Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [68]
When I returned to the desk, what I saw sent all thoughts of food to the four winds.
Daubed in thick ink across my careful notes was a symbol I had seen before, but which I had not drawn. It was a sign used by alchemists of the fourteenth century to capture the union of the sexes.
Don’t scowl at me, Michaels. I’m not being unnecessarily prurient. One must describe what one sees: that is the most important rule of science, particularly if one has broken it already that week!
This crude drawing, this arcane symbol, was the first confirmed, physical manifestation of the creature that was to change my life forever.
You must imagine my wary excitement upon this discovery. I was not frightened by the phenomenon itself, but I very much feared being taken for a fool, and so I conducted a thorough search of the desk and its surroundings, the door and its lock, even the windows, tightly sealed against the night’s chill, lest someone had waited until I slept to deliver this cryptic sigil. I found nothing to suggest that it was anything other than an anomaly; and, perhaps, a message from beyond.
Breakfast arrived, with Margaret hard on its heels. I hid the defaced sheet under the rest of my notes and told no one about it. Why? Well, instinct played a part. Margaret was unsettled enough; I didn’t want her crying the house down, demanding exorcisms or séances or whatever is the latest fad in London these days. And we had lost enough staff already. Better, I told myself, to keep this development to myself for the time being, until I was absolutely certain of its import.
I know what you must be thinking: I was tired and had been reading alchemical texts all night. The sherry, too, might have played a part. It is only natural for you to assume that I had doodled the symbol myself in some deep hypnagogic state and woken unaware that I was its author. That is in fact the complete reverse of the reality. The symbol appeared because I was reading the texts. The hand that so crudely crafted it was drawn to me for this very reason.
Margaret was not persuaded by my assurances that nothing untoward had occurred that night, but the events of the day went some way toward reinforcing the white lie. As though the production of the drawing had calmed our so-called haunting, all further incidents were greatly reduced in magnitude. Nothing happened that could not be attributed to natural causes, and I was careful to ensure that calm prevailed.
That night, to be certain I was not interrupted, I slipped a dose of chloral into Margaret’s evening cocoa. When at last she was breathing peacefully, I returned to the laboratory, intending to open communication with our provocative ghost.
You see, several things had occurred to me. The ghost knew I was there: why else would it have placed that symbol directly in front of me, where I was certain to see it? That it had waited until I was asleep suggested that it had divined my purpose. Furthermore, it understood what I was reading, or at least recognized like symbols on the pages before me. All this spoke strongly of intelligence, so making contact with it was not only possible but desirable. If replicable, the exchange might dwarf all my other achievements to date.
I had acquired numerous blank sheets of paper, upon which I reproduced other alchemical symbols and wrote messages in several different languages, including Archaic Chinese. I placed them all about the laboratory, and waited. For several hours, nothing happened. I reread The Writings of the Hidden Chamber recovered from the tomb of Tuthmosis III in Luxor, which talks of the gates and ways of the gods, and I revisited the teachings of the Indian saint Bogar, who boasted that he could travel freely throughout the three worlds by means of astral projection. I began to grow sleepy, but drank cup after cup of coffee to ensure I did not succumb. If my