Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [12]
“With military precision—most of them were soldiers—they disassembled my son,” the Countess says. “Each bore away a different piece of him and buried it in the forest.”
“It speaks well of your Christian generosity that you would seek to liberate the Baron’s murderers,” Jonathan says, stepping away from the telescope.
“Our project has less to do with compassion than with self-preservation,” the Countess replies. “Upon consummating their plot against Gustav, the golems gave Lotte and myself to know that their next victims would be we ourselves. Only after it became clear that we were taking every conceivable step to free them, hiring one metallurgist, galvanicist, and molecularist after another, did they become as compliant as when my son first brought them into being.”
A white-hot bead of anger burns through Jonathan’s breast. If the present experiment fails, he will surely become entangled in whatever lethal designs the golems draw against Lotte and the Countess. How dare these women presume to put him in such jeopardy? But before he can articulate his fury, he hears the sharp electric report of the chronometer blade snapping into place.
Jonathan again avails himself of the telescope. Already the trident had become a humming, wailing, incandescent blur, each prong oscillating like the pendulum of some demonic inverted clock. At the edge of the circle, poplars and beeches shiver in the aural storm. The trunks fracture, and the trees crash to the forest floor, even as scores of owls, rooks, larks, foxes, hares, hedgehogs, and deer flee the cataclysm. On all sides of the resonator, jagged crevasses open in the earth.
So great is the pain in Jonathan’s head that he abandons the telescope, shuts his eyes, and massages his throbbing temples. His tendons tremble like harp strings plucked by invisible hands. Were the tower nearer to the fork by as few as ten yards, he calculates, his eardrums would rip, his heart burst, and his skeleton turn to powder.
Fighting his way through the crashing waves of sound, Jonathan returns to the telescope. Everywhere he looks, fault lines zigzag across the golems’ metal flesh. Their faceless heads resemble ancient vases, cracked and battered by history’s vicissitudes. Like an ancient mosaic shedding its tiles, the creatures molt bit by bit. Bezalelite fragments drop from their phantom arms, legs, and torsos, revealing the moldering bones beneath. Momentarily mastering his fear and transcending his astonishment, Jonathan takes satisfaction in knowing that—given the intensity of the tremors—the fork is probably freeing not only the human golems but also the Baron’s experimental insects, reptiles, and mammals.
“Mirabile dictu!” the Countess cries.
“The specters are hatching!” Lotte shouts.
“It’s not safe here!” Jonathan screams, urging the women toward the stairwell. “Run!”
Despite her advanced age, the Countess manages to negotiate the steps two at a time, as do Jonathan and Lotte, so that everyone reaches the ground floor within three minutes. No sooner does Jonathan start charging down the corridor than the ceiling disintegrates, squalls of plaster cascading into his path. Frantically he sidles and weaves amidst the plummeting timbers and errant chunks of masonry, but his athleticism proves useless before the force he has unleashed. As he reaches the door to the conservatory, a wayward chandelier, luminous with gas, lands squarely atop his skull. The bright bludgeon plunges him into darkness, but not before he notices that the hall now swarms with a thousand phantoms, each a disquieting shade of red and all wearing strangely despondent expressions, utterly unbefitting of persons recently released from the bottomless pit.
AT FIRST JONATHAN assumes that he has fallen prey to a nightmare. How else might he explain the scene now stretching before him? Heaped with kindling, two wooden obelisks rise from the central courtyard, each holding a Nachtstein woman—bound, gagged, and blindfolded. The plaque above Lotte’s head reads Singularist. Countess Nachtstein’s stake