The Fallen (The Sublime Electricity Book #3)

by Pavel Kornev

  The spirit summoning was planned in one of the side rooms, and a round table had already been brought there with chairs, but getting inside turned out to be quite difficult.

  "And where are you going?" the medium asked in surprise.

  I demonstrated the king of diamonds in silence.

  "I was quite sure you had a black card!" he said, not in any mind to let me through.

  "You must have been mistaken."

  "No, I was not!" the lector continued being stubborn.

  "Well, here is the king of diamonds!"

  "Cards aren't so hard to come by!"

  "Then count the deck," I chuckled.

  The medium ducked into the room, looked over the crowd and looked at me with doubt. There was a deep crease in his forehead.

  "You'll mess things up," he announced after brief consideration. "Skepticism is infectious, I simply will not be able to concentrate. Call someone else!"

  "Few believe in communication with the otherworldly as fervently as I."

  "No!"

  I grabbed the medium by his jacket button and pulled him forcefully away from the door.

  "Listen here, my sweet man," I smiled with all the politeness I could conjure, "this event has caught my attention in the greatest way, so if you don't want a charge of anti-scientific activity to deal with, simply allow me to participate. I assure you, I will not interfere."

  But the dandy was a hard nut to crack. I had decided to play on an age-old fear of mediums, but I guessed wrong. The lector only laughed.

  "Nothing I do is against the law," he announced, relying most likely on the highly-placed sponsors who’d invited him here to entertain the public.

  "And what of the press?"

  The medium just winced.

  "These threats of yours..."

  "Not threats," I corrected him. "Promises."

  "These threats of yours are simply laughable!"

  "An attempt to summon the soul of Maxwell could lead to ten years in prison camp at Solovki. See – I believe you, no skepticism."

  "Listen!" the medium began, but waved his hand. "What the devil am I justifying myself to you for? Would you like to see this all with your own eyes? Please!"

  I smiled and walked into the room. There, I was awaited by my first disappointment. Liliana was sitting between a lady with the face of a thoroughbred horse and a twenty-year-old girl with a polished slouch, her fat hotdog fingers weighed down with rings. The only free place was opposite Lily.

  The medium closed the door and locked it with an important look.

  "Today we will be summoning the soul of James Clerk Maxwell, who crossed over to the other side in this very home, and thus left an especially bright imprint of his essence here."

  The lector popped a candle he'd brought into an empty candle holder, flicked a match on the side of the box and tried to light the wick, but it was covered in wax. He had to get a folding knife from his pocket and cut off the excess. When a little flame finally shivered on in the middle of the table, the kerosene lamp was ceremoniously extinguished and the room was immersed in gloom. The figures of the people sitting around the table dissolved in shadows. Their faces glowed like white ovals.

  The medium remained standing. He was leaning on the high back of a chair, as if hovering over the crowd, and started talking about the practices of meditation, spiritual connections with ancestors, doors to the spirit world and other extraordinary things which are sure to make an indelible impression on the overly credulous simpletons. Playing with intonation, he gradually immersed the people in something like a trance; I was left indifferent.

  Even Albert Brandt with his illustrious talent couldn't always put me into a stupor with his true voice – what could then be said for this travelling charlatan?

  And together with that, something in the lector's words wouldn't let me treat them as simple empty talk. His voice was slightly quavering, as if the dandy really was slightly afraid. And it wasn’t failure he was afraid of, either. Such fraudsters always have a trump card up their sleeve. But I didn't manage to dig my way to the truth. There were too many fears swirling in the room to focus in on just one with this little time. What was more, the unfamiliar aroma of the candle was making my head spin slightly. My eyes were watering and my throat was scratching.

  "And now," the lector said in a sing-song voice, "hold hands with the person next to you, and don't let go no matter what happens. Spirits are neither good nor evil. They are beyond morals and understandings of good and evil. If you just allow it, an otherworldly essence may make use of you, penetrate your consciousness, and take possession of your body. All together, though, we serve as a protective circle, which will keep the infernal creatures at bay. Alright! Three, two, one!"

  I carried out his order without particular desire, and my palms were suddenly clenched in the death grip of my neighbors, who were utterly terrified. The lean lady of middling years to my right and the fidgety girl of eighteen to my left were grabbing me so tight that my fingers started going a bit numb. What was more, both of them were so heavily perfumed, it was unbearable. It burned in my nostrils.

  "James Clerk Maxwell!" the medium announced ceremoniously. "We summon you from the great beyond! Can you hear us?"

  I heard a muffled echoing sound. Some gasped very quietly, some inhaled noisily.

  "Silence!" called the medium, but his words were in vain. The basement was quickly filled with someone's voice, rhythmic and unnatural to the point of terror in its detachment.

  "Oh, great Mother of the Night! Oh goddess, loving and vindictive, beginning and end of all that exists..."

  An icy chill of horror struck me to the very liver – I recognized the voice. It belonged to none other than Liliana. I felt frozen to the chair, and the scream that tore itself from my mouth froze on my lips. All the others were frozen in similar silence.

  Liliana's voice had little slices of intonation that were not of this plane of existence. But after falling into a trance, she started speaking some strange foreign language. Anticipation of the inevitable catastrophe filled me with icy horror, but I just couldn't force myself to tear my arms from my neighbors' grasp and stop the nightmare. I couldn't even move. All my attention was bound to the flame of the candle. The voice started growing more distant. The basement started seeming far-off and unreal.

  And when my consciousness had started drifting over the horizon, I realized the secret key to unlocking the situation.

  Fears! It was all about fears! With their extreme concentration, they had poisoned the atmosphere and had found an exit through Liliana, who was too sensitive due to her own phobias and an old sense of guilt. Just like water seeping through the weak point in a dam. Only one way out remained: simply burst the dam with a tempestuous flow of horror and drive the whole motley crew to hell. An old ventriloquist's trick came to my aid. I inhaled soundlessly right before myself and the flame of the candle started wavering unevenly, then flickered and went out.

  For a moment, everyone stopped breathing, then I said in a dull tone:

  "This is James Clerk Maxwell. Who has summoned me to the world of the living?"

  I heard a terrifying commotion, the lock scraped and the door flew open. A man's silhouette flickered up in the light of a kerosene lamp. It was the medium.

  I ripped my hand from my neighbors’ fingers and threw myself after the lector, but didn't make it.

  "No! Don't touch me! Get away!" the medium squealed penetratingly. After that, I heard a few juicy squelches, a zip and a prolonged gurgle. And I recognized that sound perfectly – it was the sound of blood burbling up from a throat cut ear-to-ear.

  I ducked out into the hallway and leaned wearily on the wall. His blood was gushing onto the walls flowing down onto the floor, and running in a narrow little stream into the dark end of the hallway.

  "Try-hard..." I whispered to myself and squirmed nervously.

  The unfortunate swindler had been organizing spiritualist seances for so long that he had b
egun to believe in his own clap-trap. I don't know what exactly appeared to him in the darkness, but he reacted extremely poorly to his vision. Cutting out both eyes with a pen-knife, and then slashing his own throat – how panic-stricken must one get to do a thing like that?

  The participants in the spiritualist seance ran for the four winds with panicked yelps, and I hurried back into the room where Liliana was still sitting all alone at the table. After grabbing my entranced sweetheart by the waist, I raised her to her feet and led her to the stairs. Pandemonium had already taken over there. I made it through the crowd with difficulty, and handed Lily off to her alarmed father.

  "What happened to her?" the Marquess shouted, but I just waved it off.

  I ran up to the covered tables, spilled champagne from a flute, filled it with cognac and hurried back.

  "Drink this!" I stuck a glass into Lily's hand.

  Liliana took a gulp and coughed, but I repeated:

  "Drink this!"

  After the third gulp, Liliana had come to her senses and was turning her head from side to side with unhidden surprise.

  "Leo, what happened?"

  "Don't you remember?"

  "We went down into the basement, everyone joined hands... That's the last I remember. Leo, what happened?"

  "Yes, Lev!" the Marquess grumbled. "What happened?!"

  "Have you heard of a spiritualist seance?" I answered his question with a question.

  "An idiotic endeavor," George winced. "And?"

  I chose the most realistic explanation for what had happened and said:

  "The medium went off the rails and did himself in."

  Liliana shouted and dropped her glass. It burst into shards, spilling the expensive cognac on my shoes.

  "Curses!" George exclaimed.

  "Look after Liliana," I asked him. "I need to call the police."

  "No need for that, Lev!" the Marquess checked me. "The head of the police is here as a party guest. He'll take care of everything."

  And that was true – servants quickly covered the stairs into the basement. A doctor, who happened to be among the guests, went down to look at the body, while all the participants in the ill-fated spiritualist seance were locked into a room on the second floor.

  The Marquess Montague insisted that he be allowed to be present at the interrogation, but there never was an interrogation as such. When the head of the police, a tall gray-haired old man, demanded someone explain what precisely had happened in the basement, the guests just bleated out something nonsensical, or made the excuse that they didn't remember anything from the moment everyone locked hands. I didn't open my mouth any more than I had to.

  Near the end, the head of the police cast a penetrating gaze over the crowd and declared:

  "The preliminary investigation has determined that the medium committed suicide. But the investigation is not yet complete, so I ask you to avoid discussing what happened here with anyone. That is in your own best interest, if you don't want to end up on the Department Three rolls as an individual with mystical and anti-scientific tendencies. Is that clear?"

  Everyone nodded. Considering the fact that none of the participants of the spiritualist seance cast a gaze at Liliana, neither in surprise nor outrage, I formed the impression that they really hadn't been paying conscious attention.

  "You're all free to go!" the man announced, but as soon as I was out in the hallway, a policeman with sergeant patches appeared next to me, as well as a plainclothes officer.

  "Would you stick around for a bit?" the detective asked. "They'd like to speak with you."

  The sergeant looked over my clothes, searching for flecks of blood, but I didn't object or show any resistance, just let them do their job. I grew silently glad that I hadn't taken my Luger to the party, and thus had avoided a whole heap of totally unnecessary questions.

  The head of the police was last to leave the room. When the guests had already gone down to the first floor, he extended his hand demandingly:

  "Your documents, young man!"

  I handed him my passport.

  "Russian, eh?" the old man noted without particular surprise and handed my documents to the plainclothes investigator. "Here on vacation, or business?"

  "I'm on my way to the New World," I answered calmly.

  "A guest of the Marquess Montague?"

  "More of his daughter."

  The head of the police nodded and glanced at his subordinate:

  "Well, what do you say?"

  "What made you get a new passport?" he asked.

  "My old one fell off a boat. It was utterly ruined."

  That explanation should have been enough for the bobby, given that such occurrences were quite common in the resort town, but he didn't return my passport, just promised:

  "We'll sort it out."

  I wasn't even slightly afraid they’d turn something up. I had arranged fully authentic documents that passed cleanly through all registries and agencies, but still, I wasn't comfortable with the police attention. There's little good in being without one's passport in such circumstances.

  "In your opinion, what happened in that basement?" the police chief asked. "And let's go downstairs. You don't seem like some prim lord likely to lose his marbles at the sight of blood."

  "I just hope I can be of use."

  In the basement, the medium's body had already been covered with a sheet. The only traces of the incident were ruddy splashes of blood on the walls, and a trail of dried blood stretching deep into the basement.

  "It all started here," I walked into the room with the round table. "There were eleven of us. We were all sitting here holding hands. The deceased did a lot of talking. I cannot even remember what about. Then, he lit a candle and put out the kerosene lamp. Unexpectedly, the candle also went out, and someone, certainly joking, said he was Maxwell and had come to our summoning. The deceased flew out of the room and that was the last time I saw him alive. By the time we’d gotten up, he was already lying in a pool of blood."

  "How quickly did this all happen?"

  "In the space of fifteen seconds," I decided.

  "When you left the room, was there anyone else in the hallway?"

  "No."

  The plainclothes detective shook a bloodied pen knife from a paper bag and asked:

  "Are you familiar with this object?"

  I hesitated briefly, then suggested:

  "The medium cut the wax with a similar knife before lighting the candle."

  The police head nodded and turned to the doctor.

  "And what do you say?"

  He wiped his hands on a towel and stated gravely:

  "Everything he’s described would be humanly possible."

  "And?"

  "If you're interested in my opinion, this was a suicide. There can be no doubt. And let's not confuse things with mysticism. A stupid joke easily could have pushed a true believer to such an end."

  "A joke!" the police head grumbled and turned to me: "And you don't remember who it was that introduced himself as Maxwell?"

  I looked in doubt at the old man and said cautiously:

  "I'm not even sure that someone really did such a thing at all. It easily could have just seemed that way..."

  And the head of police again turned to the doctor.

  "And if that is so?"

  "Then it's all much simpler," the physician had caught the hint from my half-finished sentence. "A mentally unbalanced psyche can convince itself that it possesses certain special talents and will thus wish to demonstrate them to the public. On experiencing failure, the disappointment can be so great as to drive a man to suicide."

  "I like that version more."

  "If you say so."

  "Don't leave town," the head of the police demanded, evaluating my sour look and clapping me on the back in a friendly manner. "At the very least, until you've signed a statement. The last thing I want is to have to is bring in any of these..." he frowned, "prissy gentlemen."

  The c
orpse was loaded onto a stretcher and carried out. Two ancillary workers came down into the basement with buckets and mops.

  "We'll be expecting you at the station tomorrow," the plainclothes detective warned me, "whenever you find convenient. Do you know the address?"

  "I'll find it," I answered vacantly, observing as the water was poured onto the floor, washing away the blood and flowing toward the stairs in a ruddy stream. Not toward the far end of the hallway, where the trail of blood led, but in the opposite direction.

  At some point, the law of gravity was being defied – a liquid can only flow down, and that is that. Here though, it had been flowing up a slope, so something otherworldly must have intervened in the laws of nature.

  The medium hadn't truly summoned the spirit of Maxwell, right? But then why had he slit his own throat? And why had Liliana been behaving so strangely?

  I had no answers to these questions, but I already knew that I would put all my effort into finding them. The medium's blood, when he ended his life, had flowed deep into the basement, but now there was water flowing in the opposite direction. As frightening as that was, I had to figure out why. And I had no time to waste.

  When I was released, the reception was still underway, but without its former verve. Even the arrival of Chaliapin and Caruso couldn’t save the situation. The public was burned out and had begun to disperse. And in that the Marquess Montague had already taken his family home, I headed for the exit with a clean conscience.

  "Leo!" Albert Brandt called me over, slightly drunk. "My lady love came down with a migraine today, so I'm stepping out!"

  "Sorry, Albert, urgent business has come up."

  "Of the amorous variety?"

  "No, it's serious."

  I quickly bid the poet farewell and walked off through the garden. It was already dark. The moon was nowhere to be seen, and the only thing driving back the darkness was the flickering glow of the streetlights; the light just barely made it through the thick greenery of the trees. After leaving the estate, I walked around it, paying particular attention to gaps in the fence, and loose iron bars, then headed off in search of a shop that might be open at such a late hour.

  Fortunately, vacationers had the tendency to remember they needed some little trifle at the very last moment so, in season, many shops didn't close until the depths of the night. In one of the shops, I bought leather gloves, thick half-boots, a roomy over-shirt and a pair of work pants with plenty of pockets – sturdy, but not enough to hamper my movement, – everything was of a dark shade in order to avoid standing out. In another shop, I got a comfortable satchel, a compact electric torch and a crowbar. The last thing I found, already on my way home, was flypaper.