Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [118]
The only sound was the whispering and muttering of hidden voices. They were in the machinery of this room too. I stood stock-still and clamped my hands over my ears.
I expected someone to come searching for me from the room I had left behind. Instead, a figure entered from the room ahead. I recognised him at once—Norris, the Scottish engineer. He appeared in a further archway, backing away from the engines and boilers. I lowered my hands. He continued backing away for a dozen paces before he caught sight of me.
“What’s happenin’, lad?” he demanded. His face was white, and he looked shaken.
“The mechanism has stopped,” I answered. Guilt or honesty made me add, “I stopped it.”
“I can see it’s stopped.” He hadn’t registered my last sentence. “But what’s this other thing that’s started?”
For a moment, I imagined he was hearing the same voices that I heard. “You hear them too?”
“Them?”
“Voices in the metal.”
He shook his head at me as if I were crack-brained. “What I hear is the metal itself. Stress and strain. What’s makin’ it so?”
Even as he spoke, a bolt that held one of the generators to its mounting snapped off suddenly. The bolthead flew up in the air, then fell back with a clatter.
“It shouldna happen,” Norris said, more to himself than to me. “Not when everything’s stopped.”
A wire that ran across the ceiling broke off and lashed about in front of our faces. It was like someone wielding a whip. Then a cable on the floor started to jump and jerk. Norris took to his heels and fled into the room with the apparatus.
I followed, returning the way I had come. The voices in the metal were no louder, but increasingly urgent and excited. At the same time, I could also hear what Norris heard, a creaking and straining of the metal itself. It was a different sound, but related, surely related.
Mother, Father, and Dr. Kessel still stood beside the box; the attendants surrounded the fallen cabinet; Norris hovered further back, half in and half out of the open partition. They were all motionless yet focused, as in a tableau. At first I couldn’t grasp the object of their attention—or objects, for they stared in several directions.
Then, with a sudden movement, a whole mass of apparatus slid from its shelf. Glass tubes smashed on the floor, metallic coils and plates scattered far and wide. I looked again and saw that the frame supporting the shelf had warped away from the vertical—indeed, was continuing to warp. And not only that one frame, but every frame in the room. It was as though some tremendous force were twisting and bending the struts from within.
There was another crash as another shelf tilted and discharged its contents. Then an even louder crash as a whole cabinet went over. And at every crash, I heard—with my other hearing, attuned to those other sounds—I heard a surge of excitement and an evil thrill. Through wires and cables, through struts and rods, those horrible, hidden voices came hurrying towards the wreckage—whispering, muttering, exulting. Like rats they were, converging upon a victim.
On the floor, the metallic fragments continued to twist and bend as if writhing. To my eyes, the process conveyed an impression of indescribable agony.
I broke the spell of horror and shouted at the top of my voice. “I know what it is! It’s the bad thoughts! Inside the metal! I can hear them!”
Mr. Jamieson turned. “What can he hear?”
“Your bad thoughts!” I shouted again. “The mechanism is having nightmares! It’s living your hallucinations!”
Father frowned. “It’s only a machine, Anthony.”
At that moment, a sound came from the frame I was standing beside: a shriek of tormented metal. The whole structure contorted and buckled slowly sideways. There were similar sounds from other parts of the room, and the machinery in the rooms beyond.
“Out of here!” cried Mr. Hungerford. “Everybody, move!”
I think Mother tugged me by the arm—it was all a blur. We fled through the open partition into