Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [56]
“You killed him.”
“Sir, I did.”
He shook my hand and turned to go, but did not shout for the warder, turning back to me instead. “My daughter suffers fainting spells, a disorder by no means uncommon among young women. It is part and parcel with the green sickness.”
I waited.
“She lies, sometimes for hours, quite insensible, and seems scarcely to breathe. At such times, she dreams that her soul departs her body and ventures abroad, committing mischief. It is no more than a fancy, you understand.”
“I do, sir.”
“And yet . . .” He shrugged. “There is a doctor in Vienna who holds that there is a second mind below the one we inhabit. If that seems less than clear, I can but say it is by no means clear to me. That mind, he alleges, has fears and desires unconstrained by morality. His theories interest me because Alice’s dreams often seem the products of such a mind. I do not allege that he is correct, and in fact I think it more probable that he is mistaken.”
“I agree,” I said. “It seems quite impossible. Would not such a mind require a separate soul?”
“I should think so. I tell you this because you may have heard that she is mad. She is not, and upon the point I give you my word as a physician. She is only a girl who dreams, and gives her dreams much more credence than they deserve. You have done her a kindness, intended or not. Someday she may be sensible of it.”
I said, “Thank you, sir.”
He smiled. “I shall send my solicitor to you, Brooks. He is a good man, kind, and not much older than yourself. He may be able to do something for you. I hope so.”
There is no more to tell. I have recounted my story to that solicitor, Mr. Josiah Willis, who has inscribed this record as I spoke. He promises me it will never be made public but that he will exhibit it to the child Alice Landon bears when that child is of age. Thus the child, whom I believe my own, shall know who I was and why I was hanged. There is a God in Heaven, I know, and He must know how sincerely I have repented. I pray that He will make this record known not only to Miss Landon’s child but to all my descendants, unto the seventh generation and beyond.
[So many years have passed since James Brooks told his story to Mr. Josiah Willis that no harm can come of making his account public. In no other way can his dying wish be granted, or so the matter appears to us. No doubt the same thought motivated the publisher of the pamphlet.]
Afterword to “Why I Was Hanged”
“Why I Was Hanged” owes as much to Nigel Price as it does to me. Nigel, who is intimately familiar with the culture of Victorian England, spent much time and effort in meticulously checking facts and practices. I owe him much more than this brief mention.
—GENE WOLFE
Margo Lanagan
Margo Lanagan has won four World Fantasy Awards in four different categories, including Best Short Story, and her short stories have won and been short-listed for many other awards. Her fourth collection, Yellowcake, was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in March 2011, and her next novel, based on her WFA-winning novella “Sea-Hearts” (from X6: a novellanthology, ed. Keith Stevenson, coeur de lion publishing, 2008), will be published in 2012. Margo lives in Sydney and is currently working as a technical writer and an arts bureaucrat. She has never seen a ghost (sigh).
MARGO LANAGAN
The Proving of Smollett Standforth
ALWAYS SHE SPRANG from the same dark corner. Smoll could never anticipate the moment she would appear, though night after night she came in the same way and performed the same actions in the same order. He fixed his attention on the place, all terrified expectation, but each night her appearance startled him as greatly as it had the first time. She seemed to wait, indeed, before she leapt forth, for approaching sleep to lower his guard by a fraction, to loosen his joints and sinews, to slow his heartbeat to a pace no more urgent than would be expected of an organ going to its rest upon a day’s gainful industry.
The corner from which she rushed was not the corner with the