The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  Last summer, at twenty-six years of age and unable to sustain my mortal needs by the craft of my pen and inkwell, I took employment in a brickyard in West Fayette Street in Baltimore, at the firm of the partners Merryman & Young – although neither partner was a merry man, and most assuredly neither was young. During my unsupervised hours at the brickyard, while my employers thought me engaged in the urgent task of distinguishing one brick from another, I discreetly penned several poems and trifles which Mr Thomas Willis White of Richmond saw fit to publish in his Southern Literary Messenger. I make bold to say that my efforts were met with immoderate success. In October of last year, I returned to Richmond and took up my new position as chief reviewer, proof-reader and unofficial editor of the selfsame Southern Literary Messenger. I took lodgings at Mrs Yarrington’s boarding-house, at the corner of Twelfth and Bank Streets, fronting the south side of Capitol Square. Mrs Yarrington keeps a most abstemious household, where intoxicating liquors are entirely forbidden. I have pledged to forsake all bottle-companions while I am her boarder.

  Now the Automaton arrives. On a recent Tuesday morning – December 15, 1835 – I was at my editorial desk, reloading my inkwell for a fresh assault upon the barbarian squadrons, when Mr White came to my stool with that day’s edition of the Richmond Enquirer. He thrust his forefinger at one portion of the newsprint, and challenged me: “What do you make of this, Eddy?”

  In the extreme lower corner of the leftmost column of the front page, I discerned this tiny “squib” advertisement:

  MAELZEL’S CONFLAGRATION OF MOSCOW, &c., – Now exhibiting at the Museum. – Exhibition every evening. Doors open at a quarter before 7 o’clock. Exhibition to commence at half past seven o’clock precisely.

  And so forth. “Might be a few agate lines’ worth of story here, Eddy,” said White. “Saddle up Shank’s mare this evening, and go fetch a look.”

  The Museum of Richmond stands at Franklin and Eighteenth Streets. I arrived promptly that evening, just lacking the quarter-hour of seven. The price of admission was fifty cents: one-twentieth of my weekly stipend at the Messenger. I paid this usury, and entered the portals.

  The museum is gas-fitted, so the rooms were well-lighted. Most of the permanent exhibits are devoted to Richmond’s history, especially this city’s ordeals in the two British wars. In a glass bell-jar, a ragged headdress of turkey-cock’s feathers summarised the advanced civilisation of Virginia’s aboriginal inhabitants. A few keepsakes of Europe, China, and the slave-coast of Dahomey are exhibited as well.

  The momentary chief attraction proved to be a sequence of tableaux and dioramas, crafted by one Johann Nepomuk Maelzel of Vienna, and now touring America. These images depicted the bloodied events of September 1812, when Russia’s capital city was put to the firebrands to thwart its capture by Bonaparte’s advancing legions. The singular architecturings of Moscow – Saint Basil’s Cathedral, and so forth – were displayed here in exquisite miniature.

  The front seats of the Museum’s auditorium were reserved for children and their wet-nurses, although I have no notion as to why suckling babes would show interest in the atrocities of Bonaparte’s hordes. I took care to seat myself out of pabulum’s range, in the third row. A sheet of linen, as white and blank as foolscap, had been stretched upon the rear wall.

  From behind a claret-coloured velvet curtain, Professor Maelzel stepped forth. He bowed, introducing himself to our assemblage and proclaiming his credentials. Speaking in stiff Teutonic accents, he announced himself as the inventor of the metronome and the panharmonicon, and vouched that he had been Beethoven’s teacher. Now there was a strong odour of the new-fashioned paraffin oil, as one of the professor’s attendants lighted a magic-lantern. The gas-jets were snuffed, and then the evening’s revels commenced.

  The audience gasped in astonishment as the room erupted in flames. Then, of a sudden, their cries transmuted into applause as it was discerned that this was a conjuror’s illusion. By some ingenious means of projecting and amplification, Professor Maelzel had enlarged the image of a single candle-flame, and was projecting this upon the white screen confronting us. A further stage-effect made it appear that these flames were within the miniature buildings of Maezel’s simulacrum, rather than behind them . . . so that indeed it seemed as if the city of Moscow, represented in miniature, was engulfed in fire. I perceived that mirrors were involved in the illusion: flames are by nature asymmetrical in shape, and I saw at once that a certain asymmetry in the conflagration on the left side of the screen was precisely reversed, mirror-wise, in the conflagration to our right side.

  In the darkness, a sound: Doom! Doom! An unseen war-drum began its mournful tattoo. (I had noticed a boy with a tom-tom lurking in the hall at my arrival.) There was a clangour of unseen bells. (I had noticed a second boy in the hallway as well.) To the steady impulse of the tocsin’s throb, a sudden phalanx of homun-culoids arose, and commenced marching through the burning streets of Moscow. They wore the dark blue uniforms of Bonaparte’s army. These soldiers, I observed, were some ingenious regiment of man-nikins: an army of automata, if you will, compelled by mainsprings and levers to parade in unison across the row of dioramas. A few other homunculi, dressed as Cossack peasants, emerged from the burning buildings and attempted to flee. The advancing rank of soldiers raised their miniature muskets and fired at these targets. There was a sharp sudden report, not precisely matching the instant of the gunfire. (No doubt due to a tardiness by the drummer-boy in the vestibule.) The miniature peasants fell. Behind them, the buildings of Moscow collapsed and were consumed in the flames.

  In the flame-lit auditorium around me, the good citizens of Richmond applauded Moscow’s death . . . for one city’s tragedy is ever another city’s entertainment.

  In the seat at my left-hand side, a waistcoated gentleman nudged me. “This isn’t in it, you know,” he declared. “I’ve only come for the afterpiece, but that’s a better show than this. Maelzel’s brought his Chess-Player.”

  As the gentleman pronounced this phrase, it seemed to be typeset with its own capitalisations in the boldface font of his voice: MAELZEL’S CHESS-PLAYER. I nodded my comprehension. “A chess-master, you mean?” I asked.

  “Well . . . some say it, and others suspect as much. Stay after with me, and see it yourself.”

  By now the principal audience had begun to disperse, for the burning of Moscow was completed. All the peasants had been slaughtered, and – as there would be no further atrocities – the entertainment was ended. A few cognoscenti lingered for the promised afterpiece, and I placed myself in the front row as the gas-jets were relighted. I observed two stagehands packing up the wreckage of Moscow: the miniature buildings had been cleverly designed to collapse at a chosen moment, to give the illusion of destruction by fire. These effects and the dioramas were now hustled away, as from behind the velvet curtain two men trundled forth a peculiar oblong box.

  The thing was set on wheels, and these of such a height that a gap of several inches transpired between the auditorium’s floor and the underside of the box. The box itself was carpentered of dark wood, three feet six inches in length, two feet four inches in depth, and two feet six inches in height. I will lay wager to those admeasurements. To be sure of them, I visually compared the proportions of the oblong box against the breadth and height of one of Maelzel’s attendants. Afterwards, I took care to pass closely by this man, comparing his stature to my own. I am five feet eight inches tall – my height has not changed since my West Point days – and so by this ruse I divined the oblong box’s dimensions. In the front of the cabinet were four cupboard panels with brass fittings: three tall vertical doors, and a long horizontal drawer beneath.

  The peculiar feature of the oblong box was a large excrescence of irregular shape, rising from the cabinet’s rear portion. I could not discern this thing properly, for it was draped in a shroud of red sailcloth.

  Professor Maelzel greeted the surviving remnants of the audience, and thanked us for awaiting the
afterpiece. “Before we inspect the Chess-Player,” he said, “let us consider its cabinet.” He rapped the top and sides of the oblong box, proclaiming these to be made of stoutest maple. By their soundings, I believed him.

  A liveried attendant brought forth a small table, placing this between the cabinet and the audience, and to one side. A single candlestick was placed on this. A second attendant was affixing six more candlesticks to the top of the Chess-Player’s cabinet: three either side, with an unlighted beeswax candle in each.

  “Behold the Automaton,” said Herr Professor Maelzel. With a flourish, he whisked away the shroud.

  Once more, the audience gasped. Seated on the rear portion of the oblong box was a replica of a man. This was garbed in the likeness of a Turk, sitting cross-legged, with a large turban atop his counterfeit head, and a high plume rising from the turban. The turban and plume made it difficult – intentionally, I suspect – to reckon the figure’s height, but my previous stratagem made clear that the Automaton was slightly larger than a typical man. The counterfeit Turk was dressed in a long coat of unknown cloth, in Oriental design. At its waist was a cummerbund, or sash, of some darkly-coloured fabric. It was beardless, yet the wooden face displayed thick black mustachios. Its eyes stared forth into the auditorium, lifeless and blind.

  The Automaton’s gloved hands were extended. The left hand brandished a long Turkish smoking-pipe. On the topmost surface of the cabinet was a chessboard.

  Two attendants seized the upper corners of the cabinet, and trundled it around so that the audience could view its hindquarters. The rear side of the Turk was somewhat more crudely fashioned than the front portions. The cabinet’s wheels, I repeat, were of sufficient diameter to raise the cabinet well clear of the floor, so there could be no suspicion of any human confederate entering or leaving the Automaton’s box by means of a trap-door underneath.

  “There is naturally much curiosity,” said Herr Maelzel, “as to the clockwork mechanisms of the Automaton. These were crafted by Baron von Kempelen of Presbourg in 1769, and I have improved their design.” By now the cabinet had completed its ambulation, and once more the Turk confronted the audience. “It will be observed,” Maelzel resumed, “that both the cabinet, and the Automaton itself, are entirely filled with clockworks.”

  From his swallow-tail coat, Maelzel took a ring of keys. As an attendant lighted a taper, Maelzel with much ceremony unlocked the leftmost of the cupboard’s three doors. He opened this fully. In the gaslight, and by the dint of one small candle, I beheld a mass of gears, pinions, levers and half-seen enginery. Leaving the cupboard door open, Maelzel went to the cabinet’s rear and unlocked another panel. Stooping, he held the burning candle behind the unlocked panel, so that its glowing flame penetrated entirely through the cupboard’s interior to the seated audience in front. Holding the candle quite near, Maelzel reached with his other hand into the cabinet and gripped one of the levers. He worked this back and forth, all the while propounding a lecture upon the history of the Automaton. The shifting lever in its turn rotated gears, which moved wheels, which turned pinions. I heard a clacketing noise, as the gears engaged at their tasks. I observed that the space between these mechanisms was too small to admit of any occupant much larger than a well-nourished rat.

  Maelzel closed the rear panel, locked it, and came back to the front with his candle. The leftmost cupboard door beneath the Automaton was still wide open. Now Maelzel unlocked the long slender drawer at the base of the cabinet. Two attendants flung this drawer open to its full length. Within the drawer were a small green cushion, one chessboard, and four sets of chessmen: two white sets, two black. These were fixed in a framework to support them perpendicularly. I could not anticipate why so many chessmen were required for a single game.

  As Maelzel continued his lecture, he gently placed the cushion beneath the left-hand elbow of the Automaton. At the same time, he removed the long tobacco-pipe from the Automaton’s left hand, and placed this pipe carefully in the drawer beneath the cabinet. “Is there any lady or gentleman here,” Maelzel asked, “who is a superlative player of chess?”

  I made ready to volunteer, but the waistcoated gentleman anticipated me. “I am Mr Clarence Hall, proprietor of the Barque bookshop in Grace Street,” he announced. “I am known throughout Virginia as an honest man and a tolerable chess-gamer. Perhaps I will serve.” As he spoke, Mr Hall indicated a trinket on his watch-fob: the sign of the Freemason’s compass. “There is a term, long used in the Masonic craft, which I have lately heard applied to chess-players of superior skill,” Mr. Hall resumed. “Some of my opponents are pleased to call me a grandmaster.”

  A footman collected the chessboard and two sets of chessmen: one white, one black. As Maelzel gave sign, this board and chessmen were set up in regulation manner at the table to one side, where Mr Hall took a chair. An attendant lighted the candle at this table, some slight distance from the Automaton.

  Surely, in any chess-match, the two antagonists ought to sit at the same board?

  The leftmost of the three cupboard doors beneath the Automaton was still wide open. Maelzel now unlocked its two brethren, throwing these wide as well. The rightmost and the central door opened into a single compartment. This contained no enginery at all, save for two steel quadrants of uncertain utility. Beneath these, in the floor of the cabinet, was a pedestal about eight inches square, and covered in dark cloth. Such a pedestal might have served as an admirable stool for a human tenant. I could see no reason for its presence in a clockwork mechanism.

  Maelzel’s attendants now whirled the Automaton around once more, so that again its rear portions were afforded to us. All three of the front cupboard doors were still open. Maelzel unlocked another panel at the rear – not the one he had previously opened, which was now locked – and again we had a view of unknown gears and pinions. Again, the business with the candle was repeated, so that the light of the flame pierced the entire cabinet from front to back – or the other way, as the cabinet was now reversed – and again the light of the candle gave token that there was no hiding-space within for even a modest homunculus.

  The wooden figure of the Turk was slightly larger than man-sized. Maelzel now lifted the Turk’s coat, to reveal the replication’s nether portions. A door about ten inches square was in the loins of the figure, and a smaller door in the left thigh. I perceived that the Turk’s cummerbund was not genuine, for it did not truly encircle the Automaton’s waist in the manner of such garments. The edges of the sash terminated at either side of the figure, so that the Turk’s cummerbund was merely a false ornamentation on the front half of the likeness.

  Unlocking and opening the doors within the Automaton, Professor Maelzel permitted the spectators to view what lurked within. I beheld a network of cogs, mainsprings, and enginery: all dormant and still. Maelzel rapped the upper portions of the figure, producing a solid heavy sounding with no rumours of hollowness.

  Maelzel now closed and locked all the apertures, and the cabinet was trundled once more to its previous position, with the eyes of the Turk gazing outward, confronting the spectators. An attendant had set up the remaining chessmen on the board in front of the cross-legged Turk, with the black pieces facing the Automaton.

  I have mentioned six candles upon the Automaton’s board. These a footman now hastened to light, with a taper. No two of these six candles were of a like height. They varied in stature by as much as twelve inches. This is unremarkable, as candles consume their wax at differing rates, and so dwindle unequally. I assumed that, in pursuit of thrift, Herr Maelzel would save the stubs of candles previously lighted, and make use of them again until their wicks were spent.

  With another flourish, Maelzel inserted one of his keys into an aperture in the left side of the cabinet: the Automaton’s right side. I heard the snicketing sound of a mainspring winding taut within the clockwork engine.

  Professor Maelzel withdrew the key, and bowed: “Let the chess-match begin.”

  Mr Hall, playing
white, made the first move: a simple pawn’s gambit. He was seated in profile, so that the spectators had a fair view of both the white and black positions at his chessboard. Professor Maelzel thanked him, then strode to the cabinet of the Automaton. Swiftly, Maelzel grasped the corresponding white pawn on the Automaton’s chessboard, and copied Hall’s move.

  I saw no profit in this duplication. Surely it made more thrift for the machine and its antagonist to do battle across opposite ranks of the same chessboard. True, by seating Mr Hall to one side, Maelzel assured the spectators an unchallenged view of the Automaton and its chess pieces. And yet – by means of mirrors, during his makeshift conflagration of Moscow – Maelzel had already displayed his ingenuity in amplifying and translocating flames so that they burnt at one position in space while being perceived entirely elsewhere. Could not a man of such genius likewise project his Automaton’s progress so that the chess-match was visible from all quarters of the room?

  As I thought of this, there was a sharp intake of breath from several spectators.

  The Automaton raised its left arm. The limb moved upward, forward, downward, jerking in stiff right-angled gesticulations. The Automaton’s head moved slightly, the plumed turban shifting. The eyes rolled, in grotesque parody of human eyes.

  The Automaton’s hand lifted the black queen’s pawn, advanced it slightly, and set it down in the square of the fourth rank. Then, releasing its prize, the Automaton’s arm reversed its movements precisely, once more resting its elbow on the cushion.

  Maelzel declaimed to the assemblage this movement of the queen’s pawn, while he crossed to Mr Hall’s board and advanced a black chessman in like fashion.

  So the chess-match proceeded, each antagonist’s move in duplicate.

  The match, in fine, was a superior one: Mr Hall was an excellent gamer, yet the Automaton surpassed him. Several white chessmen were rapidly captured. The Automaton achieved this by lowering a black piece into the square already occupied by a white piece, clumsily knocking it askew. An attendant confiscated the taken piece. On the rarer occasions when Mr Hall captured a black piece, Maelzel removed its counterpart from the Automaton’s display.