Stone Mad

by Elizabeth Bear

  “The spirits come quietly,” she said, with intense conviction or a solid show of it. She smoothed her hands over those bodice seams possessively enough that I was sure she’d done the sewing. “Our clients expect more . . . drama than that.”

  I weren’t sure what I was supposed to say to that, or even what I thought about it. I was saved—after a fashion—when something creaked and thumped behind me. I spun back toward the lobby. What was left of the chandeliers stayed burning just long enough for us to watch as the whole lobby ceiling collapsed from the center out. Then the chandeliers, too, fell and we was plunged into dusty, choking blackness. The staircase heaved under my feet like a bucking bull. I clutched the balustrade, which was too wide, flat, and polished to afford much grip, though it would have been ace-high for sliding down, and hung on best I could, which is to say for dear life.

  It occurs to me in retrospect that I got kind of a bad history with stairs. Maybe I just ought to live out my life at ground level from now on.

  * * *

  “We must get off these stairs.”

  The voice out of the darkness was Hilaria’s, calmer in catastrophe than she had any right to be. Someone’s hand took my collar and tugged.

  Mrs. Horner said, “Gently now, walk soft. Close to the edge of the step, where it’s stronger.”

  A beam of dim light rattled into existence. Mrs. Horner held something in her hand, a sort of metal tube with a frosted lens at one end. It cast a focused beam, illuminating the billowing plaster dust and to a lesser extent the broken steps underfoot. I followed her advice, picking my way over buckled carpet and splintered wood, the Arcade sisters climbing before me.

  Other than the creak of strained wood, the only sound was the rustle of taffeta and the scuff of little shoes as we four women climbed back to the relative safety of the landing. I could barely pick out the shimmering colors of the Arcades’ silk dresses through the plaster dust, which caked my lashes and made my mouth and nostrils feel like somebody had spackled in there.

  The building was still now, the rocking and tossing ended, and mostly quiet enough that I could hear the ringing in my ears I picked up after that explosion down on the docks last year. The doctor says it’s tinnitus, which having a name for it don’t change how annoying it is, but at least it ain’t tintinnabulation, I suppose.

  The building moaned as it settled, which covered up the sounds inside my head. I felt it shivering through my soles. The new configuration it fell into steadied, though I held my breath until it did. Then we was under that arch in the load-bearing wall, and trying to catch our breaths, using folded shawls and sleeves to filter the dust out of the air a little.

  The electric torch in Mrs. Horner’s hand flickered. She shook it gently, and it brightened. “Follow me.”

  We did, stepping over tumbled furniture and chunks of plaster. I mourned in my heart for the gorgeous old hotel, though it wasn’t past repair.

  “Told you it wasn’t any poltergeist,” said Mrs. Horner, sounding satisfied. I glanced over and damned if there wasn’t a smug little cat-in-cream expression on that velvety face.

  “You don’t call that a haint? It sure weren’t no natural earthquake.”

  “No. I call it a natural creature, though. You heard the loud knocks right before the ceiling fell.”

  The Arcade sisters looked at each other. Hypatia fished the bosom gun out of her bosom and held it low by her side, mostly concealed in her skirts and the ruffles on her lace jacket.

  I left my piece right where it lived, which is to say in concealment. “Borglums,” said I.

  “Tommy-knocker,” Mrs. Horner agreed. We came around the corner into a hallway with the lights still on. She flipped off her torch, probably conserving the battery.

  “Though what a generally friendly creature that lives in mines is doing tearing up a fancy hotel is beyond me.”

  Well, reader, it’s a fact. I’m not always the fastest on the uptake, but I thought of Old Boston right away, and his smashed-up ironbound trunk. I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to sound like an idiot. Which is always the best way to end up looking like an idiot, but it never seems that way at the time.

  So I just asked, “Where are we going?”

  “I know another way out,” was all she’d answer.

  * * *

  “Oh, no way are we going in there.”

  The redheaded sisters and me stood in the open doorway of the empty auditorium, listening to the creaks of the damaged hotel amplified in the dark, acoustic space. Mrs. Horner was a few steps ahead of us, widow’s weeds fading into the black.

  “There’s a stage door,” she said.

  “If that ain’t riot barred, too.”

  “I opened all of the riot bars.” She lifted the electric torch, gave it another shake, and flipped the beam on. It was a relief to be breathing air that didn’t stink of plaster dust. “There’s no one in here. Come on, unless you want to still be here when this roof comes down.”

  It got us moving, though the Arcade sisters was a step or two behind me. We trooped along suspiciously, like a nervous caterpillar sprouting eyes from every segment. I went down the auditorium stairs holding on to the rail, expecting these to try to buck me off as well. I was that glad Priya had gone home and was safe—and with all the logic of a child who wants her dolly, I fiercely wished she was here holding on to my hand.

  There was a stair up from the orchestra pit, and Mrs. Horner led us through it and up onto the stage past the footlights. The stage was so shiny underfoot I was afraid to step on it, for fear it might be as slick as ice. She made a sharp turn to the left. There was, I was surprised to see, layers of curtains on the sides, with gaps in between them. You couldn’t see that from the audience, but it made it easy for the actors and hands—or, in this case, us—to slip in between them and get backstage.

  I’d never been backstage in a theatre—or even an auditorium—before, but Mrs. Horner hustled us along right smart, so I didn’t have the time I wished to appreciate it.

  She led us down a kind of rickety hall with doors on either side—labeled “Prop Room,” “Dressing Room,” and so forth—to a metal door that reminded me unpleasantly of the hatches in a submersible. She tried to turn the handle and cursed.

  “Miss Memery, hold this torch for me?”

  “Please,” I said, “when we’re being chased by angry Knockers you go ahead and call me Karen.”

  She smiled and started rooting around under the edge of her black velvet cap. “Where do you think the tommy-knockers came from, all of a sudden?”

  “My sister is very sensitive,” Hilaria said staunchly. “Perhaps it sensed her presence and wanted to get her attention.”

  Mrs. Horner and me, we shared a look. Then I said, “It might have been here for a while. I got a feeling about those murders a few years back. Maybe that old miner smuggled one back from Alaska and it got loose and tore the place up.”

  “Then why would it get angry now?”

  I remembered the hard, sharp knocks I’d heard right before my table flipped. I looked at the Arcade sisters. “Maybe it’s been hiding. I wonder if it didn’t like you ladies”—I gestured to the Arcades, not realizing I still had the electric torch in my hand, so crazy shadows spiraled everywhere—“cutting in on its turf, with the knocking and the table flipping.”

  “We didn’t flip any tables, strictly speaking.” Hypatia spoke primly, but there was a twinkle in her eye.

  Mrs. Horner produced two hairpins from under her cap. “Shhh. Stop quarreling, girls. I hear something.”

  I did, too. A knocking—more distant, this time, and ominous.

  “Karen, hold the light steady on this lock.” Mrs. Horner hefted her pins. “These aren’t ideal.”

  “Allow me,” said Hypatia. She touched two of her buttons in a short pattern, and her corset handed her two slim metal tools. She raised her brows at Mrs. Horner, and Mrs. Horner stepped back.

  Hypatia bent to the lock and slid h
er tools inside. I held the light for her, which I think was just psychological, because she couldn’t see inside the lock anyway. I was interested to watch what she was doing, though, and I bet Priya would have been, too.

  I weren’t so fascinated, though, that I didn’t hear the heavy tread of what sounded like hobnailed boots approaching through the auditorium. Whoever was responsible for the mirror finish on those stage boards weren’t going to be happy when nail boots stomped across them to get to us.

  Which was a ridiculous thing to worrit on when the ceiling was caving in willy-nilly all over the Rain City Riverside, but sometimes fussing over small things can make the big ones seem farther away.

  The stomping came closer. Hypatia swore at the lock, and looked up at Mrs. Horner. “It’s a tricky one. Do you want to try?”

  The old lady crouched down and took the tools away from the girl. Her face creased in concentration as she leaned close, seeming to strain to listen through the thumping.

  I heard the thing step up onto the stage. I glanced over my shoulder, but it was a yawning blackness behind us, and I didn’t dare turn the torch away from the lock. That didn’t stop my eye muscles from feeling like they was straining into all that dark.

  “Almost,” Mrs. Horner said, like she was talking to herself. “Karen, please stop flashing that light in my eyes?”

  Apparently I hadn’t been holding the torch none too steady. It was jiggling every time I glanced over my shoulder at the approaching boot tread.

  Now there was a metallic scraping noise, too.

  “Where should I shine it?”

  “Anyplace you want that isn’t toward me!”

  I whipped it around so fast it probably caused headache in the onlookers. Hypatia yelped in surprise, which must have been at the movement, because the instant the light hit the thing coming up behind us the yelp changed to a kind of deflating hiss.

  I didn’t make no sound, me, because I was standing there like to swallow a pint of spiders, my jaw was so far dropped open.

  * * *

  I ain’t never seen a borglum before, but I am confident in saying that the little man in hobnailed boots leaning on his pickaxe in the middle of the scarred-up stage boards was a borglum, all right. For one thing, there was the pickaxe. It had a head big enough for a brawny man, which should have made it comically outsized, especially as the handle had been cut down from one intended for a full-sized miner—but my blood chilled down my back as I remembered the murders as the Professor had described them to me. For another, he glittered like mica when the electric torch beam hit him, as if he was kin to that mirrored ball hanging in the ballroom, casting sparkles everywhere.

  He was about thigh tall and twice as broad as you’d expect given his height, with dark eyes sparkling like berries in a thorny bush amid all that bristly beard and eyebrows sticking out from under a squashed, muddy broad-brim hat. The skin on his nose and around his eyes sparkled, too, and so did the beard and hair and eyebrows—like he’d been powdered all over with gold dust.

  What surprised me, and then surprised me that it had surprised me, was that he was dressed like a miner in canvas pants held up by buttoned-on suspenders and a faded red-striped calico shirt. I don’t know quite what I’d expected, but a tidy little suit of clothes—a bit frayed at the cuffs and seams—was not it, and it made me wonder if borglums had wives and mothers to do their sewing for them, and where they got the fabric.

  I wished now I’d pulled out my revolver, earlier. Or that I was holding the torch in my left hand, because the slit in my skirts that let me get to the iron was on the right. Your mind goes the strangest places when you’re staring at the tip of a pickaxe while it keeps sending gleams this way and that and a wee tiny man is taking slow, menacing steps toward you.

  Mrs. Horner didn’t look up, and I heard the lock spring open with a sharp, bright click that was like the sound of your family opening the door to you on Christmas morning. I felt like I’d been waiting for that click all my life. I took a step back and felt my bustle press up against somebody.

  Mrs. Horner jumped to her feet, spry as a girl, and she must have grabbed the door handle, because the latch clicked and scraped and the person behind me—Hilaria, by the height—stepped into me to make room for the door to open. I should have moved to make room for her, but nothing on the green earth or in the greener sea could have compelled me to take one step closer to that little man and his not so little pickaxe, lazily slung over his shoulder.

  He tapped the floor with one heel, and my head felt like it exploded from the inside with the sound of the knocking. It beat in waves against the backs of my ears. Hilaria made a thin sound of distress and covered hers with her palms, which didn’t seem to help her any.

  The hotel lurched, settling under our feet—a fall of six inches that for a split second seemed like it would go on until we’d dropped into the pits of Hell. Plaster grit and dust hailed from the ceiling. Hypatia let out a little shriek and Mrs. Horner said, “Blast it!” which seemed like heavy blasphemy for her.

  “The door’s wedged,” she said. I heard and felt her give it an extra yank, but I could no more take my eyes off the borglum to look than I could have flipped ’em around to the back of my head to peer between the teeth of my tortoiseshell combs. She sounded calm—like a woman who’s spent a good chunk of her life untying knots while submerged in a glass tank. She turned in her steps and took the bend of my left arm, which weren’t the one holding the torch.

  She handed the lockpicks back to Hypatia casually as passing the sugar. Hypatia took them without a word, plaster dust drifting out of the crevices in her lace coat. I wondered if the goblet of ice water was forgiven in the face of larger problems.

  “What do we do now?” Hilaria also sounded too calm, but I bet if I had the light to see by I could have made out her pulse shimmering in her long neck like that of a horse that’s been run to foundering.

  I don’t know if she was talking to Mrs. Horner, me, or her sister. My money’s on that last one. But I had no answers, and whatever Mrs. Horner or Hypatia might have said was drowned out as the borglum tapped his heel again and the building answered with a terrible trembling and that savage knocking that pounded in my ears like it was coming from inside my skull bones.

  He unlimbered his pickaxe. I shied back, the torch beam slashing about wildly and weirdly through the dust. Maybe I had some idea of using it to fight with, the barrel being metal, but mostly what I thought was that I hoped they didn’t make Priya come and identify me.

  But he didn’t come any closer, for an oddity. When I got the light shone back on him, it didn’t seem to hurt his eyes to stare right back up the beam. He just flipped the pick over so the head was down and leaned on it, arms crossed, frowning up at us.

  Us four women crowded into a line. I waited for another knocking, maybe one that would bring the whole cracked ceiling and rafters down on us. But it didn’t come.

  I remembered, pretty darn clear, those chandeliers swinging together, sparking and crackling and crashing—and coming down right on the heels of Alexandre as he heroically made himself the last one out the door.

  Barring the door—barring our escape—but not doing anybody any real harm.

  I looked at the knocker, and I said, “What do you want with us, sir?”

  Now it may seem odd to call a borglum sir, and to be honest I don’t know if that critter was a he-critter or a she-critter or if they even make such distinctions among borglum-kind, but my ma taught me that it rarely does harm to be courteous, and Miss Bethel ground that same politeness into me.

  The borglum seemed to listen to me, though. He tipped his head like a dog who’s trying to figure out what on earth those weird sounds you’re making might mean, and I saw his ears poking out the sides of his dirty cap, long and curlicued and ruffled and pointed and shaped a bit like the arrowhead leaves of jimsonweed.

  He knocked again, but gentler this time.

  The other ladies was looking at me,
like they was wondering what craziness was going to come out of my mouth next, and I can’t say I have any blame for them. I didn’t know myself, and was looking for it, when the borglum’s knocking was answered by a sound in the street outside the door. It was a ringing metal sound, like shod hooves running on cobblestones, except it was louder and there was two beats instead of four. The sound was getting closer, louder, and I thrilled to it even as it started to shake dust off the wall behind us and crack the already-cracked paint in big running flakes.

  Breathing in all that lead couldn’t be good for us, but there wasn’t a lot we could do about it. And a second later, the metal clattering outside didn’t stop getting closer and I realized we had bigger problems.

  “Get away from the door!” I yelled, trying to be heard over all the things thumping on other things.

  Hypatia looked at me blankly. “Get away from the door?”

  I grabbed her arm and yanked her to the side, throwing her down with me on top of her. Hilaria and Mrs. Horner hit the floor beside us. Something thundered against the outside of the door—a flurry of fists, it sounded like, if fists was sledgehammers—and then the thing was just torn off its hinges and the night-cold and fog came rolling in, along with the glow of the streetlamps that illuminated the stage-door entry.

  Something big blocked the light, beams dancing through the gaps in it as it moved. Pistons creaked, and so did the doorposts as the machine forced itself into the too-small space, scraping and splintering. I rolled over, letting Hilaria up, relieved that Priya’d had the sense not to just come charging through the door and the support posts, and feeling a little ridiculous that I hadn’t trusted her to know well enough to be careful.