Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [91]
It was on the evening of the 12th of June, 1906, that the “lights” first appeared, among a chattering and laughing crowd that was pouring out of the Strand Theatre into Surrey Street. Phyllis Brand was leaning upon my arm. We were newly engaged, and I was looking only at her till I heard cries from the people around us. Then I saw that the air was full of pale yellow lights. Most of them were some distance above, standing out clearly against the dark houses and cloudy sky; but a few were fluttering down among the crowd; round lights of about the bigness of a shilling, and much the same thickness. When they came quite near, it was seen that they went in threes, each at the corner of an equal-sided triangle, some eight or nine inches apart. Someone called “Fire” and the crowd began to sway dangerously.
I put my arms round Phyllis, and forced our way through, with some damage to our clothes and a few bruises, and watched the crowd from a dark doorway a little distance down the street. The excitement increased, and several of the crowd were thrown down and trampled underfoot. Seventeen people were killed, we learnt the next morning. Afterwards they were accounted among the lucky ones.
The treble lights dropped steadily among the fighting mass at the doors, and darted swiftly at some who escaped from the outskirts, always fastening upon their breasts. A white-bearded gentleman beside me declared it was only a meteoric shower, and there was no real harm in the lights. They were luminous, like electric light, he explained, but did not burn. A man with a hoarse voice suggestive of drink remarked that they had sent for a fire-engine, and when it came the crowd would be worse; and anyhow, it wasn’t his business, and he was going home. He had taken a few unsteady steps, when a triangle of lights dropped noiselessly upon him. He howled like an injured animal and ran. A woman in evening dress rushed by with the lights upon her cloak. She threw the cloak aside, but the lights had penetrated it, and adhered to her dress. She tore away the flimsy muslin, but they remained on the underwear; and when she plucked this away they were still left — three pale yellow spots upon the flesh. She tore at them with her fingers, till her nails made long red weals, but the fiendish spots remained. A man, hatless and coat-less, with three spots upon his shirt-front around a glittering diamond stud, seized her arm and hurried her away. Phyllis’s hold on me relaxed, and I found that she had fainted. I walked stealthily along the pavement, keeping in the shadow as much as I could, carrying her in my arms, and reached the Temple Station safely. The booking-clerk and ticket-collectors had fled, and I carried her down to the platform below.
The people who had the yellow spots upon them were gathered at one end of the platform screaming, and trying to tear them from themselves and from one another. Those who had escaped attack were huddled together at the other end of the platform. A man with the spots upon him tried to join us, and refused to go away. Another man who stood before his children brandishing a big walking-stick felled him. Several women had fainted. A train hustled in, and we crowded wildly into the already crowded carriages, elbowing each other fiercely out of the way. A somber-looking man in a corner woke up and grumbled about the crowding, and asked what was the matter. Somebody told him that hell fire had dropped upon earth. He snorted and offered us some pamphlets upon “The Curse of Alcohol.” It is evident that the rest of the passengers also thought that we were all drunk.
I got out at Blackfriars and carried Phyllis, who was still in the faint, into St. Paul’s Station. I tried to get some brandy from the buffet, but it was full of wailing people branded with the lights. They did not hurt, they said but they frightened them, because they would not come off: The lights penetrated the