The Dark Victorian: Risen by Elizabeth Watasin

Author:Elizabeth Watasin [Watasin, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A-Girl Studio
Published: 2012-04-12T23:00:00+00:00

***

In the sweatshop, Jim spat out his pin.

“Who knows what this is?” Jim cried. “First smart girl to accept it must help me, and hurry!”

A girl hurried forward. She followed Jim’s directions. She found his monocle and placed it at his eye socket, retrieved his brown candle, and lit it.

“That boy’s mother!” he said to the frightened women. “Where is she?”

The seamstresses moved aside. A woman sat slumped among the scattered, half-made dresses, keening softly. Her eyes were wide with grief and horror.

“Never mind,” Jim said. He turned his attention to his monocle. Art was rapidly ghosting through advertisement boards, omnibuses, fences, horses, carts, and crowds of people. The undead boy ran just beneath her. She was flying.

“That’s it!” Jim said. “He’ll lead us to the re-animationist!”

“Aye,” Art whispered in his skull. She was so close to her quarry Jim could see the grimy wheel track across the boy’s dirty shirt back.

Art shadowed the undead boy as he leapt fences and scurried thorough laundry-hung warrens, ran through yards scattering chickens, and barreled through back kitchens, frightening people with his bloodstained body. When the boy ran into a deserted street that led into a decrepit tenement, Art took solid form. He disappeared inside. The area was silent and lifeless. Art stood on the cobblestones and felt the black presence that shifted and flickered within the building.

“Street name, Art, I need a sign,” Jim said in her ear. Art slowly pivoted around to view the empty street until she faced the tenement again.

“I have it,” Jim said. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re all here,” she quietly said.

“Don’t go in,” Jim said. “Wait for us. I hear Risk on the stairs now.”

“No. Thee saw what the little one can do. More men will die if I don’t enter.”

“I understand. I—” He fumbled for words. “Art,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

“We’ll be there as fast as we can.” He fell silent.

She walked towards the building. Above, the tiny shadows waited. She grasped her stick in both hands.

“Way will open,” Art whispered. She stilled the tremor of her hands.

In ghost form she passed through all the floors. At the topmost one she rose in the presence of still and silent children. She took solid form in the midst of them.

The re-animationist stood across the room, leaning against a wall. The undead boy with the broken arm clung to him. The children stood pale and dead-eyed. Some had rotting wounds. A boy’s neck had the thick purplish bruises from being garroted. A little girl in a fine white dress was cut open from her neck down to her legs. The littlest child among them was a tiny girl of three.

“Surprised to see so many?” the man asked. He was darkly handsome but his face was wan and perspiring. He leaned heavily against the wall.

“The parent who loves would want them back,” Art said.

“Yes,” the man agreed. “They need to come back; especially if they were murdered.”

“And it’s not an accident,” he continued when Art did not respond. “If the intention was clear.

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