Ghosts by Gaslight

by Jack Dann

  I paused and found I had already stood, although I had not been conscious of it; I looked at my right hand, recalling that carved grip, and how it had felt to grasp it. “I took it, and was glad to have it. My first thought was that I might meet some of my previous foes outside, Kestrel men who would attack me again. Then that such a finely made weapon might be sold for a good sum to one of the many shops in that city. I had not gone more than a street or two before I saw walking before me my tormentor of a year’s time and more; his swagger, and the tilt of his cap, identified him at once. I had no need to see his face, and if I had seen that face I think I might have thrust the dagger into both his eyes before I had done.”

  “You killed him.” The ghost’s sigh held no question. “Because you did, I, who can but rarely converse with the living, have been able to converse with you.”

  “I did. I stabbed him from behind and saw him turn and goggle at me, and watched him fall. There had been no mistake. I had killed John Frederick Bolter, third mate of the Jack Robinson. I had been avenged, but the price was the blood-guilt I bear to this hour.”

  “You can expunge that guilt by preventing my murder, Brooks. You can expunge it by killing the man who will kill me.” By all that is holy those words should have been delivered in an invidious whisper. So we are taught, and so temptation speaks upon the stage. It was not so for me that night. I heard only the faint voice of the spectre of a desperate young woman, a desperate woman pleading for my help; and I asked who he was, and where he might be found.

  “He is in a room of this house, and it is a room that you may enter at any time without arousing suspicion.”

  I knew then, and felt as though a bucket of icy seawater had been flung into my face. “You intend my master,” I said. “I will never raise my hand against him.”

  “Then I must die tonight!”

  My answer was to strike a match and light the gas. By the time its lambent light had filled the room, the ghost was gone.

  She came again, an hour before dawn, and woke me with her icy touch. “Sit up, I beg you. You refused the great service I asked of you. I ask a small one now. I perished by violence and died a virgin. You have not earned my blessing, but you may yet escape my curse.”

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes.

  “My body lies unprotected upon the hill, Brooks. Listen!”

  I did, and heard far off the lonely howling of some cur.

  “Wild dogs rove the fells, and are the curse of the shepherds. Doubtless you have heard of it. They will savage my body when they find it. I ask that you bear it to some place where it will be discovered quickly. No more than that, and it is the last service I shall ever ask of anyone. Won’t you come to my assistance? I implore you!”

  I rose, dressed, and followed her. It was two miles, perhaps, to the place where her body lay. By the light of the dimming stars I stood and looked down upon it. No living woman, the thought was inescapable, sir, had ever looked so fair as Miss Alice Landon did then, recumbent upon the rocky soil, her eyes closed and her skirt above her knees.

  Kneeling, I felt her wrist. There was no pulse. I swear that there was none. Her flesh was not yet cold, though not as warm as that of a living person.

  “He struck my neck, and all his hatred and disdain were in the blow. It was sufficient, for girls such as I was are not so difficult to kill as rabbits.”

  There was yet no stench of decay, only a faint perfume as of lilies of the valley.

  “You would not save me, and I know that you will not avenge me. Take me now, if you wish. It will be release for you; and I, who never knew love in life, shall know it in death.”

  I hesitated, and she said, “Do you imagine that you will be the first man to ravish a corpse? You go where tens of thousands have gone before you, and you will leave in your wake no bitter tears.”

  God help me, sir, I did as she had suggested. When I rose, she was gone. I called out to her, but received no response.

  I had promised to carry her to a place where she would soon be found; I did so and set out to avenge her. Of my desperate struggle with my master I shall say nothing. The court has recorded it, and posterity may read of it if it chooses. Suffice it to say that his shouts and the sounds of my blows roused the whole house. Those who would have rescued him arrived too late, but subdued me without the least struggle.

  A fettered prisoner in a cell has no news save what his visitors bring him, and I had no visitors until my trial had begun. Conceive, then, of my amazement when I saw Miss Landon in the courtroom, seated primly beside her father. She sobbed quite audibly when the condition of my master’s body was described, and I could do nothing and say nothing.

  Her father came alone the next day to hear the jury’s verdict, and to my astonishment visited me in my cell not long after I was returned to it.

  “You live wretchedly here,” he said.

  To which I nodded. “Wretchedly, and not long.”

  “Do you smoke? I will give you a cigar.”

  Shaking my head, I thanked him.

  “A tot of brandy then.” He unscrewed the top of his walking stick and passed it to me. I took a good long swallow, thanked him, and returned it to him. You are not to believe from my drinking so that the thought of poison had not crossed my mind. He was a physician, after all, and might readily have introduced some devilish compound; but I had sooner died in my cell than wait there to be hanged.

  He wiped the rim and drank himself, and truly drank, for I saw the movement of his throat. A handkerchief served to blot his lips. “It is my understanding,” he told me, “that prisoners in possession of funds may buy certain comforts here, things sold by the warders. Shillings might be best, I suppose. I will give you twenty if you desire them, and a one-pound note to wrap them in.”

  I thanked him and accepted the money. “You wish my friendship, plainly,” I declared. “You have it. How can such a wretch as I be of service to you?”

  “First, I am indebted to you. The man you slew broke my daughter’s heart. Were you aware of it?”

  I confessed that it had been hinted in my hearing.

  “She mourns his passing. I do not.”

  “Sir, I understand.”

  “She came out last season. It was thought then, by her mother, by her brothers, and by Alice herself, that she would be married in a matter of months. She rejected other suitors, thinking it cruel to encourage them.”

  Waiting, I nodded.

  “His ardour waned. As I speak of your master, I assume you were to some degree aware of it.”

  “I asked him once,” I said, “about a report that he was to marry your daughter. He disparaged it, saying he enjoyed dancing with her, and that alone had given rise to the gossip.”

  “They were quite close, not long ago. I had begun to think of him as another son.” Dr. Landon sighed. “Would you defame my daughter, Brooks, were I to put it in your power?”

  “Certainly not, sir.”

  He nodded, mostly, I would say, to himself. “You are a good and a decent man, though you sleep here upon straw. I would save you if I could.”

  I thanked him.

  “Perhaps I can do something. I doubt it, but I shall make the attempt. If ever in your life you have been honest, answer me honestly now. My daughter is ruined, Brooks. You take my meaning, I feel certain.”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Her child will be my grandchild. I will not neglect my duty to that child, nor to her. Tell me plainly. Was your late master my grandchild’s father?”

  “I cannot answer,” I replied. “I can say only that he confided nothing of the sort to me.”

  “It is not unknown for a young gentleman to pursue a young woman and, when he has had his way with her, treat her with detestation.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “It is not.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Sir, I did.”

  He shook my hand and turned to go, but did not shout for the warder, turning back to me instead. “My
daughter suffers fainting spells, a disorder by no means uncommon among young women. It is part and parcel with the green sickness.”

  I waited.

  “She lies, sometimes for hours, quite insensible, and seems scarcely to breathe. At such times, she dreams that her soul departs her body and ventures abroad, committing mischief. It is no more than a fancy, you understand.”

  “I do, sir.”

  “And yet . . .” He shrugged. “There is a doctor in Vienna who holds that there is a second mind below the one we inhabit. If that seems less than clear, I can but say it is by no means clear to me. That mind, he alleges, has fears and desires unconstrained by morality. His theories interest me because Alice’s dreams often seem the products of such a mind. I do not allege that he is correct, and in fact I think it more probable that he is mistaken.”

  “I agree,” I said. “It seems quite impossible. Would not such a mind require a separate soul?”

  “I should think so. I tell you this because you may have heard that she is mad. She is not, and upon the point I give you my word as a physician. She is only a girl who dreams, and gives her dreams much more credence than they deserve. You have done her a kindness, intended or not. Someday she may be sensible of it.”

  I said, “Thank you, sir.”

  He smiled. “I shall send my solicitor to you, Brooks. He is a good man, kind, and not much older than yourself. He may be able to do something for you. I hope so.”

  There is no more to tell. I have recounted my story to that solicitor, Mr. Josiah Willis, who has inscribed this record as I spoke. He promises me it will never be made public but that he will exhibit it to the child Alice Landon bears when that child is of age. Thus the child, whom I believe my own, shall know who I was and why I was hanged. There is a God in Heaven, I know, and He must know how sincerely I have repented. I pray that He will make this record known not only to Miss Landon’s child but to all my descendants, unto the seventh generation and beyond.

  [So many years have passed since James Brooks told his story to Mr. Josiah Willis that no harm can come of making his account public. In no other way can his dying wish be granted, or so the matter appears to us. No doubt the same thought motivated the publisher of the pamphlet.]

  Afterword to “Why I Was Hanged”

  “Why I Was Hanged” owes as much to Nigel Price as it does to me. Nigel, who is intimately familiar with the culture of Victorian England, spent much time and effort in meticulously checking facts and practices. I owe him much more than this brief mention.

  —GENE WOLFE

  Margo Lanagan

  Margo Lanagan has won four World Fantasy Awards in four different categories, including Best Short Story, and her short stories have won and been short-listed for many other awards. Her fourth collection, Yellowcake, was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in March 2011, and her next novel, based on her WFA-winning novella “Sea-Hearts” (from X6: a novellanthology, ed. Keith Stevenson, coeur de lion publishing, 2008), will be published in 2012. Margo lives in Sydney and is currently working as a technical writer and an arts bureaucrat. She has never seen a ghost (sigh).

  MARGO LANAGAN

  The Proving of Smollett Standforth

  ALWAYS SHE SPRANG from the same dark corner. Smoll could never anticipate the moment she would appear, though night after night she came in the same way and performed the same actions in the same order. He fixed his attention on the place, all terrified expectation, but each night her appearance startled him as greatly as it had the first time. She seemed to wait, indeed, before she leapt forth, for approaching sleep to lower his guard by a fraction, to loosen his joints and sinews, to slow his heartbeat to a pace no more urgent than would be expected of an organ going to its rest upon a day’s gainful industry.

  The corner from which she rushed was not the corner with the door. Or at least not the door Smoll used himself—and Mrs. Gallon used it too, he supposed, for she swept and grumbled everywhere about the house, so it was likely she swept and grumbled here too—and which a casual observer would maintain was the only door to the attic room. No, there had once been a door in the other corner. By day, seams in the wall showed where boards had been used to seal it, and in Pinkney’s room below, short, staggered lines in the wallboards showed where steps so steep as to be almost a ladder had once angled up. Not only was the night-lady a phantom herself, she also emerged from a phantom house. Eyeing the rectangle of the no-longer-existent doorway, Smoll wondered about the person—a grown man, stronger and more practical and authoritative than Smoll was—who had tried to shut her out, the tilting woman, her beads, her voice. And when all the sawing and hammering and painting over had failed, the man, sensibly, had gathered up his household and left. Smoll wished heartily that he could pursue them. Please, oh please! he wished he could say. Let me come with you, to whatever safe place you found!

  It was not that Mr. Beecham’s house was not perfectly safe in the daytime, and full of distractions—even, on occasion, amusements, even for a boy so timid and easily mortified as Smoll. But nighttime always loomed again. Always the glad morning (the darkness easing, the clop of the passing milk-horse giving him heart) was followed—no, rushed upon, hurried out of mind, pounced on and briskly swept aside as of no account—by oncoming evening. However much Smoll lingered over the boots in the evening (See your face in ’em yet? Ridley would say, passing behind him with the last slop pail from the kitchen), there would come a point where they were done, when they were placed each pair outside the doors: Mister’s and Missus’s, Miss Edwina’s, Miss Pargeter’s, Miss Annabelle’s, Master Howard’s, Mr. Pinkney’s—and sometimes Mr. Rossiter the coachman’s as well, those wonderful long boots with all their mud that Smoll was always so grateful for. And Smoll having placed them must proceed up his flight of tiny stairs, through the hole in his floor, through the door not much larger than a coalhole cover. He must shut himself away behind that door, shake off his clothes and shrug on his chilled nightshirt and leap abed, blow out the candle and wrap himself tightly in the clean patched sheet and the blanket—as if tonight of all nights that wrapping, that tightness, might be effective against her, when every previous night, since first Smoll had been elevated from country scamp to Beecham’s boot boy, it had utterly failed to protect him.

  “SMOLL, ARE YOU well?”

  “Quite well, thank you, Mr. Pinkney.”

  “It is only that you have . . . well, rather a burdened look about you.”

  Smoll felt it and unrounded his shoulders. “Oh no, sir. I am nothing like so burdened as I was at home, carrying water and wood.”

  “That is better, Smoll. It behooves a young man to maintain a good posture, whether he be in the public gaze or no, do you not think?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  SHE WAS NEITHER old nor young, the dream-lady; she was neither beautiful nor monstrous to look upon. She was difficult to look upon; though her presence was so sudden and so strong in the sensations it produced, her actual shape was indistinct against the surrounding darkness, except in the middle, where it resembled an hourglass. Above and below the narrow waist, she was corseted into a shape that even Smoll, whose eyes were so often cast down in the presence of ladies, or indeed of anyone taller or more important than himself, recognized as old-fashioned. Below this shape she gave to skirts that faded to nothingness, although their rustlings pressed most forcefully upon his ear. Above it, her flat-bound bosom and hunched shoulders supported a head all the more terrible for being entirely without features, except for the impression of a wealth of hair, pulled and piled and pinned into place with the same energy of compression that had been exerted on the body below. Tightness, tightness was all, about this body and about the personage that was borne about in it—tightness and a little madness, which the tightness held in check.

  She carried her faceless head with an intent tilt, and it was in this tiltedness that Smoll’s fear formed, for she was intent on him; she tilted her head at him. He would scramble upright
in the bed, his back pressed to the wall, the back of his head hard against the frame of the little uncurtained window, which, admitting as it might the fullest moonlight or the strongest effusions of a clear night’s stars, never showed him what he needed to see of the woman, never illuminated her brightly enough to convince him that he had seen all the evil there was to see of her, that he now knew what she was, that he could begin to bring some measure of rationality to his encounters with her. Instead he only underwent yet again this deep abjection, this wholesale shrinking of body and being from whatever she was, whatever she wanted.

  For she did want something; she made the same demand of him night after night. She rattled the beads in her hands and pushed them at Smoll, pushed them into him sometimes. Did her touch itself, her thrusting at his middle, produce those pond ripples of horror up and down him, or was only the idea of her touch, in his appalled mind, sufficient to generate them?

  The beads themselves were grotesque, bulbous; her handfuls of them reminded him of Arthur Cleal at Hobson’s farm, gathering up innards after the butchering, the slippery tubes and organs overflowing the bowl of his hands.

  Take it, she hissed, and shook the thing and pushed it at him again. Take it; I don’t want it. Her voice was muddied—from having crossed time to reach him, perhaps, or from the invisibility of her mouth. She was hurried and guilty; she crouched at him. ’Tis not as if I can ever wear it. Take it!

  He might say No. He might say I don’t want it either. He might ask her who she was and why she plagued him. Whatever he said, fear crawled and shook in his voice. And she always answered the same, angrily: Take it!, bobbing at him, bobbing into him a little, bobbing back. There might be the flash of an eye, fixing on him with horrible inexactitude, as if she were blind; there might be something of a mouth, a ghost of teeth, momentarily, against the hollow attic room behind her, which resounded with the muddied sounds of ghost steps. What would I do with it, for heaven’s sake? Take it! Take it, before Mistress comes!