The Ghost Club

by William Meikle

  “Shall we partake of a stroll?” he asked Vincent with a smile. And now that they were indeed only a hull’s width away from making history for mankind, Vincent found it in himself to answer with a smile and a nod.

  “Although I do not see how, my friend. Have you not already determined that there is nothing breathable beyond our bubble?”

  “Why then, we shall just have to take our air with us,” Alain replied, and produced a large domed glass helmet that he proceeded to attach to Vincent’s suit. “Once this is in place we shall not be able to converse except through mime and hand signals. Just follow my lead. I only intend to take a short walk, a few steps for the sake of history.”

  Vincent nodded and Alain clamped the helmet to the suit and turned a knob at the neck. Vincent heard a rushing sound, and was momentarily struck with a singular fear of suffocation then, but with a single deep breath, he found the air coming easily once more. He nodded to show Alain that all was well and watched as the engineer fitted his own helmet in turn. Within minutes they were both breathing the air from the tanks on their backs, and Alain made the last preparations for their walk outside. First he let all of the air escape from their carriage—it went fast, with a sound like a river running over cobbles. Then, with another whooshing noise like wind in an empty room, a doorway slid aside and they had open access—the first time for any man—onto the surface of the Moon.

  ***

  Alain was first to step out. If he had any words to commemorate the occasion, of course Vincent was unable to hear them—all he heard was the sound of his own breath and the faint rush of air as it fed into his helmet from the pack on his back.

  He stepped gingerly down from their carriage, and stood, slightly unsteady, on the surface. Almost immediately he was once again struck by the immensity of the heavens overhead, and the smallness of his place in the scheme of such things. The shimmering blue globe—waning now into little more than a crescent sliver—hung above the horizon, and Alain pointed in that direction before walking away. Vincent thought that his companion was merely indicating the presence of their home in the sky above then he saw that Alain had something else entirely in mind.

  They had landed, whether by accident or chance, in a large crater, and Alain was even now headed at some speed toward the crater wall, and toward the cubic structures that clustered there. Even to Vincent’s unscientific eye they looked far too square and regular to be natural—something or someone—had built them.

  It seemed they were not the first life to have walked on this barren landscape after all.

  He followed Alain, having to break into a bouncing run to match the engineer’s speed. As they approached the crater wall he saw that the cubic structures were extensive—they ran in a full semi-circle round the rim, situated so that they would catch the maximum availability of the sun. And not only were they extensive, they were gargantuan, each block taller than the tallest height of the rocket they had used to get here, so large that Vincent could not even begin to imagine what feat of engineering prowess might have been employed in their building.

  Alain reached the crater wall first, and stopped so suddenly that he kicked up a cloud of ash and dust such that Vincent’s sight was momentarily obscured. It was only when it cleared that he saw that the blocks were not uniformly smooth but instead were intricately carved—if there was any doubt that these had not been deliberately fashioned, that was quashed by the precision and artistic skill of the depictions etched into the stone. There were great creatures, seemingly flying through space, armies of crawling, insectoid things covering the surfaces of entire planets, stars being born, blazing, and dying in their hundreds inside clouds of gas almost too old, and too large, to imagine. There was a story here to be read, but one that might take a lifetime—tens, hundreds of lifetimes—to fathom. All Vincent could do at that moment was stand in awe and wonderment—his concept of his place in the vastness of eternity had just become smaller still.

  Alain was still moving, bounding down the curve of the crater wall, obviously enraptured by the sight and the immensity of their findings. Vincent had one eye on the wall, so almost did not spot when Alain came to a halt again. The two men collided, almost comically bouncing off each other until they righted themselves and Vincent saw why the other man had stopped.

  The blocks had separated—or been separated—here, and a cavern of sorts had opened up before them. Vincent was suddenly aware that they had no lights on their suits or helmets, but Alain seemed intent on moving closer, as if he had spotted something inside that required his attention. Vincent was about to move to his side when Alain suddenly turned full round and started to run, bounding away like a hunted gazelle across the crater floor, heading straight back toward their waiting carriage

  Vincent had no time to think, no time to take a look into that cavern—his only thought was that Alain might be so afraid, so taken by fear, that he would depart and leave the reporter to suffocate alone on this foreign soil so very far from home. He sped after the engineer as fast as he was able.

  He caught his man right at the door to the carriage and they both bundled inside. Alain wasted no time. Within minutes they were aloft again, their repulsor rockets blowing them up and away, off the surface, and spearing them straight toward the twinkling dot in the dark sky that was their beacon—the rocket that would deliver them home.

  Alain did not speak as they rejoined the rocket, got out of their rubber suits then climbed up and out of the landing carriage and into the main structure. They each clambered back into the original rubber suits and chairs. Vincent had barely got himself seated when Alain turned the knob that filled the whole rocket with a blinding flash as they sped, with all due haste, away from the Moon, and straight toward the blue globe that now started to swell in the window ahead of them.

  They were headed home.

  ***

  Even now that they were safely off the surface and with the Moon receding apace behind them, it was some time before Alain deigned to speak of what had so spooked him at the crater wall. Not until they had fed on ham and bread, and downed a goodly quantity of brandy did he finally speak, and when he did so, it was in a whispered voice.

  “Did you see them?” he said.

  “See what?” Vincent replied.

  “Not what, but who,” Alain said, taking a deep draft of brandy that Vincent knew sobriety was soon to be a thing of the past for his friend and that he needed to get his answers sooner rather than later. But the liquor seemed to loosen Alain’s tongue, and he went on without further prompting. “At first glance it was just darkness I saw, such deep, velvet darkness unknown to man. Then they were there—gray and spectral and seething, roiling and rolling over and around each other—a lake of them, filling the cavern, the depths below, filling the very interior of the whole moon itself.”

  Vincent knew his man well enough to know that such flights of poetic fancy were not usual for his temperament. His friend had taken somewhat of a shock, and a severe one at that.

  “Tell me. What exactly did you see?”

  The brandy was most definitely taking hold now, and Alain’s eyes were taking on the dullness of drunken stupor, so Vincent did not quite believe his last words before falling down into fitful sleep—words that did, however, keep him awake for many hours to follow.

  “Souls—my God—it is filled with souls.”

  ***

  As Earth grew ever larger in their view, Alain’s mood slowly recovered to something like his former self. Much of his waking hours were spent in many small but necessary course adjustments to ensure the correct trajectory for their return. To Vincent’s eyes his friend still looked pale and somewhat wan, but Alain waved away all shows of concern.

  There was one minor matter on the return journey that Vincent was to look back on later and mark its import, although at the time it had seemed too small a thing to need to be noted. Alain was working, once again, at the controls for the repulsor rockets when he stopped and cocked his hea
d to one side as if listening. Vincent saw the look.

  “Is there something wrong? Something with the engines?”

  Alain’s face had gone ashen, almost gray, but the sound of Vincent’s voice seemed to drag him back to himself and once again he waved the reporter away.

  After that it was just a matter of getting them back onto firm soil, which was nowhere near as simple as Vincent might have hoped. He was to be glad yet again of the rubber suit—not this time to save him from cold, but to leech away some of the intense heat as they rubbed against the Earth’s atmosphere on their descent and the rocket seemed to burn and flame around them.

  Alain opted for the spectacular rather than the mundane on their landing and they made a, none too smooth, return to their home planet in the grounds of Notre Dame, almost three days to the minute since their departure.

  ***

  Of course there was a great sensation, and they—Vincent in particular—were feted as national heroes. There were parades and feasts, speeches and medals, but after a week Alain announced that he was done with the circus and departed for Quiberon without even so much as a word to his friend.

  As for himself, Vincent was caught up in his new celebrity status, and it was only after another week that he really took note of his friend’s absence. It took another week after that before it turned to concern—a concern that was further heightened by a news report that the engineer had become a recluse, locking himself in his barn and refusing to countenance any reportage of the events on the Moon.

  Vincent took the first available train going west, and arrived on the cliff as the sun was going down into the sea that same day. He realized as he watched the sunset that he was in almost the exact same spot from where he’d watched Alain’s first demonstration rocket fly skyward. It seemed like an age had passed since that day, although when he turned and went to the house the old building itself seemed as stout and strong as ever.

  He got no answer to his knocks, and there was no sign of any light in the windows, but on going around to the rear of the property, he heard much clattering and banging from inside the old barn.

  He banged, hard on the barn door. At first he only got oaths and imprecations in return until he called out.

  “It’s me, Vincent. Let me in, Alain. For the sake of our friendship, let me in.”

  The door opened—only far enough for someone to peer out, and Vincent was unsure if the figure that greeted him was indeed the engineer, for he was unkempt and unshaven, and smelled like he had not bathed since their last meeting. When Vincent was recognized, the door was opened fully, then closed and locked again behind them as he was led into the barn.

  The source of the clattering and banging was all too evident—Alain was building another rocket—smaller than the one on which they had made their expedition, but clearly large enough for one man to fit inside with ease.

  “Surely you cannot intend to return?” Vincent said.

  At first he was unsure of getting an answer, for Alain had his head cocked to one side, as if listening to a different conversation entirely, and it was only when Vincent took him by the shoulder that he got the man’s attention.

  “Alain, you must stop this nonsense! Remember the walls of the crater, remember what happened to you there the last time.”

  At that Alain started weeping.

  “Remember? That is the easy part. It is the forgetting that is giving me so much trouble. You must not stop me. I have to return—she has to return. I brought her back here with us, but this is not her place—as there is not ours. We each belong with our own dead, and I must return her to her sea in the dark—get her back to the dance.”

  Vincent could see that he was going to get little sense from his friend until they were away from the work at hand. It took a great deal of persuasion, but finally he walked, almost marched, Alain back to the main house where he ensured the man bathed, clothed, and fed himself back to something like normality.

  They adjourned to a small library with brandy and cigars but Alain was still not settled—he continued to cock his head in that peculiar fashion, as if listening to some otherwise silent conversation.

  “What ails you, my friend?” Vincent asked. “Did we not succeed? Are we not heroes?”

  “Thieves and plunderers is what we are,” Alain replied. “Babes pulling the wings off flies and knowing not what they have done. But this is something I can fix—I am her and she is me and we are together—and I must take her home.”

  “She? Who is this strange woman to whom you refer?”

  Alain laughed, almost a sob.

  “Woman is too small a word for her—she is older than the moon itself, wiser than time—and as lost here as we were there. We brought her back with us, as I have told you several times now.”

  Vincent was now convinced that his friend was in the throes of a delusion, but short of tying the man up or committing him to an asylum, he could think of no immediate course of action that would give him any aid. In any case, Alain preempted any decision by rising and taking a book from a desk by the window,

  “It is all in here,” he said. “I have written it all down—for you—for posterity. Do with it what you will. And forgive me.”

  “Forgive you for what?”

  “For this,” Alain replied. “I cannot let you stop me.”

  He brought the brandy bottle down hard at the side of Vincent’s head, knocking him to the ground. As the reporter fell away, he looked into Alain’s eyes. Something danced in there. It was not madness, it was a shifting, shimmering gray, like moonlight itself, and it filled poor Alain’s head. It was the last thing Vincent saw before he fell, once again, into darkness.

  ***

  He woke, alone, in the library. Dim morning sunshine filtered in the window. There was no sign of Alain but as Vincent rose he heard a roaring from the rear of the house. He rushed through, and reached the back door just as the countryside all around was lit by a brilliant blast of white lightning. The new rocket burst upward, out through the barn roof and, ever faster, blazing a trail across the morning sky, heading straight for where the Moon hung, smiling, on the far horizon—Alain was returning to his mistress.

  Vincent watched until the rocket was far out of sight before he realized he still held the book in his hand, the last thing Alain had given him. He rifled through the pages. There was screed after screed of tightly packed drawings, the same drawings he had last seen etched in the cubes on the wall of that distant crater. He could make as little sense of them now as he could then.

  The old barn was well aflame and Vincent added to the conflagration by tossing the book into the fire. He wanted nothing further to do with it. He did not stay to watch it burn. He turned away. The moon continued to smile down on him, but he kept his head bowed and did not look up.

  In all the years to come, he never looked at the Moon again, but he forever afterward felt its smile, mocking him.

  I do believe James and Stoker expected me to provide them with a new tale of the exploits of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson when it came to my turn at a telling. But I have only lately completed the long manuscript of ‘The Baskerville Hound’ and I have quite had my fill of Holmes’ little tics and peculiarities for a while.

  My initial idea for the following story required a more dogged approach to an investigation—and there is no more dogged a character in my pantheon than Lestrade. In my Baker Street stories the Inspector is, of necessity, kept in the background, but I found a desire to bring him forward, to cast some light on him, and see how he performed under the pressure of happenings far beyond the ken of a routine case for the Yard. I have thoroughly enjoyed this dabble into a more esoteric arena of storytelling, and I do believe I might linger here for a while yet.

  Here is my tale.

  THE CURIOUS AFFAIR ON THE EMBANKMENT

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Inspector Lestrade was never happy about being called upstairs to the Commissioner’s office—even less so just after his
breakfast when he was contentedly seated by a warm fire with a pipe and a mug of strong tea. He tried hard to think of any mistake he could have made on recent cases that would require disciplinary action, and could think of none that might be worthy. But the Constable who came for him said it sounded urgent and was ‘a matter of some discretion’.

  At least it doesn’t sound like a bollocking.

  He only took time to knock out his pipe on the grate before hurrying up through the corridors and stairwells to present himself to—not just the top man, but two Chief Inspectors and a politician; Lestrade recognized him, but at that moment could not remember his name.

  The Commissioner—Lestrade always had trouble with that, for they had come up through the ranks together, and to him the man would always be ‘Jonesy’—looked up as the door opened. He waved Lestrade forward to stand in front of the desk. With the other four all being seated behind it, and all facing him, Lestrade suddenly felt like he was in front of a judiciary hearing.

  Maybe it is a bollocking after all.

  The Commissioner took his time, shuffling papers and scraping out his pipe before looking up at Lestrade again.

  “Relax, man,” he said “You’re not in any bother. Not this time. We have a job for you. A delicate matter, and it’s a bit hush-hush, so we do not need you running off to Baker Street for a confab with the amateurs on this one. Understood?”

  Lestrade thought it circumspect to keep his reply to a simple nod—even if he wasn’t in any bother, anything that required so much brass in one room smelled like trouble he did not need. His instinct was quickly confirmed as the Commissioner continued.

  “Lady Elizabeth Mears has gone missing, taken by person or persons unknown from a carriage on the Victoria Embankment last night. There have been no demands, which is quite peculiar in itself for, as you know, Sir Geoffrey is one of the richest men in the country, and has the ear of the Prime Minister, so we are wondering whether this might have a political rather than a financial motive. But that is for you to find out. You will report directly to me, and speak to no one else. And this is your top priority as of right now. Anything else on your desk can wait. Understood?”