Machina Mortis: Steampunk'd Tales of Terror

by Derwin, Theresa

  The station outside the carriage windows was pulsing with life, and Alexander experienced a moment of vertigo as he watched the steam lifts easily ferrying massive iron trusses fifty feet into the air for the construction crews perched aloft. He thought wryly that he, at only twenty-three, was already far behind the times. He couldn’t quite get used to the rapid advancements happening all over the world, and the steam lifts, with their aether powered steam jets launching them high into the air, were just one example.

  He glanced again at Amelie. Her ceraunoscope, with its ability to instantly call forth—and direct—lightning was another matter, easily understood with its decades-old technology. It was a device meant only for use by ceraunologists in their weather manipulation, but Amelie’s father had left it to her in his will. How he had come by the thing, Alex had no wish to know. Earl Parrish had been mad indeed by the time he had committed suicide by running naked onto a frozen pond in the middle of a winter night.

  Stanbury was staring at him, he realized belatedly. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Shall we?”

  They alighted onto the main platform of Waverly Station, and were immediately approached by a subservant in a railman’s uniform. The robot’s gears clicked and spun somewhere within, barely audible. Even with subservants, technology had advanced rapidly in recent years. Their faces were far less robotic now than they had been even five years ago, and their motions were smooth with no hint at all of jerkiness.

  “May I help?” the robot asked.

  “Yes. We have tickets for the Cotswolds,” Alex answered, producing the documents.

  “Thank you, sir. You will be departing from Platform Nine on Level Three, it’s one of our newest, just completed a month ago. If you will follow me?”

  Amelie was grasping Stanbury’s arm as if it were a lifeline, and Alex let the two of them go ahead of him so that he could keep an eye on his sister’s steps. He would do this, he knew, for as long as she remained his to protect…

  ***

  Amelie know what her brother was thinking, she could feel his eyes boring into her as he followed them; she could almost feel his very thoughts. He was watching for blood, and that knowledge brought a sickening lurch of grief and pain. The memory of months ago returned with a viciousness that nearly floored her.

  They had gone for a horseback ride and a picnic in their valley, in the valley so near Glastenan Hall and yet, that day, so impossibly far…

  “There’s blood on your gown.” Alex had said when they were taking a walk after they’d eaten.

  Amelie had stared at her garment. The gown was crimson, but a darkening patch at the hem was more crimson still. It was blood, and it was drying even as she watched. She inhaled sharply and tugged the gown upward. As she did, as she saw her legs, she cried out and heard the sound rise on the air as she sank helplessly to the grassy ground…

  Deep red welts slashed across both of her calves, lash-marks cut harshly into her flesh, blood trailed ribbons down to her feet. Glancing around, she could see where she’d left red blood in the grass.

  She couldn’t move her eyes from the blood on her legs. And then…and then…

  …she screamed as the welts deepened before her gaze, as fresh stripes sliced across her legs, as unseen whips tore at her skin…

  She propelled herself backward, legs kicking out before her as she scuttled backward, as she tried in vain to escape from her own legs. She screamed, she knew she screamed, but the only sounds she heard were her own pale whimpers of fear.

  Alex came after her, he reached for her, his hands grasped her ankles but she kicked his fingers away viciously, but it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because his fingers were sliding in her blood, were slick with the fresh life flowing now from calves, from thighs, from the cutting pain she felt ripping now at her back and at her sides…

  Alex’s shouted curses had rung loud in her ears as darkness had claimed her…

  And for the remainder of their nightmare time in the valley, throughout the days it took for them to escape the valley, he had watched the grasses beneath her for falling drops of crimson blood.

  She longed now to go to him, to drop Random’s supporting arm and go to Alex, but she couldn’t, she could never do so again…

  ***

  They boarded the elevator that would take them up to Platform Nine, many hundreds of feet in the skies above London. Random looked down through the glass floor as they ascended rapidly to their destination, but he wasn’t truly seeing anything below him. His mind was focused solely on the woman he loved, the woman he had loved now for six years. In recent months, she had faded in and out of sanity, and had once attempted suicide. Today was, thankfully, one of her lucid days.

  He and Alex and Amelie were of an age, all of them twenty-three years old, and yet there seemed to be vast and uncrossable vistas of age between them at times. Today was one such time. He felt as if he were the only adult present, and that feeling did not sit well. He gripped Amelie’s hand more tightly in the curve of his arm as they disembarked from the elevator onto the platform.

  The view from this high above London was breathtaking, and Amelie escaped his grasp almost at once to run in delight to the viewing stand. She turned back and beckoned him over to her, and together they stood peering down and down and down, through the unimaginably vast clockworks and ironworks that made up Waverly Station, and out over fog-shrouded London town itself. Alex, Random noticed, did not move to join them, but rather stood near the tracks awaiting the arrival of the train that would carry them at a rapid clip out to the Cotswolds.

  What would happen once they reached Glastenan Hall? Would things go back to the way they’d been before the decision had been taken to commit Amelie? Random found himself wishing they’d chosen instead to go to Alex’s Mayfair townhouse. It had the distinct advantage of being singularly unsurrounded by forests and lakes…

  The sound of the train arriving ended his reverie, and he once more took Amelie’s hand into the crook of his arm to walk her to the train.

  The trains, though still the same iron horse shape they’d always been, had not been powered by anything other than aether for years now. Aether steam was clean steam, and did not add to the pollution that still plagued Britain. Waverly Station was the first station of its kind in the world, designed to allow the boarding and departure and arrival of dozens of trains into and out of the station at one time. Their train rocketed out of the station, gradually descending through levels and curves of ironwork girders until it leveled off in the countryside just outside London, and once on a level it powered forward at a high rate of speed.

  They would be in the Cotswolds within an hour or so, something that was impossible even to imagine before the discovery that aether could indeed power such immense machines. Until 1860, with the advent of the American Civil War, aether had been confined to powering things such as pocket watches and small mechanical devices. The Americans had discovered that it could add devastating energy to the gunpowder in their cannons with lethal results for the enemy, and from that moment there’d been no looking back.

  ***

  The storm broke full upon the train within minutes of the train reaching the countryside, and though the storm didn’t slow the train’s progress, Random and Alexander shot each other fearful looks at the first slash of lightning across the sky.

  “Please, no, not now, not here…” Amelie moaned, her voice tight with sudden terror.

  Random pulled her into his arms. “Poppet, it’s nothing, it isn’t him. It’s just a normal storm.”

  “It isn’t. It isn’t normal at all.” She was whispering, he could barely hear her.

  He glanced at Alex, raised questioning brows. But Alex was staring at his own hand, where he’d been idly rolling the ceraunoscope back and forth across his palm. The thing was glowing…

  Amelie saw the ceraunoscope’s glow at the same moment Random did, and now an unearthly keening began to issue from her. She was wide-eyed with fea
r, her skin had become deathly pale, and tears trailed down her cheeks.

  Static leapt from the ceraunoscope to Amelie’s hands, and Amelie arched upward off her seat the instant the static made contact with her fingertips, a scream breaking from her that rose in pitch until it was transcendent with her fear. Her body curved as though an unseen rope were wound around her waist and pulling her face-upward toward the ceiling. The scream cut off abruptly, and her head fell backward, her eyes closed in unconsciousness. Static played all about her, arced suddenly away from the ceraunoscope and toward the window. The window shattered when the trailing edge of static hit the glass. Curls of frantic energy shot down Amelie’s body from her fingertips and out the window, arcing upward now into the very clouds themselves. And still the train, heedless of anything untoward happening, sped on.

  Random tried to pull Amelie down, but whatever force held her, and he knew damn well exactly what force it was, had a tight grip upon her and refused to relinquish an inch.

  Alex joined him, but even together their strength was no match for the storm, and slowly, inexorably, Amelie was being pulled toward the broken window. Toward him…

  The ceraunoscope, ignored, lay where it had fallen on the floor. It was still glowing, and now began to emit a high-pitched whine that immediately caused the men to let go of Amelie and cover their ears in agony. Random fell to his knees, and moments later Alex joined him. The keening of the device ceased the instant the men’s knees hit the floor of the carriage, and just as abruptly the static and the storm released Amelie and she fell in a heap at their sides.

  “I think,” Random said after they’d laid Amelie down on one of the compartment’s two padded benches, “that it’s time we acknowledge that we have a genuinely unsolvable problem.”

  “Agreed. I also think we may have just witnessed what frightened our dear Doctor Hunter.”

  ***

  Landers, Glastenan’s steward, had sent the ducal steam-carriage to meet the train. By the time they had settled themselves inside the carriage, Alexander was beginning to regret his decision to bring his sister home. And Glastenan Hall itself was still nearly an hour’s carriage ride away.

  Amelie had regained consciousness in the train compartment with full memory of what had happened to her. In the past several months, her memory had been unreliable at best about the spells she suffered. Alex was on the verge of giving in to the despair he was beginning to feel. His sister was being hunted, he’d known that all along, but he’d dared hoped there would be a solution…

  His sister, with her hair carefully tucked back under her hat, with her silk-gloved hands clutched primly together in her lap, with her face so deathly pale, her fiancé’s arm wrapped securely around her…His sister…

  He was no longer so certain that the Cotswolds would work the cure she’d failed to find at Aldwine. It was beginning to look very much as if there would be nowhere in the wide world that would be safe.

  Twilight was pressing close about the station by the time the steam-carriage pulled away, but Amelie merely stared silently out the window. Alexander wondered whether she could actually see anything in the encroaching darkness but her own reflection.

  The moment they’d passed Glastenan’s gates, the moment they were on Glastenan land, he sensed a subtle change in Amelie. She wasn’t holding herself quite as stiffly, and her hands were no longer clasped together but simply rested one upon the other. Her cheeks had regained some color and the haunted look had gone from her eyes.

  So, imp, this may yet work after all…

  The carriage pulled up before the Hall, and a subservant in full livery opened the door and handed Amelie down the steps. When Alexander emerged, the scent of spring assailed him, and he wished they’d been able to arrive in full daylight. He glanced at Amelie as he came down the steps, and was surprised to find her looking up at him, the slightest of smiles upon her lips.

  The terraced garden steps that led up to the Hall’s front entrance were lined with subservants and every window of the house was ablaze with warm, welcoming light.

  Glastenan, with its Gothic façade, its two flanking towers with their immense bay windows on all three storeys, its gargoyles, its mullions, its warm russet sandstone and its mellow golden limestone dressings…Glastenan was alight to welcome them home. Even the immense glass-walled conservatory on the side of the Hall spilled light across the terraces.

  Wraight, Alexander’s human butler, came forward and bowed. “We received your telegram, Your Grace, my lady, Mr. Stanbury.”

  “I can see that, Wraight. Thank you for the reception.”

  Mrs. Briggs, his human housekeeper, swept them a curtsey.

  “Hello, Mrs. Briggs,” he said. “The staff look well; you and Wraight have done a splendid job.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace. Lady Amelie, welcome home.”

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Briggs. It’s good to be home.” Amelie said this with what appeared to be a genuine smile. She moved from Stanbury’s side to his own, and he, like Stanbury, pulled her hand through the crook of his arm. He knew that it was a possessive move, a slap almost in Stanbury’s face, but just now he didn’t care.

  “I’ve laid tea on in the parlor,” Mrs. Briggs’ smile was a match to Amelie’s.

  Alexander placed a gloved hand over Amelie’s, and shot her a look. “Shall we?”

  They walked up the wide garden steps to the open door of Glastenan Hall.

  ***

  The parlor. Her refuge, one of many hiding places. Her mother had never liked the parlor, tucked away as it was beneath the minstrel’s gallery, and had always entertained guests in the more formal morning room.

  Paneled walls, parquet floor almost completely concealed beneath a luxurious Aubusson, overstuffed armchairs in front of the marble hearth, round walnut table flanked by two straight-backed chairs, glorious Irish harp beside the window. Next to the harp stood her trunk, the one that she’d taken when she’d fled Glastenan for the Devon coast. The trunk contained the documents that had planted the seeds that resulted in her sleepwalking out into the cold waters of Lyme Bay, in search of the creature she knew only as Cadachlod.

  An oak bookcase that reached to the ceiling held not only books but also Alex’s many and varied experiments and instruments. Her ceraunoscope had for a time resided here, until she’d taken it with her to Devon. Brass instruments, clockwork gears, a wide assortment of spanners and aetherometers and Lucifer matches and even an expensive pair of bright fulgur scissors adorned the shelves, and she smiled to herself.

  …home…

  Alex was patiently holding a chair for her at the walnut table, the table itself piled with plates of cakes and sandwiches. Random had gone in search of headache powder and water for all three of them.

  She slid into the chair and Alex pushed her in close to the table, then took his own seat opposite her. She felt his eyes burning into her as she removed the cozy from the teapot and poured Darjeeling into porcelain cups, and she knew she was not going to be allowed to relax.

  Mrs. Briggs knocked at the door and entered, headache powder and a carafe of water on a tray, Random right behind her. With Mrs. Briggs’ departure, Amelie knew conversation with her brother and her fiancé could no longer be avoided. She forced herself to meet Alex’s eyes. Clear ice-blue flame met her gaze, and her stomach tightened. No, no relaxation yet…

  “Thank you for bringing me home.” She was surprised that her voice sounded almost steady, almost normal.

  “I did what I thought best, Amelie. At the very least, you can hardly walk into the sea here.”

  “I don’t relish pointing this out, Tamnais,” Random said, and Amelie heard deep weariness in his voice, “but we have merely brought your sister back within reach of the valley in which that thing nearly killed her.”

  Pain, fierce and hot, flared in Alex’s eyes. “I am aware of that, Stanbury.”

  “Please don’t speak of me as if I am not here,” Amelie said. “You wish to speak of wh
at happened on the train, I’m sure, so can we please do so? While I still feel some vestige of strength.”

  But even as she spoke, she knew she was not going to be up to the challenge of carrying on a normal conversation. Her head thrummed with pain, and without so much as another word, she rose from the table and left the parlor, aching now only for a bath and the comfort of sleeping once more in her own bed.

  ***

  “Sit down, Random, it’s no good going after her. I expect she’s decided to go to bed, and I can’t blame her.”

  Random returned to his seat at the table as requested, unease gripping him like a vise. “We have no plan, no idea whatsoever as to what we’re actually dealing with, and Amelie herself seems to be having fewer and fewer lucid periods. One of the finest asylums in Britain could not help her. And she is being actively hunted.”

  “And I have brought her back, as you said, to the very place in which she nearly lost her life. Yes. I am aware, painfully so, of all of this.”

  Random watched as Alex rose and went to the bookcase. Alex was filling his arms with instruments and gears, and, divining his intent, Random quickly moved all of the tea things to the sideboard. Soon, the table was filled to overflowing with gadgets.

  “What do you propose to do with all these?” he asked, confused.

  When Alex looked at him, Random saw madness in the other man’s eyes, and he shuddered.

  “I intend to lure the bastard back to the valley, using Amelie as bait, and then to blow him to the moon.”

  ***

  When her bath was ready, Amelie gratefully closed the bathroom door after the robotic maid had gone. She took her bottle of lavender oil from the washstand and poured a large amount into the bath, then wearily slipped out of her travel-stained clothing and into the steaming water.