by Trisha Telep
Stephen thrust the table leg between Henry’s ankles as the soldier took another step. The military automaton swayed a moment, four arms stretching out for balance. For one moment Constante thought it would fall, but then the table leg snapped and Henry’s foot came down with a loud, stable thud.
Wicketsmith didn’t build its metal soldiers to be so easily unbalanced.
Behind them, Davenport sagged against a fallen filing cabinet, looking pale. Constante hurried to him while Henry was distracted by Stephen hauling a work table between them, sending sheet metal and loose rivets and screws tumbling all over the floor.
“The spirits weren’t directly linked to the aetheric inversion,” Davenport surmised, leaning on her as she reached him. She felt him shaking.
“I think the batteries are helping them stay here without it,” she said, gently leading him toward the front door.
He took a deep breath, straightening and trying to act normal. “Ah. Yes, that would make sense. No reason to go away once they’re here, not as long as they have a source of energy.”
“Why are you still here? You were supposed to get to safety.”
“Go out in this dreadful weather? Are you out of your mind?”
She squeezed his good arm. “Idiot.”
Behind them, the work table was thrown aside with a crash that made them both wince.
“Besides,” her brother continued, “there was always a chance the disrupter would work.”
“On a Wicketsmith soldier?”
“Yes, well. I’m afraid I’m running out of ideas,” Davenport admitted, releasing her as they reached the door. Scrapes was there, nervously darting back and forth through loose papers and broken mail cylinders, seeking in vain to deliver them to the now non-existent drop door of the Pneumatic Dispatch Company.
Constante opened her hand and looked down at the key. “I have one left.”
Davenport followed her gaze and his eyes widened behind his spectacles. “You can’t approach Meriwether yourself! He’ll tear you apart! Let Stephen do it for you.”
“The key’s too small for him to grip while he’s an automaton, and I don’t think he can hold Meriwether still while he’s a ghost.”
“But—”
“I don’t think we have any choice.” Constante gave her brother a quick kiss on the forehead and turned before he could argue with her anymore.
It was clear that Stephen couldn’t physically harm Henry, although he was keeping the larger and slower automaton busy working its way around furniture and over broken machine parts. But each time Henry swung one of his four arms, the tinier, slighter automaton was in peril. Stephen had already taken some damage in the fight; his left leg was hitching slightly, and beneath his faded spiritual skin, his metal torso was battered by the blows he had taken.
Henry’s metal fingers curled around one of the standing blackboards and hoisted it. The blackboard splintered into broken halves as it struck Stephen across the head, rocking him backward.
Constante reached out and grabbed Stephen’s shoulders, steadying him before he could overbalance farther than the stabilizer could handle. Stephen shot her an anxious look.
“Miss Wicketsmith! Get out of here – I can’t hold him off much longer!”
Henry laughed and stepped forward, wielding the two broken parts of the blackboard like clubs. Constante and Stephen ducked as the boards whistled through the air.
“You know what I want!” the metal soldier declared. “Stop wasting my time!”
“Blind him,” Constante breathed, squirming out of her flower-printed robe and handing it to Stephen. “Just for a minute.”
Stephen’s metal fist closed around the fabric as he stared with shock at her lace-trimmed nightgown. “But you—”
“Now!” she cried out, as Henry swung again.
The blackboard’s pieces slashed through the air. Stephen grabbed her robe in both hands, ducked under Henry’s arms, and threw it over the metal soldier’s head.
The flower-printed cotton covered Henry’s face. Stephen pulled it tight, darting behind the iron soldier as its two lower arms groped blindly for him.
“Damn you!” Henry roared, dropping the broken blackboard and raising his two upper arms to tear the robe free.
In that brief opening, Constante darted forward and jammed the small brass key into the automaton’s chest plate. With a twist, the lock disengaged and the plate sprang open.
Fabric ripped as Henry’s metal fingers tore her robe in half. His eyes met hers, and an arm whipped forward to grab her around the throat.
Constante plunged her hand into Henry’s chest, her fingers closing around the warm, crackling aetheric battery. She ripped it from its housing.
The eyes went dark, and the automaton froze.
Constante jerked away from its grip, letting the battery and the key fall to the floor as she rubbed her throat and shuddered.
Then, with a snarl, Henry’s ghost tore himself from his metal shell, glaring at her. She drew back, and Stephen leaped out of his own automaton, his ghostly hands clutching Henry’s collar.
Henry staggered, clawing for escape as the younger engineer’s fist slammed into his face.
“Connie!”
Constante turned and Davenport kicked the arc disrupter across the floor to her.
“Take out the generator! If you’re right, we need to cut off as much aetheric energy as we can!”
Constante reached down and picked it up, her heart quailing.
Not again.
“Stephen!” she shouted, turning. “Get back into the butler!”
Stephen’s ghost looked up and Henry kicked him in the knee. As insubstantial as the ghosts seemed to be, it must have hurt; Stephen winced, his grip loosening.
Henry tore himself away and sprinted toward the automaton.
“No!” Constante gasped, appalled. Stephen recovered and hurled himself forward, dashing through the tables and half-finished automata as easily as his foe. With a silent shout, he reached out and grabbed Meriwether’s ectoplasmic coat tail, yanking him backward. Meriwether stumbled and fell, inches away from the butler automaton. Stephen jumped over him, disappearing into the machine.
Constante spun and activated the disrupter, playing its energy-dispersing arc over the generator.
The aetheric batteries, already depleted, went dark as their charges were dissipated. The generator’s engine gave a death rattle and fell silent.
The only light came from the chests of the remaining half-completed automata, and the only sound was the rain pounding against the roof.
Constante held her breath, watching the butler automaton. His metal body was no longer clothed in spiritual substance; it looked like a regular, metal mechanical again.
Then it knelt, one metal hand touching the floor where Henry had been. Its fingers trailed across the wood and hooked through the silk cord of her necklace, lifting it.
She let out her breath with a relieved gasp.
“Stephen?” Her voice shook. “Is that you?”
“Miss Wicketsmith.” His voice was a mere whisper.
She dropped the disrupter and hurried to him, kneeling.
“Is he gone?” she asked, reaching forward to touch the smooth metal features of his expressionless face.
It tilted toward her. “I think so. What happened?”
“Meriwether wasn’t close enough to a battery,” Davenport said, appearing out of the shadows with a rolled-up sheaf of papers in his good hand. Scrapes sniffed curiously at Stephen’s metal legs. “Your proximity to radiant matter is giving you the energy to remain intact.”
Stephen looked down, touching his heart-decorated chest plate.
Davenport turned and handed the papers to Constante. “Look at what Scrapes was trying to put back into the dispatch tube.”
Constante unrolled the pages and saw the plans for her gyroscopic stabilizer, a line of new but smeared notations in her father’s handwriting running along one edge. She turned t
he plans over. Her smile faded as she saw the bloody handprint on the back.
“The plans must have caused the jam,” Davenport continued. He still looked weak and pale, his broken arm bound to his chest. “Can’t imagine how they got there, though.”
“Your father gave them to Scrapes,” Stephen said, his voice still faint. “Meriwether tried to catch him, but I got in his way.”
“Thank you.” Constante set the plans to one side. “Thank you for everything.”
“Indeed,” Davenport agreed, his gaze moving thoughtfully from one to the other. “I’d say we’re quite indebted to you.”
“I’m glad I could help.” Stephen held out his hand, from which the key dangled from its silken cord. “I hope you’ll remember me, Miss Wicketsmith.”
The necklace fell into her palm. She closed her hand around it, giving him an alarmed look. He wasn’t leaving, was he? Not after she’d tried so hard to figure out how he could stay!
“You can’t go!” she exclaimed.
“Certainly not,” Davenport agreed, closing his eyes. He sounded pained. “At least not until you’ve fixed the alert box. If I don’t get a physician soon, I’m going to do something very unmanly, like cry. Or scream. Or both.”
Constante leaped to her feet, appalled by her own thoughtlessness. “Davie! I’m so sorry!”
Stephen stood. “We can wire the box to a battery long enough to send a signal to the nearest station.”
“We’ll need wire, and pliers, and a screwdriver—”
“I’ll bring everything, Miss Wicketsmith,” Stephen assured her. She subsided, chagrined. Of course he knew what they needed.
The automaton walked off, Scrapes cheerfully following at his heels.
“I still like him,” Davenport observed as she walked with him to the alarm box on the wall. “Although it’s a bit difficult to imagine him as a brother-in-law at this point.”
She blushed, slipping the necklace back around her neck. “Davie, shut up.”
“I said difficult; not impossible. Vitalic force and rats aren’t the only things that are eternal and omnipresent.”
“But he doesn’t want to stay.” The words hurt to say.
“Perhaps he just needs some encouragement.” He sat in the nearest chair. “He’s a spirit, Connie, not a mind-reader.”
She bit off her reply as Stephen returned with the tools they needed. She quickly took a screwdriver and turned to the alarm box. Scrapes sat down by her feet to watch as she unfastened the cover plate.
“We’re prepared to honor your employment contract, Stephen,” Davenport announced.
The automaton whipped its blank face toward him, everything about its posture registering surprise. “But I’m dead.”
“No you’re not,” Constante said fiercely, scowling at the alert box as she pulled out wires and began attaching them to the aetheric battery. “You’re a soul inside a body. That’s the definition of living.”
“This isn’t my body, Miss Wicketsmith.”
“No, it isn’t,” Davenport agreed, “but I imagine we could build you one of your own.”
“Of course we can,” Constante exclaimed, brightening. “We can build a body with a whole array of batteries, enough to provide you with sufficient energy to look like yourself again whenever you want.” Her mind was already racing, thinking through what would need to be done to build a new, improved mechanical man – a mechanical man designed for a ghost.
“Besides, having someone who can test our automata from the inside out would give us quite a manufacturing advantage,” her brother added. “Enough to offset the expense of your maintenance, I imagine.”
Stephen sounded unconvinced. “It wouldn’t be right for something like me to stay in this world.”
“Wouldn’t be right?” Davenport pursed his lips. “It would hardly be right for you to abandon us in our hour of need, either.”
The automaton cocked its head.
“Look at the mess you and Meriwether have made,” her brother continued, waving his good hand around them. “Wicket-smith’s Wondrous Automata is already behind on its orders, and repairing this wreckage is going to cause even more delays, not to mention use up most of our savings. Moreover, I’ll be of little help making repairs until my arm mends. Do you really intend to leave my sister to run this manufactory on her own in the midst of her grief and destitution?”
Constante glanced at her brother as she tightened the last screw. The light over the alert box went green.
Grief and destitution? Davenport was such a shameless manipulator.
Although right now she loved him for it.
She flipped the lever. The bulb turned red, indicating that an alarm was going out to the nearest constable’s station at last.
“I—” Stephen looked from Davenport to Constante. She quickly turned her gaze back on the box, blushing.
“We can rely on you, can’t we?” Davenport insisted. “Constante and I? Connie, if you would please stop pretending to be engrossed in your work . . .”
“I’m sorry.” Mustering all her courage, she forced herself to turn away from the wall.
This whole situation was ridiculous – impossible. She knew that. The ghost of the man she loved inhabiting a mechanical man? What was the point?
Except she’d felt his touch when he’d had the strength to manifest. She’d felt his hands and heard his voice. He was real.
One way or the other he was real.
“I know this must seem strange,” she said, hesitantly. “But Davenport’s right. We can build you another body, and you could stay here with us.” She drew in a deep breath and took his hand, wondering if the ghostly form inside the mechanical man could feel her touch. “With me. Please.”
It was impossible, of course, but she could have sworn the glow in Stephen’s mechanical eyes suddenly grew brighter.
“If you want me to stay, Miss Wicketsmith—”
“Constante,” she said, shooting a nervous glance at Davenport. Her brother gave her an encouraging nod. She looked back up at the automaton, enheartened. “Please call me Constante.”
Stephen’s fingers curled protectively around hers, metal over flesh. “Then I will stay with you as long I can be of any use, Constante.”
Below them, Scrapes’s stubby tail began wagging furiously with approval.
Three Little Words
Christie Ridgway
One
Dusk was beginning to fall as Jemma Scott’s best friend pulled her close for a hug. “Weddings aren’t the right time for holding back the truth,” the bride said, her gaze sliding toward her new husband and the man to whom he was saying goodbye.
Jemma didn’t look in that direction herself. The image of Troy Maxwell, who had played best man to her maid of honor, had been burned into her brain two years ago, when he’d moved into the condo above hers. Instead, Jemma glanced behind her at the fifteen-bedroom example of American Gothic architecture that had served as the locale for the small destination wedding of her two friends. “Some people would say that weddings aren’t the right time for haunted houses,” she pointed out.
The bride, Vicky, beamed as she slipped into the jacket of her going-away suit. “Unless they met on Halloween like me and my new hubby. Wasn’t the weekend fabulous? Didn’t I pick the most perfect place to get married?”
Jemma glanced behind her again. Now that all the other guests had left, the house was kind of creeping her out. It was isolated on a long gravel driveway that led to a lone country road over an hour from the nearest town. Until now, she’d been so busy with nuptial duties and celebratory hoopla that she’d not really taken time to notice exactly how spooky the place looked with its cadaver-grey clapboard exterior and pointed arched windows surrounded by funereal black trim.
A cold fingertip seemed to brush the back of her neck. “Yeah. Perfect. The only thing it’s missing is a sign that says ‘Lizzie Borden lived here’.”
A low laugh sounded. “Don’t tell me you’re
superstitious, Jemma,” the best man said.
She managed to smile in Troy’s direction, but kept her gaze from meeting his. He had beautiful hazel eyes. She’d noticed them the first day they’d come face to face on the path that led from the mailroom at their sprawling complex of condominium units, ponds and lush vegetation. He’d held out his hand, recognizing her as his downstairs neighbor. At that moment, when their palms touched, she’d had this eerie certainty that her life had turned a new corner. So, superstitious? Yeah, she supposed she was.
“Uh-oh, Jem,” the groom, Michael, said. “You better not be getting the heebie-jeebies. That would make it a long night ahead for you with only my man Troy here for company.”
Don’t remind me, Jemma wanted to say. She pasted on another perfunctory smile. “I plan on a relaxing evening propped up on pillows with the company of a good book. I’ll likely fall asleep before nine. So Troy’s on his own.” Like I was, after he took that consulting job in Argentina six months ago. Yes, neither of them had ever put any permanent spin on the dating-and-bedding relationship they’d had before he left, but they’d been tacitly exclusive. And they’d been about more than shared lasagne and lust. They’d talked about their jobs, his at an engineering firm, and her increasing responsibilities at the custom dressmaking shop which belonged to her aunt.
One day he’d been going on about a new project on the local waterfront. The next he’d informed her he was leaving at the end of the week to work in the Southern Hemisphere. He’d departed so abruptly he hadn’t cancelled his Beer-of-the-Month subscription. She had cases of the stuff now stored in her small second bedroom.
Jemma was frowning over how she was going to get them to him now that he was moving back upstairs as Vicky drew her away, toward the sole car in the small lot. The trunk was open and it was filled with suitcases for the honeymoon trip. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right? I know how you feel about Troy—”
“We’re not talking about that,” Jemma interjected. I’m not thinking about that. Do not say the words!
Vicky let out a little sigh. “Jemma, it’s going to eat at you. Maybe if you discussed with him why he left—”
