Upon having my nose bashed in by that anvil-headed freak, I fell backwards onto the tavern floor, unconscious, and was dragged back to our camp by Winfeld and a few other fellows. Fair enough, I thought. I had an inkling of doubt concerning the thrashment of Bellwrung from thy own hand upon first hearing the story. I did want it to be true, believe me.
Instead, Bellwrung just got unlucky. He and his cronies left Northside Tavern and on to another pub where they drank for most of the night. Bellwrung then left the tavern and became lost in the woods. Unfortunately for Bellwrung these were entirely the wrong woods to become lost in. Normally while drunk, Bellwrung would wander into the northern or western woods without problem, but these were, in fact, the eastern woods.
Now, how does one become lost in the eastern woods? One may inquire. I do understand the confusion, for TransMetros RailWorks rail lines do not lead into the eastern woods, as a drunkard may happen to do so by following the tracks. Aside from drinking his sight into threes, Bellwrung had an utterly awful headache from smashing in my nose which disoriented him terribly so. Yet, still, I can not understand how one can so blatantly stumble into Gorillian Fever Sect territory. Alas, this the first in a series of life altering quandaries.
Initially, that was the last of his known whereabouts. All assumed he had been abducted and, most likely, eaten by those sickly mad Gorillians. Anyone who was asked simply refused to gather a search party.
It wasn’t until just a few years ago during my time with Bellamy the Rancid, Gorillian rebel freedom fighter extraordinaire, that I learned of the bastard’s demise.
It seemed Bellwrung was just unlucky. Bellamy recanted the story, that Bellwrung was able to fight off several of the mad Gorillians, in trade for both ears.
He escaped further eastward finding a seashore shanty town. His torn ears had become infected and resulted in complete deafness. He was considered a freak in this shanty town and treated as such. A few iron smiths fashioned head-gear with large ear-trumpets shoved into each of his ear holes and affixed to his head near-permanently. He became emaciated not being able to eat, his teeth having fallen out due to scurvy and his weak gums.
The local pub, Sentry Row (often pronounced, Dysentery Row), took him in as a mascot of sorts for a few months. Some travelers through the shanty town began to recognize the deaf-mute as Martin Bellwrung, but no one wanted to claim responsibility for him. He became known as, Bellwrung the Twit. He became evermore savage-like, lashing out whenever the mood struck. I guess that was the way he always was, though. Although, now, the only difference was his evil blackened innards matched the outer monstrous veneer; there was no pretense of humanity now.
Eventually, after just a few months, the pub grew bored with Bellwrung the Twit and sold him off to an airship captain for his crew’s entertainment.
Bellamy wasn’t certain, but he believes the captain of the airship was named, Bergeau. This would lead me to believe that this was Airship Captain Christophe Bergeau. This would mean, as history shows, poor Bellwrung the Twit met his demise along with Captain Bergeau and his crew in a fiery crash into The Chasm. And if it wasn’t the crash that did them in, they would have gotten it from the underdwellars.
Many hear the story and laugh it off with a just feeling of right, but I must remind them Northward was terribly lawless and depraved. I tend to think, someone who runs their course so purposefully wrought with wickedness is bound to meet unfortunate returns. And sometimes things just go from bad to worse very quickly.
That area of Northward was free of such scumdrudgery for a short while until some other boorish, blockhead of a bugger stood up to take the place of Bellwrung. Then when the area became more modernized with steam tech, more people began living in the region. Soon there was a fool like Bellwrung in every other pub in the run-down section of the metro. That breed of being always finds its way in, like a parasitic worm.
The rest of our stay in Northward went swimmingly for the most part. Word got out that I had done in Bellwrung and all of my friends who knew otherwise just let it be. They considered if they stuck with me, the gentleman who took out the Bellwrung Beast, they would do just fine not finding any new trouble.
I had a sense of confidence about myself; a sense of vigor.
Incidentally, within the vicinity of our expedition and excavation site we had found something of interest. We had spent long hours at the site digging up and polishing off a cigar-shaped, brass object, about the length and width of my foot. It was rounded slightly at the tip and flattened just so at a delicate angle. We tiptoed and whispered around the piece, making sure not dislodge it from where it was lodged, only to realize it wasn’t lodged, but rather part of a bigger piece. So we dug down further and dusted daintily about what had now become two cigar-shaped objects, the second about twice the size of the first and connected to it by an odd mechanical hinge of sorts.
We couldn’t imagine what we were finding, but the more dirt we swept away, the clearer it all became. At the other end of the excavation site, another group of students had uncovered what seemed to be a large metal case, some sort of box. And further digging revealed that to be connected to a sphere, connected to a large, longer case or box.
What they had found was a foot, an ankle, and a shin. We, at the other end of the site, were in the process of uncovering the hand, starting with a single finger, a fingertip the size of a grown man’s foot. Soon enough, there it was: a large metal and wooden man, dried up and dried out in the cold north desert.
The large metal and wooden man, once revealed, lay there face first, arms sprawled out before him. By the looks of him he was ghastly old. I will remind you dear reader, this was when I was a young man, some fifty years ago. This behemoth was old and rusty then.
We examined the metal monstrosity closely. He was crudely put together, but that was the age of the tech. He was very early steam tech, most certainly a prototype of some working order. He was engraved on his back with AM-97, the “AM” most likely an abbreviation for “auto-maton” the 97 perhaps his working order number. Though, if there were 96 others just like him, I can only begin to wonder where they were.
He was barrel-chested, or, more to the point, boiler-chested. Quite literally, its body was made from a reworked industrial-sized boiler. His arms and legs were quite intricate in their clockwork designs. Full of delicate little gears and cogs and springs and hammers and pins at his joints. He didn’t have much of a head, rather a rectangular post dotted with a plethora of ocular-lenses, no doubt for finding his way around (just not to a water source in time).
On the back of his barrel body were two smaller barrels for water. They were hand-crafted, wooden barrels. An obscene amount of time and the effort of a serious craftsman went into those barrels. The bottom of each barrel was seared with a symbol I had not seen before or since, that of a keyhole, an eye burned to the center of the keyhole’s round top.
We able to see the heating element was still in working order. After a bout of debate on whether or not we should attempt to pry open the gear box panel, here or back at the university, we found that for such an old piece of machinery, it was quite ingeniously put together. The few students who wanted to take the find back to The University before doing any more tinkering dwindled as we found the only thing from keeping this machine from functioning was water.
Thus began the great water heist of Partridge Monarch Abbey. The metro was struggling as it was for water and we only compounded the problem by smuggling large quantities of it back to the excavation site by barrel. Each man rolled a barrel of water to the metal being. We rigged up a pulley system to hoist the barrels up and over the metal monstrosity to add the water to his reservoirs. Once filled, we started things up with some winding of wenches, cranking, and a few boot kicks.
He sputtered to life. He trembled and shook there, still face down, his metal body creating an awful racket. The trembling began to subside as the sputtering evened out. He pushed himself up off the ground. The ocular-len
ses on his rectangular box head whirred and chirped as I believe it was figuring out its bearings.
The the most peculiar thing. He slowly began walking in place. The walk gathered momentum and evolved into a jog and into a full on clunky run. The ground below him became matted and flattened down into a dense dirt. I could feel each step of his in the ground below me. Some students took cover. Other just stood by. I watched excitedly waiting to see what would happen next. This was a fantastically wonderful find.
And then his heavy in-place running evened out to a steady chug. The blaring honk of a heavy horn sounded from within his barrel chest and he was off. Running at top speed from the excavation site and gone. In a flash, like lightning, he stomped his way over the horizon and was gone. We followed his tracks for hours to the northern edge of a desert where we lost his trail to the cascading dunes, his tracks erased by the wind.
The excavation class went back to The University empty-handed, but with two very interesting stories. No one believed us about the metal man and only a handful more people believe that I took out a hardened, maniacal, psychotic beast. Alas, this is the life of an adventurer. “Oculargraphic evidence, or it might as well not have happened,” as they say, knowing all too well that such excitement does not make for a splendid oculargraphical experience.
Oh, how the mind takes off. It was all very strange to think about. That little period of my life I had not pondered in years. It would aide as a reminder soon enough.
*1: Partridge Monarch Abbey of Northward Territories. Many will tell you cute anecdotal rubbish stories about how the metro of Partridge Monarch Abbey was named. There were never any birds of the sort in the area. While the Monarch did sponsor the metro through CoinWorks, there was little The Monarch wanted to do with the poor investment. And there was never any monastery built, destroyed, set ablaze, built of glass, or any other fantastical occurrence having to do with an abbey.
The town was originally a mining town with little water. Without water, steam tech doesn’t run. When the steam doesn’t whistle, the work winds down. Originally such investment metros were given letter/number combinations of names and eventually the metro earned or garnered a name given by its inhabitants. The workmen of the town, having little work to do without their equipment running, started calling the place, Pretty Much Arsed, and marking all shipments to and from the metro with the initials PMA. They stamped their machinery and equipment with the letters. Eventually, the three letters started showing up everywhere.
Well when enough paperwork with the initials PMA got into the system, someone began to take notice. The bureaucracy has no shortage of nosy clerks. And a nosy clerk somewhere along the line decided to get confirmation on the actual name of the metro. When two dopey clerks collide, bureaucracy is created! A low-level clerk from the PMA archives, when confronted by an auditor from Central Metro West about the exact name of the metro, the clerk thought quickly and came up with Partridge Monarch Abbey, fearful of losing his job for telling the truth.
13
Perhaps this was some terrible hoax. There I stood on the sidewalk of Elseafter Boulevard where Mr. Kilmarten’s offices should have been, but instead, I stood in front of the Bleaker Ale House. I removed my top hat from the old noggin and scratched my head and wiped my brow free of perspiration before returning it back.
If this were a hoax, Mr. Kilmarten could have at least lead me somewhere amusing. The day, not even coming up on noon, was proving tedious. This was a waste of my time. I turned to look across the street. There was a newspaper stand, a gentleman reading The Gazette. Down the street was a small bistro, men and women sipped seavenly and stuffed their faces with small pastries.
Just to the curb in front of me, an ale carriage pulled over to the side of the road and ale house employees began loading the carriage with barrels of ale. It was all that you might imagine of a busy market street at noon.
Though, that eerie feeling was upon me, like I was being watched. Even with all the people around me, I knew eyes were covering me from somewhere hidden.
I asked one of the men loading the ale carriage if this was indeed the address as posted in my letter and he concurred, but no TrustWorks office in the building. Across the street perhaps? Down the street? A digit off? Mr. Kilmarten? Ever hear of him? I certainly didn’t know of any other Elseafter Boulevard.
It was all very busy, much ado, but no sign of this Mr. Kilmarten. For a moment I began to grow agitated. I shoved my umbrella beneath my arm as I looked at my pocket watch. I wondered if the news stand might have something of interest to read, surely they would have received their shipment of goods for the day. I had been itching to get my fingers on the most current issue of The Journal of Popular Mechanicals. I put my watch back in my vest pocket. I looked back across the street and the man reading The Gazette was peering at me over the top edge of the paper through dark glass goggles. What I could see of his skin was that familiar pure white porcelain. I stood there on the sidewalk, frozen, leaning slightly forward, one leg about to take a step off the curb and I just stared back. Motionless.
The newspaper lowered further to reveal the contorted, hellish grin of a porcelain mask, eyes obscured by goggles as black as pitch, and a bowler hat upon his noggin. I eased back instinctively instead of taking that step forward. I looked down to the bistro, a few of the patrons were now wearing masks and goggles similar to the man across the street. The rest of the patrons seemed to be cowering in fear.
A bit down the street, two of them emerged from a sewer grate wearing gas masks over their faces. Their bowler hats strapped in around the hat band. I feared those agents the worst. They reminded me of gasters. I had heard stories of these agents who wore the gas masks over their faces. That they were indeed ravaged-brained like that of a gaster, but somehow in control and manageable. I did hope they were just stories.
I saw a few heads pop up from here or there, faces covered by leather masks. The Ghosts had emerged from the darkness into plain sight. Agents of the Night where ever I looked about. I wondered how they managed to all find the same noggin-wear. Atop all their heads, bowler hats. Each and every agent dressed in similar business attire. GhostWurks.
I looked to the ale carriage, as the men loaded the last of the barrels, three more agents of GhostWurks were upon me.
Was this a trap? This must certainly be a trap, I thought. GhostWurks lead me here, but for what purpose? I nearly panicked, but was distracted by a monstrous, black, steamdriven carriage hauling down over the cobblestone as it ground to a halt in front of me by slamming into the ale carriage, spilling the golden ale everywhere and knocking down the three agents directly upon me.
The carriage door swung open and a portly, rat-faced fellow leaned out, “Dr. Monocle? Scheckendale Kilmarten.” He smiled and sloppily ushered me in, “We best be going.”
I looked at the GhostWurks agents upon the ground and those in pursuit. Portly Scheckendale seemed the best bet. I jumped into the carriage and the door slammed closed behind me and locked automatically with great force. The steamdriver roared as it took off down the cobblestone as GhostWurks tried grabbing on, if not attempting chase.
“There’s indefinite traffic this way, tell your pilot!” I said to the attorney.
Mr. Kilmarten was peering from the side window, merely a slit to peer through, “Oh, he knows. He knows. There are more out there.” He pointed them out: on telegraph poles, fire escapes, emerging from rubbish bins. I looked out the back window; decorated with an intricate pattern etched into the glass, I couldn’t easily see. Even through the jagged patterns, though, I knew what I was looking at: GhostWurks agents streaming from their hiding holes.
And from a carriage house, just as we passed, the door nearly exploded from its hinges as two sleek, black-as-night steamdrivers emerged. I had never seen steamdrivers of such elegance and ferocity before. Like small, but impressively designed, nimbulators of show.
“Oh, they’ve planned this out thoughtfully, they certainly have,”
Scheckendale remarked with a mischievous grin.
The chase was on. I had no clue as to what I had gotten myself into.
Mr. Kilmarten’s pilot, Jefferson Synger, was brilliant behind his steam engine. He was fully protected by an armored and reinforced cabin. The old chap could barely be seen from the outside, he almost seemed hidden. Inside, the gruff fellow chewed a cigar and kept his cap low to his brow, just over his eyes. He had mutton chops of impressive magnitude and graying hair sprouting from beneath his hat. He had a stillness about him as his concentration was fully directed on his piloting.
This craft of Mr. Kilmarten’s was quite tinkered with and heavily fantastical in a rather macabre way. Black Iron Death, I referred to the vehicle. Mr. Kilmarten liked the name so, he decided to adopt it as his own.
Jefferson handled the rather large carriage with ease. Though bulky, the steamdriver had a sleekness to it, as well. It had a smoothness and refined taste to the overall fashion, but was intimidating, nonetheless.
“You will lose them?” I wished to be reassured
Mr. Kilmarten turned from the window, “Of course, my good man, of course. Toying with them, is all.”
“What do they want with me?”
Mr. Kilmarten guffawed, “You? They want nothing with you, they want me. And they don’t even really want me, they want my employer. Which brings us to the subject of the business between you and I.”
I thought this a pleasant turn of the tide, but immediately realized I was in no better place having taken a ride from the man they were after.
“What is all of this?” I demanded to know. My concern had grown to anxious worry, I raised my voice just slightly, “I demand you tell me what is going on. This is becoming quite the outrage.”
Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman Page 13
