***
For three weeks, no one saw Dr. Sybaris. He was not found at the Diogenes Club where he had been a regular fixture for years and where the old men cheered the victory and simultaneously exclaimed how soldiers had it harder in their day. Nor did Dr. Sybaris appear at the Autonomic Explorers Club when Dr. Elias Payton had presented his paper on “Cosmic Radio Signals” in which the diminutive academic had seriously questioned several of Dr. Sybaris’ own theories and published papers. In the midst of Germany’s surrender and resultant celebrations, Dr. Sybaris had been almost totally forgotten.
Morgan had attempted to call on his friend several times during those weeks only to be left standing outside Sybaris’ door unwelcomed. He couldn’t even clearly recall their last meeting. There was a drunken memory of talking about Dr. Sybaris’ Visualizer but Morgan was damned if he could remember anything more. In truth, he could barely recall anything of that crazy week. Still, when reason returned, Morgan had sent letters and telegrams which were all unanswered.
Finally, feeling vaguely uneasy but not really knowing why, Morgan determined that he would go to Dr. Sybaris’ house and, if he was not admitted, he would return with a policeman. This time, he would not be so easily rebuffed.
Outside Dr. Sybaris’ door, the house appeared calm and quiet.
In the street, the steam powered horses carried their carts back and forth. A newsboy on the corner offered the latest data-sheet that claimed “Germany’s surrender a hoax! New threat coming! New bomb in German hands!” Morgan ignored the people in the street and pounded heavily on Sybaris’ door with his walking stick.
Morgan could hear the sound oddly reverberate in the building. Almost as if it were hollow. He knocked hard a second time.
He was about to turn away and summon a constable when the door suddenly flew open and Dr. Anton Sybaris was standing in the doorway.
“Morgan!” Dr. Sybaris exclaimed happily. “How wonderful to see you! Come in, come in. It’s been much too long.”
Stunned, Morgan could do nothing but shake the outstretched hand and stumble through the door.
Inside, the building had changed. The entire first floor was now a huge room. All of the walls had been taken down. It had all been converted into some sort of massive factory-type area. Clearly, something had been produced here but now all that seemed to remain was the space where vast machines had been. To the left was a small sitting area with a few chairs and a work-table. A few papers were still on the table but it was mostly clean.
Dr. Sybaris motioned Morgan over to the chairs where a dapper young man sat. “Morgan,” Dr. Sybaris exclaimed, “allow me to present Mr. Noyes. He’s a recent colleague of mine, a physicist, actually.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rice,” Noyes said. His voice was kind enough but it made Morgan uneasy all the same. It was like listening to a polished politician speak; the kind of talk that said one thing but meant something entirely different.
Noyes was a youngish looking fellow but, truth be told, it would be difficult to ascribe any age to him. He was urban and fashionably dressed with a small, thin mustache. His black hair was slicked back over his skull and gleamed icily in the electric light.
“My pleasure, Mr. Noyes. Anton, I hope I’m not intruding but I was worried about you.”
Dr. Sybaris gave Morgan a puzzled look. “Worried? Whatever for?”
“Well,” Morgan laughed, “I have to admit that I’m not entirely sure why. I just have a vague memory of your being very upset at our last meeting but I can’t recall any details.”
Noyes smiled. “A bit too much celebrating, Mr. Rice?”
Sheepishly, Morgan nodded. “A tad. We’ve every reason to celebrate, don’t you agree, Mr. Noyes?”
“Oh, yes, yes, indeed. Still, one can never rest, you know. ‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance’.”
“Thomas Jefferson. True, very true. Anton, I seem to recall it had something to do with your ‘Visualizer’?”
Dr. Sybaris laughed. “That foolish thing? Oh, Morgan, I gave up on that weeks ago. Never could make the blasted thing work. Stupid idea anyway. Imagine, trying to turn sound into pictures. Can’t imagine what I was thinking.”
Morgan looked at Dr. Sybaris confused. “But . . . I thought you said you had gotten it working.”
Noyes looked at Dr. Sybaris who simply smiled at Morgan. “No, you’re mistaken, old boy. Nothing of the sort. Look around you! All of my efforts these past weeks have been on helping manufacture and refine Tesla’s Sonic-Disruptors for our troops. We’ve just finished actually. The last shipment went out this morning.”
“So I see. You’ve been very busy.”
Morgan pulled Dr. Sybaris aside. “Anton, are you quite sure you’re all right?”
Dr. Sybaris’ gaze darted over to Noyes and back again. “Quite sure, old chap. In fact, I hate to be rude but Mr. Noyes and I have some pressing business to discuss. What say I meet you later tonight for drinks, ‘ey? At the Diogenes Club?”
Morgan allowed himself to be led back to the door. “Yes, of course, Anton. That’ll be fine. I’m just glad to see you are well.”
Noyes nodded genially to Morgan. “Good day to you, Mr. Rice. Hope to see you again.”
Not knowing what else to do, Morgan nodded back to Noyes whom he had no desire to ever see again. “Good day, Mr. Noyes.”
As the door slowly closed behind him, Morgan turned back to see Dr. Sybaris’ face disappearing back into the dark. It almost seemed that the skin on his face was loose but before Morgan could be sure, the door was closed. Morgan was back on the street again with the steam horses and newsies.
***
While he walked back home, Morgan tried desperately to remember his previous meeting with Dr. Sybaris in the Dog and Duck pub. He remembered walking into the pub, seeing his friend in the back and sitting down at the booth. But what happened then? There was some talk about the Visualizer. No matter what Dr. Sybaris said now, they had talked about the invention, Morgan knew that. Then, he also knew that Dr. Sybaris had gotten it to work. But why would that be unsettling? It would prove several of Dr. Sybaris’ theories but Morgan remembered that first time, the strange signal and the explosion and then it all came back to him. The signal being thoughts, not audio, and the aliens and the cults and then Morgan finally remembered the disc.
Morgan could not run home fast enough.
In a blaze of activity, Morgan went through every pocket of his coats until he found it. The disc gleamed in the light. Frantic, Morgan ran to his disc player and quickly put it in. Suddenly, the speakers erupted with sound. At first it was nothing more than buzzes, then there was the sound of English speech.
“We have not worked so long to be stopped now.” The voice had an odd, unnatural tone to it; not unlike someone speaking in an unfamiliar tongue.
“For years we have subverted their history, changed science and manufacturing.” Another voice said.
“Agreed. By assimilating their greatest minds we have accelerated their natural evolution. We have introduced technology they were incapable of understanding or controlling. They are now at least 60 sun cycles before where they would have been without our interference.”
“I understand.” This was a different voice. It had a thick German accent but spoke with no hesitation. “I have completed the necessary computations. The bomb can now be mass produced. The atomic age will begin in four weeks.”
“That is acceptable,” said the first voice. “Our forces are preparing the necessary manufacturing areas in the designated countries.”
“And soon the earth shall be wiped clean and remade in their image,” replied the second voice. “Then the Old Ones will rise and we will fly once again through space and bring the others here. Azathoth shall open the gate and Nyarlthotep, the Crawling Chaos, will reward his servants.”
“Ia! Ia! Ia!” shouted all the voices.
“Wait!” shouted the first voice. “I sense an intruder here. One who is not of our
thoughts. Noyes, do you feel it?”
“I do,” said a voice that Morgan had only just recently met. “I shall find him and he will either join us or Nyarlthotep shall walk in his guise.”
Suddenly the disc cut off. There was no more left to hear but Morgan had heard enough. After all those years, Dr. Sybaris was correct. The world wasn’t right. It had been pushed, shoved into technology it was neither prepared for or able to handle . . . and it was all around them now.
But there was still time! Morgan grabbed the disc and put it in his pocket. He had friends at the Ministry of Defense and he’d make them listen to the disc. Maybe they weren’t prepared for this technology but they had it now and could use it against these aliens just as well as they did against the Germans.
Morgan rushed from his room, the call of “cab!” already forming on his lips when he opened the door to find Noyes standing there.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Rice,” the smooth voice dripped. “I told you that I’d hoped I’d see you again soon.”
Noyes pushed himself inside and closed the door behind him. No screams emitted from the house. No blood was ever found. Still, at that moment, Morgan Rice was erased from this earth.
In the air, the sound of German airships laden with atomic bombs came ever closer and closer.
Whitechapel Transfer
By Theresa Derwin
My name is Inspector Jonathon Bestwick and the tale I have to tell is most shocking, disturbing and wholly gruesome. Yet tell it I must for I cannot bear the brunt of it alone anymore. It has stagnated in my breast these ten long years. The horror of which I shall speak has been gone from London long since and now the time has come to reveal all.
It began in the early autumn of the year of our Lord 1888 in the reign of Queen Victoria. In the dream I could see her. The dead prostitute lying with her innards out for all to see, though carefully displayed as though a skilled surgeon’s hand had committed such an atrocity. This I was sure of, for those cuts were indeed frightening in their precision.
I awoke from my evening siesta with a start, a cold sweat creeping over my skin, the fear from my nightmare engulfing me. I remembered her too clearly. The throat severed, the abdomen ripped open with a long, deep and jagged wound. He had eviscerated her. The left kidney and parts of the uterus had been removed.
Her name was Elizabeth Stride. In life they had called this poor soul Long Liz, and she was the third to have been brutally murdered by the one the newspapers were calling The Ripper because of that blasted letter we had received. This murder was swiftly followed by the murder of Kate Eddowes, similarly slaughtered. I did not know where to begin my investigations. And yet, and yet it was my duty to apprehend the fiend though I had failed in this task so far. It had been over two months since the first murder.
I tried to shake the memories away from me, but I still remembered returning to my modest lodgings through the fogged streets of London following our discovery of Long Liz, the yellow glow of the gas lamps doing little to improve my eyesight, nor my mood. For I was fraught with grief at the sight I had beheld that day. Her pallid dirty corpse, flesh scarred and bloody, lay discarded like an apple core, a thin line of scarlet blood running in rivulets from her slender throat, the job only half done. The job interrupted. Yet still, he managed to claim a further victim elsewhere.
I finally shook the dream away and went to my lounge to assist with my relaxation. I had settled down on my favourite chair, my face diffused with the soft glow from my gas lamp, as I enjoyed the latest copy of Punch. I was easing my mood with a particularly humorous illustration when the door bell rang. I could hear Miss Young, my house keeper, opening the door, arguing with someone. Then she knocked on my lounge door to inform me that I had a visitor. It was rather late at 9pm, but Miss Young was adamant that I receive my guest persevering with “Sir, she is most insistent sir, she won’t go away”.
“Very well Miss Young” said I, “I shall see this visitor on this one occasion. Please be so good as to bring us tea. And see her in”.
Miss Young nodded and left the room. Huffing a little I put down my copy of Punch awaiting my visitor. I was not in the best of moods, my sleep having been disturbed and filled with bloody images.
I was surprised to find a shabbily dressed young woman, of perhaps twenty-five years admitted into my chambers. She wore a cap as is common holding back a length of unkempt and straggly brown hair, and a shawl covered her delicate shoulders and the top half of her evening dress. From the patch of dirt on her cheek I deduced her to be a common lady, of the type Mayhew had interviewed some years past. But that was of no matter.
“Please do take a seat” I offered, standing to nod as she entered the room.
Following a brief, somewhat uncomfortable curtsey, the young woman sat down on my chaise-longue.
“Permit me to introduce myself”, said I, “I am Inspector Jonathon Bestwick of CID. To what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked.
“My name is Mary Kelly. Call me Mary”, said my guest.
“Well Miss Kelly”, I replied, “how may I be of assistance?”
“It’s about the Ripper. I can help you”, she replied, “I can help with the case you’re on. I know things”.
This was somewhat irregular, a potential witness visiting me in my lodgings, but at this point I did not question it, fool that I am, so eager was I to trap and punish the creature who was stalking Whitechapel. It occurred to me that she might indeed have valuable information through her acquaintances. Though her manner of speaking was rather unusual, and I surmised her to be a peculiar sort of foreigner, I nodded acquiescence and she continued.
“You’re not stupid”, she said, “You’ve already noticed the connection between the victims. They were all prostitutes and all found quite close by in the Whitechapel area. Your link between them is there. Your Ripper won’t be far from there.”
“I had deduced as much”, said I, “but what else can you offer me in the way of explanation?”
“Inspector, It’s me. I’m the link”, she resumed “I’m the one he’s really after Bestwick.”
“I say”, I exclaimed, “how did you come to such a conclusion?! Where is your proof?”
“It’s a long story”, she continued, briefly wiping her brow with a handkerchief, as though having an attack of the vapours “but you need to listen to me, we don’t have much time. Mary – I - am destined to die soon, in less than two days to be exact. He will sever this throat, rip open this belly, and steal these organs. But we can change that. If we work together”.
At this point Miss Young entered with tea and I served a cup to my strange guest who appeared to be predicting her own death. It is true, she was attired in the garb of a loose woman with low means and thus it was obvious to me that she may be a potential victim. So, despite her tall tale I was intrigued.
Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was fancy, but this lady appeared to know facts regarding the mutilated state of the cadavers. Information that the Press did not yet have. Miss Young left the room and we continued with our conversation.
“What pattern have you found?” asked I, “that can convince me that you will become a victim of this monster? And how do you proclaim to know when?”
“I can’t explain. You need to trust me on this. I will die on 9th of November and it will all be for nothing unless you believe me. First, I have something to show you”.
Slowly she stood and moved towards me, her hand reaching under her shawl into her dress pockets. For one moment I was convinced it was a weapon she was about to brandish. For one second my hand reached for the pistol I kept close by in my table drawer. Then I stopped, as a tattered, somewhat faded photograph was handed to me. I gasped in shock at the image before me; a bundle of clothes thrown onto a slovenly bed, an unidentifiable lump beneath that clothing. But no, it was no bundle of clothes.
Ribbons of flesh hung loosely off the body, for a body it was. The throat had been severed down to the spine, and the abdomen virtuall
y emptied of its organs. The heart was missing. A pitiable sight. I could almost smell the stench of death. Next, I perused the face of this victim. Though the face was not quite clear, I could see well enough. It was Miss Mary Kelly, dead, slaughtered. Yet here she stood in front of me.
***
We had progressed from tea to a drop of strong sherry. The occasion seemed to call for it. The photograph was still clasped between my fingers as I sat sipping my drink in silence, until at last I spoke.
“I cannot fathom how - ”
“Don’t try”, she said, “Just believe me when I tell you that the photo is real. Do you believe in me now?”
“I must proclaim, that yes, I do. By whatever agency this photograph exists, I can see that it is authentic”
“Good”. Miss Kelly sat down again, content with my answer then commenced to knock back the remainder of her sherry. “The Ripper must die, before I do. I know exactly where he will be at 4.17am on 9th November. We can kill him”
“No”, I exclaimed, “we must apprehend him and ensure that he faces trial for his crimes. He shall be punished as God wishes. But how do you know these things? And where did the photograph come from?”
With a massive sigh, this woman, this Mary Kelly, began her outlandish tale.
“Hi”, she began, “My name isn’t Mary Kelly. I’m DCI Victory Morgan and I was born in 2064”.
At this point, I thought it rather useful to down another glass of sherry.
***
I momentarily believed myself transported into a scientific romance as she spoke. Victory Morgan it appeared was the future equivalent of myself, a police detective within a large police organisation, but not a normal police department. Miss Morgan was a Demon Huntress, responsible for tracking down demons through history and banishing them to the hell in which they belonged. She had followed this Ripper through time, informing quite reasonably that the Ripper was no mere mortal. Indeed no she proclaimed exuberantly, the Ripper was a demon, a demon which could transfer its essence from body to body, possessing the poor soul and committing those most heinous of crimes in a different body each time. This, she insisted, was why we had been unable to apprehend the fiend, for each time it was a different person slaughtering those women with no memory once the demon chose a new host. I enquired if she too were some kind of demon to know such things, but she did not flinch when I took out my crucifix and held it to her flesh. She did not burn.
Machina Mortis: Steampunk'd Tales of Terror Page 12
