Ghosts by Gaslight by Jack Dann

Author:Jack Dann
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Fantasy, Horror, Anthologies, Historical
ISBN: 9780061999710
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

THE ATTENDANTS TOOK us to our rooms in the guest wing. I remember one of them had a strong Yankee accent—the surprise of his American twang was the sole observation that could penetrate the fog now enveloping me. He had a friendly, rough-and-ready sort of face, and his name—as I learned the next day—was Mr. Henry J. Hungerford.

My spirits had sunk with the declining sun. For me, the end of the afternoon meant only one thing: the approach of night and impending nightmares. It was a cycle I went through every twenty-four hours. The foreboding of nightmares was like a dark aura that changed the appearance of ordinary objects in my perception, painting them with deeper shadows and edges of lurid colour. Whether the impression was produced by an actual nightmare brewing in my brain, or merely by my habitual expectations, I cannot say.

You would suppose that such a state of dread would set my pulses racing and keep me from sleep. So it might have been on the first, or second, or fiftieth occasion. But when that same foreboding acquired the inevitability of night after night after night—and stretched ahead with the prospect of endless future nights—then the effect was, on the contrary, soporific. Like a leaden weight, it dragged me down and rendered me dull and insensible.

However, that night was different. I think some gleam of hope had entered my soul. In spite of his lack of personal charisma, Dr. Kessel had been absolutely confident as to the powers of his mechanism. It was just enough to counteract my usual torpor. I lay awake and listened to the rising wind outside, soughing through the trees and shaking the loose frame of my window.

I have said that, in certain random moments, my senses functioned with unusual clarity. Sometimes, I think, my heightened acuity far exceeded any normal sight and hearing. Lying under the sheets in Dr. Kessel’s institute, I heard—or seemed to hear—a sound carried on the wind, but not of the wind itself. It was a sound of moving mechanical parts, the faintest rhythm of recurring thuds and clanks.

A fancy came over me then, so wild and odd that I almost laughed aloud. The mechanism awaited my inspection—did I dare visit it now? You must know that mine was no bold or hardy temperament; night terrors had extinguished whatever stock of impulsive animal spirits I had been born with. To creep outside in the middle of the night was, for me, almost unthinkable. Yet I thought of it; and the thought grew and grew until I acted upon it.

I pulled on socks and shoes, and an overcoat over the top of my nightshirt. My room was on the first storey, and I had to pass by my parents’ room on the way to the stairs. They had left their door a little ajar—as always, since my screams in the night had become a regular occurrence. They were still awake and talking, and the intensity of Mother’s voice made me stop and listen.

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