A Wild Conversion

by Katherine Gilbert

  Trying to enjoy this moment as part of the crowd, he sat with his eyes closed. Here, he was just another middle-aged man in his thirties. While his well-tailored and maintained suit suggested his status, and his long, reddish-brown curls were well-kept, everyone here had somewhere to get to. He was just another face and could focus on his hope of finding his Aunt Penelope in one of her less-eccentric moods.

  Well, he called her his aunt, as she was so much older than he was, although she and her brother and sister were really his cousins. She had always been a bit flighty, was from his mother’s side of the family—the one his father had bitten down much harder on his ever-present pipe every time they were mentioned. The man had never spoke a word against them, except with his eyes—but they said that every one of his mother’s relatives were completely batty clearly enough.

  Frederick couldn’t entirely disagree, but they were a type of insanity he enjoyed, helped break him from his father’s staid tuition in ways he had early on admitted—if only to himself—that he needed.

  Every time he went to visit them, there was a whole roster of lunatics to spend time with: Aunt Sarah, who talked to nothing and listened for a response, yet seemed less than interested when people talked of Spiritualism; Uncle Philip, who specialized in a sort of horticulture which seemed to grow nothing but creations straight out of fantasy or nightmare; and, of course, Great-Aunt Hester, who dressed in a fashion so daring she had nearly been put away for public indecency once or twice. They were always overseen by his grandfather, as well, a man with many parlor tricks. There was never a dull vacation.

  Remembering the latter of these relatives especially well now, Frederick truly missed him. The man had enjoyed inviting the grandchildren he favored into his study, where he would put on these strange, inexplicable light shows. Frederick was certain they must have been the results of the man’s many experiments with electricity, long before most of the world had ever started to think about it, but, to this day, he still had no idea how they had been done.

  When he had no longer been able to quietly repress his surprise, as his father had taught him—a useful skill as a doctor, he had to admit—his grandfather had always chuckled: “Behold the clair-lumes, boy! You'll manipulate them someday.”

  He still didn’t know what the man had meant. Perhaps he had hoped that Frederick would become an inventor, although he hadn’t seemed all that surprised when he hadn’t.

  Shaking his head slightly, his didn’t notice his index finger worrying his upper lip. He supposed he would never know now.

  Letting this puzzle go, he couldn’t as easily dismiss the pain of the man’s passing. His grandfather had lived to the ripe old age of 80, but his death had been the impetus for the break-up of much of Frederick’s earthly ties. Sarah, Philip, and Hester had moved away together to Connecticut. Sometimes, he received odd letters from them, occasionally a visit around Christmas, but little else. They had only left one behind: Aunt Penelope—but she had always been the strangest of the lot.

  Sadly, Pen was the last, living relative he had close to him now. His mother had died giving birth to his little sister; his father had passed on last year, and his sister had recently married and moved to Maine. It had made the last few years feel rather hollow, which was only one of the reasons he was far too happy to visit his aunt.

  It wasn’t like it was always easy to get away from his practice, but he did have colleagues who could fill in for him. Pen had been acting stranger and stranger lately, as well, prompting ever-more visits.

  She had recently taken in three orphaned girls, seemed to be teaching them all sorts of odd tricks. The last time he had seen her, they had been working on magic lantern shows, although what each of them had created didn’t seem reasonably possible. She also gave them classes she called Classical Herbs, The Basics, and How to Know When to Hide. What in heaven’s name she thought she was up to was beyond him.

  Still, the girls seemed happy, which he supposed was enough. They were at an age where they could get away with such behavior, although he had no idea what would happen, once they were older.

  This was a subject he had tried to discuss with Pen but had made little progress. “They'll do well enough,” was all she would say—and then she had made it clear that the matter was closed.

  Sighing, he knew he would have to accept her pronouncement. There was nothing else he could do, without truly disrupting her life and home—and he refused to mimic his father to that extent.

  He only wished that he didn’t have the very strong feeling that disaster was coming. It would have made it much easier to cope with the many, gaping holes in his life.

  The first of these was one which half his patients seemed only too ready to fill. Many was the matron who had made up some ache or pain to come to him, only to then spend the entire consultation pressing upon him an account of her nubile daughter’s many charms. He had heard tales of phenomenal cooks, charming conversationalists, handy housekeepers, and sprightly pianists—all of them, of course, with beautiful, delicate features.

  The fact that most of them ranged from 16-18—nearly half his age—wasn’t unusual but didn’t interest him particularly. He couldn’t remember the last, even halfway intelligent conversation he had had with such a girl, although he knew he was an oddity to care about such things.

  It was a peculiarity which would probably assure that he was still unmarried even many more years down the road, but he had resigned himself to that fact. He had a housekeeper already. He could happily live without the burdens of an unequal wife.

  He never told the various matrons this, knew it would only bring on either shock or a redoubling of their efforts to entice.

  Neither reaction appealed to him. It was yet another reason why he wanted to see Pen. His mother’s side of the family was about the only one which never pressed him to wed.

  This was easily explained, though. Neither had they. There were two maiden aunts and one bachelor uncle among them—and they had long been overseen by a widowed woman and widower man. They seemed to see the coupled state as slightly unnerving. Pen had even told him once, “It’s ideal, of course, if you find the right person, but it’s a long stretch of purgatory, otherwise.”

  He couldn’t help but agree, if never in public. He actually had a taste for bluestockings, but they, predictably, never wished to marry and give up their maidenly intellectual pursuits.

  He couldn’t blame them. Marriage was really much more demanding for a woman than a man.

  Knowing he had very odd opinions on such things, he also knew how to keep them to himself. He supposed he had never needed Pen’s classes in How to Know When to Hide. With his father, he had done so instinctively. Emotions, after all, were not a manly trait. Better to show the world none than to get mired in their curiosity or scorn.

  Mostly keeping these thoughts to himself, a little of his discontentment was shown by the tapping of his finger against the windowsill. They were getting closer to Salem, would be there in about 5 minutes. He had the trip mapped out easily in his head by now. He could only hope that Pen was well.

  Of course, he didn’t know what he would say to Pen about his only half-expected arrival. Partly, he supposed, he wished to check up on her, to be certain that she and her charges were doing fine when nobody was looking. Partly, he simply wished for some time away with someone who would understand the deeper parts of all he was. Only his mother’s family ever seemed capable of this, so it had been to them he had turned, many times before.

  He was doing this again now, rather wondered whether he were simply trying to run away. Doctoring society matrons and desperate parvenus and their families was dull, to say the least. The men’s gout, the women’s exaggerated nerves, his colleagues’ thoroughly prosaic opinions on all of them, as well as on the rest of society, were tedious. And, if there were one thing he was most tired of, it was tedium.

  His half-made wish for excitement came true far more thoroughly than he could have imagined, a t
errible sort of grinding coming from the wheels, as though the brakes had been thrown on unexpectedly.

  Perhaps a cow had wandered onto the tracks? Hopefully, it was nothing more—or so he thought, until the explosion.

  It was loud enough to rock the train, shaking everyone from their seats. There were quite a few screams as well as the wailing of babies.

  But this wasn’t the exceptional part. There was suddenly a riot of lights outside the windows, as though the aurora borealis had descended to earth in early-morning Massachusetts.

  Among the screams, his gasp was different, was one of simple recognition. They were the sort of lights his grandfather had once entertained him with—if on an infinitely-larger, uglier scale. Much more disturbing, some of them were now moving inside the windows.

  Seeming ready to jump the track, the train was still juddering along, although it now made a sick, grinding sound with the motion. Bracing himself against the back of his seat and the one in front, he prayed the women around him would find a way to do the same. He couldn’t help them himself yet. First, he had to survive.

  Suddenly glad that it was he who did the traveling, that it wasn’t his aunt or her charges who were caught in this, he heard the shrieks increase, as they ground forward—especially as the lights began to trail through the windows, curling toward the passengers.

  As he watched, his eyes widened. The lights now looked like fingers, nearly seemed to be searching. He saw one which almost looked to be reaching beyond him, toward a woman who had fallen in the aisle, clutching her baby.

  Given that they were still barreling along, probably half a second from going off the track, he could do very little to protect her. But he also couldn’t let those things touch her. Somehow, he knew if they did that she and the babe might not survive.

  With a great effort, he managed to fight his way to his feet against the momentum, brace himself against the seats, and angle his body between the fallen pair and the terrible, clawing lights. He wasn’t certain why he felt like the lights were malevolent, other than their sheer freakishness, but he did. Though they looked like them, they just didn’t feel like his grandfather’s lights. And the way they had honed in on this one particular victim left a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He was still braced, still praying that their ride would not end in some sort of telescoped disaster at the end of a cliff—but his eyes never left the light. It was a sickish sort of yellow-green, was now curling around his arm. It nearly looked like a curious animal—sniffing, investigating. Once it had, it suddenly flicked back, and he nearly thought he heard it hiss.

  He did, as well, if only because the grinding had turned into an even more intensively juddering, stomach-churning clatter. Closing his eyes for a moment, he was terrified that the sound might signal the cars before them smashing their way into one another, killing everyone they touched.

  Having never been particularly religious, he still said a prayer to whomever might listen. It was bad enough to be in a wreck—but to be caught in some sort of freakish, unnatural sideshow, as well . . .

  Even worse, he now opened his eyes to see the lights reaching out from the other side of the car, well away from him but still clawing down for the woman on the floor and her child.

  Letting out a gasp, he tried to plan. Entirely out of instinct, and despite the fact that it might kill him, he still knew he had to do what he could. After all, as his Aunt Pen had always told him, “The good ones protect.”

  He had never thought what that might fully mean till now.

  Seeing only one way to accomplish this, he was still scared that it might simply cause further damage to the woman and her child. But the horrible lights had turned yellow, were reaching, snapping for the woman and her baby. Even with all the screams and noise, he could hear the hiss.

  It was this or nothing—and nothing would prove deadly.

  Allowing the momentum of the crashing train to start his fall, he added to it his own leap till he finally covered the woman, making it to her just before the lights would have grabbed the baby.

  Unfortunately, this meant that they clawed into him, instead. Then, he too added to the screams.

  The pain was searing—but touching him did make the lights retreat. From the hiss he heard, he suspected that they were equally hurt.

  That was something. If he were going to die from unearthly stab wounds, it was only right to return the favor.

  Suspecting that he was either hallucinating or deeply in shock, the baby’s lusty wailing at least convinced him that it was all right.

  Strangely, his efforts paid off in other ways, too—the lights suddenly ceasing, pulling back like a recoiling snake. Then, their terrifying journey finally ended with a sickening crash. The car tilted slightly to the side, everyone thrown off-balance and screaming again, but they did stop without overturning or being splintered into the car before and after them.

  For the next few seconds, he only heard breathing and whimpers, as everyone adjusted to the change—and he listened, terrified that there would be some sort of hideous creak. He truly expected that they would have ended up on the edge of a precipice—but only the screams and shocked cries from the other cars met his ears. He supposed that was good. Now, if he could just move without bleeding to death from his inexplicable wound, he could begin to help those around him.

  The woman under him, at least, seemed alive. Moving back, he tried to help her up, although the action made him wince painfully. She just nodded, her eyes wide, accepting his help and still clutching her child. Whatever had happened, it was clear she had understood what he had done. Now, if only he knew what any of it meant.

  Stumbling with the crowd toward the door of the carriage, he assessed his fellow passengers. There was no one lying unconscious, or worse, that he saw—everyone moving in a steady stream out of the wreck. That was good, because, right now, he wasn’t certain that he could have carried—or even have leaned over—anyone without fainting.

  The moment didn’t get any more explicable, or less painful, after that. Tumbling their way out of the wreck, they were greeted by a town’s worth of people.

  But the town wasn’t Salem. It should have been, at least its outskirts, but he had never seen this part before. And the lights . . .

  He went stumbling along, losing sight of the woman and her baby, but there seemed to be enough people to look after everyone. Besides, he was too aching and confused to notice.

  While the ugly profusion of lights from before were thankfully gone, this place still couldn’t be called normal. Their rescuers’ hands kept emitting the sort of lights his grandfather’s had once, if in a variety of colors. His grandfather’s had always been a rainbow, but most of these were more solid.

  They didn’t seem to be doing tricks to amuse the children, either. In fact, most of the other passengers didn’t seem to notice.

  But how could they not? They were everywhere, swirling. Only by taking deep breaths was he able to keep from hyperventilating. And some of the people were so oddly dressed—or, rather, undressed—that they put Great-Aunt Hester to shame.

  Had they crashed into a red light district being visited by a circus? He started to wonder whether he had hit his head, holding it, turning. If he had a concussion . . .

  Suddenly, he was distracted from this thought, and his whirling dizziness, by the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She had long, raven hair which she wore down in the most brazen style imaginable, but her outfit was otherwise rather prim. She was staring straight at him, too, her green eyes shining in surprise.

  A second later, she marched right up to him, her emerald, velvet dress swaying with the grace of her very quick walk.

  He was slightly mesmerized, even if he did fear that she was probably a member of the world’s oldest profession. Certainly, she was brazen enough, her hand immediately grabbing his head, tilting it down to hers to meet her unfathomable, lovely eyes more thoroughly. She was a little shorter than him but not by m
uch.

  Her voice was deep and rich. “You see them, don’t you?" she demanded.

  Part of him wanted to object to this treatment, rather haughtily—shades of his father rising in him. The other part was more than a little intrigued.

  Somehow, he knew exactly what she meant. “The lights?”

  Still examining his gaze, she nodded once. “The clair-lumes, yes.”

  That made his own eyes widen. Apparently, he had forgotten every previous lesson about how to hide his shock. “How did you know about . . .?”

  This was as far as she let him get, her fingers resting against his lips. They were soft, entirely gloveless, nearly rubbed along him.

  It was an absolutely disturbingly-good sensation, one he both wanted to reject and to explore in much more depth. Still, he was not a man who visited prostitutes in anything but the most professional of senses—and then only secretly. He would have lost all his society patients had they known about such altruism among the “unworthy.” Even had he tried to explain the truly abominable details of those women’s lives, they would quickly have cast him aside as a mere “pox doctor.”

  The beautiful woman’s eyes snapped at him, as did her voice. “Say one more word, and I'll put a silence spell on you.”

  He didn’t but only because he was too shocked to speak. He was almost annoyed at his disappointment when she took away her hand, her gaze running down along him shamelessly. Sadly, his first assessment must be right.

  “Are you hurt?”

  He wanted to demand whether she thought she were the doctor—but he knew the truth of her trade too well. Women forced into her degraded state frequently needed a few such skills just to survive.

  Hating to admit a weakness to a lady—even a fallen one—he did understand that it would do him no good to hide it. He turned a little. “There was a . . .”

  She already knew about the lights, apparently, but the experience had been too odd to discuss, just yet.