Shadows of the Silver Screen

by Christopher Edge

  A faint sigh of relief escaped from James’s lips as he ran a hand through his slicked-back hair.

  “I’ve acted in countless productions, Miss Tredwell,” he said, “but of all the roles that I have played, on stage and for the cinematograph screen, none have made me feel this way. When Mr Gold turns the handle of that camera, I feel as though I am trapped – a prisoner inside your uncle’s story as these spectres he has conjured rise to greet me.”

  Penny stared up into the boy’s eyes, seeing the anguish that lurked there.

  “Perhaps I should speak to your uncle,” James continued. “Surely Montgomery Flinch must have some kind of explanation for the spell that his fiction has cast here…”

  As his voice trailed away in despair, Penelope shook her head again.

  “I think that we should seek our answers from Mr Gold,” she said. “After all, he is the man behind the camera.”

  Matching Penny’s stride, James hurried along the gallery, his face turned towards her as she outlined her plan.

  “Mr Gold is filming today’s first scene in the library,” she reminded him. “If these strange apparitions we have seen are not mere tricks of the light or products of our fevered imaginations, then he might have captured their passing with his camera. If we could just take a peek at what lies inside the Véritéscope, then perhaps we could find out more.”

  Outside, the morning sun was still rising in the sky, but here inside the wainscotted walls of the gallery, gloom reigned supreme. The shadowy faces of portraits stared down at them as a flicker of unease passed across James’s features.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t think Mr Gold will look too kindly on that. Just remember how he treated poor Vivienne and his secretary, Miss Mottram, when they crossed his path.”

  With a shiver, Penny thought back to the scene that had brought her to this point. Miss Devey’s face streaked with tears whilst Gold had looked on with a cold-eyed stare; Miss Mottram raging against her employer’s betrayal as he passed the mantle of the leading role on to Penelope herself. Gold had completed his humiliation of both ladies the very next day, returning them to London on the back of a farmer’s cart, the director’s own newfangled motor car sitting idle in front of the great hall. With Vivienne by her side, Miss Mottram had tried to hold on to her decorum as the cart lurched down the drive towards the station, but her features couldn’t hide her seething resentment.

  At the time, Penny had watched her leave with a puzzled frown, little understanding why Gold would treat his faithful secretary with such disdain. It was only when she returned to her room and found the note slipped beneath her door that she had started to make sense of his cruelty.

  Dear Miss Tredwell,

  I cannot depart from this place without leaving you this word of warning. Whilst I have been in Edward’s employ I have kept my own counsel, but after the events of this last week I now feel no compulsion to hold my tongue.

  There is a darkness that lurks in this place; one that I fear has infected Edward and now creeps ever closer to your uncle too. The villagers speak of the ghosts that stalk the manor house, and they refuse to work after sunset. Some even say that they have seen Lord Eversholt himself walking again on the moor. At first I thought these were the superstitions of simple-minded folk, but when Edward presses his eye to that infernal camera of his, I can almost believe that they are true.

  I thought that Edward cared for me, but I see now that his only concern is for those shadows he conjures across the screen. I have tried to speak to him of my fears, but his only reply is that the truth must be told, and when I look into his eyes I no longer recognise the man who stares back at me. My meagre inheritance is gone – squandered in rent on those shabby Cecil Court offices – and now my dreams of stardom have disappeared too but, please believe me, I bear you no malice for this. To be gone from this place is all that I ask for now.

  When I first read your uncle’s story, I believed that The Daughter of Darkness would make the actress who played her a star, but these changes that Edward has made to the tale make me fear for your safety. You are in danger here and I urge you to leave before it is too late.

  Yours truly and sincerely,

  Miss Ethel Mottram

  Penelope pressed her hand to the pocket of her dress, feeling the outline of Miss Mottram’s note there. A small part of her wished she was back behind her desk in the offices of The Penny Dreadful, a place where the stories that she penned stayed under her control.

  Penny and James passed beneath a painting of a young woman dressed in a grey evening gown, a black velvet ribbon tied high around her neck. Her sad-eyed stare followed their path down the corridor, neither of them noticing the nameplate fixed to the portrait frame:

  They were nearing the door to the library now and Penny only hoped they would find the answers they were searching for within. Reaching the door, her fingers closed around the handle, pushing it open as she led the way inside.

  The room lay in darkness, heavy curtains drawn across the large bay window, leaving the library shrouded in gloom. Edward Gold was nowhere to be seen.

  “Maybe there’s been a change of plan,” James said, nervously glancing around the room.

  Penny shook her head. In the shadows she had already spotted the familiar silhouette of the tripod, Gold’s peculiar camera perched atop of it. The lens of the Véritéscope was pointing straight at them, fixing her with an unblinking stare.

  “This is the right place,” she said.

  Penelope took a step forward, the Véritéscope watching her as she approached, whilst James hung back near the door.

  “Perhaps we should wait for Mr Gold to arrive,” he said, as Penny ran her fingers along the camera’s brass casing. “If he saw you touching that…”

  Penelope scowled. From the moment she had signed Montgomery Flinch’s name across the bottom of that contract, the filmmaker had been dictating her every move. Seized by the urge to make a stand at last, her fingers sought out the switch beneath the camera’s winder and, pushing it forward with a click, the Véritéscope whirred into life.

  As the winding handle turned, a silvery light shone from the camera lens, casting a shimmering shadow across the spines of the books lining the far wall. The vast bookcase was transformed into a cinema screen, the swirling patterns that drifted like mist across the dust jackets slowly parting to reveal the darkened moor.

  Penny heard James gasp in surprise, but her own eyes were fixed to the screen, watching as a solitary light loomed out of the gloom; the figure of a boy trudging through the mist, a glowing lantern held in his hand. Then, from out of the darkness, a second shadowy form entered the scene, her clothes wreathed in mist as she stepped forward to meet the boy.

  “Are you lost, miss?” James asked, his voice crackling from the camera.

  The girl nodded her head, lifting her eyes to fix him with a deathly stare.

  “I’ve been lost for such a long time,” she replied. “I can only thank the Lord that you found me.”

  Standing in the darkness, Penny’s temple throbbed; a strange light-headed feeling returning as she watched the ghostly figure of the girl step towards the light.

  “These moors are dangerous, miss.” The stuttering sound of James’s voice filled the room. “You should be back at Eversholt Manor.”

  On the screen, the phantom reached for James’s hand, his eyes filling with fear as she spoke again.

  “Take me home.”

  At the sound of these words, the picture froze, the ghostly image of the girl flickering and then fading from view as the silvery light disappeared back into the dark eye of the Véritéscope. Unaware until that moment that she’d been holding her breath, Penny let out a long sigh of relief.

  She turned towards James, the young actor still staring spellbound at the space where the moving picture had been.

  “Surely the camera cannot lie,” Penelope began, her voice trembling with excitement. “She was there – out there on the
moors. The ghost of Amelia Eversholt.”

  James’s face was pale, his gaze still fixed staring straight ahead.

  “She’s here,” he murmured.

  With a sudden shiver, Penny realised that the winding handle was still turning. As the whirring sound of the camera whispered in her ear, she turned to see the ghostly figure of the girl emerging from the darkness of the bookcase. Penelope gasped. In the half-light, the girl’s wraithlike features looked almost grey, starved of any sunlight, and as she opened her mouth to speak, Penny felt a dizzying sensation seize hold of her mind again.

  “You have brought me home,” Amelia said, the whisper of her words seeming somehow to fill the room. She stepped forward again, the spines of the books lining the shelves behind her still visible through her shadowy form.

  James stood there frozen, his eyes filled with fear.

  “What do you want?” he stuttered.

  With ghostly fingers, Amelia reached up to the black ribbon tied around her neck and Penny noticed, for the first time, the jet-black stone that was threaded there. Shaped like a tear, its obsidian surface seemed to shimmer in the gloom.

  “I once gave you the gift of this stone,” Amelia whispered as she stepped forward again, her feet seeming to glide across the floor. “Now you are giving me the gift of life in return. I want to thank you, Edward.”

  Unfastening this simple necklace, she held it out towards James with a shadowy hand. In the dimness of the library the stone shone with an unearthly light.

  From her position beside the Véritéscope, Penelope stared at it transfixed. She felt as though the room was spinning, the ghostly figure of the girl growing more real with every moment that passed. Her mind whirled, this peculiar light-headedness making her feel as though she was about to faint. Penny reached out for the camera to steady herself, her hand catching hold of the winding handle as from the corridor outside there came the sound of footsteps.

  As a shadow fell across the doorway, Amelia let out a panicked cry. The hulking figure of a man loomed large in the gloom. Beneath bristling eyebrows, they caught a glimpse of the ghastly face of Lord Eversholt, his translucent features set in a snarl of rage.

  Penelope felt herself falling into a swoon. As she slumped towards the floor, her fingers tightened around the camera’s winder, wrenching it to a standstill. With a groaning sound, the Véritéscope juddered to a halt and, with a gasp, Lord Eversholt and Amelia melted into the darkness, their shadowy forms disappearing as if by magic.

  Slumped against the tripod, Penny shook her head; the strange dizziness slowly clearing as she stared at the empty space where Amelia Eversholt had stood.

  “What the Devil’s going on here?”

  Edward Gold rushed into the room, his features contorted with fury as he strode towards the camera, pulling Penelope to her feet with an angry cry.

  “How dare you!”

  Penny winced, the man’s grip around her wrist painfully strong. She cast a desperate glance past Gold’s shoulder, imploring James to come to her aid. But the young actor just stood there in silence, slowly shaking his head, looking for all the world as if he had just woken from a nightmare.

  Gold twisted Penny’s wrist to drag her gaze back to his. The dark shadows beneath the director’s eyes gave his face a fiendish aspect.

  “Where is she?” he hissed.

  In her mind, Penny could still see the image of Amelia’s ghostly figure, the memory of this making her shudder, but before she could even try to answer the sound of another voice boomed across the room.

  “Are you all right, Penelope?”

  Penny glanced across to see Monty standing in the doorway, his brow furrowed as he took in the sight of Gold’s hand wrapped around her wrist. As Monty raised a questioning eyebrow, Gold released his grip, meeting Monty’s gaze with a stern-faced stare.

  “I would appreciate it if you could remind your niece, Mr Flinch, that this equipment of mine is not some toy to be trifled with. The Véritéscope is a unique invention – a precision instrument – not the plaything of some giddy young girl.”

  The filmmaker brushed past Penelope to attend to his invention, carefully inspecting the camera to ensure that it hadn’t been damaged in any way.

  Normally Penny would have bristled at his barb, but out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a glint of light, some tiny object lying abandoned on the floor. Stealing forward, she reached down to pick it up, her fingers closing around a tear-shaped stone. As Gold fussed with his camera, Penny stared down at the stone with a growing sense of disbelief. The jet-black jewel was ice-cold to the touch, its glittering darkness slowly fading to a dull glow as she held it in her palm. This was the same stone that had hung round Amelia’s neck, somehow now made real.

  “It is your good fortune, Miss Tredwell, that you appear to have avoided causing my invention any irrevocable harm.” The sound of Gold’s voice made Penny jump in alarm. “From now on I must insist that you stay in front of the camera.”

  Hiding the stone in her hand, Penny reluctantly nodded her head in reply. But behind her green eyes, the realisation was growing that the mystery that lay here was darkening at every turn. With an air of disapproval, the filmmaker turned back towards Monty.

  “Now, Mr Flinch,” he declared. “It is time for us to rehearse this morning’s action. There are only a handful of scenes left to be filmed. Soon, the story of The Daughter of Darkness will reach its rightful end.”

  Penelope shivered at these words. She knew from the script the grisly coda Gold had penned for her tale; the final scene where Lord Eversholt would meet his comeuppance. Her blood ran cold at the thought of the horror still to come.

  XIX

  Alfie pushed the pile of proofs across his desk with a sigh, the thick wedge of pages covered with countless corrections for him to make. He’d be lucky to get away from the office before nightfall. Mr Wigram’s desk, with its empty chair, stared back at him reproachfully. Before he had set off for his meeting that morning, the elderly lawyer had instructed Alfie to make sure that all the printer’s proofs were checked by the end of the day.

  “I think you have spent quite enough time at the library helping Penelope with her research,” Wigram had told him. “It’s time you got down to some real work. The deadline for the September edition is almost upon us.”

  Alfie shook his head with a sigh. He couldn’t tell Mr Wigram that this research had involved him visiting half the fairs in London in search of Jacques Le Prince. From High Barnet to Britannia Fields, he’d searched in vain for any trace of the elusive Frenchman, asking stallholders and fairground hawkers if they had heard of Gold & Prince Pictures, but all to no avail. The case of the missing Frenchman remained unresolved.

  Reluctantly he turned to the next pile of paper. His detective work would have to wait for another day. But as he bent his head to his task, there came the sound of a sharp knock at the door. Grateful for this distraction, Alfie leapt to his feet, pushing back his chair and hurrying to the door. As he opened it, he saw a primly dressed woman standing on the doorstep, the handle of her parasol raised high as she prepared to knock again.

  On seeing Alfie’s face, the woman’s eyes lit up in recognition.

  “Mr Albarn,” she declared in a tone almost as shrill as her expression. “Thank goodness you are here. I need to speak to you on a matter of grave urgency.”

  Lowering her parasol, the woman brushed past Alfie as she entered the office, leaving him standing there perplexed. Closing the door behind her, Alfie turned with a frown as he tried to work out exactly who she was.

  The woman was dressed in a checked walking suit, the wide lapels of her jacket cut in a style that had last been in fashion in the previous century, whilst the hemline of her skirt afforded the merest glimpse of a pair of slightly plump ankles. She was standing by Alfie’s desk, tapping the tip of her parasol impatiently against the floor as she waited to address him.

  For a moment, Alfie was at a loss, unable to place
her face.

  “If I can I help you in any way, miss—”

  “Miss Mottram,” the woman replied in as confident a squeak as she could muster. “I am – I mean to say, I was Mr Edward Gold’s secretary at the Alchemical Moving Picture Company. We met, Mr Albarn, when you returned Montgomery Flinch’s signed contract for the cinematographic adaptation of his story The Daughter of Darkness.”

  In an instant, Alfie remembered Miss Mottram’s face; her plain features lighting up with a squeal of delight as he had handed over the contract.

  “Of course,” he replied, blushing slightly as he recalled too how Penny had told Miss Mottram that he was one of Montgomery Flinch’s legal advisers. “And what precisely brings you to The Penny Dreadful today? I trust all is well with Mr Gold’s production.”

  The secretary fixed him with an anxious stare.

  “Edward Gold has turned into a monster,” she replied, every word delivered in a hushed tone of fear. “And his invention threatens to do the same to Mr Flinch. That’s why I’ve come here today – to warn you of the dark shadows that this moving picture has cast and beg you to help bring it to an end.”

  Alfie’s mouth fell open in surprise.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Since he reached Eversholt Manor and started filming The Daughter of Darkness, Edward has been a man transformed,” Miss Mottram began. “His every kindness has turned to cruelty. I cannot tell you of the evil that haunts that place when he stands behind the Véritéscope to bring the story to life. It has even infected Montgomery Flinch himself – I have seen him strike out in a rage, reducing poor Miss Devey to tears.”

  Alfie shook his head in disbelief.

  “That’s impossible, Monty wouldn’t—”

  He caught himself just in time, cutting off his own sentence before he said too much.