Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology

by Douglas Seacat

Kincaid abandoned the crowbar, handing it back to the investigator. He then tugged at the slabs of thin wood by hand, popping them free of where they’d been nailed to the closet’s frame. Strips of paint and chunks of plaster littered the cold corridor at his feet. He breathed raggedly as he worked, and his breaths came out in small clouds. When he finally exposed the closet’s doorknob, he realized why his hands were trembling. It wasn’t fear.

  “Elliot is calling it,” he hissed to Abigail, who was rubbing her own hands together and watching him anxiously. Her glasses were fogging over.

  She whirled. “Elliot! Why are you calling the ghost?”

  “Hold on here,” Grimes shouted back, “you told him to do it. ‘For a minute.’ We all heard you.”

  Abigail glared at Faulkner. “Idiot.”

  The scowling ogrun mask took shape at the farthest end of the corridor in the fading light at the bottom of the stairs. An ethereal form began to materialize around it, limbs extending impossibly long. Kincaid could only glance back at it, a numbing panic taking hold of him. He couldn’t think. It was coming.

  The closet door was locked.

  He could sense the motion of the others—they were readying their equipment. Abigail shouted something indistinct. Light bounced the length of the frigid corridor. He heard Elliot’s muffled voice, speaking too softly to hear the words. Then Grimes bellowed a warning that, like Abigail’s, was just noise. Slowly, as if detached from his own actions, Kincaid reached to a pouch on his belt, one he’d thought he’d never need again. A pouch from the old days. A pouch he’d earned the first time he’d stolen another man’s wealth. His tools. His picks. Like his pistol, they were a reminder of the man he’d once been.

  He hurried, but it felt like he moved underwater. They were wrapped in cloth, but he’d not oiled them in a month. He could feel their dryness. They wouldn’t work. He’d lost his skills. Their metal was cold, like the bars on a cell. A nauseating wave of vertigo swept over him. He looked up, desperate to center himself.

  The corridor went nearly black then—the only light coming indirectly from Abigail’s portable lumitype, by which he could dimly see Grimes adjusting a sizable metal cylinder dotted with numerous switches—the containment device for capturing the spirit. The electricity flashing between his gloves had an erratic heartbeat. Mel adjusted a sizable alchemical capacitor serving as its power source that blocked the narrow space between her and the staircase. Elliot’s voice had reached peak intensity. Abigail aimed her lumitype like a woman surrounded by the enemy. She scanned back and forth with the beam of light shooting from it like a floodlight in a prison yard, on the search for escapees. Unseen cats howled like murder victims.

  He did not see the spirit.

  Blinking, he looked down at the picks in his hand and remembered his job.

  “It’s locked!” he called to Abigail.

  “Open it!” she shouted back.

  He was about to tell her he couldn’t do it, he’d lost his skills, prison had changed him, he didn’t want to be that man anymore, when he realized a presence had moved dangerously close to him, between him and Abigail. With a snarl, Faulkner the director lunged at him. His face was dead white, his teeth bared savagely.

  Kincaid fell against the wall, ducking a blow Faulkner aimed at his head, but he lost his grip on his picks. They spilled into the darkness at his feet with a thin metallic sound. He dropped to his knees and groped after them in the shadows. Standing over him, Faulkner made an inhuman noise, a shriek from another place, and reached for him. Kincaid instinctively raised his left arm toward the director, and in doing so, felt a moment of clarity.

  Abigail grabbed Faulkner’s shoulders and yanked him away, giving Kincaid enough time to find his feet again. The others were turning. Grimes’ gloves were outlined in a glow as he shoved his way closer, his stones still raised high. Abigail fell backwards with the director atop her. Kincaid could see the possessed man struggling to turn on her, his mouth wide open as if he meant to bite her or suck her breath away.

  Kincaid aimed his left hand at the closet’s doorknob, flexed his arm muscles, and when his pistol snapped from its holster beneath his sleeve and into his waiting palm, he fired.

  The lock exploded.

  • • •

  KINCAID LOWERED HIS SHOULDER and hit the door hard, bursting into the narrow space beyond.

  The smell was rancid, horrifying. Rotted meat and sour feces, a wet odor. Kincaid’s eyes watered, and his gullet rose. Somewhere behind him, he heard Abigail calling for help and Grimes answering. The fog of his breath filled the tiny closet as if he’d stepped outside on a cold winter’s night; he held his breath so he could see what was within. The back wall where he’d once dug a tunnel was filled in again, plastered over, just a memory. And the strobing lights from the corridor barely reached the compacted corpse at his feet.

  Berek Ofstad had likely been handsome, as befitted his career, but Kincaid could not tell from the dead man’s decaying features. Jammed into the closet, the body was curled up tightly as if trying to protect itself from an attack—Ofstad’s hands covered his face, and his knees were drawn up to his chest. Blood had congealed on the floor around the actor’s head. And lying in the pool was the murder weapon, the snarling ogrun mask, its eye sockets and the crack that divided its face sealed with Ofstad’s lifeblood.

  “Kincaid!” Mel screamed from the corridor. “Hurry!”

  He tried to answer, but he could not breathe. The stench was overwhelming. The cold bit deeply into his exposed flesh; his knees threatened to buckle. The closet was so small, he could feel it smothering the life from him. 71590. He’d been here before. Just another cage. This was where the others had abandoned him, left him to take the fall for all of them. Three years in a cell with evil men. He closed his eyes.

  “Kincaid!” he heard Grimes shout. “Come on, man!”

  His knees gave, and he sank until his palms were in Ofstad’s blood. It was tacky.

  “For the love of Morrow!” Elliot’s voice, quaking. “He won’t pass on, Kincaid! Is his body there?”

  And then, finally, over the sounds of machinery and struggle, he heard Abigail. “John! Are you okay?”

  Trembling, he opened his eyes to find himself staring into the ogrun mask.

  It’s not snarling, he thought then. It’s in pain.

  “Ofstad!” he shouted, his voice breaking. He cleared his throat as he picked up the mask and struggled to his feet. “Berek Ofstad!”

  Stumbling backward out of the suffocating closet, he turned to face the others. The frenzy in the corridor was like a madman’s painting brought to life. Their shouts and commands underscored the chaos as they climbed over one another to reach the possessed Faulkner. The purple Strangelight flooded the tight space and cast it in an eerie glow. Abigail was lost somewhere in the shadows closer to the floor, but he could hear her cries and the director’s snarls. When he looked down for her, he discovered her glasses at his feet. He bent to pick them up, clutching them protectively to his chest.

  “I found you, Ofstad!” he shouted then, raising the ogrun mask above his head until it scraped the low ceiling. “Look at me! I found your body!”

  Elliot said, “You’ve got his attention!”

  Faulkner’s head rose suddenly from the shadows, the lower half of his face still concealed in darkness. Kincaid recognized the madness in the director’s eyes—he’d seen it on the faces of men desperate to escape their cells, even if they died in the attempt. He’d seen it in a mirror. But those eyes rose, taking in the mask that had taken Berek Ofstad’s life. For a heartbeat, they dimmed.

  Grimes stepped closer and placed his hands on either side of Faulkner’s face. A single spark flew from each glove to crackle along the director’s skin briefly. Just behind him, Elliot began to utter a Morrowan prayer, the caller’s voice shockingly strong, belying his physical condition.

  The spirit of Berek Ofstad rose from Faulkner’s body.

  Kincaid could see some o
f the man’s features in the ghost’s face, but he could also see the semblance of the two ogrun masks, the one that was maudlin and the one that was gleeful. The blue-green glow around it pulsated as the ghost turned toward Grimes. Mel shoved the metal containment device toward the jammer, then both of them began adjusting switches and dials.

  Abigail came to her feet, and Kincaid handed her glasses to her. She smiled faintly as she accepted them, put them on, and turned to watch the end of the mission.

  The metallic containment device uttered a deep hum as additional voltaic sparks flickered along its edges. A wind appeared to manifest from nowhere, the machine at its center, swirling their clothes and hair but also tugging at the glowing spirit floating above them. Inexorably, Ofstad was drawn downward, even as the hum deepened to a bone-shaking thrum. Only once did it look back at Kincaid and the mask he held aloft, but it turned away without a sound. As the spirit fully entered the containment device, Mel nodded to Grimes and both threw the largest levers on either side. There was a hissing sound and then a click, and the thrumming ceased along with the sparks. The metal surface of the containment device frosted over as though containing something extremely cold. The ghost of Berek Ofstad was gone.

  The immediate silence was deafening. Kincaid could only hear his own heartbeat. The others leaned against the corridor walls or one another. No one spoke.

  On the floor, Faulkner groaned. Abigail knelt beside him and brought him slowly to his feet. His face was battered, and his hair was wild. He looked around in a near panic, his eyes wide as if expecting to see the ghost waiting to possess him again. When he was certain it was gone, he sagged.

  “All right,” he whispered. “Take a bow, everyone.”

  • • •

  THOUGH IT TOOK THE STRANGELIGHT TEAM some time to deal with the city watch and to repack the wagon, Kincaid kept mostly to himself. Abigail talked to the officer who came to take custody of the bodies of the manager Cecilia, her assistant Kellyn, and the actor Ofstad, and Mel supervised the loading process. Kincaid had assumed the Strangelight team would need Ofstad’s corpse, but Abigail shushed him when he started to discuss it with the watch.

  “We have him with us,” she said in a low voice, and Kincaid understood. He left the shell of the actor to the watch.

  By the time they had finished, a small crowd had gathered outside for the evening performance of Pride of Cathmore. Actors and actresses had drifted into the theater from the back of the building, and Faulkner had been organizing them with sharp claps and commands. Kincaid couldn’t imagine they would go forward with the play today, but in the end, he also didn’t care.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Grimes muttered as the two of them put the final crate on the wagon. Neither of them said anything else. This time, on their return, Mel and Kincaid rode the wagon back so they could keep an eye on the remains of their gear. Mel had ensured even the broken pieces, such as the fried projector and resonating chamber, were brought back so she could tinker on them later. They were almost back to Blackwell Hall before she spoke to him.

  “Like the rider said to his horse, why the long face?” she asked, grinning tiredly.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m good.”

  “Yes, you are.” Mel clapped him on the shoulder and said nothing more.

  Back at the manor house, once the gear was safely inside, he checked the radiators in the grand hall. Satisfied, he retrieved his toolkit and, turning, discovered Abigail waiting for him.

  “If this were a play,” she said without preamble, “this would be the scene where I’d ask you where you were going. You’d say you were going back to work as a furnace repairman, but then I’d tell you what a fantastic job you did today. I’d tell you there’s a spot for you on my team, if you want it. You’d act all surprised, and if this were a drama, you’d say you have a different calling in life, something tied to being an ex-con, and you’d walk out of here forever a changed man.”

  Kincaid considered, then said, “And what if I said I just needed to return these tools to my former employer? They’re expensive, and I’m no thief, you know.”

  Abigail took off her glasses, held them up to the light to inspect them, and finally put them on again. She smiled. “No, you’re not. Then I’d say we’ll you see tomorrow morning.”

  “All right, then. So…” He smiled back. “Was this just a rehearsal for the scene, or…?”

  “We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  He nodded and turned to go, but one more thought came to him. He turned back. “What happens to Ofstad’s ghost now? He didn’t cross over to Urcaen, so I assume you have him contained somewhere.”

  “We do.” She didn’t define who we meant, he noticed. “And it turns out, he has a fan or two who aren’t quite ready to let him retire from the stage just yet. I suppose that’s the life of a popular actor.”

  “Wait. Someone’s already come asking about his ghost, and you’re giving it to them?”

  “Just to borrow,” she said. “Besides, we can’t hold them all that long.”

  That was clearly all she was willing to say. Kincaid, who had been smart enough in a former life to know when to stop asking questions, stopped asking questions.

  For now.

  “Strangelight’s glad to have you, John,” Abigail said as he left the hall, and for now, he believed her.

  — CASE 2 —

  THE MADHOUSE DISAPPEARANCES

  By Zachary C. Parker

  Ramarck in western Cygnar, onset of autumn

  THE CARRIAGE SHOOK ON ITS FRAME, and Abigail Thorpe listened to the rhythmic clatter of hooves and wheels passing over another series of wooden planks suspended above the swamp. The sound continued but a moment, and then the carriage and the horses drawing it returned to the damp earth of the road once more. Beyond her window, an endless sea of mangrove and bald cypress trees loomed out of the muddied waters, their branches as thick and twisted as their partially submerged roots. They were laden with strips of hanging moss.

  The journey down Cygnar’s western coast from the port city of Ceryl had mostly been a pleasant one, less plagued with hazards than she had feared, given reports. The weather had been fair, and their single stop in New Larkholm had included finer lodgings than Abigail was accustomed to when traveling on business related to the Strangelight Workshop. It wasn’t until after the carriage had crossed the Banvick River, rounded the westernmost spur of the Upper Wyrmwall Mountains, and then entered the expansive swamp known as the Marck that the trip took on a much drearier tenor.

  Much of the Marck was below sea level, inviting the waters of the Meredius inland. The road on which they traveled was a mound of reinforced soil winding through the swamp like a prodigious serpent, twisting back on itself and weaving through the trees. Great swaths of fog rolled over much of the swamp, at times concealing the surface of the water altogether and lapping at the sides of the elevated road. A thick cloud cover obscured the sun and, combined with the fog below, made all the world seem a varying shade of grey.

  Abigail turned her attention from the drab landscape to the man who sat opposite her. She had only known John Kincaid for a short time, though she had come to think of him as reliable. He wore a neat beard and moustache that partially obscured harsh features and a chiseled face, an appearance that seemed to fit with his pragmatic nature. He, too, was focused on the twisted trees and encroaching fog on the other side of the glass.

  “Have you been to Ramarck before?” Abigail asked.

  “It’s never been on my list of places to see,” Kincaid replied. “You?”

  “No. But I’ve always found its history fascinating. This is one of Cygnar’s more isolated cities, surrounded by miles of swamp in every direction, and yet it remains. No railway reaches here. Its docks can only accommodate boats with a shallow keel, and land traffic has to deal with this swamp. A city of a modern nation stuck in a bygone age.”

  “Some people like their privacy,” Kincaid said.

&nbs
p; Abigail’s thoughts drifted once more to the letter in her pocket. The message had arrived three days ago at Blackwell Hall, and since then she had read the looping script numerous times. The letter came from the family of a mental patient who had recently disappeared from the Ramarck Royal Special Health Institution. According to their tale, the family had gone to visit the patient, a man named Nicholas Boden, only to be told by the facility’s staff that the man had gone missing. An appeal to the authorities had yielded no results.

  They had grown desperate, as Boden’s unattended estate was significant and, in his absence, its title had been challenged by a distant relative claiming to be its rightful inheritor. Without Boden’s signed will, the family stood to lose everything. It wasn’t until they spoke with a former orderly of the institution who had recently quit his job that they considered contacting the Strangelight Workshop. According to the orderly, odd occurrences were commonplace at the facility, and if the Boden family’s contact was to be believed, the disappearance of Nicholas was not the first.

  It was not unusual for the Workshop to receive such requests, but each had to be evaluated to determine if it warranted an investigation. They couldn’t afford to chase down every hint of a supernatural phenomenon, especially as there were conmen and frauds who would exploit the Workshop for their own profit if they could. Noteworthy missives were passed along to senior members of the organization, who in turn might authorize an investigator to scout out the situation and decide if a full team should follow up. Though the sorters had flagged this letter as a potential case, most of Abigail’s colleagues had dismissed it, citing the likelihood of it being a mundane crime. The disappearance was more likely to be related to corruption in the institution or some sort of sordid kidnapping, perhaps related to slavery or the illegal corpse trade with Cryx. Ramarck saw its fair share of unsavory pirates.

  Yet something about the situation had caught Abigail’s interest. It was intuition more than anything else, something that as a woman of science she rarely relied upon. She hadn’t been able to put the letter out of her mind. In the end, she had volunteered to conduct a preliminary investigation. To keep the costs down, she had brought only Kincaid; she could send for the others if she discovered anything interesting.