Ghost in the Cogs: Steam-Powered Ghost Stories

by Unknown

  As Effie swung herself over the raised platform, she glimpsed a Vril’ya splayed to the floor by one of the guards, its yellow eyes wide with astonishment. Effie found herself hoping the guards would figure out quickly that the “grenado” Mrs. Brown had planted on the Inner Earther was a dummy.

  In the shadow of the now-chaotic platform Effie whipped off her skirt, revealing the aeronaut’s trousers underneath. She pinned the forged performer’s ribbon to her collar, tucked in her pocket, and started forward, trying to look as though she had somewhere to be.

  Nobody challenged her as she walked into the aeronauts’ workshop. She strode between the benches, trying to glance surreptitiously at each station she passed. In her pocket, the Hobbs pick-lock chafed uncomfortably against her leg. “It’ll open all but cold iron, miss,” Mrs. Brown had promised. Under different circumstances, Effie would have been taken aback by her servant’s familiarity with such devices, but now was not the time to ask questions.

  Then she saw the gold-and-purple colors of the Donna Julia. Effie slowed to an amble, smiling vaguely at the young men sanding the tackle blocks. They did a double take when they saw her, eyes wide at the sight of a female aeronaut. Effie let her gaze float over the workstation. She saw no safe.

  “I’m the new pilot,” she said pleasantly. “Mr. Baxter’s new engine wants airing. Where am I to get it from?”

  It was a gamble, of course. But if Baxter had stolen her engine—and he did, Effie thought furiously—it had to be somewhere nearby.

  The two men looked both amazed and blank. Then the first one waved his hand at someone behind her. “Oi! Fielding! The miss is looking for a new engine.”

  Effie turned to see Baxter’s mop-haired servant bounding toward them. The air seemed to freeze around her. Fielding’s pleasant face changed expressions in slow motion, first taking on a look of surprise and then one of happy recognition.

  “Miss Mitchell! What a—I’m glad to see you’re back on the field! That is,” he said, remembering himself, “Mr. Baxter will be glad. He was terribly disappointed to hear you wouldn’t be joining us. What a horrible thing! That fire! Did you lose much of the workshop?”

  Effie stared. If Fielding was a liar, he was the best she’d ever encountered.

  “The Dover won’t fly this season, I’m afraid.” She smiled, delivering the line she and Mrs. Brown had practiced. “One of my father’s friends invited me to assist today. Alongside my chaperone, of course,” she added, remembering balloons’ dubious reputation as French inventions.

  She blushed, and Mr. Fielding blushed. No progress whatsoever occurred until one of the sanders said, “The miss wants a look at the new engine?”

  Fielding practically bounced with joy. “He told you about the engine!” Catching himself, he lowered his voice. “It’s a remarkable innovation, Miss Mitchell. You have to see it!”

  Smiling tensely, Effie followed Fielding out of the workshop and toward the looming dirigibles. They looked like something out of an antediluvian nightmare, huge and iron grey. It was hard not to believe the Nonconformists were right when they said the burning of fossilized aether—the very innovation that had permitted the elimination of the West Indies trade—infected their crafts with the souls of ancient beasts. Effie shivered in the bright sunlight, feeling as though she were indeed coming into the territory of massive predators.

  “Mr. Baxter!” Fielding waved his hands toward one of the figures examining the strain on an almost filled dirigible. Baxter—a slender man clad in impractical ruffles—froze. His expression told Effie all she needed to know.

  Certainty exploded into rage. She pointed at him. “Thief!” she yelled. “Arsonist!”

  This was not part of the plan. Neither, however, was Mr. Baxter’s reaction: to lean over the galley and order one of his men to cast off the bowlines.

  Effie took off at a run. The bowline had just left its mooring post when Effie caught hold of it. Forgetting any pretense of propriety, she launched herself up the rope, hand over hand.

  Below, she saw the shadow of the balloon drift away from the ground and a bewildered Fielding being pulled into the air by the bowline’s loop. She hoped the man had the sense to let go before they were too high. Effie, having abandoned all sense herself, hauled up into the galley, almost at the feet of a frightened-looking Baxter.

  “You!” she puffed. “Stole! My! Engine!”

  Baxter raised his hands as if in protest. “I needed to show it could be done!” He gestured toward the dirigible’s glowing engine. Following his gesture, Effie saw, to her horror, a familiar brass globe burning blue within the green flame of an Owen engine. He’d stacked the two devices, a combination of power that ought to be impossible and that would—she saw now—grant this dirigible more maneuverability than it had ever had before.

  She realized her mistake a second later when a blow to the side of her head blackened her vision. Effie crashed onto the galley deck. Above her, Baxter wielded a heavy pole. “I didn’t mean to kill you,” he apologized. “If you only understood! I’ve seen the future, you see. In the emperor’s telescope. Napoleon’s got a new alliance. The men from Mars and their mechanical ships. They’ll invade from the sky and turn England red.”

  A well-placed kick cut short the madman’s rant. Effie scrambled away, her head throbbing. Somehow, in all her scheming, she had never envisioned the possibility of dying. If only I can get my engine back, she thought wildly, it’ll be worth it.

  Her hair was yanked backward. Effie had to clutch a cleat to keep from falling. In the corner of her eye, she saw the dark shape of the pole coming for her and turned away. But before it hit, there was a crash behind her, and the grip on her hair loosened.

  Mr. Fielding, having pulled himself on board the airship, was apparently terminating his employment with his fists. “Working for Boney, is it?” He yelled. “You Frenchified villain!”

  Effie hauled herself up. It wasn’t just her head wound, she realized. The dirigible was listing. With a mind of its own, the monstrous airship was heading straight for the Crystal Palace. The sharp point of a British flagpole sailed into view.

  “Brace!” she yelled, her training leaping to the fore. Effie pulled into four-point contact with the galley as the shatter of glass announced the worst. Glancing down, she saw Baxter push the overbalanced Fielding overboard—and was relieved to see the servant tumble onto one of the Palace’s iron ribs, just missing a fall through its glass ceiling. The dirigible leapt free.

  “No, no, no!” Baxter, his face bleeding, launched himself at the helm. “Why aren’t you working?” Buckets of tools skidded down the deck as the dirigible’s tilt increased.

  Effie, hearing the hiss of air above, knew. Wasn’t this the moment she’d practiced since she was eleven years old? Carefully, she reached for a loose line, found its tension, and slid down toward the engines.

  All the fight seemed to have gone out of Baxter. He stared up at the dirigible’s sagging envelope like a blind man. “It can’t be.”

  Effie landed on the engine’s frame. The heat from the fire was excruciating, but she had no time. Even as Baxter turned, she was already snatching the blistering Asmodeus engine from the flames, already raising it—

  “No!” Baxter grabbed at her.

  And suddenly he was falling, and she was following, the green ground rushing up to meet them both.

  The wind was loud around Effie. Screechingly loud. She tried to drag the engine toward her face. This is how you die, her father had said.

  The engine pulled away from her. It twisted underneath her, crunching into her abdomen, forcing her upward. The wind died.

  Below her, a tiny figure—Baxter—hit the ground. Effie turned her face away. Her own fall had slowed to a crawl. The hard fist of the engine pushed her up, the fierce heat of her family’s ghosts lowering her gently to Earth.

  The engine deposited Effie, burned and bleeding, in the middle of Hyde Park. Energy expended, it settled in the grass beside her. She
stared at it as the running people approached.

  Something new has been discovered today, she thought dazedly. The Asmodeus ghosts were still conscious. And they could move independently, without flame. Shapes were aligning differently in her head: the famous dexterity of Asmodeus craft, the hideous accidents attending West Indies “slave” balloons, the alien ponderousness of the dirigibles. And somewhere, too, she was remembering what Baxter has said about the Continental Emperor and Mars and an invasion. She wasn’t sure how it all fit together yet.

  In later years, Effie would say she’d felt the shadow of destiny in that moment. That for a brief second, the Asmodeus engine had shown her the shape of things to come.

  But the moment passed. A crowd raced across the green. The determined shape of Mrs. Brown led them, and behind her, a limping Fielding looked confused.

  Effie glanced down at the gleaming engine sitting on the grass, its familiar ghosts circling contentedly.

  “Thank you,” the next aerial admiral said. And she clambered up to greet the future.

  When not globetrotting in search of dusty tomes, Siobhan Carroll lives and lurks in Delaware. She is a graduate of Clarion West, the indefatigable OWW, and the twin ivory towers of Indiana University and U.B.C. Her fiction can be found in magazines like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Realms of Fantasy, and Lightspeed. Sometimes she writes under the byline “Von Carr.” Both versions of herself firmly support the use of the Oxford Comma. For more, visit voncarr-siobhan-carroll.blogspot.com.

  Hiss

  Folly Blaine

  Randy Henderson

  Mary pushed open the heavy oak door to her uncle’s laboratory with stiff, white fingers and led Simon, the housekeeper’s boy, inside. Moonlight streamed through tall arched windows that overlooked the rear gardens. Pale flowers shifted in the evening breeze like ghostly dancers.

  “There, you’ve had your look,” Mary said.

  “We have time. Sir went all the way to the gate.” Simon wandered deeper into the room.

  Mary followed. He was the newest addition to their family. She would indulge him. “I told you it isn’t scary.” She shrugged. “Only another room.”

  Instruments rested neatly on wooden tables and hung on the walls, perfectly spaced between tall cabinets. In addition to the pincers and vises, there were tongs, tiny hammers, handsaws, and thin metal rods. Long tables spanned the length of the walls with curtained areas beneath.

  While Simon inspected a row of glass beakers, Mary picked up a scalpel, considered it. She enjoyed how the blade glinted in the moonlight. She touched the tip lightly to her index finger. A prick, and then a spot of brown welled, pooling at the tip. So sharp. So precise.

  Mary ran the blade slowly along the pad of her thumb, splitting the skin apart in a neat line. Thick brown sludge oozed from the wound.

  She stared, waited. No pain, no fear. Nothing. She felt nothing.

  Mary glanced at Simon and pocketed the scalpel.

  Approaching the shadows at the back of the room, Simon paused before a large object, easily three times taller than himself. A gray sheet covered the object.

  Simon yanked away the sheet. Fabric pooled at the object’s base, revealing a large metal sphere covered in curved rectangles of copper and bronze, bolted at each corner. Sets of orderly pipes stacked like an organ fed into the top of the strange device. The sphere rested on squat feet of mortared brick, set right into the laboratory floor.

  Was this the “battery” that she’d heard her uncle whisper about with visitors? Simon stepped forward, touching the smooth shell, pinching a bolt between his fingers and twisting. It didn’t budge. Wires trailed from the side of the machine to a raised bed next to it where a helmet rested on the long, low cushion.

  “What is this?” Simon asked.

  “I’m sure it’s for his work.”

  “Everything is for his work, but what’s it do?” Simon flicked the helmet.

  Male voices from the hallway interrupted them. Mary grabbed Simon’s arm and whispered, “Hide.” She pushed him toward a curtained area beneath a shelf along the wall. It would give them a clear view of the machine. The two crawled inside, and Mary pulled the curtain shut just as the door opened, and Uncle entered the room, trailed by Mister Davis and several men. Their shoes shuffled across the floor. They moved like they carried something heavy. A kerosene lamp flared to life. Then another.

  “Set the body there,” her uncle said. He sounded different, more official than she was used to hearing.

  Men’s legs passed the sliver in the curtain. Mary held her breath.

  Body? Simon mouthed.

  Mary glared and shook her head.

  Together, they peered between the curtains.

  Mister Davis picked up the helmet while the other dark-haired men dropped something on the raised bed. It creaked in protest.

  “How long will this take?” Mister Davis asked. He stood shorter than the others. “You two, wait outside,” he said, and the other men left.

  Uncle frowned at the sheet on the ground and kicked it aside. He opened a panel on the sphere. He turned dials, listened, pressed switches. The machine gurgled and then roared to life. Steam trickled and hissed from vents at the side.

  “Do you feel it?” Simon whispered, his voice bright. “I feel . . . looser. Stronger.”

  Now that he said it, Mary realized it was true. She lifted her hands and flexed them. The sluggishness she usually felt, the . . . disconnect between her will and her body had lessened. And her special heart, the one that sang beneath the ragged scar on her chest with a constant click click click, pulsed with new vigor.

  “You say he died this afternoon?” Uncle said loudly, over the roar of the machine. “Here,” he took the helmet from Mister Davis and seated it firmly on the dead man’s skull, rocking it into place. “Time’s right on the edge, but we may get lucky. Souls tend to cling to the familiar.”

  “I don’t care about his soul,” Mister Davis said. “I care about his tongue. We need to know if they’ve found us out, if our undertaking is at risk.”

  “If there’s not enough soul to bring back the whole man, we risk greater danger than discovery. Let me work.”

  Mary’s head whipped toward Simon, but he’d lost interest and was cupping a glass beaker over his mouth.

  The machine quieted to a low hum.

  “What are you waiting for?” Mister Davis said. “Ask him.”

  Uncle pressed a finger to his mouth. “Shhhh.” He shifted a lever up on the great machine, and the humming and hissing increased.

  The dead man screamed.

  Mary felt a surge, a tingling that flowed from her humming heart, matched pulse for pulse by the excited hissing of the machine and the convulsions of the dead man.

  “The window!” Mister Davis cried.

  Mary looked over in time to see a hooded face ducking between the lilies.

  “Damn,” Uncle muttered. He hesitated. “Damn, damn, damn.” Then he pulled the lever all the way down and rushed from the room. “Gather your men. He mustn’t leave the grounds.”

  Mister Davis followed, calling to his helpers. The room fell silent and still once again, save for the hissing of the machine and the groaning of the dead man. Already, Mary could feel the hum of her heart slowing to its normal soft and steady clicking.

  Mary climbed out from under the shelf. Simon held back, clinging to the curtains as though they were his mother’s dress.

  The dead man’s torso lurched upward, his eyelids peeling back to reveal black pits. His mouth wrenched to one side then drooped, tongue lolling out like an overheated dog. The sudden reek of spoiled food washed over Mary. Simon shrieked and backed away.

  The dead man’s fingers closed around Mary’s wrist, and he pulled her toward him. His breath stank of foulness, rot.

  Mary jerked away, and her arm ripped from her shoulder with the wet gristly sound of a pork chop being torn in two.

  “You-you-you,” the dead man stuttered. Something like
spit but milky yellow, strung from his lips as he dropped the arm.

  Mary reached down and picked up her arm from the floor where it had fallen. The joint had gone soft again. The housekeeper could fix it, but it was such a bother.

  She set her arm on the table.

  “Please,” the man said. Dried blood flecked the corner of his mouth. “So much hurt—”

  Mary leaned in closer. “What do you feel?” She licked her lips. “Tell me.”

  “Needles. In my arms, my legs. Oh God, my eyes. Like someone shoving pins into my eyes.”

  He struggled to stand and fell back again, his muscles seizing and contorting, head jerking beneath the helmet, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. “It burns,” he said.

  “Do you really want my help?” Mary said slowly. Her hand moved to the scalpel in her pocket.

  “Yes,” the dead man pleaded again, air wheezing past his slack lips.

  “Truly?”

  “I said I do!”

  Mary plunged the blade deep into the dead man’s chest. He fell against the bed and shuddered. “Thank you.” He smiled through a mouthful of black grime. “Thank . . . you.”

  Mary looked from the man to the machine to Simon who stood peeking with wide, yellowed eyes from between the curtains. She retrieved the scalpel, wiped the blood on the dead man’s shirt, and counted to ten. Then Mary grasped the lever and pushed up. The hissing began again. The machine shuddered to life.

  The dead man screamed. And then his screams turned to tearless sobs. “Why-why-why—”

  “You shouldn’t’ve hurt my arm, sir,” Mary said. “It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t good. Come, Simon,” she said and held out her hand. “Uncle will be back soon.”

  Simon walked to her as though in a daze, and she led him to the door.

  “No! No! Please! I’m sorry,” the man said. “Let me sleep again.”

  Uncle returned, breathing heavily. He frowned as Mary and a quivering Simon emerged.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “What happened to your arm?”