Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [45]
"No!" I shouted involuntarily. "Don't – that is… I don't think you should tamper with that."
He disregarded my warning, bending down to examine the device. "This is some of your old man's stuff, isn't it?" He looked up at me, then back to the choirboy mannikin. "Far out."
"It's – it's very delicate." I stepped across and laid my hand on his arm. "Extremely so. I think it would be best if you refrained–"
"Screw that." He shook me off, then knelt down for a closer look. His hands had already found the small panel at the back and had pried it open. "I've been itching to get a hold of one of these."
"Please… I beg of you." Dreadful memories urged my anxiety. "Desist–"
"Forget it," said Miss McThane to me. "There's no stopping him when he's got a new toy." She gazed with an expression of disgust as Scape explored further into the choristers' alcove.
"All right." His voice came muffled from the depths, beyond the row of mannikins. A flaring safety match threw his shadow back towards me. "I think I found the master controls."
So he had; I recognised the assemblage of levers and gears from the last time. No doubt the apparatus was still in the state of erroneous adjustment in which I had left it; I could see that the great coil of the central driving spring was still wound tight.
I left off wringing my hands and grasped the back of Scape's vestments to pull him away from the machinery. "You mustn't," I cried. "The devices are misaligned and malfunctioning–"
He shook me off with considerable violence, sending me sprawling upon the floor. His brow furrowed in anger above the blue lenses. "I've been studying your old man's gizmos for years," he said sharply. "There ain't anything I don't know about them."
I made another attempt to ward off tragedy, grasping him about his robed knees. He toppled backwards and, flailing about for balance, grabbed hold of the centremost lever. "Watch out!"
Scraping through a layer of rust, the lever swung in an arc under Scape's weight. For a moment there was silence, then a soft, unmistakable tick. Our combat ceased, with Scape supine on the alcove's floor and I halfway above him; we both arched our necks to see the machinery beyond us.
Another tick, and a groan of metal shifting from its long-confined position. The noises began to rattle and clatter faster, as the escapements and ratchets of the apparatus woke into their spurious life.
"Christ Almighty–" I scrambled across my opponent's form and yanked the lever. It resisted all my efforts; I might as well have been tugging at the balustraded stones of the church in a Samson-like attempt to bring the entire edifice down upon our heads. The row of mechanical choristers shifted, the jointed limbs beneath the robes creaking, the porcelain faces swivelling above the ruffled collars. In the manner of an owl, the head of the lead chorister swung all the way round, its glass eyes beatifically regarding us. The rosined wheels that my father had installed in the device's throat engaged; "Glo – ri – a," it sang in a piercing treble.
Scape got to his feet and joined me in tugging at the lever. "We gotta get this thing shut off before those creeps out in the church hear it." Our efforts were to no avail as the lever remained in its position.
A creaking noise sounded from the other alcoves around the perimeter of the vestry, as the remainder of my father's devices stirred into life from their rusting sleep. Looking behind me, I saw a white-haired priest emerge into the room's open space; the figure was entirely lifelike except for the maniacally rolling glass eyes and the hand repeating its blessing over the pump-organ. "And with thy spirit," it pronounced, or rather, the wheels inside its throat did.
"Nice going," said Miss McThane. Her sarcasm was cut short as she was forced to duck away from the benediction of the clockwork priest, now spinning about rapidly enough to lift the hem of its vestment as