Hellbound Hearts

by Paul Kane

  And then, now fully awake, he heard it clearly. “Deirdre?”

  Not a cry or a shout or even a moan as he had first believed, but a calling, as if the name were spoken by a blind man, lost and wandering, reaching out for the touch of the familiar. Colin did not recognize the voice, but it had a parched, weakened quality that might have masked its true timbre.

  He sat up in bed to listen and, sure enough, the voice came again, calling his dead mother’s name. “Deirdre?”

  “Father?” Colin said, his own voice equally thin and reedy in the dark. Though the voice did not sound precisely like his father’s, who else would be calling for long-dead Deirdre Radford in the middle of the night?

  Colin sat and listened closely, but long minutes ticked past without any further occurrence. Over time, however, he slowly became aware of another sound, a low thrum or vibration, so minimal as to be almost unnoticeable. Had he not been listening so keenly, he never would have heard it, and the sound would have remained part of the shush of the world’s quiet noise; the voice of a distant river, the wind on the grass, the soft breath of a slumbering lover.

  Alighting from his bed, he went to the fireplace, at first believing it to be the source of the thrum. It did seem louder there, but when he bent to listen more closely, he realized the tone did not emanate from within.

  As he cocked his head, trying to ascertain its origin, he placed his hand upon the mantel, then pulled it abruptly away as though he’d been burned. Thoughtfully, he put his hand once more upon the wooden mantel and felt the vibration there. With a glance around the room, wondering if the thrum was more pronounced in some corners than in others, he traced his hand along the mantel and then pressed his palm against the wall beside the fireplace.

  That contact was rewarded with a shift in tone. The vibration became louder and turned, for just a moment, into a grinding noise, followed quickly by the clank of metal, like gears turning over, and then a sigh as though of steam, before it finally diminished once more to its original volume and tenor.

  Somewhere in the midst of that noise, he might have heard the voice again, calling for Deirdre, but he could not be sure.

  Barely aware that he was holding his breath, Colin pressed an ear to the wall. Beneath the continuous thrum he could hear a soft clicking, as of cogs turning. Abruptly he pulled away from the wall, fetched his robe, and slipped it on. Tracing his fingers along the wall to be sure the thrum did not subside or diminish, he went out into the corridor.

  Colin kept his hand on the wall and then on the banister as he descended the stairs, but he already knew his destination.

  Only one new mechanism had been installed in the house during his time at university, and he had no doubt that his father’s mysterious invention must be the source of these unfamiliar sounds.

  No one else stirred as he made his way through the foyer and then along the hall to the cellar door. He thought that one or more of the servants might also be roused by the noise, though perhaps they had all grown accustomed to it over time. His grandmother had not been awakened, but she was an old woman and he presumed her hearing had deteriorated with age.

  Constantly alert to any change in the sound, afraid with each creak of a floorboard beneath his feet that it might cease, Colin fumbled to light the lamp that hung by the cellar door. Its soft glow cast strange shadows as he lifted it down from its hook, so that he turned quickly, thinking that Filgate or Grandmother Abigail had heard him wandering the house and come to investigate, secretly sure in the back of his mind that his father had appeared from some hiding place to explain all.

  But Colin was alone there, in front of the cellar door. And suddenly it seemed to him a dreadful idea to be up by himself in the middle of the night, about to descend into the cold and the dark and the queer depth of his father’s obsession. As a boy, he had always feared the cellar, and somehow in the burgeoning confidence of his time at university, he had forgotten that fear.

  Now it returned.

  But that mechanical hum still vibrated in the air, and when he touched the cellar door, he felt it far more strongly than before.

  “There’ll be no jumping at shadows,” he promised himself, and so doing, he opened the door and started down.

  The cellar looked much as it had earlier. Colin took the time to light several of the lamps that Filgate had arranged for him, though it now occurred to him that some of them had likely been put in place by his father, when Sir Edgar had been working on the contraption.

  Whatever he had been expecting upon his descent, however, his imagination proved far more active than the mechanism itself. The sound had gained in volume with every step as he approached the room wherein the thing had been constructed, but when he stepped inside, he had to stop and stare in surprise. No levers moved. No steam escaped the valves. Cogs did not turn. The machine was absolutely still.

  Holding a single lamp in his hand, he maneuvered around the mechanism just as he had earlier in the day, his robe catching on a hinge and tearing slightly. Colin swore and continued his examination. He reached out to touch one of the bars of the mechanism with a hesitation akin to that felt when petting a stranger’s dog, but only the dullest vibration could be felt in the machine itself, less so than in the wood of the cellar door.

  Yet there could be no denying that the sound had grown louder as he entered this room. Colin began to walk the perimeter of the room to see if there were places where the volume rose or fell, and when he stepped over one of the pipes that jutted from the mechanism into the wall, he paused and looked back at the metal cylinder where it entered the stone foundation.

  Crouching, he grasped the pipe. His whole arm trembled with the vibration traveling through it, and he pulled away. Glancing back at the machine, he saw that nothing had changed. It remained still as ever. But here, where the pipe entered the wall, its extremities thrummed with the workings of some other machine or some unknown engine to which this one was attached, off beyond the cellar wall.

  Colin rose, staring at the wall. He turned in a circle, trying to figure where the pipes might lead. One by one he walked to each of the seven pipes extending from his father’s mechanism, checking to be sure, and he found that each of them vibrated just as urgently as the first. As he checked, he fancied he could hear more subtle noises now, his ears adjusting to the thrum. There were clicks and whirs, hisses and clanks. Machines.

  But two of the pipes led into a wall that separated this room from another cellar chamber, and when he checked, he confirmed that they did not exit on the other side of that wall. One led into a wall that bordered nothing but stone, and must have run far under the remainder of the house, although how his father had managed to install it without excavating down through the floor of the parlor, Colin could not imagine.

  This chamber sat at the southeast corner of the house, and of the remaining four pipes, two each had been pushed through holes in the south and the east walls, respectively. Colin wondered about those pipes. The two that led into the adjoining room did not emerge in that room, but what of these, which could run under the grounds outside?

  He knew of only one way to find out.

  With one last look at Sir Edgar’s mechanism, Colin doused the lamps and retreated up the stairs. He did not bother returning to his room. Rather, he fixed a pot of tea and nibbled on a leftover apple tart in the kitchen as he waited for the sun to rise, so that he could pay a visit to Mr. Church.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing,” Grandmother Abigail insisted.

  The old woman frowned at him, arms sternly crossed. When Colin had returned from town with Mr. Church and half a dozen of his workers, Grandmother Abigail had demanded to know what he thought he was doing, ordering them to dig holes in the grounds around the house.

  Reluctantly, he had told her the story of his experience the previous night, including his amazement that the sounds he heard in the walls did not rouse any of the house’s other residents from their beds. He had long suspected Filgate
of relying heavily upon brandy to carry him off to sleep, which would explain the man’s sound slumber, but his suggestion that perhaps age had diminished his grandmother’s hearing brought this angry protest.

  “I intended no offense,” Colin said, his tone as apologetic as he could muster. “I simply cannot imagine how you managed to sleep through the noise. Granted, it wasn’t especially loud, but so consistent that the irritation alone would be enough to drive one mad if it persisted long enough.”

  Grandmother Abigail’s expression faltered, and she shrank slightly. It lasted only a moment, but long enough for Colin to realize that her pique had been a mask behind which she hid some other, more subtle, response to his inquiries.

  “What is it you aren’t telling me?” he asked.

  She shook her head and looked away, gazing out the window at two of the workers, who even now plunged shovels into soft brown earth, piling rich soil high beside the waist-deep hole they’d dug.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” his grandmother said.

  “You did hear it,” Colin guessed. “You know precisely what I’m talking about.”

  Her jaw seemed set, as though she might never utter another word as long as she lived. She took a deep breath and released it before turning to him.

  “I heard nothing of the kind,” she said. “But your father heard . . . something.”

  Colin straightened up. “Tell me everything.”

  “He said almost exactly the same thing, about the sound being enough to drive one mad, given time enough. He heard . . . vibrations, yes, but he said whatever those machines were that he heard, they had a rhythm.”

  Colin nodded. Though it had not occurred to him in those precise terms, he understood what his father had meant. “Was that when he began to build his own mechanism?”

  Grandmother Abigail seemed pale in the sunlight shining through the window. “He thought if he could match his own machine to the rhythm, find a way to get the two in harmony, he could make his mechanism function on its own, without his—” She’d cut herself off.

  Colin stared at her. “Without his what?”

  She shook her head, willing to go no further.

  “Without his what?” he shouted. “Grandmother, please, there must be some connection to this mechanism and his disappearance. If there is, the only way I will be able to discover it is if I understand what he was thinking while he built it.”

  Grandmother Abigail regarded him coolly, as if she had separated herself from him somehow.

  “He managed to make it work in some rudimentary way by placing himself within the machine. Those shelves are seats, the levers and valves meant to be operated by hand.”

  “But Father left no designs—”

  The old woman narrowed her eyes as if daring him to challenge her. “I burned them.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Her mouth quivered a bit, and then she lowered her gaze. “I was afraid for you, Collie. Your father thought . . . he . . .” She steadied herself, raised her eyes, and looked at him with the clearest warning he had ever seen. “You know that ever since your mother’s death, your father has been obsessed with the idea that the connection they had could not be severed, that there must be some way for him to speak to her, even beyond death. Beyond life.”

  Colin nodded. “All of those séances with Finnegan—”

  Grandmother Abigail’s expression turned to stone. “He educated himself, talked to spiritualists and scholars alike. If he heard even a whisper of some method he had not yet attempted, he experimented with it. Finnegan indulged him all along, let poor Edgar think his wish might one day be granted, and lined his own pockets with your father’s money. But when your father began to talk of the sounds he heard in the walls, and when he began to build that mechanism in the cellar, Finnegan urged him to stop. No, more than stop. Finnegan wanted him to break it into pieces, threatened to have nothing more to do with Edgar if he refused.”

  Fingers of dread crept up Colin’s spine. “What happened?”

  “Your father had Filgate throw Finnegan out of the house and told him never to return,” Grandmother Abigail said. “He kept working, building, testing that infernal machine, and less than three weeks later, Edgar vanished.”

  Colin turned and stared out at the hall that led to the cellar door.

  “Whatever you hear in the walls, lad, you mustn’t listen,” the old woman said.

  “And if that means we never find him?” Colin asked.

  Grandmother Abigail lifted her chin, trembling slightly. “Better that than risk losing you along with him.”

  Colin thought on that for several long minutes, alternately looking out the window at the diggers and back into the house in the direction of the cellar. When, at length, he finally met his grandmother’s gaze, she must have seen his decision in his eyes, for her shoulders slumped with sadness and surrender.

  The old woman turned from him without another word and left the room, as if he had already disappeared.

  Church’s men dug all around the foundation of the house at the rear corner where Sir Edgar’s mechanism filled the cellar room, but they found nothing. The pipes that penetrated the walls in that chamber did not emerge on the other side. Church had no explanation, nor had Colin expected one. The pipes must simply have stopped several inches into the wall.

  Colin did not believe that, of course. He had jostled one of the pipes enough to know that it did not end after a few inches. And then there was the matter of the nocturnal thrum, the vibration, of the machine. Where did that come from? Colin supposed that his grandmother might be right, that he might have imagined it just as his father had done, but if that was so, then where was his father?

  An answer to that question had begun to coalesce in the back of Colin’s mind once Grandmother Abigail had told him of his father’s falling-out with Finnegan, but he tried not to dwell upon it, for it seemed impossible. Felt impossible.

  All that day, as Church’s excavations revealed more and more of nothing and Grandmother Abigail’s words resonated deeper and deeper in his mind, Colin felt a growing anxiety. With the onset of evening, emotional tremors passed through him, a queer combination of unease and anticipation. There could be no doubt what his next course of action must be, and over the dinner table he saw in his grandmother’s eyes that she knew it as well. They barely spoke during the meal, and when it had concluded she excused herself, claiming a headache, and retired for the night.

  Soon enough, Colin found himself alone in the parlor with a glass of brandy and a crackling fire, all of the servants having withdrawn.

  He did not even pretend to retire for the night. Instead, he waited there in the parlor, listening for the hum and staring at a shelf of his father’s old books without even the smallest temptation to pluck one down to read. He sipped brandy and felt himself grow heavy with the influence of the alcohol and the warmth of the fire, but as drowsy as he became, he would not allow himself to doze.

  He felt his father nearby, as if, were he to close his eyes and reach out, he might grasp Sir Edgar’s hand or tug his sleeve. The feeling chilled and warmed him in equal measure, and it occurred to him that this must be how his father had felt for so many years about his late mother. He had always talked of feeling her nearness, of his confidence that her spirit lingered, awaiting him, attempting to contact him, if only he could find the means to receive that communication.

  Enough brandy, and the walls Colin had built inside his mind to prevent him thinking about his more outlandish theories regarding his father’s disappearance began to break down. A little more, and he stopped denying to himself the certainty that had formed in the back of his mind. Somehow, in attempting to contact his mother, his father had succeeded in breaking down a wall, tearing away the curtain between what Colin knew as tangible reality and some other existence. Whether his father was alive or dead, he did not know, but he felt sure that in matching the rhythm of the vibration in the walls, he had slipped out of
the world.

  Yet he felt just as certain that his father was still in the house—still down there in the cellar—and if he could match that same rhythm, as his father had done, it might be possible to draw the curtain back one more time and let Sir Edgar return.

  A loud, sobering voice spoke up at the back of his mind, warning him that he might share his father’s fate, but he took another sip of brandy and pushed the thought away. If his father had stepped onto another plane of existence, joining him there was far from the worst thing Colin could imagine. And not attempting to save his father was inconceivable.

  Sometime after midnight, his vigilance was rewarded with a whisper.

  “Deirdre,” said the walls. But now he felt sure the voice belonged to his father.

  The thrum began moments later, and Colin set aside his brandy snifter, rose from his chair, and walked from the parlor, swaying only slightly.

  Intuition guided him—at least that was what he told himself at first. From the moment he hoisted himself up onto the wooden shelf that functioned as a seat, and settled his arms onto the two smaller shelves that were angled downward toward the levers, he felt in tune with the machine. The support behind his arms gave him leverage, the seat taking his weight left his legs mostly free. Some of what had seemed to be levers were actually pedals.

  But it wasn’t enough simply to work those levers and pedals. One valve protruded from a metal arm that, when swung in front of his face, behaved more like the mouthpiece of a trumpet. When he breathed into it, the valve seemed to draw greedily from the air in his lungs until he found the perfect rhythm of inhale and exhale.

  His breath powered the machine, as did his arms and legs. He listened so carefully to the rhythm in the walls, the clank and grind, the thrum and vibration, and worked his body—his own mechanism—to match it. Somehow, he knew, he had to find a way to meld himself to his father’s machine, to turn the two mechanisms into one, acting in concert, and then extend that unification to the other machines beyond the walls, wherever they were, and to the mechanism that was his father. He could feel Sir Edgar there with him, breathing with him, moving with him, as if the man’s body had been scattered into tiny particles that filled the air of the chamber.