth? Or was this merely a test of Sir Auberon’s, some elaborate ruse? Perhaps it was the blue cup I should drink from, or neither. But no, I couldn’t believe Jack would deceive me in such a fashion. He was trying to help me. I should trust him. Shouldn’t I?

  My fevered musings were interrupted by an acrid-smelling fog which began billowing into the room, stinging my eyes and causing me to cough violently. My vision blurred, and I suddenly felt very languid. I knew I had mere seconds left of consciousness. With a firm resolve, I took hold of the red teacup’s handle and drained its contents. And then…darkness.

  When I awakened, I was unable to open my eyes or move my limbs, not so much as to wiggle a toe. All I could do was lie there and listen to Sir Auberon’s reedy voice as he rambled on incessantly to no one but himself.

  “At last, my experiments have reached their final stage. First, I was able to augment the intelligence of a toad to that of a small mammal. Next, I elevated a field mouse to the thinking capacity of a chimpanzee. Then, I advanced a hare until its mathematical processing skill exceeded that of the average human. My first experiment with a human subject was encouraging, but I was still unable to achieve the calculating power required. This specimen is more promising, for his innate intelligence is higher, and I shall increase it a thousand-fold.”

  While Sir Auberon raved, I slowly regained mobility, and flexed my limbs experimentally. In place of my torpor, a peculiar euphoria coursed through my body. My eyes flicked open, and I made a hasty survey of my surroundings. I lay upon a narrow bed in a dark room filled with arcane equipment whose purpose I could not even guess at. It was a laboratory of sorts, but unlike any laboratory I had ever seen during my university days. It was more of an alchemist’s den, a warren of forbidden science and occult blasphemies.

  Hanging from a rack were the mutilated remains of past experiments: sheep, hares and cats that had been disemboweled, their innards replaced with more of the hideous clockwork. An unearthly apparatus consisting of a constellation of golden orbs crackled malevolently in the corner, spitting tiny bolts of lightning from globe to globe. A leather-bound tome sat open upon a desk, and upon its pages I discerned strange, elaborate sigils which made me shudder even to glimpse them. This man surely had truck with the devil himself, or worse.

  On the far side of the laboratory crouched an enormous machine, like a metal dragon, fully twenty feet across, a concatenation of thousands of turning gears all interlocking with each other in a cascading series of clicking cogs, the source of the ubiquitous ticking. The machine was powered by an ancient stone millwheel, which rotated slowly, with all the inexorability of a planet circling the sun. Knowing I must act quickly, or else fall prey to Sir Auberon’s diabolical intentions, I abandoned my feigned pose of sleep and sprang to my feet.

  “How can this be?” Sir Auberon protested. “There was enough trichloromethane gas in that room to anaesthetize a herd of elephants.”

  Jack stepped forward. “I administered an extract of cocaine to counteract the effects of the trichloromethane.”
>
  “You did what?” Sir Auberon roared. “That is not possible. That function is not a part of your program.”

  “You did not give me a choice in my augmentation. But I gave him the choice. He has chosen correctly.”

  “There must be an error in one of your subroutines. But your primary algorithm is inviolable. You cannot disobey me. Place the subject back on the operating table and fasten the restrains.”

  Jack lurched towards me like a nightmarish toy soldier. Before I could evade him, his fingers clamped on my arm. My attempts to wriggle free proved fruitless, for his grip was like iron.

  “Don’t listen to this madman,” I implored. “Together we can overpower him. Let us flee together, and I shall find a way to restore your humanity.”

  Sir Auberon laughed derisively. “Your pitiable attempts at reasoning with my servant are misguided. Jack is little more than an automaton. But you will be different. Once I have augmented your brain, you will thank me. Archimedes, da Vinci, even Newton will be as children playing at your feet.”

  “I’d rather die than become one of your monsters. If this work is so important, why don’t you augment your own brain?”

  A flash of rage contorted Sir Auberon’s usually emotionless visage. He ripped off the turban to reveal a nest of gears embedded in his own open skull.

  “Do you think I could do this to myself? My father died before completing my augmentation, just as each generation of Duncroft has attempted to augment the next. It is only in this century that science has advanced to a point that our family’s goal lies within reach. This Babbage engine in tandem with a human brain will have the computational power necessary to derive the mathematical formulae that will open the dimensional gate and release the Old One from its prison.”